Zeitoasen. Literarische Verlangsamung im Realismus bei Stifter, Raabe und Fontane Von Carsten Rast (review)

Time oases are locations in realist narratives that offer havens from the modern acceleration of industry and technology, transportation and communication, that was becoming evident in the nineteenth century and threatened to destabilize traditional ways of life. In Carsten Rast's deeply probing analysis they are not escapist denials of social and political reality and thus do not make German realism reactionary and evasive. Rather, the oases carry with them a dialectical awareness of the modern forces against which they attempt to shelter. They are located "zwischen Statisch-Festgelegtem und Dynamisch-Bewegtem" (14). They express a critique of progress but also a recognition of it. That is not to deny that the passages attempt "eine Verstetigung des Wandels durch Reduzierung seiner Geschwindigkeit und durch Hervorhebung ästhetischer Verfahren als Partizipation an Dauer" (29). They form boundaries to the new but are aware of ongoing processes; the figures make personal choices while the world goes on; the novels "verbinden einen Rückzug nach innen und eine öffnung nach außen" (45). There is a critique of progress in all three novels, not hostile but differentiated, a resistance to modern tendencies along with an awareness of them.

Rast examines mainly Stifter's Der Nachsommer, Raabe's Die Chronik der Sperlingsgasse, and Fontane's Der Stechlin, usually though not always in that order. He does occasionally refer to other texts from his authors and mentions others, such as Thomas Mann and Musil. Toward the end he expands the purview further to other works from Parzival to Fouqué's Undine. From a great wealth of observations and analyses, here are some examples. With its memorial roses, Stifter's Rosenhaus spatializes the lost love of Mathilde; thus the tone breaks with traditional idyllic harmony and acknowledges suffering and misfortune. Heinrich Drendorf, far from a static figure, is constantly on the move among various locations and on his scientific research journeys. Out of the stagnation of Risach's home comes a new marriage. Rast goes so far as to say that Stifter "thematisiert am deutlichsten die Unerreichbarkeit einer harmonisch-idyllischen Zurückgezogenheit" (137).

In the Chronik, the street is a decelerated center, closed off from and connected to the accelerated life of the city and beyond: one figure is driven to emigration to America. Here, too, within the oasis there are memories of early loss and imposed renunciation. While there is no evident interest in world events, there is an acute sensitivity to social and political problems. The Sperlingsgasse can be understood "als kultureller Kern einer sich globalisierenden Welt" (266).

Der Stechlin is clearly farther along in its contiguity to the encroaching modern. There is an awareness of telegraph and railroad, even though Dubslav's house is not reachable by them. The lake is a midpoint of decelerating movement, yet it erupts in rapport with distant catastrophes. There is little confidence that Dubslav's oasis will be enduring. His house is already reduced from a manor it replaced. His son Woldemar abandons a career in the larger world and retreats to the oasis, marrying not (as I and perhaps other readers had hoped) the bright and sophisticated Melusine, but her conventional and accommodating sister. Though indebted himself, he hopes to save the house with Armgard's dowry. It is not certain that he has the grit to preserve the oasis against the decline of the nobility, and it is not clear that Fontane thinks he should. Rast comments that the text "optiert […] für langsame Modernisierung, nicht für Beschleunigung" (115).

This book, originally a Marburg dissertation, is very ambitious, presenting familiar texts as exceptionally dense with meaning and implication. There are hundreds of references to other studies of the authors and of theoretical contributions; the list of secondary works fills thirty-three pages. Rast is a superlatively close reader who requires concentration sentence by sentence. There are microscopic observations on antinomies and anomalies that complicate the oases. In this there may...