(review)

MLR, 97.3, 2002 MLR, 97.3, 2002 vocabulary,metaphors,and techniquesfrom FrenchSymbolism. His close readings of Hofmannsthal's notes and essays, including some that Vilain publishes for the firsttime, and his readingsof poems such as 'Wasistdie Welt?','Erlebnis','Psyche', 'Manche freilich', and of prose poems such as 'Gerechtigkeit'and 'Das Glick am Wege', are models of intertextualcriticism. Vilain all too modestly terms his study a 'surveyof Hofmannsthal'sreception of FrenchSymbolistpoets' (p. 318). It is, of course,that, but the account is much more nuanced and detailed than one would usually find in a survey. What most distinguishes the book from a mere survey, however, is Vilain's thesis that Symbolism raised for Hofmannsthal 'the problems of identity and originality' (p. 205). ForHofmannsthal,he argues, 'writingSymbolistpoetry [ . .] is associated with the dissolution of the self' (p. 219). Thus it collided with a quest that preoccupied the young Hofmannsthal personally and constitutes one of the major themes in his early works, the search for identity. Furthermore,as Vilain properly points out, Hofmannsthal's concepts of the poet and the function of poetry were essentially shaped by the heritage of Romanticism, particularlyby his admiration for the poetry and the poetics of Keats and Novalis. Romanticism became for him 'a permanent reproach to the disintegrativetendencies of the brand of Symbolism he inherited' (p. 287). Those of us who feel not entirely comfortablewith the often adduced language crisisas the reason for Hofmannsthal'scessation of writinglyric poetry will findVilain's alternativeexplanationwell worth considering. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE JENS RIECKMANN Lebenswege undLektiren.Osterreichische VSVertriebene in denUSAundKanada.Ed. by BEATRIXMULLER-KAMPEL. (Conditio Judaica, 30) Tiibingen: Niemeyer. 2000. vi + 352 pp. DM 88. The title of thisbook conceals ratherthan revealsitstruecontent. The 'Vertriebene' referred to are those forced to leave Austria because they were Jewish and who then, in the USA and Canada, became Germanists, devoting their lives to the German language and its literature from which they had been excluded. The method adopted is that of the interview,which is transcribed,cross-referencedand foot-noted. Each interview is preceded by a brief curriculum vitae showing the individual'spath of exile, and followedby an extensivebibliographyof theAustrian Germanists'publications.As the Germanistsinterviewedhave all become distinguished members of the academic community, most have also had volumes dedicated to them. The interviewsarepresentedin orderof date of birth,therebyalso showing the development of German Studies. The firstinterviewee,WalterH. Sokel (1917), is famous not only for TheWriter inExtremis: Expressionism in Twentieth Century German Literature (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, i959), and FranzKafka:Tragik undIronie. cur Struktur seiner Kunst (Munich:Langen Mtiller, 1964),but also for a host of other pioneering studies. He is followed by PeterHeller (1920), Herbert Lederer (1921), Hans Eichner (1921), Egon Schwarz (1922), Harry Zohn (1923), Dorrit Claire Cohn (1924), Ruth Kluger (193I) and Evelyn Torton Beck (I933). The bibliographiesof all these intervieweesreveal an astonishingrange of activityby no means restricted to matters of the German-Jewishsymbiosis, nor by any means strictlyacademic, as creative works are also included. Peter Heller's bibliography, for example, includes a list of his 'Dichtungen und dichterische Essays in Zeitschriften und Anthologien'; Herbert Lederer was responsible for over fifty German-languagestudentdramaticproductions;Ruth Klugerstartedheracademic career researching seventeenth-century baroque literature, but became famous vocabulary,metaphors,and techniquesfrom FrenchSymbolism. His close readings of Hofmannsthal's notes and essays, including some that Vilain publishes for the firsttime, and his readingsof poems such as 'Wasistdie Welt?','Erlebnis','Psyche', 'Manche freilich', and of prose poems such as 'Gerechtigkeit'and 'Das Glick am Wege', are models of intertextualcriticism. Vilain all too modestly terms his study a 'surveyof Hofmannsthal'sreception of FrenchSymbolistpoets' (p. 318). It is, of course,that, but the account is much more nuanced and detailed than one would usually find in a survey. What most distinguishes the book from a mere survey, however, is Vilain's thesis that Symbolism raised for Hofmannsthal 'the problems of identity and originality' (p. 205). ForHofmannsthal,he argues, 'writingSymbolistpoetry [ . .] is associated with the dissolution of the self' (p. 219). Thus it collided with a quest that preoccupied the young Hofmannsthal personally and constitutes one of the major themes in his early works, the search for identity. Furthermore,as Vilain properly points out, Hofmannsthal's concepts of the poet...

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