Goethe as Woman: The Undoing of Literature (review)

270 Book Reviews What is the good of saying that Götz is "a key document of the Sturm und Drang" (89), if that is aU that is said about that movement, or, oÃ- Iphigenia, that "it displays the features which one associates with the notion of neo-classicism" (106), without any further characterization of that term? Readers may once have been able to read the "classics" for fun and profit, but the level of education that assumed is a thing of the past. We're aU postmoderns now. Unlike the work of post-Romantic poets, Goethe's must stül be read with the context of the inherited Uterary tradition never far from our minds. It may have been his own firm anchoring in the Uterary tradition, combined with a fortunate personality (Ui contrast to the depressive Romantics), that enabled Goethe constantly to discover "worldly" contents that he could graft— somewhat Uke Eduard at the beginning of Die Wahlverwandtschaften—onto inherited forms. Ui the sense that this was a process, I would agree with the Swaleses that Goethe's self was "constantly Ui debate with its surroundings" (16). What the Swaleses neglect to portray, however, is the surroundings. One of the strangest omissions concerns "SeUge Sehnsucht." That the poem is part of a coUection caUed West-östlicher Divan is nowhere mentioned, nor does the discussion contain any reference to, say, the experience of love. Instead, it is considered under the rubric of "human reflectivity," as an example of Goethe's worldly faith: "It cannot be too strongly stressed that the force of 'Stirb und werde!' is not other-worldly. Rather, it has to do with the transformatory and setf-transformatory law of this-worldly experience; it is a law of ceaseless dying and becoming" (54). This emphasis on worldly profit, rather than any divine relationship (as in "seUg," the meaning of which is not defined or even mentioned), can be defended , but the approach is too abstract. There are real-world reasons close at hand for agreeing that the poem, Uideed the Divan, exemplifies the "attachment to the earth and aU that it stood for" (10): for instance, the experience of passion in old age, the discovery of a new and fruitful poetic model, the retreat from despair in a time of turmoU, both personal and poUtical. In place of such vital particulars is "transformatory and setf-transformatory law." The Swaleses have indicated a fruitful direction for reading Goethe today—an emphasis on the positive nature of transformation, of acceptance of living Ui a world that erodes certainties as fast as the headlines Ui our newspapers change—but much too much of Goethe has been left out Ui the process. New York, New York Elizabeth Powers Benjamin Bennett, Goethe as Woman: The Undoing of Literature. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2001. 274 pp. In Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's cinematic rendition of Kleist's Penthesilea (1987), Edith Clever plays aU the parts in a tour de force lasting 243 minutes. Performed on a claustrophobic dark stage, the spectator gets the sense that PenthesUea is hearing voices and that the intense dialog is going on solely Ui her head. With a shift in perspective, it could equaUy be argued that Clever embodies aU the voices ruminating through Kleist's mind. She would thereby embody Kleist as woman. Distilling the play to its most essential quality—mere words— accompanied by no action except Clever's facial expressions and gestures, Syberberg demonstrates the impossibihty of staging Penthesilea: he foregrounds how the play itsetf resists representation. Syberberg's rendition of Kleist serves as an example, as I see it, of what Benjamin Bennett would argue is Kleist as woman. In his pivotal chapter on Penthe- Goethe Yearbook 271 silea, he claims that, with its cast of animals and single-breasted women, the tragedy cannot be performed. As tf to point to this impossibiUty, Kleist casts aU the fighting off-stage. If the action is excluded from view, representation, Uke the bodies of the Amazons, is itsetf mutilated. Penthesilea is a kind of pure theater , which is to say, it takes place in an utterly imagined realm, divorced from any conceivable real world. And insofar...