Goethe und China - China und Goethe. Bericht des Heidelberger Symposiums (review)

Goethe Yearbook 325 dilemma born of an aging aesthetic and troublesome reception, one in which the demands of antiquity and modernity seemed at odds. The solution, conceptually identified by Goethe as Mantegna's "Doppelleben, " anticipates the aesthetic stance Goethe realizes in the allegorical and opera-like composition of Faust II. Finally, Borchmeyer, in an earlier and longer version of his interpretation of "Alexis und Dora" already available in the 1985 Reclam volume Goethes Erzählwerk (edited by Paul Michael Lützeler and James E. McLeod), pointedly attacks Albrecht Schöne for his determined dismissal of reception aesthetics in his 1982 reading of the same text. Obviously irritated by Schöne's lofty claim to have solved the riddle of the text and to have thus determined its single correct interpretation, Borchmeyer invokes Gadamer and argues for a renewed respect for hermeneutical limits. He also argues in some detail against Schöne's reading, principally by denying the very existence of the puzzle that Schöne "solves" — the key term is the "so" of line 25. In summary, a stimulating set of essays. The volume does not completely redeem the promise of the preface and title to provide a panorama of current European Goethe scholarship and building-blocks to a new Goethe. (Apart from Borchmeyer little explicit attention is paid to questions of methodology, for example; new critical approaches, whether semiotic, post-structuralist, feminist or whatever, are virtually absent.) Its value is to be found, finally, not in any emergent critical program, but rather in the strength of individual essays and the introduction it provides to a set of issues currently generating interest among Italian Goethe scholars. That in itself is both instructive and rewarding. University of California, Irvine Meredith Lee Goethe und China — China und Goethe. Bericht des Heidelberger Symposiums, ed. Günther Debon and Adrian Hsia. Bern, Frankfurt/Main, New York: Peter Lang, 1985 (euro-sinica, Band 1). This stimulating volume is the report of a symposium held in 1982 in Heidelberg . Just when one begins to feel that there is little new under the sun to be said about "Goethe und —," it is possible to be aroused and refreshed by the diverse contributions printed here. Katharina Mommsen's introduction, which retains its character as the opening address, moves skillfully between close reading of specific texts, reviewing the state of the discussion on Goethe's reception of Chinese culture, and assessing the importance of this reception in Goethe's development. She strikes two key notes which resound repeatedly in the subsequent papers: Goethe's remarkable achievement in capturing and conveying the spirit of Chinese lyric poetry in the Chinesischdeutsche Jahres- und Tageszeiten, and Goethe's long-term, dedicated pursuit of knowledge about Chinese history and literature. Left unstated but apparent nonetheless is the fact that China was often present in Goethe's thinking where one 326 Book Reviews might otherwise have expected Greece to be. For Goethe, as for British Whigs, China was a domain oiAufklarung. This needs further study within the contradictions of colonialism in the 18th century — Goethe's comments on chinoiserie should not be taken at face value. In the second part of the collection, Meredith Lee and Günther Debon examine "China bei Goethe." Lee discusses the somewhat elusive issue of what is "Chinese" in the Chinesisch-deutsche Jahres- und Tageszeiten. Despite a carefuf and rewarding reading of key poems in the cycle, Lee does not quite answer the posed question. Perhaps it would have been useful to consider what "deutsch" meant for Goethe, so that the tension in the hyphenated term of the title might have been elucidated. Günther Debon's "Goethe erklärt in Heidelberg einen chinesischen Roman" presents the facts about Goethe's knowledge of Chinese novels, in particular of the Chinese popular novel Hao-qiu zbuan (History of a Well-chosen Spouse). He throws doubt upon the supposed influence of this work upon Der Mann von fünfzig Jahren, and stresses the need for a return to the sources in any further studies of the problem. Part Three, "China and Goethe," shifts to a larger stage with three essays. Two are by Feng Zhi, the doyen of Goethe studies in...