Briefe: Gesamtausgabe 1763–1803 by Johann Gottfried Herder (review)

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234 Reviews treatment of Turks from the fifteenthcentury, explores their manipulationby successive dramatists, and illustrates that the persuasive force of a drama rests on the dramatists ' mastery of a sign-system based on a common understanding of, for example, mythology, metaphor and emblem, and the connotations of whiteness and blackness. The popularity of opera at this time is acknowledged by the focus on performances staged in Braunschweig and Hamburg, two centres of early German opera. While the norm-endorsing function of opera of this period is well established, the achievement of this study lies in its demonstration that the opera librettist, using his own idiom, employs the rhetorical traditions of spoken drama. An enterprising examination of examples from some of the few extant scores reveals parallels between musical and textual rhetoric. Arguably the discussion of opera could have encompassed analysis of a libretto by Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig; Feind's views on opera could possibly have been complemented by those of Menantes and Neumeister. But these are quibbles. The work offers a panoramic view of the German stage, shedding light on some lesser-known areas. In this respect it makes an important contribution to the early modern syllabus at a time when the choice of texts studied by undergraduates is often limited by the scarcity of appropriate secondary literature. Equally, it offersa lucid and stimulating argument with which specialists can profitably engage. University of Exeter Sara Smart Briefe: Gesamtausgabe 1763-1803. By Johann Gottfried Herder. Ed. by Gunter Arnold for the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik. Vol. xi: Kommentar zu den Banden 1?3, Weimar: Bohlau. 2001. 664 pp. ?99.90. ISBN 3-7400-1178-5. This latest volume in the comprehensive edition of Herder's letters, the firstten vol? umes of which have already been reviewedin this journal (MLR, 93 (1998), 1157-60), contains the editor's commentary on 636 of the letters, or roughly a quarter of the total. For two main reasons, the commentary is necessarily extensive. Firstly, since the letters of Herder's correspondents (some 2,500 of them survive) are not included in the edition, their content has to be conveyed through frequent quotations and paraphrases. And secondly, since Herder regularly discusses his own current writ? ings and those of other authors on literary,philological, historical, philosophical, and theological topics, his letters are full of scholarly references and literary allusions to works in several languages, all of which require editorial comment and bibliographical elucidation. To this formidable task Gunter Arnold brings great erudition and an intimate knowledge of Herder's works and the Herder scholarship of the last two centuries. His annotations of the correspondences with Hamann, Heyne, Lavater, Mendelssohn, and Nicolai are in these respects exemplary. Given the large extent of Herder's personal, learned, and official correspondence and the loss and dispersal of large sections of it, lost and hitherto unknown items continue to come to light. Sixteen of these are inserted at appropriate chronological points in the present commentary. They include letters already published in earlier volumes of the edition but now corrected against rediscovered originals, official notes to the Biickeburg authorities on ecclesiastical and educational matters, and a few more substantial items (pp. 486-88, 609-11, and 659-60) which throw new light on episodes in Herder's life and on his attitude to his professional responsibilities in Schaumburg-Lippe. The inclusion of successive versions of the same letters in differentvolumes does not, of course, make foreasy reference, particularly since most of Volume ix, through no fault of the editor, is already given over to reprinted letters corrected when the lost MLRy 98.1,2003 235 originals were unexpectedly rediscovered. Readers must also refer to keys to abbreviations in more than one volume, and to the index of names in Volume x in order to identify Herder's less famous correspondents and other individuals mentioned in his letters. The effortrequired to familiarize oneself with the complex layout of the edition is, however, eminently worthwhile. This splendid commentary at last makes all known letters of Herder's pre-Weimar years fully accessible, and Giinter Arnold is to be congratulated on bringing this monumental enterprise a large step nearer to its conclusion. All Herder...