'Fern im d�nischen Norden ein Bruder': Thomas Mann und Hermann Bang. Eine literarische Spurensuche by Claudia Gremler (review)

Abstract

MLRy ioo.i, 2005 261 work, but the scholar's historicist awareness of the plurality of traditions was at odds with the poet's need to give his materials coherence. Hofmannsthal saw his role as that of reintegrating these traditions for an equally disparate modern public. Initially Goethe was his model, but in an important reconsideration ofthis central relationship, Chapter 3 shows how from 1906/07 onwards, and particularly afterthe end of the war, Goethe lost his exemplary function. Hofmannsthal feltthe need to 're-sacralize' art in a post-Nietzschean age and uncover beneath an urgent awareness of the eclectic na? ture of culture 'eine geheimnisvoile, vitale Kraft, die ? als eine Art heilige Kultur? auf einer "hoheren" Ebene die historischen Traditionen einen kann' (p. 10). Konig's views here are compatible to some extent with those of others who have looked at Hof? mannsthal's progression fromhis self-confessed Stilverdrehungsmanie in the so-called 'lyrical decade' (to which Konig gives relatively little attention) towards a more truly individual style, but he offersa fuller picture than usual ofthe intellectual framework in which this development took place. Konig challengingly locates the main caesura after the First World War, rather than in the early 1900s, and is also somewhat less sanguine than most about the ultimate successes of this development. As well as developinga rigorous model forseeing Hofmannsthal's development, the book also maps the ways in which succeeding generations have read Hofmannsthal. Chapter 4 focuses on the circle of academies and intellectuals grouped around Hof? mannsthal in the 1920s and 1930s?Rudolf Borchardt, Konrad Burdach, Walther Brecht, and Josef Nadler. Carl Jacob Burckhardt and Walter Benjamin are examined alongside the dramas in the next section. Using a wealth of unpublished material, Konig shows how Hofmannsthal himself was largely responsible for setting the cri? tical agenda and how he communicated his view of the 'sacralization' of the cultural sphere to them, in effectstage-managing his own reception. This led, Konig argues, to a necessary blindness in the early reception, and he traces how some ofthe early inter? pretative habits, models, and preconceptions have dominated Hofmannsthal scholar? ship via Ernst Robert Curtius and Max Kommerell to Richard Alewyn and beyond. Given the huge scope of Konig's investigation and his perfectly plausible claim to have identified clear guiding principles for Hofmannsthal's most fundamental aes? thetic positions and intellectual principles, it is not clear why so little attention is devoted to his lyric and prose writings?this despite a separate (short) section on the issue of genre and Hofmannsthal's experimentation with generic variety in the early 1900s. It would be fascinating to see Konig's approach extended to the other dramatic writings, Der Schwierige, Der Unbestechliche, and the opera libretti. Since nearly a fifthof the book is taken up by a fabulously detailed bibliography and an index of persons, surely room could have been found forthat most helpful of indices, a 'Werkregister'. Quibbles aside, however, Konig's is one of the most important books on Hofmannsthal to have appeared in recent decades and will be essential reading for the foreseeable future. Royal Holloway, University of London Robert Vilain Fern im ddnischen Nor den ein Bruder': Thomas Mann und Hermann Bang. Eine literarische Spurensuche. By Claudia Gremler. (Palaestra, 320) Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2003. 366 pp. ?69. ISBN 3-525-20593-7. Literary influences on Thomas Mann's works have long been a well-researched area of Mann scholarship. Claudia Gremler's study, the published version of a doctoral dissertation completed for the University of Gottingen, deals with one very specific aspect of Mann's intertextual technique: the productiveuse of motifs, literary figures, and narrative methods which Mann encountered in the works of the Danish author 262 Reviews Herman Bang (1857-1912), a representative of Danish modernism, who is mostly associated with impressionism and decadence. Bang was one of a considerable num? ber of Scandinavian authors who were translated into German and became popular during the firstdecades of the twentieth century. Mann admired the Danish author, with whom he felta close kinship, partly due to their shared homosexual orientation, Gremler's examination of Mann's intertextual references to Bang's works explores the function of...