Five Portraits: Modernity and the Imagination in Twentieth-Century German Writing (review)

BOOK NOTES MICHAEL ANDRE BERNSTEIN. FivePortraits: ModernityandtheImagination in Twentieth-Century German Writing. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 2000. 150 pp. In this scholarly page-turner, Bernstein provides portraits offive towering figures ofmodernism: Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Musil, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin , and Paul Celan. He builds on his earlier work that located three imperatives underlying the "modemist masterpiece." The modernist texts that claim such stature must, according to Bernstein, seem universal, must be difficult, and must be redemptive . He posits that what "emerged out ofthe tension between the fulfillment and the frustration ofthese demands is precisely what we have come to recognize as the characteristic triumphs and particular problems ofthe modernist masterpieces as a distinct and historically circumscribed form" (4). Closely associated with these imperatives are the figure ofthe inspired genius and the cult ofinwardness. Bernstein brings the intersections ofeach individual author's artistic, intellectual , and political lives into sharp focus by using the defining characteristics ofthe "modernist masterpiece" as his analytic lens. Each portrait is an independent essay, yet is brought into a fruitful dialogue with the other portraits. Bernstein's choice of only German-speaking authors was predicated on the recognition that "the idioms of visionary inwardness and of apocalyptic destruction were both realized in German with unparalleled single-mindedness" (9). It is worth noting here that although all the authors portrayed wrote in German, only two were German citizens (Heidegger and Benjamin). Bernstein does not naively reinsert the author into the text in a crude biographical reading. He does, however, very consciously and with a "certain polemical intent" (10) revive the nuanced literary-intellectual portrait, a critical genre which has been placed in a theoretical limbo in recent years. The question that must be asked ofthis "revival" ofthe portrait is a basic one: what is gained? With the possible exception ofthe last one, a somewhat unsatisfying chapter on Paul Celan, the answer is that by bringing together aspects ofa life and work that are usually treated separately in biographical or literary scholarship, Bernstein achieves a more clearheaded analysis than might be otherwise possible. For example, in his portrait ofRilke, he manages to demystify the canonical legend that sees Rilke vacillating between times ofpoetic inspiration and near paralysis. Bernstein is able to do this by paying close attention to the actual dates of Rilke's poems and by advancing a more skeptical interpretation ofRilke's biography. This approach is particularly fruitful with Martin Heidegger. Bernstein brings together the intellectual and the political in Heidegger's philosophy and life, doing so in the context of the tensions inherent in modernism itself. Thus, he avoids the Scylla ofan ahistorical, apolitical, mere recapitulation ofHeideggerian thought and the Charybdis ofapolitical polemic that looks only at Heidegger's fascist personal history outside the context ofhis texts and the entire modemist project. The last chapter on Celan is dissatisfying to me because I would like to see more explicit comment regarding Celan's role within modernism, especially with respect to his later poems. Celan may indeed be the last modemist, but the analysis ofhis role in that pivotal spot needs more development. IfCelan's "Death Fugue" is "the last luminous example of a modemist masterpiece in all its undiminished ambition" (105), and ifmodernism ended with the Shoah, then where does Celan's later poetry fit? Bernstein describes the changes in Celan's work after his early volume of poetry MoAn und Gedächtnis, but does not do enough to relate these Vol.26 (2002): 178 THE COMPAKATIST artistic changes to modernism as a distinct form nor does he bring the tripartite grid ofmodemist imperatives, which had yielded such fruitful results in earlier portraits, fully to bear here. The volume ends rather abruptly with the Celan chapter without a final chapter underscoring or explicitly linking the arguments so cogently advanced throughout the preceding chapters. This "shortcoming" admittedly enticed me to provide the links—a result that would certainly be in keeping with Bernstein 's intellectually engaging and invigorating project. This is a book designed for a wide range of readers. It is accessible on a fundamental level because Bernstein provides both a translation and the original German for all the texts he cites. Bernstein also successfully...