Klaus-Dieter Bergner (review)

Abstract

the lyric and the few dramas.Arnold's examination of Rene Schickele'santhology Menschliche Gedichte im Kriege highlights the importance of its thematic range as opposed to itsformalexperimentation.The contrastwith Sturm-Abende is well made, and a more balanced assessmentthan usualof the lesser-knownpoets emerges.This is generally a well-writtenbook, free fromjargon, that offersa useful surveyof the two periodicalsand theiroften neglected anthologies of lyrics. MELLEN UNIVERSITY, IOWA BRIANKEITH-SMITH NaturundTechnik inder Literatur desfriihen Expressionismus. ByKLAUS-DIETER BERGNER. Frankfurta.M.: Lang. 1998. 348 pp. (33. Klaus-Dieter Bergnerstateshis credentialsfrom the startas a concerned ecologist. Ginter Grass'sDieRdttin and CarlAmery'sDasGeheimnis der XKypta serveasexamples of recent specific warnings about and analyses of the dichotomy between nature and destructive technological progress, already traced in nineteenth-century and earlytwentieth-centuryscientificstudies.As a former studentof German literature and of biology, Bergneris well qualifiedto tacklethe early short storiesand novels of Alfred Doblin as writer and medical doctor. His analysis of the short stories, especially of 'Die Ermordung einer Butterblume' and 'Die Segelfahrt', take into accountpublishedresearchandrelatethesetextsto problemsof the self,the dualism between spiritand nature,the potentialforharmonywith nature,and the spectreof spiritualand biological regression.In his early prose worksDoblin accords nature an importantrole as a powerful and autonomous force, owing much to his reading of Spinoza and Nietzsche and balanced by precise experiments as a doctor. His emphasis on the independence of the human body from the will, and on the link between nature and man's animal forebears,allowed him to relate the mechanical world of the modern city to the world of ideas formulatedby the futurists.Bergner shows nature as the seniorpartnerto technology, operatingirrationallyas a cosmic force that can call man back to order when he strivesbeyond his allotted scope. Where Doblin portrays individuals striving away from this pattern, Benn shows individualsstrivingforunitywith it. A rich use of nature imagery that depicts man's place in an evolutionarysystem helped Benn to criticizethe emphasison a strangeindividualitythatisolatesitselfin the false belief that it can measure and explain everything. As an illusory compensation, Benn's Novellendescribe characters that long for moments of dionysiac ecstasy. This urge, summed up as the lure of the South, is not helped by technology. Benn's world of nature remains serenely indifferent to man's puny attemptsto come to termswith it. Carl Einstein's criticism of bourgeois culture, especially in the novel Bebuquin, focused on the loss of identity, and proposed madness as an apparent solution. Nature as a finallyinscrutableproblem presentsself-centredman with a challenge, faced by the dangers of destruction by mechanical forces. Even the mastery of nature through such achievements as street-lighting is revealed as an illusion, turningman into a two-dimensionalbeing with no innerspace of his own. The most original part of the book comes in the section on comparative use of vocabulary by the three writers for the fields of nature and technology, but also parts of the human body, medicine, science, architecture, and communications. Not surprisingly,the resultssupportthe findings of the earlier analyses, and in his final summing-up,Bergnerreworksthe contrastsby the threewritersin theiruse of nature, technology, and critique of civilization. Bergner contrasts the dominance today of technological advances with their works, where nature is already under the lyric and the few dramas.Arnold's examination of Rene Schickele'santhology Menschliche Gedichte im Kriege highlights the importance of its thematic range as opposed to itsformalexperimentation.The contrastwith Sturm-Abende is well made, and a more balanced assessmentthan usualof the lesser-knownpoets emerges.This is generally a well-writtenbook, free fromjargon, that offersa useful surveyof the two periodicalsand theiroften neglected anthologies of lyrics. MELLEN UNIVERSITY, IOWA BRIANKEITH-SMITH NaturundTechnik inder Literatur desfriihen Expressionismus. ByKLAUS-DIETER BERGNER. Frankfurta.M.: Lang. 1998. 348 pp. (33. Klaus-Dieter Bergnerstateshis credentialsfrom the startas a concerned ecologist. Ginter Grass'sDieRdttin and CarlAmery'sDasGeheimnis der XKypta serveasexamples of recent specific warnings about and analyses of the dichotomy between nature and destructive technological progress, already traced in nineteenth-century and earlytwentieth-centuryscientificstudies.As a former studentof German literature and of biology, Bergneris well qualifiedto tacklethe early short storiesand novels of Alfred Doblin as writer and medical doctor. His analysis of the short stories, especially of 'Die Ermordung einer Butterblume' and 'Die Segelfahrt', take into accountpublishedresearchandrelatethesetextsto problemsof the...