The German Epic in the Cold War: Peter Weiss, Uwe Johnson, and Alexander Kluge by Matthew D. Miller (review)

In his study on the modern epic in postwar German literature, Matthew Miller undertakes a comparative analysis of the narrative reactions of three major postwar German authors to twentieth-century catastrophe. Peter Weiss (1916–1982) wrote his three-volume Ästhetik des Widerstands (published 1975–1981) over the space of a decade, chronicling antifascist resistance. The tetralogy by Uwe Johnson (1934–1984), Jahrestage. Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl, appeared between 1970 and 1983, featuring daily commentary from mid-1967 to 1968 on the subject of German division, current world events, and the experience of exile. Finally, Alexander Kluge, born in 1932, assembled his writings from four decades on a multitude of social and political topics in Chronik der Gefühle (2000).

In an introductory meditation on the changing perception of reading in the accelerated, globalized present, Miller clarifies the stakes in writing modern epics, which "unfold in and address themselves to vaster, longer, slower—that is, epic—swaths of time" (14). While literature's postwar reemergence appears counterintuitive, in Miller's view, he draws on critics as varied as Theodor Adorno, Franco Moretti, Andreas Huyssen, Fredric Jameson, as well as Kluge and Oskar Negt to argue persuasively for the potential of modern epics, which may contribute substantively to readers' skill at differentiating (Kluge's Unterscheidungsvermögen), questioning, and observing. These writers, and, I would argue, Miller, seek to foster a "social emancipation" (180) that is grounded in such critical abilities.

Miller's study features an introduction, a chapter on critical theory, and chapters on Weiss, Johnson, and Kluge, respectively, which address the interconnected temporal and spatial motifs involved in these epics' unwinding of history. These narratives are not simply about history or geopolitics, as this study demonstrates, but about "orientation" in a violent and volatile world. Despite the dizzyingly detailed and complex prose of these three works, Miller deftly explores their layers without succumbing to the temptation to simplify their complexities. As he leads readers through key scenes (e.g., the young antifascist resistance fighters of Ästhetik des Widerstands who seek to educate themselves by discussing the altar at the Berlin Pergamon Museum) and spatiotemporal juxtapositions (e.g., Weiss's comparisons with Greek myth and the contemporary political struggles), we see paths emerging from these modern epics that evoke Jameson's notion of "cognitive mapping." Miller ultimately detects hopes for humanization and self-emancipation arising from the "cultural labor" (57) depicted by Weiss.

In the chapter on Johnson, Miller discusses central questions relating to the continued significance of Jahrestage: How do we read Gesine Cresspahl's hopes for democratic socialism given that we, like Johnson, are aware of the Prague Spring's outcome? What messages might Johnson offer today? Convincingly, Miller asks us to consider that Jahrestage's protagonist-narrator is not in fact blind to Soviet threat of suppression (Johnson did, after all, finish this work after the Prague Spring had ended violently), but that the narrative nevertheless points toward "progressive social possibilities" (124). Cresspahl's careful scrutiny of the New York Times and her self-reflective juxtaposition of historical moments—Jewish persecution in Nazi Germany, the repressive socialist realities of the GDR, the Vietnam War, and the racism witnessed in New York—are part of a strategy of critical documentation of collective experience, found in the "modern epics" Miller explores.

Whereas Weiss and Johnson engage in "literary remediation," Kluge integrates different media in such a way that shows a "newfound openness to visual media" (150). His assemblage of narratives is, as Miller notes, a radically different kind of modern German epic. While Weiss and Johnson provide cohesive narratives conveyed by autodiegetic narrators, Chronik der Gefühle challenges readers: "Kluge's literary mediation of destruction orchestrates destructive literary forms to prevent the neutralizations or transfigurations of history" (155). His choice of form is not simply an attempt to...