David Midgley

Book Review: Genese Grill: The World as Metaphor in Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities: Possibility as Reality

and the prose writings of Erich Maria Remarque. The last chapter, by Sven Erik Larsen, discusses the emotional aftermath of war on the basis of literary treatments of modern conflicts and wars in Europe, South Africa and Korea. Literature, Larsen suggests, is the only medium that is capable of conveying the complex mix of emotions that arise in post-conflict and post-war situations. This is a wide-ranging and thought-provoking collection of essays. It is also a timely survey of the ways in which our perceptions of and engagement in war and violence in the early twenty-first century are shaped by the strategies adopted by the literary, television, film and internet media. Overall the essays suggest that being aware of these strategies is the first step towards a truly accurate perception of violence, the development of a proper fear of war and an authentic, humane pity for its victims. Even if many of the essays were not in themselves highly informative, this central message would have made the volume worthwhile.

Book Review: Paul Bishop (ed.): A Companion to Friedrich Nietzsche: Life and WorksA Companion to Friedrich Nietzsche: Life and Works. Edited by BishopPaul. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2012. Pp. 449. £60.00.

Raabe’s Die Hämelschen Kinder and Fontane’s Vor der Sturm. They emphasize the specifically gothic underpinnings of these later nineteenth-century works. Two particularly fine essays expand the examination of gothic ‘revenants’ beyond literary studies. Jörg Kreienbrock’s chapter on Heine traces the gothic’s unexpected role in philosophical discourse. Similarly, Monika Schmitz-Emans’ essay on Schumann’s gothic influence provides a fascinating look at the composer’s predilection for the gothic in both his creative writing and his music. Although the nineteenth century is given broad treatment, only three chapters focus on the twentieth. Andrew Webber’s essay on Hoffmann’s influence on Weimar film and Barry Murnane’s chapter on Prague as a locus for gothic modernism in the works of Meyrink and Leppin explore the use of gothic as a means of negotiating or critiquing modernism. Webber’s and Murnane’s offerings fit nicely with the earlier papers on Schumann and Heine in showing the gothic’s scope for German cultural studies. Finally, Catherine Smale’s work jumps ahead to post-reunification Germany and addresses the gothic in the work of Christa Wolf and Irina Liebmann. Although Smale’s essay offers an intriguing reading of these writers, it seems divorced from the collection. The inclusion of other twentieth-century-focused pieces might have led to a more balanced volume. Similarly, the addition of a concluding chapter would have helped tie together the many disparate strands explored throughout the volume. Overall Murnane and Cusack have succeeded in assembling an important volume that addresses a significant lack in German studies scholarship. Key to this volume’s thrust is an understanding of gothic as ‘a literary mode that accompanies processes of modern social organization and identity formation, mirroring and distorting them and offering a potential means of negotiating and criticizing modernity’ (p. 4). This approach allows for a productive discussion of the German gothic that proves relevant even for material seemingly far afield from the Schauerroman, such as philosophical discourse, expressionist cinema, or post-Wende writing. With its useful methodology and rich body of research, Popular Revenants will hopefully pave the way for future studies into the influence of German gothic ‘revenants’ − in both German studies and other fields.

Book Review: Brecht and Political Theatre. The Mother on Stage. By Laura Bradley. (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006. Pp. 261. £50.00

in a separate chapter, also demonstrates the importance of Musil’s diaries for the interpretation of his works at all stages of his life. And the intellectual historian Galin Tihanov extends our understanding of the refl ections of early twentieth-century conservative thought contained in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, linking motifs from the writings of Carl Schmitt, Werner Sombart and Othmar Spann, as well as Walter Rathenau, to the characterization of both Arnheim and Ulrich. No less valuable is the contribution of Rüdiger Görner, which closes the volume with an account of Musil’s impact on German and Austrian writers since 1945. In addition to a chronology of Musil’s life and a select bibliography, the volume contains a concise description of available editions in German and English. It provides English-speaking Musil scholars with an excellent resource.

Reviews : Nietzsche, "The Last Antipolitical German". By Peter Bergmann. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, I987. 239 pp.

humanitarian assumptions on the other. The book takes its title from a section in Ecce Home where Nietzsche presents himself in retrospect as &dquo;more German&dquo; than the Germans of his day, and there is much that is useful in Bergmann’s attempt to situate the successive phases of Nietzsche’s thought in the context of his times. ’Anti-politics’ as a concept is shown to have emerged out of the post-Reformation struggle between clerical and secular philosophies, and Nietzsche’s personal revolt against the pietism of his home background is related to the politicizing experience of secularization in Europe during the nineteenth century. The book largely consists of a chronological account of Nietzsche’s subsequent progression through anti-historicism (with his espousal of Schopenhauer), anti-monumentalism (in his attack on David Friedrich Straup), the pursuit of self-overcoming (and the attendant rejection of Wagner), culminating in a fervent