Figures of Identity: Goethe's Novels and the Enigmatic Self (review)

232 GOETHE SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA Faust is to be regarded as homo europaeus, the reason is not his identification with a Spenglerian essence, but rather the opposite: he is a succession of "masks," of experiences, of variants, of historical alternatives. Faust is primarily not harmonious, but open-ended. This centerless synthesis, as I would like to call it, has a theoretical background, explained by Doinas in structuralist terms. He considers the myth to be intrinsically multifaceted, with three levels (historical, psychological, and symbolical), each of them with five components and three human types. The multitude of Faustian literary treatments is generated by the exploitation of potential combinations or emphases of these component elements. Similarly the "Europeanness" of Faust is explained by the myth's complex internal structure. (This view is meant, I believe, as a kind of rejoinder to Blaga's emphasis on the organic unity of "geprägte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt"). The translation by Doinas rigorously follows the text published by Erich Trunz in the Hamburger Ausgabe. The formal structure (e.g. rhythms, stanza, shape, line lengths, etc.) is also faithfully preserved; the notes occasionally offer alternative translations. The translation's main merit is its variety. More systematically than Blaga before him the translator takes advantage of the over 150 years that have elapsed and works back into the text stylistic effects and textual sensibilities that have been made available to us in the interval by post-Romantic and modern poets. Doinas controls the sublime register as well as the level of stylistic earthiness. He is excellent in "Walpurgisnacht," in the Gretchen episodes, in "Anmutige Gegend," and in the Helena episodes. Curiously enough, a certain exhaustion seems to set in when some of the famous "arias" oÃ- Faust are reached ("Prolog im Himmel" and the conclusions to both parts of the drama): the notes suggest a case of over-achievement or over-rationalization. There are very few mistakes that I could detect ("dunkler Ehrenmann" in "Vor dem Tor," 1. 1034, is mistranslated as "just and sullen man"), but the connotations are not always kept in mind, and so occasionally countrified or homespun tones come to be heard in unexpected places. But these are relatively minor faults. The achievement of Doinas, like that of Blaga twenty-five years ago, is considerable. It shows perhaps better than many a learned Western exegesis the sheer immediacy and usefulness of Goethe's work in complex and difficult cultural and social circumstances. Faust, in this test case which perhaps is or can be duplicated in other areas of the globe, shows itself well able to provide sophisticated and symbolical responses to new ideological situations. Catholic University of America Virgil Nemoianu Muenzer, Clark S, Figures of Identity: Goethe's Novels and the Enigmatic Self. University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1984. I mean to praise this book, indeed to praise it very highly, and I begin with this statement because it occurs to me that the body of what follows may create a misleading impression. To call Muenzer's work "convincing" or "accurate" or interpretively "sound" (which in many ways, or at many points, it is) would be to compromise its principal aim, Benjamin Bennett 233 which is to initiate, around and about Goethe's novels (viewed as the developing stages of a single project), a particular type of critical and self-critical discourse within which such notions as conviction, accuracy and soundness have yet to be given a meaning. The notion of "originality," however, which perhaps therefore suggests itself, is also not satisfactory, for the book's argument, to the extent that it can be analyzed into paraphrasable points, does not say anything strictly new about any of the four novels it deals with in detail. It is in fact not in Muenzer's interest to be original. His aim is to bridge the gap between an existing critical discourse and a different, relatively inchoate discourse which is characterized in part precisely by its exclusion of the pretense of superseding or supplanting an earlier communicative state of affairs. The bridge, therefore—unlike Wittgenstein's metaphorical ladder—must stand, and be supported at both ends; the circumstances thus require...