Josef Quack (review)

Abstract

MLR, 100.3, 2005 875 It is equally paradoxical that the greatest achievement of Zilcosky's book is to show how rooted Kafka was in the culture of his time, which means that of pre-First World War, German-speaking Central Europe, by interesting himself so much in travel. University of Kent Julian Preece Geschichtsroman und Geschichtskritik: Zu Alfred Doblins 'Wallenstein'. By Josef Quack. Wiirzburg: K6nigshausen& Neumann. 2004. 398 pp. ?39.80. ISBN 38260 -2710-8. Alfred Doblin's place in the literary canon is owed largely to Berlin Alexanderplatz, a work known to readers of German as one of the foremost novels of the city and the prime example of polyphonic narrative. Its popularity has not, however, engendered a matching degree of interest in his other writings; indeed, the apparent differences of theme and style from one of Doblin's works to the next is one likely reason why fans of Berlin Alexanderplatz are put offreading any more of his novels and short stories. His novel Wallenstein, begun in 1916 and published in 1920, is no quick or easy read. It is densely written, spread across an immense range of characters and places, and relentless in the detail of its descriptions. It spares little of the reader's nerves in its portrayals of extreme, sadistic violence in the Thirty Years War. None the less, the result is a vivid evocation of the war's atmosphere and the brutal machinations of some of its personalities. The dimensions of Doblin's subject matter and the sheer force of the language of Wallenstein indicate his ambition to give an original and monumental treatment to a popular German theme. In this study,JosefQuack sets out to establish Wallenstein as a fullyfledged historical novel, a highlight in Doblin's ceuvre and a work capable of holding its own among the great names of European literature. He cites the predominance of theory in Doblin criticism, and its prejudice against the historical novel, as reasons why Wallenstein has been underrated in the past, and aims to put the record straight. The study is organized into three sections which put this case from differentperspectives. First, Quack discusses the text alone to show convincingly how, contrary to widespread belief, it possesses both a coherent structure and a strong historical sense. Indeed, he argues, Doblin makes full use of the historical novelist's licence to analyse with the methods of fiction, beyond the historian's duty-bound interpretation of sources. Second, he analyses Flaubert's Salammbo and Tolstoy's War and Peace to establish hallmarks of the historical novel for which there are analogies in Wallenstein, and he also briefly compares it with de Coster's Thyl Ulenspiegel. Third, he examines Wallenstein in the context of Doblin's later statements on it, and of his other works. This is a valuable study of a novel which has hitherto received too little serious attention. Quack's argument is made all the more persuasive by its division into discrete sections, and he is right to insist that Wallenstein both teems with historical facts and raises questions about the philosophy of history. He delivers useful surveys and critiques of Doblin's statements on the genre ofthe historical novel and on nature, and reassesses Doblin's opinion of Schiller's Wallenstein, which he rightly shows to be much more nuanced than is often suggested. None the less, there are times when he overstates his case. To argue that Wallenstein shows the 1618-48 conflict to be a war of religion, and thus provides an analysis with which historians concur (p. 96), is to misunderstand both historiography and the novel and to push an over-generalized concept of narrative (p. 71) too far.The recurrence of religious themes in Wallenstein does not translate into such a straightforward global interpretation (which Doblin did not desire anyway). Quack's criticisms of others can be unfounded: for example, his complaints about Ricarda Huch's 'iibermaBigefr] Gebrauch der indirekten Rede' 876 Reviews (p. 197) in her novel Der grofieKrieg in Deutschland, and the lack of stylistic features employed by Doblin (p. 199), appear subjective and simply partisan. It is proof of Wallenstein's complexity that Quack, despite arguing forits...