Perspectives on Max Frisch ed. by Gerhard F. Probst and Jay F. Bodine (review)

Book Reviews 497 GERHARD F. PROBST AND JAY F. BODINE, eds. Perspectives on Max Frisch. Lexington, Ky.: University of Kentucky Press 1982. pp. 225. $20.50. Despite Max Frisch's standing as one oftoday's best known and acknowledged authors, the literature in English dealing with him and his works is painfully limited. Probst and Bodine are to be commended not only for recognizing the need to introduce Frisch to'the English-speaking world, but also for enlisting the help of a number of scholars in remedying this situation. Such an effort has been long overdue and is to be welcomed. The collection includes English translations or revisions of four pieces previously published in German and eight original essays, as well as an extensive bibliography that, while not exhaustive, is, as Probst indicates in his introduction, "the most comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary literature published in this country." A novice perusing the collection will certainly gain an appreciation for Frisch's major works, the literary styles and forms which characterize his writing, his recurring themes and concerns, and his attitude toward the contemporary world. Thus Manfred Jurgensen treats Frisch's dramas, Hans Banziger his narrative works, and Horst Steinmetz his diaries. Several works deal with the troublesome man-woman relationship which is dominant in much of Frisch's oeuvre, including those by Marian E. Musgrave, Rolf Kieser, Linda 1. Stine, and Banziger. Bodine pursues Frisch's preoccupation with language, its potential for misuse, image-making, and self-revelation, and his related skepticism.toward language; Klaus leziorkowski deals with Frisch's attitudes toward Switzerland in general and with his Wilhelm Tell work in particular; Wulf Koepke discusses Stiller (I'm notStiller) as an anti-Bildungsroman; Probst analyzes the levels of image-making in Frisch's MeinName sei Gantenbein (A Wilderness ofMirrors) and, in a second essay, deals briefly with Frisch's subsequent prose work DerMensch erscheint im Holoziin (Man in the Holocene). Stine traces Frisch's use of the fairy tale from his early novel Die Schwierigen to his recent narrative Montauk. The essays successfully reveal the affinities among Frisch's works, the recurrence of specific thematic concerns, and his experimentation and innovation in form and style. For German scholars, the value of the volume is harder to define. Jurgensen's article is relatively superficial and without reference to Frisch scholarship; the essays by Banziger and Steinmetz, although reprints, provide more thoughtful analyses of particularworks, clarify the interrelatedness ofFrisch's works in both form and content, and indicate areas of previous Frisch scholarship, and their inclusion in English translation is certainly justified. Koepke's reprint and Jeziorkowski's original contribution place Stiller and Wilhelm Tell for die Schule, respectively, in a literary context. Koepke, who considers Frisch's novel in the framework of the traditional German Bildungsroman, views Stiller as a parody of Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg (Magic Mountain), emphasizing their similarities and differences, and pointing out possible ties between them. For the Frisch scholar the essay is not new, and as an introduction to the work, the focus is too narrow, and the richness and ambiguity ofthe novel are not given their due. leziorkowski, on the other hand, places Frisch's Tell in the tradition of the Book Reviews German and Swiss literature dealing with this Swiss national hero, illuminating Frisch's work from a historical perspective and placing it within a literary and philosophical context, thereby emphasizing the uniqueness of his treatment of the myth, its origins, motivations, and reception. Also of interest to both Frisch neophytes and scholars are the essays of Stine and Musgrave, which extend areas oftheir previously published scholarship. Stine, broadly interpreting Miirchen to include folklore and legends, familiar and original tales, fantasy situations, and fairy-tale motifs, pursues their appearance in Frisch's writings and details their use by Frisch to oppose "varying degrees offantasy ... to suggest through. comparison and contrast the one thing words cannot directly express - reality." Musgrave, after touching upon Frisch's beliefin the importance oftravel and his literary use of foreign lands and "exotic peoples," surveys Frisch's •"continuum' of women, domestic and foreign" and discusses the negative life experiences of many of Frisch's women figures. Her...