Roland Dollinger , Wulf Koepke , Heidi Thomann Tewarson (review)

Abstract

MLR, 100.2, 2005 561 sonae. The many myths which have emerged from this shifting self-depiction are examined by Anthony Northey in 'Myths and Realities in Kafka Biography', which provides a useful overview of the many misconceptions surrounding Kafka's life and work in an attempt to provide a clearer picture. Also valuable in providing orientation for scholars is Osman Durrani's contribution, 'Editions, Translations, Adaptations'. The inclusion of such a wide range of material in this volume makes it an ideal in? troduction to Kafka's work. The material is presented lucidly, and each contribution takes into account previous reception as well as presenting new readings and interpre? tations. The volume also benefits from English translations throughout, thus serving an interdisciplinary as well as a Germanist readership. The interdisciplinary value of the collection is further highlighted by the inclusion of Martin Brady's and Helen Hughes's contribution, 'Kafka Adapted to Film', which explores the problematic na? ture of bringing Kafka's work to the screen. This insightful study concludes by highlighting the tension between the consolidatory nature of filmas a synthesis of images, words, and sound, and the form of language employed by Kafka, which is embedded in the discreet and the moderate. It is this and similar tensions which have made Kafka the subject of so much scholarship and myth-creation in the years since his death. As a writer and a man, Kafka seems destined to remain at odds with a changing world. University of Wales, Bangor Carol Tully A Companion to the Works of Alfred Doblin. Ed. by Roland Dollinger, Wulf Koepke, and Heidi Thomann Tewarson. (Studies in German Literature, Lin? guistics and Culture) Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2004. xvi+ 309 pp. ?60; $85. ISBN 1-57113-124-8. The prolific work of Alfred Doblin, the 'German James Joyce', is virtually unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world. In Germany, there have been sporadic flurries of inter? est whenever leading authorities, notably Hans Mayer, Gunter Grass, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, have endeavoured to raise awareness of his influence. Herbert Ihering may have pleaded fora Nobel Prize, Lion Feuchtwanger may have serenaded Doblin as a second Homer, but among more recent tributes W. G. Sebald's reference, in his Der Mythus der Zerstorung im Werk Doblins (Stuttgart: Klett, 1980), to 'irritierende Gewalt' is not untypical. The present volume serves two purposes: to introduce the author to an Englishspeaking audience and to review his status within a wider context. The firstis an impossible task, given that only a minuscule proportion of Doblin's many sprawling novels, dramas, essays, autobiographical, philosophical, religious, and medical writ? ings in prose and in verse have ever appeared in English. One might have expected the chapter on Berlin Alexanderplatz to make specific reference to the sadly dated version by Eugene Jolas, but Gabriele Sander devotes much of her essay?translated from German?to literaryand linguistic influences from Goethe's Werthervia Schiller and Kleist to Keller and more ephemeral figures. This foray into intertextuality left me wondering if Sander's findings would enrich or frustrate our target readership's per? ception of the most accessible if not the most typical of Doblin's novels. The foreign reader, at least, is unlikely to be troubled by the designation of Hedwig CourthsMahler (whose firstnovel appeared in 1904) as a 'nineteenth-century' author. Several contributors revisit the ambiguity that determines Doblin's public standing . His articles were 'much criticized and much appreciated' (p. 8), his 'formally and thematically interesting' plays (ibid.) were rarely applauded, and reviews ranged 'from enthusiastic praise to total rejection' (p. 9). The public were either fascinated by his extraordinary imagination or repelled by the pomposity of his vision. Even Berlin 562 Reviews Alexanderplatz is presented in the editors' twenty-page introduction as only partially successful. Doblin's philosophy went largely unnoticed. It is easy to forgetthat this is the writer who provided, in Die Ermordung einer Butterblume, a paradigmatic model of Expressionist prose, the man who introduced Brecht to China and Grass to modernism, the only major novelist of the Weimar Republic to have experimented with science fiction,the inspiration behind Fassbinder's most ambitious film,and the author of the greatest...