Das monumental Ich-Wege zu Goethes "Faust" (review)

404 Book Reviews mption. It becomes an act "gegen die polis" (48): In this reading, one can say that Goethe's politics is anti-Habermasian, informed as it is by rupture and "incommunicability " (10, 15). As may be clear from these observations, Breithaupt's focus is not on "images" as a thematic presence in Goethe's work, for instance, in descriptions of works of art (although such passages are discussed as well); nor is Breithaupt primarily interested in Goethe's remarks about politics, but rather on the political as a matter of textual practice in Goethe's literary writing ("die in den literarischen Schriften praktizierte Politik," 13). His is a rhetorical analysis that examines those operations of Goethe's texts that offer a mode of escape "aus der Übermacht des Ästhetischen" (9), meaning that they demystify objects of perception as being in fact the products of language itself. Bilder are forms of ideological relocation, whether we call these "allgemeingültige Zeichen" or "verbindliche Bilder" (10): "Auch das Sprachliche ist eine Art und Weise des Erscheinens" (28). Conversely, Breithaupt's comparison of Luciane's and Ottilie 's tableaux vivants in the Wahlverwandtschaften shows how such Goethean visual representations as Ottilie's may themselves have a counter-ideological, counter-aesthetic effect. A key term that Breithaupt adopts to describe the textual destabilization at work in Goethe's writing is that of das Dritte—a stmctural "third" instance that in Goethe's work after his return from Italy comes increasingly to disrupt such dichotomies as male and female, moment and time, subject and object. Here Breithaupt's reading redraws a structure in Goethe's thought that has too often been assumed to result in a conciliatory act (or vision) of sublimation: "Die Mitte, die es [das Dritte] einnimmt, geht in keinem Fall in einer einfachen Vermittlung oder Synthese auf, sondern beharrt in wechselseitiger Abstoßung oder Aufopferung von den gegensätzlichen Polen" (64). Here one might wish for a more detailed account of the specificity to Goethe of this pattern of thinking: For instance, an analysis of the essay "Über Laokoon" that discusses the tension between synchrony and diachrony in the Augenblick of visual representation does not indicate to what extent Goethe is in this regard either simply repeating or instead revising Lessing's earlier theory of the prägnanter Augenblick. Whether or not readers agree that Goethe, in his literary texts, consciously sought an engagement with Plato, say (29), or Kant (102 and passim), they will find Breithaupt's close readings to be finely structured, scrupulous, invariably illuminating, and at times provocative. His book is in this sense both beautiful and political, and has the virtue of inciting one to go back and re-read Goethe's texts themselves. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Nicholas Rennte Karl Eibl, Das monumental Ich—Wege zu Goethes "Faust." Frankfurt/Main und Leipzig: Insel, 2000. 412 pp. In volumes 1 and 2 of the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag edition of Goethe's works (the Frankfurter Ausgabe) Karl Eibl, who also had overall responsibility for the second Abteilung of the Frankfurter Ausgabe (Briefe, Tagebücher and Ge- Goethe Yearbook 405 spräche), provides a masterful presentation of Goethe's poems, including consideration of previous editorial and interpretive work, an assessment of the widely used Goethe editions, and commentary on the individual poems and their proper sequencing. Readers of Goethe are handsomely served by this edition and must be grateful for information, for the model of philological excellence that Eibl provides, and for his elegant and judicious interpretations. This book on Faust likewise benefits from the author's rich knowledge and mature professionalism. Das monumental Ich, however, offers a specific but not fully convincing thesis, while providing interesting material not essential to its thesis, and addresses a mixed readership. This results in some unevenness in the kind and intellectual level of information provided and in the issues addressed. The book is neither just an introduction to Faust with a balanced presentation of the main scholarly bones of contention nor just an esoteric dissertation with its own ax to grind. Rather, it offers valuable background information useful or at least potentially interesting to everyone, along with miscellaneous "insights...