Stephanie Bird (review)

Abstract

880 Reviews as Siegfried Lenz, refused to alter passages of his text which caused offence. These all concerned Poland and things Polish, especially the firstmonth of the war, known to Polish schoolchildren as the heroic 'September'. What Grass's non-Polishreaders are unlikely to know is that the defence of the Danzig Post Office quickly entered na? tional mythology and that Grass was challenging the nationalists' narrative of recent Polish history by depicting Jan Bronski's last hours playing Skat while dreaming he was reunited with his beloved Agnes. Yet Gesche's most rewarding section compares historical accounts of the siege with the version in Die Blechtrommel to reveal how closely Grass has stuck to the facts. The letter written to Hedwig Bronski informing her that her husband has been executed forbanditry is identical to that written to the next of kin ofthe real victims, who included Grass's own uncle. Gesche's comments on Cassubia and Cassubians, who would be far less well known in the wider world were it not for Grass's fiction, are also informative. His own mixed lineage has been the subject of debate, though an initiative to referto him as 'Graszewski' on account of his Cassubian forebears never caught on. It seems unfortunate to me that the rest of the book does not contain similarly important information. It could easily have done so: an account of reception after 1990, since when Grass has been celebrated in Gdahsk and Poland, would have been highly illuminating. Some comment on his other novels, especially Der Butt (1977), which has more Polish content than any other, and Unkenrufe (1992), would also have helped. It is unfortunate too that Gesche did not come across Carl Tighe's incisive commentary on Grass and Poland in his history of Danzig/Gdansk (London: Pluto, 1990), which would have disabused her of her contention that Hundejahre had no bearing on Germano-Polish relations. University of Kent Julian Preece Women Writers and National Identity: Bachmann, Duden, Ozdamar. By Stephanie Bird. (Cambridge Studies in German) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2003. x + 246pp. ?45. ISBN 0-521-82406-0. Stephanie Bird's critical analysis of narrative prose by Ingeborg Bachmann, Anne Duden, and Emine Sevgi Ozdamar is based on careful close reading of the authors' texts, and demands a similar engagement from her own readers to follow her detailed and occasionally dense arguments. Bird's is an ethically aware reading, which asserts the primacy ofthe literarytext. She affirmsthe importance of fiction,within the text, in the form of ambiguity, performance, and poetic language, and in particular the significance of narrative forexploring questions beyond theory and interrogating our conceptual understanding. Bird begins, perhaps surprisingly, but effectively,with a short digression on Christa Wolf's Medea, succinctly demonstrating Wolf's idealization of Medea as a woman and of Colchis as a nation opposed to the Western, capitalist Corinth. After this example of how not to do it, Bird looks at each author individually, treating discretely the differentconstellations of female and national identity presented in their texts. Rather than imposing a specific thematic structure, Bird examines issues which arise from the texts themselves, which allows her to treat illuminatingly diverse concepts (from shame to desire to metaphor); although her approach is theoretically informed, individual theories (by Lacan, Butler, Kristeva, among others) are introduced only when, and in so far as, they elucidate the texts. She eschews binary oppositions, and explores whether, and to what extent, the authors succeed in subverting from within the discourses they stage?of the language of the perpetrators, of patriarchy, or colonialist thinking. The complicity of the authors and/or their protagonists is MLRy 100.3, 2005 881 shown, and put in context; in meticulous close analysis, Bird traces their blind spots respectively of post-war Austrian identity,a fascination with violence, and a laudable but essentializing desire to assert Turkish tradition and identity. In dealing with the contested debates surrounding female and national identity in their work, Bird also tackles the charges of stereotyping which have been levelled variously at all three authors: of racist, colonialist stereotyping in Bachmann's Z)er Fall Franza\ of reinforcing the image of woman as victim in Duden...