Besprechungen / Reviews 205 sprechende Sonderstellung nimmt auch das Bukolische Tagebuch als Beispiel für ein schöpfungspoetologisches Tagebuch ein. Außerdem hätten die Essays mehr als kursorische Verweise verdient, da sie nicht nur der Präzisierung von Lehmanns Wirkungsintention dienen, sondern auch die Kriterien der Kunstprosa als spezifischer literarischer Gattung erfüllen. Diese Bemerkungen sind als Anregungen für die zukünftige Lehmann-Forschung zu verstehen und schmälern keineswegs das Verdienst des Autors, mit seiner Biographie nicht nur eine Lücke in der Lehmann-Forschung zu schließen, sondern auch einen der bedeutendsten, aber in Vergessenheit geratenen deutschen Dichter des 20. Jahrhunderts ins allgemeine und wissenschaftliche Gedächtnis zu rufen. Rice University, Houston, Texas Klaus Weissenberger Katharina Mommsen: «Orient und Okzident sind nicht mehr zu trennen» - Goethe und die Weltkulturen. Reihe: Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft 75 (Ed. Jochen Golz). Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012. 480 pp. € 28,00. This volume gathers twenty-five essays by the eminent Goethe scholar Katharina Mommsen. The individual pieces are based on keynote addresses and reprints of previous publications spanning many years of the author’s study of Goethe’s relationship to the East. In them Katharina Mommsen shows the diverse ways that the poetry, religion, and art of the East became a decisive resource for poetic inspiration and cultural renewal throughout Goethe’s life. Mommsen introduces her collection with an expression of admiration for Goethe’s ability to open himself up to encounters with otherness. In this respect she draws particular attention to Goethe’s great love and emulation of Hafez when he was already sixty years old, resulting in the West-östlicher Diwan, and his equally astounding openness to Chinese culture in his late seventies and early eighties when he studied Chinese poetry and wrote the Chinesische Tageszeiten. In both cases, according to Mommsen, Goethe assumes the speaking/ writing position of a poet - the Islamic mystic or the retired Mandarin bureaucrat - situated in the other culture. Mommsen points out that Goethe’s unique respect for other cultures and religions and his eagerness to be inspired by the great artists of these cultures was in turn recognized and celebrated by many cultures. She sees this confirmed by the fact that some of Goethe’s works have been translated into numerous languages, the most translated being Werther and Faust. The volume begins with two introductory essays touching on the issue of orientalism. Mommsen briefly mentions Edward Said’s influential study but sees her contribution primarily in singling out Goethe and some other German authors, such as Wieland, Lessing, Herder, Rückert, Georg Forster, and Alexander von Humboldt, as being free of an attitude that would glorify the West and vilify the East in the service of a colonialist agenda. (See p. 45). In many of the essays in this volume, Katharina Mommsen assumes a position similar to the one she praises in Goethe. She approaches the other, non-Western, non-Christian culture with much CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 205 14.07.15 20: 41 206 Besprechungen / Reviews respect, singling out classical or contemporary writers or poets to whom she calls attention as exemplary in their ability to bridge cultural divides. For it is this capacity to overcome cultural and religious difference that Mommsen considers the enduring message of Goethe and his Persian counterpart Hafez. It is this ethos that she captures in the title of the volume «Orient und Okzident sind nicht mehr zu trennen,» which is a citation from Goethe’s Faust and which constitutes a recurring refrain throughout the collection of essays. At the end of the volume, the reader can find a chronological list of the author’s lectures and interviews, a list of the illustrations, an index of names and works, as well as an index of Goethe’s works. The individual, frequently quite short essays of the volume are grouped thematically under these headings: «Orientalische Poesie,» «West-östliche Versammlung,» «Türken, Bagdad, 1001 Nacht,» and «Unterschiedliches zum Ausklang.» While the individual textual examples that Mommsen works with suggest a strategy of assimilation, she offers no overarching explicit argument as to how we are to imagine Goethe’s creation of this cultural bridge. What makes it possible to postulate such an identity or communality between such different and distinct cultures? And why do cultural differences matter? Mommsen comes closest to engaging these big questions in the essays grouped under the title «West-östliche Versammlung.» Here she draws attention to Calderón, especially Calderón’s El principe constante, and Goethe’s reception of Calderón as a playwright who recognized the indebtedness of the West to the East, which he reflected in his plays. According to Mommsen, it is in Calderón’s approach to Islam that Goethe found a model for how we are to read and relate to Hafez. In the same group of essays she also discusses Goethe’s relationship to the genres of wisdom literature and didactic literature as well as Goethe’s relationship to calligraphy in order to approach the question as to how the poet deals with the mediation between cultural differences. The final grouping, however, does not reflect on whether and how cultural differences matter but rather it seems to indicate something along the lines of «miscellaneous.» The strength of this volume lies in the many precise textual references and cross-references within Goethe’s work where he engages with specific texts and figures from the non-European cultures. Ultimately, the individual essays stand all very well on their own. Columbia University Dorothea von Mücke Paul Bishop (Ed.): A Companion to Friedrich Nietzsche: Life and Works. Rochester: Camden House, 2012. xii + 449 pp. $ 90.00. As indicated in its title (and underscored often enough by Nietzsche himself), this collection of essays by established European and American scholars emphasizes the intimate connection between the philosopher’s life and works - or, in editor Paul Bishop’s own words, «the reciprocity of biography and creativity» (6). In keeping with the continually growing Camden House Companion series, the volume is addressed to both beginning and advanced readers of Nietzsche. The bookends CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 206 14.07.15 20: 41