Bildgedächtnis: Zur poetischen Funktion der Sinneswahrnehmung im Prosawerk Johannes Bobrowskis by Andreas Degen

Abstract

MLR, IOI.2, 2006 595 Received opinion, on the other hand, he often accepts without question (Ernestine Schlant, The Language of Silence (New York and London: Routledge, i999)). One puts the book down feeling it has been in the end amissed opportunity. UNIVERSITY OF KENT JULIAN PREECE Bildgeddchtnis: Zur poetischen Funktion der Sinneswahrnehmung im Prosawerk Jto hannes Bobrowskis. By ANDREAS DEGEN. (Philologische Studien und Quellen, i87) Berlin: Schmidt. 2004. 4II pp. ?49.80. ISBN 3-503-07925-4. After eighty pages of introduction that explain perception through the senses and his torical imagination, Andreas Degen presents in great detail in this Berlin dissertation nine stories and two published novels. He often breaks new ground when defining Bobrowski's application of sensory perception to portray the past, and his concen tration on perspectives to describe characters rather than the evocative potentials of metaphoric language. He highlights how Bobrowski used history to understand the present with individual images combining to produce a 'Bildgedachtnis' and new interpretations. Spatial links fuse with musical reminiscences to reveal correspon dences and challenges to the behaviour of individuals and communities. Bobrowski treats problems of coming to terms with the Holocaust or the division of Germany into two states as extensions of earlier Central European persecutions, and this process is seen as an attempt to assuage his sense of national guilt. Degen examines literary procedures: observation, interpretation, interrelation of memory and imagination, and the artistic presentation of actual experiences. In correlating what is near and far as spatial and temporal co-ordinates, Bobrowski used both discours and histoire a la Todorov. Reactualizing the past could bring reassessment on a personal and commu nity level, self-awareness emerging out of the process of narration. For this Bobrowski favours themetaphor of walking beside a river that, together with plain and sky, ren ders the landscape abstract, and he uses colours such as green and white for positive and negative connotations. Bobrowski's inclusion of vertical features brings to the landscape life and structure, opening up its potential expressivity. Degen emphasizes the influence of Hamann's understanding of language as almost tactile, as both expe rience and revelation. Hamann's dictum 'Rede, daf3 ich dich sehe' becomes the key to understanding how Bobrowski expressed reality as a form of oration using both landscapes and artefacts. Where objects are devalued, the potential to communicate is lost (seeWalter Benjamin), whereas Bobrowski's tone of melancholy resignation registered such deficiency and tried to overcome it in the use of protagonist figures and groups. The choice of texts to illustrate the central argument is justified by grouping them as discoveries by the observer (Rainfarn, Der Mahner, and Der Tdnzer Malige), the actuality of old pictures (Im Guckkasten: Galiani and Betrachtung eines Bildes), and the interplay of memory and imagination (Von nachgelassenen Poesien, Yunger Herr am Fenster, Die Seligkeit der Heiden, and Boehlendorfi). Other texts are used in sup port, but themost detailed analyses are of the novels, where Degen applies his earlier theories. Some arguments suggest levels of complexity by formulae that are hard to follow, not least because of overuse of abstract nouns, e.g. for Levins Miihle 'Die Erzihlung bzw. Einholung der Vergangenheit endet also, wie sie begonnen hat: in einer Asthetik Philippis (Realitit der Schriftlichkeit, Trennung, historischen Par tikularitat), nicht Weiszmantels (Ideal der Miindlichkeit, Einheit, Prasenz)' (p. 265). Others are supported effectively either by tabular presentation of the structure, or by clear summing-up of earlier detail: e.g. for Litauische Claviere, 'DerWechsel des Sinnesbereiches istAusdruck der Gegenwiirtigkeit vergangener Zeit' (p. 32 I).Degen 596 Reviews is particularly persuasive in his understanding of the interrelation between music and text. Yet, typically, there is no detailed interpretation of the lyric Dorfmusik within context, and Degen misses out in general on the humour, lightness of touch, and im mediacy of Bobrowski's writing. Specialist readers will also be surprised by Degen's lack of first-hand reference to the extensive Nachlass and by some deficiencies in his bibliography. MELLEN UNIVERSITY, IOWA BRIANKEITH-SMITH Peter Handke's Landscapes of Discourse. By CHRISTOPH PARRY. (Studies inAustrian Literature, Culture and Thought) Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press. 2003. 25 Ipp. $29; ?45. ISBN I-5724I-I2I-X. Peter Handke...