Poetic Realism in Scandinavia and Central Europe, 1820-1895 by Clifford Albrecht Bernd (review)

Book Reviews181 Gertrude, Lewes sends a lively series of letters as he and Eliot traveled in France and Spain in January-February 1867 (Letters 347, 348, 349, 351, and 352). Baker has gathered his letters from archives throughout the world. In the interests of economy, if not reader convenience, the volume omits letters already published in the nine-volume George Eliot Letters (Yale UP). In several cases, though, he republishes letters that appeared in the GEL only in part or in incorrect versions, and the attractive type-face and layout are patterned on the GEL, so that the reader accustomed to working with those feels quite at home here. Baker's copious notes supply valuable information on people, historical and literary allusions, and other topics, which Baker, editor and author of many works on Lewes and Eliot, is well qualified to provide. These volumes are a major addition to our knowledge of Lewes, of Victorian publishing and scientific research, and—yes—of George Eliot too. Carol A. Martin Boise State University CLIFFORD ALBRECHT BERND. Poetic Realism in Scandinavia and Central Europe, 1820-1895. Columbia: Camden House, 1995. 243 p. Sr rofessor Bernd's book is an exciting work of scholarship: he is able to offer a remarkably fresh, original, and cogent analysis of a period which has already been the object of considerable scrutiny. His conclusions will require future students of Poetic Realism to reevaluate completely, if not jettison altogether , the received wisdom concerning its uniquely German character. This volume, a reworking and expansion of his earlier German Poetic Realism published in the Twayne series (1981), owes its importance to Bernd's linguistic abilities (he also reads Danish and Swedish) as well as to his curiosity which has led him to look at contemporaneous literary activity beyond Germany's border to the north. The argument he presents, itself a culmination of research published over the past fifteen years, is, simply put, that Poetic Realism is not a peculiarly German phenomenon as has been propagated for so long, but rather the logical outgrowth of a literary movement which had first flourished in the Northern lands. He succeeds in demonstrating how the German Poetic Realists were indebted to and shaped by a literary tradition which had existed in Denmark, Sweden, and Swedish Finland during the first half of the nineteenth century, a cross-cultural connection apparently overlooked until now by both German and Scandinavian scholars. Beginning with the familiar assumption that the rise of Poetic Realism is dependent upon disillusionment with political activities and its accompanying depressed socio-economic conditions, Bernd examines the literary output in Denmark shortly after the Danes were disastrously defeated during the Napoleonic Wars in 1814, and claims 1823, the year of publication of Poul Martin Moller's poem "Glaede over Danmark," a first volley fired to challenge the preeminence of Danish Romanticism represented by Adam 182Rocky Mountain Review Oehlenschläger, as the actual moment of the movement's birth. In quick succession he traces how such important Danish authors as Steen Steensen Blicher, Thomasine Gyllembourg, Carl Bernhard, and Bernhard Ingemann took up M0ller's standard. Gyllembourg is a particularly striking case because of her importance in establishing a theoretical basis for the literary form which came to be considered the most appropriate vehicle for the highest expression of Poetic Realism, the novella. (She demands that the novella must "be pregnant with characteristics of drama." [38]) Here, as elsewhere in the book, Bernd provides brief discussions of selected major works which are by no means exhaustive, although he helpfully includes copious references to more substantive critical works for those wishing to pursue the matter. His own interpretive approach is quite narrow and focuses primarily on identifying certain dialectical elements which he argues are characteristic of Poetic Realism (the rejection of the fantastic and mythological elements associated with Scandinavian Romanticism; the stress on a realistic portrayal of the joys and suffering of life). It is interesting that Bernd elects to exclude H. C. Andersen from the ranks of the Poetic Realists. Although Andersen is (wrongly) known as primarily a writer of fairy tales, many of his Historier, especially the later ones (e.g., En Historie fra Klitterne), fall comfortably...