412 Besprechungen / Reviews couched in Fontane’s novels of the early 1880s. In this chapter, especially, Anderson’s strengths as an examiner of fiction’s interaction with larger political, cultural, and biographical forces - strengths readily visible in his earlier monograph, Ehrgeiz und Trauer: Fontanes offiziöse Agitation 1859 und ihre Wiederkehr in Unwiederbringlich (Stuttgart: S. Hirzel, 2002) - are again on display. The focus that works so well in Anderson’s earlier investigation of the full contexts of Unwiederbringlich, however, only highlights what will undoubtedly make some readers of this book uncomfortable. Der versteckte Fontane, itself a mixed production of newer research and revisions of articles Anderson published almost three decades ago, is often hunting game sprawled across numerous biographical contexts, across various literary genres, and across about seven decades of an author’s life. Anderson even points out that this sort of approach, which draws disparate textual and historical clues into what he calls a Beweisnetz, is only possible using data-search functions in the age of computers (9). Perhaps partially because of the data-mining that computers enable, his case can rely on connections that may seem to the reader, at least at first, quite tenuous. Anderson is explicitly aware of this. A somewhat defensive moment in his introduction reminds us that «[g]egen meine Arbeiten wurde manchmal eingewandt, die Beweisführung beruhe auf Zufällen. Der Grund dafür ist die Suche nach den Fakten, denn es ist der Zufall, der die Fakten von der Theorie unterscheidet.» Anderson positions himself thus as a discoverer of patterns rather than a creator of them. Yet through careful argumentation, close reading, and undeniable plausibility, his enlightening and productive analyses do manage to overcome the appearance of Zufall. They are, moreover, pertinent to an enduring study and appreciation of Fontane’s work. In a discussion of the novelist’s «kreative[s] Zitieren anderer Schriftsteller» (30), Anderson attends to Effi Briest’s cryptic statement to Crampas, «Ich mag nicht als Reimwort auf Ihren König von Thule herumlaufen» by moving us quickly to Goethe’s poem. It becomes clear that the «versteckte[s] Reimwort» for Thule is Buhle, alluded to but omitted from the novel. Such observations amplify our understanding of Fontane’s deserved reputation for the depiction of witty, subtle, even suggestive conversation. While the best of Anderson’s readings overcome the idea of coincidence - that is, they demonstrate a pattern on Fontane’s part and reveal to us something about his style - the less successful moments pull up short precisely because they feel more like a pattern constructed, rather than a coincidence discovered, by Anderson. One example of this, in the chapter on Fontane’s covert critiques of Bismarck, sees Anderson linking Fontane’s discussion of Schiller’s Die Räuber and Karl Moor in an 1878 letter to Maximilian Ludwig, to Fontane’s mention of would-be Bismarck assassin Karl Nobiling in a letter to his daughter Martha almost three months later. «Ich glaube,» Anderson writes, «die in seinen [Fontanes, G.B.] Augen berechnende Betonung des Namens ‘Karl’ stellt einen Bezug zu den Räubern her» (157). This weak and almost admittedly created link - note the «Ich glaube» - only serves as a platform for other speculations, though: «Wer Karl Moor sagt, der meint auch dessen intriganten, erbschleichenden Bruder Franz.» What begins as hypothesis becomes premise, a problematic move, and the connections thus enabled continue, as Anderson writes: «Wer erzählt dem Vater-land Lügen und Halbwahrheiten über Karl Moor/ Nobiling Besprechungen / Reviews 413 zum eigenen Vorteil? Hie Franz, dort Bismarck und seine Presseleute.» The chain of associations rounds itself off by bringing in Gerd Minde from Grete Minde, the novel whose «politische Relevanz» (158) is championed here by the reminder that the similarly named Geert von Innstetten in Effi Briest is «Bismarcks enger Mitarbeiter» (157). Such passages might lead a reader to see in Der versteckte Fontane not just the coincidences that are proof of Fakten, as Anderson puts it in his introduction, but also the sort of Theorie that he simultaneously opposes to Fakten. Indeed, if the connections Anderson presents seem at times to bear the marks of not just theory but conspiracy theory, complete with the cover-up implied by Fontane’s idea of the Versteckspiel, then this is as much an advantage to his study as it is a drawback. For despite the occasional moments at which the links appear to go further than credibility or argument can support, the more frequent windfall of Anderson’s careful attention to possible concealed patterns in Fontane’s writings (including his novels, occasional poems, letters, journalism, and autobiography) is a deeper appreciation of the substantial wit and narrative subtlety of a canonical figure. California State University, Chico Geoffrey Baker W ILLIAM K INDERMAN AND K ATHERINE R. S YER (E DS .): A Companion to Wagner’s Parsifal. Rochester: Camden House, 2005. 376 pp. $ 90. The essays in this collection depict Wagner’s last work from a number of different perspectives, focusing on text, musical structure, reception and interpretation - though this last aspect is handled somewhat superficially. Parsifal, as every one of the contributors acknowledges, is a fascinating and highly controversial work. It went through a long period of composition and had many inspirations - Christian ideas, the philosophy of Schopenhauer, and even Buddhist thought. Mary Cicora explains in her chapter on the literary background of the opera that Wagner, as in many of his other works, was using medieval material to address problems of the nineteenth century. Thus while he did much to popularize medieval literature, he used it for his own purposes: Cicora demonstrates how Wagner’s interpretation of his source, Wolfram von Eschenbach, was distinctly modern in ignoring issues of time and space, and she illustrates the various ways Wagner’s characters reveal much more psychological depth than Wolfram’s. James McGlathery’s chapter on erotic love in Parsifal shows convincingly that Wagner departed dramatically from the portrayal of this subject in his sources, particularly Chrétien de Troyes. Whereas Wagner’s Grail knights are an all-male community, the medieval sources show a much more conventional picture of relations between the sexes. Both Wolfram and Chrétien refer frequently to erotic love, but Wagner shifts this to a focus on chastity and asceticism. McGlathery concludes that the opera is a celebration of the power of erotic passion. Ulrike Kienzle considers the status of Parsifal as a sacred work, particularly a Christian one. Clearly, it does not reflect institutionalized Christianity, but rather an idealized form of this, combined