The Aesthetics of Horror. The Life and Thought of Richard von Kralik by Richard S. Geehr

Abstract

AUSTRIAN STUDIES, I3, 2OO5 269 determination tomake the readers struggle every inch of theway, slipping inpuns so poignant thatwe don't know whether to laugh or cry. Snippets of quotation displace coherent narrative, but truth slips through the mesh of metaphor, revealing hidden impulses that conscious speech denies. To cite a characteristic example: the perversity of Goebbels's propaganda prompts Kraus to coin the word Tonfallstricke', a triple pun that combines themeanings of 'sound trap' ('Ton-Fallstricke'), 'tonic constraints' ('Tonfall-Stricke') and 'intonation tricks' ('Tonfalls-Tricke'). In the French translation this becomes simply 'le recours ? un ton particulier' (p. 324). In such instances, a mode of argument that depends on multiple allusions tends to be reduced to itsbasic linear meaning. Similar difficulties arise over the translation of more straightforward passages, such as Kraus 'sexemplary critique of the doublespeak inherent in the concept of 'Schutzhaft' ('protective custody'). The translator's footnote concedes (p. 367) that 'd?tention pr?ventive' fails to convey the cynicism inherent in the idea of locking people up for their own protection. But the passage does succeed in conveying the irony of Kraus's commentary, which contrasts the self-righteous pronouncements of theNazis' propaganda with the gruesome sufferings of their victims. Indeed, the translation is most successful where itbrings out Kraus's use ofVoltairean irony: his feigned acceptance of the claim that ? under National Socialism ? all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. In short, the force of Kraus's polemic isclearly communicated, even when the subtleties are lost. For students, moreover, this publication has the additional merit of featuring a preface by Jacques Bouveresse that runs to over 150 pages, designed to contextualize Kraus's critique of Nazism. This well-researched and sharply focused introduction, divided into twelve sections, reconstructs the genesis of Kraus's text and illuminates some of the fundamental issues it raises, notably 'Can Nazism really be understood?', 'How the criminal transforms himself into an innocent' and 'The intellectuals and the Third Reich'. One might quibble about Bouveresse's reluctance to discuss the Shakespearean motifs in Kraus's polemic, which form such a striking counterpoint to the quotations from Goethe's Faust But one can only concur when the final section of thismagisterial introduction offers an emphatically positive answer to the question: 'Can Kraus be translated?' These two commendably ambitious publications provide French readers with an entr?e to Kraus's uvre that the Anglophone world can only envy. University of Sussex Edward Timms The Aesthetics of Horror. The Life and Thought ofRichard vonKralik. By Richard S. Geehr. Boston, MA and Leiden: Brill. 2003. + 166 pp. 90,00; $120.00. isbn 0-391-04201-7. Richard S. Geehr, whose previous studies include Adam Muller-Guttenbrunn and the Aryan Theatre ofVienna (1973) and Karl Lueger.Mayor ofFin de Si?cle Vienna (1990), is on familiar territorywith Richard von Kralik (1852-1934), whose charismatic personality and vigorously propounded views made him a key 270 Reviews figure in the Catholic counter-culture that emerged as Lueger rose to power in the late 1890s. Geehr's thesis is that, although Kralik established himself as the poet laureate of the Christian Social party in the last years of theMonarchy, his influence was greatest during the First Republic, even though, by then, his main contribution to public lifewas to address to the crowds of admirers, sometimes as many as 300, who gathered at six o'clock every Tuesday in his villa inD?bling. Geehr's opening chapter surveysKralik's early life and influences, suggesting that his Bohemian origins and uncertain, possibly Czech, ancestry fuelled his 'Germanism', while visits to Greece and to the Oberammergau Passion Play, both in 1880, helped to shape the idiosyncrasies of both his Catholic faith and his vision of cultural renewal as a synthesis of Christian, Germanic and Classical influences. Chapter Two then charts his involvement, as spokesman for the conservative 'integralist' faction, in the 'Catholic Literary Dispute' that preoccupied the Catholic intelligentsia inGermany and Austria between approximately 1906 and papal intervention in 1911. That all quotations are given only inEnglish translation seems slighdy unhelpful, as are the incompletely referenced epigraphs introducing each chapter, while the repeated use of the term...