Reading for Stimmung: how to think about the reality of literature today -- Fleeting joys in the songs of Walther von der Vogelweide -- The precarious existence of the pícaro -- Multiple layers of the world in Shakespeare's sonnets -- Amorous melancholy in the novellas of María de Zayas -- Bad weather and a loud voice: Diderot's Le neveu de rameau -- Harmony and rupture in the light of Caspar David Friedrich -- The weight of Thomas Mann's Venice -- Beautiful sadness in Joaquim Machado de Assis's last novel -- The freedom of Janis Joplin's voice -- The iconoclastic energy of surrealism -- Tragic sense of life -- Deconstruction, asceticism, and self-pity.