Reviewed by: Das Mittelalter der Moderne: Rilke—Pound—Borchardt by Christian Kiening Robert Weldon Whalen Christian Kiening, Das Mittelalter der Moderne: Rilke—Pound—Borchardt. by Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014. 195 pp. Suddenly, in the middle of that iconic modernist film, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), both actors and viewers are confronted with, of all things, a medieval cathedral. What is a cathedral doing in such a modernist art form as film? What is a cathedral from the distant past doing in a film about the distant future? What has the “medieval” to do with the “modern”? Answering these questions is Christian Kiening’s task in Das Mittelalter der Moderne: Rilke—Pound—Borchardt. Kiening is well equipped to explain the cathedral in the movie. Professor of Ältere Deutsche Literaturwissenschaft at the University of Zü-rich and director of the national Forschungsschwerpunkt Medienwandel—Medienwechsel—Medienwissen, Kiening has published in both medieval and cinematic history. So, what is that cathedral doing in Metropolis? Kiening develops his answer through five chapters. In chapter 1, “Auftakt,” Kiening uses the puzzle about the cathedral to point to a much wider issue—classic modernism’s fascination with the Middle Ages. Cathedrals, Kiening points out, appear in Metropolis partly because early twentieth-century modernism is filled with cathedrals—Joris-Karl Huysman, Auguste Rodin, and, of special interest to Kiening, Rainer Maria Rilke were all inspired to create their works in part by those great, brooding, ancient cathedrals. In chapter 2, “Zeitschichten,” Kiening reflects on the ubiquity of the medieval in modern times. Romantics, especially German Romantics, were fascinated by all things medieval, partly, of course, because they saw enthusiasm for the Middle Ages as an alternative to the Enlightenment’s passion for classical antiquity. Europe’s late nineteenth-century Victorians were just as enamored of the medieval as their Romantic ancestors. As Kiening remarks, “in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts entstand ein regelrechter Mittelalterkult, der in Deutschland eine Fülle von Nibelungendramen, in England ein florierendes Kunstgewerbe und in Frankreich eine dandyhafte Haar- und Kleidermode hervorbrachte” (20). Classical modernists continued this vigorous medievalism. Modern medievalism was neither simple nor uncontroversial. Kiening explores in detail the fierce debates between advocates of the Renaissance and champions of the Middle Ages and the chronic arguments about chronologies and themes. These were no small matters because as Kiening notes, the concept “modern” only makes sense against an historical [End Page 105] horizon, and confusion about the “pre-modern” threatens the very meaning of “modern.” Kiening devotes chapter 3, “Der Geist der Gotik,” especially to Rilke. Rilke’s modernism is suff used with medieval nostalgia, or bett er put, Rilke’s medievalism is a means to highlight modern woes. Cathedrals are especially important to Rilke—as immense intrusions of the past in the present; as monuments to a God long gone silent; as inescapable reminders that a once-vibrant cultural synthesis has long since shatt ered into fragments. Chapter 4, “Schöpferische Restauration,” concentrates on Ezra Pound and Rudolf Borchardt. Both were modernists fascinated by the medieval, though, as Kiening notes, while Pound att empted to bring the medieval into the modern, Borchardt much preferred to return the modern to the medieval. Kiening concludes his text, in chapter 5, “Ausklang,” with a brief summary of the multiple roles the medieval played in the modernist works of Rilke, Pound, and Borchardt. Though Kiening’s work focuses on just three modernists, his discussion includes reflections on the work of Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Stefan George, and many others. Though Das Mittelalter der Moderne is literary criticism, not philosophy, it is acutely aware of the philosophical dimension of these literary concerns. Classical modernism was obsessed with time, with accelerated time, end times, time and space, and streams of consciousness. Thanks to Henri Bergson, Edmund Husserl, and others, “Zeit wurde als nicht nur quantitatives, sondern auch qualitatives, nicht nur physikalisches, sondern auch physiologisches, empfundenes und wahrgenommenes Phänomen begriff en” (44). Modernists discovered what Ernst Bloch called “die Ungleichzeitigkeit des Gleichzeitigen.” Time exists both horizontally and vertically, in multiple layers, and it moves in lines, circles, and, as W. B. Yeats wrote, in gyres. The past is not gone; it protrudes into the present like...
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Nov 8, 2019
Meike G Werner 
Open Access