Anna Seghers: The Mythic Dimension by Helen Fehervary, and: Auf stand der Fischer von St. Barbara by Anna Seghers (review)

Abstract

542 Reviews personal and the public, and the process of their overcoming. Elizabeth Boa looks at the eulogistic mode in poems easily dismissed as propagandistic and therefore, in view of the Wende and the collapse of Communism, as dated. Anthony Phelan offers a perspective on the drafts of Brecht's poetic version of the Communist Manifesto which allows a consideration of its relation to Lucretius, Marx and Engels, and the progress of World War II. David Constantine shows the dark side of Brecht in the pornographic sonnets, but places it in the context of his utopian provocativeness. Ray Ockenden on 'Der Schuh des Empedokles' presents the range of Verfremdungseffekte in the title poem, exile poems, and the Buckower Elegien, after the term had become a feature of his theoretical writings in the thirties. Erdmut Wizisla examines 'Kinderhymne' as a riposte to Hoffmann von Fallersleben's 'Lied der Deutschen' and compares it also with Becher's 'Auferstanden aus Ruinen'. Karen Leeder discusses the reception of the poetry in English, with reference to Seamus Heaney, Adrian Henri, Naomi Replansky, Keith Armstrong, Michael Hamburger, Adrian Mitchell, Tom Paulin, Christopher Logue, Andy Croft, and Derek Mahon, in the context of extensive quotation from their work, which includes translations. All the authors combine close readings of single poems with overviews of forms based on a wide cultural awareness ofpast and present. They fulfilthe editors' promise that the book is 'a jovial disputation about a legacy and its reception, about the po? tential for a productive rereading of Brecht's poems in another century'. Appearing under the imprint of the publisher of the standard translation of most of Brecht's works, the volume clearly aims at a readership beyond the Brecht research community. It pays throughout particular attention to problems of translation and to the changing political context of the oeuvre both in its creation and in its reception. St Andrews Malcolm Humble Anna Seghers: The Mythic Dimension. By Helen Fehervary. (Social History, Popu? lar Culture, and Politics in Germany) Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. 2001. xi + 275pp. $52.50; ?37.50. ISBN 0-472-11215-5 (hbk). Aufstand der Fischer von St. Barbara. By Anna Seghers. Ed. by Helen Fehervary withJenniferWilliams. (Werkausgabe:DaserzahlerischeWerk,i/i.i). Berlin: Aufbau. 2002. 171pp. ?22.50. ISBN 3-351-03451-2 (hbk). Helen Fehervary's stimulating monograph adds a number of strikingly original per? spectives to the current reassessment of Anna Seghers's work. In addition to offering instructive insights into Seghers's relationship with Brecht and Benjamin, the book is the firstin any language to situate Seghers firmlywithin the context of Central and East Central European intellectual history. It demonstrates in particular the depth and extent of her lifelong indebtedness to the ideas ofthe young Georg Lukacs and the Budapest Sunday Circle. Fehervary' s knowledge of Hungarian enables her to evaluate archival and published material which is as little known as it is important and leads her to the crucial discovery that certain key words which are vital to an understanding of the ceuvre are phonetic transcriptions fromthe Hungarian (for instance, the associ? ation of Djal, in Seghers's 'Die Toten auf der Insel Djal' (1924), with the Hungarian root gyal opens up a fascinating line of interpretation linking the story to the expe? riences ofthe Sunday Circle). No less illuminating is her contention that Seghers is 'the quintessential pictorial writer' (p. 13). Of crucial importance here is Seghers's doctoral dissertation, an early testimony to her enduring fascination with the work of Rembrandt and the Dutch landscape painters whose influence is especially evident in the land-, sea-, and skyscapes characteristic of her work. In addition to identifying numerous images which Seghers derived fromthe Dutch masters' studies ofeveryday MLRy 99.2, 2004 543 life, Fehervary sees a close correspondence between features of Seghers's prose and Rembrandt's drawing style. In the early short story 'Grubetsch' (1927), forexample, which so impressed Hans Henny Jahnn when he nominated the virtually unknown writer for the prestigious Kleist Prize in 1928, the influence of Rembrandt's various depictions of the supper at Emmaus is so palpable that it is 'as if Seghers had been looking at these depictions while...