Der Streit um Klassizität: Polemische Konstellationen vom 18. zum 21. Jahrundert ed. by Daniel Ehrmann and Norbert Christian Wolf

Abstract

Reviewed by: Der Streit um Klassizität: Polemische Konstellationen vom 18. zum 21. Jahrundert ed. by Daniel Ehrmann and Norbert Christian Wolf Mattias Pirholt Daniel Ehrmann and Norbert Christian Wolf, ed. Der Streit um Klassizität: Polemische Konstellationen vom 18. zum 21. Jahrundert. Paderborn: Brill-Fink, 2021. 332 pp. Harmony and order are keywords repeatedly used to describe the nature of both the classical and classicism. Klassizität refers to transhistorical qualities that warrant continuity and stability, constants in the flux of time. Johann Joachim Winckelmann's notion of the "stille Größe und edle Einfalt" of the Greeks has been regurgitated for the last two and a half centuries, but it draws on a much longer tradition, stretching back to the Renaissance and even to the classical age itself. Leon Battista Alberti's demand for pictorial dignity and grace and Polykleitos's canonical theory of symmetry and proportion point to an almost unalterable, comfortable, and sometimes oppressive ideal. Against this backdrop of age-old consensus, the overarching ambition of Ehrmann and Wolf's edited volume is to emphasize the polemic nature of the classical, is more than welcome. Tracing the presence of Klassizität from the late eighteenth century to today, the book's thirteen contributions, including the editors' initiated introduction, describe a continuous and fierce battle both within the classical tradition and between classicism and anti-classicism. As Helmut Pfotenhauer claims in the book's first chapter on Karl Philipp Moritz's anticlassicist classicism, "Klassizismus ist per se Streitkultur." In this battle, the combatants—be it Goethe, Hölderlin, Handke, or Jelinek—are not always quite clear about which side they are on. Somewhat pointedly, one could perhaps argue that it is not important whether you defend or oppose classicism, as long as you engage in the fight. As Ehrmann explains in his long essay, "Polemik als Konstellation," polemics are less a matter of quarreling individuals with clear intentions and goals and more a question of constellations determined by their specific situatedness in time and space. Thus, the battles between classicism and anticlassicism address not only or not primarily "kanonischen Formen vergangener Epochen, sondern verhalten sich stets auch in spezifischer Weise zu zeitgenössischen Diskursen und Medienentwicklungen, grenzen sich von diesen ab und provozieren wiederum Reaktionen auf die eigenen Positionierungen." Arguably, Ehrmann's chapter, which traces the evolution of these polemic constellations from the mid-1700s to the early 1900s, functions as the theoretical and thematic foundation of the array of readings of two hundred years of Germanlanguage literature (with a chapter on the French avantgarde by Susanne Winter). The rest of the chapters zoom in on specific periods (e.g., Dirk Rosen on Junges Deutschland and Bernadette Grubner on the GDR era), specific writers (e.g., Harald Gschwandtner on Handke and Bernhard and Wolfgang Riedel on Grünbein), or specific texts (e.g., Kathrin Rosenfield on Hölderlin's Sophocles translations and Uta Degner on Jelinek's Ulrike Maria Stuart). As is often the case with collections such as this one, the richness of material and perspectives make the book into a somewhat motley entity. Depicting the two-hundred-year-long [End Page 187] biography of a particular concept, or set of concepts, it becomes apparent that the authors often mean very different things when they say Klassik, Klassizismus, or Klassizität. While some, Pfotenhauer, for example, focus on classicism in the narrower sense of the word, that is, on the eighteenth-century conception of classical, primarily Greek, art and literature, others, Gschwandtner and Degner, among others, address the oppressive presence of a national canon, Goethe's, in particular. Some contributions hardly address Klassizität at all. Michael Bies's chapter on Goethe and Kathrin Rosenfield's on Hölderlin are both excellent interpretations of Goethe's concept of Handwerk and Hölderlin's famous translations of Sophocles, but the battles they zoom in on are not really between classicism and anticlassicism. Both texts are convincing and thought-provoking studies, but they significantly widen the scope of the book as a whole. Furthermore, one or two possible topics remain underdeveloped. Schiller plays a surprisingly small role in the various discussions of the German classicist tradition, whereas Grillparzer...