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From Sinophilia to Sinophobia: China, History, and Recognition CHUNJIE ZHANG D UKE U NIVERSITY In 1697, after engaging with Chinese thought for years, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz published The Latest News from China (Novissima Sinica), a collection of works by European Jesuits, with the intention of promoting the mutual exchange of knowledge between Europe and China. He writes in the introduction, I consider it a singular plan of the fates that human cultivation and refinement should today be concentrated […] in the two extremes of our continent, in Europe and in Tschina (as they call it) […]. Perhaps Supreme Providence has ordained such an arrangement, so that as the most cultivated and distant peoples stretch out their arms to each other, those in between may gradually be brought to a better way of life. (45) Obviously, Leibniz considers China and Europe to be on the same level of civilization while assigning other cultures to lower levels. If we see Leibniz as an ethnocentric thinker who endorses Europe’s superiority while belittling others, then his admiration for China significantly balances his Eurocentrism by conceiving the globe as at least a dual-centric constellation, if not a polycentric one. Leibniz supports those Jesuit missionaries who were inclined to integrate themselves into Chinese society and to gradually introduce Christianity, known as the method of accommodation. Furthermore, Leibniz also suggests that the Europeans «need missionaries from the Chinese who might teach us the use and practice of natural religion, just as we have sent them teachers of revealed theology» (51). 1 Clearly, Leibniz interprets classical Chinese philosophy, in particular Confucianism, as a natural religion. This interpretation betrays, on the one hand, that Leibniz shifts Chinese thought into more familiar forms of knowledge, which could even be described in more radical terms as a distortion of the foreign; yet, on the other hand, Leibniz’s reading also registers his recognition of China and reveals China’s challenges to Christian European discourse. Among the numerous European admirers of classical Chinese philosophy, Leibniz is one of the most significant representatives of Sinophilia from the sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. During this time, China played a central role in European intellectual discourse in religion, ethics, art, and technol- 98 Chunjie Zhang ogy. Travel literature and other works on China were reprinted and translated into various European vernacular languages. 2 Enlightenment rationalists such as Christian Wolff, Voltaire, and François Quesnay believed in Confucianism as the perfect political constitution and advocated European rulers emulating the Chinese model in organizing the state, economy, and agriculture. 3 The fashionable style of chinoiserie, such as the imitation of Chinese gardens by William Chambers, the architect of the Royal Gardens at Kew, also created an exceedingly positive recognition of this remote culture, which did not seem to have equal interest in Europe at the same time. 4 The first British embassy to China in 1792, led by Lord George Macartney to negotiate better conditions for trade and establish diplomatic relation, made clear that the Qing dynasty showed little interest in conforming to Western norms. During the second half of the eighteenth century, the dominant course of Sinophilia shifted toward Sinophobia. Equally radical and intensive, the prevailing Sinophobian attitude portrayed China as the prototype of a stagnant and despotic society. The German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder played the leading role in dismissing the long duration of Chinese history, praised by the Sinophiles, as an «embalmed mummy» lacking life and the capability of transformation. Herder’s Sinophobia is intrinsically entangled with his philosophy of history, which held a powerful sway over Hegel, Marx, and their followers. Jonathan Spence observes that the Sinophile Voltaire started his philosophy of history with China instead of the Biblical Genesis and thus «gave a new twist to Western historiography» (97). Then, conversely, it is the European dispute about history that decisively engenders the attribution of historical stagnation to China, in particular in Herder’s work. In other words, the rise of historicism in the latter half of the eighteenth century, inextricably connected to Herder’s contribution, played a significant part in the long-lasting negative connotation of China (Meinecke; Tautz). There are two main tendencies today to explain the shift from Sinophilia to Sinophobia. First, this radical turn had little to do with Chinese reality and rather reflected inner European intellectual debates (Israel 640; Waley- Cohen 127). 5 David Mungello rightly points out that Leibniz and his contemporaries seriously studied Chinese language and culture and thus showed a more neutral and objective judgment of China, while the later generation of Enlightenment thinkers and their critics employed either a positive or a negative China to promote their own intellectual programs (Great Encounters 122). Second, this shift is ascribed to the rise of European imperialism and the growing number of negative travel accounts about China. From the perspective of postcolonial criticism of imperialism and Orientalism, intellectual From Sinophilia to Sinophobia: China, History, and Recognition 99 Sinophobia is thus seen as the needed justification and ideology for the rising European colonial hegemony in the second half of the eighteenth century (Said; Mackerras; Berger). Both explanations, however, should not be taken in absolute terms. Even if the shift from Sinophilia to Sinophobia merely reflected European thinkers’ own obsessions, we still have to admit that Leibniz’s Sinophilia was supported by his correspondence with Jesuits in China. Moreover, even if the missionaries did not see China in its entirety, they at least transmitted part of the socalled reality. Furthermore, European imperial encroachment on China did not start until the 1840s with the first Opium War. In particular, Germany, in which Leibniz and Herder lived, did not even exist as a unified political entity in their day, let alone have imperial ambitions. In the eighteenth century, European trade with China was almost exclusively conducted on China’s terms (Waley-Cohen 96-102; Gregory 29-72). Negative descriptions and perceptions of China had existed well before Leibniz’s time, but it had never had such a dominant position until the mid-eighteenth century. 6 In other words, the cases of Sinophilia and Sinophobia in eighteenth-century Europe, as seen through the works of Leibniz and Herder, still deserve more comprehensive observation and explanation. The concept of recognition, originating from Hegel’s dialectic model of master and slave, is helpful for my understanding and analysis because changing representations of China in European discourse can be synthesized and explained through a discussion of the Hegelian notion of recognition and its critique by Frantz Fanon. Hegel employs the interaction between master and slave to illustrate the independence and dependence of self-consciousness in his influential Phänomenologie des Geistes. While Hegel states that «the lord achieves his recognition through another consciousness» - the bondsman - and this recognition «is one-sided and unequal,» he, at the same time, stresses that the lordship is not «an independent consciousness, but a dependent one» (Phenomenology 116-17). Hegel contends, «the truth of the independent consciousness is accordingly the servile consciousness of the bondsman» (Phenomenology 117). In other words, the master only exists through recognition by the slave. Dialectically, the Hegelian tale of master and slave emphasizes a fundamental reciprocity. Hegel’s notion of recognition meets censure from the Martinican anticolonial thinker Frantz Fanon in the 1950s. Fanon argues in Black Skin, White Masks that, in social and colonial reality, the white master does not need the recognition from the black slave while the slave strives to adopt the values of the master. In other words, master remains master and slave remains slave. He contends, «The Negro wants to be like the master. Therefore he is less 100 Chunjie Zhang independent than the Hegelian slave. In Hegel the slave turns away from the master and turns toward the object. Here the slave turns toward the master and abandons the object» (221). Fanon thus claims that, in order to gain an equal recognition, the colonized blacks need to maintain their difference or alterity from the white European colonizers and fight for recognition from the master on this ground. In the case of Sinophilia and Sinophobia, the encounter between Europe and China prior to 1800 is marked less by China’s effort to gain Europe’s recognition than by Europe’s reaction to the challenge posed by Chinese thought. Sinophilia, according to Hegel, betrays a one-sided recognition. Sinophobia, following Fanon, is both a refusal to imitate China and a cry for European alterity. The Chinese disinterest, however, compels us to see that the European representations of China in the eighteenth century are less the results of struggle and collision than phenomena produced both by Europe’s encounter with the towering figure of the Chinese Empire and inner European intellectual dynamics. In the following pages, a more detailed perusal of Leibniz’s and Herder’s writings and an account of the historical background of European Chinese trade around 1800 will help us reimagine the transition from Sinophilia to Sinophobia through the notion of recognition. Leibniz’s admiring interpretation of classical Chinese philosophy, in particular Confucianism, is best articulated in his argument with the party of Jesuits such as Farther Longobardi and Father Sainte-Marie, who consider Confucian doctrines erroneous and thus claim that the Chinese need to abandon their own philosophy and become completely Christianized. Leibniz disagrees in his Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese (1716): China is a great Empire, no less in area than cultivated Europe, and indeed surpasses it in population and orderly government. Moreover, there is in China a public morality admirable in certain regards, conjoined to a philosophical doctrine, or rather a natural theology, venerable by its antiquity, established and authorized for about 3,000 years, long before the Greeks whose works nevertheless are the earliest which the rest of the world possess, except of course for our Sacred Writings. It would be highly foolish and presumptuous on our part, having newly arrived compared with them, and scarcely out of barbarism, to want to condemn such an ancient doctrine simply because it does not appear to agree at first glance with our ordinary scholastic notions. (78) Leibniz advocates that more Chinese classics should be accurately translated with greater quantity, «Indeed, it would even be desirable that all the classics be translated together» (78). Obviously, Leibniz’s recognition of China stresses the antiquity of Chinese thought and its practical effects in society. From Sinophilia to Sinophobia: China, History, and Recognition 101 Leibniz even believes that the ancient Chinese learned part of their thought from the tradition of the Christian Patriarchs such as Abraham and Jacob. This endeavor to identify the shared root of both Chinese and Christian philosophy is reflected throughout Leibniz’s reading of Confucian classics. In fact, Leibniz does not strive to find out the differences but to identify the similarities between Chinese and Christian thought. He contends that «Chinese philosophy more closely approaches Christian theology than the philosophy of the ancient Greeks» (97). By bringing Christianity into accordance with Confucianism or vice versa, Leibniz aims to establish universal truths. For example, Leibniz understands the Confucian notion of Li (理) as «reason, or the foundation of all nature, the most universal reason and substance.» Li is for Leibniz the «pure, motionless, rarified» universal cause, «without body and shape, and can be comprehended only through the understanding» (79). Leibniz rejects Father Longobardi’s interpretation of Li as the Christian prime matter and contends that this Chinese notion should be equated with the notion of prime form «as the Soul of the World, of which the individual souls would only be modifications» (96). Leibniz’s central thesis about Chinese philosophy is that it is a natural theology, which contains profound and accurate understanding of moral truths comprehended through human reason or Li and exists before the divine revelation by Jesus Christ. For Leibniz, «Jesus adds nothing new to what reason shows, but only converts this knowledge to a surer footing, overcoming the inconstancy of human reason» (Perkins 174). Leibniz’s interpretation of Li as the prime form reminds us of his monadology, according to which each monad is a variation of the same universe and an expression of the same whole (see Perkins 60-65). Each monad contains and reflects the whole universe and the temporality of past, present, and future in a different way. The British historian of science Joseph Needham argues in his influential Science and Civilization in China (1956) that Leibniz’s theory of monads, one of his life achievements, is essentially influenced by Confucian philosophy. In other words, through Leibniz, Chinese thought enters European intellectual history. Although it is debatable if Chinese philosophy is germinal to Leibniz’s monadology, as David Mungello doubts, at least we can be sure today that Confucianism is germane to and supportive of Leibniz’s own theory (Mungello, «How Central to Leibniz’s Philosophy Was China? »). Leibniz, with the Jesuit Bouvet, also made one of the most remarkable discoveries in Europe’s encounter with China: they realized that the binary system of arithmetic, which Leibniz developed, astoundingly corresponds with the central diagram of the Book of Changes (易经), one of the ancient Chinese 102 Chunjie Zhang classics. Leibniz thus comments, «Now this shows also that the ancient Chinese have surpassed the modern ones in the extreme, not only in piety (which is the basis of the most perfect morality) but in science as well» (134). Furthermore, Leibniz is interested in the Chinese language and believes that it contains structures of the universal Primitive Language given by God to Adam prior to the confusion of languages in Babel. This attempt at introducing a nonphonetic language into the phonocentric and logocentric system in Europe, as Jacques Derrida comments, «had opened a breach within the logocentric security» of the West (98). Now if we go back to our question of recognition, then there does not seem to be a master and a slave in Leibniz’s narrative. Rather Leibniz places Chinese culture on a higher or at least an equal level to Europe and shows his willingness to adopt the assumed Chinese perspective to connect or integrate his world with the other. 7 Yet it is also inappropriate to completely ignore the aspect of subsuming and encompassing Chinese philosophy or language into the European knowledge system in Leibniz’s approach. The Leibnizian search for a universal language, as Derrida points out, is immediately connected with the search for a universal logic, which may in turn confirm European logocentrism. 8 Especially when China becomes the prototypical example of Herder’s historical stagnation, the aspect of logocentrism becomes more consolidated and the master-slave model emerges in the European representation of China. In 1791, almost a century after the publication of Leibniz’s The Latest News from China, Herder, then one of the most prominent intellectuals in the German-speaking world, published the fourth part of his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-1791) and turns the image of China into a hopeless stagnation of history. As the title of Herder’s magnum opus indicates, he endeavors to unearth a philosophical logic of time, space, and human culture in this work. In the preface to his Ideen, Herder claims, Was ist das menschliche Geschlecht im Ganzen, als eine Herde ohne Hirten? oder wie jener klagende Weise sagt: Lässest du sie gehen wie Fische im Meer und wie Gewürm, das keinen Herren hat? - Oder hatten sie nicht nötig, den Plan zu wissen? Ich glaube es wohl; denn welcher Mensch übersiehet nur den kleinen Entwurf seines eignen Lebens? […] Was ist denn Ganzes auf der Erde vollführt? was ist auf ihr Ganzes? Sind also die Zeiten nicht geordnet, wie die Räume geordnet sind? und beide sind ja die Zwillinge Eines Schicksals. […] Genug, ich suchte nach einer Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, wo ich suchen konnte. (15-16) Herder arrives at the conclusion that history is not a series of coincidences; rather it is an organic ongoing process, or a development comprising constant From Sinophilia to Sinophobia: China, History, and Recognition 103 dynamic changes and improvements from lower to higher stages. Herder’s philosophy of history encompasses a universal development from cosmology to the civilization in northern Europe. The chronology and the rhetoric of Herder’s narrative make clear that northern European nations represent the most developed stage of history while other cultures are seen as less developed: Wie kam also Europa zu seiner Kultur, und zu dem Range, der ihm damit vor andern Völkern gebühret? Ort, Zeit, Bedürfnis, die Lage der Umstände, der Strom der Begebenheiten drängte es dahin; vor allem aber verschaffte ihm diesen Rang ein Resultat vieler gemeinschaftlichen Bemühungen, sein eigner Kunstfleiß. (897) Obviously, Herder identifies Europe as a cultural entity in comparison to other peoples. Furthermore, the self-fashioning of Herder’s philosophy of history undeniably bears a logic which justifies the self-ascribed superiority of Europe as a natural and historical process. Herder’s philosophy of history, along with his Sinophobia, emerged through his dispute with Voltaire’s extremely influential treatise Philosophie de l’histoire (1765), in which Voltaire expresses his high esteem toward China. 9 Voltaire stresses the longevity of Chinese historiography and, similar to Leibniz, the imperfection and underdevelopment of European culture in comparison to China. Furthermore, following in Leibniz’s wake, Voltaire also considers that the ancient Chinese have developed social morality to perfection: Let us constantly remember, that five hundred years ago, scarce any one knew how to write, either in the North, in Germany or France. […] There are no people in Europe, who have not latterly made more progress within half a century in all the arts, than they had made from the time of the invasions of the Barbarians, till the fourteenth century. I shall not here examine why the Chinese, who were arrived at the knowledge and practice of everything that was useful in society, did not go as far as we do at present in the sciences; they are, I allow, as bad physicians as we were two hundred years ago, and as the Greeks and Romans; but they brought morality to perfection, which is the first of the sciences. (Philosophy of History 89) Herder strongly disagrees with Voltaire’s approach to history and, in particular, the idea of an absolute perfection in the past because, for him, history is not an imitation of certain ancient models but should rather be conceived as an ongoing process of unique transformations toward the future. Therefore, motionless, the word Leibniz used to describe the unchangeable law of the notion of Li, is now used by Herder to characterize a condition which is forgotten by the flow of history. The universal law for Herder now is not motionless perpetuity, but rather constant regeneration and progression. Therefore the ancient high culture of China, along with Egypt, does not 104 Chunjie Zhang deserve awe and respect any longer. It merely resembles museum-like dead objects and curiosities. Herder portrays China as the biggest failure in the course of the history of humanity. He claims, «Wer erstaunt nicht, wenn er in der Sinesischen Geschichte auf den Gang und die Behandlung der Geschäfte merkt, mit wie Vielem ein Nichts getan werde» (437)! We can summarize Herder’s depiction of China with a metaphor he uses: an embalmed mummy (eine balsamierte Mumie). First, China is embalmed because it has achieved a high degree of refinement in many aspects of its culture such as porcelain, silk, gun powder, the compass, printing, and bridge-, and ship-building long before the Europeans could. 10 Second, it is a mummy because the Chinese are not seen to have the organic drive and ability to innovate and improve these arts. 11 Against Leibniz’s high regard for the Chinese language, Herder holds it as the epitome of the Chinese artificial way of thinking and their lack of scientific spirit: ein Europäisches Ohr und Europäische Sprach-Organe [gewöhnen] sich äußerst schwer oder niemals an diese hervorgezwungene Sylbenmusik […]. Welch ein Mangel von Erfindungskraft im Großen und welche unselige Feinheit in Kleinigkeiten gehörte dazu, dieser Sprache aus einigen rohen Hieroglyphen die unendliche Menge von achtzigtausend zusammengesetzten Charakteren zu erfinden […]. (434-35) For Herder, Chinese people are not talented to develop sciences in their culture according to European standards: «Kann man sich wundern, daß eine Nation dieser Art nach europäischem Maßstabe in Wissenschaften wenig erfunden? » (438). Confucian moral philosophy is seen by Herder as the hindrance preventing China from growing into the next historical stage and keeping Chinese civilization in the childhood phase (Knabenalter) of the history of humanity. Herder compares Confucianism to a mechanical engine (mechanisches Triebwerk) which does not have the ability to produce any new ideas. 12 He comments that there is little taste of true nature and feeling of inner peace, beauty, and dignity in Chinese cultural customs. Echoing the popular climate theory that some climatic environments are better than others for enabling humans to develop their potential, Herder ascribes the negative features of Chinese culture to China’s national character and its geographical location. 13 Therefore, he argues, the Chinese are doomed to be a degenerated slave culture because, like the Jews, they avoid contacts and exchange with other nations. 14 It is not only clear so far that Herder is using European standards to judge China but also that he is doing so intentionally. Well informed and erudite as Herder is, he knows the high reputation of the Chinese Empire among Enlightenment thinkers. Herder writes, «Jedermann kennt die vorteilhaften From Sinophilia to Sinophobia: China, History, and Recognition 105 Gemälde der Sinesischen Staatsverfassung, die insonderheit von den Missionarien nach Europa geschickt und daselbst nicht von spekulativen Philosophen sondern von Staatsmännern sogar, beinah als politische Ideale bewundert wurden» (432). Although he claims to find a middle course to deliver a realistic picture of China, his completely negative portrayal betrays that he is not primarily interested in drawing up a balance sheet of Chinese mores and customs, but rather bears other intentions: first, as a critic of the Enlightenment, as Isaiah Berlin calls him, he shows his discontent with the Enlightenment philosophy of history represented by Voltaire by destroying the positive image of China; second, something that is more far-reaching and influential, Herder constructs an image of China in order to establish and promote an image of European dynamism of trade and sciences, which is set against the backdrop of the so-called Chinese stagnation. In other words, Herder’s endeavor to find out the logic of universal history bears the task of constituting a new identity and historical mission for Europe, and thus he uses China here to produce the binary between the modern and the ancient, east and west, historical stagnation and development. Herder’s account of the historical stagnation of China is later reflected in Hegel and Marx’s image of China. For Hegel, China does not have real history or historicity. The spirit of world history, which finds its home in northern Europe, has never been to the other part of the world (Vorlesung 11-174). Karl Marx also takes on the concept of Chinese changelessness and considers Asian economic form a nonprogressive one. Colin Mackerras comments, «It followed for Marx that outside intervention was necessary to force change upon a resistant and miserable Asia» (112). If Hegel’s and, in particular, Marx’s image of China accompanies and also is accompanied by China’s subjugation by Western powers in the second half of the nineteenth century, in Leibniz and Herder’s time there was little diplomatic relationship between the Chinese Empire and European nations. In 1793, two years after the publication of Herder’s Ideen, Lord George Macartney, Great Britain’s first envoy to China, was commissioned to negotiate better conditions for trade and to establish diplomatic relationships with the Qing dynasty. At the end of his mission, Macartney was deeply disappointed because his requests to the Huang Di (emperor) Qianlong were rejected and he was courteously dispatched back to his ships in the South. Qianlong’s edict to George III, which appears to have been drafted well before Macartney’s arrival, treats Great Britain as one of China’s tribute countries: 106 Chunjie Zhang We, by the Grace of Heaven, Emperor, instruct the King of England to take note of our charge. Although your country, O King, lies in the far oceans, yet inclining your heart towards civilization you have specially sent an envoy respectfully to present a state message, and sailing the seas he has come to our Court to kotow and to present congratulations for the Imperial birthday, and also to present local products, thereby showing your sincerity. […] As to what you have requested in your message, O King, namely to be allowed to send one of your subjects to reside in the Celestial Empire to look after your country’s trade, this does not conform to the Celestial Empire’s ceremonial system, and definitely cannot be done. (Macartney 337-38) The edict further shows that the Qing do not want to privilege the British over other European countries and consider the purpose of a long-term ambassador unpractical and illogical: If it is said that your object, O King, is to take care of trade, men from your country have been trading at Macao for some time, and have always been treated favourably. […] Why, then, do foreign countries need to send someone to remain at the capital? This is a request for which there is no precedent and it definitely cannot be granted. Moreover, the distance between Macao […] and the capital is nearly ten thousand li [a Chinese li is equal to 500 meters], and if he were to remain at the capital how could he look after it? If it is said that because you look up with admiration to the Celestial Empire you desire him to study our culture, yet the Celestial Empire has its own codes of ritual which are different from your country’s in each case. Even if the person from your country who remained here was able to learn them it would be of no use since your country has its own customs and regulations, and you would certainly not copy Chinese ones. (Macartney 339-40) It is not only clear that the Qing are ignorant of the British and European practice of diplomacy, but this document also tells us that they are not at all interested in expanding trade and maintaining a sustained relationship with Britain - from their perspective a tribute country of no danger and significance. For the British, however, the Macartney embassy is meant to save the British East India Company from bankruptcy, due to the highly restricted trade conducted solely on China’s terms, and to further open up the potentially greatest market in the world for British products. In fact, before and also long after Macartney’s embassy, European trade with China was restricted to the small area around Macau and Canton in the south. Foreign trade was not seen as a natural right, but rather a gracious concession by the Qing Empire. China exported a great amount of tea to Europe each year, but refused to allow European goods to circulate extensively on their domestic market. «The East India Company had been unable to sell sufficient goods to finance its large purchases of tea, and as a result had been forced to send great quantities of silver dollars to China to pay for its yearly From Sinophilia to Sinophobia: China, History, and Recognition 107 purchases» (Macartney 14). Foreigners were not allowed to buy books on Chinese histories and ordinary Chinese people were not allowed to teach them Chinese. Only merchants with special licenses could do business with people from the so-called Western Oceans. Recent research has shown that the Gross Domestic Product of China in 1820 was $199 billion, whereas six advanced Western countries (UK, USA, France, Germany, Italy, and Austria) altogether only had $128 billion (See Sugihara 79). Therefore China plays, culturally and economically, a far more important role for Britain and other European countries than vice versa. The Macartney embassy has been seen as the defining moment in Sino-European history because China was first seen from inside out through the eyes of a shrewd diplomat. The travel writings by Macartney and his companion John Barrow are the first accounts of China from a British colonial and capitalist point of view (see Barrow). This embassy also poses clear challenges to China and demystifies the dominant European perception of China as a country of grand power. When Herder published his Ideen, however, China still remained an enigmatic country in respect of political and economic powers for the European nations. The letter by George III that Macartney presented to the Chinese Emperor still reflects a strong Sinophile tendency. Against this background, it is difficult to see Herder’s Sinophobia merely as the rhetoric of the powerful or the justification of subjugation and exploitation because Europe was still observing and exploring the real strength of the Chinese Empire. Therefore, in addition to criticizing the arbitrary debasement of China in Herder’s work, we can also see that Herder’s philosophy of history actually produces the need of recognition that an assumed inferior China should have toward a self-ascribed superior Europe. If Leibniz’s willingness to adopt Confucianism shows his one-sided recognition toward China, then Herder’s exaggerated negative depiction of China discloses a negative recognition of China and a call for European distinction. The existence of the Chinese Empire with its economic, cultural, and territorial achievements and the euphoric accounts of the Jesuits throughout the eighteenth century all compel European and German intellectuals to react in such a radical manner. This invention of the need of recognition for China, in fact, betrays a desire for Europe’s self-assertation and self-acknowledgement. It is to some extent true, if we follow Edward Said’s argument in Orientalism, that the West imposes images of the Orient onto it, which has less to do with the reality than the rhetoric of control and subjugation. Yet in the case of the representations of China in the eighteenth century, reality and projection are 108 Chunjie Zhang both at work to produce the Leibnizian Chinese utopia and the Herderian Chinese dystopia. Furthermore, we also perceive the anxiety of defining oneself against an imagined giant. Surely we have to keep in mind that the representations of China as historical stagnation has had disastrous consequences until our time. The need of recognition Herder produces for China becomes reality in the end. Notes 1 For an excellent description of the method of accommodation and the Jesuits’ «Rites Controversy» see Perkins 23-32, 184-94. Leibniz’s later Discourse (1716) indicates his sustained interest in Chinese philosophy as a natural religion which supposedly shares common ground with Christianity. 2 «So erschienen die von P. Gonzàles Mendoza zusammengestellten Reiseberichte verschiedener Missionare von 1585 bis 1663 in 28 Auflagen in 7 Sprachen; Matteo Riccis Tagebücher von 1615 erfuhren in drei Jahrzehnten 12 Auflagen in 6 Sprachen, Alvarez de Semedos Berichte über die China-Mission jesuitischer Missionare wurden in etwa der gleichen Zeit bis 1678 in 9 Auflagen in 5 Sprachen gedruckt, und Martino Martinis Kriegsbericht über die Eroberung Chinas durch die Manchu von 1654 brachte es in einem halben Jahrhundert bis 1706 auf 21 Auflagen in 9 Sprachen» (Poser 12). 3 See Mungello, Great Encounter 116-20. Voltaire claims, «It is true that the constitution of their empire is the best in the world, the only one entirely based on paternal authority» (Philosophical Dictionary 114). 4 For Chinese interest in European culture see Mungello, Great Encounter 15-76. Chambers’s main contribution to eighteenth-century chinoiserie is his Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (1772). 5 Israel argues, «Western philosophers strove valiantly to grasp the fundamentals of classical Chinese philosophy but ended up, in the main, merely mirroring their own prior obsessions» (640). 6 In the seventeenth century, the anti-accomodationists in the «Rites Controversy» within the Catholic Church clearly state the inferiority of Chinese thought and ritual practices and their need to be Christianized. Montesquieu attributes despotism to China in his famous The Spirit of Laws. For more details see Perkins. 7 Mungello argues that, to a certain extent, Leibniz’s reception of China deserves to be acknowledged as an expression of «an egalitarianism (but not relativism) among cultures that predates the development of ideas about Europeans’ cultural superiority» (Great Encounter 86). 8 Derrida argues, «In an original and non-‹relativist› sense, logocentrism is an ethnocentric metaphysics. It is related to the history of the West. The Chinese model only apparently interrupts it when Leibniz refers to it to teach the Characteristic. Not only does this model remain a domestic representation, but also, it is praised only for the purpose of designating a lack and to define the necessary corrections» (79). 9 In August 1773, Herder wrote to his publisher Hartknoch about his debut work on the philosophy of history, «Endlich, mein lieber Hartknoch kann ich Ihnen antworten: denn Eins meiner Bücher ist fertig, dazu ein sehr schönes: heißt «auch eine Philosophie From Sinophilia to Sinophobia: China, History, and Recognition 109 der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit: Beitrag zu vielen Beiträgen des Jahrhunderts 1773.» hat aber mit Voltaire u. Harder zum Glück nichts als Titel gemein, ist würklich meine Philosophie der Geschichte […]. Es ist Feur darinn u. glühende Kolen auf die Schädel unsres Jahrhunderts» (Briefe 35). Harder is Voltaire’s German translator. Herder’s Ideen are in many ways an expansion and further development of the framework he developed in Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit. 10 Herder claims, «Das Porzellan, die Seide, Pulver und Blei, vielleicht auch Kompaß, die Buchdruckerkunst, den Brückenbau und die Schiffskunst, nebst vielen andern feinen Handtierungen und Künsten kannten sie, ehe Europa solche kannte» (Ideen 441). 11 Herder contends, «nur daß es ihnen fast in allen Künsten am geistigen Fortgange und am Triebe zur Verbesserung fehlet» (Ideen 441). 12 Herder argues, «Durch sie [politische Moral] ist dies Volk, wie so manche andere Nation des Erdkreises mitten in seiner Erziehung, gleichsam im Knabenalter stehen geblieben, weil dies mechanische Triebwerk der Sittenlehre den freien Fortgang des Geistes auf immer hemmte und sich im despotischen Reich kein zweiter Confucius fand» (Ideen 441). 13 Herder writes, «Und diese Hindernisse liegen in seinem Charakter, im Ort seiner Wohnung und in seiner Geschichte uns klar vor Augen» (Ideen 433). For climate theory and its relationship with race see Wheeler 21-28. 14 Herder claims, «denn die Sinesen in ihrer Erdecke sich, wie die Juden, von der Vermischung mit andern Völkern frei erhalten haben, zeiget schon ihr eitler Stolz, wenn es sonst nichts zeigte. […] Wie sie das Einimpfen der Bäume nicht lieben, so stehen auch sie, trotz mancher Bekanntschaft mit andern Völkern, noch jetzt uneingeimpft da, ein Mongolischer Stamm, in einer Erdecke der Welt, zur Sinesischen Sklavenkultur verartet» (Ideen 436). Works Cited Barrow, John. Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey through the Country from Pekin to Canton. Philadelphia: Printed and sold by W.F. M’Laughlin, 1805. Berger, Willy Richard. China-Bild und China-Mode im Europa der Aufklärung. Cologne: Böhlau, 1990. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Gregory, John S. The West and China since 1500. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Hegel, G.W.F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford, New York, Toronto, and Melbourne: Oxford UP, 1977. -. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986. Herder, Johann Gottfried. Briefe: Gesamtausgabe: 1763-1803. Eds. Karl-Heinz Hahn and Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv. Vol. 3. Weimar: Böhlau, 1977. -. Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. Ed. Martin Bollacher. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1989. Israel, Jonathan I. Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670-1752. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2006. 110 Chunjie Zhang Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Writings on China. Ed. Daniel J.Cook and Henry Rosemont. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1994. Macartney, George. An Embassy to China; Being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney During His Embassy to the Emperor Ch’ien-Lung, 1793-1794. Ed. J.L. Cramer- Byng. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1963. Mackerras, Colin. Western Images of China. Hong Kong and New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Meinecke, Friedrich. Die Entstehung des Historismus. Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1936. Mungello, David E. The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005. -. «How Central to Leibniz’s Philosophy Was China? » Das Neueste über China: G.W. Leibnizens Novissima Sinica von 1697. Ed. Wenchao Li and Hans Poser. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000. 57-67. Perkins, Franklin. Leibniz and China: A Commerce of Light. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. Poser, Hans. «Leibnizens Novissima Sinica und das europäische Interesse an China.» Das Neueste über China: G.W. Leibnizens Novissima Sinica von 1697. Ed. Wenchao Li and Hans Poser. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000. 11-28. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Spence, Jonathan D. The Chan’s Great Continent: China in Western Minds. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998. Sugihara, Kaoru. «The East Asian Path of Economic Development: A Long-Term Perspective.» The Resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 and 50 Year Perspectives. Ed. Giovanni Arrrighi, Takeshi Hamashita and Mark Selden. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. 78-123. Tautz, Birgit. Reading and Seeing Ethnic Differences in the Enlightenment: From China to Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Voltaire. Philosophical Dictionary. 1972. Trans. Theodore Besterman. Harmondsworth and New York et al.: Penguin Books, 1985. -. Philosophy of History. Glasgow: Printed for Robert Urie, 1766. Waley-Cohen, Joanna. The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. Wheeler, Roxann. The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth- Century British Culture. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania P, 2000. Re-Orienting the Weimar Theater: Enlightenment and Empire in Schiller’s Turandot DAVID D. KIM M ICHIGAN S TATE U NIVERSITY In his seminal study of German colonial discourse, Russell Berman has sorted through the contentious legacy of Enlightenment principles only to complicate further the task of German postcolonial studies; and rightly so. With a title that «is posed ambivalently around the double meaning of the conjunction, suggesting simultaneously an alternative (a choice) and an equivalency,» his Enlightenment or Empire cautions its readers to consider more meticulously how historical experiences have intervened in theoretical propositions (6). As Berman argues, this dialectical relationship is visible in the double process whereby universal conceptions of humanism and rationality facilitate the denigration of alternative, non-European epistemes, as well as the mobilization of anticolonial subversions from within. Yet, he goes on to say, Derrida, Foucault, and Sartre do not take this duality into consideration. Their «[b]road-brush attacks on colonialism or on the role of intellectuals, Eurocentrism, or Enlightenment in it» offer no pragmatic critique of European imperialisms (204). Berman’s adamant critique of postcolonial oversights with poststructuralist inflections comes at a time of transition as a new wave of cultural critics has put forth alternative conceptions of postcolonial cosmopolitanism. As Pheng Cheah has recently argued, metropolitanand migrant-focused enunciations of cultural hybridity no longer capture the material dynamics of postcolonial nationalisms because the vast experiences of the subaltern subject in decolonized spaces demand a more complex articulation of intercultural agencies than what Homi Bhabha and James Clifford have said with their «general postcolonial perspective» (93). In the age of globalization, as Cheah asserts, there are only catachrestic transpositions of the old (Bildung, Europe, modernity, and Natur) to the new (cosmopolitanism, Asia, postmodernity, and Kultur) while capitalism, citizenship, human rights, and technology have set real boundaries around the finitude of human beings. Dipesh Chakrabarty has echoed this need for materialist translations between an imaginary Europe and the political modernity of postcolonial India, or what he calls a certain «provincialization» of secular visions of the human, to redress local issues 112 David D. Kim of social justice and equity. Berman is surely making an argument that is different from Cheah or Chakrabarty’s when he launches his critique of «antiintellectual» limits of postcolonial reason from the other side of the color line, but what they do have in common is a valid concern for postcolonial enunciations in which disjunctive world communities are flattened out across cultural nuances or historical particularities (EE 206). Such theoretical abstraction is what Berman has elsewhere identified as «the very necessary consequence of the more general post-colonial theory, current in contemporary debate, that, barely tarrying with specific material, quickly rushes to the level of a grand generalization of a conflict between ‹Europe› and ‹Other,› as if there were one Europe and all the ‹Others› were the same» («German» 28). In other words, just as there is no amorphous Empire, there is no singular Enlightenment project and critics must be attuned to the heterogeneity of colonial and postcolonial landscapes to intervene effectively in these political spaces. For postcolonial scholars, undermining reductionist arguments with historical data or differentiating certain notions of Kultur from aporetic claims about Eurocentrism is indeed an urgent task, but Berman’s propositions are quite problematic for their own reasons. They hardly do justice to the theoretical complexity of the three French philosophers when he equates their critique of discursive practices or logocentric valuations with ad hominem attacks: «If the intellectual, as the agent of Enlightenment, is presumed guilty for colonialism (since colonialism is allegedly generated by intellectuals engaging in Western metaphysics), then an occasion for anticolonialism is as fine an opportunity as any to go after the intellectual» (EE 206). If this radical accusation stems from an unclear definition of what anti-intellectualism means or who qualifies for an intellectual, the next gesture of his is even more sweeping. By acknowledging W.E.B. Du Bois as an exemplary instance of «the positive engagement of nonwhite intellectuals with the cultural legacy of Europe,» Berman points to the possibility of normalizing the troubled relationships between the West and the Rest (EE 208). Yet, this unique example does not suffice to revise the role Western cultures have played in disrupting the course of indigenous cultures around the globe. Berman also remains silent about the fact that, in light of the Nazi Holocaust, Du Bois shifts from a delimited sense of the color line and a naïve manifestation of Germanophilia to «a more general form for the expression of particular relationships between minority and majority culture and between victimization and survival» (Rothberg 131). His singular case subverts any attempt to simplify what European intellectual traditions mean for communities of color. Berman refrains from engaging explicitly with those who have convincingly documented the extensive cross-pollination between theories of alterity and Re-Orienting the Weimar Theater 113 representations of the other in the age of empires and thereafter. 1 His carefully selected case studies do not take issue with the ways in which Enlightenment ideals of freedom and sovereignty have not been immune to imperialist perversions since Herder’s ethnocentric division of world cultures and Kant’s polygenic ranking of racial types although these teleological narratives of Bildung and Kultur later play a foundational role in seeing non-Western landscapes as organic mimicries of the West or in denying colonial subjects the status of cultural equivalence. And without subverting the affective drive for colonial mistranslations, Berman hopes to salvage a particular manifestation of the West (German Kultur) from the Rest (the rest of the West) when he writes, «German culture is a term that ought to be comparable to Hispanic culture - suggesting a network of references, meanings, and values that stretch across national borders. This more permeable national identity allows for the greater hermeneutic openness to other systems of meaning» (EE 222). Isn’t aligning German identities with the plethora of Spanish-speaking cultures itself a gross overgeneralization if one includes the Americas and northern Africa in the equation? And don’t postcolonial interventions take shape in the conceptual, as well as political, deconstruction of such imprecise comparisons? In other words, what is lost here is a more conscientious dislocation of Eurocentric aspirations right where Enlightenment and Empire appear to be the furthest apart, seemingly excluding each other from their own endeavors. In many ways, then, postcolonial scholars have to settle this matter of complicity. But rather than examine Berman’s slanted critique of anticolonial thinkers any further, I want to turn to this conflicted relationship between Enlightenment and Empire in another way, that is, by way of Schiller’s much neglected translation of Carlo Gozzi’s Turandot (1762) into the German language and onto the Weimar theater. If Goethe was right to define «Weltliteratur» as a «geistiger Handelsverkehr» whereby travel literatures circulated in translation between European communities, Schiller’s Turandot (1802) gave shape to world literature in a number of ways (42, 186-87). 2 Yet, this work of translation did not occur in an ideological vacuum; nor was its aestheticism disconnected from contemporary imaginations of the Far East. In his organic rendition of the deadly princess from the East, Schiller transformed Gozzi’s Chineseness into a Persian product of enlightened empires that was, at the same time, an aesthetic response to contemporary debates on genre and modernity. Here, then, Enlightenment and Empire did not appear as homologies of the West; rather, Schiller resorted to aesthetic prototypes and imperial thoughts without being able to account for them. While responding to Berman’s study by way of Schiller’s aesthetic education, this study takes its cues from Tejaswini Niranjana’s meticulous focus 114 David D. Kim on the bidirectionality of signifying practices, which has shown how «translation in the colonial context produces and supports a conceptual economy that works into the discourse of Western philosophy to function as a philosopheme» (2). As Niranjana shows, enlightenment discourses on the «‹free acceptance› of subjection» thus serve Sir William Jones to justify the violent transplantation of British culture and the English language to the Muslim world while German minds like Goethe and Herder are influenced by his Orientalist translations of Persian grammar (11-12). This is not to say that such discursive cross-pollinations make all Enlightenment thinkers into intellectual agents of European empires; nor do they reduce Enlightenment projects into cultural imperialisms. Instead, Jones’ perversion of Enlightenment principles reveals the political economy in which translating and translated languages, source and target cultures, engage with each other as nonequivalent values - one coming from above, the other coming from below - and this impossible measurement of intercultural judgments gives birth to the problematic affiliation between Enlightenment and Empire. Around 1800, distant readers were certainly aware of what was at stake in mistranslations. In response to a recent German translation that the philologist Karl August Kütner had done of Horace, Goethe noted that «Ungelehrte» had little knowledge of ancient history or of classical mythology and the new translation thought, had failed to transmit the author’s poetic elegance for the uninstructed audience. The result was the following: «Der große, feurige, edele, gefühlvolle Dichter, der uns durch die Gewalt seiner Lieder dahin reißt, erhebt, begeistert, der wird unter der Hand unserer Übersetzer ärger als ein Gratulant» (334). Kütner’s unskilled manipulation had deprived the Roman poet of his spiritual depth and stylistic mastery, transmogrifying him into a felicitator; and unless scholars had lost «allen Geschmack,» it was meaningless to prefer the original to «eine gefolterte, wässerige, geschmacklose Übersetzung» (334). In translating Gozzi’s commedia dell’arte, Schiller, too, faced this challenge of engendering an elegant afterlife, but the task took a strikingly different shape because, in contrast to Goethe’s concern with intercultural appreciation for the original, Schiller’s was to make just a few improvements to the Italian play. As Schiller confessed to the friend and publisher Christian Gottfried Körner on November 2, 1801, Turandot was meant to be nothing more than a pastime without «große Anforderungen» (WB 12: 585). Die Jungfrau von Orleans (1801) had just premiered in Leipzig with great success and, while recovering from a catarrh, he wanted to work on «eine neue Bearbeitung eines Gozzischen Mährchens, Turandot, für das Theater» (583). But the ill poet also saw another opportunity with this translation. After Christoph Wieland Re-Orienting the Weimar Theater 115 and Wilhelm Schlegel’s separate translations of Shakespeare had amply demonstrated what a decisive mark foreign literatures could leave on German stages, Schiller hoped that Gozzi’s work would benefit his fellow citizens in a similar fashion: «Auch wird dadurch für die deutsche Bühne ein neues und interessantes Theaterstück gewonnen» (583). He later expanded this point by using a more forceful language, this time suggesting that Weimar theater was in need of foreign intervention: «Zunächst bestimmte mich das Bedürfniß unsres Theaters dazu, wir brauchen ein neues Stück und wo möglich aus einer neuen Region; dazu taugt nun dieses Gozzische Mährchen vollkommen» (585). Since foreign cultures had unfamiliar stories in store, translating Turandot into German would be ideal for complementing the repertoire of German theaters. Once begun, though, the translation took more time and effort than Schiller had expected, and the crux of the problem was in overcoming the structural rigidity of the original. In another letter to Körner, he explained this issue as follows: Es [Gozzi’s Turandot] ist mit dem größten Verstand componiert, aber es fehlt ihm an einer gewißen Fülle, an poetischem Leben. Die Figuren sehen wie Marionetten aus, die am Draht bewegt werden, eine gewiße pedantische Steifigkeit herrscht durch das Ganze, die überwunden werden muß. Ich habe also wirklich Gelegenheit mir einiges Verdienst zu erwerben, und die 6, 7 Wochen die auf dieses Geschäft gehen mögen, werden nicht verloren seyn. (B 585) Though Kleist would only eight years later describe «Marionetten» as ideal embodiments of «Ebenmaß, Beweglichkeit, Leichtigkeit,» Schiller’s analogy had a wholly different connotation (2: 341). Here, «Marionetten» were scientific products of «ein mechanisches Werk, wo die Teile, leblos für sich selbst, dem Ganzen durch ihre Zusammenstimmung ein künstliches Leben erteilen» (WB 8: 684). To translate Gozzi’s work was to overcome this malaise of the original, meaning that he needed to infuse Gozzi’s somewhat lifeless characters with Anmut and Würde, two aesthetic qualities that would transform the awkward play into «ein organisches Produkt, wo nicht bloß das Ganze lebt, sondern auch die einzelnen Teile ihr eigentümliches Leben haben» (684). This would ameliorate the original by veiling Gozzi’s creation «wie ein Königsmantel in weiten Falten», to borrow Walter Benjamins metaphorization of the work of translation. (Benjamin 14). Benjamin refers to translations in those majestic terms as he grappled with the work of translation as a maturation process. «Übersetzungen,» he wrote in his preface to the German translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens, «die mehr als Vermittlungen sind, entstehen, wenn im Fortleben ein Werk das Zeitalter seines Ruhmes erreicht hat. Sie dienen daher nicht sowohl diesem, 116 David D. Kim wie schlechte Übersetzer es für ihre Arbeit zu beanspruchen pflegen, als daß sie ihm ihr Dasein verdanken. In ihnen erreicht das Leben des Originals seine stets erneute späteste und umfassendste Entfaltung» (11). As such, translations were no lesser copies of the original; nor did they amount to interlingual, intralingual or intersemiotic border-crossings only because the emphasis did not rest on transmitting content. 3 Rather, they provided the original with an incessant process of self-revelation and unraveling. 4 Benjamin’s deliberations are helpful to think through one way in which Schiller conceives of his translation as a translational means of lifting up Gozzi’s work, that is, adapting the latter «zum Weimarer Ton» (Ingenkamp 992). 5 This meant that, though the original was written in three Italian dialectics to designate the three social classes (royal, aristocratic, and common), Schiller’s translation transformed everyone on stage into equally educated citizens, all speaking a common, major language. Their mode of speech was also written in «Jamben,» a metrical foot that was conventionally associated with classical Greece and its subsequent high cultures (Schiller, WB 12: 585). Despite his limited knowledge of eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte and the Italian language, Schiller’s gaze remained focused on Gozzi and, in that sense, on an original. Yet, this difficult negotiation with a source text was inflected by a number of mediating paratexts. For example, Schiller assumed that incomprehensible matters of the synchronous were measured in the diachronicity of history. As such, his deliberations on universal history followed a particular procedure whereby foreign cultures were located in relation to familiar cultures in the present. Entitled «Was heisst und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte? », his 1789 lecture before the faculty of Jena exemplified how this historicist method of intercultural understanding placed non-Europeans in a Eurocentric conception of historical time. As Schiller noted, the sight of «Wilden» elicited «nur Ekel oder Mitleid,» but «[s]o waren wir. Nicht viel besser fanden uns Cäser und Tacitus vor achtzehn hundert Jahren» (HS 417, 418). Accordingly, non-Europeans were located at a level that was inferior to European cultures while the past of European selves corresponded to the present of non-European others. This was the reason why travelogues were educational and entertaining. The following paragraph, though a bit lengthy, made the point quite clear. Die Entdeckungen, welche unsre europäischen Seefahrer in fernen Meeren und auf entlegenen Küsten gemacht haben, geben uns ein eben so lehrreiches als unterhaltendes Schauspiel. Sie zeigen uns Völkerschaften, die auf den mannichfaltigsten Stufen der Bildung um uns herum gelagert sind, wie Kinder verschiednen Alters um einen Erwachsenen herum stehen, und durch ihr Beispiel ihm in Erinnerung bringen, was er selbst vormals gewesen, und wovon er ausgegangen ist. Eine weise Re-Orienting the Weimar Theater 117 Hand scheint uns diese rohen Völkerstämme bis auf den Zeitpunkt aufgespart zu haben, wo wir in unsrer eignen Kultur weit genug würden fortgeschritten sein, um von dieser Entdeckung eine nützliche Anwendung auf uns selbst zu machen, und den verlornen Anfang unsers Geschlechts aus diesem Spiegel wieder herzustellen. Wie beschämend und traurig aber ist das Bild, das uns diese Völker von unserer Kindheit geben! und doch ist es nicht einmal die erste Stufe mehr, auf der wir sie erblicken. Der Mensch fing noch verächtlicher an. Wir finden jene doch schon als Völker, als politische Körper: aber der Mensch mußte sich erst durch eine außerordentliche Anstrengung zur Gesellschaft erheben. (416-17) Schiller betrayed a profoundly disturbing ordering of world communities where non-Europeans performed no role other than instructing Europeans of their bygone days while the present of the non-West did not go any further than Europe’s past. Instead of being a significant part of world events and planetary transformations, whatever took place outside Europe only amounted to a «Schauspiel,» an object of scholarly inquiries and a spectacle for curious spectators. 6 At the same time, Schiller’s Jena was certainly no stranger to the long history of European encounters with «the Orient,» the earliest of which had taken place in the middle of the thirteenth century with the Franciscan priest Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, the brothers Nicolo and Maffeo Polo, and the young Marco Polo’s journeys to the imperial court of Mongolia. In the subsequent centuries, Jesuit priests like Matteo Ricci, Nicholas Longobardi, and Martino Martini expanded the knowledge of China and formed, among others, Leibniz’s conception of that expansive place as a culture to be «read,» and not «seen» (Tautz 35, 39). By the time Hermann Hesse ventured through East Asia in the first half of the twentieth century, Europeans had therefore gathered so many impressions of the Chinese, that the latter seemed confused, psychotic, sly or untrustworthy. For instance, Hesse described Chinese men as «hübsch,» «zart,» and «nett,» only to note a few pages later that their effeminate appearance masked their true essence: «Grausamkeit» (11, 22, 67). According to Eric Hayot, this fixation on Chinese brutalities had been in construction since George Henry Mason’s publication of The Punishments of China in 1801, shifting China’s image from «a country of wisdom» to an «object of fear, contempt and Western arrogance» (Hayot 66; Trampedach 81). One figure was particularly subject to intense European imaginations: the Chinese emperor. Christopher Columbus had fantasies about delivering the royal edict to the Great Khan of Cathay while crossing the Atlantic. Though China was known to be quite distant from his final destination, which was India, the mythical figure embodied everything the Italian explorer was striv- 118 David D. Kim ing for, including gold, silk, spices, and other material wealth. In Histoire de la cour du roy de la Chine (1615), Michel Baudier offered a more detailed, though equally fantastic, account of the Chinese emperor whose «so vast a Greatnesse…will take up no less, than four whole Dayes» to see (7). And in a language no less grandiose, Hegel referred to the emperor as «das gewalthabende Individuum über Menschen und zugleich über die Natur und die natürlichen Dinge» (296). The layered architecture of the Forbidden City later made its way into «Die kaiserliche Botschaft» (1917), providing Kafka with a hermeneutic space in which the emperor’s message was suspended in midway. Far from focusing on individual portraits then, these works and others conceived of the Chinese emperor as a malleable prototype of thisand otherworldliness. Schiller inherited a distorted vision of the Chinese in two significant ways. First, recalibrating non-European cultures in universal time was considered integral to Enlightenment historiography and prefigured what was to come in the colonial era: «the denial of coevalness as the allochronism of anthropology» (Fabian 32). Second, translating Gozzi’s China necessarily engaged these ideas of time and history on aesthetico-philosophical levels. Together, these tasks rendered the Orient into a manageable object of Enlightenment writings because the civilizational advancements of the West facilitated spatiotemporal movements. In other words, it was the opposition of «the West’s mobility, science, and (modern) progress» to «the historical and geographical stasis of ‹the Rest›» that explained Schiller’s ugly celebration of European travelers (Smethurst 1). It also created the force field within which all European versions of Turandot could stage Calaf/ Kalaf, a dethroned prince from an imaginary kingdom somewhere to the west of China, as the ultimate savior putting an end to the degenerative practices of that locale. There was more, though. Strictly speaking, Gozzi’s play was neither an original nor the only original because the mythic origin of the Chinese princess lay in François Pétit de la Croix’s Les Mille et un jours: contes persans, turcs, et chinois (1712). In his preface, the French Orientalist noted that the source of those tales, including «Histoire du prince Calaf et de la princesse de la Chine,» was a Dervish, named Mocles or Moqlas, whom he had met during his stay in Isfahan around 1675. In the Middle East, this legend of the Chinese princess had been told for generations, until it arrived to French readers in translation. And it was again half a century later that the Venetian playwright Gozzi, hoping to set up a counter-stage to Carlo Goldoni’s dramatic celebration of reason and secularization, adopted the popular story, which had already begun to rival the more widely read Les Milles et un nuits (also known as Arabian Nights, 1704-17). More comical than coercive, more entertaining Re-Orienting the Weimar Theater 119 than educational, Gozzi’s theatrical tale was to reestablish a Christian world stage while taking advantage of contemporary fascinations with the Far East, as well as of prominent figures in the Venetian comedy. 7 Friedrich Werthes then translated Gozzi’s Turandot into the German language by layering, on top of those Orientalist manipulations, his own predilections for, universal reason, a restrained sentimental affect, and interpersonal dynamics. This German translation offered Schiller one more subtext for a new retranslation. 8 If Gozzi wrote his fiabe teatrali in alignment with Orientalist fantasies, on the one hand, and in opposition to Enlightenment tendencies, on the other, Schiller conceived of his translation of that work as a unique opportunity for intervening in the significant changes that were happening to German writers. Shortly before Friedrich Schlegel announced the coming of a new era with «eine progressive Universalpoesie,» Goethe and Schiller had been debating on matters of genre with the hope of salvaging their vanishing present (37). In December 1797, they began exchanging a series of letters in which they put their concern as follows. «Es ist mir dabey aufgefallen,» Goethe first wrote, «wie es kommt, daß wir Modernen die Genres so sehr zu vermischen geneigt sind, ja daß wir gar nicht einmal im Stande sind sie voneinander zu unterscheiden. Es scheint nur daher zu kommen, weil die Künstler, die eigentlich die Kunstwerke innerhalb ihrer reinen Bedingungen hervorbringen sollten, jenem Streben der Zuschauer und Zuhörer, alles völlig wahr zu finden, gefällig nachgeben» (Schiller, WB 8: 1566). According to Goethe, writers regrettably abandoned genre distinctions because modern desires for the «vollkommen Gegenwärtigen» were dismissive of poetic orders and imaginative creations and this blurring of genre boundaries was lamentable. Clinging onto the legacy of classical Greece, he came to the following conclusion: Diesen eigentlich kindischen, barbarischen, abgeschmackten Tendenzen sollte nun der Künstler aus allen Kräften widerstehen, Kunstwerk von Kunstwerk durch undurchdringliche Zauberkreise sondern, jedes bey seiner Eigenschaft und seinen Eigenheiten erhalten, so wie die Alten gethan haben und dadurch eben solche Künstler wurden und waren. (1567) As mimetic forms of the natural, the lyric needed to be kept apart from the epic. The poet once again needed to follow the ancients and eradicate any impurities that had come from scandalous genre crossings. Though sympathetic with Goethe’s anxiety of modern realisms (not to be confused with the Realism of the second half of the nineteenth century), Schiller had a slightly different response to contemporary developments. A neat differentiation between genres, he answered, was simply impossible because no work included every element of the genre to which it belonged. 120 David D. Kim Ihr jetziges Geschäft, die beyden Gattungen zu sondern und zu reinigen, ist freylich von der höchsten Bedeutung, aber Sie werden mit mir überzeugt seyn, daß, um von einem Kunstwerk alles auszuschließen, was seiner Gattung fremd ist, man auch nothwendig alles darin müsse einschließen können, was der Gattung gebührt. Und eben daran fehlt es jetzt. Weil wir einmal die Bedingungen nicht zusammenbringen können, unter welchen eine jede der beyden Gattungen steht, so sind wir genöthigt, sie zu vermischen. (1573) In other words, genre policing was impossible because every organic product was inherently impure. And since there was no conceptual framework in which the lyric could neatly be separated from the epic, it was equally impossible to produce generically pure works. For Schiller, then, to retranslate Turandot was precisely to demonstrate how that necessary border-crossing did not have to be irreconcilable to Enlightenment ideals especially because the origin of a material did not matter: «Nicht das Gebiet aus welchem der Gegenstand genommen, sondern das Forum vor welches der Dichter ihn bringt, macht denselben tragisch oder komisch» (745). To put it differently, transforming the Italian commedia dell’arte, that fiabe teatrali, into a German «tragikomisches Märchen» would give flesh to a universal poetics that was grounded in the Aufklärung, and not in the Romantik. According to Karl Guthke, Schiller’s tragicomedy is modeled after a dramatic synthesis that does not juxtapose elements of the two genres: «Schillers Turandot ist gegründet auf das Phänomen des Tragikomischen und suggeriert dem Zuschauer das komplex-einheitliche ästhetische Erlebnis des auf komische Weise Tragischen und auf tragische Weise Komischen, derart, daß die Komik die Tragik in demselben Maße steigert wie die Tragik die Komik» (GP 91). The comic and the tragic complement each other, producing an organic wholeness that Schiller has originally envisioned for his work. That explains why Turandot’s definition of love is also inscribed in an ambivalent relationship with individual pride. Since true love complements the two lovers, she needs to work through a dilemma between what she thinks love is and what Kalaf is offering her. Kalaf, too, mirrors these struggles by going back and forth between love and independence, grief and elatedness. Yet, Guthke does not go far enough in uncovering Schiller’s substantial manipulations to impart readers with «das komplex-einheitliche ästhetische Erlebnis.» For instance, Gozzi’s text reads that Calaf’s parents, the former king and queen, have voluntarily ended their humiliating lives in exile. In his remembrance of familial miseries, Calaf highlights their human frailties (46). In Schiller’s rewriting, Kalaf paints a wholly different picture of his parents. Instead of succumbing to their tragic fate, he says that the king and the queen have gracefully endured all hardship: «Sie leben. Und wisse Barak! In der Not Re-Orienting the Weimar Theater 121 allein / Bewähret sich der Adel großer Seelen» (WB 1.1: 73-74). Schiller’s princess is also concerned with issues of public honor and personal pride whereas Gozzi’s work is centered around gender inequality - a social matter that western cultures have historically associated with Chinese culture. And Schiller’s Turandot is only critical of her adorers while Gozzi’s protagonist is indiscriminately hostile to men. These specific transformations allow Schiller to present the Oriental other as being neither absolutely familiar nor wholly foreign. Schiller translocates Gozzi’s Turandot onto Weimar theater by adding pathetic «Götteranrufungen» as well (Ingenkamp 992). For example, Gozzi’s original reads: «May the wisdom of Confucius and his priests descend upon us all» (54). 9 At another point, the emperor announces: «Ah, barbarous daughter, you were born to torment me! Who cursed me with this terrible affliction? Who forced me to decree this accursed edict that must make even Confucius tremble? » (56). And later, he says: «What a law! What torment! That I vowed to the great Confucius to follow it! » (63). In Schiller’s translation, these apparently cultural references are no longer present. In lieu of Confucius, the German translation refers to «Götter» and «Himmel» (WB 9: 402, 403). Whereas Gozzi’s play deliberately distorts Confucius into a comical, as well as divine, figure, Schiller makes no mention of that foreign name; only twice does he refer to a much less known mythical figure, named «Fohi» who appears in Confucian texts (391, 392). Schiller adopts Gozzi’s «chinesisches Setting mit einer deutlichen Tendenz zur gesamtorientalischen Anbindbarkeit,» but omits any markers of Chineseness to produce an equivalently Orientalist Persia (Polaschegg 210). Without confusing his audience, Schiller’s Weltbühne makes that transfer to demonstrate a universal paradigm on stage. 10 Nowhere else is this paradoxically Germanocentric universalization of the Oriental other more apparent than in the transubstantiation that the masked figure Pantalone undergoes from Gozzi to Schiller. If the Italian courtesan plays an iconic role in the former’s fable, the latter transforms him into a «bieder-komische Nürnberger der Meistersingerzeit» who resonates with contemporary German audiences (Ingenkamp 1006). Gozzi’s Pantalone also says the following in response to Calaf’s attempt to solve Turandot’s riddle: Dear master, wisdom is no help here. Where I come from we don’t have these peculiar laws. We don’t have these edicts. There, for example princes don’t fall in love with pictures, and they don’t get their heads chopped off by trying to marry the subjects of pictures. And we don’t have females who hate men the way Princess Turandot does. We don’t even have creatures of her type, not even in our nightmares…I was a man who was stupefied to find people wearing these funny costumes, to discover these ridiculous oaths, to find these strange kinds of princes and these peculiar princesses. I don’t understand the oriental mind. (56-57) 122 David D. Kim The incommensurable gap between the Italian courtesan and the Oriental mind results in a complete breakdown of intercultural understanding. It does not matter how much time Pantalone has spent in the Chinese court, the oddity of Chinese cultural practices and imperial laws is so great that they border on freakishness. Moreover, princesses like Turandot are categorized as «creatures» because they refuse to serve their husbands in marriage. Now listen to the words in which Schiller universalizes this statement according to Enlightenment aspirations. China and Venice, human beings and genders, Christianity and tyranny are clearly differentiated from one another for a particular reason. Rat, Majestät? Hat sich da was zu raten! / Bei mir zu Hause, in der Christen Land, / In meiner lieben Vaterstadt Venedig, / Schwört man gar kein Beispiel und Exempel, / Daß sich die Herrn in Bilderchen vergafft, / Und ihren Hals gewagt für ihre Mädchen. / Kein Frauensmensch bei uns geboren wird, / Wie Dame Kieselstein, die alle Männer / Verschworen hätte - Gott soll uns bewahren! / Das fiel uns auch im Traum nicht ein…/ Und jetzt erstaun ich über alle Maßen / Daß ich so kuriöse Bräuche hier / Vorfinde, so kurjose Schwüre und Gesetze, / Und so kurjose Fraun und <junge> Herrn. (WB 2.3: 547-69; my emphasis added) The initially constructed gaps are closed in the midst of thisand otherworldly customs as Turandot is called a «Frauenmensch» - that is, first and foremost, a human being and, then, a woman. Turandot’s wickedness is also traced to a sense of guilt, and not to some kind of «senseless» refusal to be a woman in preparation of marital life. Moreover, Chinese culture is «curious» rather than «strange,» «peculiar,» and «ridiculous.» These differentiations are then extended to metaphors describing Turandot as «Schlange» and «Sphinx» whereas the Italian original refers to her as «tigress,» «viper» or «tyrant» (WB 2.3: 585; Gozzi 51). If, according to Friedrich Schleiermacher, there only exist two methods of translating - either leaving the author in peace and moving the reader toward him or leaving the reader in peace and moving the writer toward him - Schiller’s Turandot speaks in a forked tongue that does both because it was neither a nostalgic recovery of past texts nor a strictly modern crossing of genre boundaries (49). It replaces, as Schiller himself writes, the «Kosten der Erfindung» with «ein gewißes Gefühl von Selbstthätigkeit und Kunstfertigkeit» (WB 12: 592). That is precisely what Schiller tells Körner when he says that, with a bit of «poetische[r] Nachhülfe,» the original will acquire «einen höheren Werth» on German stages (585). The translation takes a life of its own, crossing genre boundaries and intermixing mimetic forms without undermining Enlightenment orders of the world. Though grounded in specifically German concerns with aesthetics, genre, and history, Schiller’s translational task inherited a thick network of Europe- Re-Orienting the Weimar Theater 123 an imaginations of the Orient where China functioned «as a limit or potential limit, a horizon neither of otherness nor of similarity, but rather of the very distinction between otherness and similarity, and thus, because what is at stake in the era of modernity in the West is the dream of the universalization of culture, as a horizon of the very idea of horizons, a horizon, that is, that marks the limit of the universal as a transcendental field» (Hayot 8). What Gozzi had done with the Chinese to mock the limits of contemporary dramas on Enlightenment secularization and reason thus made its way, though not faithfully, into Schiller’s imagination of Enlightenment principles, genre boundaries, and things Persian. In that intricate webbing of aesthetic commitments, ideological predilections, intercultural projections, and transregional relocations, Schiller’s task was to catapult a revised, higher form of something old into the new century. It also meant re-orienting Weimar theater against the backdrop of Orientalist depictions of the Chinese and Persians. In such an Enlightenment project, then, the empire was complicit without being delimited to one European culture. Works Cited Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, ed. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002. Baudier, Michel. The History of the Court of the King of China out of French. London: H.B. for Christopher Hussey, 1682. Benjamin, Walter. «Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers.» Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 2.1. Ed. Tillman Rexroth. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1972. 7-21. Berman, Russell A. «German Colonialism: Another Sonderweg? » The European Studies Journal 16.2 (1999): 25-36. -. Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1998. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. Cheah, Pheng. Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2006. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Ed. Paul B. Armstrong. 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. Damrosch, David. What is World Literature? Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003. de Man, Paul. The Resistance to Theory. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986. Derrida, Jacques. «Des Tours de Babel.» Difference in Translation. Ed. John F. Graham. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985. 165-207. Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia UP, 1983. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Weimarer Ausgabe I. Ann Arbor, MI: Chadwyck- Healey, 1997. 124 David D. Kim Guthke, Karl S. Goethes Weimar und «Die große Öffnung in die weite Welt.» Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz in Kommission, 2001. -. Geschichte und Poetik der deutschen Tragikomödie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961. Hayot, Eric. The Hypothetical Mandarin: Sympathy, Modernity, and Chinese Pain. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. Berlin: Hegel-Institut, 2002. Hesse, Hermann. Aus Indien: Aufzeichnungen, Tagebücher, Gedichte. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1980. Ingenkamp, Karl-Heinz. «Struktur und Gehalt.» In Friedrich Schiller, Werke und Briefe. Vol. 9. Ed. Karl-Heinz Ingenkamp. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1995. 981-1014. Jacobs, Carol. «The Monstrosity of Translation: Walter Benjamin’s ‹The Task of the Translator.›» MLN 90.6 (1975): 755-66. Jakobson, Roman. «On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.» The Translation Studies Reader. Ed. Lawrence Venuti. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2004. 138-43. Kleist, Heinrich von. Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Ed. Helmut Sembdner. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2001. Lukoschik, Rita Unfer. Der erste deutsche Gozzi: Untersuchungen zu der Rezeption Carlo Gozzis in der deutschen Spätaufklärung. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang 1993. Niranjana, Tejaswini. Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: U of California P, 1992. Polaschegg, Andrea. Der andere Orientalismus: Regeln deutsch-morgenländischer Imagination im 19. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008. Rothberg, Michael. Mutidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2009. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 25th anniversary ed. New York: Vintage Books, 2003. Schiller, Friedrich. Werke und Briefe. 12 vols. Ed. Otto Dann et al. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2004. -. Historische Schriften und Erzählungen. Ed. Otto Dann. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2000. Schlegel, Friedrich. Kritische Schriften. München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1938. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. «On the Different Methods of Translating.» The Translation Studies Reader. Ed. Lawrence Venuti. trans. Susan Bernofsky. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2004. 43-63. Smethurst, Paul. «Introduction.» Empire, Form, and Travel Writing. Ed. Julia Kuehn and Paul Smethurst. New York: Routledge, 2008. 1-20. Tautz, Birgit. Reading and Seeing Ethnic Differences in the Enlightenment: From China to Africa. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007. Trampedach, Tim. «Bilder vom Fremden: Die Deutschen und China.» Chinawissenschaften - Deutschsprachige Entwicklungen: Geschichte, Personen, Perspektiven. Ed. Helmut Martin and Christiane Hammer. Hamburg: Institut für Asienkunde, 1999. 81-97. Werthes, Friedrich August Clemens. Theatralische Werke von Carlo Gozzi: Aus dem Italienischen übersezt. Bern: bey der Typographischen Gesellschaft, 1777-1779. Re-Orienting the Weimar Theater 125 Winter, Susanne. Von illusionärer Wirklichkeit und wahrer Illusion: Zu Carlo Gozzis Fiabe teatrali. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 2007. Notes 1 Just to give a few examples, Mary Louise Pratt has written about Humboldt’s imperialist gaze on the Amazon during his trip through the Americas; Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin have collectively produced a series of anticolonial and postcolonial inquiries in light of European cultural legacies; and Edward Said has explored discursive manipulations of «the Oriental other» in nineteenth-century France. 2 In What Is World Literature? David Damrosch has also turned to Goethe to deduce this translational definition of world literature, that is, world literature as «a mode of circulation and of reading, a mode that is as applicable to individual works as to bodies of material, available for reading established classics and new discoveries alike» (5). 3 Roman Jakobson identifies three kinds of translation whereby «intralingual translation» means rewording within the same order of signs, «interlingual translation» is translation proper, and «intersemiotic translation» connotes the movement from verbal signs to non-verbal signs (139). 4 I refer my reader to three helpful readings of Benjamin’s essay: Paul de Man’s The Resistance to Theory, Jacques Derrida’s «Des Tours de Babel,» and Carol Jacobs, «The Monstrosity of Translation.» 5 Ingenkamp’s reading provides my study with an informative foundation, but I shall be complementing his work with a focus on Schiller’s politics and poetics of translation in light of cultural and literary debates. 6 I want to direct my reader’s attention only for a moment to a paradigmatic moment in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, where Schiller’s overlapping of Enlightenment and Empire repeats itself in colonial Africa, yet with a paradigm-shifting turn. While sailing down the Thames, Marlow uncannily echoes Schiller’s words by saying how the English river invokes grand memories of past heroes - that is, heroes whose unprecedented bravery have taken them to unknown ends of the earth. Yet, this sight does not lead to the same sentimentalism. Marlow is critical of re-envisioning Africa’s present savagery as Britain’s past wildness: «And this also,» said Marlow suddenly, «has been one of the dark places of the earth….I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago - the other day…Light came out of this river since - you say Knights? Yes, but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker - may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday» (Conrad 5-6). For Marlow, what is deemed civilizational depends on temporal conditions, which redefine the present of a past (the Roman attitude toward the Celts) into a past of the present (the British attitude toward Africans), so that the Roman traveler discovers: «Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery. The utter savagery had closed round him - all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men… He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination - you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the long to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender - the hated» (6). 7 For a detailed examination of this intracultural conflict, read Winter’s Von illusionärer Wirklichkeit und wahrer Illusion. 126 David D. Kim 8 Friedrich August Clemens Werthes’ translation of Gozzi’s commedia dell’arte became available in five parts between the years 1777 and 1779. According to Karl Guthke, Friedrich Rambach dramatized Werthes’ translation with the title Die Rätsel (90). This event caused «ein ebenso heftiges wie kurzlebiges Gozzi-Fieber» in German-speaking cultures (Lukoschik 153). Meanwhile, Werthes himself had spent nearly a decade unsuccessfully following Wieland’s footsteps, taking minor teaching positions and improving his foreign language skills like Italian. After Wieland’s Erfurt lectures had planted the seeds for Werthes’ pursuit of Italian literature in 1774, the latter traveled, among other places, to Italy where he also acquainted himself with Gozzi. See Lukoschik 157-64. 9 I owe my English translation of Gozzi’s work to John Louis DiGaetani’s translation. 10 For more information about Weimar’s claim to cosmopolitanism, see Guthke, Goethes Weimar. A Colonialist Laments the New Imperialism: Elisabeth von Heyking’s China Novels M ARY R HIEL UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE For more than a century, China has functioned as one of the signifiers creating anxiety about the West and its future. In the context of the 2008 Olympics, for example, the media filled our public and private spaces with images and narratives, both personal and political, that reconstructed for our gaze and our imaginations a China that was exotic, ancient, but also politically regressive. Even recent media coverage about the economic behavior of China invokes an age-old stereotype of the Chinese as untrustworthy. While we continue a longstanding tradition of worrying about China, contemporary scholars try to contextualize China’s «behavior,» as, in part, a product of its colonial subjugation to the West. The Director of the Center on US-China Relations at New York’s Asia Society, Orville Schell, for example, reminded us that while «we often imagine ourselves to have escaped that history (of colonialism) - or that history somehow ended - it would be naïve to forget that we remain part of the equation» (33). Our contemporary preoccupation with China as both a threat and a fascination is not so far from how Germany imagined itself in relation to China at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, the era of land-grabbing imperial/ colonial politics to which Schell was referring. Here, I return to that history in the context of Germany’s particular participation in, and representations of, China. Although representations of China in German culture have a long history, late nineteenth-century discourses on China produce a particularly modern source of both anxiety and hope for Germany in this nation-making era. 1 On a methodological note, it is important to remember that attention to representational issues surrounding Germans reading/ writing China is not synonymous with a plea for a truer image of China, or, as the editors of Sinographies suggest, it is not a «plea for the restoration of Eastern identity» (xi). It is instead an investigation into the conflicted experiences of the national self at a time in German history when Weltpolitik is definitive of national identity. The importance of place to identity is crucial here, and as the editors of Sinographies point out, this place is «not only home but abroad, not only in relation to the expression of a colonialist or racist imperialism that claims to make statements about a nation or civilization ‹out there› but also a form of 128 Mary Rhiel self-expression and self-production the necessity of whose expression testifies to the felt gap between what you think is and what you wish it would be» (xi). Indeed, this very gap is the driving conflict in the three texts I will discuss here, texts focusing on China at the Jahrhundertwende and written by Elisabeth von Heyking, a Diplomatenfrau who was in China from 1896 until 1899. Before moving to these texts, I want to give a short summary of the historical context at the turn of the century. Between 1896 and 1899, Germany pursued an aggressive military and diplomatic program in China as it acquired its concession in Qingdao, Shandong Province, as well as mining and railroad rights in the province itself. By 1900 the Boxer Rebellion, which started, in fact, in Shandong, complicated the picture for those who saw in Qingdao Germany’s place in the colonial sun. Klemens von Ketteler, Imperial Germany’s envoy to China at the time, was killed in the Uprising, an event that placed China at the center of German public attention and precipitated Kaiser Wilhelm’s Hunnenrede in which he vilified the Chinese as he sent off German military troops to rampage across Shandong into Beijing. China was represented in a variety of media and genres at this crucial juncture. Texts concerned with China span the range from popular serializations to high modernist works. Elisabeth von Heyking wrote three works whose genesis is in part connected to her residence in Beijing as the Diplomatenfrau of Germany’s Imperial Envoy to Beijing preceding von Ketteler, Edmund von Heyking. Elisabeth von Heyking kept extensive journals while traveling and residing abroad in her role as Diplomatenfrau. They were published posthumously in a volume entitled Tagebücher aus vier Weltteilen. In this volume each chapter represents a country of residence, and they are ordered chronologically. The China chapters of the journal comprise two sections of the volume and make up the larger portion of the journal. As Heyking suspended travel writing, she began to write fiction, and in 1903 she published her first novel, Briefe, die ihn nicht erreichten, in which the Boxer Rebellion and China play a central role. In 1914 a second novel, Tschun, appeared and was set in China at the turn of the century. Heyking’s literary output is particularly interesting now because the journal and novels so vividly dramatize the shifts in cultural identity and related representational strategies at a point in colonial/ imperial history when contacts with China made it necessary to reimagine what it means to be German, which in turn demanded a reordering of the meaning of China (Sinographies, xviii). The three texts I discuss here illustrate one particular author’s struggle with representational issues that emerge from a crisis in which China figured centrally as a place that shook foundational assumptions about self, nation A Colonialist Laments the New Imperialism 129 and colonialism. Initially Heyking saw in China a new opportunity for Germany to succeed in acquiring colonial territory. However, the transition at the end of the nineteenth century from colonialism to the New Imperialism became a barrier to Heyking’s representation of the European Self and the Chinese Other in colonial terms. 2 The ensuing collapse of Heyking’s belief in the German colonial enterprise in China made travel writing no longer tenable. Her turn to fiction represents a shift toward a mode of writing that was commensurate with a time in which the world had lost its transparency via colonial categories. Her first novel dealt with the loss of certainties that underpinned a preconceived notion of colonial privilege, and the second novel returned to China as a necessary reframing of the Chinese Other in terms that reject Western imperial categories. Heyking traveled to many colonial settings in her role as Diplomatenfrau, including postcolonial Chile, Egypt, India, and China. Her travel writings from these various places were shaped by narrative strategies that depended on inherited positions of visual superiority and distancing of the Other. 3 Her writing style was linked to territorial colonial desires that she expressed in her pre-China journal where she wrote that her dream was to be reincarnated as an English aristocrat in India. This fantasy erupts unexpectedly in her journal that had previously presented a virulent anti-British sentiment and is, I believe, an indication of a nostalgic desire for a pan-European colonial privilege that emerges later in her first novel. The major figure of the travel writing, aside from the narrator herself, is Edmund. He represents the very ground that made possible her travel narration, as the project of the journals is to embody the command of the writer over the colonized Other, yet is close enough to capture the «exotic» for the titillated home readership. Projected onto him are stereotypical notions of colonial masculinity whose superiority, knowledge, diplomatic finesse, and aristocratic decorum, she hoped, would produce territorial gains for Germany. Her investment in local culture was typical for colonial representation, particularly in that her writing (re)produces a sense of two separate, unequal and incommensurable cultures. The journalistic voice maintains its equilibrium and distance from the Other via the use of conventional landscape and ethnographic descriptions in which the writing subject remains safely detached from its environment. The representational strategies of the early China sections were commensurate with such earlier journal entries. Arriving in a state of confident excitement about Germany’s future in China, Heyking believes that her husband will create a thriving German settlement there. Her optimism vis-a-vis colonial activity corresponds to her use of conventional landscape descriptions and lay ethnographic portrayals in her journal writ- 130 Mary Rhiel ing: «Von weitem sieht man die Hausböte kommen, und da die vielgekrümmte Wasserfläche durch die Ufer verdeckt ist, scheint es, als bewegten sich die Segel auf dem Lande. Fedrige Bambusdickichte stehen auf den Dünen, im Schlamm am Ufer lagen grosse schwarze Wasserbüffel und der Himmel war von zartem Abendrot überhaucht, das sich im Wasser widerspiegelte» (183). Her ethnographic descriptions are consistent with the landscape idiom: «Chinesinnen, mit weiss und rosa geschminkten runden Gesichter, Orangenblüten oder künstlichen Schmetterlingen hinter den Ohren im glänzenden schwarzen Haar, sassen mit ihren niedlichen, in bunte Seide gekleideten Kindern und schlürften allerhand kalte Getränke» (184). In sync with her colonial gaze, she defines Chineseness in the terms that had become accepted in late nineteenth-century Europe, terms in which China is defined as a stagnant culture, with a decadent and incapable ruling elite. In other words, despite its reputation for an advanced historical culture, a culture at one time considered far beyond that of Europe, Europe’s modern version of China had it fall in with other colonial territories as a «backward» place, in need of those cultures at the pinnacle of historical development in order to survive and prosper. However, these conventional tropes of colonial travel writing broke down in China under the pressure of the extremely competitive environment at the end of the nineteenth century, when New Imperialism rendered visions of territorial and settlement colonialism obsolete. Here in the China sections, Heyking’s command over the landscape and the non-Western Other fails her. The masterful writing subject of the earlier journal chapters becomes sickly and melancholic when faced with the realities of the contact zone in late nineteenth-century Beijing. Landscape narration, for example, gives rise to a weakened subjective voice, a voice that has lost its mastery. While in the countryside outside of Beijing, she writes, «Schlingpflanzen ranken sich an der Steinpagode empor, und eine herrliche Weymouthskiefer hebt sich tiefgrün von dem Weiß der Pagode ab. Wäre es nur etwas kühler und fühlte ich mich etwas weniger krank, und hätten wir einen etwas besseren Koch, so wäre es reizend hier draußen» (194). Finally, the colonial fantasy that opened the China journals is shattered - making her travel writing no longer tenable. At the same time that her narrative strategies fall apart, she projects onto her husband, at first a hero of the German colonial enterprise, a loss of drive that otherwise would have driven the narrative to closure in national/ colonial terms. When the Heykings were moved to their next assignment, postcolonial, prerevolutionary Mexico, she continued to write in her Tagebuch, but the journal’s formerly masterful gaze had been lost, and she views her world from a claustrophobic place where she cannot breath, that is to say, from a place A Colonialist Laments the New Imperialism 131 from where she cannot imagine life: «Die Spezialität Mexikos ist, dass man herunterfahren muss, um ins Gebirge zu kommen. Oben auf dem Hochplateau, auf dem die Hauptstadt steht, hat man nie die Empfindung, auf den Bergen zu sein, denn alles ist eine einzige trostlose Ebene, und nur an den Atembeschwerden merkt man die Höhenluft» (379) Mexico was the last location of travel writing for Heyking because the collapse of territorial colonialist ideology in China did not produce for her a new imperial vision. Instead, she began to write fiction. At the point where travel writing was no longer tenable, fiction better accommodated Heyking’s inability to represent the world via a totalizing colonial vision. Briefe, die ihn nicht erreichten, her first novel, appeared in 1903 and became a bestseller in Germany; it was translated into several languages and, as one contemporary reviewer observed, was the talk of every literary salon from St. Petersburg to New York, and from Stockholm to Calcutta. 4 Beyond its initial popularity, the novel has been sparsely studied until now. Its more recent treatment is taking place in the context of German transnational and colonial studies’ attention to China. In a recent monograph, Kuturelle Exklusion und Identitätsentgrenzung: zur Darstellung Chinas in der deutschen Literatur, Weijian Liu discusses the novel at length and includes Heyking, along with Alfons Paquet and others, as examples of writers who resisted the dominant negative view of China. Liu evaluates Briefe positively for its «Gesellschaft- und Machtkritik» vis-à-vis the foreign occupation of Chinese territories (211). He also concludes that Heyking demonstrates an intercultural awareness by understanding the resolution of the novel as an intertextual reference to a Daoist and Buddhist understanding of self. 5 Here I want to reframe Liu’s argument and assert that the work’s critique is less an intertextual appropriation of Chinese culture than a melancholic farewell to colonialism and a simultaneous condemnation of the emergence of mass culture and global capitalism that she sees as responsible for colonialism’s demise. Briefe, die ihn nicht erreichten is an epistolary novel set at the turn of the century in which a woman who is traveling from China via Canada to New York, then to Germany and back to New York writes letters to a man she met while residing in Beijing. The recipient, a Forschungsreisender, neither receives nor answers the letters as his whereabouts are unknown. Yet, in the letters, we learn that he represents the epitome of the humanist explorer who is trusted by the Chinese, who knows their culture and languages, and who is not driven by material greed or motivated by economic exploitation. The narrator is highly critical of practices associated with imperialism and exposes foreigners in China as greedy businessmen pressuring diplomats to close deals for land and rights; they are men hungry for power, rushing to gain ad- 132 Mary Rhiel vantage over and above their colonial competitors; people who use patriotism as a means to justify exploitative imperial ends. The novel also makes clear that such economic exploitation of the Chinese follows upon the loss of those humanistic values and ideals that her interlocutor embodies. Comprising the center of the novel is a sense of loss that is related to the disappearance of the mythical good colonizer, the humanist, scientist aristocrat, a man of integrity. This novel, then, is focused on Western identity in a transformative era in global politics, and China functions as the exotic backdrop that best stages the negative effects of imperialism as a replacement to colonialism. The Boxer Rebellion plays a central role in the novel, and it has two major narrative functions. First, it allows the narrator to reframe the violence as a natural outcome of the inhumane treatment of the Chinese by materialistically motivated foreigners; and second, as the intermittent news of the violent resistance movement increases little by little, so does the sense of fear and loss associated with the missing interlocutor. In either case, the crass materialism that underlies the competitive search for markets and resources is at fault in the eyes of our narrator; thus the Boxer Rebellion is less an historical event than a literary metaphor for the disruption to pan-European colonial privilege, embodied by the narrator’s interlocutor, and caused by the new imperialist politics and the violent local reaction against it. The novel’s rejection of the imperial enterprise is compounded by, and related to, the loss of national identity. The narrator travels to Germany and finds that it no longer embodies the home it once did. Instead, her former home is now a museum and it is full of kleinbürgerliche tourists from Berlin who want to see how the aristocracy once lived. She follows them as they are led on a tour through her erstwhile home. Indeed, toward the end of the travel journals, the narrator bemoans her complete sense of homelessness upon returning to Germany from China. In the novel, the image of homelessness is literalized in the sense that her former residence is being trampled through by the masses now empowered by the new economic order. The narrator thus leaves Germany to return to New York, where the emotional intensity of the letters increases as news reports indicate a worsening of the violence in China. She is frantic over the well-being of her lover. Just as the narrator begins to believe that he is alive and their future together is secure, the story cuts off in mid-sentence. The brother of the narrator takes over to tell of her suicide at the news that her lover was killed in the last battle of the Boxer Rebellion. The novel’s antiimperialism has a double edge. While it rejects Western imperialism, it mourns the loss of the pan-European humanistic aristocrat that underpinned an earlier colonial ideology. Modern nationalism privileged national identity over class; it leveled difference in the interest of a unified na- A Colonialist Laments the New Imperialism 133 tional identity. The novel’s critique mourns the loss of the primacy of class identity over national identity. Indeed the novel renders national identity no longer viable for Heyking as she no longer knows who she is within modern categories. Her failed attempt to go home behind her, the narrator rejects her German heritage for New York’s immigrant mélange. In an ironic turn, the novel portrays Germany, akin to the former ideological positioning of China, as a place without a future. In contrast, New York represents a nostalgic nowhere, a transnational distraction from the stagnating German nation, and the promise to restore privilege in a modern, but nonnational setting. The ideology of individualism becomes the new belief system, America the place of a possible future. However, despite New York’s role as a refuge from modernity’s displacements, the narrative’s power resides in the overwhelming sense of loss and inability to go on, represented by the death of both lovers. At the core of the novel is an identity crisis in which class anxiety manifests itself in terms of the gender relations embedded in the love story. The masculine colonial ideal dies, and its contingent feminine counterpart destroys herself in response. The finality represented by the death of these two figures can be seen as a response to the complexity of the situation that offers no other solution or vision for the future. 6 Neither conventional gender categories nor nationality are presented as viable positionalities from which to imagine a self. Indeed, the demise of a link between the aristocratic feminine writer and the colonial heroic venturer opens up possibilities of inventing news discourses of feminine self-fashioning that do not necessarily secede to masculine heroes the condition for representational subjectivity. Read against the grain, the novel deconstructs colonialism’s linking of stable national, class and gender constructions, and Heyking’s move to a literary form represents an unintentional contemplation of the impossibility of a unified solution grounded in bordered nations and binary gender distinctions. In this first of Heyking’s novels, China signified the location of the demise of colonialism, a process linked in the discourse of the novel to the appearance of greed and crass materialism associated with the New Imperialism. In her 1914 novel, Tschun: Eine Geschichte aus dem Vorfrühling Chinas, Heyking returned to China as part of a representational balancing act that, in view of the reordering of the Western self, required a redefinition of the Chinese Other. The rejection of imperialism in Briefe did not mean the end of Heyking’s need to understand China. Rather the question is: How is China construed in potentially noncolonial terms? Given the critique of the hierarchical production of civilizational superiority of Europeans over the colonial Other in Briefe, the question one brings to the 1914 novel, Tschun, revolves precisely around the novel’s redefining of Chinese cultures and their relation to Euro- 134 Mary Rhiel pean cultures. The novel takes place before and during the Boxer Rebellion, so that the very political conflicts that Heyking treats in both her travel journal and in her first novel are again the focus of a narrative reworking. Tschun is a coming-of-age novel whose protagonist is a fatherless Chinese boy raised by his mother in Chinese Christian culture. Set at the end of the nineteenth century, when imperial powers were dividing China amongst themselves, Tschun is a figure placed between his relatives, who are defined by Confucian values (the cause of China’s stagnation according to the West), and Western diplomats, whom the young Tschun identifies as more sophisticated and progressive than his countrymen. After harsh treatment by his traditionally Confucian uncle, he finds work as a servant to a Western diplomat’s wife. In the course of Tschun’s employment in the diplomatic section, the Boxer Rebellion breaks out, and he and his mother take shelter in the Christian church to which they belong. The Boxers attacked the church fiercely - Chinese Christians were after all one of their defined enemies. Tschun emerges from the trauma of his mother’s death during the fighting with the realization that the foreigners were not superior, that in fact they are crassly materialistic, a finding in direct contradiction to Tschun’s original belief that the foreigners were striving altruistically for the betterment of China. On the other hand, the novel asserts that Chinese culture as defined by Confucianism and other traditional practices does not represent a viable direction for China’s future. At the conclusion of the novel, after the Boxer Rebellion has subsided, Tschun, in an expressionistic reverie, standing on a bridge between the city of Beijing and its closed diplomatic quarter, spurns the destructive influence of the foreign presence, rejects the outmoded traditions that have ruled Chinese culture, and awakens to the belief in a new, young China. The narrative develops using the gaze of a young Chinese boy whose view of the world is prerational and naïve. As a member of the Chinese Christian community, Tschun is uniquely positioned as an in-between figure. However, at no time in the novel does the term «foreigner» mean anything more specific than European, an effect of Tschun’s youthful naïveté. Consequently Tschun knows no distinction between French, German, or English. On the other hand, Chineseness is also reduced to a stereotypical version of a monoculture stuck in historical time. This is accomplished via Tschun’s young voice and nontraditional positionality from which he observes a world in which everything fascinates him, Chinese and foreign alike. He is in awe of the nuns and priests of his mother’s religion, he observes the mores of his Confucian relatives with curiosity and fear, and his observations of foreign diplomats are equally imbued with youthful interest. In the early part of the novel Confucian rules governing family life are portrayed as cruel, backward, and supersti- A Colonialist Laments the New Imperialism 135 tious, a judgment in line with the dominant Western view of Chinese culture at the time. In contrast, Western diplomats appear to Tschun to offer a more rational alternative, and Tschun looks up to them for their belief in «das Recht auf Selbstbestimmung» (34). At the same time, Westerners are exoticized via Tschun’s curious gaze. For example, he comments on the way they jump up from their chairs and run wildly through the room, all this «beim Klang einer seltsam unverständichen fremden Musik» (28), or he feels sorry for a women’s red curly hair because it was so ugly (14-15). As the object of Tschun’s gaze, the West is made strange, even if young Tschun idealizes Westerners for their more rational and advanced ways. His naïveté enables an ironic commentary in which the critique of Western imperialism is embedded. Tschun wonders, for example, why nuns and priests help the Chinese who are destitute (an act he asserts would never occur to the Chinese), and is especially amazed that they travel so far to do so. He concludes that the West must be a paradise with no destitute people (23-24). The critique of the West eventually enters Tschun’s consciousness as he observes that the foreigners are not as smart as he once thought. In fact, the longer he associates with them, the more he realizes that they are not at all astute observers of Chinese culture. He notes that they are not there to help the Chinese, but rather to profit from them in every way possible. Soon the reassignment of barbarianism has moved from the Chinese to the Western foreigners. It is through such observations and realizations by Tschun that the novel develops its critique of the foreign occupation of China. Through Tschun’s slow coming to consciousness, the novel gives the reader a critical portrayal of contemporary politics in China, including the emergence of nationalist republican movements. Tschun is surprised that the West did not seem to support the republicans as he thought it only logical for them to do so given their own values. He realizes, alas, that the foreigners had given up on China ever changing (103). The violence (The Boxer Rebellion) that constitutes the climax of the novel is shown to have been caused all along by the greed and stupidity of foreign imperialists and western missionaries. Nevertheless, the rebellion is portrayed in the novel as extremely violent and threatening. Caught between Chinese culture as represented by a narrowly defined Confucian ethic and the Western imperial alternative, Heyking’s novel resolves its opposition by presenting an image of a Chinese third way. The narrative develops the resolution by using the gaze of the young, naïve protagonist who has at least passed through the West on his way to Chinese manhood. Tschun shows us the balancing act that a redefinition of China required. It creates a fictive world in China by using strategies that make a distant, threatening place rocked by recent violence more personal and secure. With a young boy 136 Mary Rhiel as protagonist, the world is sentimentalized via innocence and naiveté. The cultural fears that have accompanied the West’s preoccupation with China are placated. The otherness of Chinese culture, an otherness construed by the West, is no longer as strange and estranging. Tschun’s rejection of Confucian China, as well as his familiarity with Western ways, has created a China in which the gelbe Gefahr recedes. Although by the end of the novel the giant has awakened, the new China construed in the novel is not to be feared. Is this a China that in its independence could be an economic, political and/ or cultural interlocutor with the West? Just what is at stake in Heyking’s reimagining of a new China in Tschun? What is the projected future that emerges from this new world order? A more detailed discussion of the narrative voice and of the representation of Tschun’s enlightenment at the end of the novel will answer these questions. The positing of a racial divide, at first contested in the novel by Tschun’s mimicking behavior, is achieved from the first pages in the language of the novel. The narrator, who renders the fictive world via Tschun’s naïve perspective, also commands an omniscience that constantly creates a binary that is fundamental to the narrative. The foundational narrative opposition is based in a difference that homogenizes Chineseness via racialized characteristics. For example, the narrator constantly talks about «ganz echte Chinesen» (10). Descriptions of Tschun and other Chinese characters refer to physical differences. For example, the narrator doesn’t comment on Tschun’s eyes, but rather speaks repeatedly of his little slanted Chinese eyes (Schlitzaugen). Or when describing Tschun’s relatives, we are not told that children are born, but that «kleine Chinesenmenschen» (54) are brought into the world. The third way of the new China that closes the novel is thus also a product of race-based differences. Relatedly, Tschun’s rejection of the West takes place as he realizes something about his own identity, namely, in his terms, which race he belongs to. The Boxer Rebellion over, Tschun turns decidedly against the foreigners as he conjectures that they will use the Rebellion as a pretense for taking more land. In an attempt to find the right expression, Tschun notes, «sie sind uns doch … fremd … fremd! » (370). By the end of the novel, Tschun rejects the foreigners completely as he formulates a bitter critique of imperialism. «All sein Glaube an die Fremden war dahin» (420), and Tschun, after a beating by foreign soldiers, escapes from his employers. Finally, Tschun looks around and sees his «Landesleute, Chinesen! -» (421) and turns the corner to the creation of a new and independent China. Although the novel ends with a passionate plea for an independent China, such a future is built on a foundation in which borders define mutually exclusive cultures and that retrospectively defines colo- A Colonialist Laments the New Imperialism 137 nialism/ imperialism as a system that created a dangerous mixing of cultures and races. In line with early twentieth-century fears, Tschun’s unifying script transforms the instabilities of inevitable globalizing conflicts into an imagined stability. The conflict associated with the unequal mixing of cultures sees local resistance as an unwanted and threatening effect of colonialism. Indeed, the novel’s depiction of the Boxer Rebellion is so terrorizing that the end of colonialism comes as a relief. Tschun constructs a time and space in which China, at the cusp of the twentieth century, erases not only colonialism (i.e., a Europe-centered world) but also its effects (a decentering world consisting of alternative modernities in conflict). 7 So although our author’s life of many border crossings has indeed enabled what appears to be an antiimperial view of the Other, Tschun is meant also to calm nerves frayed by reports of the Boxer Rebellion and subsequent moves toward independence from imperial occupation. Contrasting the three texts through time brings to the fore the adaptive strategies that Heyking used when her experience in China proved to be too «paradoxical» to fit into the existing system of colonial representations, especially via travel writing. Heyking managed the difficulty of taming reality in the contact zone by moving to imaginative literary forms, primarily the novel. Her first novel attempts to reorder her experience by staging the identity crisis of the western colonial woman against the backdrop of events in China, and her second novel ten years later reimagined not the colonial self, but China via the story of the novel’s protagonist, a young western-identified Chinese boy whose emergence into manhood coincides with China’s violent rejection of colonialism. The Western fears associated with these shifts are well managed by Heyking’s novels. Notes 1 For a recent account of the history of German views of China, see Steinmetz, especially chapter six: «German views of China before ‹Kiautschou.›» 2 New Imperialism refers to a resurgence of colonialism between 1870-1914 that focused primarily on Africa and Asia. Characterized by a scramble for territories, it resulted in European control of 84.4% of the globe by 1914, according to Pietersee (179). Rather than creating larger territorial colonies, New Imperialism saw the creation of concessions and spheres of influence that gave mostly European countries control over markets and resources. In an analysis of the New Imperialism on literature, Chris Bongie contends that in the move to Weltpolitik, «the exoticist project confronts its own impossibility» (39). 3 For a more detailed discussion of the Heyking’s travel journal, see my essay «Diplomatenfrau between Two Worlds.» 138 Mary Rhiel 4 «Die Briefe haben inzwischen das gebildete Lesepublikum der ganzen Welt erreicht und der Name der Baronin von Heyking bot eine lange Zeit in allen Salons, von Petersburg bis New York, von Stockholm bis Kalkutta, den interessantesten Theil des Tagesgespräches» (Kayser, 22). 5 Liu sees in the suicide that ends the novel a symbolic action that can be understand as Buddhist in the sense that the narrator frees herself from the ego-invested self. Further, «Mit diesem Hinweis auf das Nirvana steuert die Autorin eine neue Identität an, die durch den Eingang ins ‹Nichts›, die Überwindung des alten Ego, eine erneute Betrachtung der Diesseitigkeit hervorruft und mitfühlende Anteilnahme an allen leidenden Wesen an die Stelle des linearen, das ‹Weltweh› verbreitenden Fortschritts- und Erfolgsdenkens setzt» (221). 6 Historian Rudy Koshar writes about Imperial Germany, «The tragic element of the Kaiserreich […] stems from the transitoriness of its anticipated political futures» (497). Koshar sees cultural production as, in part, an attempt to deal with anxieties associated with the loss of future visions and past communities (503). 7 Arik Dirlik uses this term to deconstruct the binary between homogenous notions of European vs. Chinese culture, rendered particularly in temporal terms («Chinese History» 118). Also see Dirlik’s contrasting of globalization versus imperialism («End of Colonialism» 3). Works Cited Bongie, Chris. Exotic Memories: Literature, Colonialism, and the Fin de Siècle. Stanford: Stanford U Press, 1991. Dirlik, Arif. «Chinese History and the Question of Orientalism.» History and Theory 35.4 (1996): 97-118. -. «The End of Colonialism? The Colonial Modern in the Making of Global Modernity.» boundary 2 32.1 (2005): 1-31. Heking, Elisabeth von. Briefe, die ihn nicht erreichten. Berlin: Verlag von Th. Knaur Nachf., [n.d.]. Heyking, Elisabeth von. Tagebücher aus vier Weltteilen, 1886-1904. Leipzig: Koehler und Amelang, 1926. Heyking, Elisabeth von. Tschun: Eine Geschichte aus dem Vorfrühling Chinas. Berlin: Ullstein, 1914. Liu, Weijian. Kulturelle Exklusion und Identitätsentgrenzung: Zur Darstellung Chinas in der deutschen Literatur, 1870-1931. Bern: Peter Lang, 2007. Kayser, Dr. V von. Review in Zukunft 54 (1905-06): 22. Koshar, Rudy. «The Kaiserreich’s Ruins: Hope, Memory, and Political Culture in Imperial Germany.» Society, Culture, and the State in Germany, 1870-1931. Ed. Geoff Eley. Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 1996. Pieterse, Jan. Empire and Emancipation: Power and Liberation on a World Scale. New York, Westport, London: Praeger, 1989. Rhiel, Mary. «Diplomatenfrau between Two Worlds: Elisabeth Heyking’s China Journal.» Monatshefte 100.3 (2008): 369-82. Schell, Orville. «China: Humiliation and the Olympics.» The New York Review of Books 55.13 (Aug. 14, 2008): 30-33. A Colonialist Laments the New Imperialism 139 Sinographies: Writing China. Ed. Eric Hayot, Haun Saussy, and Steven G. Yao, Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2008. Steinmetz, George. The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. Chicago: U Chicago P, 2007. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Postfach 25 60 · D-72015 Tübingen · Fax (0 7071) 97 97-11 Internet: www.francke.de · E-Mail: info@francke.de Komplett überarbeitet und mit Blick auf die Bachelor-Studiengänge erweitert: Das bewährte Studienbuch berücksichtigt alle Grundlagen literaturwissenschaftlichen Arbeitens, von der Gattungs-, Literatur- und Kulturtheorie über die Literaturgeschichte bis zur Literaturvermittlung und eignet sich durch die neue Gliederung besonders als Gr undlage für eine Basismodul Liter aturwissenschaft. Leicht verständlich und anregend zugleich werden komplexe Sachverhalte erklärt. Neu hinzugekommen sind Kapitel zum Literaturbegriff, zu Kulturtheorien und Intermedialität. Stefan Neuhaus Grundriss der Literaturwissenschaft Eine Einführung UTB M 3., überarb. und erw. Auflage 2009 XIV, 319 Seiten, €[D] 19,90/ SFr 35,90 ISBN 978-3-8252-2477-6 010709 Auslieferung Februar 2009.indd 21 20.02.2009 8: 51: 31 Uhr Reading China, Resisting Hitler: Adam von Trott’s Engagement with Chinese Political Philosophy and Culture 1935-44 1 NANCY LUKENS U NIVERSITY OF N EW H AMP SHIRE Adam von Trott zu Solz was executed in August 1944 at the age of 35 for involvement in the resistance to Hitler. He worked closely with the Kreisauer Kreis around Helmuth von Moltke, PeterYorck, Hans Haeften and Hans von Dohnanyi, and became a confidant of Count von Stauffenberg. As one of the youngest conspirators he presents a life and written legacy that deserve to be known in greater depth, for Trott, an international lawyer trained in politics, philosophy and economics, thought in transnational terms when planning for the future of Europe and the global order. The substance of Trott’s transnational perspectives, especially regarding the connections between Europe, the U.S. and the Far East, have been neglected and/ or misrepresented in accounts of his life and work which generally quote or dispute one another without consulting the primary sources. 2 An unpublished 1999 McGill dissertation by Katharine Sams is a welcome exception, though regrettably it does not go beyond 1940. 3 Trott’s correspondence, memoranda and publications, and postwar reports collected by Clarita von Trott fill 30 volumes at the German Federal Archive in Koblenz; portions remain in private collections not included there. 4 A brief chronology will contextualize Trott’s engagement with China in the mid to late 1930s. Coming from a family of Hessian aristocrats - his father was Prussian Kultusminister until 1917, his mother descended from a Prussian ambassador to Saint Petersburg and from American abolitionists - Trott studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics in Oxford from 1931-33 as a Rhodes Scholar after completing a Göttingen dissertation on Hegel and International Law. 5 Returning to Germany in August 1933, he began immediately to build connections among socialist and Jewish friends and oppositional circles. 6 He still harbored some hope for an academic, business or legal career; 1933-34 was spent exploring these options, still benefiting from the spate of privileged family, political and academic connections due to his class and race, and not yet stigmatized by nonmembership in the Party. He spent four years in Referendar and Assessor posts in Hesse and Berlin. A primary focus of Trott’s political activity in the mid-thirties, which I contend is important for his later work in China, is with the Neue Blätter für 142 Nancy Lukens den Sozialismus, 7 where he published several book reviews. Once that journal was shut down, its publisher finally agreed to print Trott’s selection of Kleist’s Politische und Journalistische Schriften with a barely veiled scathing attack on Nazi brutality. 8 In 1935 he completed his legal exams. But by 1936 he saw the writing on the wall as pressure mounted to join the Party if he were to enter civil service or academia and began to look for other options than a legal career. By this time Trott’s interest in China had been piqued through his friendships with two individuals in particular. One was China aficionado Wilfrid Israel, owner of the Berlin department store N. Israel, a London-born German Jew whom Trott met in the spring of 1935. 9 Israel did not emigrate until 1939. Trott is known to have stayed in his flat when in Berlin, though Israel’s frequent missions to Portugal, Spain, and Britain on behalf of resettling Jewish refugees meant that they did not see a lot of each other. Israel wrote to Trott at one point wanting to know if Trott thought an increase in German commerce in the Far East could assist German, Italian and English intervention to end the Sino-Japanese war. 10 The other friend was Julie Braun Vogelstein, widow and biographer of Social Democrat Heinrich Braun. 11 Having completed his Oxford BA in two rather than three years, he was granted further Rhodes funding as well as support from Braun Vogelstein, whom he had helped emigrate to the U.S., for a research tour to China focusing on the «classical Chinese concept of sovereignty.» 12 The time frame of Trott’s most intensive study of and direct experience in China was the twenty-one months from February 1937 to October 1938. Having met in January 1937 in Leipzig with sinologist Wolfram Eberhard, who agreed to teach him Chinese language, culture and philosophy and accompany him on his travels, Trott left in February via London for the U.S. for preparatory research, arriving in New York March 12. 13 After four months of contacts with experts and studying sources he sailed the Pacific on a British steamer for Shanghai, but the July 7 Marco Polo Bridge incident stranded him at Hong Kong. 14 After traveling to Canton and spending three weeks in the war-torn Kwangsi Province against the advice of General Alexander von Falkenhausen, military advisor to Chiang Kai Chek and later an important resistance contact, 15 Trott took up residence in Peking with Gustav Ecke, professor of Chinese art history at Fu Yen University in Peking since 1928 and editor of a Sinology journal. In October 1938 his father died and he regretfully headed home much earlier than planned. He learned about the November 9 pogroms in Germany on board the ship home, arriving in Germany in late November to what he found to be an atmosphere of «sterile despair,» «guilt and shame.» 16 Despite the disappointment in not being able to com- Reading China, Resisting Hitler 143 plete his studies, he quickly realized events in Europe compelled him to be in Germany and play an active role in the resistance. One of the first results of Trott’s China expertise was an invitation by Edward (Ned) Carter of the Institute of Pacific Relations to attend its November 1939 meeting in Virginia Beach. He obtained passage on an Italian vessel, made it through the Straits of Gibraltar after the outbreak of war in September 1939 and spent the fall, apart from attending the ten-day November conference, racing between New York and Washington meeting émigré friends and resistance contacts and attempting to deliver memoranda and messages on behalf of the resistance to business, academic, and human rights leaders and diplomatic and public officials. Traveling with a German passport in wartime, he aroused suspicion; the FBI trailed him and recorded many of these conversations. 17 Despite urgings of friends and colleagues not to return to Germany, he sailed from San Francisco on January 12, 1940, for Japan and China, then took the Trans-Siberian Railway via Königsberg back to Berlin, determined to fight the regime from within. He had friends like Albrecht von Bernstorff in the Foreign Office who were deeply involved in resistance efforts and in specific coup attempts and with whom he had been in close touch since his 1938 return. On May 31, 1940 Trott accepted a low-ranking appointment at the Asian affairs desk of the Information Department of the German Foreign Office 18 and a week later married Clarita Tiefenbacher. 19 His recognition as an Asia specialist provided valid alibis for his numerous foreign trips to Switzerland, Scandinavia, Holland and elsewhere on behalf of Kreisau and other resistance initiatives to persuade the Allies to support their efforts and plans for a post- Hitler democratic Europe. Trott is known for his near-native fluency in English, his huge network of contacts with influential people in Britain and the U.S. as well as with the ecumenical movement. Friends and colleagues write of his immense capacity for friendship and dialogue, his voracious reading of literary classics, his commitment to socialism and to eradicating war as a means to solving conflict, and last but not least, his profound humor, raucous laughter and ability to defuse the most dangerous situation with ingenious ruses. What has scarcely been addressed in depth is his engagement with Chinese thought. In the following I will examine Trott’s «reading» of China through his correspondence, research notes and notes from conversations and travel with leading Sinologists in 1937-38, and publications. I will consider how he constructs his narrative of China and the Orient vis-a-vis his correspondents, his transnational views of Europe as conveyed from China after journeying from 144 Nancy Lukens China, and, finally, how his engagement with everyday Chinese culture and Daoism may have influenced his thought and action as part of the resistance after his return to Berlin in 1940. It is not known how early Trott began reading Chinese philosophy. His library contains well-marked copies of Victor von Strauss’ 1924 edition of Laotse’s Tao te King and Percival Lowell’s 1921 Die Seele des Fernen Ostens; 20 as early as March 1933 he wrote to his father about working on Lord Palmerston’s Orientpolitik. 21 Trott’s contacts in the US and Canada during his spring 1937 study trip range from meeting Felix Morley, former Washington Post Far East correspondent, 22 and Henry Stimson, Secretary of State at the time of the 1931 Manchurian crisis and author in 1936 of The Far East Crisis, 23 to library visits in Chicago and Cornell. The list of books whose titles Trott noted at the Cornell library, 24 which he called the «best non-Chinese East Asian library in America,» 25 reflect the breadth of his scholarly interest and refute any suspicion that his motivation in embarking on this study was mystical or escapist: Arthur Probstrain, Encyclopedia of Books on China (London, 1927); Edward Harper Parker, China, her History, Diplomacy & Commerce (London, 1917); Chu His 1130-1200, Les principes gouvernementaux en Chine: extraits de Tchou-hi (Firence, 1888); Foreign Policy Association of New York, The Rise of the Kuomintang (1928); Chai Chun-chieu, Essai historique et analytique sur la situation internationale de la Chine (Paris, 1829); Liu, Ta-chun, China’s Industry and Finance (Peking, 1927); Hsieeh, Pao Chao, The Government of China (Baltimore, 1925); Research Department of the Bank of China, The Financial Situation in China & Japan (Geneva, 1933); Lee Chou Ying, The System of Chinese Public finance - A Comparative Study (London, 1936; Kim Wei Shaw, Democracy and Finance in China (London, 1936). The initial driving force of Trott’s study was to study «why subjects obey.» 26 One undated outline titled «Herrschaft und Charakter» 27 suggests that the unique contribution of ancient Far Eastern attitudes toward state sovereignty is located in the transition from personal morality to the structure of sovereign obedience («der Übergang von persönlicher Moral zur loyalen Herrschaftsgestaltung»), and that this would help one understand the prevailing forces of the present time. He relates this question to Europe: «es ist eine Frage, ob Europa sich ihnen [den geistigen Kräften der Gegenwart] gewachsen erweisen wird.» 28 In notes for a comparative study of ancient Far Eastern and Western views of sovereignty (cf. his letter of 10 Feb 1938 to Julie Braun Vogelstein, cited be- Reading China, Resisting Hitler 145 low), Trott defines sovereignty as «Verkörperung der eigenständigen Macht und der letzten politischen Gehorsamspflicht eines Volkes,» as «höchste Rechtsquelle für die inneren und äußeren Beziehungen eines Staates.» The concluding line of the notes names «das Tao des Menschen» as the primary building block of all personal and political relationships. 29 Trott sought out numerous Chinese scholars to whom he had letters of introduction. Typed notes from three meetings with a Professor W. Hung in late December 1937 and into 1938 show that Hung affirmed Trott’s purpose and was advising him in detail about Chinese resources to whom he could turn. Hung believed that „meine Aufgabe, einer staatstheoretischen Interpretation (Namengebung) der politischen und philosophischen Zusammenhänge jener Zeit (des Konfuzius) noch nicht versucht worden, sei auch nicht sinologisch, philosophisch, sondern nur staatstheoretisch möglich.» 30 Hung refers him to a Chen Chui, possibly the assistant to whom Trott refers in his February 1938 letter to Braun-Vogelstein below, who should help him with textual criticism especially of the last ten of the 100 Li and consider how best to compare Chinese concepts with analogous Western concepts. Trott’s notes from his third conversation with Hung suggest the direction of the work he was doing at this point. He is clearly attempting to make responsible generalizations about the evolution of Chinese thought as it compares to the particular aspects of Western political culture that concern him most: [I] need to weigh the relative significance of the different elements [of sovereignty]… the conflict between the moralist and the mystical concept of emperor […] Chinese thought has been formed over centuries in adaptation to natural process, while Western thinking with its «cubist» forms of technologically-oriented civilization often uses violence to force the object into pre-conceived categories […] Chinese materialism is ‹heiter›, in contrast to western materialism; apart from this Hung finds in Schopenhauer certain resemblances to Daoism. 31 Trott’s correspondence from China, despite his isolation from everyday events in Europe, demonstrates his characteristic acute awareness both of his own position as observer 32 and of the language, interests and vulnerabilities of his Gegenüber. To Julie Braun-Vogelstein in February 1938 he describes his fascination with ancient Chinese philosophy with the caveat that the constitution of the observer defines the limits of the study. He urges her to read Martin Buber’s translation of Dschuang-tse [Zhuangzi] if she has not done so, as it would give her «einen Begriff von den Gegenden, in denen ich mich zur Zeit bewege,» phrasing that suggests the integration of the intellectual, spiritual, geographical and physical aspects of his experience. The letter goes on to describe the young «Mitarbeiter» with whom he is working through the classical texts. 146 Nancy Lukens Coming from an ancient Mandarin family in Fukien and studying the classics since age four, his assistant had a profound relationship to Chinese philosophy. Trott adds that the young man is also at home in European history and «some of our problems.» The letter then emphasizes how much more directly he is experiencing Taoism’s inspired view of nature through his ongoing study of Chinese martial arts than through «translated» ideas: 33 Eine ganz wesentliche Ergänzung meiner philosophischen Studien ist der chinesische Fechtunterricht, den ich seit einiger Zeit nehme. Diese Fechtkunst ist ganz auf dem Taoismus aufgebaut und vermittelt so anstelle von ‹übersetzten› Ideen eine unmittelbare Fühlung mit dieser inspirierten Naturanschauung. A letter of November 24, 1938 from his ship back to Europe from China to his Jewish friend Diana Hubback from Oxford days exemplifies both Trott’s romantic projection of China in correspondence with a close friend, and secondly his coded reference to the November 9 pogroms by referring to their mutual friend Wilfrid Israel: 34 Oh, how I wish you could see China and Peking for yourself. The wide ancient plain with its graves and temples and peasant huts, stretching out to the Western hills where the guerilla’s domain begins. Though there is war, there is an eternal presence of serenity in these fields and forms and faces. You and Wilfrid [Israel - should go there together. - My thoughts have been with him very much these last weeks - do you know where he is, how I can reach him? Give him my love if you can. You know that it is we who are humiliated by what has passed and it is for us to wonder whether our former friends wish to have anything more to do with one who, after all (in my case through my very absence) has to accept his full share of responsibility. I know that our friendship is too deeply rooted to be affected by all these developments, but I know of hardly another one I have abroad that in some way or other is not. This I think will be my hardest discovery on returning to Europe after these eventful months. I shall have to face it and set to work in other directions. Between his two China trips and after his second return in 1940 Trott consistently made connections in his writing for diverse audiences in Britain, the U.S. and Germany - despite the profound distrust caused by the fact of his traveling on a passport from Nazi Germany - between the substance of his reading of China and the Far East and the substance of his thinking about Germany, Europe and the future economic, political and cultural global order. His memorandum Far Eastern Possibilities was distributed first in English in June 1938, then in German as Ostasiatische Möglichkeiten in early July 35 to a selected list of German and British officials and close friends. In the English version, but not in the German, Trott states «as a German observer» that his purpose is «to defeat the fatal notion, increasingly dominating Reading China, Resisting Hitler 147 Anglo-Saxon opinion, that Germany can only be regarded as an unsettling force and not a potential cooperator toward a better order of international relations.» 36 Trott sees the changes in Pacific alignments taking place with the deepening Sino-Japanese conflict as having profound repercussions for the European situation and world politics and decisive for the chances of peace in the rest of the world in the next decade. 37 This June 1938 analysis argues that the Chinese resistance in the hinterlands is based on strong agricultural communitarian models of economic and political cooperation, education and land reform (here we see parallels to the themes of Kreisau planning in 1942-43) despite the chaos caused by wartime banditry and dislocation; he argues that the «ideological solidarity» of Japan and Germany must not be misunderstood; Germany wants a role in constructing a tolerable Far Eastern peace agreement by limiting the fatal consequences of an extended Japanese campaign in China. By contrast, in a January 1940 American foreign policy monthly out of New York, Amerasia, Trott positions himself not as a German but as a member of the International Secretariat of the Institute of Pacific Relations, arguing for American neutrality in the war in an article called «Euramerasia.» 38 The neologism in Trott’s title itself suggests his motive in addressing an American audience concerned with American interests in Asia. Typical of Trott’s dialectial skill as well as noteworthy for his willingness to publish statements not in line with his government’s official position is the following argument from this article. Appealing to the power of America to «turn the scales in a state of the world in which all other important powers are involved in a major conflict,» he warns that if the U.S. effectively condones Japanese imperialism in the East, «the whole vital fabric of Chinese popular resistance will become irretrievably allied to Russia, revolutionary unrest will be perpetuated in China and may spread all over the Asiatic continent.» 39 If America enters the European war, China would be driven to seek help from Russia and with the U.S. busy in Europe, Russian influence would become the most powerful external factor in the Far Eastern conflict. Arguing from an empathetic perspective with Chinese «bitterness against the barren shallowness of Western pledges to weaker nations and an exasperated realization of the cynical dialectic underlying Western progress since Manchuria,» 40 he sees grievances against Western imperialism currently submerged under Sino-Japanese hatred, but warns that if the U.S. enters the European war it will greatly strengthen the chances of unified anti-Western power in the Pacific during and after the war. His conclusion is that neutrality should be considered «a basic national interest of America between Europe and Asia.» 41 148 Nancy Lukens Yet another audience for Trott the Asian affairs specialist is of course that within Nazi Germany after his return from Asia. One publication comes out of Trott’s Berlin China connections and is clearly addressed to that audience, with corresponding cautions, yet without sacrificing the argument. In his March 1940 lecture to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Foreign Public Law and International Law, «Der Kampf um die Herrschaftsgestaltung im Fernen Osten,» 42 Trott’s analytical approach is similar to that of his acutely political 1935 introduction to his volume of Kleist’s political writings. In describing the struggle for sovereignty in the Far East he locates the contemporary struggle for authentic power in the capacity of peoples to muster their last available resources, not in the predictable power games played by Western-style power brokers. With typical transnational orientation Trott predicts that the current conflict over sovereignty in China «wird weit über den betroffenen Kontinent und die orientalischen Völker hinaus - für die politisch-wirtschaftliche ebenso wie für die geistige Neuordnung unserer Welt von tiefgreifender Bedeutung sein.» 43 Given the limits imposed on correspondence by the need for secrecy and by awareness of the censors, Trott’s war-time correspondence offers scant substantive information but frequent hints, often coded references, and do document where he was and often what he sent whom when. A February 1941 letter to his wife Clarita signals, for example, how consciously Trott weighs what assignments he can accept as a Far East expert in the Foreign Office without compromising his ultimate purpose. Reporting that his «Ostasienbericht» (Ostasiatische Möglichkeiten) is now with Ambassador Stahmer, he then refers to a publishing assignment he will possibly accept if the other contributors are «Kapazitäten […] die mich nicht zu sehr komprimittieren.» 44 What does Trott’s reading of China mean, then, for his participation in the plot to overthrow Hitler? Katharine Sams maintains in her thesis on the development of Trott’s political thought that the China experience functioned to prepare Trott for political action in Germany and Europe. Trott had written to Sheila Grant Duff in 1936 that he would go to the Far East and «come back a mandarin of the new order,» meaning the new order of labor in Europe. 45 How did he return, when he did so in 1938 and again in 1940? I will not rehearse here the history of the attempted and failed plots against Hitler from 1939 to 1944. Surely of significance are the moral and ethical as well as social and economic questions that occupied the diverse network of Kreisauer in planning the elimination of the regime as well as a future democratic Europe. Studies such as that by Ger van Roon began to document these deliberations in the 1960s. 46 Trott, like theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others with foreign contacts attempting to get Allied support for the resis- Reading China, Resisting Hitler 149 tance, were constantly disappointed by their failure to gain trust abroad and of course by one after the other failed plot prior to July 20 which led to the arrest and death of Trott and scores of others. I will focus here on a few documents that indicate specific impulses Trott gained from his China experience and how he felt China equipped him for this work. Among the conversation partners Trott visits a number of times were Sinologists Hellmut Wilhelm and Dr. Bidder of the German Embassy in Peking. His notes of an August 1938 conversation with Botschaftsrat Bidder, primarily in response to Trott’s question whether Bidder thought the Chinese could master modern industrial technology given that their culture is based purely on agricultural practices, demonstrate Trott’s eagerness to use his counterpart’s expertise while formulating his own conclusions. Bidder is optimistic that industry would be built into the continuity of the tradition of Chinese culture and philosophy and not be «broken» by modern developments. 47 Following a paragraph in which he notes Bidder’s expectation that Western administrative economic practices will be integrated with the help of Western experts into traditional Chinese practices, Trott notes his skepticism about this perception and reaches a significant conclusion about the relationship between the moral and the political in Europe: Was die psychische Kraft altchineschischen Ideengutes angeht, möchte ich ihm Recht geben, was ihre heutige soziologische Realisierung anbetrifft, glaube ich an die Notwendigkeit radikalerer Adaptierung, um Chinas agrarisches und militärisches Problem zu lösen, wonach dann allerdings die Möglichkeit eines organischeren Einbaus der Industrie, als wie sie dem Westen gelungen ist, sehr wohl denkbar erscheint. Es gilt hier [in China] eine moralische in eine politische Kraft umzuwandeln, während bei uns das umgekehrte notwendig ist. Trott mentions Daoism and Chinese thought a number of times in his correspondence with family members, in particular the value of the Daoist concept of wu wei and the paradox wei wu wei. The literal meaning of wu wei is «without force.» It is often expressed by the paradox wei wu wei, meaning «action without force» or «effortless doing.» 48 According to James Miller, the goal of wu wei is alignment with Dao, revealing the soft, invisible, but fundamental and indomitable power within all things. Masters of wu wei can control this invisible potential, the innate yin-action of the Way. 49 In ancient Daoist texts, wu wei is associated with the yielding nature but also the strength of water to move earth and carve stone. Daoism does not see the root of disharmony or evil in conflict between human wills, but in the imbalance between human wills and the natural universe. 50 To his mother Trott writes from Peking in August 1938, „Wenn man etwas von der orientalischen Weisheit lernen kann, so sollte es das sein, dass die in- 150 Nancy Lukens nere Welt des Menschen so weit und prekär ist wie die äussere und dass man nicht mit schnellfertigen Massstäben, vor allem nicht von sich auf andere, zu richtigen Schlüssen kommen kann. 51 Writing to his mother from Berlin fifteen months into the war in December 1940, Trott invokes wu wei in advising her about a situation in which she was uncomfortable participating in the preparation of a lavish family celebration during wartime. Acknowledging her gifts of empathy and self-sacrifice, he reminds her of the British celebrating amidst German bombings and encourages her to adopt a Chinese attitude: Die Engländer haben neulich im Keller der Guildhall ihr berühmtes Banquet abgehalten. Es gehört eine gewisse Tapferkeit und Selbstverleugnung dazu, sich andern zuliebe, ohne es selbst zu können, mitzufreuen. Wenn Du es so auffaßt - resigniert und ohne moralische Erwartungen und Bedingungen (WU WEI! ! ) - dann hast Du auch bestimmt Kraft und Humor genug, trotz schlimmer Müdigkeit alles gut zu überstehen. 52 In a 1943 letter to Clarita a similar contemplative side of Trott emerges as he looks to Asian art to explain a truth he sees in how people respond to the evils occurring in the present time. While some blame the «evil times» for the events of the present, Trott finds nature and truth itself actually «time-less,» and it is the task of human beings to be at home in them so that there is balance between earth, ideas and their fruits. His reflection shows his eagerness to synthesize oriental and Western thinking from the political and philosophical to the spiritual: Mit dem Zeitgeschehen ist das so eine Sache: allermeistens wird man in den Menschen, die darüber seufzen, ein gut Teil Nicht-fertig-Werdens mit ihren eigenen unmittelbaren Lebensaufgaben feststellen, wofür dann die ‹böse Zeit› beschuldigt wird. Die Natur, aber auch die eigentliche Wahrheit, is ja doch ‹zeit›-los, und in ihnen soll man […] daheim sein. […] So bewahrt sich das Elementare eines gesegneten Erdreiches auch in Blüte und Frucht und dem, den sie dann damit speist. Und wie mit der ‹heutigen Zeit›, so ist es mit vielen großen Ideen und Begriffen, denen diese unmittelbare Wahrheit der Existenz fehlt. In ihnen vergibt und erschöpft sich die Seele und läßt ein Gefühl hilfloser Uferlosigkeit zurück, während im Umkreis des Greifbaren und natürlich Bewährten die großen Wahrheiten sich auf einfache und geheimnisvolle Weise spiegeln. Hierin liegt ein guter Teil vielleicht der asiatischen Kunst, den chinesischen Bambusblättern oder der frierenden Kiefer im Winterwind und hier im Westen - die Kraft des empirischen, skeptischen, ja oft auch des sensualistischen Denkens der Angelsachsen und - anders - der Franzosen. Den Deutschen wird die ‹Idee› immer wieder zur Gefahr, wenn sie auch nicht ohne sie auszukommen versuchen sollten [...] [M]ir ist dies zeitweilig wohl beinahe zum Verhängnis geworden, denn so ‹greifbar› ist eben die Wahrheit doch nicht; es muß sich tiefer hervortun und nicht so sehr erarbeitet, als gegeben werden. 53 Reading China, Resisting Hitler 151 It is typical of Trott the poet and political being that he could write such prose during the same weeks that he is conducting secret missions and negotiating with fellow conspirators about how Germany and Europe should be organized politically and economically after Hitler. Between the outbreak of war in September 1939 and his execution in 1944 he traveled outside Germany scores of times, on missions each of which had some sort of Foreign Office cover but primarily the goal of informing Allied and ecumenical contacts of resistance plans and pleading with them to formulate clear aims and recognize the conspiracy. His transnational orientation and his understanding of international affairs defined all his writing about Asia, whether directed to American, British or German leaders or opinion-makers. All focused on that vision for balance in the structure of sovereignty that he had first investigated in his book on Hegel. His attempts to interpret the complex realignments he saw occurring between China, Japan, Russia, the U.S., Great Britain, Germany and the rest of Europe were all deeply colored by his experience and reflection during 15 months in China. This transnational vision eluded most national leaders as well as many of his friends in Britain and was not heard due to the force of events at the time of his return to Germany in 1938, 54 but he engaged in it with a different perspective about the power and authority of individuals and communities vis-à-vis a state authority out of balance with «Heaven.» While most accounts focus on the failure of Trott’s and his resistance colleagues’ diplomatic efforts and the mistrust they encountered abroad, his largely unknown personal correspondence of 1940-44 - however fragmentary and fraught with the issues known to all who deal with texts written for the censor - indicates he grasped that the political reality of the present is about accepting what must be done for the sake of humanity and the future in face of incomprehension at home and abroad. What counted was maintaining calm while preventing further genocide and attempting to rid Germany and Europe of Hitler, while considering the profound moral implications of doing so. In the following letter, without his naming wei wu wei explicitly, I think that is his reference point. In June 1944, in full awareness of yet another plan to assassinate Hitler and certainly knowing his neck was on the line, he wrote to Clarita: 55 Läßt sich unser christlicher Kinderglaube […] ausweiten und auf die ganze Wucht und Intensität unserer heutigen Probleme einschärfen? Fast scheint es mir, als ob das alte China noch ein […] Scherflein hierzu beitragen könnte. Hans [Haeften] sagte neulich, die Kenntnis dessen, was er ‹Weltangst› nennt, gehe mir ab. […] Hier liegen (vielleicht seit China) wirklich Abgründe […] wenn auch alles letzten Endes nicht gewollt und gemacht, sondern geschenkt oder versagt sein wird. Gnade oder Tao. 152 Nancy Lukens Notes 1 This article is based on a paper given at the 2008 German Studies Association conference in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I am indebted to my colleague Mary Rhiel at the University of New Hampshire and others at the session «Germans Reading China» for their comments and questions. 2 The best German overview of Trott’s life and thought to date is by Dr. med. Clarita von Trott, Adam von Trott zu Solz: Eine Lebensbeschreibung (Berlin: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand gegen Hitler, 1994), hereafter cited as CT, to be reissued with an Appendix for the 2009 Trott centenary. A new biography is also forthcoming: Benigna von Krusenstjern, «daß es Sinn hat zu sterben - gelebt zu haben»: Adam von Trott zu Solz 1909-1944 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009). Earlier monographs, all by British and American authors, include Christopher Sykes, Tormented Loyalty (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), published in the U.K. as Troubled Loyalty (London: Collins, 1969) and in Germany as Adam von Trott: Eine deutsche Tragödie, (Düsseldorf/ Cologne: Diederichs, 1969); Giles MacDonough, A Good German: A Biography of Adam von Trott zu Solz (Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 1992); cf. Gordon Craig, «Good Germans,» New York Review of Books 17 Dec. 1992: 42-44; Henry O. Malone, Adam von Trott zu Solz: Werdegang eines Verschwörers 1909-1938 (Berlin: Siedler, 1986), and the University of Texas dissertation by the same author, «Adam von Trott zu Solz: The Road to Conspiracy against Hitler» (1980). 3 Katharine J. Sams, «Political Thought and Action in the Life of Adam von Trott, 1909- 1940» (Diss. McGill University Department of History, 1999). 4 Materials in the Trott Collection at the Bundesarchiv are cited using the standard notation BArch N1416 followed by the Ordner and volume number. Materials not at the Bundesarchiv are indicated otherwise. 5 Adam von Trott zu Solz, Hegels Staatsphilosophie und das Internationale Recht, International Law and Diplomacy Series, University of Göttingen, ed. Herbert Kraus, 1932. Reprinted in 1967 with an Introduction by Hans Rothfels. Trott claimed that his experience of China finally helped him work through his fundamental dissatisfaction with Hegel’s understanding of the relationship between a state and its people. Part II of Trott’s book is recognized as a significant contribution to Hegel criticism. It is my contention that while most accounts of Trott dismiss his «Hegelianism» as an early intellectual phase there is far more continuity to his thinking about the problem of sovereignty than previously acknowledged and that his China sojourn pushed this understanding beyond its Western limits and prepared Trott for the decisions he made about his participation in the conspiracy against Hitler, the ways he viewed it and articulated that in his correspondence and conversations. 6 Cf. Malone, Werdegang 106f. 7 Published by Protte, Potsdam; a forum for leftist intellectuals including Paul Tillich and the younger generation including J.P. Mayer, Curt Bley, Johannes Gaidies and Adam von Trott. Ceased publication in late 1933. 8 Adam von Trott zu Solz, ed. and intro., Heinrich von Kleists Politische und journalistische Schriften (Potsdam: Protte, 1935). Reprinted with an afterword by Günter Wirth (Berlin: Hentrich, 1995). 9 Naomi Shepherd, Wilfrid Israel: German Jewry’s Secret Ambassador (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984) 102. 10 Ibid. 104. Reading China, Resisting Hitler 153 11 Trott’s correspondence with Julie Braun Vogelstein is held at the Leo Baeck Archive, New York, hereafter LBI. 12 Typescript, BArch N1416/ 17 China: Exzerpte, Notizen, Bruchstückhafte Entwürfe. 13 MacDonough 97. 14 Sams 358. AvT to Diana Hubback 11 Aug. 1937: «History is closing in on me even on these continents.» 15 Sams 404-07 dates an important consultation of Trott and Albrecht von Kessel with Falkenhausen in Dresden on 3 September 1939 (Malone and others thought it to have been in July) proposing an assassination plan. Trott had met Falkenhausen in August 1937 in China (letter of 17.8.1937, Hong Kong, to Julie Braun Vogelstein - LBI); however, shortly after Trott’s return to Berlin they also both attended a China-Studien-Gesellschaft dinner in Berlin to welcome the new Chinese ambassador, 27 March 1939 (BArch N1416/ 20 Teilnehmerliste). 16 AvT to Sheila Grant Duff, 6 December 1938, BArch N 1416/ 25. 17 BArch, N1416/ 3 (fol. 1) Laufende Monographien. 18 Auswärtiges Amt, Politisches Archiv, Personalakte Trott. 19 CT 150. 20 Von Trott Restbibliothek, Wildeck, Hessen, thanks to Verena Onken von Trott, July 2008. 21 Sams 176. 22 March 27 or 28, 1937; AvT to Sheila Grant Duff, BArch N 1416/ 25; F. Morley diary entry 31 March cited in letter to Clarita von Trott, 24 Dec. 1957, BArch N1416/ Berichte. 23 Sams 332. 24 BArch N 1416/ 17. 25 Adam von Trott, «Amerikanische Eindrücke» Barch N1416/ 1, 19. 26 Based on dated and undated notes in Trott’s hand, BArch N1416/ 17 Gespräche mit China-Fachleuten. 27 Undated outline, BArch N 1416/ 17. 28 BArch N1416/ 17. Marginal notes in AvT’s handwriting on this ms. list as sources: 1) Tao de King (Strauss) (i.e. Victor von Strauss’ 1924 Leipzig edition), 2) Sze Shu; 3) Finno Tuno Shotoki (? ); 4) Sawakichi; 5) Franke etc; 6) de Groot. 29 Ibid. Undated notes, ink, one-half page in AvT handwriting: «Vergleichende Studie über die altorientalische und die westliche Souveränitätsauffassung.» 30 BArch-N1416/ 17. Notizen von Gesprächen mit China-Fachleuten (10 pp.) 31 Ibid. 32 «Die vergleichende Befassung - wobei das Adjektiv nicht allzu schwer wiegen kann (es ist durch die Constitution des betreibenden Subjekts schon gesetzt! ) - mit der altorientalischen Philosophie ist ungeheuer interessant.» AvT to JBV, 10 February 1938. LBI. 33 AvT to Julie Braun Vogelstein, Peking, 10 February 1938. LBI. 34 AvT to Diana Hubback, on board the SS «Ranchi», 24 November 1938. English original, LBI. 35 English version sent 1 July 1938, Peking, to Lord Lothan. Lothian forwarded it to Edward Lord Halifax, London, 2 Aug 1938. Sams (428, n. 336) cites FO 371 22109, PRO letter of F.R. Hoyer Miller to Lord Lothian’s private secretary, Peking, 5 Aug. 1938, saying Trott prepared the draft for Peter Fleming who was flying back to England from China in early July. German Version Ostasiatische Möglichkeiten, Anfang Juli 1938, sent to Eleonore von Trott for distribution in Germany to Finance minister Schwerin von 154 Nancy Lukens Krosigk, Professor Albrecht von Haushofer, Prof. x Franke, Prof. x [E.F.] Schumacher, Prof. Theodor Strewe (China-Studien-Gesellschaft), Adalbert von Unruh, Albrecht von Bernstorff, Ernst-Friedemann von Münchhausen, Paul Leverkühn, Hans von Dohnanyi, Fritz Jessen, Josias von Rantzau, Friedrich Schmidt-Ott. 36 Malone 586-87. 37 Ibid. 38 In Amerasia: A Review of America and the Far East 3 (1940): 513-15, ed. M.S. Bates, University of Nanking. Citations are from a slightly different draft. Cf. note 39. 39 «Euramerasia», AvT draft typescript, p. 3, BArch N 1416/ 17. 40 Ibid. 4. 41 Ibid. 5. 42 In Zeitschrift für ausländisches und öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht 9 (1939-40): 264- 83, here 282. 43 Ibid. 283. 44 Berlin, 15 February 1941 to Clarita von Trott. CT, by permission. 45 Sams 290. 46 Ger van Roon, Neuordnung im Widerstand: Der Kreisauer Kreis innerhalb der deutschen Widerstandsbewegung (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1967). 47 BArch N1416/ 17, Notizen von Gesprächen mit China-Fachleuten. Gespräch mit Bidder 12.8.38. 48 James Miller, Daoism, A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003) 16. 49 Ibid. 17. 50 Ibid. 19. 51 AvT to Eleonore von Trott, 30 August 1938. BArch N1416/ 15 Briefe an die Eltern 1933- 44. 52 British cities were experiencing heavy German bombing raids at this time. The London Guild Hall was destroyed in December 1940 (Wikipedia) after this letter was written. Coventry Cathedral was destroyed the day this letter is dated. It is unknown what specific bombings Trott was aware of as he wrote; the reference suggests finding a way to celebrate amidst one’s own and others’ hardship. 53 AvT to Eleonore von Trott, 14 November 1940, BArch N1416/ 15 Briefe an die Eltern 1933-44; cf. CT 210f. 54 Cf. for example Klemens von Klemperer, German Resistance against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938-1956 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); Patricia Meehan, The Unnecessary War: Whitehall and the German Resistance to Hitler (London: Sinclair/ Stevenson, 1992). 55 CT 212. Lu Xun, Peking Opera and Modernism: China as a Literary Model in Anna Seghers’s «Zwei Briefe über China» * MIN ZHOU R OGER W ILLIAMS U NIVERSITY Denn wir schreiben ja nicht, um zu beschreiben, sondern um beschreibend zu verändern. (Seghers, «Kleiner Bericht» 8) Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem «Anderem» ist nämlich […] auch eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem eigenen Selbst. So [… kann] jede Einbeziehung, Entlehnung und Verherrlichung des Fremden indirekt als Ausdruck des Bewußtseins eigener Beschränktheit und Ergängungsbedürftigkeit aufgefaßt werden. (Bauer 176) Throughout her life, Anna Seghers took a keen interest in China. Several fictions of hers take place in China. 1 Despite her «abiding reticence about personal matters» (Kane 8), Seghers recollected her encounter with China during her childhood and youth in a couple of essays («Verwirklichung» and «Erinnerungen»). A picture of her and a Chinese author, Hu Lan Qi, from the 1920s as well as pictures of her taken during a visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1951 were also widely publicized. Unlike her contemporary Bertolt Brecht, however, the discourse on Seghers’s relationship with China has been ignored until now or, at best, mentioned only in passing. This essay calls attention to Seghers’s letters about China, «Zwei Briefe über China.» Reading the two letters against the biographical and historical background that are important to their composition and to our understanding of them, this essay will investigate Seghers’s appropriation of the stylized qualities of Chinese art forms to promote a modernist aesthetic despite the domination of socialist realism theory in the cultural policy of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The focus will be on the cultural-political dimensions of the «Zwei Briefe über China» as the letters appeared within East German contexts. Methodologically, then, this essay aims to bring Seghers’s effort to bridge aesthetics and politics to the foreground. It also strives to challenge the monotonous image of socialist realistic literature and calls for a new approach to East German literature in general and Seghers’s works from the postwar period in particular. This new approach would do away with the stereotypical positive or pejorative moral judgment of the author, focus instead on her literary work, and evaluate it from the perspective of 156 Min Zhou historical circumstances as well as newly acquired information about her life. To start, I propose to look back at the reception of China in Europe and Seghers’s rather unusual encounters with and her view on China against this background. Noch bevor man in Europa genau wußte, wo China geographisch zu lokalisieren war, beschrieb man schon, wie es dort zuging: Ganz anders; alles schien geradezu auf den Kopf gestellt. Nicht den wahrheitsgetreuen Berichten des Marco Polo (1298), sondern den daraus zusammenphantasierten Abenteuer des Ritters Mandeville (1366) wurde Glauben geschenkt. Wer «China» beschrieb, wollte seinen Lesern vor allem ein Bild von etwas anderem vor Augen führen, wollte etwas schildern, das abschrecken oder vorbildlich sein sollte und so weit entfernt war, daß man es mangels exakterer Zeugnisse einfach glauben mußte - oder wollte. China war literarische Metapher für den Kontrast zum Abendland. Written in 1985, this passage by Thomas Lange reads like a German version of Edward Said’s argument about Orientalism, namely, that it was European «desires, repressions, investments, and projection» that invented the Orient (Said 8). The passage further testifies to Said’s view on German Orientalism, that is, lacking «a protracted, sustained national interest in the Orient […], the German Orient was almost exclusively a scholarly, or at least a classical, Orient: it was made the subject of lyrics, fantasies, and even novels, but it was never actual» (19). Said’s theoretical framework shows its shortcomings when applied to particular cultural instances such as Seghers’s visit to and writing about the PRC. In 1951, Seghers traveled to the PRC with an official GDR delegation to attend the celebration of the second anniversary of the founding of the new Chinese state. Within about four weeks, Seghers toured the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Tianjin as well as rural areas to witness the Chinese people’s new life. In addition to the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, museums and theaters, she also visited universities and factories, attended state banquets and mass rallies and met with farmers, workers, soldiers, writers, artists and her friends from the past. The essayistic work «Zwei Briefe über China» results from Seghers’s only visit to the PRC and reports on a real China rather than a fantasized one. In the first letter, entitled «Erster Brief (Über Literatur-Fragen),» Seghers examines modern Chinese literature and its representative Lu Xun and points to the importance of creating a new written language and new forms of expression to respond to changed lives and social structures. The second letter, «Zweiter Brief (Über Theater-Fragen),» on the other hand, investigates Peking Opera Lu Xun, Peking Opera and Modernism 157 and uses its symbolic and abstract features to support Seghers’s argument that modern art is not formalistic but is an effective way to represent social reality. Not only is Seghers’s account of Chinese literature and theater quite accurate, but more importantly, the letters reveal Seghers’s belief that the East is the West’s equal and can genuinely influence the West. In an interview in 1976, Seghers once again expressed her rejection of classical antiquity as a source of universal norms: Die ostasiatische Kunst hat schon früh starken Eindruck auf mich gemacht. Während meiner Arbeit am Ostasiatischen Institut kam ich in einen Kreis junger Leute, mit denen ich mich eng befreundete. In einem Punkt waren wir alle derselben Auffassung: Wir waren nämlich gegen die Theorie, daß die Kunst überall ihren Ursprung in der antiken Kunst hätte. Ein junger Wissenschaftler [versuchte …] nachzuweisen, daß die ostasiatische Kunst sich unabhängig hearusgebildet hat. Meiner Freundschaft mit diesem Kreis verdanke ich, daß ich noch heute viel und gern über verschiedene Kunstepochen lese und die Kunst besonders liebe, die man fälschlich primitiv nennt. (Roscher and Abusch 54-55) Seghers’s love for so-called primitive art resolutely opposed the Orientalist «idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non- European peoples and cultures» (Said 7). Her rejection of this dominant racist European view is not surprising considering her Jewish background. Born Netty Reiling in Mainz, Germany, in 1900 of Jewish descent, she adopted the pseudonym «Seghers» from a seventeenth-century Dutch painter whose work she came across while writing her dissertation on Jews and Jewry in the work of Rembrandt. As a Jew and Communist - she entered the Communist party in 1928, the same year she made her literary debut - Seghers fled Nazi Germany and lived in exile in France and Mexico from 1933 to 1947. Her mother, however, died in a concentration camp in Poland during World War II. Having experienced the destruction of European Jewry, Seghers defied inherently racist theories and practices such as Orientalism. This essay will also show that in the postwar period in which the interview above was conducted, the East also had an ideological dimension defined by the Cold War confrontation that moved the East-West division westwards to the Elbe River and turned Seghers and the GDR into part of the Eastern territory. Seghers’s emphasis in the interview on art from «East Asia» (ostasiatisch) rather than Said’s focus on the Near East, on the other hand, resulted from her lifelong interest in China. In its colonizing aspirations at the turn of the twentieth century, Germany portrayed China as a «gelbe Gefahr» to justify its ruling of the Chinese seaport Qingdao (Denkler 381). Paradoxically, German occupation of Qingdao led to increased encounters between people of the two 158 Min Zhou nations and to the emergence of a new image of China in Germany (Romero, 1900-1947 131). Individuals such as Richard Wilhelm, a missionary who took great pride in not having baptized a single Chinese in his entire twentyyear stay in China, promoted the great cultural and spiritual insights of China through their writings and translations. 2 Striving to reveal «the soul of China» (die Seele Chinas) to their German readers, these books presented a more positive picture of China, different from that at the turn of the twentieth century. Seghers’s fascination with China began in her childhood when she read Chinese fairy tales and poems and saw Chinese paintings and calligraphy («Verwirklichung» 6). Inspired by this ancient civilization, Seghers went on to study art history and sinology at Heidelberg University. Between the two Chinese cultural traditions of Confucianism and Taoism, Seghers was drawn to Taoism and its embrace of romance, spontaneity and naturalness. One of Seghers’s favorite Chinese books was Liaozhai Zhiyi (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio) («Erinnerungen» 388). Written in the seventeenth century, the book borrows from oral folk tradition and features a series of captivating, highly colorful stories. The boundary between reality and the odd or fantastic is successfully blurred in these supernatural tales. 3 Seghers’s love for demons, spirits and fantastic things, her fascination with folklore, the occult and the metaphysical, anticipates her modernist approach in literary creation and her vindication of modernism, as discussed below. In addition to the image of an ancient and spiritual China delivered by books, Seghers also made efforts to «encounter a real China.» 4 Although «[i]n unserem Institut war nie die Rede von dem zeitgenössischen China» (387), Seghers collected news about contemporary China from newspapers and was attracted to such revolutionary movements as the Chinese people’s fight against the intervention of foreign powers in the aftermath of World War I and Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People. It was also during this time that Seghers came into contact with political refugees from China who helped open her «eyes for many political scenes and for class struggle» (388). She became friends with them, found inspiration from stories they told her, and published works that take place in China or are related to China. Half a century later, she remembered her courageous Chinese friends with great respect: Bald kamen wir in Deutschland selbst mit jungen chinesischen Menschen zusammen. […] […] Sie waren dem Tod entronnen und lebten eine Zeitlang in unserer Mitte, um ruhig zu studieren.[…] Unsere Freunde fuhren als Lehrer zurück in die roten Provinzen im Süden. Es war eine gefährliche, vielleicht oft tödliche Heimkehr. Sie traten sie aber so kühn und hoffnungsvoll an, als sei ihre Reise leicht und froh. («Verwirklichung» 7-8) Lu Xun, Peking Opera and Modernism 159 Even during her exile, Seghers followed with interest Chinese political developments and commented on them. 5 At a time when Germany was becoming increasingly Fascist, the Chinese people’s desire and fight for freedom and independence appealed to Seghers and gave her hope for an alternative future for Germany. Several years later, Seghers once again found affinities between East Germany and China. With the composition of her two letters about Chinese literature and theater, she hoped to overcome the impasse of modernism in an East German cultural landscape that was dominated by socialist realism. Here it may be instructive to review in synoptic form Seghers’s view on the relationship between modernism and realism and the historical background of the postwar period. These bear fundamental pertinence to the composition of the two letters about China. As «one of the greatest modernists of her time» (Fehervary 1), Seghers took part in modernism from the outset of her literary career. 6 Despite the skepticism and criticism of her political companions, 7 Seghers continued to assimilate influences from expressionism, documentary literature, montage techniques and interior monologue (Hilzinger 45). At the same time, she sought opportunities to expound her understanding of realism to her colleagues. In 1932, Seghers published the essay «Kleiner Bericht aus meiner Werkstatt.» Written in the form of a dialogue, the essay discusses how to portray effectively Chinese textile workers’ celebration of May 1 in Shanghai. 8 Contrary to the belief of some leftist artists and theoreticians that realism ought to reflect life in its totality, Seghers expresses her modernist approach, one that «beschreibt richtig ein Stück Wirklichkeit, der schnell ihre wichtigsten Elemente erfaßt, den Extrakt dieser Wirklichkeit» («Kleiner Bericht» 14). In other words, realist literature is to focus on the essence of reality rather than giving a photorealistic impression. The nature of realism was also a main agenda in her correspondences with Georg Lukács in 1938. Seghers questions Lukács’s acceptance of the view that realism is a mirror of the world. She counters him with the argument that splinters of a mirror can also reflect a fragment of the world. The very precondition and premise for any artistic creation, she points out, is not mirroring or observing the world, but actively participating in it. The classical heritage, on the other hand, cannot give a writer the immediacy of basic experience. Differences in social realities thus necessarily lead to different forms of presentation. What Lukács «see[s] as experiment in form» and what may look like «wild breaks in style, experiments, peculiar mixed forms» is, according to Seghers, «a forceful attempt at a new content.» The attempt is unavoidable as 160 Min Zhou it responds to the writer’s immediate experience. To illustrate her idea, Seghers contrasts the world of Goethe with those of Heinrich von Kleist and Georg Büchner. She interprets the latter’s formal experiments as a necessary step for the authors to portray the reality of transitional times and to express their shock and turbulent experience. Seghers confides to the Marxist theoretician the concern that his definition of realism might block the artistic innovations of socialist writers. Instead of placing realism in opposition to modernism, Seghers calls for a broader, more inclusive realism that nurtures new, creative and experimental methods to represent difficult times (Lukács 167-97). If Seghers recorded in the letters to Lukács her view on modernism and realism, a topic of debate among left intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s, then her two letters about China were an immediate response to the Cold War and its impact on the cultural policy in East Germany. Shortly after Seghers’s return to Germany from exile in April 1947, the Cold War started. To compete with the West, the Soviet Union tightened its ideological control and sovietized the Eastern part of Germany, including its cultural life. The concept of socialist realism was introduced and a distinction between socialist realism and decadence was made in March 1948 (Hartmann 170). By and large consistent with Lukács’s realism theory, socialist realism was an officially sanctioned theory and method of artistic creation in the Soviet Union beginning in 1934. It required artists to portray main characters in a positive and heroic light and to educate the readers in the goals and meaning of Communism. To satisfy the pedagogical requirement, socialist realism aimed to popularize what had been an elitist artistic tradition. Works were expected to continue the classical realist tradition. Modern forms and modernist experiments, on the other hand, were rejected on the basis that they were too elitist to be comprehensible to the masses. German writers and artists were called upon to write in the socialist realist style, or they were condemned as formalists. From 1948 through the middle of the 1950s, the focus of East German cultural-political debates was the campaign against formalism, a collective term that included expressionism, surrealism, abstract art and everything else that was somehow related to these concepts. The witch hunting devastated East German cultural life. One of Seghers’s letters to Wladimir Steshenski from April 13, 1953, gives us a glimpse of the disappointment, frustration and fear that the anti-formalism campaign brought upon East German intellectuals: Sie warten, daß ich Ihnen von hier erzähle. Wie ich Ihnen schon schrieb, wurde ein solcher Brief durch die Ereignisse abgebrochen, die uns alle betroffen haben. Wie ich ankam, fand ich mehrere Leute unruhig, durch viele Fragen bedrückt. […] Lu Xun, Peking Opera and Modernism 161 Um ein Beispiel zu nehmen für die unruhigen Geister. Das ist der Bildhauer S[eiz], der mit uns in China war, der ist ganz unglücklich, weil seine Chinazeichnungen bis jetzt nicht veröffentlicht wurden. Und andere, ihm wichtige Entwürfe nicht angenommen. […] Ich nenne ihn nur als ein Beispiel für die Künstler, denen jetzt manches hier schwerfällt, so daß man nicht weiß, wie es weitergeht. Zum Beispiel Strempel ist nicht mehr. Ich weiß nicht, ob Sie sich noch an seine Malerei im Bahnhof Friedrichstr. erinnern, die man abgekratzt hat. […] […] Es ist schwierig hier, in dieser Zeit des verschärftesten Kampfes, Menschen zu finden, die richtig zu diskutieren mit den Künstlern verstehen. Und auch ein negatives Urteil oder auch ein teilweise negatives in eine solche Form bringen, daß der Betreffende Kraft und Ideen zur Arbeit bekommt und nicht in seinen Fehlern fixiert wird. Oder gar abhaut. («Steshenski» 193) Important here are both what and how Seghers writes in the letter, in particular what words she chose to describe the events that were taking place in the GDR at the beginning of the 1950s. Anti-formalism campaigns are referred to as «Ereignisse» and «unruhige Geister.» The word «abkratzen» recounts how, due to formalistic manifestation, Horst Strempel’s mural was removed after a display of only 28 months at the railway station Friedrichstraße. The artist, on the other hand, was in too much despair to see any future for his art and himself in East Germany. He turned his back on the GDR at the beginning of 1953, a sensation at the time that Seghers only touches on with the sentence «Strempel ist nicht mehr.» It is also worth noticing that, unlike Seghers’s correspondence with Lukács in the 1930s, this letter does not refute the cultural policy despite its «unsettling» (unruhig) and «gloomy» (Leute [wurden] bedrückt) impact; on the contrary, she admits that artists have made mistakes. What she hopes for is a better way of transmitting criticism. She wishes to find cultural officials who are capable of wrapping «ein negatives Urteil oder auch ein teilweise negatives» into an appropriate form that will help artists correct their mistakes rather than «locking them in their mistakes» or simply «pissing them off.» Furthermore, while Seghers writes about the suffering of concerned artists, she does not mention anything about the damage the policy has done to contemporary art and literature, a topic she reflected on nearly two decades later in an interview in 1976: [Ich war], als ich aus der Emigration zurückkehrte, zuerst erstaunt über Vorstellungen, die es manchmal über die Wirkung von Kunst gab. Viele Arbeiten, die mir schlecht und wirkungslos vorkamen, lobte man oft, andere, die ich für gut und wirksam hielt, wurden verdammt. Unrichtig kamen mir Ansichten vor, wenn sie der Entfaltung einer starken, vielseitigen Kunst entgegenwirkten. (Roscher and Abusch 55) 162 Min Zhou The rather weak critiques in her letter to Steshenski are surely Seghers’s compromises. At the same time, they are also part of a strategy informed by an extremely complicated time and can be understand only in the context of the «Zeit des verschärftesten Kampfes» (Seghers, «Steshenski» 193). After the founding of both German states in 1949, the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 intensified the Cold War in Europe. In 1952, the year of the publication of the two letters about China, the US testing of the first hydrogen bomb engendered fear in Seghers and many other Germans of a third world war (Romero, 1947-1983 137). In the Cold War between the East and the West, Seghers chose to side with the former, represented by the Soviet Union. The Soviet state had triumphed over the Hitler regime and embodied a social system that Seghers believed to be the only guarantee that Nazism would not happen again. Despite her disagreement with the Soviet line of socialist realism, she could not challenge the concept publicly as the Cold War made everything political, and any criticism could be abused on the other side of the Iron Curtain. In addition, although Seghers was internationally renowned on account of her novel The Seventh Cross, she was still a new arrival in Germany. In the power constellation of the GDR, which favored exiles from the Soviet Union, Seghers was under pressure to prove herself as both gifted and trustworthy. Finally, with her children studying in France and as a member of the GDR’s Weltfriedenrat, Seghers needed international travel privilege granted from the Communist party, making her particularly vulnerable (Romero, 1900-1947 99). Despite all these circumstances, Seghers, who at the time was elected president of the East German Writers’ Union (Deutscher Schriftstellerverband), cherished postwar East German art and literature dearly as a means to educate the reader and to construct a new, democratic and progressive Germany. In an effort to reconcile East German artists and their cultural officials, Seghers intervened in her own way by writing to Steshenski. As the head of the Auslandskommission of the Soviet Authors’ Union, Steshenski’s review of East German literary and cultural works played a critical role in the reception of these works in the GDR. Seghers must have hoped that her connection to this powerful Soviet friend could win his support for Hanns Eisler, whose Fausus libretto was criticized in 1953 as an offense against German classical culture as she told Steshenski later in the letter. 9 To show her backing for Seitz, another frustrated artist mentioned in her letter to Steshenski, and expedite the publishing of his China drawings, Seghers wrote a preface entitled «Verwirklichung» for his drawing collection Studienblätter aus China, which finally appeared in 1953. The two letters about China are thus another Lu Xun, Peking Opera and Modernism 163 attempt to bring her «negatives Urteil oder auch ein teilweise negatives in eine solche Form» so that her critical voice could be heard, yet no unnecessary fuss would be made of the criticism. To reach her goal, Seghers turned to travel literature, a genre with critical potential, and set her eyes on China, a country that she had always loved and her most recent visit to which gave her inspiration to deal with the rather sensitive topic. Unlike Seghers’s other essayistic works about China 10 that appeared in newspapers immediately after her visit to China and struck an anti-American tone (Romero, 1947-1983 115), «Zwei Briefe aus China» appeared in August 1952, nearly one year after the visit to China. They were published in Aufbau, a journal of «Deutscher Kulturbund» and a forum for East German intellectuals in the postwar period. The epistolary style chosen by Seghers allows her to integrate her critiques into seemingly spontaneous impressions and comments. It creates an intimate relationship between the writer and her reader despite or because of the serious topic of the letters. The occasional form distinguished by «publikumsbezogene Subjektivität» (Frederisken 111) is itself a challenge to the objectivity required of socialist realism. Addressing her readers as «mein lieber Freund,» Seghers brings them to China right away: Der Büffel in China, versteh’, das ist der Wasserbüffel der Bauern, ein gewaltiges, aber sanftes Tier. Wir kennen ihn aus Geschichten und Bildern. Ich war froh, als ich zum erstenmal einen von nah sah. Er lag vor dem Dorf, als sei er gestern aus Urzeiten hierher gekommen, und gleichzeitig so vertrauenerweckend in seiner kraftvollen Gelassenheit, als hätte sich die jahrtausendelange Zähmung von einem Tag auf den anderen vollzogen. Ein Kind stapfte um ihn herum, er sah es ruhig an. («Zwei Briefe» 8) This short passage reads like a Chinese ink and wash painting, portraying a child sporting with a water buffalo. It catches the idyll of country life in China, gives off the aroma of the earth and brims with peace, leisure and fun. The vividness reveals Seghers’s superb skill as a writer and her insight into Chinese cultural tradition. Seghers’s purpose with this one and only poetic paragraph is primarily to introduce to her reader the Chinese writer Lu Xun (1881-1936). 11 Devoting his works to the ordinary person’s struggle and suffering, Seghers tells the reader, Lu Xun compared himself to a water buffalo. «Die freudig und freiwillig aufgenommene Bürde,» she adds, «die einer so wenig spürt wie der Büffel das Gewicht eines Kindes, das ist das Volk selbst» (8). Seghers explains to her reader that Lu Xun, as one of the outstanding authors in modern Chinese literature, along with other progressive intellectuals abolished classical Chinese and used the vernacular language as a medium for 164 Min Zhou written communication. To make literature more accessible to ordinary Chinese, Lu Xun also created a new form of expression, a short political satire, that responds to the calling of his time, namely, to attack feudalist and imperialist enemies. The rest of the first letter does not seem to have a «red thread» running through it. Seghers reports on China’s campaign to eliminate illiteracy. She comments on the immense responsibility Chinese artists currently face because millions of people have now acquired the ability to read literature. She refers to Mao Tse Tung’s «Talks at the Yenan Forum on Art and Literature» and discusses questions he raised in the talks. She mentions her conversation with Chinese colleagues about formalism and cites their views on a particular kind of formalism that has been ignored in the GDR. The looseness of these ideas echoes the epistolary style. It also reveals Seghers’s struggle to take issue with controversial topics while keeping her critical voice from being too strident. It takes a mindful reader to connect the various thoughts with one another and to understand Seghers’s contention and her argument. Socialist realism’s goal of popularizing art and literature brings with it, as Seghers sees it, a serious challenge. She formulates this challenge through a question raised by Mao’s talks, namely, what is the connection between spreading the level and raising it? («Was ist der Zusammenhang zwischen Verbreiterung des Niveaus und seiner Erhöhung? ») In other words, how does one make art and literature accessible to the masses while at the same time raising its level and preventing work of poor quality from being produced? In Seghers’s estimation, there is no either-or answer to the question because content and form of the aesthetic work are closely related. The appropriate content is primary, yet without a form that is on a par with the content, no substantial artistic work can be created or widely distributed. In writing about raising the artistic standard, Seghers rectifies a misconception that experimental literature (or «churlish» literature, as it is called in China) is of poor quality. On the contrary, she thinks highly of this raw literature because it comes directly from life and is fresh and full of potential. Seghers contrasts raw literature with classical literature, considering the former to be sources (Quellen) and the latter only currents (Strömungen). She urges artists to learn from raw literature and to view the classical heritage critically. If raw literature is not formalistic, then what is formalism? Seghers cites one of her Chinese colleagues and names a particular formalism that has been ignored in the GDR: Auch dann kann ‹Formalismus› entstehen, wenn jemand das Technische seines Berufes gelernt, dabei aber nicht im gleichen Maß an Lebenserfahrung gewonnen hat. Das Leben ändert sich beständig. Der Schriftsteller drückt mit den inzwischen ge- Lu Xun, Peking Opera and Modernism 165 lernten Mitteln immer weiter dasselbe aus. Aber dasselbe ist nicht mehr dasselbe. Denn das Leben hat sich geändert. Er gebraucht zwar die richtigen Begriffe. Doch er versteht die neue Anwendung nicht mehr auf die Wirklichkeit, die sich geändert hat. Das Leben, das er darstellen soll, ist von ihm selbst nicht mehr durchgelebt. (12) The passage very much reminds the reader of Seghers’s correspondence with Lukács. There she ingeniously compares with the «sorcerer’s apprentice» those artists who manage to disenchant the world as they believe in the magical power of a certain literary method and vainly attempt to portray a world they themselves have not experienced. Here, Seghers tells her reader that to portray the immediate experience of a changed world and to give the portrayal fullness and originality, the artist would have to follow what Lu Xun did, namely, to create something new in technical aspects such as expressions (Ausdrücke) or concepts (Begriffe). If, on the contrary, the artist sticks to methods learned from classical literature of the past, the work produced would be nothing but barren, lifeless and disenchanted. How does one come to the right method then? Seghers ends her letter with advice. It is first and foremost through «Lebenserfahrungen,» that is, engagement in life and participation in people’s struggles (Kämpfen). Next is through «richtiges Denken,» which she defines as correctly analyzing life experience, choosing the most important topic and answering questions contained in the topic. As for professional-technical knowledge (Kenntnisse), Marxist teachings and cultural heritage, Seghers lists them with her advice about the right method, but does not give any further explanation. Thus, Seghers reverses the definition of formalism. Instead of charging formal experiments with formalism, Seghers thinks of shaping a new and changed world experience with the old literary forms as formalism. She criticizes artists who write according to a literary method rather than according to their life experience, which ultimately determines the content and form of any artistic work. While the first letter is a discussion on the theoretical level, in the second letter Seghers exemplifies through Peking Opera how form originates from people’s life and is therefore part of realism. The appreciation of Peking Opera is often associated with Bertolt Brecht, who used his understanding of Peking Opera as a foundation for his theory of the alienation-effect. While Brecht found inspiration from his «misinterpretation» of Chinese acting (Tian 200), Seghers gave an accurate account of the core of Peking Opera and found in it a solution to the problems at home. A performance art that developed over the span of more than a century, Peking Opera features a unique degree of abstraction and imagination, or lack of realism. Peking Opera, for instance, does not have a naturalistic stage setting; rather, the stage illusion is created by the actor’s performance, in particular, 166 Min Zhou his hand gestures or stage steps. In addition, the colors and patterns of the facial make-up are of such importance in Peking Opera that as soon as actors wearing particular colors and patterns appear on stage, they are recognized immediately by the audience without any self-introduction. All these conventions were «developed by Chinese actors from generation to generation from their observation and experience in real life and [were] then condensed and sublimated into an art of expression in which content and form cannot be separated from each other» (Tian 208). Seghers keenly captured the quintessence of Peking Opera and accentuated it in the second letter to corroborate her argument about formal questions. Seghers opens the second letter with an account of her experience of watching Peking Opera. She was fascinated by the forms, colors, music and voices and could not see enough of the actors’ movements that ran through the body to the fingertip. When she looked at the faces of the Chinese audience around her, however, she felt ashamed because, unlike her, the Chinese were deeply moved. The difference between her reaction to Peking Opera and that of the Chinese audience, Seghers tells her reader, is caused not solely by the language barrier. What she did not understand were the meanings of actors’ masks, their hand gestures, stage steps, as well as the fact that the gestures and steps substitute for complicated stage scenery. Moreover, the tales and fables performed on the stage are based on folklore and legends that are tied to the Chinese people’s lives from the past. The stories are told by fairy tale narrators and performed by jugglers from street to street. Chinese audiences grew up listening to the tales and watching their performance which, in turn, have become part of their lives and culture. Is this something formalistic? Seghers asks and quotes the response of Chinese writers and dramaturges: «Sie fragen, ob nicht manches in unserer Oper abstrakt oder rein symbolisch ist? Ihre Anschauung ist nicht richtig. Nie kann man nur als symbolisch ansehen, was Ihnen vielleicht so erschienen ist. Vielmehr sind unsere Theaterstücke Kristallisierungen der alten Weisheit des Volkes. Der kleine Stock in der Hand des Reiters bedeutet für alle: Pferd. Ist das nicht viel mehr als ein wirkliches Pferd? Der Schauspieler, der den Reiter spielt, hat alle Zufälligkeiten des Reiters, alle denkbaren Bewegungen in seinem Rhythmus komprimiert. Oder der Stadtwall. Ganz ohne Bühnenaufmachung wissen alle, wer jetzt hier ankommt, der mußte reisen. Unsere Darsteller haben das Leben gründlich studiert. Generationen von Schauspielern haben das Leben gründlich studiert, um es vereinheitlicht und vereinfacht darzustellen. Daraus entsprang unsere artistische Form» (Quotation marks are Seghers’s). Lu Xun, Peking Opera and Modernism 167 […] Von Ihrem Standpunkt aus dürfen Sie nicht versuchen, unser Theater zu erfassen. Es hat bei uns seine einzigartige Form. Sie beruht auf den Erfahrungen, auf den Träumen, auf dem Leben des Volks. (15) In citing contemporary Chinese artists Seghers argues the point that it is a serious misunderstanding to label Chinese performance as purely stylistic or formalistic. The forms of seemingly abstract gestures and steps are neither abstract nor formalistic as they come from life, and «everyday things are artistically selected, condensed, sublimated, typified, idealized, beautified, and transformed into a work of art» (Tian 206). Rather than merely imitating life, Peking Opera represents life in a more concise and effective way. The performance appears strange to Seghers because she does not share the Chinese audience’s life experience and their cultural tradition. She is therefore not appropriately socialized to understand the performance. The emphasis on the difference between Seghers (you) and the Chinese artists (we) illustrates the gap that existed between East German cultural officials and artists and articulates Seghers’s criticism of the former. At the same time, the dynamics between Seghers (you) and the Chinese artists (we) has also changed the typical Orientalist’s relationship to the Orient. It is no longer the superiority of «we/ Europeans» over «them/ the Orient»; instead, the European is eager to learn about and from the Orient and to resolve its «eccentricities.» She is engaged in a face-to-face dialogue with the Chinese and gives them voice. The involved European also finds in Chinese art an equal counterpart to European art: she equates the stylized make-up in Peking Opera with the masks in Greek tragedy; a tragic love story in a local Chinese opera reminds her of Shakespeare’s «Romeo and Juliet»; she finds the storyline of another Peking Opera omnipresent in antiquity as well as in modern dramas such as Racine’s Andromache. Seghers’s explanation of these coincidences is clear: different histories and life experiences have given different forms of representation to universal emotions: «Jedes Volk, auf Grund von jahrundertelangen Erlebnissen, nimmt eine künstlerische Form in sich auf, die es ohne besondere Erklärung versteht» (16). With this, Seghers provides a living example of her premise that forms originate from lived realities and have nothing to do with formalism. In public debates about the legacy of GDR literature and culture since 1989, Seghers is one of the first East German authors whose life and work have been bitterly discussed (Brandes 175-97). Although the opening of archives and the release of her personal papers and documents have provided more insight into Seghers’s personal life, little has changed with regard to the reception of her works. Except for a few publications (Janzen and Horn) and within the 168 Min Zhou circle of the Anna-Seghers-Gesellschaft, scholarly attention is paid primarily to Seghers’s literary work created in «the years 1933-40 when much of her best work was written» (Wallace 1); her other works, especially those written after her return from exile and in the GDR, are considered affirmative and uninteresting, a view that reflects a dichotomy «between Lukácsian realism and Western modernism» that, long after the end of the Cold War, still prevails in the study of GDR culture and literature (Hell 11). Seghers’s two letters about China, however, raise important questions. What is socialist realism? Do socialist realism and modernism really exclude one another? And how are we to evaluate East German works created under the spell of socialist realism in general and Seghers’s works from the postwar period in particular? As this reading of Seghers’s two letters shows, socialist realism or realism in general was never a monolithic or unanimously accepted concept among leftist intellectuals either before or after the founding of the GDR. Instead, artists like Seghers endeavored from the very outset to defy the narrowness of the concept and to modernize it. Due to the particular historical context and their personal experience, it was difficult for these artists to rebel against or dissent from the official cultural policy publicly. Rather than fixing on Seghers’s personal life and her public speeches and questioning her political integrity, therefore, it would be much more productive to focus on her works written in the GDR and examine their complexities from a different perspective, one that shifts away from ahistorical black-and-white moral judgment and investigates Seghers’s later works in their historical context with «newly acquired hindsight» (Silberman 27). Instead of making the distinction between the «lie» of fiction and the «truth» of nonfiction (diaries, letters, and so forth), literary critics should not «treat one text as the implicit meaning of another, but rather […] read them all with and against each other in order to bring out their points of tension, contradiction and similarities» (Moi 5). The intertextual network of Seghers’s two letters about China indeed represents a broader, more inclusive and modernist concept of realism under the banner of socialist realism in East German literature and a more complex picture of Seghers as a writer. As far as the reception of Seghers’s two letters about China is concerned, they did not seem to have had an immediate impact on either artists or officials in East Germany. As it often happened in the GDR, Seghers’s soft yet critical voice was either drowned out by official exclamations or outweighed by her silence in public life that disappointed others’ expectations of her to speak out. 12 Retrospectvely, this led many to question her integrity, especially after Walter Janka published the book Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit and articulated his deep disappointment in Seghers’s refusal to defend him and to intervene publicly in his trial (Brandes 175-97). Lu Xun, Peking Opera and Modernism 169 This reading of the «Zwei Briefe über China» shows that because of her background, her experience of World War II, and under the intense pressure of the particular ideological and historical circumstances of the Cold War, Seghers was very cautious. As president of the East German Writers’ Union, it was important to her to have some impact on policy-making and to help East German art and artists as much as she was able. Straightforward public protests would have availed little, while literature might bring her criticism to a targeted audience. Rather than opposing the regime, Seghers chose to reach out to both intellectuals and officials and hoped to bridge the gap between them. Romero nicely summarizes Seghers’s politics of criticism: Seghers hatte jedoch eine bescheidene Meinung von ihren Einflußmöglichkeiten oder tat zumindest so, um eventuell hinter der Szene operieren zu können. Auf den Tisch hauen war nicht ihre Art: Sie wollte öffentlichen Widerspruch und jedes Aufsehen vermeiden, da sie «falsch ausgelegt» werden und damit der Sache des Sozialismus im Kalten Krieg schaden konnten. Obendrein war sie viel zu nüchtern, vorsichtig und diszipliniert, um sich auf Kreuzzüge einzulassen: Wenn etwas aussichtslos wurde, weil es auf den starren Willen der Parteiführung stieß, gab sie auf, was aber nicht bedeutete, daß sie dann wie viele andere mit den Wölfen heulte. Sie schwieg und wartete. Sie wurde aber auch zur Meisterin der kleinen Geste, mit der sie plötzlich in Ungnade Gefallenen ihre Sympathie und Solidarität zeigte. (1947-1983 116-17) What Seghers achieved, however, was more than sympathy and solidarity. She preserved her public influence and was able to contribute to the balance between politics and aesthetics and to endorse a new generation of artists in their pursuit of «subjective authenticity,» a modernist concept that was coined in the 1960s and is often associated with Christa Wolf. «Was wäre das Jahrhundert ohne sie? » Wolf ended her introductory essay to Anna Seghers. Eine Biographie in Bildern with this question (9). To understand the importance of Seghers’s impact on East German art and literature, we will take one last look at the artistic life of China. Around the time of Seghers’s visit to China, Peking Opera, like many other Chinese arts, was at the beginning of radical reforms that lasted for decades. Justified by the enforcement of socialist realism, many traditional plays were eliminated, revised or rewritten, while new plays were created to represent contemporary life in China (Yang, «Reform» and «Bamboo Curtain»). Although traditional features such as hand gestures and stage steps were partially retained in the new plays, other imaginative and symbolic characteristics of the classical Peking Opera were replaced by realism: the color symbolism and patterns of facial masks were no longer observed, and modern make-up designs were used; civilian costumes were substituted for elaborate traditional costumes; bare 170 Min Zhou stages were replaced by realistic settings complete with naturalistic sound and lighting effects (Wilkinson 164-74). Chinese artists and writers suffered from the great demand that the Communist party made on them and their art. Many of them were unable to produce anything, and they all lived in constant fear. At a forum in 1957, one of the Chinese intellectuals dared to ask Mao Tse Tung, «What would have happened to Lu Xun, had he been alive today? » Lu Xun’s timely death in 1936 before the Communist party gained power in the Sino-Japanese War was believed to have contributed to the party’s celebration of him as the representative of modern Chinese literature. What, then, if he had lived to see the Communist party’s practice of its cultural policy? Mao’s answer to the question was straightforward: «Lu Xun? Either he would have been locked in prison yet kept writing, or he would not have said a word.» 13 Mao was not creative enough to envision another alternative, that is, Lu Xun could have kept writing and voicing his criticism of the party in such a strategic way as not to endanger himself while still helping his colleagues and promoting a broader concept of socialist realism. If so, Chinese art and literature would not have had to wait until the 1980s to see the late arrival of a modernist movement. Notes * Research for this article has been supported by Roger Williams University Foundation to Promote Scholarship and Teaching. I would like to thank Eva Kaufmann, Humboldt University, and Belinda Kong, Bowdoin College, for their encouragement and suggestions. I am grateful also to Weijia Li for information about Anna-Seghers-Archiv and Theodore Fiedler for his sensitive comments and editorial help. 1 Seghers’s fictions that take place in China include the short stories «Der Führerschein,» «Die Stoppuhr,» «Der Last-Berg,» «Marie geht in die Versammlung,» and «Die Kinder.» Part of the short story «Der erste Schritt» and of the novels Die Gefährten and Die Toten bleiben jung also takes place in China. For more information about Seghers’s works related to China, see Romero, 1900-1947 236-69 and documents in Anna-Seghers-Archiv (ASA) at Literaturarchiv der Akademie der Künste, Sig. 834. 2 «Richard Wilhelm,» web, 5 May 2009, < http: / / www.schoolofwisdom.com/ wilhelm.html>. 3 For more information about the book Liaozhai Zhiyi (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio), see web, 5 May 2009, <http: / / www.nationmaster.com/ encyclopedia/ Liaozhai- Zhiyi>. 4 Seghers wrote, «Es war für uns schwer, mit der Wirklichkeit in Berührung zu kommen. Es war schwer, aber nicht unmöglich» («Verwirklichung» 6). Unless indicated otherwise all translations are my own. 5 In «Verwirklichung,» her introduction to Gustav Seitz’s Studienblätter aus China, Seghers wrote about Agnes Smedley, a young journalist who reported on the Chinese Civil Lu Xun, Peking Opera and Modernism 171 War for the newspaper Die Frankfurter Zeitung in the 1930s. Romero mentions that while exiled in Mexico, Seghers wrote her article «Chinas Schlachtgesang. Betrachtungen zum Buch von Agnes Smedley» and published it in two issues of Freies Deutschland in 1943/ 44 (1900-1947 484). 6 Seghers’s first book, Aufstand der Fischer von St. Barbara (1928), won her the prestigious Kleist-Preize in 1928 because it displayed «eine starke Begabung im Formalen.» In 1947, a critic of The Seventh Cross called Seghers a «surrealistische Dictherin» because «[ihre] irrationalen, überwirklichen Sprachbilder» «doch immer wieder in die Wirklichkeit einmünden,» to name two examples. For more details about Seghers and her modernist writing, see Schrade, Hilzinger and Stephan. 7 By the time Seghers wrote «Zwei Briefe über China,» she had weathered many controversies. Her first book, Aufstand der Fischer von St. Barbara, was criticized among left wing circles. Because of the book’s portrayal of too-primitive fishermen and their neurasthenic leader, it was excluded from «proletarisch-revolutionären Literatur.» A couple of years later, with the publication of her second work, Auf dem Weg zur amerikanischen Botschaft (1930), Seghers was again under attack for being too similar to formalists. She was said to have placed «das Hauptgewicht auf ästhetische Probleme» and to be «zu stark geprägt von dumpfen Erinnerungenen aus der (bürgerlichen) Vergangenheit.» The book was considered a triumph of «[n]icht Realismus, sondern (gemäßigter) ‹Surrealismus›.» For more details, see Schrade 22-26. 8 As Romero reveals, the dialogue in «Kleiner Bericht aus meiner Werkstatt» is not a fiction but took place between Seghers and the Chinese author Hu Lan Qi. The report they worked on appeared in the same year on the front page of the May issue of the leftist journal Rote Fahne (1900-1947 245-46). 9 As head of the Auslandskommission of the Soviet Authors’ Union, Steshenski was charged with updating Soviet authors on East German literature and culture. His review of East German literary works played a critical role in the reception of these works in the GDR. For more information about Steshenski’s role in East German culture, see Hartmann and Eggeling 316-22. With her letter to Steshenski, Seghers enclosed Hanns Eisler’s opera text «Dr. Faustus,» which was attacked in 1953 as an offense against German classical culture. Seghers wrote in the letter to Steshenski, «Eisler ist zur Zeit in Wien. Ich sah ihn kurz vorher gänzlich verstört und erzürnt. So daß ich daraufhin erst sein Theaterstück las. Ich will aber hier jetzt keine Kritik des Stückes geben. Ich schicke es lieber. (Das heißt, wenn Sie wollen, schreibe ich Ihnen meine Meinung)» («Steshenski» 193). 10 Publications about her visit to China include a lecture and a report. The lecture, «Vortrag über chinesische Bauern vor Brandenburgischen Bauern» (1951), focuses on contemporary Chinese history, in particular the fight between the Communist party and its enemy, the Nationalist Party. The report, «Im neuen China. Aus einem Reisebericht» (1951), was given to the plenum of the German peace committee in Berlin. It speaks in detail of the mobilization of ordinary Chinese people to join the Korean War, to battle against imperialists and to defend their peace. Neither piece was ever reprinted. 11 The printing of the letters in the journal Aufbau incorporates the image of a stamp issued in China that features a portrait of Lu Hsün and his autobiographical poem, which Seghers translates into German in the letter: «Er start zornig auf seine Feinde mit ihren gehässigen Zeigefingern. Freiwillig nimmt er die Bürde auf sich, als diene er seinem Kind als Büffel» («Zwei Briefe» 8). Seghers received the Lu Hsün stamps mailed to her by Xiaoye Li, a writer from Tianjin, during her visit to China in 1951. She took detailed 172 Min Zhou notes of her discussion with dramaturges in Shanghai about Chinese operas and incorporated these notes in her two letters about China. See more information about Seghers’s visit to China in 1951 at ASA, Sig. 624. 12 A typical example of Seghers’s silence was her behavior at the Kafka Conference in 1963 in Prague. As Mittenzwei reveals, Seghers attended the conference along with an East German delegation and delegations of other Eastern European countries. Despite Kafka’s influence on her in her youth, Seghers was very cautious to attend only the first day of the conference and did not say a word about Kafka, who was considered decadent in the GDR (206-10). Romero explains this complicated situation: «Offensichtlich wollte sie nicht in die Kontroversen gezogen werden, denn das hätte bedeutet, entweder gegen die ohnehin isolierte Delegation ihres Landes […] oder aber gegen Kafka Position zu beziehen. Beides wollte sie vermeiden. […] Seghers verweigerte sich der seit Kriegsende die Gemüter erregenden Politisierung und Polarisierung um den Dichter, die auf der Konferenz eine Art Höherpunkt erreichte» (1947-1983 226). 13 Zongying Huang, «Lu Xun Huo Zhe Hui Zen Yang? (What if Lu Xun lived today? ).» Works Cited Bauer, Wolfgang. «Goethe und China: Verständnis und Misverständnis.» Goethe und die Tradition. Ed. Hans Reiss. Frankfurt a.M.: Athenäum, 1972. 177-97. Brandes, Ute. «Anna Seghers’s Politics of Affirmation.» Anna Seghers in Perspective. Ed. Ian Wallace. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998. 175-98. Denkler, Horst. «Von chinesischen Pferden und deutschen Missionaren: China in der deutschen Literatur - deutsche Literatur für China.» The German Quarterly 60 (1987): 377-87. Fehervary, Helen. Anna Seghers: The Mythic Dimension. Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 2001. Frederiksen, Elke. «Der Blick in die Ferne: Zur Reiseliteratur von Frauen.» Frauen, Literatur, Geschichte: Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Eds. Hiltrud Gnüg and Renate Möhrmann. Stuttgart: J.B.Metzler, 1985. 105-22. Hartmann, Anne. «Schriftsteller als kulturpolitische Kader: Auswirkungen der sowjetischen Präsenz auf das kulturelle Leben in der SBZ.» Schriftsteller als Intellektuelle: Politik und Literatur im kalten Krieg. Ed. Sven Hanuschek, Therese Hörnigk and Christine Malende. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2000. 159-72. Hartmann, Anne, and Wolfram Eggeling. Sowjetische Präsenz im kulturellen Leben der SBZ und frühen DDR 1945-1953. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998. Hell, Julia. Post-Fascist Fantasies. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997. Hilzinger, Sonja. Anna Seghers. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2000. Horn, Anette. Kontroverses Erbe und Innovation: Die Novelle «Die Reisebegegnung» von Anna Seghers in literaturpolitischen Kontext der DDR der siebziger Jahre. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2005. Huang, Zongying. «Lu Xun Huo Zhe Hui Zen Yang? (What if Lu Xun lived today? ).» Web. 6 May 2009. <http: / / www.maozong.com/ show.aspx? id=4851&cid=60>. Janzen, Marike. «Between the Pedagogical and the Performative: Personal Stories, Public Narratives, and Social Critique in Anna Seghers’s Überfahrt.» The German Quarterly 79 (2006): 175-91. Lu Xun, Peking Opera and Modernism 173 Kane, Martin. «Existentialism or Ideology? The Early Works of Anna Seghers.» Anna Seghers in Perspective. 7-27. Ed. Ian Wallace. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998. 175-98. Lange, Thomas. «China als Metapher: Versuch über das Chinabild des deutschen Romans im 20. Jahrhundert.» Zeitschrift für Kulturaustausch 3(1986): 341-49. Web. 5 May 2009. Qtd. after <http: / / www.historia-interculturalis.de/ historia_interculturalis/ Archiv/ Lange_China_Metapher.doc>. Liaozhai Zhiyi (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio), Web. 5 May 2009, <http: / / www. nationmaster.com/ encyclopedia/ Liaozhai-Zhiyi>. Lukács, Georg. «A Correspondence with Anna Seghers (1938/ 9).» Essays on Realism. Ed. Rodney Livingstone. Trans. David Fernbach. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981. 167-97. Mittenzwei, Werner. Die Intellektuellen: Literatur und Politik in Ostdeutschland 1945-2000. Berlin: Faber & Faber, 2001. Moi, Toril. Simon De Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. «Richard Wilhelm.» Web. 5 May 2009. < http: / / www. schoolofwisdom.com/ wilhelm. html>. Romero, Christiane Zehl. Anna Seghers: Eine Biographie 1900-1947. Berlin: Aufbau, 2000. -. Anna Seghers: Eine Biographie 1947-1983. Berlin: Aufbau, 2003. Roscher, Achim, and Alexander Abusch, eds. «Wirklichkeit und Phantasie: Fragen an Anna Seghers.» Also fragen Sie mich! Gespräche. Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1983. 51-58. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Schrade, Andreas. Anna Seghers. Stuttgatt: J.B. Metzler, 1993. Seghers, Anna. «Anna Seghers an Steshenski, 13. April 1953.» Anna Seghers: Eine Biographie in Bildern. Ed. Frank Wagner, Ursula Emmerich, and Ruth Radvanyi. Berlin: Aufbau, 1994. 193. -. «Erinnerungen an Philipp Schaeffer.» Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben. Bd. XIV. Aufsätze, Ansprachen, Essays 1954-1979. Berlin: Aufbau, 1980. 386-89. -. «Im neuen China: Aus einem Reisebericht.» Tägliche Rundschau 29 Nov.-1 Dec. 1951. -. «Kleiner Bericht aus meiner Werkstatt.» Woher sie kommen, wohin sie gehen: Essays aus vier Jahrzehnten. Ed. Manfred Behn. Darmstadt and Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1980. 13-18. -. «Verwirklichung.» Studienblätter aus China. By Gustav Seitz. Berlin: Aufbau, 1953. 5-11. -. «Vortrag über chinesische Bauern vor Brandenburgischen Bauern.» Frieden der Welt: Ansprachen und Aufsätze 1947-1953. Berlin: Aufbau, 1953. 112-25. -. «Zwei Briefe über China.» Aufbau 8.1 (1952): 8-16. Silberman, Marc. «Whose Story Is This? Rewriting the Literary History of the GDR.» Contentious Memories: Looking Back at the GDR. Ed. Jost Hermand and Marc Silberman. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. 25-58. Stephan, Alexander. «‹Ich habe das Gefühl, ich bin in die Eiszeit geraten …›: Zur Rückkehr von Anna Seghers aus dem Exil.» The Germanic Review 3 (1987): 143-52. Tian, Min. «‹Alienation-Effect› for Whom? Brecht’s (Mis)interpretation of the Classical Chinese Theatre.» Asian Theatre Journal 14.2 (1997): 200-22. 174 Min Zhou Wallace, Ian. «Introduction.» Anna Seghers in Perspective. Ed. Ian Wallace. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi B.V., 1998. 1-6. Wilkinson, J. Norman. «‹The White-Haired Girl›: From ‹Yangko› to Revolutionary Modern Ballet.» Educational Theatre Journal 26.2 (1974): 164-74. Wolf, Christa. «Gesichter der Anna Seghers.» Anna Seghers: Eine Biographie in Bildern. Ed. Frank Wagner, Ursula Emmerich, and Ruth Radvanyi. Berlin: Aufbau, 1994. 6-9. Yang, Richard F.S. «The Reform of Peking Opera under the Communists.» The China Quarterly 11 (1962): 124-39. -. «Behind the Bamboo Curtain: What the Communists Did to the Peking Opera.» Educational Theatre Journal 21.1 (1969): 60-66. Besprechungen / Reviews S AMUEL W EBER : Benjamin’s -abilities. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard UP, 2008. 376 pp. $ 29.95. Walter Benjamin’s legacy in the critical debate today is marked less by a hermeneutic effective-history blessed with linear continuity and classical authority than by a complex story of interpretive reversals, contradictory assessments, and institutional conflicts among his exegetes. Benjamin’s fame, of course, has survived all these twists and turns, whereas the theories, perspectives, and critical paradigms employed for elucidating his work have been forced to recognize their own inevitable partialities and limitations. Thus, Benjamin’s reception history is largely a history of methodological self-reflection in the encounter with the persistent questions raised by his texts for a pluralistic and ever-widening scholarly community. As the pertinent entry in Burkhardt Lindner’s Benjamin-Handbuch (2006) argues, deconstruction is one of the critical paradigms that have sharpened their tools through their extensive Benjamin readings. However, few would argue that deconstruction is still on the cutting edge of the critical terrain; indeed, deconstructive approaches to Benjamin flourished especially during the 1980s and 1990s. Although it would be reductive to label Weber’s wide-ranging study simply as a deconstructive reading, it is very much indebted to this theory’s focus on the internal dynamics of language and the differential play of signifiers in the production of highly ambiguous and often paradoxical meanings. In this sense Weber’s volume may be a late hallmark, a somewhat self-reflexively melancholic testimony to the radical position that deconstruction once enjoyed. Weber himself is quite frank and modest about the historical status of his book. Spanning forty years, its chapters practice a «textual» approach that at one point marked a «pilot or pioneering project»; but «that has long since ceased to be the case» in light of the proliferating body of critical literature on Benjamin’s attention to writing, allegory, and reading (357). Nonetheless, it is the untimely character of this publication that now lends it an impressive capacity to look back, to recollect, and to rescue the achievements of deconstruction for the present Benjamin debate. Weber takes his cue from Derrida’s definition of iterability, the «power or potentiality to repeat or to be repeated» (6), in order to investigate how Benjamin’s conceptual language works along a series of idiosyncratic terms ending in -ability (-barkeit): criticizability, translatability, citability, legibility, recognizability, etc. For Weber, these concepts denote what Derrida refers to as a «structural possibility,» rather than an «actual realization,» and they can be traced back to Kant’s use of the suffix -mäßigkeit in the Kritik der Urteilskraft (39). In Benjamin’s work, -ability suggests not a fixed property or state, but an inherent predisposition to change, to become other, which defines the term’s virtuality. Thus, for instance, Weber shows that «translatability» suggests that artworks are not self-sufficient and autonomous (as classical aesthetics assumed), but contain an inherent propensity for being translated: «The paradox resides in the fact that the work can only be itself insofar as it is transported 176 Besprechungen / Reviews elsewhere, altered, transformed - in short, translated» (61). Therefore, Weber argues, translation for Benjamin does not communicate a discernible meaning but works to «point to - signify - the movement of symbolization itself» (91-92). Hence, Benjamin suggests, language is characterized by Mitteilbarkeit, which is to be understood less as a communicative function than as «impartibility,» as Weber translates the term more literally. This -ability constitutes language unmittelbar, i.e., not only immediately, but also «without means or instrumentality.» Language, then, is defined by its «immediate possibility of being imparted» (117). Or, to mention a third example, the famous concept of the now of recognizability (Jetzt der Erkennbarkeit), from the Arcades Project, suggests «not simply knowledge as reality, but knowability as everpresent possibility» (168). Following Benjamin’s own lead, Weber insightfully «translates,» explains him through a carefully literal reading, analyzing the hidden and sometimes cryptic implications of his conceptual language by focusing on the etymological roots and teasing out the «immediate» and direct meaning of the individual components of Benjamin’s terms. This attention to the structure of conceptual signifiers is something that, as Weber shows, existing translations have not always observed. On the whole, Weber’s deconstructionist explication of Benjamin amounts to one of the most precisely detailed and thoroughly text-oriented analyses of the internal workings of writer’s discourse that I know of. This is also the reason why Weber’s argument often defies paraphrase and summary, even though, unlike some other proponents of deconstruction, including Derrida himself, his own style is remarkably lucid and pedagogically helpful, taking even the non-expert patiently and step-by-step through Benjamin’s elaborate argument. And yet, the volume is somewhat unbalanced, even though it is impressively broad in thematic scope. Sometimes one wished Weber had taken his own approach a few steps further. In his illuminating chapter on the Arcades Project, he reads Benjamin’s representation of Paris streets in light of Derrida’s influential concept of the «generalized text,» whose endlessly deferred and never complete meaning «determines itself through the differential relations in which it is engaged» (228). Weber employs this concept to analyze Benjamin’s endlessly ramified montage project as exposing «nothing more or less than the allegorical cast of apparently material reality,» an exposure that «takes responsibility for the unknowable that sits at the heart of all efforts to decipher and decode, interpret and communicate» (229). This is an important insight but it raises a further, more far-reaching question underdeveloped in this volume: How does this allegorical structure of Benjamin’s city text function as the topographical stage for the comprehensive and virtually infinite citability and translatability (two of Weber’s key categories) of cultural traditions in nineteenth-century Parisian culture? As Benjamin shows, all kinds of past historical styles and foreign cultures are inscribed in the «generalized text» of the French capital, not so much as «presences» but as traces, citations, imitations, involuntary parodies, etc., giving world exhibitions, museums, the bourgeois interior, and the façades of buildings the phantasmagoric appearance of historical depth and cosmopolitanism, even while masking the power politics of colonialism, the manipulations of the capitalist consumer society, and the second-hand aesthetics of kitsch. To address questions like these may require Besprechungen / Reviews 177 a broader approach, such as the ones offered by cultural criticism, much of which Weber curiously chides for not doing what Benjamin does, who «never forgets that whatever his subject matter may be, its distinctive specificity always entails a certain structure of language, and hence, of its interpretation» (227). Weber does not indicate what branches of cultural criticism he has in mind, but his remark seems to disregard the strong tradition of cultural studies that has benefited from deconstruction and poststructuralism for sustained «readings» - quite in Benjamin’s sense - of material culture within the enabling or limiting parameters of their signifying practices, discursive networks, and self-representational strategies. Regrettably, it is only in passing that Weber discusses the best-known of Benjamin’s -ability terms, Reproduzierbarkeit (reproducibility), which informs Benjamin’s hugely influential critique of photography and film. Weber’s reading of Origin of the German Mourning Play in terms of history, myth, and allegory, is extremely thorough and often illuminating, but is only tangentially related to the -abilities theme. The same can be said of the chapters on the connection between Benjamin and Carl Schmitt, or Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben. Finally, it is somewhat puzzling to see how little Weber cites from the vast resource of the secondary literature on Benjamin, especially from more recent critics, a few notable exceptions, such as references to Werner Hamacher, notwithstanding. Is it that Weber prefers to engage Benjamin’s texts immediately, which of course would be illusory, especially for a deconstructionist? Or does he wish to remain untainted by what some have already denounced as a veritable Benjamin industry? Nonetheless, Weber’s interpretations are often innovative and refreshingly unorthodox, especially his reading of Wagner’s Ring cycle through the lenses of Benjamin and Derrida, where Weber argues that the two features that for Benjamin mark modernity - «on the one hand, it presents itself as nightmare; on the other, as its staging (Inszenierung)» - also define the notion of myth in Wagner’s tetralogy (283). This chapter is especially valuable because, owing to Benjamin’s own preference for visibility, image, and visual media, the topic of music has been rather neglected in the critical literature. All in all, Weber’s authoritative study will be of considerable interest to anyone wishing to learn more about Benjamin’s profoundly self-reflexive (proto-deconstructive? ) attention to the intricate and often elusive ways in which his own conceptual language works. University of Alabama in Huntsville Rolf J. Goebel R ICHARD D. C RITCHFIELD : From Shakespeare to Frisch: The Provocative Fritz Kortner. Heidelberg: Synchron Publishers, 2008. 223 pp. € 34,80. In seventeen tightly argued chapters this recent study offers a psychobiography of the renowned Austrian character actor and stage director Fritz Kortner whose struggle with his Jewish heritage is at the core of his life story. Growing up in Vienna, which had the largest Jewish population of any European city around the turn of the century, the resistance to Judaism was a pervasive and depressing experience for the impressionable and sensitive young man who, in his early adulthood, changed 178 Besprechungen / Reviews his name from Cohn to Kortner just to blend in and be accepted. Anti-Semitism at that time had made the transition from religious intolerance to racial discrimination which, on a pseudo-scientific basis, carried the fateful exclusion of conversion. Jewish otherness was no longer considered a religious choice but a hereditary affliction that preempted the avenue of assimilation through baptism. Simultaneously, an aggressive and ultimately eliminationist anti-Semitism emerged in the paranoid notion of a Jewish conspiracy, threatening to undermine all Western, and especially German, values. Built on the belief of an unalterable parasitic defect, this new anti-Semitism already carried all the ensuing rationalizations of the Nazis, and Kortner fit the mold of the «ugly,» «greedy,» and «parasitic» Jew in his outward appearance as well as in his evolving professional persona. With intimate factual knowledge, Critchfield chronicles three essential phases in Kortner’s life, all centered on the issue of his Jewish identity. Suffering under a pervasive stigmatization in his early years, Kortner tried to escape by pursuing an acting career that allowed him to be someone else, if only temporarily. In his own words, he represented the Jewish artist fighting not only for his voice but also for his professional, and eventually, existential survival in a world of anti-Semites. Notwithstanding such outspokenness and the reputation for being difficult, Kortner matured into one of the most visible actors of his time with access to the best stages in Germany and Austria. Yet his success had its corollary in persistent vitriolic reactions to his acting, and later, his directing, both of which showed the same demanding disposition that reinforced his growing reputation as a feisty non-conformist. That impression fully came to the fore with the assumption of power by the Nazis and Kortner’s forced emigration. Officially, he became the most hated and persecuted actor, accused of the «Judaization» of the German theater, which left him no choice but to leave Germany immediately on a journey that took him via Austria to England and eventually the United States, where he tried to rebuild his career in Hollywood within the community of other famous German expatriates. Critchfield describes these wanderings with emphasis not only on the difficult process of adapting to a foreign culture, but also with attention to Kortner’s ever more pronounced emergence as a politically engaged artist. In London he worked briefly in cinematic production but soon found himself unemployed due to a Nazi boycott against any film in which he was even marginally involved. Rather than succumbing to adversity, however, it only enhanced his motivation to effect political change, and it is this motivation that largely defines his efforts in America. In contrast to his success during the Weimar Republic, Kortner found sufficient (if only marginal) employment during his Hollywood years, which fueled his determination to resume center stage in Germany again. To facilitate this process he contacted one of the most influential American journalists (Dorothy Thompson) whom he convinced to support Roosevelt’s reelection on the correct assumption that only a decisive American president would be able to stand up to Hitler. More engaged than most of his fellow exiles, the defeat of fascism and the eventual return to Germany became his defining goal. Kortner returned as early as 1947. In addition to acting, he now expanded into directing, also with considerable success. While he was never offered the directorship (Intendant) of a major German theater, he became a powerful figure in German the- Besprechungen / Reviews 179 ater, film, and TV - not, however, without the familiar controversies that accompanied him in this third phase of his life. One provocative role in particular had defined his career, i.e., that of Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, whom he had first played in 1927 to equal acclaim and disparagement. In his revival of this role 41 years later, nothing substantial had changed. In 1968 Kortner again portrayed Shylock not as the prototypical vengeful Jew, but as the much more differentiated and historically accurate victim of prior Christian offense and marginalization. That reading, with its inversion of cause and effect, had a powerful historical corollary as it retraced arguments from the beginning of the emancipation debate in the late eighteenth century. In this debate, which took place in the circle around Moses Mendelssohn, Jewish behavior was first seen as a reaction to Christian abuse and exclusion. Kortner adopted this argument with its humanistic as well as pragmatic implications, which raised the critical issue of efficacy: Was it helpful in his lifelong fight against anti-Semitism, or were his recurring portrayals of an alleged everyday fascism ultimately fueling anti-Semitic resentments even after the demise of the Third Reich? There can be little doubt that his combative stance against any real or perceived anti-Semitism contributed greatly to the complexities of his life. Yet it is also true that the actor, stage director, and «dictator» Kortner left a legacy built on the continuing task of great art to foster the advancement of humanity. It is that commitment that Critchfield’s study lays out in exemplary detail. University of California, Davis Karl Menges S IEGFRIED M EWS : Günter Grass and His Critics from The Tin Drum to Crabwalk. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008. 434 pp. $ 90.00. Grass attended a portion of the Bremen conference later documented in the volume Die Medien und Günter Grass (2008). At the conclusion of a celebratory roundtable discussion, he rose from his first-row seat, turned to the audience, and uttered a word of thanks prefaced by the remark - «Es freut mich, daß ich Arbeitgeber bin […].» Truer words were never spoken, proof positive being the roughly 1050 secondary titles - from Ábbe to Zweig - Mews lists under the rubric «Works Cited» (346-405). And even if these titles are largely restricted to German and American scholarship and press reviews, it is clear that Mews has rendered a great service to Grassforschung. Mews outlines his method - «I first comment on the critical reaction upon the publication of the German original […] and then survey the reception of the English translation, and, finally, investigate the critical contributions by scholars […]» (7) - and he dutifully lists the print bibliographies of his predecessors (O’Neill, 1976; Neuhaus, 1992) as well as the periodically updated online bibliography by Hermes, Mertens and Neuhaus, each of which simply list title citations. The book under review seems to have had its inception in his own «Review Article» (GQ 74.2 [2001]), and Mews has recently updated the current work in Monatshefte 101.2 (2009). His masterful commentaries, deft summaries, occasional corrections and sensible evaluations of the work of other researchers represent all but the last word on content and methodology. 180 Besprechungen / Reviews Put another way, the need for an introductory Forschungsbericht to an article or monograph on Grass is henceforth all but obviated by Mews. Each of the fifteen chapters focuses on a single work of prose fiction from Die Blechtrommel to Im Krebsgang. A last-minute epilogue addresses the reception of the memoir Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, but Shafi’s useful publication Methods of Teaching The Tin Drum (2007) eluded Mews. The reservation parenthetically expressed by Julian Preece that Mews «covers only his prose works, leaving aside poetry, drama, and essays» (Monatshefte 101.2: 297) is well taken, even though their inclusion would have burst the seams of Mews’s book, not to mention the fact that Stuart Taberner has most recently published an essay collection in the Cambridge Companion series (2009), one including considerations of his poetry, drama, essays, and of Grass’s artistic creations (prints, sculpture, paintings). It would not be reasonable to review Mews’s book in all detail, since it is itself a commentary on the scholarship of others, making my review a review of reviews. The book is not a study on Grass’s literariness per se, yet Mews is more than well versed in Grass’s texts and his grasp of the scholarship and critical issues is impressive. He selects points of argument made by the scholars under review, thereby advancing potentially meaningful viewpoints on a given text: «In contrast to [Peter] Schneider, [Thomas] Schmidt opines that Grass’s grand gesture, with which he wants to reassert the power of literature to shape public consciousness, has come too late. He adds a cautionary note for those who would rashly draw moral lessons from the Gustloff tragedy, juxtaposing it to another event: only one day after the ship’s sinking, the SS forced five thousand inmates on a death march from the concentration camp Stutthof near Danzig and into the surf of the Baltic, where they were executed.» (318-19) By privileging this detail of Schmidt’s commentary, Mews enriches the reader’s understanding of the complex implications of Im Krebsgang, to say nothing of the pivotal role played by critics such as Schmidt. And lesser details seldom escape his eagle eye. Writing on Mein Jahrhundert, for example, he points out that the 1903 chapter documents not a soccer Länderspiel - as the author had termed it - «but the (first) game that decided the German championship (in 1903, German clubs from abroad were permitted to participate).» (312) The devil is, indeed, in the details. More importantly, Mews subdivides Grass’s prose fiction into three chronological categories: «Danzig, Center of the Universe,» «From Danzig to the Global Stage,» «After Reunification: Old Problems and New Beginnings.» On one level, this attempt at systematizing Grass’s Gesamtwerk simply aids the reader in coming to grips with the sweep of Grass’s literary creativity, even as he achieves global status, while on another level, it oversimplifies Grass’s achievement. Reddick originally came up with the concept Danziger Trilogie, but now it has been expanded to include three other titles centered on Danzig. Mews knows this, of course, and it does suggest that Grass has never escaped the hold of his birthplace - his present residence near Lübeck being but a surrogate Danzig. All the world became Grass’s stage in 1959, if you will, and the fiction of the 1970s and 80s was a curious amalgam of the particularly «German» - Das Treffen in Telgte, for example - and the global, as exemplified by Zunge zeigen, even if Grass’s Eurocentrism clashed with the civilization of India. To term Besprechungen / Reviews 181 the 1990s to the present as «After Reunification» is predictable, 1989/ 90 being a sort of political and cultural Stunde Null, and Mews is correct in seeing it as an admixture of old and new. Mein Jahrhundert was surely mostly about the former, even as Im Krebsgang parsed the intersection of old problems and new beginnings. The controversial Brisanz of past and present surfaced in the memoir (even if the autobiography was about much more than the Waffen-SS revelation). Since then, of course, Die Box (2008), a sequel to the memoir, as well as Grass’s journal of the immediate Wendezeit, Unterwegs von Deutschland nach Deutschland (2009), have been published, each testing the validity of Mews’s chronological categories. Finally, an evaluation of Grass’s other writings - poetry, drama, essays, and of his art - would significantly inform and possibly refute Mews’s categorization. Perhaps my musings are moot, yet they do speak to the implicit agenda of the book as a whole. In taking stock of Grass at the hands of his critics, the novelist is celebrated, to which an ever immodest Grass would likely say - «Es freut mich, daß ich Arbeitgeber bin […].» University of Cincinnati Richard E. Schade C HRISTINE A CHINGER : Gespaltene Moderne: Gustav Freytags Soll und Haben. Nation, Geschlecht und Judenbild. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2007. 380 pp. € 48,00. Vor etwa 20 Jahren erstand ich für ganze 10 DM eine Taschenbuch-Ausgabe von Gustav Freytags Roman Soll und Haben, der, so hatte ich in meinem Hauptseminar zum realistischen Roman gehört, zur Standardlektüre des deutschen Lesepublikums gehört hatte, bevor er besonders nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg seiner antisemitischen und stereotypenhaften Züge wegen eher ins literarische Abseits geriet. Erst im Jahr 2007 gelang es mir, mich Hunderte von Seiten lang mit dem Schicksal des biederen Anton Wohlfahrt zu beschäftigen. Dass die Literaturwissenschaft wie auch der literarische Markt dieses Buch in den letzten Jahrzehnten eher ignoriert hatten, wunderte mich nach Abschluss der Lektüre nicht so sehr. Auf diesem Hintergrund erstaunte es mich nun zunächst, dass Christine Achinger sich in ihrer über 350-seitigen Doktorarbeit Gespaltene Moderne: Gustav Freytags Soll und Haben. Nation, Geschlecht und Judenbild ausschließlich mit diesem Roman befasst. Schnell macht Achinger jedoch klar, dass es sich lohnt, tiefer in diesen Roman einzusteigen, der vom Veröffentlichungsjahr 1855 an bis weit nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg Generationen von bürgerlichen Lesern und Leserinnen faszinierte und ihr Selbstverständnis spiegelte, wenn nicht gar mitprägte: «Eine genaue Lektüre [des Romans, BM] […] ist auch ein Beitrag zum Verständnis der Entwicklung bürgerlichen Denkens, zur Analyse des Zusammenhangs zwischen Erfahrung des Aufstiegs der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft und spezifischen Konzeptionen von Rasse, Geschlecht und Nation und ihrer vielfältigen Vermittlung, sowie zur Geschichte des modernen Antisemitismus. Gerade die illiberalen Züge des Romans eines liberalen Autors vermögen Aufschluß zu geben über einige der grundlegenden Probleme bürgerlichen Denkens selbst» (11). 182 Besprechungen / Reviews Achingers Ansatz ist ambitioniert: Der Titel ihrer Arbeit verrät bereits, dass sie es sich zum Ziel gesetzt hat, das Phänomen «Moderne» (das für sie in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts beginnt und durch Industrialisierung, Kapitalismus und das erstarkende Bürgertum charakterisiert ist und damit nicht den Zeitraum der Jahrhundertwende zum 20. Jahrhundert meint) in all seiner Problematik mit Freytags Roman in Verbindung zu setzen. Dabei diskutiert sie so gut wie alle wesentlichen Themen und Strömungen, die sozial und kulturell (und sogar psychologisch) im 19. Jahrhundert relevant waren, um letztlich auch die Ästhetik des Romans mit den Ergebnissen ihrer vorangehenden Diskussionen abzugleichen. Frauenbild, Geschlechterverhältnis und -diskurs und Männlichkeitsideal können so ebenso diskutiert werden wie der Kolonialdiskurs, koloniale Modelle des 19. Jahrhunderts und das Amerikabild dieser Zeit; der Wunsch der Deutschen nach nationaler Identität und Einheit ebenso wie die Ablösung des alten, feudal gegliederten Gesellschaftsgebildes durch das bürgerlich geprägte. Achingers Diskussion des zum nationalen Grund- und Hauptwert stilisierten Arbeitsethos - dem «Sinn für die Arbeit in der deutschen Weise, […] als moralischer Imperativ statt als Mittel zum Erwerb, als ordnungs- und gemeinschaftsstiftende Aktivität, nicht als Beförderung der eigenen wirtschaftlichen Interessen» (167) - führt logisch zu einer eingehenden Diskussion der Position des Romans dem Kapitalismus gegenüber. Und die notwendige Beschäftigung mit der Frage, ob und inwieweit der Roman dem Antisemitismus des 20. Jahrhunderts Vorschub geleistet oder Modell gestanden hat, schließt eine Betrachtung der politisch Liberalen des 19. Jahrhunderts ein, zu denen auch Freytag gehörte und dessen Positionen Juden und Frauen gegenüber in seinen theoretischen Schriften zwar liberal-progressiv waren, in seinen Roman aus unterschiedlichen Gründen nicht unbedingt eingeflossen sind. Ein Rundumschlag ist es, den Achinger beabsichtigt - und der ihr beeindruckend gelingt. Schon früh in ihren Ausführungen identifiziert sie die Idee der «deutschen Arbeit» als das positive Leitbild, das den Bürger Anton Wohlfahrt auf seinem Entwicklungsweg leitet und das ihn, als Sympathie- und Ideenträger, sowohl von den die «schlechte» Moderne repräsentierenden wuchernden Juden, die den authentischen Bezug zu ihrer Arbeit und deren Produkten verloren haben, als auch von den rückwärtsgewandten Aristokraten, die den Sprung ins 19. Jahrhundert mit seinen Anforderungen an den positiv tätigen, also «deutsch» arbeitenden Menschen nicht vollzogen haben, trennt. Polnische Aufständische wie amerikanische Spekulanten, das wilde «Naturkind» Lenore wie der «Über-Mensch» Fink, der ästhetisierende und der Welt abgewandte Jude Bernhard und natürlich vor allem der jüdische Emporkömmling Veitel Itzig, all diese Figuren zeigen Wege, die in der Moderne möglich geworden sind oder im Gegensatz zu ihr noch bestehen - und die die harmonische Eingliederung in das deutsche nationale Ganze nicht erlauben. Im Begriff der «deutschen Arbeit», so Achinger, propagiert Freytag ein Ethos der Selbstbescheidung, in dem die Idee individuellen Glücks und Erfolgs dem Ziel des nationalen Fortschritts untergeordnet ist bzw. von letzterem abhängig ist. Eine solche «Verklärung» des Arbeitsalltags im mittleren 19. Jahrhundert entspricht dann den Maximen eines poetischen Realismus, den sich der Roman in seinem Motto («‹Der Roman soll das deutsche Volk da suchen, wo es in seiner Tüchtigkeit zu finden ist, nämlich bei seiner Arbeit.›», 26) bereits auf die Fahnen geschrieben hat und der, wie Achinger gegen Ende ihrer Studie ausführt, Besprechungen / Reviews 183 der Ästhetik Hegels und dem von ihm in der Moderne identifizierten Konflikt «‹zwischen der Poesie des Herzens und der entgegenstehenden Prosa der Verhältnisse›» (318) ein Modell erfolgreicher künstlerischer Darstellung eines universell interessierenden Individualschicksals entgegenstellt. Achingers Arbeit ist ein Steinbruch und nicht unbedingt dazu angetan, auf einmal gelesen zu werden. Jedes Kapitel allein könnte bereits genug Material für eine Doktorarbeit liefern, und ihre detaillierten und genauen Diskussionen der existierenden Forschungsliteratur weisen sie als gewandte und extrem belesene Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaftlerin aus. Es ist eine Grundsatzfrage, ob Doktorarbeiten, die ebendiese ausführlichen Debatten mit existierenden Positionen zum Thema führen, in dieser Form auch veröffentlicht werden sollten. Achingers exzellente Diskussionen besonders der Problemkreise Liberalismus und «Judenfrage», Nationalismus und Andersartigkeit, und auch ihre sehr genauen und gut nachvollziehbaren Einzeldeutungen von Figuren, Konstellationen und Fragen der Romanästhetik sind so fundiert und gehen weit über den «Aufhänger» Soll und Haben hinaus, dass sie auch ein Publikum ansprechen, das generell Interesse an der Entwicklung eines deutschen nationalen Identitätsbewusstseins im 19. Jahrhundert hat. Die zum Teil langen Diskussionen und Erwiderungen auf Forschungsbeiträge machen es aber eher mühsam, das Interesse nicht zu verlieren (nicht zuletzt auch, da Achingers Prosa extrem wissenschaftlich und damit nicht immer leicht zugänglich ist). So wäre Christine Achinger vielleicht besser beraten gewesen, ihre Arbeit für den generellen Buchmarkt noch einmal zu revidieren, wie es in den USA von Verlegern erbeten wird. Dessen ungeachtet ist Achingers Arbeit beeindruckend und zeigt, dass es möglich ist, Tiefen- und Breitenbetrachtung erfolgreich miteinander zu vereinen und als Resultat eines «close readings» einen Beitrag zu liefern, der die Kultur- und Mentalitätsgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts und des deutschen Liberalismus neu beleuchtet und dem es gelingt, am Beispiel nur eines Buches die komplexe Problematik, in die sich das liberale Bürgertum des 19. Jahrhunderts verwickelte, zu beleuchten und historisch differenziert von vorschnellen Kategorisierungen und Urteilen zu befreien. Middlebury College Bettina Matthias H ANS R UDOLF V AGET (E D .): Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. A Casebook. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. 288 pp. $ 29.95. Besides the introduction Hans Rudolf Vaget wrote two essays for this well-balanced volume containing four more original and several previously published essays, all by English-writing authors. He wants to offer «helpful perspectives» and «fresh approaches developed by a new generation» while also revisiting «some of the familiar issues of the literature on the Magic Mountain» (8). Vaget’s essay «The Making of The Magic Mountain» draws on Mann’s letters and the by now published diaries and concludes: «To an astonishing degree [Mann] proceeded […] in an almost improvisational fashion» (16). Mann re-arranged chapters, changed and added characters under the impression of - among many others - his meetings with Georg Lukács and Gerhart Hauptmann, and his readings of Spengler: 184 Besprechungen / Reviews «[A] fortuitous interplay of separate factors, personal and historical, is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the genesis of this book» (23). Martin Travers in «Death, Knowledge and the Formation of Self: The Magic Mountain» takes the reader in medias res: Mann’s preoccupation with death and the relationship between knowledge and sickness. Mann considered the experience of death a necessary stage along the road to knowledge, but undermined any romantic aura surrounding death with naturalistic detail and ironic deflation (32). Mann regarded his novel a parody of the Bildungsroman, with many departures from the earlier classical models. The narrator leaves the question open: What has Castorp actually learned? «It does appear that Castorp has come full circle, to embrace what he always was,» but he dies «knowingly» (43). In «Photography and Bildung in The Magic Mountain» Erik Downing asks: «How does the introduction of the discursive or metaphorical regime of the photograph fundamentally alter the project of Bildung […] ? » (45). Noting Walter Benjamin’s observation that the advent of psychoanalysis coincides with that of photography, Downing shows that each of the two primary pedagogical influences on Castorp «is situated within the metaphorical field of photography and its model of development» (46). Downing thoroughly plows this field, relating Bild to Bildung and Entwicklung to the photographic plate, etc. According to Downing, «Mann makes the connection […] with the photothematics more or less explicit later on […]» (53). «[Castorp] comes to insist on […] a photographic logic […] of ongoing inversion and exchangeability» (58), which allows Downing to conclude: «The Magic Mountain is and is not a Bildungsroman, and Mann […] leaves us in this suspended state, in the endless oscillation between the old and the new, between Bildung and Entwicklung at once» (68). Todd Kontje’s essay «Modern Masculinities on the Magic Mountain» contributes further insights into the Bildungsroman issue. According to Kontje, Mann plays with its generic conventions, assigning his characters «precarious and intrinsically unstable» sexual identities (85). Mann «subverts [this] intrinsically patriarchal genre about the solidification of male heterosexual identity into a story about ambiguous desires and inconclusive debates» (82). Nancy P. Nenno in «Projections on Blank Space: Landscape, Nationality, and Identity in Der Zauberberg» postulates that contested «blank» spaces on the map, Alpine snowscapes, Arctic regions, hostile terrain and war zones provide a screen onto which conflicts surrounding identity, both individual and national, can be projected. «The Alpine regions […] serve as a testing ground for identity, both Hans Castorp’s own and that of Germany» (114). The title of Vaget’s essay «‹Politically Suspect›; Music on the Magic Mountain» is taken from Mann’s statement: «[M]usic has always been suspect, most suspect to those who loved it most deeply, like Nietzsche» (125). Vaget points to the history of «what Germans and almost everyone else considered to be the most enchanting flower of German culture: music» (125), ideologically exploited in «that characteristically German alliance of music and politics» (134). Mann, who regarded the Germans’ emotional attachment to Romanticism as anachronistic, «a sickness» (137), has Castorp stumbling to his death with Der Lindenbaum on his lips, victim of the «shameful Besprechungen / Reviews 185 exploitation of the German people’s romantic impulses» (138). This conclusion leads directly to the next essay of the collection. In «‹Linke Leute von rechts›; Thomas Mann’s Naphta and the Ideological Confluence of Radical Right and Radical Left in the Early Years of the Weimar Republic» Anthony Grenville discusses the postwar confluence of ideological extremes, a «highly unusual combination of revolutionary Marxism with reactionary irrationalism» (145). He sees Romanticism as «the crucial ideological turning-point where many Germans abandoned reason, freedom, humanist individualism for the cult of emotion, instinct, nationalism […]» (163) and attributes the pattern of non-thinking submission to a totalitarian authority to a Nietzschean Lebensphilosophie and Spengler’s organic vitalism which subordinated intellect to will, strength, vitality. Although he finds tendencies «far more related to the extreme reactionary right» (159), he concludes: «Naphta is the dual-purpose totalitarian, the representative of both the left and the right in the Weimar Republic, united by hatred of the center» (165). In «Naphta and His Ilk: Jewish Characters in Mann’s Magic Mountain» Franka Marquart and Yahya Elsaghe argue that Mann’s ambivalence in representing «Jewishness» is a symptom of his inability to «readily and completely […] free himself from the ingrained anti-Semitic notions of his formative years» (175/ 76). They characterize the Jewish Jesuit Naphta as «the embodiment of a long and infamous tradition of amalgamating Jews and Jesuits» (186) and conclude: «Naphta […] becomes the embodiment of all anti-Semitic projections that constitute […] the image of the Jew in the aftermath of Enlightenment, […] the image of the ‹deadly Jew›» (190). Dorrit Cohn in «Telling Timelessness in Der Zauberberg» asks with the narrator: «Kann man die Zeit erzählen, diese selbst, als solche, an und für sich? » (201). It is the narrator’s stated intention to contract mountain years to reflect «the effects [their] hermetic magic has worked on his protagonist’s consciousness» (207). The summary narrative technique (Raffung) inevitably brings the narrator’s voice to the fore. Paradoxically the narrator also wants to convey the «figural experience,» «including [Castorp’s] atrophied sense of time» (207). Such mutually exclusive solutions presuppose either an unreliable narrator or a thinking mistake on the part of Mann (213). Cohn points to Mann’s actual resolution, the compromise of alternating summary and scene. She characterizes her findings as inconclusive and invites debate. In «The Magic Mountain. A ‹Humoristic Counterpart› to Death in Venice» Ellis Shookman finds Mann’s notion of humor complicated; «funny,» but also suggesting a «detached, reflective human awareness» (222). Neither is the meaning of «counterpart» (Gegenstück) any more «clear […] or constant» (224). Notwithstanding, the possible comparison of (few) instances of humor and an avalanche of «counterparts» in both works leads to a hunt for correspondences regarding psychoanalysis, knowledge, literary form, soldierly discipline, colors, physical characteristics, the homoerotic, Slavic traits, allusions to Greek gods, monotony, primeval silence, disorientation, resemblances of characters, and more. Shookman’s conclusion: «[T]hese works are alike and different» (227); they «have significantly comparable scenes, subjects, characters, and classical references» (235). 186 Besprechungen / Reviews According to Malte Herwig in «The ‹Magic Mountain Malady›; Der Zauberberg and the Medical Community 1924-2006,» Mann invited responses by the medical profession when delivering realistic descriptions of the disease as well as less than flattering depictions of the medical providers. According to initial reactions Mann was an unqualified amateur who ventured to criticize them and their patients. «Reading this book the layman will think that almost everybody suffering from tuberculosis of the lungs is bound to degenerate spiritually as well as morally» (250). Defending his novel as «genuinely medical» (ärztlich) (246), Mann emphasized the narrative’s «service to life, its commitment to health» (251). Eventually Mann became «idolized and instrumentalized» (258) by parts of the medical community. Mills College Elisabeth Bartsch Siekhaus M ONIKA C ZERNIN : «Jenes herrliche Gefühl der Freiheit». Frieda von Bülow und die Sehnsucht nach Afrika. Berlin: List Verlag, 2008. 383 pp. € 19,90. Monika Czernin, who has studied pedagogy, philosophy, and political science and now works as a journalist, documentary film maker, and independent author, details in the prologue how she first became acquainted with the original materials (consisting of loose leaf diary entries, letters, photos, and newspaper articles) which form the basis for her latest novel. A phone call from a distant cousin of Frieda von Bülow, Earl Friedrich von Hatzfeldt, awakens the interest of Czernin in the life of a writer who is nowadays viewed simultaneously as one of the most influential colonial feminists in Imperial Germany whilst also being deemed anti-Semitic and racist. Most likely, the latter labels have pushed Frieda von Bülow and her writings onto the periphery of serious study. The book is divided into six main chapters, each detailing a particular section of von Bülow’s life in a rather episodic manner. The initial prologue and a timeline of major events in von Bülow’s life, along with a short epilogue and acknowledgement of thanks by Czernin to all the people and experts who have helped her gather information for this book, support the biographical details with factual data. Frieda von Bülow (1857-1909) was born into old Prussian nobility, and her life was both framed and constricted by the hierarchical expectations of this social class. Czernin begins the biography of von Bülow, who was the oldest of five children, with the first chapter entitled «Kindheitsliebe,» but not with the birth of Frieda, as might be expected. Rather, she details receiving the materials of von Bülow’s life in the mail, looking at photographs and reading herself into the life of this woman. Czernin approaches the writing of her biographical novel by first conveying the key experience that she believes has coloured the rest of von Bülow’s life - the death of Frieda’s beloved youngest sister, Margarethe. Margarethe von Bülow, a respected writer in her own right, died of heart failure on January 2, 1884 in Berlin, trying to save a young boy who had fallen through the ice. Czernin does not give a sober, factual account of what happened, but assumes von Bülow’s personality as she imagines Frieda’s emotional turmoil in personally having to witness her sister’s death, even though Frieda was convalescing in Italy during this time. This event affects von Bülow deeply and Besprechungen / Reviews 187 stays with her throughout her life as the two sisters, separated by three years, were connected by an apparently uncommonly close bond (19). The theme of loss is pervasive in Czernin’s narrative as Frieda is survived ultimately only by her younger sister Sophie. Czernin glosses over the factual details of the family members’ passing, intent more on stirring the reader’s empathy for von Bülow as she describes Frieda’s thoughts and feelings. With her style of writing, Czernin is able to create a fascinating psychological portrait of von Bülow with such ease that the reader is caught up in the ensuing events and feels like a companion of von Bülow on the journey, instead of a distant and objectively-minded critic. Frieda von Bülow’s strong-willed, independent thinking, her love of adventure, and her incessant yearning for new experiences and the freedom to explore is what drives the narrative forward. Czernin details von Bülow’s travels to East Africa and her single-handed management of a farm there, her friendship with Lou Andreas- Salomé, her affair with Carl Peters, her writings (she published 25 books in total), her two returns to Germany, and her inevitable death from cancer in chronological order in the succeeding chapters of the novel. While every fact is carefully researched, as evidenced by the author’s interspersed travelogues of her journeys to Africa itself and various archives with the purpose of reconstructing the necessary political and social context, it is the intimate conversations between von Bülow and key characters, such as Carl Peters, which bring a human dimension to the facts of her life. These conversations are fictionalized, and motivations for various actions are hinted at, but never confirmed. Czernin is aware that von Bülow’s writings are not recognized favorably by researchers (361). However, by concentrating on the effect of von Bülow’s writing on the reader on an emotional level, Czernin illustrates their enduring value and thus validates their worth for serious study. Czernin does not remove herself from the story, but rather involves herself more and more with the story as she tells it. The reader becomes privy to the author’s various research trips, which are woven into the narrative of how von Bülow may have experienced and felt in certain places and situations. The interweaving of personal emotions and thoughts from the author and those created by the author for Frieda lessens the distance between the reader and von Bülow herself, as Czernin details von Bülow’s actions, thoughts, and emotions. Czernin does not pass jugdement on von Bülow, but rather presents Frieda as a complex and multi-dimensional human being. The source material is reproduced by Czernin in italics throughout the novel, which distinguishes it from the imagined conversations and descriptions created by Czernin. Since Czernin ably incorporates the source materials with her own questions and experiences and ties those in with imagined conversations and descriptions of the thoughts and emotions of the characters she is writing about, the narrative flows together seamlessly and moves forward with a well-formulated pace. Overall, the book gives a contradictory reading experience: While it presents a psychological and intensely intimate portrait of a woman whose actions and decisions are still being derided today, it is essentially a collection of fictionalized and somewhat romanticized accounts of various episodes in von Bülow’s personal life. What makes it a critically engaging and informative read is the fact that the narrative 188 Besprechungen / Reviews itself is constructed with such great care, and that it creates historically and politically accurate contexts which form a sound backdrop for the vibrant personality of von Bülow as created by Czernin. Laurentian University Bettina Brockerhoff-Macdonald T HOMAS A. K OVACH AND M ARTIN W ALSER : The Burden of the Past. Martin Walser on Modern German Identity: Texts, Contexts, Commentary. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008. 141 pp. $ 29.95. This book is about Walser’s intellectual negotiations with the German past since the 1960s. Thomas Kovach has expertly translated six of Walser’s essays/ speeches dealing with the German past and its impact on contemporary German identity. These texts are presented chronologically, tracing Walser’s development from a decidedly leftist intellectual to a more conservative stance. By placing Walser’s texts in a larger historical and literary context it is the author’s hope to elucidate - especially to non-German readers - how not only Walser but German society at large deals with the conflicted sentiments regarding the country’s problematic past, in particular the issue of the Holocaust. Kovach approaches Walser’s essays as literary texts, paying close attention to their literary complexities and rhetorical strategies, and attempts to distinguish what may be considered a valid critique of Germany’s culture of remembrance from those aspects that may be seen as problematic. Naturally, Walser’s Friedenspreisrede of 1998 takes center stage here, although it is essential that the previous and subsequent texts embed this speech in a broader framework, which enables Kovach, through comparisons, analogies and cross-references, to extract and explain Walser’s reasoning in a much more differentiated and balanced way than otherwise possible. For each text Kovach provides introductory comments, detailing Walser’s personal circumstances and the historical-political conditions under which the texts originated. Following each piece, Kovach’s commentary progresses from a brief recap to close analysis of the text. Starting with the 1965 essay «Our Auschwitz,» it becomes clear that Walser was at the «forefront of public voices» (20) in dealing with this issue overtly and explicitly, offering a number of subtle psychological observations and insights into the role Auschwitz played in the German psyche, and insisting on collective responsibility and the necessity of reflection on the sheer incomprehensible and inexpressible reality that is Auschwitz. In his speech «No End to Auschwitz» (1979), Walser continues his forceful engagement with the past on a deeply personal level, identifying himself and all Germans with the perpetrators condemned to share the burden of collective guilt. While in these first two texts Walser’s voice is that of a public speaker, the tone changes from here on. In «Handshake with Ghosts» (1979), Walser laments the impossibility for Germans of being able to devote thought to the division of Germany, thus inhibiting a «reconstitution of a German national identity» (52). As Kovach points out, «guilt for the Holocaust is viewed as the problem preventing Germans from devoting themselves to national tasks, rather than as an essential fact each German must face and deal with» (52). In the 1988 speech «Speaking of Germany,» Walser again voices his unappeasable irritation about Germany’s divi- Besprechungen / Reviews 189 sion, blaming the «self-interest of [unnamed] other countries.» It is here that Walser’s urgency becomes problematic, for, as Kovach makes clear, it «evok[es] something approaching a sense of German paranoia» which for many intellectuals «assumed a troubling nationalist stance» (79). The center of attention here is of course Walser’s Peace Prize Speech, «Experiences While Composing a Sunday Speech» (1998), which emanates a much more patriotic tone. German collective guilt has been reduced here to collective shame or disgrace, and the Germans have suddenly become the «accused» (suggesting their guilt has yet to be established). Auschwitz now has become a moral bludgeon, a routine threat, an unceasing presentation of German disgrace and its concomitant exploitation, against which «something» in Walser rebels. As other critics have previously recognized, Walser wishes to distance personal forms of memory from the moralizing tenets of public memory. Kovach pays special attention to the mitigating fact that Walser’s speech with its self-reflexive title is based on a «fictional stance» (104), a meta-speech so to speak, the nature of which is then illuminated in retrospect by the last essay, «On Talking to Yourself: A Flagranti Attempt» (2000). Kovach emphasizes Walser’s preference for a «literary mode for public speaking» (127), which conveys the notion that an interior monologue (which the prize speech in essence constitutes) addresses the audience in a much more «intense and personal fashion» (128). In this way, Kovach explains, the verbalization of what moves Walser when confronted with images of the Holocaust expresses his hope «to allow his listeners to experience a kind of freedom, a reminder of their own difficulty in finding an appropriate language for the theme, and thus to generate a ‹liveliness of exchange› lacking in the discourse of politicians and professors» (126). Kovach’s conclusions are sound, nuanced, and, above all, balanced assessments of Walser’s texts. The burden of the past weighs heavily on Walser. While his obviously conflicted internal dealings with his Jewish fellow citizens may be seen as «symptomatic of his generation of Germans» (131), in Kovach’s view, they do not warrant a «charge of anti-Semitism» (130). On the other hand, he takes Walser to task, in that «responsible German citizens should exercise particular care not to validate the sentiments of neo-Nazi or similar groups» (102). What becomes clear, however, is that modern German identity continues to be constituted to some degree by a «legacy of guilt» (130). Consequently, there persists an «unbridgeable gulf separating the descendents of the perpetrators from those of the victims» (130). Yet Walser’s speeches have opened up a «broader discourse» (131), perhaps clearing a path to a shared «mode of remembrance» (104), a rapprochement that Kovach, in juxtaposition to America’s conflicted past, sees materializing with the «passing of time and the emergence of new generations» (105). Given that the sections of Kovach’s commentary (together with his introduction and conclusion) comprise a mere 42 pages, this makes for a rather slim volume. In light of the veritable flood of critical literature Walser’s speech has elicited, it would have behooved Kovach to supplement his citations of Noelle (2004) by acknowledging other major studies that cover very similar terrain, especially those assembled in the essay collection Seelenarbeit an Deutschland (2004), as well as several book publications (e.g. Brumlik, Funke, Rensmann, 2000; Borchmeyer, 2001; Lorenz, 190 Besprechungen / Reviews 2002). At the very least, annotated entries of the major publications could have been added to the bibliographical lists of Walser’s works available in English translation, English-language books on Walser, and selected studies about Germans and their past. However, neither this slight shortcoming nor the occasional error (9, 14, 48, 51, 101n) should detract from the indubitable merits of this immensely informative and highly readable book that makes Walser’s most important non-fictional texts available for the first time in English translation. Georgia Institute of Technology Frank Pilipp M ONIKA S HAFI (E D .): Approaches to Teaching Grass’s The Tin Drum. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2008. 258 pp. Cloth $ 37.50; Paper $ 19.75. The publication of a volume of essays on The Tin Drum constitutes a welcome addition to the more than one hundred titles in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature inasmuch as German belles lettres had been merely represented by Goethe’s Faust, Kafka’s Short Fiction, and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. The status of The Tin Drum as a prominent example of «world literature» is also attested to by the relative frequency with which the novel - its considerable length and daunting complexity notwithstanding - is apparently taught in either the German original or Ralph Manheim’s English rendering at US and UK institutions of higher learning (four contributors of the present volume are affiliated with British universities, one contributor hails from a Canadian institution) in a variety of courses that run the gamut from those in German Studies and Comparative Literature to those with a focus on race and gender, the Holocaust, and Film Studies. Unsurprisingly, the essays, which have been carefully edited by Monika Shafi, who also contributed a useful survey of German editions and those of English translations of Grass’s novel as well as an overview of pertinent secondary literature, offer a considerable range of approaches and thematic emphases that are intended to facilitate students’ access to a notoriously difficult text rather than to advance new readings. But the volume’s emphasis on providing instructional tools does not necessarily detract from its significance as a contribution to the continuing scholarly debate about Grass’s masterpiece; particularly the articulation of conflicting views on the part of various contributors attests to the fact that even fifty years after its publication The Tin Drum does not yet seem to have attained the standing of an uncontested classic. The (not cross-referenced) disagreements among the authors of various articles also tend to compensate for the inevitably repetitive references to specific textual passages, figures, themes, and so on. The eighteen contributions are subdivided into four sections. In the first of these, «Historical Contexts,» Julian Preece draws attention to Grass’s depiction of the «recent German history of the Nazi period» in general and that of the city of Danzig and the formerly German Eastern territories in particular rather than to the novel’s «literary artistry» (16). In a somewhat similar vein, Todd Kontje explores the novel Besprechungen / Reviews 191 as «historical fiction,» and, in an infrequently encountered approach, Patricia Pollock Brodsky analyzes the indications of «antifascist resistance» (42) and relates them to the precarious situations of the Kashubians in the borderland between Germans and Poles. Timothy Malchow includes in his investigation of «personal and public memory» (56-66) a brief discussion of Crabwalk, which, in contrast to many critics, he does not read as a «representation of German wartime suffering» but as an indication that the ongoing «discourse» (66) on the Nazi past tends to foster acts of violence. In the section «Narrative and Reading Strategies,» Irene Kacandes, in a distinctly pedagogical fashion, apprises the reader of her endeavors to prepare her students for «the big book» (67) by initially hewing to, in Gérard Genette’s terminology, the novel’s «paratext» (68). In an entirely different vein, Sabine Gross engages in a spirited reading of Oskar’s role as narrator whose relentless exploration of the «full range of narrative possibilities» (76) can be quite «infuriating» (77) and provocative in that it may detract inattentive and overwhelmed readers’ attention from the «actual significance and […] impact» (87) of historical events. In a sense, Alfred D. White’s essay on the «creative dwarf» (90) Oskar supplements that of Gross; whereas Gross concentrates on Oskar the narrator, White devotes his attention to Oskar’s actions and concludes, not entirely unsurprisingly, that Grass prefers Oskar’s creativity to his (lacking) «political influence» (102). Katharina Hall writes about the «secondary narrators» Bruno Münsterberg and Gottfried Vittlar (103), mostly neglected or ignored by critics, whose roles pale in comparison to that of Oskar but who offer a «rare and valuable alternative perspective» (114) to that of the protagonist-narrator. The notorious chapter «Karfreitagskost» serves Richard E. Schade as the subject of his close reading in which he also discusses Grass’s pertinent drawings and «idiosyncratic eel iconography» (124) in an attempt to augment the text with visual impressions. Jane Curran’s characterization of Oskar as the embodiment of the «distraction and insouciance» supposedly engaged in «by a large portion of the German population» (132) during the Second World War appears to implicitly contradict the reading by White. Elizabeth C. Hamilton, whose essay is supplemented by «Suggestions for Assignments» (147-48), focuses on Oskar the public persona and performer on various stages. In the section on «Issues of Race and Gender,» Dagmar C.G. Lorenz faults Grass for his allegedly negative portrayal of Jewish figures, that is, toy merchant Sigismund Markus in Book I (but see, e.g., Brockmann, 202) and the survivor of Treblinka Mariusz Fajngold in Book II - a portrayal that Lorenz considers to be a «trivialization of the Holocaust» (152). In view of these charges, it is appropriate to recall that Grass refuses «to demonize the Nazis or to idealize their victims» (Kontje, 30). Furthermore, Markus is genuinely mourned by Oskar, and Fajngold acquires a quasi-heroic dimension when he evolves into an (unlikely) resistance fighter (see Preece, 25). In a more encompassing vein than Lorenz, Peter Arnds extends the list of potential and real victims of the Nazis’ racism to include the «physically and mentally disabled […], criminals […], rootless drifters […], and homosexuals» (169). As several other contributors note, Oskar himself is decidedly a candidate for victimhood. In her contribution on «gender discourse and gender relations» (176), Barbara Becker-Canta- 192 Besprechungen / Reviews rino astoundingly dismisses the gang rape of the widow Greff by a group of Soviet soldiers as a «minor incident» (181) in comparison to Oskar’s violent sexual fantasies. Teresa Ludden’s essay on «Feminist and Psychoanalytic Theory» favors the elucidation of various psychoanalytic theories at the expense of literary analysis. The last section is devoted to Volker Schlöndorff’s prize-winning film - without doubt both a supplement to the literary text as well as a work of art in its own right. Stephen Brockmann briefly delves into the reception history of the Grass/ Schlöndorff cooperation by referring to the temporary banning and confiscation of the film in Oklahoma in 1997 on account of its explicit sexuality - albeit comparatively harmless by Hollywood standards - and attributes it to Schlöndorff’s violation of the conventions governing the «depictions of a sentimentalized childhood» (203). In her wide-ranging essay on «Sound and Image» (207), Margaret Setje-Eilers devotes particular attention to the various manifestations of the «musical-cultural environment» (220), which range from an operetta to Hitler Youth songs, as contributing factors to the eventual Gleichschaltung of the population. Susan Anderson, in an essay that concludes the volume, emphasizes the film’s persisting «relevance» in view of the continuing need to remember the «horrors of Nazism» (232) even more than sixty years after its demise. Although there are a few errata (incorrect historical data, misspelling of characters’ names, mistranslation), they do not significantly detract from the generally high quality of a volume that features several reader-friendly features such as providing quotations from The Tin Drum as well as German secondary literature in both the original and in English translation, a bibliography of works cited, and an index of names. There can then be little doubt that the volume constitutes a by no means negligible addition to the ever-increasing body of Grass literature in general and that on The Tin Drum in particular. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Siegfried Mews