MLRy 99.4, 2004 1103 comes to familiar texts straight on and still has something fresh to say. This ex? cellent little volume (an immensely readable 150 pages) takes on Brecht's early years (1912-24), fromAugsburg to Munich and Berlin, and concentrates on his lyricpoetry, though there are useful asides on plays and other writing. The authors modestly set out not to present the 'whole Brecht', nor indeed 'a new theory', but to negotiateexisting theoretical approaches (especially Marxist and psychoanalytical trends), and concentrate on key terms: Brecht, God, love, and nature. More important, however, they intend the book to be a contribution to the neglected art ofthe close reading of poems. A firstsection offersa neat overview of Brecht's biographical and aesthetic develop? ment from his earliest pieces in the school magazine to his 'arrival' in Berlin. It traces his break with the accepted norms of bourgeois society (God, Kaiser, Fatherland) and, via his reading of Nietzsche, points forward to his embracing of the scientific age and his publicly professed Marxism of the 1930s. The individual chapters which fol? low flesh out this model. The 'Brecht' chapter presents his self-portraits and gradual move towards self-obliteration; the chapter on God traces the path out of the Protes? tantism of his youth towards a cynical rejection of a 'deus malignus', and finallyto the 'frohlicher Atheismus' of logical empiricism. The nature chapter examines how his conceptions of nature, anthropology, and society are affected by the absence of God; and the love chapter demonstrates the range of Brecht's love poetry from exquisite tenderness to pornography. The great strength of the book is the way the individual chapters reinforce one another to produce an utterlypersuasive overarching dynamic. There is a central motif of sacrifice, destruction, and transfiguration which finds itself repeated in each section in both a legendary, mythic version and also in a natural mode. Perhaps the most fascinating of the sections is that on love, an aspect of Brecht that has been neglected in favour of political interpretation. Here the authors trace Brecht's paradoxical (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempt, as they put it, 'die Liebe aus der Liebeslyrik zu verbannen'. Such a volume, however, stands or fails by its readings of individual poems. These are wonderfully detailed and invigorating: not only the familiar 'set pieces' like 'Erin? nerung an die Marie A.' or 'Vom armen B.B.', which are given new twists by focusing on their contexts; but also lesser-known poems, like the fine 'Ballade von des Cortez Leuten' or 'Von der Willfahrigkeit der Natur'. The thematic constellations also pro? duce surprises. 'Gesang des Soldaten der roten Armee' reads quite differently,for example, alongside other poems about exotic martyr heroes from 1916-20, instead of in the exclusively political context which has dominated. This book is a genuinely exciting introduction to Brecht's early poetry: illuminating for the specialist and inspiring for the student. Moreover, it is written in a strikingly refreshing, personal style which, while serious and scholarly, is (in the best sense) very farfrom the norm of academic German, and does justice to its extraordinary subject. New College, Oxford Karen Leeder Hermann Broch: Visionary in Exile. The 2001 Yale Symposium. Ed. by Paul Michael Lutzeler in co-operation with Matthias Konzett, Willy Riemer, and Christa Sammons. (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture) Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2003. xiv + 266pp. ?50; $75. ISBN1-57113272 -4. This volume comprises seventeen essays on various aspects of Hermann Broch's the? oretical and creative work. Its editor, Paul Michael Lutzeler, who was the firstto draw attention to the importance of the author's critical writings in his Hermann Broch: Ethik und Politik (Munich: Winkler, 1973), successfully readdresses the question of no4 Reviews Broch's political and cultural theories by dividing the book into two sections: 'Her? mann Broch: The Critic' and 'Hermann Broch: The Novelist and Dramatist'. On the whole, the aim of this symposium seems to be that of asserting Broch's relevance in the twenty-firstcentury. The title, as Lutzeler explains in his preface, is in this respect programmatic ('In these times of global danger, we need intellectuals with moral integrity and political vision of the calibre...