Poetische Berge: Alpinismus und Literatur nach 2000 by Leonie Silber

Abstract

Reviews 207 Whether literary or theoretical, Broch’s texts frequently bear the marks of inner tensions that arguably gave rise to them. This tendency is discussed here in pieces by Gunther Martens (on Broch’s ambiguous stance regarding the respective limitations of both literature and theoretical discourse in view of ethical and cognitive challenges) and Galin Tihanov (on Broch as a ‘postromantic’ writer). The volume is completed by a suitably detailed biographical introduction by the editors, a synoptic discussion of Broch’s influence on later authors (P. M. Lützeler) and a bibliography of primary and select secondary material (ordered by texts and themes treated). While not every Broch text mentioned in this Companion will be accessible to those who do not read German, many are, and the book as a whole makes a strong case for seeking them out. Martin Klebes University of Oregon Poetische Berge: Alpinismus und Literatur nach 2000. By Leonie Silber. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2019. 307 pp. €48.00. ISBN 978–3-8253–6960–6. The Alps have cast a lasting spell over our collective imagination. Since at least the eighteenth century, the longest mountain chain entirely within Europe has attracted artists, writers, philosophers and explorers. On the one hand, artistic responses to alpine spaces reflect on the sometimes idealized, sometimes uncanny encounter between the individual and the mountains. On the other, scientific texts recording the topography of the mountains and journalistic accounts of our supposed mastery of their peaks through summiting embody our drive to codify. This dual discourse shapes our understanding of the mountains: contemporary encounters with alpine space are mediatized through texts produced by those who have gone before us. The past decade has witnessed a boom in such textual engagements, both within the academy and without: a proliferation of fictional and non-fiction texts that focus on the Alps has in turn precipitated an increasing volume of academic works on the subject (see for example Kathrin Geist, Berg-Sehn-Sucht: Der Alpenraum in der deutschsprachigen Literatur (Paderborn, 2018); Johann Georg Lughofer (ed.), Das Erschreiben der Berge: Die Alpen in der deutschsprachigen Literatur (Innsbruck, 2014); Jon Mathieu, Die Alpen: Raum, Kultur, Geschichte (Stuttgart, 2015)). Leonie Silber’s text represents a welcome addition to existing discourse. Her broad corpus, including literary and non-literary texts as well as film, emphasizes that an understanding of contemporary engagements with mountains is not accessible through the close reading of literary texts alone. Where her work is distinguished, however, is through her choice of alpinism as a critical lens: as activities that fundamentally affect our understanding of, and relationship with, mountain landscapes, the practices and processes of alpinism also shape literary responses to the same. Throughout her study, Silber Reviews 208 interrogates the ideological weight that has accumulated in alpine space by tracing the legacy of the hyper-masculinity and nationalism of mountaineering as practised by the British in the nineteenth century through to the period of National Socialism (as seen for example in Philipp Stölzl’s Nordwand, 2008). She develops this framework through a consideration of post-1945 developments in sport and leisure tourism and demonstrates how these replicate such patterns of engagement with alpine space and their dark legacies (as thematized by Elfriede Jelinek in In den Alpen, 2002). The volume further explores both postmodern alpine space, in which anthropogenic destruction and simulated ‘alpine’ spaces abound (for example, Ilija Trojanow’s EisTau, 2011), and non-alpine mountainous space (the Himalayas, the Caucasus and Spain’s Sierra de Gredos) as part of a broader construction of mountain topographies in contemporary German-language literature and culture. An illustrative example of Silber’s approach is provided by her discussion of Christoph Ransmayr’s Der fliegende Berg (2006). Ransmayr’s novel centres on two Irish brothers who are driven to the Himalayas by two interconnected desires: to be the first to conquer a peak supposedly higher than Everest, but also to produce a trace by codifying the blank space that the narrator’s brother Liam, a geodesist who ultimately dies on the mountain, has identified on the map. Silber demonstrates that Ransmayr’s approach binds together the (imagined) topographical environment of the Himalaya with the subjective environment experienced...