John Guthrie

Book Review: Hilary Brown: Luise Gottsched the TranslatorLuise Gottsched the Translator. By BrownHilary. Rochester, NY: Camden House2012. Pp. viii + 248. £55.00.

the optimism apparent in Die erleuchteten Fenster (1951, but written in 1939). What brought about this transformation in Doderer? Although Barker’s reflections help, no critic has yet taken the measure of this extraordinary writer, great but sometimes morally blind, who transcends all established categories. In sum, this is an invaluable book which draws on a lifetime’s intimacy with Austrian literature to map a body of fiction, much of it barely known, against a relatively unfamiliar historical setting, with a lucid and engaging style. It must surely become a standard work.

Book Reviews : Schiller's Early Dramas. A Critical History. By David Pugh. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 2000 (distributed by Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge, Suffolk). Pp. 231. £40.00

boundaries. For in this tale, patriarchal authority appears in its most repugnant form, and the transgressive curiosity that leads Bluebeard’s seventh wife to unlock the bloody chamber is amply justified by saving her life. Davies reads the tale against two cultural narratives: that of Genesis, where Eve’s curiosity proves fatal; and the now familiar historical narrative, presented here via Norbert Elias, in which the rise of Western civilization

Reviews : World War I and the Weimar Artists: Dix, Grosz, Beckmann, Schlemmer. By Matthias Eberle, translated by John Gabriel. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, I985. viii + I34 pp.

Amongst the spate of recent publications and exhibitions devoted to modern German painting, it is refreshing to encounter an original study which succeeds in setting the work of these four major artists against the background of the intellectual, cultural, and artistic developments of their age. The first chapter of Eberle’s book (&dquo;Elemental Forces and Mechanical Power&dquo;) traces the conflict between conservatism and belief in progress epitomized by contrasting reactions to the sinking of the Titanic, itself a prelude and parallel in the eyes of many artists to the First World War. This comparison is also axiomatic to the book’s argument which uses Beckmann’s painting of I 9I 2i 3 ( The Sinking of the Titanic) as its starting point. Eberle asks why German artists reacted differently to the war from French and Italian counterparts, the answer being found in the emerging style of the New Objectivity which rejected the new classicism in these other countries. The chapter on Otto Dix charts the changes of attitude in this artist in terms of subject-matter and technique with new and illuminating contradictions becoming evident, especially Dix’s failure to come to terms with the vital

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Spinoza’s importance for eighteenth-century Germany is undisputed and well documented. Not so well studied is the exact nature of his influence on early Weimar Classicism, on the emergence of such central notions as ’Humanitat’. Dr Bell’s study lays the foundations for a better understanding of this influence by a thorough discussion of the reception of Spinoza from its early phase (characterized by misrepresentation, prejudice and superficiality) through to its culmination a century or so later in the works of Lessing, Herder and Goethe. Bell returns to the appearance of the TheologIcal-PolitIc.zI TreatIse in 1670, emphasizing the contradictions in the thinking of those who attacked Spinoza early on, including Bayle, with his influential but &dquo;fantastically inaccurate picture&dquo;. Adducing reasons for Spinoza’s unpopularity, considering briefly the objections of Leibniz, Dippel and V’olff, he proceeds to show how the understanding of the early Spinozists was not much better than that of his opponents. The early Aufkldrzmg did not penetrate Spinoza’s work very deeply. A turning-point comes with Mendelsohn and Lessing, for despite the former’s hostility and inaccuracies of presentation, he was able to &dquo;salvage what was of