Reviewed by: Die Poetik des Extremen. Ausschreitungen einer Sprache des Radikalen Thomas Freeman Die Poetik des Extremen. Ausschreitungen einer Sprache des Radikalen. Von Uwe Schütte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006. 449 Seiten. €49,90. Schütte's book deals with a fascinating topic. His theme is "extreme" literature that reaches and even transgresses the boundaries of language and social convention, spilling over into the realm of insanity. He is looking for common threads in "extreme" German literature since the French Revolution, which—along with war, terrorism, and biographical circumstances such as madness—he sees as a trigger in the production of this "radical" art. In his attempt to map out a "poetics of the extreme," his main focus is on perennial classics that he seeks to present from a different perspective. These include works by Kleist, Hölderlin, and Büchner. He also deals with drugs and rapture as a means of breaking boundaries in the lives and works of "modern" 20th-century authors including Benn, Klaus Mann, Jünger, and Benjamin. Hans Henny Jahnn was no stranger to opium, but in his chapter on Jahnn, [End Page 437] Schütte does not refer to its role in his life and works (the "red poison" in Fluß ohne Ufer). Instead, he focuses on the revolutionary potential of Jahnn's Ugrino cult and the non-stop gruesome bloody horrors and sexual aberrations of his early drama Pastor Ephraim Magnus. Schütte sees Jahnn's breaking of taboos as part of his revolutionary social criticism. The final section of Schütte's book deals with the art and literature of insanity and terrorism in the post-modern era. This art and literature is exemplified by the works of schizophrenic patient Ernst Herbeck, and by those of Rainald Goetz who writes about madness and political terrorism. Goetz is perhaps best known for his "performance art," during which he slashed his forehead with a razor while giving his reading at the competition for the Ingeborg Bachmann prize in 1983. For the most part, the arguments of Schütte's analysis are presented in the form of extensive quotes from secondary literature, with only occasional criticism of these sources. Thus the text contains a wealth of summarized scholarship, but this material upstages the original insights of the author. His close examination of passages from the primary literature as seen through the lens of the "extreme" gives us fresh readings of both well-known and lesser-known texts. Schütte did not coin the terms "radical" and "extreme" literature. He cites other scholars who have used them in connection with authors he discusses. He uses "extreme" literature as an intensification of "radical" and "subversive" literature. However, the nature of this "radical" literature carried to utmost extremes varies widely. It may be confusing for his readers that he does not give one definitive explanation of what he means by the term "extreme," but instead sees it as having shifting meanings in the contexts of different works. One consequence of this is that the sections of his book do not always clearly trace common threads through all the works he analyzes, but rather appear to be independent essays on very different works with only occasional references contrasting or comparing them. The volume needs—but lacks—an index and a concluding chapter summarizing the various views of "extreme" literature and reminding the reader how Schütte's poetics of extremism connects the authors discussed in the book. Some characteristics of "extreme" literature seem so general that they might be applied to almost any literature. Do Schütte's examples mean all literature with shocking violence is necessarily "extreme"? There is no lack of gore in Greek literature, in medieval literature, or baroque literature. There are transgressions against taboos in the Sturm und Drang, but Goethe and Schiller are not included in the category of "extreme" authors. If madness in literature is the criterion, it can be found in the lives and works of many authors. The key to understanding Schütte's poetics of "extreme" literature is neither in the madness itself, nor in the criminal sexual behavior and shocking gore depicted. For Schütte, it is the...