Goethe’s Poetry for Occasions by Ernest M. Oppenheimer (review)

HUMANITIES 401 'dull duty of the editor,' although arduous and demanding, is in fact a fascinating and fundamental scholarly art. The volume of papers on Editing Eighteenth Century Novels presented in November 1973 maintains the high standard set by its predecessors. As the editor of this collection, G.E. Bentley, Jr, notes, until quite recently none of the great eighteenthcentury novels were available in reliable editions. The vigour and assiduity with which this anomaly is in process of being corrected is attested in essays by the editors of works of Fielding, Lesage, Richardson , Sterne, and Smollett which are included. Martin Battestin outlines the multifarious problems that have faced the editors of the Wesleyan edition of Fielding's works, with particular attention to Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, while Roger Laufer describes his editing of Gil BIas de Santillane for Editions Garnier, and reflects on the crucial question of finding a publisher and a market for the completed text. Having discussed textual considerations on a previous occasion, John Carroll chooses to indicate the challenges that Samuel Richardson's Clarissa offers to the annotator. Melvyn New, general editor of the Florida Sterne, in his turn concentrates on the text of Tristram Shandy, while a.M. Brack, Jr, deals with the origins and fluctuating fortunes of the Bicentennial Edition of Smollett's works. We must await the appearance of the finished products for full enlightenment, but meanwhile these papers tell us of iconographic effects achieved by typographical variation in Fielding's novelsI of the amazing range of Richardson's allusions and quotations, and of the textual importance of the first edition of Volumes I and II of Tristram Shandy. There is spirited discussion of such technical issues as the distinction between'accidentals' and'substantives' and the validity of various editions , but it is evident that these scholars are principally intent on getting at the meaning of the texts they are seeking to establish and that they are, finally, as Professor New puts it, students 'of the words of the book and not of the book itself.' Their belief is, to quote Professor Battestin, that the 'establishment of a reliable text is ... the fundamental act of criticism.' One is impressed with the painstaking work they have devoted to the cause of understanding but also with the substantial financial backing required. It is sad to realize how hard it would be to launch such ambitious projects in the present era of galloping costs and shrinking budgets. (JOHN STEDMOND) Ernest M. Oppenheimer, Goethe's Poetry for Occasions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1974, 246, $15.00 Professor Oppenheimer describes himself in the Introduction to his book as 'cautious by nature' (p 8), and the caution expresses itself in the 402 LETTERS IN CANADA modesty of his announced intention: he sets out to examine in chronological sequence those works of Goethe's which manifestly derive from a specific occasion. Of course, Oppenheimer is well aware that Goethe himself suggested more than once that all his poetry was a Gelegenheitsgedicht in the sense that reality was the impetus and principal concern of his writing. Viewed within this context, Oppenheimer's theme would be nothing less than the nature of Goethe's creative impulse as a whole - and the extent to which the workings of that impulse account for Goethe's 'naIvety' (in Schiller's sense), for both the strength and limitations of the Q?uvre, for that intactness which at times can prove forbidding to aesthetic sensibilities imbued with the hazardous condition of modern poetry. These are massive issues - and one respects Oppenheimer's caution. He offers precise, cogently-documented analyses of a whole range of works, ranging from the very early'family' poems to the 'Maskenzug' of 1818. Throughout he is concerned to explore the conditions under which an occasion demanded poetry from Goethe, or, alternatively, under which he transmuted an event into an occasion by the act of poetic commemoration. Oppenheimer does not lose himself in the fascinations of simple source hunting: throughout, critical inquiry is allowed to prevail as the specifically artistic nature of the achievement is examined. There are fascinating implications to Oppenheimer's undertaking: on several occasions he raises the frequently-made objection...