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178 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE with reference to Old Testament accounts of those of the temple, the high priest's dress, and the temple's inner sanctuary. Finally, in what may be the best essay in this volume, "Cringing Before the Lord: Milton's Satan, Samuel Johnson, and the Anxiety of Worship;' Andrew Barnaby defines the profane nature of attempts at writing sacred-devotional-poetry in the English Renaissance, and relates them via certain judgments of Samuel Johnson to Milton's Satan's radical reason for heavenly rebellion. This book is light on English Renaissance drama (two essays), and rather heavy on seventeenth-century poetry (two essays on Donne, one on Herbert, one on Fuller, and three on Milton). It begs comparison with Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and Profane (1958), if for no other reason than that of its title, which has become a Burckhardtean catch phrase for the breadth of curiosity and learning associated with the Renaissance. Mary Papazian provides no account of the historical origin and transmission of the catch phrase itself that provides the framework for this collection of essays. None of the essays attempts to do so, either. Still, much of value appears in this volume for readers interested in some of the many ways Christian doctrine and art in the Renaissance interacted with the profane broadly defined. Maurice Hunt Baylor University The Nearand Distant God:Poetry,Idealismand ReligiousThoughtfrom Hblderlin to Eliot. By Ian Cooper. Legenda: Legenda, 2008. ISBN 978-1-906540-00-5. Pp. x + 184. $ 89.50. Near is And difficult to grasp the god. But where danger dwells Rescue also grows. - Holderlin, "Patrnos" Since his rediscovery during the second decade of the twentieth century, Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) has been a focal point in the study of German classicism; at times, the critical appreciation and analysis of his work has overshadowed the scholarly engagement with Goethe and Schiller. Exploring the religious dimension of his poetry, prose, and philosophy, his unique merging of Greek mythology, pantheism, and Christianity has been at the center of literary, theological, and philosophical criticism of his writings. Ian Cooper's The Near and Distant God-the title alludes to the opening lines of "Patmos," the crown of Holderlins late Christian poetry-furthers our BOOK REVIEWS 179 understanding of Holderlins religious poetry and his importance in post -Kantian attempts at establishing religious meaning. Despite the implications of the subtitle, the study is not so much a "from-to" exploration; rather, it looks at the theological problems Holderlin struggles with and how they radiate out into the literary future, specifically modernism. Cooper's book is primarily of interest to Holderlin scholars, to students of the theological repercussions of (German) idealism, and to those concerned with the general history of post -Enlightenment Christian thought. Apart from Holderlin, the study discusses major writers in the wake of idealism: Morike, Hopkins, Rilke, and Eliot; it will therefore also be of interest to scholars working on these poets. Erich Heller's classic studies, The Disinherited Mind and The Artist's Journey into the Interior, provide Cooper with his starting point. His aim is to deepen Heller's reading of Hegel, Holderlin, Rilke, and Eliot by giving it a historical dimension, in order to write "the story of religious consciousness developing after Kant" (8), at the center of which stands Holderlin, Chapter 1 first analyzes Kant and Hegel's discussion of Christianity. For Kant there exists a tension between the rational ideal of faith and the contingent reality of historical Christianity. For Kant's followers, the question arises, "what would be necessary to develop a sacramental understanding of history" (17). In Hegel's interpretation, the event of the Last Supper is only experienced as the absence of Christ and not as a projection into the future. The following discussion of Holderlin focuses on three texts: "Uber die Verfahrungsweise des poetischen Geistes," "Menons Klagen urn Diotima," and, centrally, "Patmos," In Holderlin, the notions of recollection and recognition become crucial, leading to his poems' attempts at projecting a community that can regain the consciousness and figurative presence of the Word. Chapter 2, a transitional chapter, analyzes three central nineteenth-century thinkers-David Friedrich Strauss (author of Das Leben...

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