The Romantic Performative: Language and Action in British and German Romanticism (review)

REVIEWS jazz audience responses." He does not seem to be aware that the phrase is practically a classical motifin the canon ofpremodemjazz on record. In general, however, Leggett knows his jazz, blues, and pop music almost as well as he knows his Larkin. He has also found some ofthe smartest commentators on these musical genres and put their work to use in his readings of the poems. Larkin 's Blues is an intriguing example ofhow musical traditions—even the most vernacular—must be part ofany consideration ofmodem poetry, especially when poets are listening as carefully and critically as did Philip Larkin. Krin GabbardState University ofNew York atStony Brook ANGELA ESTERHAMMER. The Romantic Performative: Language and Action in British and German Romanticism. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000. 357 pp. When Faust struggles to translate the opening ofSt. John's gospel into his beloved German, he is dissatisfied with "word" as an equivalent for "logos." He is triumphant , however, once he reinvents the Bible: "In the beginning was the deed," conveys the sense ofenergy and accomplishment he seeks. For Goethe, language needs to be translated into action, into the performative. Moreover, Faust's very act of translation is in itself a work of transformative imagination. Elsewhere in the play, Faust similarly longs to liberate himself from the confines of ordinary language: he despises rote learning and elevates the feeling in his heart above the deadness ofthe letter. He also knows that black magic, with its spells and incantations , will not open the universe to him. Nonetheless, he is able to conjure up the Earth Spirit—and the drama as a whole is a hymn to the sacred powers ofpoetry. Although Goethe is not one ofthe major writers Angela Esterhammer discusses in 7Ae Romantic Performative, he very well could have been. As her definition of both Romanticism and the performative is wide-ranging and inspiring, this fine study lends itselfto further application. Faust's translation ofword into deed indeed epitomizes what Esterhammer calls the Romantic performative—the concept of language as action and action as language. For many ofthe thinkers at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, speaking is the act of calling something, including the self, into existence. It grounds the speaking individual in his or her utterances as well as establishes a connection between speaker and hearer. The Romantic performative is inherently dialogic. Hence, for the Romantics, language is much less a tool than that which negotiates one's position in nature and society. But why is this view oflanguage necessarily Romantic and not, say, postmodem? Throughout her study, Esterhammer clarifies the Romantics' positions in contrast to current theory. The Romantics would indeed acknowledge that language betrays intentions (as in the French reception ofFreud) or that rhetoric can undermine the legitimacy a text claims for itself(as in Derrida and de Man). Yet, the Romantics also admit that the dynamism and ambiguities in language open up the realm of unexpected experience, thereby invoking lived reality in a way not evident in Derrida or Lacan. The vitality inherent in Romantic language also allows for the subject to be ever changing, unlike the static assessment ofthe subject in the speech-act theories ofAustin, Searle, and Habermas. The breadth, intricacy, and suppleness of Esterhammer's definition of the Romantic performative cannot be donejustice in a short review. What is impressive Vol. 26 (2002): 160 THE COMPAKATIST about her work is that she covers an expansive range ofauthors and yet can offer a succinct, coherent argument about what the Romantic performative entails. In the spirit ofFriedrich Schlegel's "symphilosophieren," Esterhammer brings together several different disciplines, including moral, political, and idealist philosophy, linguistics, poetry, and law. The investigation begins by looking at how the French Revolution set the stage via its remarkable speech acts: new names were bestowed on citizens, dates, measurements , and institutions. New laws were declared and oaths ofallegiance taken. This initial chapter then examines the positions ofHobbes, Hume, Reid, Bentham, Burke, and Paine on social contracts and constitutions. The other inaugural moment in Esterhammer's eyes is Kant's transcendental philosophy. Rather than deduct what a Kantian theory oflanguage would be, she posits that his "central hypothesis ofthe synthetic...