Goethes 'Lehr'- und 'Wanderjahre': Eine Kulturgeschichte der Moderne (review)

Abstract

MLRy 100.3, 200S 863 Gibbons's essay is complemented by Brita Hempel's in the next section ('Freundschaft , Liebe, Sexualitat'), and it too draws on unpublished material. She concludes that in the short fragmentary text 'Loix des femmes Soldats' written in connection with Uber die Soldatenehen, Lenz endorses the divine, patriarchal world order and the sexual morality derived fromit. Johannes Lehmann shows that Lenz's concept ofhap? piness was derived from the Enlightenment but that italso reveals the strains within it and points towards the separation of happiness and morality. Similarly, Martin Kagel shows how Lenz reveals the cracks in the classical models of the ideal of friendship. Gerd Sautermeister resurrects Lenz's play Die Freunde machen den Philosophen with an ingenious interpretation of it as a psychological experiment. Christine Kiinzel draws our attention to the fact that the eighteenth century viewed rape and seduc? tion differentlyfrom our own age, mostly to the disadvantage of women, but that Lenz's dramas were beginning to show a shiftof opinion. Claudia Benthien examines non-verbal communication in a welcome close reading of Der neue Menoza, which highlights the occurrence of fainting and failing, while finally in this section, Helga Madland takes a personal stance in her farewell to a lifetime of Lenz studies and makes some original observations about Lenz's forward-looking view of women. The final section has papers on reception. Heidrun Makert traces the beginnings of research on Lenz in his home region of Livonia, Ariane Martin shows that the claim that Naturalism discovered Lenz needs revision, and Jan Knopf analyses the 'emasculation' of Lenz's Der Hofmeister in Brecht's adaptation through the addition of anachronisms and notion of 'die deutsche Misere'. Ken-Ichi Sato shows how the reception of Lenz in Japan at firstlatched onto the idea ofthe forerunner and the open form, but has become more differentiated. The final essay here is the bracing account by the Israeli theatre researcher Gad Kayner of a very provocative production of Die Soldaten at Tel Aviv University. Finally, the volume also has a list of the Lenziana in Cracow compiled by Gesa Weinert, and notices on the latest website and on the Internationale Lenz-Gesellschaft. Kayner's account of the production in the politically and culturally tense location of Tel Aviv gives us a sense of Lenz's works as provocation, as 'Wunde', though it seems also to be at the cost of authenticity. The title of this volume is not altogether happily chosen, for indeed, as one of its contributors, Ariane Martin, notes, the 'wound' metaphor implies an element of mythologizing and pays lip service to what is now a cliche: Lenz as forerunner, modernist, rebel pure and simple. In fact, most of the papers here show how deeply rooted he was in his times as well, and our understanding of that has been increasing. The wounds that still need healing are the gaps in our knowledge and understanding of him. There is only one gap I noticed here in the editing: a paper by Martin Rector is referredto on p. 352 as in this volume but not actually included. Apart from that omission, the editors and contributors are to be congratulated on helping us to fillyet more gaps in our knowledge of the unusually original writer Lenz. New Hall, Cambridge John Guthrie Goethes 'Lehr'- und 'Wanderjahre': Eine Kulturgeschichteder Moderne. By Franziska Schossler. Tiibingen: Francke. 2002. 379 pp. ?44. ISBN 3-7720-2782-2. Drawing heavily on New Historicist theory of an avowedly Foucauldian type, the author seeks to confirm the (sociologically oriented) critical consensus that Wilhelm Meister is 'modern', in the sense of presenting the reconstruction and reconfiguration of discourses contemporary with Goethe. In moving from the Lehrjahre to the Wanderjahre, it is argued, we move from Genie discourse (centred on individual 864 Reviews autonomy) to economic and medical discourse (centred on socio-historical, cultural issues). In tune with recent scholarship's 'leaving behind' the 'restrictive' category of the Bildungsroman, the text is viewed as a dialogistic archive of specialist dis? courses, revealing its genetic origin amid the social power positions it records. In other words, Wilhelm Meister profiles the 'Kultur-Zivilisation antagonism' that (since at...