Karl Kraus and the Critics by Harry Zohn (review)

Abstract

MLR, 96. , 200I MLR, 96. , 200I in Goethe's 'Denn das Leben ist die Liebe, Und des Lebens Leben Geist', which he quotes in the same speech (Werke indreizehn Bdnden (Frankfurta.M.: Fischer, I974), XII,674), as he had done a year earlierin his plea for common Europeanideals (xI, 869). It became a crucial part of Mann's answer to his question. Surprisingly, Woltersdoes not use thesegreatwords,but the point is stronglymade by him. Against this background the five chapters dealing with the novels trace the unfolding story of Jaakob's search for the invisible God and Joseph's role within that story. A brilliant chapter on the 'Hollenfahrt' is followed by a chapter on Jaakob's inability to act wisely in a political world, and three chapters deal with Joseph's falland gradualriseto the position in which we ultimatelyfindhim. What emerges from this great study is also a sympatheticyet fair and critically informedunderstandingof the gradualconversion of the writerMann to a position enthusiastically proclaimed, but at heart sadly regretted in its necessity, of committing himself to political tasksin response to the 'Forderungdes Tages', the tasks imposed on the writer conscious of his representative role in historical circumstances.The defence of the eternal truthsabout humankindand its rightful existence, embedded in ancient myths that project the task of the future, is at the heartof Mann's ceuvre,but particularlycentralto the novels in 'Patriarchenluft'. UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM HINRICH SIEFKEN Karl Kraus and the Critics. By HARRY ZOHN. (Literary Criticism in Perspective) Columbia, SC: Camden House. I997. xvi + 16I pp. ?50. Karl Kraus cannot have been easy to treat within the conventions of the 'Literary Criticism in Perspective' series, which aims to 'trace literary scholarship and criticism'about authors,movements, and singleworks.His achievement centreson the cumulativemonument ofDieFackel ratherthan on singleworks,and he met with extremes of adulation and hostility, the hostility expressed not least in the studied ignoring of his activities by his principaljournalistic target, the NJeue FreiePresse. HarryZohn'sroom formanoeuvreisalsorestrictedby the need, writingforEnglishspeakingreaders ,to fillin his account with explanationsof varioushistoricalfigures and events on which Kraus commented; this background material is usefully supplementedby an introductory'Chronology'. Within these constraints,Zohn's strategyis to construct a selective 'typology of Kraus criticism'. He treats criticalperceptions of central issues, including Kraus's attitudeto his ownJewishness,to Austrianpolitics, and to psychoanalysis,in a series of chaptersarrangedchronologicallyand thematically,with a number of loose ends drawn together in a chapter entitled 'Kraus and . ..', and he winds up the storyin two furtherchapters surveying 'The Postwar"Kraus Renaissance"' and developments since the mid-1970s, 'Atthe Centennial and Beyond'. Literaturein English receives generous coverage, and all quotations are translated. This has the disadvantage that Kraus's original German is not given, but the compensating advantage is that the translationsare full of linguisticingenuity;the idiom is that of American English,but not so stridentlyas to put off readerson the other side of the Atlantic. In keeping with the strategyof the book a separate chapter is devoted to critical evaluations of Kraus's own translations (or 'Nachdichtungen') and to modern translations of Kraus, in which Zohn himself has been an outstanding pioneer; this includes a forceful review (pp. Io -03) of his polemical dispute with Thomas S. Szasz: 'Having been unwilling to be taught a lesson, Szasz, who has a largereadership,deservesto be pilloried.'Krausisnot the only authorto whom one in Goethe's 'Denn das Leben ist die Liebe, Und des Lebens Leben Geist', which he quotes in the same speech (Werke indreizehn Bdnden (Frankfurta.M.: Fischer, I974), XII,674), as he had done a year earlierin his plea for common Europeanideals (xI, 869). It became a crucial part of Mann's answer to his question. Surprisingly, Woltersdoes not use thesegreatwords,but the point is stronglymade by him. Against this background the five chapters dealing with the novels trace the unfolding story of Jaakob's search for the invisible God and Joseph's role within that story. A brilliant chapter on the 'Hollenfahrt' is followed by a chapter on Jaakob's inability to act wisely in a political world, and three chapters deal with Joseph's falland gradualriseto the position in which we ultimatelyfindhim. What emerges from this great study is also a sympatheticyet...