Review

Author(s): Arthur Burkhard

Review by: Arthur Burkhard
Source: MLN, Vol. 87, No. 5, German Issue (Oct., 1972), pp. 799-800
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2907880
Accessed: 23-12-2015 01:02 UTC

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M L N 799

literaturemakes it easy to surveythe critical reception of Broch during

the period from1913 to 1970.
For Broch scholarsthisattractiveand meticulouslyedited volume would
seem to be indispensable,but anyone in the fieldof contemporary German
literaturewill find it engrossing.Since it is printed in a limited edition
(500 copies), thosewishingto acquire it should do so at once.

The Johns Hopkins University WILLIAM H. McCLAIN

Martin Swales, ArthurSchnitzler,a criticalstudy. Oxford UniversityPress,

1971; 284 pp. $14.50. MR. Swales tells us in his Foreword (pp. VII,
VIII): "Schnitzler may be only a secondary writer,but at times he
touched real greatness. To confrontboth his grave limitationsand his
momentsof real achievementis the purpose of this critical studyof his
work." This introductoryremark is followed by the names of two men
who supplied him with informationin Vienna, Dr. Otto Breicha of the
" OsterreichischeGesellschaft fur Literatur," and Professor Heinrich
Schnitzler,son of the poet. The presentreviewer,who knows these two
men also personally from his sojourns in Vienna and has the highest
respect for the man to whom this study is dedicated, ProfessorRoy
Pascal, is accordinglyalready at the onset favorably disposed to this
investigation.
He fullyagrees, for example, with the conclusionsreached at the end
of the veryfirstchapter " Schnitzlerand fin de siecle Austria": " Arthur
Schnitzlerhas long been recognizedas being profoundlyrepresentativeof
the Vienna of his time. Critics have however,tended to assume that he
reflectsonly one small sectorof the experience of his age, that he glorifies
the last gay, leisured years of the 'Donaumonarchie,' and celebrates the
cynical charm, the melancholy grace of the Anatol adventurer figure.
Yet thereis more to Schnitzlerthan thisstereotypedimage. ... At his best,
and it may, admittedly,be only a rare best, he is a significantindividual
talent who commands critical attentionwith the same urgencyas do so
many of the trulygreat figuresof the time" (p. 26).
We come again to complete agreementwith Mr. Swales when he asserts
(p. 113) "Leutnant Gustl is one of the supreme examples of Schnitzler's
narrativeskill" and cannot commend highlyenough his analysis of this
story (pp. 103-104) unless it be to rate even more highlyhis painstaking
and discriminatinginvestigationof Liebelei (pp. 181-200) or Reigen
(pp. 233-52).
Anyone who feels inclined to dismiss Schnitzler as a second-rate
dilettantewould be forced to revise his judgement if he examined the

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 800 M L N

revealinganalysesof the nuances in poetic diction which Mr. Swales dis-

covers and expounds in these altogether extraordinaryanalyses which
can be unreservedlyrecommended.

Cambridge, Mass. ARTHUR BURKHARD

Joachim Bark, Der Wuppertaler Dichterkreis: Untersuchungen tum Poeta

Minor im 19. Jahrhundert.Bonn: Bouvier,1969. 171 pp. (Abhandlungen
zur Kunst-,Musik- und Literaturwissenschaft. Bd. LXXXVI). THIS
work is not an exhaustivestudyof one group of poets, nor is it a history
of poetryof the early industrialage. To the reader's relief it is also not
an attemptto resurrectlong-forgotten poets by elaborate explanations of
their undeserved fall into oblivion. Bark argees that the judgment of
time has, in the main, been correct,and he has no serious intentionof
disturbingit. His concern is to discoverthe general principlesgoverning
the popularity of some nineteenth century German poets who sank
abruptly into obscurity. Bark states that seventeen thousand of an
estimated twentythousand writersin that centuryare now totally un-
known. These poets have been relegated to this status, not only by
professionalcritics,but also by the descendants of the reading public
which once accorded them popularity. Bark intends to substantiatepos-
terity'sopinion in a way which will give us greater insightinto the in-
habitants of literarysubstrataof the nineteenthcentury,who and what
they were and why they remained obscure, therebygiving a general
insightinto nineteenth-century literatureand its problems and concerns.
Bark has selectedseven poets and writersfromthe Wuppertal area, born
between 1820 and 1836, who associated in the very loosely knit group
to which, in 1863, Miiller von Konigswintergave the name by which
it is known,the " WuppertalerDichterkreis."They are ReinhartNeuhaus,
Emil Ritterhaus, Friedrich Roeber, Adolf Schults, Karl Siebel, Karl
Stelterand Hugo Oelbermann. In the two decades 1840-60the Wuppertal
textile trade underwentrapid industrializationand mechanization,which
resulted in the disruptionof home-centredfamilyweaving and the crea-
tion of an urban industrialproletariat. Bark regardsthe situationin the
Wuppertal, and its poets, as symptomaticof the capitalisticindustrialera
to come and of the new, problematic relationship between poets and
the machine age. Bark thereforedescribes his method of investigation
as " literary-sociological."He attemptsnot only to examine the effectsof
miliet on the poets and theirworksbut to establish the responsibilityof
the poet towards his environment,towards the social problems which
are clearlyin evidence and which furnishthe poet's literarymaterial. The

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