eJournals Colloquia Germanica 39/1

Colloquia Germanica
cg
0010-1338
Francke Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel, der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/31
2006
391

ELYSTAN GRIFFITHS: Political Change and Human Emancipation in the Works of Heinrich von Kleist. Rochester: Camden House, 2005. 190 pp. $ 70.

31
2006
Edgar Landgraf
cg3910088
88 Besprechungen / Reviews custom of Raubehe (literally translated as «marriage by theft») and proposed that the origin of bridal quest narratives was to be found in abduction stories, in which the bride must endure her removal from her home and country. It is true that abduction stories share the first three stages of a bridal quest narrative. However, the fact that the genre’s subsequent stages are already found in the earliest examples of bridal quests, all of which highlight a bride’s active contributions to the unfolding of the story, make the older theory of the genre’s dependence on abduction stories unlikely. In the bridal quest narrative, after her curiosity about the distant lover is aroused, the bride-to-be conspires to set up a secret meeting in order to learn more about the wooer. A secret betrothal and elopement are orchestrated with her full consent and ample resourcefulness. She might contribute treasures stolen from her father, and might even fight her father’s armies alongside her bridegroom. Bornholdt notes that the older the bridal quest narrative, the more incisive the bride’s actions and interventions (213). The author’s third contribution to our knowledge of this intriguing genre lies in her argument for the oral origin and transmission of the genre in northwestern Europe. The genre’s anchoring in oral traditions could explain the scarcity of written evidence of the genre between tales recorded in Franconian chronicles between the seventh century and the eighth century. These narratives re-emerge and are widely disseminated beginning in the twelfth century, possibly through the Crusades. Only the Latin poem Waltharius offers written evidence of the bridal quest genre in the ninth and tenth centuries. Framed by a substantial introduction and conclusion, the book’s theoretical position is developed in five deft, well-written chapters that trace the chronological emergence and dissemination of bridal quest narratives. Chapter one analyzes bridal narratives in six early medieval chronicles; chapter two offers a reading of Waltharius; chapter three investigates patterns of bridal questing in the Old Norse Piðreks saga; chapter four covers the German bridal quest epics König Rother, Orendel, Der Münchner Oswald, and Salman und Morolf; and chapter five revisits Scandinavian texts as recorded in the Poetic Edda, Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, and Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum. The author is to be congratulated on revisiting older theories on the development and origin of bridal quest narratives with a keen eye for nuance in a wide array of medieval texts and for ideological tendencies and lacunae in scholarly interpretations of the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Wake Forest University Ulrike Wiethaus E LYSTAN G RIFFITHS : Political Change and Human Emancipation in the Works of Heinrich von Kleist. Rochester: Camden House, 2005. 190 pp. $ 70. To adapt a famous epigram by Kleist: One might divide the family of literary scholars into two groups - those who read literature as a metaphor, and those who are experts in a formula. There are not enough of those who are experts in both; they do not constitute a group. The first group reads literature - to use a rudimentary definition of metaphor - as substituting for something it is not, for example as represent- Besprechungen / Reviews 89 ing historical or social realities, individual experience, personal views and feelings, or even fundamental human truths. The second group, the experts in a formula, might comprise those who think about literature in more theoretical terms, as a particular linguistic practice. They are interested in how the literary use of language differs from and subsequently reflects on the limits and means employed by non-literary uses of language in the construction, for example, of social realities, individual experiences, personal views and feelings, or human truths. The continued popularity of Kleist is indicative of his ability to address both kinds of interests in literature. His narratives are sufficiently realistic and psychologically intricate to speak to those who prefer metaphorical readings; at the same time, their formal complexity has spawned an unprecedented amount of theoretically informed, highly reflective readings, which have focused on the ability of his writings to make the representational structures of their social and ideological environment the object of their critique. Elystan Griffiths’ book is written for those who cherish reading literature as a metaphor. This group will find an accessible study, which in the course of six concise chapters aptly makes the point that Kleist is not writing in a vacuum, but rather responds to and comments on the particular social and political problems of his time. The first chapter provides a brief overview of important political, judicial, military, pedagogical, and administrative debates that marked Kleist’s time, summarizing some of the main arguments associated with Herder, Humboldt, Gneisenau, Adam Müller, Fichte, Pestalozzi, and others. What emerges is the image of an age defined by the tensions between progressive and conservative ideas, where reforms and humanistic ideals are adopted not for their intrinsic, but rather for their perceived political and military value. Chapter two revisits Kleist’s life, looking for biographical evidence to give us «important insights into the highly personal manner in which Kleist experienced the political developments of his age» (28). The strength of Griffiths’ book, however, lies in its ability to trace the discussion of specific political and social debates in Kleist’s works, providing a more complex and concrete picture of the author’s political stance, one which neither reduces him to the caricature of a smallminded conservative (Lukács), nor makes him out to be a great liberal-progressive. Instead, Griffiths looks at Kleist’s works individually and assesses, in each case, how positions taken by the narrator or by specific characters appear to comment on particular debates, be they political and national (chapter 3), educational and social (chapter 4), military (chapter 5), or administrative and judicial (chapter 6). This approach allows Griffiths to note, for example, how Kleist appears around 1808-09 to oscillate between more and less pessimistic views on military organization and on the usefulness of a «temporary suppression of individual freedom for the good of the nation» (118). Griffiths’ main focus, however, is on Kleist’s various thematizations of the «complex and dynamic relationship between the individual and the group» (48) in his literary works. Thus, Penthesilea, for example, is interpreted as the story of the title character’s «search for fulfillment and self-expression independently of her cultural community» (55), Die Verlobung as «thematizing» the individual’s «difficulties of crossing cultural boundaries» (64), or Der Prinz von Homburg as demonstrating that Kleist recognizes «that the individual’s creative self-expression both supports and threatens the performance of the army» (117). From these readings emerges an 90 Besprechungen / Reviews overall image of Kleist as an engaged citizen who constantly hints at progressive political, judicial, and military positions, yet who signals at the same time that he does not believe that human nature allows for the possibility of ascertaining these progressive ideals, at least not without compromising fundamental human rights. While Griffiths’ book offers a useful and extensive summary of the political debates to which Kleist alludes throughout his works, the rather general (and rarely new) conclusions drawn from such readings point toward the inherent weakness of Griffiths’ book. Driven primarily by biographical and psychological interests, this study reduces the literary texts to supplements. Reading Kleist’s works merely to complete the «available biographical evidence about Kleist’s attitude to politics» (40) means sacrificing the brunt of Kleist’s critical-analytic potential, and avoiding the important transcendental questions that Kleist’s narratives pose with regard not only to the political and social questions of his day, but also to the philosophical, aesthetic and cognitive convictions on which they (and many of our modern beliefs) are built. The matter is made only worse when Griffiths acknowledges that the value of his biographical findings as a guide to Kleist’s literary oeuvre is limited, and that «Kleist’s technique as a writer» (28) needs to be examined - yet subsequently reads Kleist’s propensity to create unresolved tensions, contradictions and paradoxes only as indicative of unresolved or compromised political positions, or as examples of Kleist drawing «attention to the human tendency to seek neat explanations for complex and often mysterious events» (149) where such are «not always» possible. In the end, Kleist’s writing technique is seen as informing us about the shortcomings of his intellect. Griffiths reads Kleist - who many would consider one of the most analytic and precise of German writers - not as exposing the blind spots, aporias, or inherent violence of Enlightenment ideology, but rather as an author who has «a strong aversion to abstraction» (43), who is not «an abstract thinker» (43). Like the book as a whole, Griffiths’ rather short interpretations of Kleist’s highly complex narratives (on average, he devotes about five pages to each work) generally end where one would hope - after thirty years of intense «formulaic» engagement with Kleist’s writing - critical analysis would begin: for example, with the insight that Kleist’s narratives often leave their reader «with the unsatisfying awareness that the evidence of the text is inconclusive and that all judgments - the reader’s included - must remain provisional» (142). Making such an observation the starting point rather than the conclusion of one’s investigation into the political and social context of Kleist’s writing could have made it possible to combine the metaphorical with a formally reflective approach to literature. Such an approach would endeavor to understand Kleist’s particular literary practice in reference to the socio-historical context, which both allows for and is the target of its (dis-)articulation. I would point toward recent publications by David Roberts, Helmut Schneider, Bianca Theisen, or Sigrid Weigel as successful examples of such an approach. Elystan Griffiths’ book addresses a different audience. It illustrates both the need for and difficulty of combining metaphorical with formulaic approaches. Bowling Green State University Edgar Landgraf