erlebte Rede

erlebte Rede, the German term for free indirect style.

erlebte Rede (style indirecte libre), term introduced in 1921 by E. Lorck for a stylistic device, prominent in Impressionist and psychoanalytically oriented fiction. Related to the stream of consciousness techniques (e.g. Schnitzler's Leutnant Gustl, written 1900) which employs the first person technique deriving from monologue in drama, it is written in the third person and enables the writer to switch inconspicuously from third person narrative to passages revealing inner states of mind without involving the use of the first person or even the subjunctive of indirect speech (Kafka, ending of Der Prozeß). Interesting variations displaying the narrator's consistent remote control can be found in Schnitzler's Die Toten schweigen (written in 1897); ‘sagte sie für sich’ and ‘sie dachte’ introduce soliloquies in direct speech, which then switches to erlebte Rede: ‘Warum hatte sie den Kutscher weggeschickt? Was für ein Unsinn! … Ja, was soll sie denn tun …?’, before reverting to: ‘Ich bin nicht allein mit ihm, fiel ihr ein.’ Stream of consciousness technique (in German inadequately termed Bewußtseinsstrom), rigorously employed in Leutnant Gustl, dispenses altogether with the narrator's presence by making no concession to phrases like ‘fiel ihr ein’.