Mysticism as Modernity: Nationalism and the Irrational in Hermann Hesse, Robert Musil and Max Frisch. (Studies in Modern German Literature, 107) by William Crooke

Abstract

MLR, 105.1, 2010 281 zu erfassen suchen als bishef. Will Sprengel's vivid and wide-ranging account of the complex relationship between the twowriters encourage a new generation of potential readers to take Stehr's neglected masterpiece down from itsdusty shelf and read it for themselves? Anyone reading this fascinating studywill surely feel tempted to do so. University of Bristol Peter Skrine Mysticism asModernity: Nationalism and the Irrational inHermann Hesse, Robert Musil and Max Frisch. ByWilliam Crooke. (Studies inModern German Literature, 107) Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang. 2008. 180 pp. ?26; 37. ISBN 978-3-03910-579-3. Itmay come as a relief to discover that a book whose title promises to cover so much ground turns out to be constructed ofminuscule modules. Each chapterette introduces an individual or a text that serves as amilestone on the longmarch from theMiddle Ages toModernism: Meister Eckhart, Gustav Landauer, Alfred Rosen berg, Hermann Hesse's Demian, Robert Musil's Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, and finally, less than a hundred pages into the book, Max Frisch's Mein Name sei Gan tenbein.These are dealt with in relation to the question ofGermany's 'Sonderweg', although, curiously perhaps, none of the selected texts is located specifically within that country. German titles and quotations are handled inconsistently and sometimes inaccu rately:Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften occurs beside Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften, words appear in an oblique case for no obvious reason ('Musil's "other state" or "anderen Zustand'", p. 78), and texts are misquoted, even at key points ('Wer geboren will, muft eineWelt zerstoren', p. 63). The central argument is easily summarized. Meister Eckhart, propounder of the ineffable, laid the foundation stone for a view ofman's position as empty and free' and thus eligible for a mystic union with his creator. Modernism, presented as a consequence of the compression of time and space, unwittingly avails itself of a similar type ofmysticism. Eckhart's insistence on the dissolution of individuality re-emerges in the twentieth century in Emil Sinclair's relationship with Demian, in Ulrich's sense of oneness with the world, and in Gantenbein's fractured re sponse to reality. The modern newspaper is credited with the ability to create a national-mystical moment'; it determines Ulrich's 'taghelle Mystik' no less than the image of the outside world as experienced by various figures in Frisch's text. Lacking quality?dne eigenschaft is a key phrase in Eckhart, as Jochen Schmidt noted (Ohne Eigenschaften: Eine Erlauterung zu Musils Grundbegriff (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1975))?the modern individual is easily absorbed into a collective state that replaces God. Thus Sinclair and Demian become victims ofGerman nationa lism and end up in the trenches; Musil and Frisch return, unwittingly, via their literary figures to populate the essential emptiness of the nations which they tried to flee. The implication is that if even confirmed anti-nationalists such as Hesse, 282 Reviews Musil, and Frisch portray the struggle against nationalism as a futile one, there can be littlehope for ordinary folk,nowadays best represented by the anonymous CDU politician who claimed that his country's reunification was proof thatGod had forgiven theGermans forkilling sixmillion Jews (p. 137). A final paragraph (p. 138) cites parallels from an article about 'Governing Bolivia theAymara Way from theNew York Times, which we may presume was our author's reading matter while he was searching for a suitable conclusion to his investigations. University of Kent Osman Durrani Krisis derModerne: Georg Trakl im intertextuellenDialog mit Nietzsche, Dostojew skij,Holderlin undNovalis. By Hanna Klessinger. (Klassische Moderne, 8) Wurzburg: Ergon. 2007. 174 pp. 25. ISBN 978-3-89913-581-7. This study is a contribution towards the recent attempt by Trakl scholarship to contextualize a poet who used to be regarded as somewhat detached from his torical developments. For Hanna Klessinger, reading Trakfs poetry in terms of its intertextual dialogue with earlier texts and authors offers a way of breaking through the supposed hermeticism of his work. The distinctive feature of her study is its analysis, not just of isolated lexical borrowings, but of intertextual dialogue at the level of entire texts.Her focus is on four individual poems from what commentators call Trakfs third phase of production...