Friedrich de la Motte Fouqués Nibelungen-Trilogie ‘Der Held des Nordens’: Studien zu Stoff, Struktur und Rezeption by Wolf Gerhard Schmidt, and: Jahrbuch der Fouqué-Gesellschaft Berlin-Brandenburg 2000 ed. by Julia Bertschik (review)

Abstract

MLRy 98.4, 2003 1047 In two essays on Der Findling, Bettina Knauer points to the role ofmasks and the use of asthetischerScheinin Nicolo's construction of his identity,while IngeborgHarms uses a Marxist theory of the significance of exchange and the psychoanalytic notion of 'incorporation ' forher interpretation ofthe text as an exploration of exhausted authority. What of Kleist's drama? For Gerhard Kurz, Amphitryon represents, when read in Goethean terms as 'ein "gegenwartiges Drama"', not the power, but the impotence of God ('alter Vater Jupiter', as Merkur calls him) under the conditions of modernity. Three essays deal with Penthesilea: for Joachim Pfeiffer,the play shows how Kleist saw literature as the opportunity to imagine the dissolution of social, and above all gender, identities; Maximilian Nutz points out how the question of gender identity affectedthe reception of the work in aesthetic terms, and takes early twentieth-century criticism to task forreading Kleist 'vor dem Hintergrund sehr zeitbedingter Diskurse' (p. 222); and Gabriele Brandstetter questions the function of catharsis in the play, calling for an 'aesthetics of disgust'. Dagmar Ottman argues that, in Der Prinz von Homburg, Kleist's engagement with classicism led to a 'metonymic' style (demon? strated with reference to the role of such stage props as the giove), while Alexander von Bormann, comparing the play with Lessing's Philotas, sees it as a 'drama of adolescence'. Finally, in relation to Das Kdthchen von Heilbronn, Oesterle extends Max Kommerell's observation, 'Kleist liebt die Verhore', into an interpretation of Kathchen as a 'schone Seele' as conceived by Christoph Martin Wieland. This is a rich collection of essays (lacking only an index), and it will surely be an indispensable reference point for all future Kleist scholars. University of Glasgow Paul Bishop Friedrich de la Motte Fouques Nibelungen-Trilogie 'Der Held des Nordens': Studien zu Stoff, Struktur und Rezeption. By Wolf Gerhard Schmidt. (Saarbriicker Beitragezur Literaturwissenschaft, 68) St Ingbert: Rohrig. 2000. 333 pp. ?27. ISBN 3-86110-239-0 (hbk). Jahrbuch der Fouque-Gesellschaft Berlin-Brandenburg 2000. Ed. by Julia Bertschik. Berlin: Weidler. 2000. 124 pp. ?16.50. ISBN 3-89693-155-5 (pbk). At long last Fouque's Der Held des Nordens has received the attention it deserves. In a 'Nachbemerkung' Wolf Gerhard Schmidt tells us that his welcome study of this strangely neglected yet fascinating work is a slightly revised version of a Saarbrucken Magisterarbeit; his acknowledgements also make it clear that it owes a good deal to the advice and encouragement he received during a postgraduate year at Cambridge. The result is as impressive as it is ambitious. Towards the end (p. 220) Schmidt quotes a telling pronouncement by Helfrich Pe? ter Sturz. Writing in 1782, Sturz maintained: 'die alte nordische Geschichte gehort uns zu [. . .] sie ist dem Dichter der das wahre Erhabene fuhlt, fast mehr als die Griechische wert'. It was a line of thought which Fouque followed up with considerable success during a significant phase of the Napoleonic Wars, but which Wagner alone was able to transmute into high art. Curiously, Schmidt withholds the section he entitles 'Fouque's Studium der altnordischen Sagen', which one might have expected to find closer to 'Die Quellenfrage' (pp. 31-8), until pages 236-46, and chooses to discuss his concept of drama, in the Held des Nordens trilogy, the critical reception it received from contemporaries, and the themes and ideas which constitute its 'fic? tional cosmos', before turning his attention to what may well be considered its most significant aspect: Fouque's fascination with Germanic mythology and the way he presents it to his age. Schmidt's useful bibliography extends from p. 283 to p. 315, though it is rather disconcerting to see Carlyle's French Revolution (1837) given only 1048 Reviews as Die Franzosische Revolution (Leipzig, 1915) and to discover that, rather unhelpfully ,his own study is not provided with an index. A reader wondering where exactly Fouque and his Held des Nordens trilogy stand in relation to, say, Oehlenschager or, for that matter, William Morris must hope to chance upon the latter's names. To his surprise, this reviewer chanced on neither. Wagner of course could not be overlooked. Though the composer never mentions Der Held des...