Albert Schirrmeister (review)

Abstract

858 Reviews warmly recommended to those with a serious interest in the work of Wolfram von Eschenbach, since, quite apart from its contributions to the specific issue addressed in the title, the contributors provide close readings of diverse parts of the narrative text which are invariably relevant to an understanding of Parzival and of Wolfram's oeuvre as a whole. Cyril Edwards's translation of Parzival appears less than a quarter of a century after that of A. T. Hatto in the Penguin Classics series (1980). In view of the classic status accorded Hatto's version both in the anglophone world and in Germany and Austria, this might appear to be a temerarious undertaking, but it is clear that Edwards has not wished to place himself in (direct) competition with Hatto. In the course ofhis succinct introduction to the romance, Edwards adverts to his distinguished predecessor and also to the American translators Helen Mustard and Charles Passage (whose version appeared in 1961), announcing his particular programme and modus operandi in the following terms: Arthur Hatto remarks that 'the reader must imagine Wolfram to be in one sense rougher and less tidy than he appears in these pages'. This translation, in the interest of trying to convey something of Wolfram's stylistic originality,will give the reader a rougher ride than some of its predecessors. (p. xxx) Hence Edwards's translation, invariably accurate but aspiring to a degree of stylistic idiosyncrasy comparable to that shown by Wolfram himself, is in fact a 'Nachdichtung ' showing the same perceptibledelightin idiosyncratic and sometimes outlandish locutions as Wolfram himself. This fascination with verbal texture for its own sake is also reflected in his footnotes, which, not content simply to advance explanatory Realien, are more concerned to confront the dense verbal and metaphorical structures which characterize Wolfram's language. This not infrequently moves the translator to 'debate' with the (modern) reader what might be the best way of translating intriguing but recalcitrant phrases (see, for instance, the footnotes to pp. 207-08). Hence the ideal reader forthis latest translation might be the scholar already conversant with the original who can, as it were, join Edwards in his translating atelier. Yet even readers with little or no German will be able to savour more than a whiffof the challenging power of the medieval original in a translation which Edwards has, on principle, re? fused to 'normalize' for the sake of an easy read. University of Durham Neil Thomas Triumph des Dichters: Gekronte Intellektuelleim 16. Jahrhundert. By Albert Schirrmeister . Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Bohlau. 2003. viii + 3i9pp. ?34.90. ISBN 3-412-09703-9. Two hundred years since the creation of the last imperial poet laureate in the Holy Roman Empire, this book on their role is welcome indeed. Laureation had a long but largely inglorious history in the Empire. The firstimperial poet was laureated in 1355, the last in 1804, and over these four and a half centuries there were, according to my own researches, more than thirteen hundred bearers ofthe proud titlepoeta laureatus caesareus, 90 per cent of them now unknown to literary historians. Although ample secondary literature exists on certain individual poets, surprisingly little has hitherto been written on the phenomenon as a whole?doubtless not least a reflection of the general disdain in which the concept of laureated poets is held. Apart from encyclo? paedia and handbook entries under 'Dichterkronung' and the like, there have been a few important articles, notably by Karl Schottenloher in 1926 and more recently by Dieter Mertens and Theodor Verweyen, but Albert Schirrmeister is the firstto MLRy 100.3, 2005 859 devote a whole book to the subject, although even his study, based on his Freiburg im Breisgau dissertation, focuses on a small segment of the history of the phenomenon, the years between the laureation of Conrad Celtis by Frederick III in 1487 and that of Nikolaus Mameranus by Charles V in 1555, and thus including the thirty-odd poets laureated by Maximilian I. Operating with the concept of 'field', a term derived largely from Pierre Bourdieu, and denoting a dynamic system of connections and influences, attractions and conflicting tensions (rather as in a magnetic field), Schirrmeister sees the...