MLR, 100.2, 2005 553 the static tableau scenes in the Aegean, in Arcadia, and in the Mountain Ravines con? trast with periods of 'Faustian' striving at court, on the battlefield, and in his futile land-reclamation project. Jaeger goes beyond an examination of Faust when he reviews many of Goethe's daily preoccupations, such as his curiously ambivalent attitude to journalism. Yet the result is less readable than Heinz Schlaffer or Manfred Osten; as a recycled Habilitationsschrift ,the monograph is aimed at the specialist rather than the general or undergraduate reader. It is well documented, amply illustrated, and closely argued, but ultimately one-sided in its adherence to a fixed model. The parodies of progress need to be set against parodies of hidebound stability, and although Philemon and Baucis may embody worthy qualities, one still cannot easily see their creator aspiring to change places with them. University of Kent Osman Durrani Ubersetzung als Auslegungin Goethes 'West-ostlichemDivan' im Kontext friihromantischer Ubersetzungstheorie und Hermeneutik. By Antonella Nicoletti. (Basler Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 81) Tubingen and Basel: Francke. 2002. x + 430pp. ?40. ISBN 3-7720-2680-x. The section 'Ubersetzungen' fromthe Noten und Abhandlungen zu besseremVerstdndnis des West-ostlichenDivans, the prose part of Goethe's collection of 'oriental' poetry, is Goethe's best-known and most extensive reflection on the subject of translation. And, as Antonella Nicoletti points out, it is almost always regarded in isolation, as a free-standing statement to be set alongside comparable pronouncements by Goethe's Romantic contemporaries. The firstintention of this book is to put 'Ubersetzungen' back into its original context: within the Noten undAbhandlungen and within the Divan itself. It then reads both parts of the Divan (but particularly the prose part) from the perspective of 'Ubersetzungen', treating it as a 'theoretische Synthese' (p. 161) ofthe whole, as its key,the concentration and elucidation of its themes and preoccupations. The main effectof reading 'Ubersetzungen' as embedded in the Divan is to notice that, like the other Noten und Abhandlungen, it is meant to help our understanding of it ('zu besserem Verstandnis'). That is, it has a hermeneutic function. In this it is like translation itself,particularly as understood by Goethe and his contemporaries. The firstpart of Nicoletti's book gives an overview of Romantic conceptions of transla? tion and hermeneutics in Germany, relying on secondary sources. Friedrich Schlegel emerges as being important in both domains, and particularly the connections be? tween them, anticipating, as Nicoletti rightly underlines, most of what is usually credited to Schleiermacher and his more public and systematic treatises, Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Uebersezens and Hermeneutik und Kritik. Schlegel first emphasizes translation as a 'Kunst des Verstehens' (p. 24; cf. pp. 34 and 70), thus finding the intersection of hermeneutics and translation which Nicoletti concentrates on in her reading of the Divan. Drawing but refining on Gadamer, she suggests that translation can be seen as the third step in the traditional hermeneutic progression from understanding via explanation to application (subtilitas intelligendi, subtilitas explicandi, subtilitas applicandi). Translation is the supreme example of subtilitas applicandi , 'eine Anwendung des zu verstehenden Textes auf die gegenwartige Situation des Interpreten' (p. 67: Gadamer's words, but he does not make the connection with translation). Towards the end of 'Ubersetzungen' Goethe says that the third epoch of translation, the 'hochste und letzte', 'erleichtert hochlich das Verstandnis des Originals '. Missing from this survey of contemporary translation and hermeneutics is Holderlin, though his preoccupations often seem tantalizingly near. In the context of 554 Reviews the Divan, the so-called Pindar-Fragmente suggest themselves particularly. Like the Divan, they ostensibly elucidate verse with prose, their verse is somewhere between translation and original text, they are explicitly concerned with origins and returning to sources, and like the Divan they open up and explore the idea of translation itself. In the second part of the book Nicoletti turns to the Divan itself,beginning with a close reading of 'Ubersetzungen' and going on to explore the links with other prose sections. She shows that they can all be understood to flow out of and feed into it, and multiplies the metaphors that, again in Romantic fashion, expand and diversify the meaning...