Problems of historical understanding in the Modern Novel

Table of contents :
479722_0000
479722_0001
479722_0002
479722_0003
479722_0004
479722_0005
479722_0006
479722_0007
479722_0008
479722_0009
479722_0010
479722_0011
479722_0012
479722_0013
479722_0014
479722_0015
479722_0016
479722_0017
479722_0018
479722_0019
479722_0020
479722_0021
479722_0022
479722_0023
479722_0024
479722_0025
479722_0026
479722_0027
479722_0028
479722_0029
479722_0030
479722_0031
479722_0032
479722_0033
479722_0034
479722_0035
479722_0036
479722_0037
479722_0038
479722_0039
479722_0040
479722_0041
479722_0042
479722_0043
479722_0044
479722_0045
479722_0046
479722_0047
479722_0048
479722_0049
479722_0050
479722_0051
479722_0052
479722_0053
479722_0054
479722_0055
479722_0056
479722_0057
479722_0058
479722_0059
479722_0060
479722_0061
479722_0062
479722_0063
479722_0064
479722_0065
479722_0066
479722_0067
479722_0068
479722_0069
479722_0070
479722_0071
479722_0072
479722_0073
479722_0074
479722_0075
479722_0076
479722_0077
479722_0078
479722_0079
479722_0080
479722_0081
479722_0082
479722_0083
479722_0084
479722_0085
479722_0086
479722_0087
479722_0088
479722_0089
479722_0090
479722_0091
479722_0092
479722_0093
479722_0094
479722_0095
479722_0096
479722_0097
479722_0098
479722_0099
479722_0100
479722_0101
479722_0102
479722_0103
479722_0104
479722_0105
479722_0106
479722_0107
479722_0108
479722_0109
479722_0110
479722_0111
479722_0112
479722_0113
479722_0114
479722_0115
479722_0116
479722_0117
479722_0118
479722_0119
479722_0120
479722_0121
479722_0122
479722_0123
479722_0124
479722_0125
479722_0126
479722_0127
479722_0128
479722_0129
479722_0130
479722_0131
479722_0132
479722_0133
479722_0134
479722_0135
479722_0136
479722_0137
479722_0138
479722_0139
479722_0140
479722_0141
479722_0142
479722_0143
479722_0144
479722_0145
479722_0146
479722_0147
479722_0148
479722_0149
479722_0150
479722_0151
479722_0152
479722_0153
479722_0154
479722_0155
479722_0156
479722_0157
479722_0158
479722_0159
479722_0160
479722_0161
479722_0162
479722_0163
479722_0164
479722_0165
479722_0166
479722_0167
479722_0168
479722_0169
479722_0170
479722_0171
479722_0172
479722_0173
479722_0174
479722_0175
479722_0176
479722_0177
479722_0178
479722_0179
479722_0180
479722_0181
479722_0182
479722_0183
479722_0184
479722_0185
479722_0186
479722_0187
479722_0188
479722_0189
479722_0190
479722_0191
479722_0192
479722_0193
479722_0194
479722_0195
479722_0196
479722_0197
479722_0198
479722_0199
479722_0200
479722_0201
479722_0202
479722_0203
479722_0204
479722_0205
479722_0206
479722_0207
479722_0208
479722_0209
479722_0210
479722_0211
479722_0212
479722_0213
479722_0214
479722_0215
479722_0216
479722_0217
479722_0218
479722_0219
479722_0220
479722_0221
479722_0222
479722_0223
479722_0224
479722_0225
479722_0226
479722_0227
479722_0228
479722_0229
479722_0230
479722_0231
479722_0232
479722_0233
479722_0234
479722_0235
479722_0236
479722_0237
479722_0238
479722_0239
479722_0240
479722_0241
479722_0242
479722_0243
479722_0244
479722_0245
479722_0246
479722_0247
479722_0248
479722_0249
479722_0250
479722_0251
479722_0252
479722_0253
479722_0254
479722_0255
479722_0256
479722_0257
479722_0258
479722_0259
479722_0260
479722_0261
479722_0262
479722_0263
479722_0264
479722_0265
479722_0266
479722_0267
479722_0268
479722_0269
479722_0270
479722_0271
479722_0272
479722_0273
479722_0274
479722_0275
479722_0276
479722_0277
479722_0278
479722_0279
479722_0280
479722_0281
479722_0282
479722_0283
479722_0284
479722_0285
479722_0286
479722_0287
479722_0288
479722_0289
479722_0290
479722_0291
479722_0292
479722_0293
479722_0294
479722_0295
479722_0296
479722_0297
479722_0298
479722_0299
479722_0300
479722_0301
479722_0302
479722_0303
479722_0304
479722_0305
479722_0306
479722_0307
479722_0308
479722_0309
479722_0310
479722_0311
479722_0312
479722_0313
479722_0314
479722_0315
479722_0316
479722_0317
479722_0318
479722_0319
479722_0320
479722_0321
479722_0322
479722_0323
479722_0324
479722_0325
479722_0326
479722_0327
479722_0328
479722_0329
479722_0330
479722_0331
479722_0332
479722_0333

Citation preview

Problems of Historical Understanding in the Modern Novel

Dissertation for the degree of Ph.D. at the University of East Anglia, 1979

Submitted by Andrew S. Bowie

1979

Berlin, October,

/;~:~-o, L-'~;/~'. '" .

l , '::::

,

,~,

\~--./

To all those who helped, particularly: my parents,

Corinna

Stupka, Thomas Elsasser, Peter Steiger, Malcolm Bowie, Peter Bayley, Band.

and the members of the Blue Bayou Jazz

Contents

Introduction Chapter One: Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale, and Narx' s Di~~lassenkampfe in Frankreich and Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte: Contradic~ory Realism.

p. 26-63

Chapter Two:

p.

'Realism'

and Totality.

64- 1 35

Chapter Three: Abstraction, Symbol, and Mass History: Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg-.

p. 136-· 99

Chapter Four: The Limits of Abstrac~ion: Hermann Broch' s Die Schlaf\",andler.

p.

191-235

Chapter Five: A Precarious Synthesis: Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus.

p.

236-79

Conclusion

p. 280-3 1 7

Bibliography

p.3 1 8--3 1

Footnotes ( chapters.

) are given at the end of the respective

1•

Introduction The present work is an attempt

to·

sugge$t ways in which

certain large-scale novels involving major events of mo4ern European histori contribute to, or fail to contribute to,

an understanding of that history. As such, it can be

understood as being a,

largely implicit, critique of those

approaches to literature which tend to ignore historical interpretation. This is in many ways determined by the material itself: an examination of novels -whose content is so substantially related to the :field of historical discourse can hardly limit itself to merely formal considerations. It will,

though, become clear that precisely such

material is able to reveal a great deal about the novel form. As Adorno states in the Asthetische Theorie, 'Die ungolosten Antagonismen der Realitat kehren wieder in den KUl1stwerken als die immanenten Probleme ihrer Form.'(l) The novels in question can contribute to an awareness of novel form by their being near to other forms of discourse, most evidently the philosophy of history and narrative history. The moments at which a form becomes problematic show up its nature most clearly. This, of course, poses the question of the point at which a problematic text ceases to belong to the genre. A priori genre descriptions seem to me generally unproductive. The main texts irl the present examination: L'Education sentimentale, La D~b~cle, Les 2'hi~aul~,

per

Zauberberg,~··Die

Schlaftiandler, and.: Doktor

Faustus all sustain the .representationofa-certain fictional figure or fictional figures throughout a narrative which givos an image of a p8.rticular socio-historical l"J'orld. Jonathan Culler states in Structuralist Poetics that 'the basic convention which governs the novel - and which, a fortiori,

governs those novels which set out to violate

it - is our expectation that the novel will produce a world.' (2) In the conclusion the work of Alexander Kluge will be considered: none of his works could be considered a novel. Kluge's montage

~cchnique

does not sustain characters

2. throughout the whole text,

though it does give an image

of a socio-historical world which is not discursive in the manner of narrative history or sociological description. In this sense the texts are all 'fictional',in that they involve 'possible historical fragments of the actual world.'(J) To b~gin with it seems reasonable to take a 'realist' view of fictional characters and events in a text, whereby they are seen as being made up of aspects derived from actual history., How they are derived· can be specified in the particular case and the conception can be revised in terms of this. In the case of example,

D(~ktor

Faustus, for

thG real history of modern music is obliterated

by the biography of-,the central figure;

the b1.ography,

though, is made up of transformed structural elements of that history.

~ost

of the texts to be dealt with here can

be seen in similar terms. It should,

thu~

be clear that

literary fiction cannot straightforwardly be separated from historical fact, with the latter being true and the f'ormer false

(4).

A major aspect of the present study is to

suggest what fictional forms' particular contribution to historical understanding is. If one upheld the simple fact/fiction distinction the answer would be: not very much. The further determination of what I understand by a will, I

'novel'

hope, be done by the concrete analyses of the texts.

By this-I do not intend to suggest that the question is an empirical one,

rather that definitions of a genre are

best arrivod at by contact with the object. The novel

is not an a priori entity: it arises at a particular stage :1.n history arid is continually redefined by historical dovelop::nents. One could not identify A la recherche du te~~_~r~~ as

a novel on the basis of criteria derived from

Robinson Crusoe. Whilst,

as will be seen, it is possible for the novel

to separate its characters more and more from the movement of an objectified socio-historical world,

the initial

3. approach must be in terms of how

th~

levels of fiction

and history relate, how they are integrated by the farm. Eberhard Lammert suggests an initial contradiction in an

importru~t

essay:

the contradiction arises from the

demands of certain Romantic theories of- the novel (here that of Schelling) but has mor-e general import: 'die eigenschopferische Phantasie_ muss notwendig in Spannung geraten zu dem Verbinilichkeitsanspruch einer Romangeachichte, die nicht weniger ala "ein Spiegel des allgemeinen Verlaufs menschlicher Din~e a und d~Lebens, also nicht bloss ein partielles Sittengem~lde" sein soll.'(5) This takes one nearer to the basic starting point of the analysis. Fredric Jameson draws the fundamental consequence fron! the contradiction suggested in the Romantic theory when he refers to Regal's view of art in bourgeois society: 'Regel .•• distinguishes the struct~ral peculiarity of capitalism in terms of the dilemma it poses as a potential content for the work of art; to constitute the collective totality which fails to have any existential equivalent in individual experience, to determine individual reality while remaining structurally inaccessible to categories of the latter's understanding or image-making power.'(6) It is this conception of modern historical understanding and literature that is ultimately a'; issue in the following. The novels I have chosen to look at in detail all involve, in some way or other, mass-historical change on an everexpanding scale, whether it be the 1848 Revolution in Paris, the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, the First World War, or Nazism and the Second World War. It is, then, perhaps more accurate to see the issue in terms of modern mass-society,

rather than simply 'capitalism', though

a major component is, as I shall try to show, dependent upon the development of capital and the concomitant disasters within bourgeois society. The formulation of the issue in these terms makes it clear that a particular approach to history and li-terary form is intended. In the rest of the Introduction I want to try to justify this approach, as well as explain the methodological assumptions that have determined

4. the manner of the analysis. This will entail a degree of abstract theorising which until recently would have been unacceptable in

~litgraFY

thesis in England. For those familiar with the theoretical areas in question it will pose no major problems. For those unfamiliar, certain aspects may well,in this more abstract form,

be fairly impenetrable. In the rest of the" thesis,

however,

the categories introduced here will be more

directly related to empirical material, thereby, I hope, helping to set up a process of mutual clarification. To have attempted a complete explanation of the method starting from scratch would both have been too large an undertaking and, for many readers,

a tedious repetition of what they already

know. The present approach seemed the best compromise. The term 'mass-history', which

was.u~ed

above, has to be

used carefully, as Max Horkheimer suggests: 'Es gibt weder eine Massenseele noch ein Massenbewusstsein. Der Begriff der Masse im vulgaren Sinne scheint aus der Beobachtung von Menschenansammlungen bei aufregenden Ereignissen gcbildet zu seine Mogen die Menschen als Teile solcher zufalligen Gruppen auf eine charakteristische Weise reagieren, so ist das Verstandnis hierftir in der Psyche der sie bildenden oinzelnen Glieder zu suchen, :ie bei jedem freilich durch das Schicksal seiner Gruppe in der Gesellschaft bestimmt ist.'(7)

'-

The latter part of the statement presents the central dialectic involved in a consideration o£ large-scale modern history in the novel. Alfred Schmidt expands the point in a manner related to Jameson's view of Hegel: 'Hegels Philosophie - darin folgt ihr die Kritische Theorie - verandert die Rolle psychologischer Tatbestande beim Studium der Geschichte. Wohl haben wir auszugehea von den unmittelbaren Interessen, Leidenschaften und Trieben der Individuen. Aber durch sie hindurch verwirklicht sich die objektive Tatigkeit des Allgeme inen ... t (8) Critical Theory,

the theory of the Frankfurt School, will

playa central role in"my analysis, for the simplp reason that I

consider it to be the most profound attempt to

come to terms with modernhistory and aesthetics. Schmidt

5. gives the following historical characterisation of Critical Theory, which suggests that its origins have much to do with the most extreme manifestation of mass-history: 'Die Kritische Theorio war eine spezifische, unter den unwiederholbaren Bedingungen der dreissiger Jahre entstandene Rezeption des Marxismus ... ' He cites Oskar Negt: '''Die 'Kritische Theorie' ist die Form der marxistischen Theorie, die den Faschismus, den hochzivilisierten Riickfall in die Barb~rei, zu ihrem bcstimmenden Erfahrungsgehalt hat~'(9) If one accepts the premise that modern history's radically problematic relation to the individ'.:ctl reaches a culmination in Fascism, such a theory will be of evident importance in the consideration of literary issues which relate to such a phenomenon. Of the novelsto be looked at only two deal directly with Fascism itself.

However~

the other novels

deal with events which playa significant role in its devekpment. Critical Theory moves from the difficulty of accounting for Fascism in individualist terms to a consideration of Marxian and other approaches based upon the analysis of classes and structures in modern capitalist society. The continuity of many of these structures, most evidently those based on commodity exchange,

revea~the

need for a

theory which can take into account both the continuity of Fascism with preceding history and its specificity. An approach to literary texts must do something similar, whilst at the srune

t~me

doing justice to the literary

for~

which mediates the historical material in question. How,

then, can one develop a mode of analysis in relation

to the novel dealing

~ith

major crises of European society,

taking into account the concern of the novel with fictional individuals as well as the 'allgemeiner Verlauf menschlicher Dinge'? The general answer seems to me to lie in an analysis of the way textual levels are constituted and of how they interact. Such an amiysis i.nvolves both the:usual consideration of narrati. ve and the, .drawing of epistemological consequences from this consideration.

6. Although, by virtue of its use of epistemological categories, it is nearer to more can also

discursive modes, such an approach

reconstruct what historical aspects are sedimented

in the particular narrative form. The failure to attempt such historical analysis in a convincing manner seems to me to disqualify the kind of Structuralisw proposed by Barthes and others as a mode of textual analysis. Thus when Culler (admi tted,ly a somewhat sceptical Structuralist) states: 'The attempt to understand how we:make sense of' a text leads one to think of literature not as representation or communication but as a series of forms which comply with and resist the production of meaning. Structural analysis does not move towards a meaning or discover the secret of a text. The work, as Barthes says, is like an onion, tta construction of layers (or levels, or systems) whose body contains, finally no heart, no kernel, no secret, no irreducible ~rinciple, nothing except the infinity of its own envelopes - which envelop nothing other than the unity of its own surfaces."' Cl0}-- 7·,.-.-~ 2.."-.-" • • it has to be objected that, whilst the work should not be presumed to have an irreducible principle - the consequences for criticism would be a disastrous dogmatism -

the layers

of Barthes' onion are humanly produced layers, produced at a particular historical stage, and, as such, they relate to other human products of that historical stage. As Jameson states: !the essential characteristic of literary raw material or latent content is precisely that it never really is initially formless, never (unlike the unshaped substances of the other arts) initially contingent, but is already meaningful from the outset, being neither more nor less than the very components of our concrete social life itself: words, thoughts, objects, desires, people, places, activities '. The work of art does not confer meanings on these elements, but rather transforms their initial meanings into some new and heightened construction of meaning; for that v~ry reason neither the creation nor the interpretation of the work can ever be an arbitrary pro c e s s .' (1 1 ) Adorno draws a further consequence of such a position:

7. 'Was Geschichte ist an den Werken, ist nicht gemacht, und Geschichte erst befreit es von blosser Setzung oder Herstellung: der Wahrheitsgehalt ist nicht ausser der Geschichte,sondern deren Kristallisation in den Werken.' (12) . In the chapter to follow, sentimentale, I

on Flaubert's L'Education

shall try to concretise the fundamental

dif€erence of the two approaches. It is undeniable that Structuralist interpretations have ~nterestingly re-opened the case on many authors. They tend,

though, not to give

sufficient foundation to their method: the onion image implies infin~te regress. This regress can best be prevented by anchoring the analysis of the structural levels of a text in an historical context, by taking into account that in language systems: 'sind individuelles und gesellschaftliches Bewusstsein zusammengeschlossen.(lJ) (My emphasis.) It is this point which seems to me to constitute the best basis for historical criticism of literary texts. Literary language is no doubt, at least since the beginning of the bourgeois world, distinguished by its individuality, by its difference from other institutionalised forms of discourse. A major aspect of the importance of literary works,

though, is dependent upon the way this individualised

use of language mediates collective historical significance. This is evident if one considers

~he

question of the

continuing importance of literary texts beyond their own age, or even within tpeir own age. In the case of the novel dealing with the major crises of modern European history and it should be emphasised that the argument is concentrated on this topic, not a more general theory): one must find appropriate ways of analysing how the characteristics of the form relate to the mass-historical issues involved. This entails a conception of novel-narration which is not simply based on notions of empirical psychology, which is able to show the collective implications of the linguistic

~cans

used in the text. If this is not achieved novel narration

8. can simply be regarded as individual speculation on historical material.

(An attitude often present, incidentally,

in criticisms of Thomas Mann's work.) The first step away from such a position is to establish the difference between the writer qua person and the appears via the

t~xt.

'subject' or 'ego' which

J.M. Lotman indicates this in a

discussion of 'point of view': 'The concept of "point of view" is analogous to that of perspective in painting and film. The concept of I1literary point of view" unfolds as the relationship o f t h e s y s tern to its "s u b j e c t II (0 r "s en tie n t c en t r e " ) , where "system"may be on the linguistic or some higher level. By "subject" or "sentie;·t centre" of a sys'tem (whether ideological or stylistic or whatever) we have in mind some ,consciousnes? which is capable of -. gen-erat"ing a structure of this kind, -and, hence, is reconstructable through the process of reading.' (14) .

This consciousness is not that of a psychological individual -

as the linguistic structures which identify it are intersubjective and thus collectively generated.

(The analogy to film

can help here: what the camera 'sees' is not what a person sees, but is still interpretable by individuals.) In the major work of art it is particularly important to be aware of this difference of subject and individual, as Adorno suggests: 'Die Divergenz von Subjekt und Individuum, praforrniert im Kantischen Antipsychologismus, aktenkundig bei Fichte, affiziert auch die Kunst. Der Charakter des Authentischen, Verpflichtenden und die Freiheit des emanzipierten Einzelnen entfernen sich voneinander. '(15)

.It is,

then,a contention of the present work that the concept

of' the subject is indispensable if the significance of the texts is to be properly grasped. further,

The~use

of' the term iS r

another' difference of approach from that of the

Structuralists, who, most evidently in the case of Althusser, generally reject the term. Given the continuing dominance of empiricist modes of thought particularly in English literary studies, it is worth outlining in more detail what is m~ant by the subject' and why it is relevant to literary texts. The main cognitive function of the term can best be seen by considering ..... hat

9. it is used to argue against. Theories of the subject are initially directed against positivist epistemologies, which reduce the question of cognition to the sphere of the validation of already existent statem9nts from the natural or social sciences: 'Der Positivismus steht und fallt mit dem Grundsatz des Sz~entismus, dass der Sinn der Erkenntnis durch das, was die Wissenschaften leisten,definiert ist und darum zureichend auf dem Wege der methodologischen Analyse wissenschaftlicher Verfahrensweisen expliziert werden kann.' (17) In such terms a novel about history could tell us nothing about history, 'except that which could be confirmed by a historiography with a scientistic basis. will be considered again in chapter

3.)

(A~p6int

that

Habermas summarises

the consequences of such an epistemology as follows: Die Ablosung der Erkenntnistheorie''''durch Wissenschaftstheorie zeigt sich darin, dass das erkennende Subjekt nicht langer das Bezugssystem darstellt. Von Kant bis Marx ist-das Subjekt der Erkenntnis ale Bewusstsein, Ich, Geist und Gattung begriffen worden; stets konnten deshalb die Probleme der Geltung von Aussagen nur mit Bezugnahme auf eine Synthesis entschieden werden - wie immer auch der Begriff der Synthesis mit dem ses Subjekts sich gewandelt hat. Die Explikation des Sinnes der Geltung von Urteilen oder Satzen war durch den Rtickgang auf die Genesis von Bedingungen moglich, die nicht in derselben Dimension liegen wie die betirteilten oder ausgesagten Sachverhalte,. Die Frage nach den Bedingungen moglicher Erkenntnis wurde mit einer allgemeinen Entstehungsgeschichte beantwortet. Jede Geschichte berichtet von den Taten und den Schicksalen eines Subjekts, seien es auch Taten und Schicksale, durch die es zum Subjekt sich erst bildet.' ('18) I

The quotation from Lotman above shows clearly how this can be related to novel narrative. The content is constituted by a consciousness which arises with the material itself. The narrating instance, as has been often enough demonstrated, is not the author

himself~

If one further assumes the necessity

of some generative consciousness being present in order to be able to interpret a novel at all, it becomes clear that the identification of this consciousness can only follow from what it generates. This differentiates it from the

10.

psychological individual who writes the text in that the text's statements have

~o

be

cohsideredJnt~r~ubjectiveIYi

the

only statement about the person Flaubert that can be made on the basis of having read L'Education sentimentale is that he wrote the novel. The narrative

sta~ments

of the

novel could be the opposite of what the person really thought,

this would not affect an analysis of the subject

in the text,

except where the text gives clear ironic

signals, as it indeed does.

Furthermor~

the generating

instance need not be conceived of as a narrator who is an identifiable individual,

though this may be the case.

Again the text's own indications are decisive. As will be seen in the cases both of Flaubert and of Zola it is almost impossible on the basis of the textual evidence to talk of the psychology of a narrator in the novels in question. This does not mean that. the_narrating instance cannot be identified,

rather that the identification must be

in terms of the text conceived of as the product of intersubjective forms. As Habermas states of theories of the subject: 'Von Hegel tiber Freud bis Piaget ist die Idee entfaltet worden, dass sich Subjekt .und Objekt wechselseitig konstituieren, dass sich das Subjekt nur im Verh~ltnis zu und auf dem Weg Uher den Aufbau einer objektiven Welt seiner selbst vergewissern kann. ' ( 19) In this sense it is mistaken to try to give a strict definition of the subject, as Horkheimer states: 'Die Subjekt-Objekt-Relation ist •.. nicht durch das Bild zweier konstanter, begrifflich vollig durchleuchteter und sich einander n~hernder Grossen zu beschreiben, vielmehr stacken in den von uns als objektiv bezeichneten subjektive und in den sogenannten subjektiven auch ob'jektive Faktoren, und zwar so, dass wir zum historischen Verstandnis einer bestimmten Theorie das Ineinanderspielen' .. !menschlicher und aussermenschlicher, individueller und klassenmassiger, methodologischer und gegenstandlicher Momente darzustellen haben, ohne jades dieser Momente von den anderen in seiner wirksamkeit restlos isolieren zu konnen.' (20) This is applied here to theories;

it can, I believe, be

11.

applied to literary texts, particularly of the kind to be dealt with here, where the texts are often close to other kinds of cognition. In the novel it must be continually asked in terms of whom or of what the events of the novel's world are constituted, what synthesising instances are at work (or, of course, fail to be at work) within the text. Thus, to take an obvious example in the present context, historical data of the kind that could appear in an historical narrative account can have totally opposed significance if it appears in a novel, by virtue of the process of mediation between subjecr and object suggested here. The questions of who provides the data and to whom they are,import~are

the vital initial questions. This makes

it clear that the fictional aspects of the text playa determining role in the mediation of history in the novel. The subject need not be identified with the narrating instance: the genesis of significance can be the function of the fictional figures. It can also, and this emphasises the need for the kind of conception outlined here, be dependent neither upon the representations of the fictional characters,

~

upon the narrating instance: something

of the kind takes place, for instance, in both L'Education sentimentale and Doktor Faustus, as I

shall try to show.

In the novel dealing with events on the scale of the First World War, for example, is necessarily

the process of synthesis

highly-pr~blematic~

The~experience

of the

fictional characters 'acting within the historical world can have little direct relation to the overall course of events which has come to be known as the First World War. How can such levels be unified; indeed, should such levels be unified? This question leads to a general issue which will recur throughout the thesis. The synthesis of these disparate levels evidently presupposes a stand-point which transcends the immanent historical world being presented. The way in which this stand-point is constituted can be seen ;

12.

as the key to the way history is understood in a particular text. The difficulties surrounding ilie constitution of such a stand-point (or the refusal to constitute it) are seen in certain theories of the novel as being determining for the "genre itself.

L~mmert,

in the above-mentioned essay,

suggests that the growing problems of the novel in the modern era relate to the need to balance the author's freedom to set up a totality in his or her work with the desire to do justice to the real historical world. The problem arises along2with the genesis of secular historiography, along,

therefore, with the disappearance of transcendent

theological schemes of order in historical writing: 'Zur gleichen Zeit, da der Romanautor als Schopfer und Geschichtsschreiber in einem apostrophiert wird, treibt der Zwang, seiner individuellen Schopfung eine objektive Legitimation zu verleihen, ihn auf die unabl~ssige Suche nach den Ordnungsprinzipien seiner Geschichte. Denn ihr Duktus darf nun nicht mehr auf einer Moral- oder einer Vernunftkonvention beruhen, die ihrerseits dem Erzahlen Richtung und Ziel iQ-zu geben vermochtej sie muss sich statt dessen an den wahren Geschichtsverlauf halten, tiber den keiner Auskunft geben kann, also auch nicht ein allwissender Erzahler.' (21) (L~mmert's emphases) These observations can help explain the following confusing, but important,

remarks from that confusing, but

important work, Luk~cs' Die Theorie des Romans: 'auch das Vernichten des Objekts durch das zum Alleinherrscher des Seins gewordene Subjekt vermag keine To tali ta t des Lebens': 'aus sich ~u en t las sen' ... 'mit dem Zusammenbrechen der Objektwelt ist auch das Subjekt zum Fragment geworden' ... 'Die Subjektivit~t will alles gestalten und kann gerade deshalb nur einen Ausschni tt spiegeln' ... ' Dies ist .'ein gattungsbestimmendes Apriori: das Ganze des Lebens Uisst keinen transzendentalen Mittelpunkt in sich aufweisen und duldet es nicht, dass eine seiner Zellen sich zu seiner Beherrscherin erhebe. Nur wenn ein Subjekt, weit abgetrennt von jeglichem Leben und seiner notwendig mitgesetzten Empirie, in der reinen Hohe dar Wesenhaftigkeit thront, wenn es nichts mehr ist als der Tr~ger der transzendentalen Synthesis, vermag es in seiner Struktur die Bedingungen der Totalitat zu bergen und seine Grenze zur Grenze der Welt zu -i

••

l

••

13. verwandeln. Ein solches Subjekt kann aber in der Epik nicht vorkommen: Epik ist Leben, Immanenz, Empirie ... I (22) In the final sentences Luk~cs is referring to Kant's conception of the transcendental subject. In the Kritik der reinen Vernunft this determined the conditions for the possibility of objective knowledge of the world, whilst itself being an a priori construct and thus non-empirical. Because the epic and the novel must come to terms with the historical world, where the necessity of judgements, most obviously those of value, which cannot be covered by the transcendental subject in Kant's sense are present, the subject of epic forms cannot have transcendental status. It is,

thus, merely subjective in the received sense of the

word. The novel thus becomes the form which reflects the loss of an objective sense giving principle in history. This is, of course, very questionably formulated: Lammert's comments cited above make the point in a less mystified manner. The problem of the subject becomes of central importance once traditional transcendental or transcendent guarantees, based particularly on religion, are clearly inept in the face of the developing bourgeois world with its concern with individual activity and experience. It seems no coincidence that, a few years after writing Die Theorie des Romans, of which Lukcics h.:iJ.self later stated 'Das auslosende Moment flir ihr Entstehen war der Kriegsausbruch

1914 ... '(23), he developed the more historically based theory of the proletariat as the collective subject of history, in part as a way out of the subjective utopianism characteristic of Die Theorie des Romans. The later theory will be considered in Chapter Two. Significantly Lukacs limits the extent of this subjectivism even within Die Theorie des Romans, by taking up a conception of irony close to that of Friedrich Schleg0l and other Romantic theorists of the novel. Irony becomes:

14. 'die transzendentale Bedingung der Objektivitat der Gestaltung~ .. ~'Die Ironie als Selbstaufhebung der zu Ende gegangenen Subjektivitat ist die hochste Freiheit, die in einer Welt ohne Gott moglich ist. Darum ist sie nicht bloss die einzig mogliche apriorische Bedingung einer wahrhaften, Totalitat schaffenden Objektivitat, sondern erhabt auch diese Totalitat, den Roman, zur reprasentativen Form des Zeitalters, indem die Aufbaukategorien des Romans auf den Stand der Welt konstitutiv auftreffen.' (24) The recognition and thematisation of the lack of sensegiving and transcendental constitutive categories in the secularised bourgeois world receives, in terms of this theory,

its expression in the novel ..form. Despite the

abstractness of the formulation,

this is in many ways

convincing: as a general description of the growing complexity of narrative strategy which is a feature of the novel's development, particularly in the period around Die Theorie des Romans, it seems to me largely acceptable. Its generality,

though,

tends to blur important aspects of the novel.

Two points can be made here. The first is

simp~y

that the

form as described here evidently cannot constitute a totality merely by admitting its inability to do so. That would take dialectics into the realm of mere paradox: the totality of every novel seen in this manner would be the same totality,

set up by the ironic failure to create

the image of a world with a central sense-giving principle. The second point relates to this. Whilst as readers of novels we may have a view of novel fiction as being, precise"ly,

just" rfiction', which can be seen as presupposing a

kind of irony (25),

the irony need not penetrate all aspects

of the work. In the case of certain of the texts to be looked at in what follows irony is often limited within the text by the generation of what can only be termed a 'transcendental' perspective. Such a perspective is based on a constitutive level beyond the immanent world of the .novel and beyond, for instanc~ the ironic gestures of a personalised narrator. What is often termed the 'omniscient'

narrator is an example of what I mean, though I am not happy with the term. This level of the text has direct consequences for an analysis of the understanding of history in a particular

~ovel,

as it relates most directly

to 6ther modei of grasping history. The use of the term 'transcendental' is important in the present analysis and needs to be further explained. Such an overt use of philosophical categories in relation to, literary texts will, as will become apparent, be justified by their

appear~ce

in many of the literary texts themselves. The reason the term seems to me so important derives from the nature of the history the novels represent. The level of the most general synthesis in the novel dealing with mass-events is that level upon which the overall

move~ent

of history beyond the individual is characterised-' •.• haben

-

wir auszugehen von den unmittelbaren Interessen, Leidenschaften und Trieben der Individuen. Aber durch sie hindurch verwirklicht sich die objektive Tatigkeit des Allgemeinen ... ' (see above). If the text wishes to approach this 'objektive Tatigkeit' - it may use means of avoiding it - it necessarily uses categories which involve a transcendental synthesis. Such a

synt~.

esis cannot be seen in empirical terms: it is

neither a direct object of experience for the

character~

nor for the narrating instance - one cannot see the crisis involving the First World War or large-scale inflation, though their effects can be directly empirical in the form of starvation, or whatever. Critical theory maintains that -the kind of syntheses required, which Kant tried to abstract into the conception of an 'a priori gtiltiges Inventar eines dem Werden enthobenen und allein durch die Einheit seiner synthetischen Leistungen besUmmten Subjekts' (26) are in fact the" historical products of the collective social process. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge make the point in the following reinterpretation of Kant:

16. 'Nur das ist bei Kant Gegenstand von Erfahrung, was Produkt des Subjekts ist; dieses Subjekt produziert seiber die Regeln und Gesetze des Zusammenhangs der Erscheinungswelt. Es erfahrt nur das, was es seiber zuvor produziert hat. Denn nur dadurch ist es moglich, einen von der blossen Einbildung getrennten Erfahrungszusamrnenhang herzustellen.' ... 'Das Material der Erfahrungsproduktion des Subjekts lasst sich niemals vollstandig aneignen. Alles, was wirkliche Erfahrung ist, die auch von anderen vernimftigen Subjekten nachgeprlift und wiederholt werden kann, ist Ausdruck eines Produktionsvorgangs, ~r nicht auf isolierte Individuen gesttitzt ist, sondern die Tatigkeit eines kollektiven gesellschaftlichen Gesamtsubjekts bezeichnet, in das alle Tatigkeiten der Auseinandersetzung mit der ausseren und inneren Natur hineingezogcn . werden.' (27) Elements of the attempt to constitute such a subject are necessarily present in the novel which directly confronts large-scale events of modern history. A major task of the present work is to trace those elements which do this most effectively. Such elements,as will be seen, are often pressnt in an indirect manner, which necessitates reading the text, so to speak,

'gegen den Strich'. The tracing of such elements

helps make clear an aspect of the theory of fiction which is based neither upon the positivi~t Fact/Fiction dichotom~ nor upon Kermode's tendency in The Sense of an Ending to extend fiction as a term

50

far that it comes to be

the same as cognition. Habermas, in the essay on Nietzsche cited above,

suggests the consequences of the kind of

revision of Kant proposed by Negt and Kluge: 'Gewiss mUssen wir jenen absoluten Geltungsanspruch einer Erkenntnis der unter Formen der Anschauung und unter Kategorien des Verstandes erscheinenden Natur, den Kant durch die transzendentale Deduktion einzulosen getrachtet hatte. Und ohne diese Deduktion ist es in der Tat nicht angebracht, den Sinn der Regeln nach denen die Synthesis vollzogen wird, in der Form unbedingt wahrer synthetischer Urteile apriori auszudrlicken. Diese haben, wenn sie unter dem erkenntnisleitenden Interesse der Selbstbehauptung eines kontingenten GattuIlf5subjekts entstanden sein sollten, I--' " den Status von subJektiv erzeugten RegaIn, von "F'kt' 1 10nen, die unmittelbar auf unsere eigenttimliche Fahigkeit

J..

. '~ t~ t

17. der Symbolisierung, Nietzsche spricht von: Sinnschopfung, Poiesis, Erdichtung, zuruckgefuhrt werden mogen - aber offenbar haben sie doch den Status von gattungsgeschichtlich "bewahrten" Fikilionen' ... 'Die Welt, die wir in diesem Rahmen konstituieren, ist namlich ein gattungsspezifischer Entwurf, eine Perspektive, die auch von der bestimmten organischen Ausstattung des Menschen und den Konstanten der ihn umgebender~ Natur kontingent abhangt. Aber sie ist darum nicht beliebig. I (28) The point about such a position is that it applies not just to the natural sciences but to the socio-historical world,

as Habermas states in Erkenntnis undlnteresse in

describing Marx's epistemology: 'Die gegenstandliche Tatigkeit wird von Marx einerseits als transzendentale Leistung begriffen; ihr korrespondiert der Aufbau einer Welt, in der die Wirklichkeit unter Bedingungen der Objektivitat moglicher Gegenstande tritt. Andrerseits sieht Marx jene transzendentale Leistung in realen Arbeitsvorgang~n fundiert.' (29) The novel evidently does not merely reproduce such modes of cognition; it does,

though, continually concern itself with

such syntheses, affecting their appearance in the text by the narrative construction of the novel's world. The most evident transcendental syntheses in the novel can be, though, - and very often are - ideological in the extreme, thereby reflecting distorted attempts to come to terms with a world whose events and historical processes have little concern with the individual. The form itself can contribute to the creation of such ideological syntheses by the desire to

integr~te

the

lev~ls

of the text even when the existential

level cannot' be straightforwardly assimilated to the collective historical level. As I

shall try to show,

particularly in the analysis of La D6b~cle

and of aspects

of German novels which relate to the First World War, such texts involve a move in the direction of myth. This is, of course, well known. What I wish to stress is the way the genesis of such myths is the function of the need to corne to some kind of transcendental perspective upon historical processes which tend to seem more and more

\. /

18. ir.rational when viewed from the individual point of view. Myth tries to restore the lost continuity between individual fate and collective processes which cannot be seen in individual terms. The iptegrative temptation of myth for th~

novel which would deal with mass-history whilst

sustaining the levels vital to the form is evident. The importance of the question of myth and modern history need hardly be emphasised. The power of myth as a political wBapon in those situations where the gap between individual experience and the overall course of events is most extreme is a central factor of modern history. The phenomenon of large-scale inflation, for example, where even those who are willing and able to work can achieve virtually nothing to improve their lot, however hard they work as individuals,

suggests the

potential'~

of mythical

transcendental explanations of why this-is the case. Such explanations were,

of course, part of the standard armoury

of Fascism and of other forms of reaction which preceded it. It is for this initially simple reason that much of the following is concerned to see to what extent major novels of history partake of such mythologisation. This might seem a

rat~er

joyless task, as well as being one which

puts history above the aesthetic aspect of the text. The objection can be countered in two main ways. The first is that the specific contribution made by the literary constitution of the material becomes most evident if the merely ideological aspects of the presentation are very critically analysed. Only by taking this 'hardline' will the real possibilities of literary form emerge with as little distortion as possible. The proximity of such literary texts as are in question here to other modes of discourse demands that these modes be clearly separated from the literary contribution of the text. Th:.s often requires one to look at the novel in a similar manner to the way one would consider narrative history or philosophy

19. of history before considering what ~lse it achieves or fails to achieve. The second counter-argument is provided by the literary material itself. In-all the texts to be examined in detail the movement of collective history plays a determining role in the overal~ structure of the novel; it is not just another part of the novel's content. I have deliberately chosen large-scale bourgeois novels of this kind because they show up the major issues most strikingly. The tendency towards' synthesis of an ideological nature is increased by the need to bring a large scale work to an end. At the same time,I would not wish to deny that a degree of distortion comes into

an~analysis

of this kind.

It cannot be claimed that the analysis will do justice to the texts as wholes; it will concentrate upon certain major issues of the kind suggested above. As such, the texts will, on occasion, be seen in somewhat ideal-typical terms. This~will

be countered, I hope, by attempting to bring out

the very specific nature of certain aspects of -che novels if it is important in the context, even to the extent of allowing the overall argument to fade temporarily into the background in order to achieve this. The success of such a dialectic of general and particul.1.r can only be judged on its results. A further point can be made here as well as anywhere: the analysis is carried out on the assumption that, with the exception of the texts of Alexander Kluge (and even there it would be more than useful), the reader is familiar with the tex-cs inquestion. They all have the effective status of 'classics' and are easily actessible for this reason.

An analysis of so many large-scale and complex works which attempted first to describe them in terms of their 'plot' and so on would either never get started

or take on

proportions that made the enterprise impossible. The examinations are,

then, attempts to provoke new reactions

to what is often very familiar material. They do not claim

20. to be totally new interpretations of the particular text, and are even less reinterpretations of the whole work of a particular author. They are,

rathe~

an attempt to put

the works into a different context by following a

comp~ex

of themes through very differing works. That this entails a radically non-biographical,

text-centred approach will,

I hope, be clear from my remarks up to now. The themes in question have, by virtue of a different historical experience and a resultant radically different philosophical tradition, been dealt with in a more complex and differentiated manner by certain elements of the German philosophical tradition, which I have indicated will form the major theoretical basis of the analysis. This raises problems and has consequences for the general nature of the thesis. The first problem is stylistic and will already have been apparent in this introductory piece: the central concepts of the theory are, unlike in German, not part of standard English. Anyone using such theory in English is forced into a stylistic compromise which will be unacceptable to many. Even if the concepts are acceptable,

the stylistic consequences

of the kind of thinking they generate may not be. The terms tend to create a syntax which favours long periods. This arises from the kind of relationships they establish, which are absent from more empiricist discourse. If a mode of "thought depends to a significant extent upon the wish to synthesise areas which might at first appear to be disparate, at the same time as sustaining those areas'

specificity,

this must be reflected in the language used. As Samuel Weber states: ' ... perhaps the most serious obstacle to the development and articulation of dialectical thinking in English is not semantic but syntactic. The criterion of clarity is rigidly enforced by a grammar which taboos long sentences as clumsy and whose ideal remains brevity and simplicity at all costs.' (30) This taboo will be,

indeed already has been, offended

against in th~present work. I hope,

though,

that it will

21 •

be possible to steer a course which avoids the recent tendency of certain Structuralist and Marxist writers in English - I am not referring to Culler, whose stylistic compromise is in many ,ways exemplary - to sound like a badly translated parody of the theories upon which they are based. As perhaps the most impressive example of the style at which one would aim, Jameson's Marxism and Form can be cited. Ultimately,. though, the acceptance of the style is dependent upon the plausibility of the arguments offered: if they are compelling, the language ought to be as well. The' next point relates to the previous one. The analyses offered here are provoked by the reflection upon aesthetic works' relations to difficult theoretical texts. In certain chapters this will be achieved by confronting the novel in

q~estion

with a theoretical text, or texts, dealing with

similar issues. This is a complex process which is made even more difficult by the difficulty of some of both the theoretical and aesthetic works. In earlier drafts I attempted ""'-0;:

......

at the same time to cover as much of the'secondary literature'

as possible in the space available. This led to littte but

confu~ion.

~)

In consequence I have adopted the following

procedure: secondary literature is only directly considered when it either sets up a theoretical issue which corresponds directly with the logic of my own argument or when it productively contradicts my argument. I have not attempted to make a general review of different views of the same texts: in the case of Thomas Mann this is simply impossible in the face of the Mann-industry. This procedure might seem somewhat arrogant and unscholarly. It seems to that, had I

m~

though,

set about the project of research into so many

very large works from very different areas of literary study on the basis of a very thorough revrew of secondary material,

the kind of connections I wish to propose could

not have emerged. They would have become entangled in the

,

.

1 I

22. mesh of existing approaches. It does also seem to me that it is time for something of a reconsideration of the role of secondary literature. The dutiful listing of articles which approach themes one. has oneself dealt with,even when those articles are twenty and more years old and/or have nothing really to do with one's own argument, must, given the continual growth of the

V

industry of literary criticism, give way to a more selective procedure. Most interesting literary criticism in the area dealt with in the present work is of recent date or was produced by thinkers of an earlier period who still influence the way literature and history are looked at today. This is evidently the case with the Frankfurt School, much of whose work was done in the Thirties and

Eortiles~

}....

-'-.~

tiut whose influence really developed later. If in the present work I have failed to indicate the

-

corresponde~ce

of a

particular statement to something in the secondary literature, I

can only apologise and maintain that the analysis would

have taken the same course anyway, given the theoretical basis adopted. The extra reference may help confirm a point but the thesis stands or falls by. the power of its overall argument. If objections have not b(3n directly considered, it can only be maintained that I consider them to be wrong. It is surely futile to spend time disagreeing with a positivist interpretation of Thomas Mann, for example, when it has been made abundantly clear that I

consider such

interpretations as being built on sand. Most convincing reinterpretations of the works of a particular author are the result of conceptual redefinition, not of scholarly hard-work. Once again it can be emphasised that I

am

interested only in the work of particular authors, not their person. This fact alone disqualifies enormous amounts of secondary literature, particularly in' the cases of Flaubert and Thomas Mann, from being relevant to the questions being asked here.Certain kinds of biographical approach have

23. their relevance - think of Benjamin's Baudelaire project, or Sartre's work on Flaubert - the main interest here, though, is in how a particular text can be made to speak by confronting it with history. A final possible objection ought to be considered here. It might appear that what follows is uncritically based upon the work of the FranKfurt School. This is not, and cannot really be,

the case., . given the . diversity of --:opinion

within the School. It is, though,

the case that the work

of Adorno will appear in the thesis in a more favourable light than my general assessment o~ his work ought to allow. This is particularly

~_

so :.... _

in the chapter on

Doktor Faustus, where a very selective view of Adorno's philosophy of music will be. presented. The major objection to Adorno's work is its tendency towards a kind of absolutism which allows little room for correction by more detailed historical analysis. Alfred Schmidt suggests this in the f'ollowing criticism of' the later work of' Horkheimer and Adorno: 'tritt in spateren Schriften Horkheimers (und Adornos) diese prodw~tive Spannung von inha~tlicher Historie und geschichtsphilosophischer Konstruktion des (zumindest potentiell ft v9rntinf'tigen") Gesamtverlaufs zugunsten eines- Schopenhauerischen ~ Generalverdikts zurlick, das, obzwar berechtigt gegen metaphysische Verklarung sinnlosen Leidens - let~ich auf materiale Geschichte als Gegenstand von Erkenntnis ver~ichtet.(31) Such a

'Generalvardikt'

~is

also

pr~sent

in the unconvincing

second half of the Philosophie der nauen Musik. It often makes Adorno incapable of dealing appropriately with works that do not fulfil his absolute criteria. Adorno's generalisation of his specific negative experience of history, a

neg~tivity

admittedly shared by millions of others in

infinitely more extreme f'orm, must be avoided if one does not wish to arrive at an image of' history as a closed book. The work of Alexander Kluge, which owes much to Adorno and which will be considered in the conclusion,

suggests

how this failing can be overcome without abandoning Adorno's undeniable insight into the problems of modern history.

24. Notes (1) Theodor W. Adorno, Asthetische Theorie Frankfurt am Main 1973 p.

16. As so many of the works cited in the

thesis are published in, Frankfurt, I

shall adopt the ugly

but' convenient abbreviation _, FfIO' .

(2) J ona than Cu ller, Struc turali s t Poe tic-os. Structurali s t Linguistics 'and the Study of Literature (3) Teun A. van Dijk, Narrative.'

London 1975 p. 189

'Action, Action-Description and

in New Literary History 6 1975 p. 292

(4) The conception outlined here can also allow a significant role for fiction conceived of as fantasy, where this fantasy is a reaction to the pressure of history, and becomes a way of indirectly coming to terms with negative deve19ments. I

am thinking here in particular of Jean-Paul or of

GUnter Grass' Die Blechtromrnel. This aspect, not

p~

though, will

a major role in the analysis.

(5) Eberhard Lammert,

'Zum Wandel der Geschichtserfahrung

im Reflex der Romantheorie.'

in ed. R. Koselleck and W.D.

Stempel, Geschichte - Ereignis und Erzahlung Munich 1973 p.506 ~ .

(6) Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form Princeton 1971 p. 353-4 (7) Max Horkheimer,

'Geschichte und Psychologie' in ed.

Alfred ScruLidt, Kri tische Theorie Vol 1 Ffm 1968 p. 21 (8) Alfred Schmidt, Die Kritische Theorie als Geschichtsphilosophie Munich, Vienna 1976 p. 23

( 9)

- do - p. 1 5

(10) Culler Ope cit.p. 259 (11) Jameson Ope cit. p. 402-3 (12) Adorno Ope cit. p. 200 (j3) JUrgen Habermas,

Zur Rekonstruktion des historischen

Materialismus Ffm 1976 p. 'Po~nt

(14) J.M. Lotman,

184 of View in a Tex~' in New Literary

History 6 1975 p. 339. What is meant by 'sentient centre' is unclear to me. I

,

suspect it is a problem of translation.

(15) Adorno Ope c~t. p. 254

1' !

(16) On this issue see Alfred Schmidt, Geschichte;

und~

Struktur Ffm, Berlin, Vienna 1978 (17) JUrgen Habermas, Erkenntnis u~Interesse Ffm 1973 p. 89

I

L ..

25.

(18) Habermas, Erkenntnis und Intere'sse p. 89 (19) Habermas

t

'Historischer Materialismus und die Entwicklung

normativer Strukturen.' in Zur Rekonstruktion

OPe

cit. p. 14

(20) Cited in Schmidt Die Kritische Theorie als Geschichtsphilosophie OPe cit. p. 42

(21) Lammert

OPe

cit. p. 504-5 The difficultyis t according

to Lammert, reflected in the number of major works that attempt to portray an individual story and create a totality which fail to be completed or reach a convincing end. Most relevant example in':, the present context is Der 1wIann

ohne

Eigenschaften.

(22) Georg LukAcs, Die Theorie des Romans Neuw~ed and Berlin 1971 p. 44-5 (23) - do - p. 5 (24) - do - p. 81-2 (25) See Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending Oxford 1968 Chapter Five 'Literary Fiction and Reality.' p.

127~52

(26) Habermas, 'Zu Nietzsches Erkenntnistheorie.(ein Nachwort) 1968.' in Kultur und Kritik Ffm 1973 p. 258 (27) Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Offentlichkait und ~rfahrung.

Zur Organisationsanalyse von bUrgerlicher und

proletarischer Offentlichkeit Ffm 1~72 p. 23

(28) Habermas, 'Zu Nietzsches Erkenntnistheorie'

OPe

cit.

p. 258-9

(29) Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse Ope cit. p. 38 (30) Samuel Weber, 'Translating the Untranslatable.' Introduction to his transLation of Adorno's Prisms London 1967 p.1]

(3 1 ) Schmidt, Die Kritische Theorie als Geschichtsphilosophie Ope cit. p.8

26. Chapter One Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale, and Marx's Die Klassenkampfe in Fra...Tlkreich and Dar achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte: Contradictory Realism.

* In the Vorwort of Jacques Offenbach und das Paris seiner Zeit Siegfried Kracauer explained why his topic was not so frivolous as it might have seemed, given the dates of its production -

1934-7:

'Welche Gesellschaft wird in dem Buch angesprochen? Die franzosische des neunzehn t'c:n Jahrhunderts mi t ihren Monarchien und Diktaturen, ihren Weltausstellungen und Revolutionen. Diese Gesellschaft ist nicht nur deshalb die unmittelbare Vorlauferin der modernen, weil sich in ihr die Geburt der Weltwirtschaft und der btirgerlichen Republik vollzieht, sie ist es auch insofern, als sie auf den verschiedensten Gebieten ~tive anschlagt, die sich heute noch fortbehaupten. Und zwar reagiert sie im Rahmen tibersehbarer Verhaltnisse mit solcher Deutlichkeit, dass ihre Reaktionen den Wert von Modellen erlangen'.••'Angesichts des Geschehens unserer Tage wird niemand verkennen, dass gerade die Phantasmagorie des Zweiten Kaiserreichs Aktualitat bositzt.'(l) The texts to be examined in this chapter, which deal with

..

the origins of the Second Empire, seem for this reason an appropriate starting-point for an investigation of the novel's relation to mass- history. Why, though,

should one

begin at this point in the novel's history? Without wishing to presuppose the historical necessity which accompanies the theory, it seems plausible to accept Luk~cs'

thesis in

Der historische Roman that the bourgeois novel dealing with the wider movement of history comes into substantial existence around the time of the French Revolution, establishing itself particularly in the wake of the Napoleonic period. The: novel where the central characters become involved with the movement of public history (2) ~s opposed,

for example, to a novel such as Torn Jones, where

the hero only becomes contingently involved in the events of

1745)

and where that history has an evident importance

in its own right makes a somewhat faltering start with Scott.

27. How faltering is suggested in the following remarks of Hans Robert Jauss, Scott~s

referring to Stendhal's rejection of

model after his early enthusiasm for it:

'Die geschichtliche Wirklichkeit, auf die sich moderne Dichtung offnen-soll, ist keine vorgegebene Natur, die man nur nachzuahmen brauchte. Die von Scott gepragte Form des historischen Rom~s vermag Geschichte nur in beschreibbaren Residuen, nicht in actu zu fassen; sie ergreift nur die von der geschichtlichen Bewegung hinterlassene, verdinglichte Welt, nicht die historischen Personen, Handlungen und Ereignisse in ihrer ursprtinglichen Zeitbedingtheit. Darum tadelt Stendhal, dass bei Scott die Fabel einer tragedie romantique die auseinanderfallenden Elemente von Beschreibun.g und Handlung wieder zusammenhalten mU sse . '

(

3) ,

Stendhal wishes a technique where ' •.• die Subjektivitat sich als Bezugspunkt aller geschichtlichen Erfahrung mit darstellt.'(4) In Stendhal's novels the development of the personal story of the hero is substantially influenced by the political tendencies of the era and the hero's own political tendencies have a major effect upon the action. The search for individual spontaneity is constituted

by

the resistancejof social and political life to subjectivity, not by their having nothing to do with it. The- experience of the RevJlutionary and Napoleonic eras, where massive social transformations were so often brought about by the initiative of individuals, a situation made possible by the beginnings of the new bourgeois society, seems central in the work of both Stendhal and Balzac. The opposition of

•

individual and social whole leads to the novel's encouraging a conception of heroic action at the same time as sustaining a view of the overall socio-historical situation. At the same

tim~

there is, particularly in the later;

parts of Lucien Leuwen, a growing sense of the declino of the heroic era represented most strikingly in the figure of Napoleon. The optimism of a Victor Hugo,

cited by

Benjamin in his Baudelaire essays, as to the potential unity of individual and collective is based on an illusion: '''Seit 89 entfaltet sich das ganze Yolk im gelauterten

..

28. Individuum: es gibt keinen Arm~n, er hatte denn sein Recht und damit auch den Strahl, der auf ihn fallt; der arme Schlucker tragt in seinem Inneren die Ehre Frankreichs ... It' (5) Benjamin gives the reasons for Hugo's optimism: 'Victor Hugo sah die Dinge, wie die Erfahrungen der erfolgreichsten literarischen und einer glanzenden politischen Laufbahn sie vor ihn hinstellten. Er war der erste grosse Schriftsteller, der Kollektivtitel in seinem Werk hat - Les mis~rables, Les travaiUeurs de la mer.' (6) Benjamin then suggests a contrast which has the status of a model for the period, in comparing Baudelaire with Hugo. He says of Hugo: 'dessen poli tisches Glaubensbekenntnis'.. .'war das'..• des citoyen. Die Masse der grossen Stadt konnte ihn nicht beirren. Er erkannte die Volksmenge in ihr wieder. Er wollte Stoff sein von ihrem Stoff. Laizismus, Fortschritt und Demokratie waren das Banner, das er tiber den Hauptern schwang. Dieses Banner verklarte das Massendasein. Es verschattete eine Schwelle, die den Einzelnen von der Menge trennt. Diese Schwelle htitete Baudelaire; das unterschied ihn von Victor Hugo. Er ahnelte ihm jedoch darin, dass er auch den gesellschaftlichen Schein nicht durchschaute, welcher sich in der Menge niederschlagt. Er setzte ihr darum ein Leitbild entgegen, so unkritisch wie die Hugosche Konzeption von ihr. Der Heros ist dieses Leitbild. Im Augenblick, da Victor Hugo die Masse als den Helden in einem modernen Epos feiert, halt Baudelaire nach einem Zufluchtsort des HeIden in der Masse der Grossstadt Ausschau. Als citoyen versetzt Hugo sich in die Menge, als Heros sondert sich Baudelaire von ihr ab.' (7) The initial constellation I wish to present is contained in these somewhat difficult remarks. The heroism of the Napoleonic era (leaving aside the question of whether it really was so heroic, a point taken up in Marx's texts to be examined later), which was an important aspect of Stendhal' s presentation of history in his fiction,becomes problematic. Hugo's belief in popular enlightenment

hopes~to

constitute

a new form of heroism in which individual and collective harmonise. As such,

the hero becomes the People: hence the

collective titles of the novels. Baudelaire -

taking his

.

,

29.

,i

-.

position somewhat ideal-typically - sees the People merely in terms of the mass and radically separates the individual from any kind of collective identification: his heroism is negative, based on the sense of the impossibility of such an identification. The reason 1848 is such an appropriate historical starting point for

~onsidering

how the novel dealing

~ith

mass-events becomes problematised is that such motifs as those suggested here playa central role both in the history and: in the texts dealing with the history. At the same time, developments occur which will be analyses. By taking both literary

im~'ortant

ru~d

in the later

non-literary texts

as the object of investigation the particular contribution to historical understanding of both can be clarified, as was~indicated

in the Introduction. In the case of L'Education

sentimentale (L'Education) it will be argued that the fictional mode is able to bring about a specific kind of historical cognition which results from a particular use of formal possibilities (8). The texts to be looked at in the first two chapters of the thesis stand under the rubric of 'realist'. This naturally evokes a massive area of debate over the term. In order to avoid becoming totally entangled in this

deb~te

the use of the word 'realist' in

this context will, for the moment, only be intended to re~er

to the fact that the novels have in them a substantial

amount of material central to the public history of the period they deal

wit~,

material:which could also playa

role in an historical narrative account. The questions this begs will hopefully be answered in the analysis. As was explained in the Introduction, the initial approach to the question of individual and collective in the novel must be determined by the formal structure of the narrative, especially by those factors which are subsumed under the general term ~p6int of view'. In 'realist'

texts

it is particularly important to establish the relationship of the temporal levels of the narration. In L'Education

30. this is by no means easy. In itself this is nothing unusual, as

G~rard

Genette indicates:

'Dans Ie r6cit classique ,,~ la troisieme personne", cette distance (between the narration and what is narrated) est generalement comme ind6terminee, ... le preterit marquant une sorte de passe sans age: l'histoire peut atre datee, comme Ie plus souvent che,z Balzac, sans que la narration Ie soi t.' (9) However, in the case of Flaubert, far further. This has become a

this indeterminacy extends

dom~nant

theme in recent

Flaubert research and has led to a substantially different view of the author to that pertaining up until a few years ago. In Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty Jonathan Culler takes up the question of narrative in Flaubert's work: 'What is rejected is a consistency irl point of view which could lead to the identification of a knowledgeable Balzacian narrator or a series of narrators limited in their points of viewapd characterisable ·by those very limitations.' (10) He

r~fers

to the premise that:

'As long as the narrator remains a major figure in the work or a source of authority, his vision and personality will be made the determinant of the story and the truth to which it must be related.' (11) and demonstrat:es how this ceases to be the case in Flaubert's work.

Thu~

it is, on the basis of this argument, invidious

to try to determine the identity of the narrator of L'Education on the evidence of the not infrequent opinions passed on events in the novel on the extradiegetic level: these simply do not add up to enough to make the other aspects of the text subordinate to them. The following example, describing the brutality follo~ing the June days, is loaded with opinion, but the manner of its presentation defuses it: , l' egali t~ (comme pourJle ch~timent de ses d~fenseurs et la d~rision de ses 'ennemis) se manifestai t triomphalement, une egalite de betes brutes, un merne niveau de turpitudes sanglantes; car Ie fanatisme des interets ~quilibra les delires du besoin' ... 'La raison publique 6tait troubl6e comme apres les grands bouleversements de la nature. Des gens d'esprit en rest~rent idiots pour toute leur vie. I (References to the primary texts will follow the quotation in t:ile text. The edition used is the Livre de poche one,

31. Paris 1965. Here p. 377) The tone is that of a rational 'moraliste' and reads like a quotation from a writer in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. If any identity is to be ascribed to the narrator it would be that of the 'homme de bon sens'. This, though, does not explain the use of the language of an earlier period here, nor does it explain most of-.the material of the novel, as we shall see. In the above passage there is a kind of Olympian

contemp~ation

of events, as if from a

great historical distance. Given the fact that the novel was completed in 1869 the remark that people remained 'idiots pour toute leur vie' could only be sustained if the people died before that date, otherwise the remark is unconvincing with regard to events which at the time of publication were barely twenty years away. The 'bon

sen~1

of the

narrator looks less convincing and the title of Culler's book shows its appropriateness.

(12)

Culler, following Sartre, describes a kind of fiction which is 'told from the viewpoint of experience and wisdom and listened to from the viewpoint of order~.!The narrator has mastered the world, whether in the role of social historian or of an individual who looks back,all passion spent.' (13) The

ro~e

of social historian would appear to be central in

L'Education: the novel contains masses of social and historical data, often being used as a secondary source by historians (14). Lf,

though, one looks at some examples

of what happens to historical material in the narrative, ~he

role of the historian is not so clear. Three general

categories are useful for analysing how the material of social history is mediated in the narrative. The categories all have, directly or

indir~ctl~

to do with the relationship

of individual to a social whole and, thus, to collective conceptions. Tho first category can best be called 'chat';

r

social

the second is that of the subject to whom the

elements of history are referred (cf. the Introduction):

32. the third is that of historical role, which will become clearer later in the analysis. Not long after the .beginning of the novel, early in the 1840's, Frederic arrives at a demonstration,

as so

ofte~

by chance:

' •.. quand i1 arriva dans la rue Soufflot, il aper~ut un grand rassemblement autour du Panth~on. Des jeures gens, par bandes in~ga1es de cinq douze, se promenaient en se donnant Ie bras' •.. 'au fond de 1a place contre les grilles, des hommes en blouse p6roraient, tandis que, Ie tricorne sur l'oreil1e et les m~ns derriere Ie dos, des sergents de ville erraient Ie long des murs' •.. 'Tous avaient un air mysterieux, ~bahi; on a~tendait quelque chose evidemment' ..• 'Frederic se trouvait aupres d'un jeune homme blond, a la figure avena:te, et portant moust;ache at barbiche comme un raffine du temps de Louis XIII. II lui demanda la cause du desordre. "Je n!en sais rien," reprit l'autre, "ni eux non plus! C'est leur mode prJsent. Quelle bonne farce!" Et i l ~clata de rire. Les petitions pour la Reforme, que l'on faisait signer dans la garde nationale, jointes au recensement Humann, d'autres 6v~nements encore, amenaient depuis six mcis, dans Paris, d'inexplicables attroupements; et mSme ils se renouve1aient si souvent que les journaux n'en parlaient plus. "Cela manque de galbe et de cou1eur," continua 1e voisin de Fred~ric' ••. '11 ~carta les bras largement, comme Frederic Lemattre dans Robert Macaire.' (p. 46)

a

a

The" passage

begin~

with.the perception:of an observer,

Freddric, who is not directly concerned with the events. The paragraph that follows is referred to this observer, in that all the details are generalised by the indefinite article, a feature common in the novel, which will be seen again in the scenes of the February Revolution. A second figure,Hussonnet,

answers Fr~diric's request for more

specific information in the manner of the 'f1aneur', for whom the events are part of the theatre of social life. A new paragraph suddenly shifts the focus: it is no longer clear where the information is coming from. It has a specificity that makes it certain that Fr~d~ric is not; the source and does not fit the style of HU5sonnet's preceding and subsequent utterances,

the latter an antiquarian parody,

33. the former suggesting no interest in specifics. indirect libre' is,

'Style

thus, highly unlikely, though not

absolutely out of the question. The matter would be easy if the information profer!ed were itselC enlightening: this would classify it as coming f-rom an historical narrator. The fact is,

though,

that the information is not very

informative: the reference to the 'garde nationale' is comprehensible with a minimum of backgrounq knowledge; 'recensement Humann' is obscure and unexplained, 'd' autres ev~nements encore' to explain

the

then follow

'a '.inexplicables

attroupements' and the fact that their recurrence makes them uninteresting for· the Press of the time fact,

(o.n important

as will be indicated later in the chapter.). After this

piece of enlightenment Hussonnet repeats the gesture of a famous actor in the most famous role in the period, (Aga~n,

this will come to signify more ~n the light of

the rest of the present chapter.) The problem-paragraph has no subject to whioh one can refer it so that the elements cohere in any kind of meaningful contex.t. Seen in an historical perspective the paragraph can be seen to refer to events which play a role in the preparati~~

of the 1848 Revolution. The point is, though,

that the narration blocks such an interpretation. This example is fairly extreme. It is, though, the case that in the novel the use of such elelIll:lnts of social and political history rarely constitutes straightforward narrative causal explanation in the manner it does in the standard 'historical novel' ,-let alone tn an historical narrative. When such explanation is. present it is inclined to come as a shock, as will be seen when the passages on the Revolution are examined. An analogous phenomenon to this use of detail from public history

whi~h

fails to cohere or enlighten is

the way in which aspects of the social history of the time appear in conversation, in social 'chat'. Consider the following examples: at Arnoux's early in the novel:

34. 'Les autres causaient des choses du jour: Ie portrait de Ch~rubini, l'h6micyc1e des Beaux-Arts, l'Exposition prochaine.' (p. 55) Fr6d~ric meets S~neca1 for the first time:

'D'abord on causa des choses du jour: Ie Stabat de Rossini.'(p~ 71)

ent~e

autres

at the Alhambra: 'Puis on causa de Delmas, qui pourrait, comme mim~ avoir des succes de theatre; et il s'ensuivit une discussion, ou l'on me1ait Shakespeare, la Censure, Ie Style, Ie Peuple, les recettes; de la Porte SaintMartin, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo et Dumersan.' (p. 96) in the Dambreuse circle: 'lIs causaient de votes, d'amendements, de sousamendements, du discours de M. Grandin, de la r~plique de M. Benoist. Le tiers parti d~cidement alla~t trop loin!' (p. 269) at the funeral of M. Dambreuse: 'On ne causait que du refus d'allocation fait par la Chambre au Pr6sident. M. Piscatory s'etait montre trop acerbe, Montalembert, "magnifique, comme d'habitude", et ]'IM. Chambolle, Pidoux, Creton, enfin toute la commission aurait suivre, peut-~tre, l'avis de MM. Quentin-Beauchard et Dufour.' (p. 424)

du

Most immediately apparent is the proliferation of names.,. familiar and unfruniliar. The general heading of 'les choses du jour' points to the affinity of such discourse to that of the newspapers, whose importance at this time grew massively,

as Kracauer points out in his Offenbach book.

The way the novel presents such chat corresponds very closely to Benjamin's observations on the Press in his Baudelaire essays: 'Ratte die Presse es darauf abgesehen, dass der Leser sich ihre Informationen als einen Teil seiner Erfahrung zu eigen macht, so wtirde sie ihren Zweck nicht erreichen. Aber ihre Absicht ist die umgekehrte und wird erreicht. Sie besteht darin, die Ereignisse gegen- den' Bereich abzudichten, in dem sie die Erfahrungen des Lesers betreffen konnten. Die Grundsatze journalistischer Information (Neuigkeit, Klirze, Verstand:ichkeit und vor allern Zusammenhangslosigkeit der einzelnen ~ach­ richten untereinander) tragen zu diesem Erfolge genauso bei wie der Umbruch und die Sprachgebarung. tKarl Kraus wurde nicht mude nachzuweisen, wie sehr

35. der sprachliche Habitus der Journale die Vorstellungskraft ihrer Leser lahmt .)' (15) Hussonnets journal corresponds both to this and to the structuve of the conversations,

'traitant de la m@me encre

un volume de vers et une paire de bottes.'(p. 266) The conversations thus mirror the collective, and purely public, concerns of the inhabitants of Paris. What is of real importance in the experience of the novel's main fictional charaeters is independent of such discourse. The appearance of such historical material takes on a dual aspect: it is set off against those moments of intense subjective experience which Fred6rlc has with Mme Arnoux, for example, and it seems deliberately diffuse and random. The chat,

though, often can give the key to the general

historical situation. The narrative rarely explains how, and.: _so:

the reader must have reCQurse· e-i ther to the history

books or the notes. In the examples given here material which is presented in an identical manner, as in a newspaper, functions very differently in each example. The first merely collects mixed trivia:

Ch~rubini

is well-known enough

but it is not his music that is at stake but a portrait of him;

the hemicycle is simply obscure,

though,

the notes tell

us, much discussed at the time. The next example is similar, only specifying one element with no apparent motivation: . why should this element be emphasised, rather than any other of the 'choses du jour'? The third example makes the general point about social intercourse which is inherent in the

descr~ion

of Hussonnet's journal, thereby both

representing the content of the conversation at the same time as potentially critiCising it. The two final examples from the reactionary Dambreuse circle involve a political collective based on the defense of material interests. The chat of the circle is often cited and the most inane in the novel. In their conversation the political interest shows through very clearly

~nd

the manner of its construction

36. in the text manages to constitute a negative critique, without an overt opinion being passed from another narrative level. The first of the two examples demonstrates their simultaneous concern with the superficial trappings of politics and their politic~l interests. What is said, though,

remains obscurei we are simply given names and

a set of opinions which take such a cliched form that they appear ludicrous, even if we do not know who MM. Grandin and Benoit actually were or what they said. The final example is the most important. Eight different figures are named in the space of about thirty words. The passage can be read in various ways. One could be termed the Private Eye interpretation, in that the way the names are introduced, particularly the wonderful trio of Chambolle, Pidoux and Creton, is worthy of that journal. The second interpretation depends upon the circumstances of the chat, namely the funeral of M.Dambreuse, who 'avait acclame

Napol~on,

les Cosaques, Louis XVIII,

1830, les ouvriers, tous les regimes, cherissant Ie Pouvoir d'un tel amour, qu'il aurait se vendre.' (p,.- 420)

pay~

pour

It emphasies the nullity of the person who is being buried and the purely selfish interests of his mourners. A further interpretation suggests a vital aspect of the novel. Dambreuse's political career, which is described here in a manner

strikingly similar in tone to many

of Marx's remarks on the period, suggests a kind of historical subject. The data given at his funeral in the conversation is in fact a micro-history of Louis Napoleon's rise to power. The mention of the refusal to grant more money to the President is one of the very few occasions in the novel where Louis Napoleon appears at all in the novel (a fact that will be important in the comparison with Marx). The views expressed in the passage come from a circle of Monarchists after the suppression of the Revolution and the election of Louis Napoleon to the Presidency (and about ten months before the coup d'~tat)_ The first five names come from Monarchist Circles,

the latter two are supporters

37. of Louis Napoleon. The tendency of the group towards support of Louis Napoleon is,

therefore, clear: this

again correspond.Swith much of Marx's analysis. The latter interpretation suggests how the disintegration of so many elements of the history of the period within the text poses interesting questions as to the subject of such data. The example is ambivalent in that it collects the necessary data but does not present them in a manner which elucidates. Culler relates such examples to an attraction on Flaubert's part 'to Positivism precisely insofar as it appears to have abandoned a" search for causes and contented itself with exhaustive taxonomic descriptions.'(16) The tendency finds its apotheosis in Flaubert's work in the projected conclusion of Bouvard at Pecuchet: '''Copions! II faut que la page s'emplisse, que Ie 'monument' se comp~~tet - egalite de tout, du bien et du mal, du beau et du laid, de l'insignifiant et du caracteristique. II n I yr a de vrai que les phenom~nes. ,., (17) (My emphasis.) Such

a~

conception""_involves a" complete negation of any

subject~which

could_make the phenomena cohere ... ,_

This tends to be the general tenor of the new approach to Flaubert ini tiated by Barthes

e~ld

developed by Culler.

The example being looked at seems to me to point in direction which Culler's analysis is inclined to ignore. Having convincingly demonstrated the uncertainty present in the narration caused by the difficulty, indeed impossibility, of establishing an authoritative, personalisable narrator,

he fails to go into the significance of this in

rel~tion

to the historical material of the period. I have already suggested that such a mode of presentation has much to do with other tendencies rooted in the history of the time, namely in the form of the press. Directly and indirectly L'Education can tell us ~reat deal about 1848, both in terms of' infol'mation and in terms of the narrative mediati.on of such information. Culler wishes to see Flaubert's world as 'an immense paradigm in which everything could

38.

-

J

replace anything else.in the syntagma of chance. It is.a more disturbing world because the novel forces the reader to attempt to --discover a patte~n in the lives of characters and their relations with society and proposes more obstacles than assistance to that process.' (18)

This seems to me exaggerated; the example of Chambolle, Pidoux and Creton has a kind of disguised necessity. The discovery of that necessity is often difficult: the text does not constitute an evident historical subject and often takes the process of randomness o~ both historical and other descriptions to great leng:ths, much in the manner of the apparently futile

accumulati(.~

of information

in the form of social chat, or of certain aspects of the popular press. This, though, has its own historical significance, which I believe can be best shown via the comparison with Marx. This approach concentrates less on Flaubert as an isolated author and more upon what the novel signifies as a part of history: in this perspective such a narrative mode can

ha~

collective significance. The presence of

the Positivist tendency can in this light be seen as baving an almost

totally opposed result to that which would

be the case if it were to appear in an analytical text dealing with the same period. The analogies of Marx's and Flaubert's texts make this evident. The comparison of L'Education with Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte was,_ to my knowledge, first made by Edmund Wilson in The Triple Thinkers (19). His essay showed up the striking parallels between the works. This must now be extended on the basis of the new view of Flaubert's narrative. First, though, one needs to make some remarks which link up to the observations on the novel and society following the French Revolution made earlier. These remarks will run the risk of pushing the novel rather too far in the direction of a traditional mimetic conception of 'realism'. However, as the historical aspect3 are so evident this does not seem particularly problematic at the outset, provided one keeps in mind what has been

39. said about the nature of the narrative which contains these aspects. It is a feature of the novel that these two sides are both present and must not be neglected. L '~Educa tion is an extreme case of a novel dealing wi th the decline of the possibilities· of the heroic individual in nineteenth-century France. This is tb3 most evident first impression conveyed particularly by Fr6d6ric. He must find his way at the outset of the novel in the France of Louis-Philippe, the France owned by the 'Bankiers, Borsenkonige, Eisenbahnkonige, Besitzer von Kohlen- und Eisenbergwerken und Waldungen, ein Teil des mit ihnen rallierten Grundeigentums - die sogenannte Finanzaristokratie.' (20) (Marx's emphasis.) as Marx puts it. The figure of M. Dambreuse fits this description exactly; he is from an aristocratic family but gives up his title and 'd~s 1825, abandonnant peu

a

peu sa

noblesse et son parti, il s'~tait tourna vers l'industrie' ..• 'il".avait amasse une fortune -que l'on disait considerable •.. ' (p.37) The penetration of commodity structure and the dominance of money in all spheres of society is far advanced. The world of the novel has strong affinities to Benjamin's image of Paris in the Baudelaire texts. An index of this in the novel

~s

the extent to which the arts are affected by

capital. Arnoux's firm is called, for most of the novel, l'Art industriel: 'Apr~s avoir pouss~ dans

leurs debuts des mattres . contemporains, Ie marchand de tableaux, homme de progr~s, avait tach~, tout en conservant des allures artisUques, d'etendre ses profits pecuniaires. Ilrecherchait l'emancipation des arts, Ie sublime bon march~.'(p. 59)

a

In the visual arts the man who most consistently follows this lead is the painter Pellerin, who ends'up as a photographer, thereby neatly demonstrating Benjamin's conception of the 'Verfall der Aura'.(21) The growing dominance of money values is related to a general problematisation of social ideals. Trying to prove his worth to Mme.Arnoux Fr~d~ric reflects:

'Comment se

faire valoir? par quels moyens? Et, ayant bien che~chl;. Fr6dJric ne trouva rien de mieux que l'argent.'

..

(p.

160)

, ,

40. It is a feature of

Fr~d~ric's

career, such as it is, that

the only values which remain such are those which he is unable to appropriate. His love for Mme Arnoux transcends his otherwise commodity-determined relationship

~o

the

world. However ironically one reads the conclusion of the novel, it remains true that Fr'd~ric's and Deslaurier's happiest memory is of an adolescent trip to a brothel, where they take flowers and end up running away. The avoidance of the commodity is the only escape from disillusion. The dominaxe of money values contrasts with the society's origins in the Revolution and the Napoleonic era as seen at the beginning of this chapter. Even very early in the novel there are hopes expressed for a new transformation where the individual can play an important role in collective change. Deslauriers resumes this in his

~xpression

of~

youthful frustration: '"Patience! un nouveau 89 se prepare! On est las de constitutions, de chartes, de subtilites, de mensonges. Ah! si" j'avais un journal ou uno tribune, comme je vous secouerais tout cela! Mais, pour entreprendre n'importe quoi, il faut de l'argent!'" (p. 3 4 ) The constant failure he encounters changes this view,as he explains to

Fr~deric

on the

latt~r's

return to Paris:

'PAh! c'etait plus beau, quand Camille Desmoulins, debout la-bas sur une table, poussait Ie peuple k la Bastille. On vivait dans ce temps~la, on pouvait s'affirmer, prouver sa force! Des simples avocats commruldaient a des generaux, des va-nu-pieds battaient les rois, tandis qu'a present ••. ·, (p. 137) The reference to a central figure of the French Revolution is one of many in the novel. There is a kind of dispLacement of historical reality in the frequent reference to the heroic period of the Revolution. The contemporary situation seems to block real contact with historical transformation, thereby shifting the weight of history into the past and giving the present a sense of unreality. The nature of the narrative reinforces this, of course. When it comes to the 1848 Revolution itself this is

41 . even more the case. In a revolutionary club

S~necal,

who

is chairman,is described: 'comme chaque personnage se r6g1ait alors sur un modele, l'un copiant Saint-Just, l'autre Danton, l'autre Marat, lui, i~ltachai t de re..ssembler a Blanqui, lequel imitait Robespierre.' (p. 340) This double playing of historical roles has an equivalent in Der achtzehnte Brumaire, starting with the title itself. At the beginning Marx gives an explanation of the phenomenon of historical role-playing. Referring to the way the events of 1848-51 ape those of the first Fre~Revolution,

'Caussidisre

fUr Danton, Louis Blanc flir Robespierre, die Montagne von '" 1848-51 flir die Montagne von 1793-5, der Neffe fUr den Onkel',

(22), and the way that Revolution had in its turn adopted the appearances of the Roman Republic, Marx states: 'Bei Betrachtung jener weltgeschichtlichen Totenbeschworungen zeigt sich soforte~n Bpringender Unterschied. Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, St-Just, Napoleon, die Heroen, wie die Parteien und die Masse der alten franzosischen Revolution, vollbrachten in dem romischen Kosttime und mit romischen Phrasen die Au:fgabe ihrer Zeit, die Elltfesselung und Herstellung der modernen bUrgerlichen Gesellschaft' ••• 'die neue Gesellschaftsformation einrnal hergestellt, verschwanden die vorsindflutlichen Kolosse und mit Ihnen das wieder auferstandehe Romertum' ••• 'unheroisch wie die bUrgerliche Gesellschaft ist, hatte es des Heroismus bedurft, der Aufopferung, des Schreckens, des Btirgerkriegs und der Volkerschlachten, urn sie auf die Welt zu setzen.' (23) (Marx's emphasis) The reali ty of ;:the new order is then later revealed in the fact that the 'wirklichen Heerflihrer sassen hinter dam Kontortisch.'(24) Analogous structures are, then, present in the texts of Marx and Flaubert: the sense of historical displacement is evidence of this. How does the Revolution itself appear in each? Such an analysis cannot content itself with showing factual and symbolic parallels.

(Wilson's essay does a lot

of the work on this score anyway,

tending,

though,

to go

rather too far in the direction of symbolic interpretation. L'Education is more resistant to this than he makes it.)

42. The central question is the way history is constituted in the texts, as I

explained in the Introduction in relation

to tho question of the subject. As will be plain from my remarks up to now this ,is a difficult issue. Turning to the way the novel presents the Revolution, this is even more the case. Fr~d~ric goes to what will turn out to be his abortive rendez-vous with Mme Arnoux (25): 'En debouchant de la rue Tronchet, il entendit derri~re la Madeleine une grande clameur; il s'avanTa; et il aper~ut au fond de la place, h gauche, des gens en blouse et des bourgeois. En·efret, un manifeste publie dans les journaux avait convoque cet endroit tous les souscripteurs du banquet r~formiste. Le minist~re, presque immediatement, avait afficha une proclamation l'interdisant. La vaille au soir, l'opposition parlementaire y avait renonc~; mais les patriotes, qui ignoraient cette r~solution des chefs, ~taient venus au rendez-vous, suivis par un grand nombre de curieux. Une d6putation ,des ~coles s'etait port~e tout a l'heure chez Odilon Barrot. Elle etait maintenant aux Affaires Etrangeres; et on ne savait pas si Ie banquet aurait lieu, si Ie Gouvernement executerait sa menace, si les gardes nationaux se pr~senteraient. On en voulait aux Deputes comme au Pouvoir. La foule augmentait de plus en plus, quand tout a coup vibra dans les airs Ie refrain de la Marseillaise.' (p. 3 1 2)

a

The shifts of focus in this passage will, as we shall see, become part of the technique that Zola uses in order to penetrate as much of an historical situation as possible. In this passage, as so often in the novel, the shifts have anything but a totalising effect. The passage begins, as did the one cited earlier where Frederic meets Hussonnet, with Fredtric as the subject. He has been called by Deslauriers to take part in the demonstration but is instead going to meet Hme Arnoux. The demonstration is thus a potential hinderance for him. His perception of it is correspondingly general,asin the other passage. This time the reason is different in that Fr~d'ric knows what is going on. The narrative realisation is, however,

identical, including

the characteristic use of the indefinite.atticle. The change of perspective that follows is introduced by a

43. phrase that seems to signal that rare aspect of the novel, explanatory narrative history as constituted by an historical narrator. The pluperfect indicates that the passage is a summary. In fact,

though, the summary never moves outside

the field of knowledge which could have been available to a well-informed person on that particular day. A further shift takes the perspective, via a change of tense, among the parti~ipants:

'Elle 6tait maintenant ... '. A historically

specific uncertainty as to the taking place of the banquet and, most important, to the reaction of the'garde nationale', gives way to a vague and unenlightening characterisation of the mood of the crowd:

'On en voulait .•• ', where the

capital letter for 'Pouvoir' puts it in the same category as

'~a

Censure, Ie Style, Ie Peuple' in the example quoted

earlier in the chapter. The paragraph ends with a phenomenon that is so unsurprising that the overall movement of the paragraph is an anti-climax. The dominant impression

is of

the dissolution of a central perspective: neither Frederic's very private concerns nor a perception based on historical interest gives any real coherence. In what follows Fr6deric's private interests are counterpointed with events but the politic;41 level introduced by 'En effet ..• ' is only continued in the fact that the crowd shouts 'Vive la Reforme! A bas Guizot!'

(p. 313). Otherwise

the events are either generalised or are characterised by a randomness of specific elements which read as if other specific elements co~ld just as easily take their place: 'Un cheval s'abattiti on courut lui porter secours .•• '(p.3 1 3) The randomness continues as Fr6d6ric is present at subsequent events. A totalising synthesis of what is really happening is absent. As, for example, Frederic walks around Paris the day after the insurrection begins, the narrative fills in the background: 'La veille au soir, Ie spectacle du chariot contenant cinq cadavres recueillis parmi ceux du boulevard des

44. Capucines avait chang6 les dispositions du peuple; et penda.nt qu' aux Tuileries "les aides de camp se succ~daiBnt, et que M.Mol~ .•. ' ..• 'et que' .•• 'et que' ... 'l'insurrection s'organisait formidablement. Des hommes d' une 6loquence frene't ique haranguai t la fou Ie au coin . des rues; d'autres dans les 6glises sonnaient Ie tocsin pleine voleei on coulait du plomb, on roulait des cartouches' ..• 'Paris, Ie matin, etait couvert de barricades. La r6sistance ne dura pas' ... 'D'elle m~me, sans.secousses, la monarchie se fondait dans une dissolution rapide; et on attaquait maintenant Ie poste du ChAteau-d'Eau, pour delivrer cinquante prisonniers, qui n'y etaier.t pas.' (p. 322)

a

Once again a sort of summarising historical narration is present which fills in the backgroun,1 and gives causes- for events. One wonders, though, why the exact number of corpses from the 'fusillade du boulevard des Capucines'

(which

took place as Fred~ric was~on the way to sleep with RosanetttJ, Mme Arnoux not having turned up)~ where far more died,is so necessary to the causality. Again affinities to Benjamin's description of the Press are pnsent in this manner of reporting events. The passage moves from the kind of general detail already observed elsewhere to the specific nullity of the last sentence. The course of the Revolution was presumably not substantially affected by this action and the narrative never returns to it. The subject of this final detail cannot be established except if one wishes to use a psychological genetic explanation which maintains that Flaubert wishes to make fun of his readers'

expectations of coherence

(26). This is no doubt true in a trivial way. As I have suggested in the Introduction,

though,

the text can signify

far more than this via tho fact of its mediation of collective significances. Even when Fr'd'ric himself is the .subject of the narration this difficulty of making the text cohere is present: 'Les tambours battaient la charge. Des cris aigus, des hourras de triomphe s'elevaient. Un remo~continuel faisait osciller la multitude. Fr~d6ric, pris entre deux masses profondes, ne bougeait pas, fascine d'ailleurs et s'amusant extremement. Les blesses qui

tombaient, les morts dtendus n'avaient pas l'air de vrais bless~s, de vrais morts. II lui semblait aS5ister a un spectacle.' (p. 323) The spectator sees the real events as a 'spectacle': a mo~e of perception whi~h agai~ corresponds- to"

the voyeur-

istic aspect of the popular press, where the context and significance of information is subordinate to its novelty. This mode is also present in the following: 'De toutes les fenetres de 1a place, on tirait; 1es ba1les siff1aientj l'eau de la fontaine crevee se m@lait avec Ie sang, faisait des flaques par terre; on glissait dans la boue sur des vetements, des shakos, des armes; Frederic senti t sous son""pied quelque chose de mou; c'~tait la main d'un sergent en capote grise, couch6 la face dans Ie ruisseau ••• '(p.J2J~4) which reads almost like the

on-the~spot

report of a journalist

writing for the Springer press. The perceptions are referred to Fr6d6ric but no reaction is described; they are further phenomena. (Culler contrasts this with Fabrice's horror at a corpse in the Waterloo scenes of La Chartreuse de Parme.) The phenomena are part of the

e~ts

but they are so presented

that they do not add up to an image of what is really happening because no point of reference i.s given. A kind of historical montage results, in which empirical elements are mixed together without regard to their relative importance. Looking ahead to the next chapter, this general way of presenting events corresponds to what Lukacs in Geschichte und Kl:assenbewusstsein says of the positivist view of historical reality: 'soba1d man ••• auf dem~attirlichen" Boden der Existenz, der blossen, der nackten und rohen Empirie stehen bleibt: stehen das Subjekt der Handlung und das Milieu der "Tatsachen", in dem sich seine Handlupg abzuspielen hat, als schroff und tibergangslos getrennte Prinzipien einander -: gegeniiber.' (27) Luk~cs,

as we shall see in the next chapter, saw the way of

transcending this split in the conception of the proletariat as the collective subject which could give coherence and diroction to the empirical historical world. This conception

46. is, of course, derived from Marx and is, in a somewhat problematic manner, present in the analyses of 1848. Marx began writing his texts when the major proletarian uprising had already been defeated. The dominant theme of the February insurrection is,

then, by virtue of his

long-term belief in the victory of the proletariat,

that of

the illusory nature of the events. Whilst at.the outset it had appeared as if the real Revolution were taking place, this was an illusion, which was reflected in the language of the time: 'Die Phrase, welche dieser eingebildeten Aufhebung der Klassenverhaltnisse entsprach, war die fraternite, die allgemeine Verbrliderung und Brtiderschaft. Diese gemtitliche Abstraktion von den Klassengegensatzen, diese sentimentale Ausgleichung der sich widersprechenden Klasseninteressen, diese schwarmerische Erhebung tiber den Klassenkampf',·' die fraternite, sia war das eigentliche Stichwort der Februarrevc1ution. Die Klassen waren durch ein blosses Missverstandnis gespalten und Lamartine taufte die provisorische Regierung am 24. Februar: "un gouvernement qui suspend ce malentendu terrible ui existe entre les differentes ~lasses."' 28 Marx's emphases Lamartine's defense of the tricolore.which symbolised this vie~

is made part of the chat in L'Education: 'On se redit, pendant un mois, la phrase sur Ie drapeau rouge, "qui n'avait fait que Ie tour du Champ de Mars, tandis que 1e drapeau tricolore", etc.; et tous se rang~rent sous son ombre, chaque parti ne voyant des trois couleurs que la sienne - et se promettant bien, d~s qu'il serait 1e plus fort, d'arracher les deux autres.' (p. 330)

The interpretation is identical as to the negative aspect. The difference is that Marx believes in the determining role of the proletariat, whereby this collision of interests will ultimately be resolved. The general sense of the lack of a subject in the novel does not prevent,: as in the examp.le ci ted above from M. Dambreuse' s funeral, there being a negative historical coherence present. The implicit critique of social chat and related phenomena is shown here to have political implications of the kind Benjamin suggests in his critique of the mode of perception

furthered by the popular press. The curtailing of the quotation with 'etc.'. a phenomenon to be observed elsewhere in the novel in similar cases, implies a view of reality determined by labels, abbreviations, which block access to what is in fact the case. In the.se terms both the novel and the analytical texts lead in the direction of a kind of realism which depends upon the negation of received modes of making sense of the world. The novel achieves this

Ex

constituting itself with the very material that it ultimately criticises, even down to aspects of style and presentation of the kind being analysed here. ,.

In contrast to the novel Marx's texts overtly synthesise the collective trends in the events.

Ho~ver,

it is possible

to read the novel in terms of these trends: its 'montage' aspect allows this. Thus Marx's central antithesis: 'Die Februarrevolutiori war die schone Revolution' .•• 'Die Junirevolution ist die hassliche Revolution, die abstossende Revolution, weil an die Stelle der Phrase die Sache getreten ist.' (29) is evident in the figure of Dussardier. During the February period he naively reacts:

'"tout va bient Ie peuple triomphe!

les ouvriers et les bourgeois s'efubrassent' ••• 'comme c'est beau!"· (p. 328) The vagueness of the identity of interests is then brutally made clear in the June days when Dussardier fights with the 'garde nationale' against .the insurgents and is wounded, thereby becoming the darling of the reactionaries: 'Peut-etre qu,'il aurait dU se mettre de l'autre bord, avec les blouses; car enfin on leur avait promis un tas de choses qu'on n'avait pas tanues. Leurs vainqueurs .d6testaient la Republique; et puis, on s'etait montre .bien dur pour eux! Ils avaient tor~ sans doute,pas tout a fait, cependant; at Ie brave gar~on 'taittortur6 par cette id'e qu'il pouvait avoir combattu la justice.' (p~J76) The total uncertainty provoked by the events in Dussardier's naive consciousness can then be confronted with the cynical appropriation of him by the reactionaries:

'Le

brave commis &tait maintenant un heros, comme Sallesse,

48. les fraresJeanson,

la :femine Pe'quillet, etc.!

(p.J84),

where 'etc.' again plays an important role. The brutality of the reaction is also made clear by the novel. M. Roque's firing into the starving prisoners in the aftermath of the June days makes it evident that the novel's dispersion of historical reality does not lead merely to confusion. The point in the history of the 1848 Revolution 'Wbicn is perhaps most central to the overall question of individual and collective history is shown in the titles of Marx's works on the Revolution: Die Klassenkampfe in Frankreich and Der achtzerillte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte. By the time of the second text the figure of Louis Napoleon, who had already played a major role in the first text, had carried out the coup d'6tat of 2nd December 1.851. The concentration on a central figure 'Who seems to determine events is forced upon Marx by this figure's continuing ability to confuse the basic class distinctions which had played a major role in the beginnings of the Revolution. As I mentioned above, Louis Napoleon hardly ever appears in the novel and "'Then he does it is in social chat. It might, therefore, seem somewhat abstruse to lay such weight upon .this topic. Two reasons can be given why this is not the case. First, the novel was wri t t en in the Empire which fo llowed the coup. -dLeta t and necessarily bears

~aces

of historical

ref~ection

upon

the time of writing as well as the time being written about. The time of writing has been best evoked by Kracauer in his Offenbach book, where he takes the Operetta as the indirect key to the society in which it became massively popular. Second, the main narrative in the novel ends with the murder, in Fred~ric's presence, of Dussardier by S~necalf

during the coup._d'~tat itself. The· second conclusion,

in 1867,· is --of a more private nature, though it makes clear the failure of the hopes invested in the Revolution, as well as suggesting the nature of the society that has developed, by describing the subsequent careers of some or the novel's

characters.

In 1869, the year of the appearance of L'Education, Marx wrote in his preface to the second edition of Der achtzehnte Brumaire: 'Von den Schriften,

The text actually begins in a largely realist manner, giving an ideological portrait of its central figure and the irrational/rational motivation of' his desertion from the field of battle. The introduction of the main historical theme relating to Huguenau is similarly concrete, arising out of his attitude to topics of discussion in

th~

soldiers'

milieu: 'sicherlich war er ein AngehHriger des Krieges, dessen Vorhandensein er guthiess. Er hatte es auch nie leiden mHgen, wenn die Leute in den Kantinen und in den Wirtschaften auf den Krieg und auf die Zeitungen schimprten oder behaupteten, dass die Zeitungen von Krupp gekauft seien, urn den Krieg zu verlangern. Denn Wilhelm Huguenau war nicht nur Deserteur, sondern auch Kaufmann, und er bewunderte aIle Fabrikanten, weil sie die Waren erzeugen; mit denen die Ubrigen Henschen handeln. Wenn also Krupp und die Kohlenbarone Zeitungen kauften, so wussten sie was sie taten, und dies war ihr gutes Recht, so gut es sein eigenes war, Uniform zu tragen, solange es ihm beliebte.' (p. 390) The central figure,

then, holds to precisely those instances

which would compel reality into the forms created by the demands of monopoly capital,

the successors of the harmless

'Sammler', who are nearer to total control of a major aspect of social exchange. This makes clear a relationship of individual and historical totality which is highly concrete. The systematic implications of Huguenau's role as

'Kaufmann'

are seen in his positive attitude towards

those historical manifestations of the business principle which have already begun systematically to manipulate the world of production. Huguenau develops,

though,

in different directions,

209. without abandoning

~his

level. After the first three

chapters have been concerned with Huguenau,

the fourth

chapter suddenly begins: 'A Is man den }laurer und Landwehrmann Lud ....· ig Godi cke aus dem verschUtteten Graben herausbuddelte, war sein zum Schreien geoffneter Mund mit Erde angeflillt.' (p. 393) This sets the pattern for the rest of the novel:

the

subjective mediation of the continuum of the novel now extends into individual chapters, which centre on

par~icular

fates and on particular consciousnesses. One strand of the narration,

those parts of

'Geschi~hte "

des Heilsarmee-

madchens in Berlin' which are not in verse,

involves a

first-person narrator, Bertrand MUller. This strand is separate from the rest of the novel's action and relates closely to the 'intercalated chapters of the 'Zerfall der Werte'. The remaining strands of the narration are gradually revealed as all playing in the same town. The figures end up crossing each others' paths but no contact is really established, whereby a major aspect of the implied historical totality is underlined. The levels of Huguenau are, established by the very

mode"of

then,

the text. The historical

totality on the abstract level is given chapters to itself. Whilst it is advisable for the sake of clarity to begin the analysis from this abstract level, it will be shown to be the case that the novel can only really be assessed when the interaction of the levels is shown by establishing the place of the 'Zerfall'. Broch was convinced that the novel was the most appropriate place for such theory, as in a letter to Willa Muir: 'Man kann mir nun einwenden, dass eine solche (neue Geschichtsphilosophie) im Roman nichts zu tun hatte, und dagegen habe ich zu sagen: 1) dass meines Daftirhaltens Geschichtsphilosophie und viele andere Belange infolge der Mathematisierung de:' eigentlichen Wissenschaft aus dem wissenschartlichen Bereich auszuscheiden beginnen, dass dagegen - infolge des metaphysischen Bedlirfnisses des Menschen - diese Belange anders\\'o untergebracht werden mUssen.' (8)

210.

The comrnen t

is enough to ma.1.ce i t clear that the theory

alone is not regarded as sufficient to mediate the kind of cognition intended -

the theory could otherwise stand

outside the novel. \{hat, occurs in the novel makes the whole issue more interesting. The 'Zerfall' opens with a series of questions relating to the War and its horrors. The main question, which makes clear why the novel is receiving such detailed examination in the present work,

concerns the relationship between

the actions of the individual and the

'Gesamtgeschehe~'

'Unser Gesamtschicksal ist die Summe unserer Einzelschicksale, und jedes dieser Einzelleben entwickelt sich durchaus "normal", sozusagen seiner Unterhosenlogizitat gemass. Wir empfinden das Gesamtgeschehen als wahnsinnig, aber flir unser Einzelschicksal kHnnen wir mit Leichtigkeit einen logischen Motivenbericht liefern. Sind wir wahnsinnig, weil wir nicht ,wahnsinnig geworden sind?' (p. 419) The question establishes a relationship between the novel and the philosophy of histpry which is the central question in the present work. More

rece~t

following from Alfred Schmidt,

formulations,

as in the

suggest the aptness of the

initial question: 'Worauf es ankommt, ist das von Kant auf seine Weise entdeckte Problem der modernen Welt: tiber das widerverntinftige In- und Nebeneinander von bewusster Z\1lecktatigkeit des einzelnen und Bewusstlosigkeit und Blindheit des Ganzen hinauszugelangen.' (9) The novels of the kind being dealt with in the thesis provide a model of this and related questions in the way that their textual levels relate to each other. In the novels in the first two chapters, culminating in Les Thibault, the opposition of individual action to the action of the whole was the central constitutive factor,

the novel being

concerned often to preserve the individual's value in a world which threatened to extinguish it completely.

~1ann' 5

and Broch's novels move nearer the realm of 'Geschichtsphilosophie' because they concentrate more upon a logic of the whole,

thereby changing the relative importance

211 . of individual and totality and causing problems for the novel form.

The more overt and more extreme Schlaf~andler

occurs in Die

~ay

that this

poses further questions in

relation to issues that have been significant else~here in the thesis. The final reflection of the first part of the 'Zerfall' formulates a whole ser~es of important general questions: 'G~be

es einen Menschen, in dem all~s Geschehen dieser Zeit si~allig sich darstellte, dessen eigenes logischesTun das Geschehen dieser Zeit ist, dann, ja dann ware auch diese Zeit nicht mehr wahnsinnig. Deshalb wohl sehnen wir uns nach dem "FUhrer" damit er uns die Motivation zu einem Geschehen liefere, das wir ohne ihn bloss wahnsinnig nennen konnen,' (p. 421)

,

Two main issues can be taken up here. The idea of the individ·lal as the historical subject has already concerned us earlier. In Chapter One the figure of-Louis Napoleon was dealt with via Marx's stylisation of him into the ironic centre of interpretation of the failure of the 1848 Revolution in France. It was suggested that Louis Napoleon was in many ways a forerunner of the bane of Caesarism in modern Germany for whatever reason,

~d

that Flaubert's refusal,

to make him play any role in his novel

had deeper historical significance. Whilst Marx tended, despite all,

to make the figure fascinating,

in L' Educa t.ion,

this was avoided

thou.gh bo th shared a very simi lar image

of the period as being somehow hollow and open to the misuse of appearances. It is noticeable that successful novels dealing with modern history virtually never involve the historical actors who can be seen as being a major locus of interpretation. This tendency has been further reinforced since Hitler. As J.P.Stern points out, Hitler has never,

and probably could never,

receive appropriate

novelistic treatment (10). His career seems in some ways like the nightmare exaggeration of the rise of a Balzacian figure:

to centre a novel representation upon him

~ould

either involve an aspect of consent or the continual

212.

necessity of distancing the sense of the novel from its central subject. The potential dangers of the formulation here should,

then, not be overlooked, a point that will

be important when the conclusion of the novel is dealt with. The second issue makes the dange~s of the formulation less important. The fact is that the person 'in dem alles Geschehen dieser Zeit sinnfallig]sich darstellte'i-s Huguenau.The work , of fiction takes its own central character as most representative of the logic of the period (11). The novel, I

as

indicated in relation to Pasenow, where it was less

directly evident,

sees the central locus of historical

meaning in terms of structural abstraction, of systems. Instead of a

'world historical figure',

Napoleon, being an initiator of dominant tendencies;

as Hegel saw

as well as a concentration

the individual who most: corresponds

to the foundations of the prior historical system

tak~s

over the constitutive role. This can be a fictional character as the historical point depends upon abstractions used to grasp the main tendencies. In order for this to work the novel must emphasise the primacy of the system and this can be seen as one reason for the introduction of the 'Zerfall' into the work as a separate entity. The resultant contradictions must now be analysed. The first point has been a continual issue up to now:

the constitution of transcendental bases for the

understanding of the real historical significances in the novel leads continually to problems. When the novel is as overt about these bases as Die

Schlafw~ldler

the risk of

a piece of pseudo-science being the result is greater. Die Schlafwandler walks something of a tight-rope in this respect. The question of the status of the narrator is vital here. The factors pointing to the 'Zerfall'

being the

work of Bertrand MUller are numerous: a few can be given here. In the second part of the 'Zerfall'

the author of the

text wishes to counter any implication of the merely

213.

subjective charaster of his reflections on 'Baustil': '~!an mag mir einwenden,

auf meine

dass meine }tUdie;keit und Reizbarkeit

Unterern~hrung

he concludes:

zurUckzufUhren sei.'(p.

436) and

'Wenn ich.konnte, ich wtirde meine wohnung

n1cht mehr verlassen.'

(p.

437-), thereby creating a clear

link to the story of Bertrand MUller. In the sixth part of the 'Geschichte des

Heilsarmeem~dchens

first person narrator begins:

in Berlin'

the

'Zu meiner eigenen Verwunderung

hatte ich wieder begonnen, mich mit meinen geschichtsphilosophischen Arbeiten tiber den Wertzerfall zu beschaftigen.' (p. 488) which, when combined with the verbal links in this strand of the narration to the 'Zerfall'

leaves the

matter pretty much beyond doubt (12). A dialectic is

thus established which is only possible

within the novel via the narrative possibilities at the disposal of the fictional text, which allow levels to interact in a way not possible in an analytical work. It will tUrn out that the analytical side of the novel is only acceptable because of this dialectic: in itself it is more than questionable. To suggest how this part of the text works, as

.well as how Huguenau works in general,

chapters

71-3, which form an interesting constellation, will be looked at. The first of the chapters concerns Hanna Wendling after her husband has returned to the front. It deals with her isolation and what it signifies, concluding: 'Ftir den ersten Blick dtirfte es belanglos erscheinen, ob in dem Ged~chtnis der Hanna Wendling das Individuelle oder das Generelle die Oberha~d behalt. Aber in einer Zeit, in der sich das Generelle so allgemein sichtbar zum Dominierenden aufgezwungen hat, wo der soziale Verband des Humanen, der bloss von Individuum zu Individuum sich spinnt, aufgelost ist zugunsten von Kollektivbegriffen bisher nie geahnter Einheitlichkeit, wo ein entindividualisierter Zustand voller Grausamkeit eingetreten ist, wie er eigentlich bloss der Kindheit und dem Senium entspricht, da wird auch das Einzelgedachtnis sich solch allgemeiner Regel nicht entziehen, und die Vereinsamung einer hochst unbetdichtlichen Frau, mag dieselbe auch hUbsch sein und ihrem Partner eine gute Bettgefahrtin, kann nicht mit dem leider

erfolgten Entzug sexueller Berrledigung erkl~rt werden, sondern bildet einen Teil des Ganzen, spiegelt wie jedes Einzelschicksal ein metaphysisches ~alten Wider, das tiber die Welt verhangt ist, ein, wenn man will, physisches Ereignis, dessenungeachtet metaphysisch in seiner Tragik: denn diese Tragik heisst Vereinsamung des Ichs. I (p. 6 1 5) The transcendental aspect of the passage, which formulates the experience in language which is as distant from that of the subject in question as one can imagine, is less problematic when considered in relation to what follows it. The next chapter will deal with the isolation of Berband Muller and its significance. The present passage shows certain important consequences for the novel:

the

disparity of levels between the experience and its historical significance as part of a collective crisis makes it clear that received narrative modes which represent a state of the social world are in many ways no longer apt. The theme of 'Vereinsamung'

requires that the novel deal

with the failure to communicate: a narrative conveying the image of an interacting and communicating society would be historically inept. The attempt to grasp the reasons for the 'Vereinsamung't apparent in this disparity of levels,

takes over from those

aE~ects

which in the

traditional novel contributed to the image of a social totality. The difficulties in such a situation are epitomised in the next chapter: Bertrand }Hiller's attempts to philosophise and their failure are a further instantiation of the basic problem: 'rch versuche zu philosophieren, - doch wo ist die Wtirde der Erkenntnis gebliebeh? ist sie nicht langst erstorben, ist die Philosophie angesichts des Zerfalls ihres Objekts nicht seIber zu blossen Worten zerfallen' ... 'Selbst das Philosophieren ist zu einem asthetischen Spiel geworden' ... 'ein Geschaft fUr BUrger, die sich des Abends langweilen! nichts bleibt uns mehr als die Zahl, nichts bleibt uns uns mehr als das Gesetz!' (p. 615-6) Instead of developing means of coomunication and interaction

215.

to brine about an end to the situation of isolation , philosophy has become merely an underpinning of the domi nan t as pec t s

0

f' bourg-eoi s

socie ty:

the na tu ra 1 sci ences

and capital. Both depend upon merely quantitative value sys tems:

the frequen t

conjuc ti on of the ro les

0

f bus i ne s 5:l1an

and phi losopher emphasises the development which .... as already latent in Pasenow. The optimism of Eduard v. Bertrand regarding the development of his business empire,

that system

of exchange values which gave access to more and more of the world,

has now been transformed into the pessimism of the

isolated philosopher Bertrand MUller. The very ability to suggest what has gone wrong in Western history becomes systematically available because its main manifestation is isolation. The thinker whose task used to be to synthesise the collectively binding categories which could grasp

-

reality is himself isolated and this is his main insight. This can be regarded as the end point of a particular bourgeois tradition of both literature and philosophy. This is further reinforced by the revelation of Bertrand as the probable

narrator of the novel and his growing

tendency to suggest the merely fictive nature of that which he narrates: 'es blieb die Welt ein fremder Feind, weniger noch als ein Feind, ein Fremdes, dessen Oberflache ich wohl abtasten konnte, in das einzudringen mir doch niemals gelang ... ' (p. 617) His final statement in the chapter,

referring both to his

actions in the social world and his philosophical reflections, is a sort of epitaph for a particular image of the bourgeois l\,'0

rId: 'Ich sagte zu mir: "Du bist ein Trottel, du bist ein Platoniker, du glaubst, die Welt erfassend, sie dir gestalten zu konnen und dich selbst zu Gott zu erlosen. Merkst du nicht, dass du daran verblutest?" Ich ant\o.'ortete mir: "Ja, ich verblute. ttl (p.6 1 7)

The solipsism of the 'dialogue' there is no

in~erlocutor

- he asks himself the question,

- is an ideal image of the isolation

which has come to take over the novel. His systematic

216.

graspine of the historical

situa~ion

is concomitant

with the realisation that the systems grasped have total dominance over reality:

such a realisation makes the

fictional text merely fictional and puts the whole aesthetic enterprise into question. A text like Die Schlafwandler can only assert its own basic superfluity by reinforcing the a,",'areness that there is no way out. Handelkow has the following to say about this in his brilliant

'~ach~ort'

to the new edition of his book on the novel: 'Bertrands Weg, wie er sich in den Stationen seiner symbolischen VerhUllung in beiden ersten Romanen und seiner Enthlillung als der deus absconditus und creator des gesamten Romans im dritten Teil darstellt, ist der Weg des menschlichen Bewusstseins, der Ratio, der im Lichte der Theorie des Wertzerfalls ein tragischer Weg der standig wachsenden Entfremdung und Isolation, des standig zunehmenden Realitatsverlustes ist.Letzte K~nsequenz dieses in~ertrand personalis,ierten Bewusstseins ist der Versuch, die eigene Rationalitat in der theoretischen Ableitung ihrer geschichtsphilosophischen Genese einzuholen, urn so ihrer zerst~renden Eigenlogik zu entrinnen. Dieser tautologische Versuch, sich mit Hilfe von Rationalitat aus dem durch sie geschaffenen Gefangnis zu befreien, scheitert. Das vermeintliche Subjekt des Romans, der Erz~hler Dr. Bertrand MUller, enthlillt gerade im Vorhaben, Welt gestaltend zu erfassen, dass er selb~r nur Objekt einer von ihm zwar durchschauten, aber nicht mehr beherrschbaren und formbare!1 Gesetzlichkeit'ist.' (13) Read in this way, reading,

and there is much to be said for such a

the novel is an appropriate gravestone for

civilised hopes in the period it describes and in the period of its genesis. The problem with such a positive assessment is its dependence upon an acceptance of the validity of the theory presented in the 'Zerfall'. This might seem at first sight somewhat contradictory, given what has been said about the narrator. It seems to me clear, however,

that only the implicit transcendental status of

the propositions of the 'Zerfall'

can justify the bulk

and complexity of their'appearance"within the novel. The novel does not play games with such propositions as the best parts of Der Zauberberg do. Mandelkow makes this

217.

plain when he refuses to accept

Ziolko~ski's

contention

that the revelation of the narrator relativises the 'Zerfall' as much as any of the ideological systems described therein: '~icht

Helativierung ist der Sinn der EinfUhrung der Erzahlerrolle in den Schlaf~andler, sondern der Aufweis des nicht mehr zu vermittelnden Gegensatzes von vlelterkenntnis und deren "irdischer" Gestaltung kraft der in das Geschehen eingreifenden geschichtlichen Tat.' (14) What follows Bertrand's despairing remarks is a huge chunk of epistemology, whose function can hardly be merely to characterise the state of Bertrand himself. It will be my contention that the weaknesses of the theory in the novel are closely related to the kind of weakness I have tried to point out in the other parts of the text. It is then a further matter to decide to what extent the failings are specific to Broch and to wh_at e;.:tent they involve objective historical contradictions of the kind encountered in Chapter Two. The most evident and most often indicated failure of the 'Zerfall' is precisely its degree of abstraction (15). This can easily be demonstrated" by looking at some of the premises of the '"Zerfall' which concern themselves with the possibility and the necessity of large- scale abstraction in the urJ.derstanding of history. In the 'Historischer Exkurs', which constitutes part seven of the 'Zerfall', the origins of the crisis of value are to be found in the 'Zeit, in der mit dem Auseinanderfallen des mittelalterlichen Organons der Prozess der flinfhundertj~hrigen Wertaufl~sung eingeleitet und der Samen dar Moderne gelegt wurde.' (p. 533) It is thus initially clear that only Europe can be involved, as a process of this kind did not take place elsewhere. In order to get at the essentials of the problem it is claimed that it is no use analysing indi"vidual manifestations such as 'Protestantismus', 'Individualismus',

'Nationalismus' ,

'Sinnenfreude', or 'ihre humanistische und naturwissenschafliche

Erneuerung'. Instead, the phenomena

218.

'mUssen alle' ... 'auf einen gemeinsamen ~enner gebracht werden, sie mUssen eine gemeinsame ~urzel besitzen, und diese Wurzel muss in der logischen Struktur des Denkens liegen, an dieser spezifischen Logik, die alle Handlungen der Epoche durch:r~nkt und erftillt;.' (p. 533) Even if it is agreed that the Reformation brought about a process of 'WErtauflosung',

the argument used to justify

the proposition is pretty odd. This is further confirmed later in the same passage, where it is stated: 'ertragt die Wirklichkeit auch das unmoglichste Theoriengebaude, - insolange die Theorie nicht selber ihren Bankrott erklart, so lange wird sie vom Vertrauen getragen und di~ Wirklichkeit ordnet sich ihr unter. Erst nach erfolgter Bankrotterkl~rung reibt sich der Mensch die Augen, erst dann wendet er sich der Wirklichkeit wieder zu, verlegt den Quell seines Wissens vom Gebiet des Vernunftschlusses auf das der lebendigen Erfahrung.' (p. 535-6) Nothing explains how the theory can declare itself bankrupt: to be able to do so requires another theory which revealed why the first theory was no longer apt to the reality it purported to describe, or the theory must be revealed by the weight of evidence against it to be false. It is signi.ficant that in order to make this totally Idealist point the text has recourse to a metaphor from the realm of capital exchange:

the declaration of bankruptcy is

in one sense the reassertion of the concrete basis of economics over the power of abstraction created by money. The speculator is forced to admit his project was built on sand, even if he has known this well before the final breakdown.

(Zola's L'Argent makes much of this topic.)

The kind of theory proposed in the 'Historischer Exkurs' has important consequences for the general issue of the novel as a means of historical mediation. According to the theory one can trace the real movement of history by retracing the changes in st;ructures of thought,

the

'logic' of the age, which determines the movement of empirical history. This seems to me an evidently false view o.f the role of systematic abstraction in his"torical analysis as

219. ~ell

as being a view with fatal consequences for the novel.

It was suggested earlier that the novel tends

TO

make

characters experience in a way whose main fun~tion is to point to the general crisis. This, in its extreme form, mak~s

the novel into a narrati~e means of presenting what

is not empirically observable or in generql an object of experience within the socio-historical continuum as if it were so observable. In Die Schlafwandler one is continually faced with characters whose isolation is evoked by the dominant motifs and images of the religious decline which is the historical centre of the 'Zerfall t

•

This

means that the radical subjectivity which is formally suggested by the chapter structure of Huguenau and by the stylistic differences within

~he

chapters -

compare those

concerning Godicke and those concerning Huguenau -

is

negated by the recurrence of the saDie motifs across the various textual areas. The mistakenness of this kind of integration shows up even more because other aspects of the text point in more interesting directions. Bertrand's failure to achieve a convincing synthesis, which he admits in the passages cited above, is more interesting than his analysis of why he must fail. Once his theory is given the weight it actually has in the novel it creates a system. which rules the world of the novel from within. This would be less problematic if the main consequence was a reflection upon the possibilities of narrative domination in the fictional text

which is relativised by the narrator's

admission of the powerlessness he feels despite his ability to integrate the text he writes. The .main consequence, is a

'Gleichschaltung'

though,

of the text from the inside by a

more than questionable theory, which creates a questionable novel world. This is further highlighted by the fact that in the figure of Huguenau the novel is able to evoke on certain levels the far more dominating and real 'Gleichschaltung'

which rules the historical world.

Perhaps the most famous passage in the 'Zerfall' concerns

220. itself with the

'Logik'

of modern so~ieties;

described in relation to the militarv

the business-world , the revolutionary milieu, and the 'btireerJ

the art-world,

this is

,

licher Faiseur' : 'zur Logik des btirgerlichen Faiseurs gehort es, mit absoluter Konsequenz und Radikalitat den Leitspruch des Enrichissez-vous in Geltung zu setzenj auf diese Weise, in solch absoluter Konsequenz und Radikalitat entstand die Weltleistung des Abendlandes _ uman diese~ Absolutheit, die sich selbst aufhebt, ad absurdum geftihrt zu werden: Krieg ist Krieg, l'art pour l'art, in der Politik gibt es keine Bedenken, Geschaft ist Geschaft - , dies alies besagt das namliche, dies ist alles von der namlichen Radikalitat, ist von jener auf die Sache und nur auf die Sache gerichteten grausamen Logizitat, die nicht nach rechts, nicht nach links schaut, - oh, dies alles ist der Denkstil der Zei t!' (p. 496) This is more convincing in its use of the notion of the logic of the age because it points far- more directly to the relation of the abstract system to behaviour in the socio-historical world.

~he

point made here anticipates

'the Dialektik der Aufklarung,

as can be seen in the following

from that work: 'In der Reduktion des Denkens auf mathematische Apparatur ist die Sanktion der Welt als ihres eigenen Masses beschlossen. Ws als Triumph subjektiver Rationalitat erscheint, die Unterwerfung alles Seienden unter den logischen Formalismus, wird mit der gehorsamen Unterordnung der Vernunft unters unmittelbare Vorfindliche erkauft.' (16) The ultimate consequences of such a situation will be seen in the Conclusion in Alexander Kluge's presentation

of

the bombing of Halberstadt. Die Schlafwandler shows at its best elements of insight which point in the direction of what, exempl~ry

to my mind, Kluge so effectively achieves. Huguenau's concentration upon business matters as the centre

of his existence reveals him as

a

function 01 the world

as seen in the Dialektik der Aufklarung.

~his

emerges initially

on the biographical level; he is a man 'ftir den es seit seiner Knahenzeit keine anderen Inhalte des Redens und Denkens eegeben hatte als Geld und Geschaft.' Such a reduction,

(p. 395).

in itself a common enough phenomenon

221 .

in EUropean history particularly of the last two centuries, is suddenly and effectively made into the root of the crisis. In such places the novel's incorporation of the overtly theoretical dimension is able to work because it highlights the way in which a directly empirical phenomenon, Huguenau's tot~l concentration

on business,

can only exist by virtue

of its place in a concrete system which far transcends the particular case. There is none of the impression of the violation of the empirical level of the novel that I

criticised above, when the system seemed artificially added.

Huguenau is described in the central passage as .?

'ein Mensch, der zweckm~ssig handelt. Zweckm~ssig hat er seinen Tag eingeteilt, zweckm~ssig flihrt er seine Gesch~fte, zweckm~ssig konzipiert er seine Vertr~ge und schliesst sie abo Alldem liegt eine Logik zugrunde, die durchaus ornamentfrei ist, und dass solche Logik allenthalben nach Ornamentfreiheit verlangt, scheint kein allzu gewagter Schluss zu sein, ja, es scheint sogar so gut und so richtig wie alles Notwendige gut und richtig ist. Und doch ist mit dieser Ornamentfreiheit das Nichts, ist mit ihr der Tod verbunden, verbirgt sich hinter ihr das Monstrum eines Sterbens, in dem die Zeit zerfallen ist.' (p. 463-4)

-

By its locating the catastrophe in the behaviour of a minor figure such as Huguenau,

the novel points to

a fundamental aspect of the problem of modern historical understanding. Huguenau is a plausible figure, no more 'evil'

than many other figures in the novel:

even his murder is, of the

~ar,

he is

considering the historical situation

a nasty deed, but one which fades

cance in a situation of mutual mass murder.

int~

Wha~

insignifi-

strikes

home in Huguenau is the way he relates to the sense of the wider systems at work in the history of which he is basically a very insignificant part. The concentration upon his ideology, .which reduces reality to the limited empirical manifestations of a particular economic situation in a particular economic system, necessarily raises the question of how such an ideology could arise. This leads, via the disjunction between his personal significance and

222. his historical significance resulting from his appear.ance in the novel,

to an awareness of the profound dangers inherent

in a level of historical reality which is not directly accessible, which does not

straightfor~ardly

appear in

the observable behaviour of specific persons. The con~radiction is related to that sensed by Esch in his observations of Lohberg's and Mutter Hentjen's economic activity and their personal

~onvictions.

At this stage, however,

the

contradiction has taken on its full weight. In such a situation the novel's central figure -

the third part is

named after Huguenau, not Bertrand - no longer fulfils the role of the conscious or unconscious generator of meanings or searcher for meanings in a problematic world. The emphasis is displaced onto the level of historical synthesis and,

thus,

that of the narration. Huguenau's

personal misdeeds would not suffice even in the historical context in which they occur to create the central historical significances of the text·. In the face of the empirical manifestations of the major historical problems of the kind seen in Huguenau the novel text has a degree of justification in moving beyond its previous domain in order not to Ie t

the su:a:face deceive. As such,

the demands of the

form are subordinated to the demands of historical truth. In many senses the most significant

aspec~of

the

period which emerges out of the one dealt with in the novel are less those relating to the charismatic figures than those relating to their followers or those who did nothing to oppose them. It is the banal figures,

the KZ bureaucrats

who record the day's menu in the same diary entry as the number burnt in the incinerators, orders,

the officers who followed

the citizens who went along with the state whatever

was done in its name, who made the madness possible. These figures of whom Huguenau forms an ideal type, Heinri ch ~Iann' s

'Un tertan'

as do

or the central figure of Roth's

brilliantly prsable basis for musical material means that :undarnen tal abstractions,

such as those to do

with harmony or counterpoint, or, perhaps even more so,. with dodecaphonic music,

can be used independently of

their referring to actual works. They provide the basis of new possibilities for fiction in a similar way to that in which the development of modern society is accessible to fiction via those aspects of the main determining processes which appear everi' on the most apparently insignificant levels of everyday life. Leverktihn's own compositions form a continu.al counterpoint to the events of his own life,

to the historical world

he lives through before becoming insane,

and to the histor)"

of the Nazi period. The counterpoint works in via the principle of juxtaposition outlined

~he

a~ove.

main Different

250. ~ime-scales and levels of occurrenc~ are thereby linked,

such as Zeithlom's reaction to the opening of the KZs or problems of musical form. The fact that such totally disparate material exists within the same text leads to the constant necessity of reflection upon what kind of connections exist between the material. This is, of course, the basis of the constellation of the Faust theme, Leverk·lhn's biography, and the fate of Germany. Were the juxtapositions to become fully resolvable by metaphor, of the novel would be negated (16):

the whole principle

that ~his basically

happens at the very end will concern us later. very end this is not the case:

~he

Up to the

material of the text

retains the resistance to complete conceptual determination which is most evidently the case in music, but which also applies to all forms of art. At the same tiPle it is clear that the points at which the compositions take on metaphorical, as well as analytical ,significance will be key moments in the novel's mediation of history. It should be always kept in mind during the analysis of these passages that the role of Zeitblom as narrating instance is decisive in the genesis of the metaphors. As soon as the description moves away from the presentation oi technical details, which are essentially value-free, is signalled. It is,

the danger of ideology

though, only when the technical aspect

of the music is interpreted that its full historical significance can be revealed: were the description to remain on the technical level the novel would become impossible, one would again be faced with data without a real subject, and,

thus,

wi~h

the kind of problems suggested in Chapter

Two. The tension between the material Zeitblom presents and his person is,

as was suggested in the Introduction, a

fundamental constitutive factor in the novel. The two central compositions of LeverkUhn,

the Apocalipsis

cum figuris and Dr. Fausti Weheklag give the best examples of the novel's functioning in· this area. The analysis will

251 .

be limited to the main points of relevance to the question of hOh the musical 'horks lead to significances on the level of the historical totality. The three-part chapter 34 is, as the title of the composition whose production and ",hose content forms a substantial part of the text suggests, concerned with the end of a particular world. The First World 'V'ar is over and the period concerned is, writes:

as Zeitblom

'nach dem Zusammenbruch des deutschen Autoritats-

staates mit ihrer tiefgreifenden diskursiven Lockerung.'(p.468) Zeitblorn the liberal humanist has the feeling 'dass eine Epoche sich endigte, die nicht nur das neunzehnte Jahrhundert umfasste, sondern zurlickreichte bis zum Ausgang des ~Ii t telal ters, bis zur Sprengung scholastischer Bindungen, zur Emanzipation des Individuums, der Geburt der Freiheit.' (p. 469) The historical circumstances are,

then,

the early chaotic

years of the Weimar Republic. The narrative appears far more limited: it consists largely of the discussions of the Kridwiss circle and descriptions of the genesis and content of the Apocalipsis. Despite this, a remarkable degree of historical density is the result. Zeitblom relates the discussions of the largely proto-fascist circle to the composition of the Oratorio: 'ich' ... 'der Geburt eines Werkes aus freundschaftlicher Nahe beiwohnte, das gewisser klihner und prophetischer Beziehungen zu jenen Erarterungen nicht entbehrte, sie auf haherer, schapferischer Ebene bestatigte und ve rw irk 1 i c h t e .' ( p. 470) The most evident correspondence is in the combination of historical regression and modern technique common to both the composition and the ideology of the circle (and, it should be added,

to. the construction of the novel, as

was sUE;gested earlier \\'hen referring to the parodies of Reformation German which appear in the text). The circle's discussions are reactions to the developments in German society resulting from the First World War. The members of the circle are prepared to affirm the mass society which was the result of the mobilisation of the hhole

252. sociery in the

~ar.

They accompany this Kith an ideology

of cruelty regressine to the Middle Ages:

the

idea~

of

the circle relate closely to those of Ernst JUnger in Die totale which,

~!o~)=-lmachung,

and r...:lve that dee-ree of truth

as Zeitblom remarks,

comes from a total identification

with the systematic trends of the period, an identification present above all, of course, in the Nazi Party. Leverklihn's compositional method is not to be seen as a simple symbol of such ideas: it is characterised by a combination of the most modern dissonance,

the possibility developed

by the liberation of harmony, with archaic forms. The links to the world

~hich

has emerged out of the War are

developed throughout the chapter in a manner which opens considerable perspectives. On a very general level the nature of the composition corresponds to the tendency of -

real musical works around the period of the War itself to use dissonance in an increasingly extreme manner: on the affective level this corresponds to a fear of the violence uqleashed in the period. This can be historically attested in the elements of panic which appear in the Sacre du printemps, written a year before·the War,

and

in the fir·3l march of Berg's Three Orchestral Pieces. Via its capacity for extending the semantic potential of the fictional music the novel takes such aspects much further. This is facilitated by the stress which is put on the production of the composition, an aspect which also, of course,

sustains the novelistic aspect of the text:

Leverkiihn's activity and Zeitblom's observation of it are central poles of the narrative. The stress on the genes~ relates on one level to the themes of illness and the psychological aspect associated with the pact with the devi I. !'of 0 re impo rt an t in the pres en t

con tex t i s ho". . it

is translated onto the collective level. Zeitblom describes his experience of the composition of the work: t •••

ich bei jedem Besuch in Pfeiffering - und

253. nattirlich sprnch ich dorr vor, sooft ich konnte, fas r immer tiber den Samstag und Sonntag - neue Partien des Enstehenden aufnehmen durfte: Zuwlichse und Fensa eines zuweilen unglaublichen Umfanes, von ~al zu Mal, so dass, besonders wenn man die strengen Gesetzen sich unter\\;erfende geistige und t:echnische Kompliziertheit der Faktur in Anschlag brachte, einen an blirgerlich m~ssigen und gesetzten Arbeitsfortschritt Gewohnten der bleiche Schrecken davor ankommen k 0 nn t e . I ( p. 477) What seems to Zeitblom's traditional perspective to be a source of difficulty, nrunely the subordinction of the composition to strict laws of technique, is coupled with a productive capacity which far transcends his conception of the possibilities of production. The link between the ~wo

factors is

his assumption:

ul~imately

revealed

~o

be the opposite of

the subordination to the demands of the

techniques is the pre-condition for the productive capacity This aspect is crucial:

(17).

the stress on the objectified,

technical aspect of the music is ·carried over into the more general historical sphere. The Apocalipsis is described as being open to the reproach of barbarism: 'Er hat wohl eher zu tun mit einem gewissen Einschlag von eisig anrtihrender ~Iassen-Moderni t~t in diesem Werk religioser Vision, das das Theologische fast nur als Richten und Schrecken kennt, - einem Einschlag von stream-line, urn das insultierende Wort zu wagen.'(p.500) The work is seen in terms of the destruction of the bourgeois conception of the individual: 'in einem Geist, einer zugrunde liegende Gesinnung, die sehr genau mit den absprechenden Urteilen meiner Interlokutoren in der Martiusstrasse tiber die Lage des Individuums und alles Individualismus in der Welt tibereinstimmte: einer Gesinnung, will ich sagen, die am Psychologischen nicht l~nger interessiert, auf das Objektive, auf eine Sprache drang, welche das Absolute, Bindende und Verpflichtende ausdrtick~e ... ' (p. 494) This takes one to the roots of the Weimar catastrophe: development of

sys~em-based

the

factors which problematise the

role of the individual has its correlate in the development of a mass-movement that gives ·the individual a role in an objective order whilst simultaneously destroying his

individuality. The War had highlighted such a situation , hut it had deeper roots: 'Diese Achtlosigkeit, diese Indifferenz eegen das Schicksal des Einzelwesens konnte als gezlichtet erscheinen durch die eben zurtickliegende vierj~hrige Blut-Kirmes; aber man liess sich nicht t~uschen: wie in manch anderer Hinsicht hat~e auch hier der Krieg nur vollendet, verdeutlicht und zur drastischen Erfahrung gernacht, was langst vorher sich angebahn t, einem neuen Lebensgeflihl sich zugrunde gelegt hatte.' (p. 484) The fundamental situation is,

then,

one in which the

release of productive forces functions more and more in terms of the objective factor, wi tt:- the subjective side becoming wholly subordinate to this. At this point it seems to me necessary to step slightly outside the material directly dealt with by the novel, in order to suggest the kind of

consequ~nce

that the novel

also can give rise to by virtue of its constitution of historical problems in terms of a more systematic approach. In doing this one runs the risk of being accused of materialist reductionism. The further perspective seems to me,

however, worth this risk,

as well as being inherent

in the novel's approach. The consideration of the concept of musical productive forces arising from the development of new techniques cannot, especially given the context of the novel's presentation of the issues, be separated from questions of· material productive forces and relations of production. In Weimar Germany a central issue in this respect was:

the growth, which had started well before the War,

but fully established itself by the necessities of arms production in the War, of rul integrated,

rationalisec heavy

industry under the monopoly of a few private firms. The continuing existence of such firms was dependent upon their method of production, which, because of very high fixed costs determined by the most modern techniques being used, forced them to produce at full capacity independ0nt of the real demand of the market. Alfred Sohn-Rethel

sa~

255. the consequences of this situation in

~eimar

as follohs:

'Die Produkt;ionsokonomie der Rationalisierung macht;e ihre Vorteile geltend unter der Voraussetzung einer Gefriedigenden Kapazit~t5auslastung. In der ~eltkrise, die nicht lange auf sich ~nrten liess, ver~andelte sich der Segen dieser Rationalisierung bald in den Fluch der Irrationalitat.' (18) . The large steel firms were in a position where they 'nur noch als geschlossene Gesillntheit wie ein einziges riesenhaftes Uhrwerk produzieren konnten.'

(19) The new techniques

lead to a situation where the rationality of the limited system of production takes over from any consideration of

the reasons for producing. Because the systems developed

overcome obstacles to massively increased production,

the

industry becomes forced by its fixed costs to carry' on this production. The Ring is found,

but it is cursed. An

order is required which ensures that the_ means of production can function without interference from considerations of the social effects.

(This is not intended as a total explan-

ation of Nazism, but of a major contributing factor.) In the time of crisis the contradictions in the situation become evident:

referring to_the Wall Street crash and

the resultant crisis,

Sohn-Rethel states:

'Diese Krise war etwas wesentlich anders als eine der tiblichen periodischen Storungen und Wiederher~ stellungen des marktokonomischen Gleichgewichts; sie war eine Strukturkrise, die den Bestand des ganzen Systems in Frage stellte. Die Ursachen ihres besonderen Tiefgangs erblickte ieh in einschneidenden Ver~nderungen der industriellen Produktivkrafte und Produktionsmethoden, Ver~nderungen, die es dem Monopolkapitalismus unmoglich maehten, die Produktion \,:ieder in Gang zu bringen, solange man sich auf die Grundnorm des Wirtschaftens, namlich die Reproduktion des gesellschaftlichen Lebens, kapitalistiseh gewendet: die Erzeugung reproduktiver Werte und marktgangiger GU ter gebunden hie 1 t. I (20) This is one of the reasons for the destruction of the bourgeois order by Sazism: 'die Suspendierun~ der btirgerlichen Rechte, die den Faschismus spezifisch definiert, ermoglicht erst die reibungslose Sicherung dieser Unternehmerfunktion

256. des S t aa t e s fUr da s von se iner' Ex i:3 tenzkri 5 e bedroh t e 1'10 no pol k a pit a 1 .' ( 2 1 ) The ultimate consequence is the 'totale Mobilmachung', where industry fulfils its capacity in arms production which becomes a major factor in the origins of a selfdestructive war. This may seem to lead rather a long way from the novel. Such a conception of production is,

though, by no means

absent from the novel. Zeitblom sees the course of the War in terms of productive capacity: 'Ja, ich fUrchte, es wird uns zum Verderben ausschlagen, dass eine fatal inspirierte Politik uns zugleich mit der menschenreichsten, Uberdies revolutionar gehobenen Macht und der an Erzeugungskapazitat gewaltigsten in Konflikt gebracht hat, - wie es ja aussieht, als ob diese amerikanische Produktionsmaschine nicht einmal aufhochsten Touren zu laufen brauchte, urn eine alles erdrUckende FUlle von Kriegsgerat hervorzuschleudern.' (p. 33-6) In relation to Germany he suggests, with a degree of irony, the way in which the system of technology absorbs humanproductive capacity, which in itself is capable of remarkable achievem~nts,

but ones which ultimately negate the subject.

He reads in the paper that German U-Boats have sunk twelve ships: 'Wir verdanken diesen Erfolg einem neuen Torpedo von fabelhaften Eigenschaften, das der rleutschen Technik zu konstruieren gelungen ist, und ich kann eine gewisse Genugtuung nicht unterdrUcken Uber unseren immer regen Erfindungsgeist, die durch so viele RUckschlage nicht zu beugende nationale Ttichtigkeit, welche -immer noch voll und ganz dem Regime zur VerfUgung steht, das uns in diesen Krieg gefUhrt hat und uns tatsachlich den Kontinent zu FUssen gelegt ... ' (p. 229) Alexander Kluge suggests in a transcribed discussion (hence the slight syntactical confusions) the linkage between the realm of material production and the realm of fantasy, which is central also to artistic production, when he states of the War: 'Obwohl doch ein solcher Krieg nach den Regeln der Gefangnisverwaltung ablaurt, mit ausserster Disziplin

257· und hochindustrialisiertem Hlntergrund, laufen die Phantasien, als ob das die Defreiung nach rtickwtirts ist, merken Sie, dass hier die Xationalsozialisten, als professionelle Gelegenheitsrnaterialisten, eine materlelle Kraft aufgreifen, die die btirgerliche Gesellschaft his dahin als unpraktisch, unbrauchbar fUr den Betrleb ausgegrenzt hat. Je~zt plotzlich merken sie, seit 1929, dass dieser Wirtschaftsbetrieb nicht funktioniert. Sie sind vor die Not~endigkeit gestellt, wirtschaftliche Widersprtiche aus der Okonomie in den politischen Bereich zu transformieren, und in dem politischen Bereich brauchen sie ein StUck von dieser abgedrangten Phan~asie, und jetzt wird die eingebrach t.' (22) This brings one back to the Kridwiss circle, where Sorel's R~flexions

sur la violence provides-the ideological

accompaniment to the submission to the necessities of an over-rationalised production system: 'seine Lehre, dass die Volker dieses Erdteils sich immer nur in der einen Idee vereinigen konnten: Krieg zu flihren,- dies alles berechtigte dazu, es das Euch der Epoche zu nennen' ... 'Dieses war' ... 'die krasse und erregende Prophetie des Buches, dass popuUire oder vielrnehr massengerechte My then fortan das Vehikel der politischen Bewegung sein wlirden: Fabeln, Wahnbi lder, Hirnge spinste, die mi t ~'ahrhei t, Vernunft, Wissenschaft Uberhaupt nichts zu tun haben brauchen, urn dennoch schopferisch zu sein, Leben und Geschichte zu bestimmen und sich als dynarnische Realitaten zu erweisen.' (p. 486) Again the crisis of the growth of productive forces is repeated on a different level. Zei tblom' s posi ting of the 'geistiget En tsprechung' I

between this sphere and the Apocalipsis relates to the forms in which the submission to system-based necessities manifests itself, productive capacity of all kinds being absorbed by questionable structures. Adorno suggests the general consequence in the aesthetic sphere: 'Die Aporie der Kunst heute ist nicht durch willentliche Rindung an Au tori ta t zu kurieren. '''ie im 5 tande des ungemilderten ~orninalismus ohne Gewalt zu et~as wie der Objektivitat von Form zu gelangen sei, ist offen; von veranstalteter Geschlossenheit wird sie verhindert. Die Tendenz war synchron mit dam politischen Faschismus, dessen Ideologie ebenfalls fingierte,

!.

258. ein der Xot und Unsicherheit der Subjekte unterm hoffen geschah sie im Auf trag machtigerer Subjekte.' (23)

Sp~tliberalismus enthobener Zustand ~tire zu von de~Abdankung des Subjekts. Tats~chlich

Leverktihn's compositioD uses the 'fromue Fessel praklassisch strenger Formen ... ' - (p. 49 1t); the work entails a stimmigkeit ... '

the polyphony of

'tiefere Vergangenheit echter "fehr-

(p. 494),

thereby echoing the constant

implication that polyphonic music is associated with an integrated 'Gemeinschaft',

a society where a hierarchic

order determines the place of its members in an analogous way to that in which the rules of counterpoint determine the movement of the voices. An authoritarian order is implied which abolishes the subjective freedom of the bourgeois order in favour of a regression to earlier forms. The work combines these elements with the awareness of the

-

modern art work of the processes which are at its base. The process of reification which the Nazi period will bring to a culmination is reflected in other aspects of the mU5ic: 'Char und Orchester stehen einander nicht als das Menschliche und das Dingliche gegentiber; sie sind ineinander aufgelost: der Chor ist instrumentalisiert, das Orchester vokalisiert, - in dem Grade und zu dem Ende, dass tatsachlich die Grenze zwischen Mensch und Ding verrlickt erscheint, was sicher der klinstlerischen Einheitlichkeit zustatten kommt, da es doch - wenigstens flir mein GemUt - auch etwas Beklemmendes, Gef~hrliches, Bosartiges an sich hat ... ' (p. 498) The success with which the musical aspect is sustained (the work of Penderecki, which often deals with the consequences of modern technology, has relations to the Apocalypsis) is typical of the novel. LeverkUhn's radicality corresponds to Adorno's conception of the modern art-work: 'Modern ist Kunst, die nach ihrer Erfahrungsweise, und als Ausdruck der Krise von Erfahrung, absorbiert, was die Industrialisierung unter den herrschenden Produktionverh~l tnissen gezei tigt hat.' (24) The regressive relations of production introduced by the Nazis in relation to the massive expansion of productive forces are hinted at in the consequence drawn from the return to primitive forms of ordering the material

259. in the

Apoc~lypsis:

'ei n ,,"' c r k , d a 5 n a c h s e i n ere e i s t i g - see lis c hen Gru n d _ stimmung mi t "}~ai5ersaschern" mehr zu tun hat als mit moderner Schnittigkeit der Gesinnung, und des'3en ~esen ich - mit gewagtem ~ort - eine exolodierende AltertUmlichkeit nennen mochte.' (p. SOl) Kaisersaschern is a symbol of that side of Germany which is ideologically remobilised in the Nazi period.(2S) The question of the specifically German aspect of the history in the novel is taken up in more detail in the chapter concerning Dr. Fausti

Wehekla~.

This chapter

extends many of the themes already dealt with and deserves particularly close attention as it is in many ways a summary of much that is central to the novel.

(26) The

remainder of the present analysis will attempt by concentrat-

•

ing upon the associations of the chapter with the rest of the novel at least to touch on the -remaining issues concerning the novel's mediation of mass history. Between the chapter on the Apocalipsis and the Weheklag chapter the novel moves most of the time on a more limited biographical level. Whilst not reducing the figures involved to being merely functions oE dominant trends (Mann's use of material from his own social experience of the time helps here,

of course),

the apparently private history

is a constant reminder of the

threat under which the

bourgeoisie lived in Weimar. The vi~in concerto which Leverklihn writes for Schwerdtfeger and the 'interview' with Fitelberg seem to point in a more hopeful direction, where compromise allays the radicality of artistic and social developments. This, of course, will prove to be an illusion. Before the chapter which reveals the extent of the illusion in both political and aesthetic terms, LeverkUhn's chamber ,,,orks are described in

manner which

sustains the purely musical side of the text. They embody tendencies ceni.ral to the pre-twelve-tone work of the \

Zweitef Wiener Schule (27). This contributes to the I

.

historical credibility of the Faustus cantata, which has to do \·.-i th more than musical questions on the formal

260. level, by reinforcing its musical validity. The work comes in a particular musico-historical context,

the

twelve-tone piece following the essentially atonal pieces. Th e co III pIe x i t Y

0

f

the c 11et pte r no h"

a more linear approach necessary:

{; 0

bel 00 ked at mak e 5

the possibilities of

reference ruld a~sociation are so extensive in the chapter that an analytical separation of textual levels is too difficult to carry out. There is also a danger of making the text more metaphorical than it is if one tries to systematise the levels too strictly. The chapter is a paradigm of the whole novel's fiction. Importantly,

const~tution

of history in

the chapter begins with Zeitblom's

remarks about his writing of the text and the exhaustion occasioned by the task ahead:

the degree to which the

material in the text is subjectively and ideologically affected by Zeitblom is a constant issue in the chapter. The historical data and opinion presented add up to a formulation of what is known in the history of ideas as 'The German Question ' .. As my statement indicates, I am somewhat sceptical about the usefulness of this notion. However, certain sides of Zeitblom's posing of the question do lead in important directions,

even when the general

direction is determined by his ideology and the immediate situation. His initial observations of the 'nach ihrem logischen Ablauf vorgesehenen' ... 'ein unglaubiges Grauen erregenden Tagesereignisse.'

(p. 636) take in characteristic

phenomena of the German disintegration,

in particular

those relating to the regressive nature of the order which had obtained. Then comes a real historical

eX~lple:

'Unterdessen lasst ein transatlantischer General die Bevolkerung von Weimar vor den Krematarien des dortigen Konzentrationslagers vorbeidefilieren und erkUirt sie - solI man sagen: mi t Unrecht? -, erklart diese BUrger, die in scheinbaren Ehren ihren Geschliften nachgingen und nichts zu wissen versuchten, obgleich del' Wind ihnen den Stank verbrannten ~lenschenfleisches von darther in die Nasen blies,- erklart sie fUr mitschuldig an den nun blost'gelegten Greueln ... I (p. 637)

261 .

.-\ similar constellatioll of

~ie

5chuldloserl,

the basic question. such as ~hat

:~azism

\\'a~

ouserved in the central fie-ure

the very title of which plays upon In the face of

mass phenomena.

"the ethical question becomes ever more complex.

constitutes a notion of g~ilt in a situation where

the main~ainance of one's daily role in

2

without one's performing criminal actions,

system can,

even

lead to the

spread of a political movement such as Nazism? The difficulty presenl: in the successful parts of the novel of unambiguously relating the life of Leverklihn to the overall course of his tory

wh

i c h his 1 i f e i n s 0 n: e way ref 1 e c "t s i s an

aesthetic response to this kind of question. Some of the potential systematic implications present in the text have been outlined which point to an understanding of Kazism as an answer to a general crisis of production in bourgebis society. This,

though,

does not comprehend the

whole historical issue of Nazism. Levels of the social process which might seem unconnected to the major problems can become involved in the question of cause and responsibility. The novel form can provide certain possible means of sustaining the complexi ty of"questioning required in order not to

exc~ude

areas that may be of vital importance bUl:

are not directly perceivable as such.

The difficulty

of giving full methodological grounding to such questions indicates an area where the novel can contribute. The partial freedom inherent in the aesthetic text becomes a way of critically reacting to the unfreedom of the text's historical content. Whether the novel is the most appropriate means of achieving this can,

as it will be seen, be doubted.

This will be apparent in the conclusion of Doktor Faustus: the issue does arise,

though,

out of problems in the

present chapter. Too technique in

the nove 1 which is problema tic in thi s

respect is also that which when it works makes the novel so fascinating,

namely the way in which juxtaposed material

262. can suggest metaphorical links on a far greater scale than ~ould

at first appear. Certain aspects of this lead to

integrative echoes of the kind I

have been concerned to

criticise in the rest of the thesis. After the example of the opening of the KZs the following image appears: 'Der dickwandige Folterkeller, zu dem eine nichtswiirdige von Anbeginn dem Nichts verschworene Herrschaft Deutschland gemacht hatte, ist aufgebrochen ... ' (p. 637-8) This contains,

as is often the case,

a verbal echo from

elsewhere in the novel. The image has already appeared in the description of hell by the devil during the interview with Leverklihn, where he states that the most appalling things are done,

'und Z\var ohne vom Korte zur Rechenschaft

gezogen zu werden, dicken Mauern.'

im schalldichten Keller' ... 'zwischen

(p. 327). One aspect is clear: a connection

is made between what is done by the Nazis ruld an image of hell. Further,

links are created between the Faustian

pact and the fate of Germany,

ending in the hell of the

Third Reich. The constellation is extended by the whole network of connections to the interview. According to the devil the ending in hell is the consequence of signing the contract by knowingly contracting syphilis in sleeping with the prostitute. On a simple psycho-physical level Leverklihn's creativity is increased by the effects of the illness - an attestable phenomenon, which was, for example, the case with Schubert and,

to some extent, with Nietzsche.

The self-destructive consequences of the compositional 'Durchbruch'

(a term that will be returned to) are linked

to the self-destructive consequences of German political developments. Such metaphorical associations have been severely criticised as tending towards an irrationalist

'demonisation' of

problems which belong on the politico-social level (28). The mixture of the Faust legend, Niet7sche's biography, the development of modern art,

and the 'German Problem'

identifies problems \o"hich si.mply do not belong together.

'rhe criticism has most justification when referred to passages of the following kind which recur in this parT of the chapter: 'Denn ist es blosse Hypochondrie, sich zu sag2n, dass alles Deutschtum, auch der deutsche Geist, der deutsche Gedanke'T das deutsche Wort von dieser eritehrenden Bloss,tellung mitbetroffen und in tiefste~ Fragwtirdigkeit gestlirzt worden ist?' (p. 6)8) ) Such passages,

however, have a complex aspect:

the subjective

constitution of the text prevents a simple interpretation. On the one hand the liberal German Zeitblom exaggerates the question in his despair at what has happened, falling prey to reductionism; on

th~

thereby

other hand, because

of the stress on Zeitblom's subjectivity, this tendency to schematise the German problem is relativised and in some ways becomes part of the problem itself. On this level the novel is able by the use of existent teehnical possibilities to create an irony with deep historical foundations. As I hope has already been shown, much of the material in the novel takes one far beyond a merely metaphorical integration of German history,

the Faust story,

modern bourgeois culture.

T~

and the crisis of

questions raised by the

material and the nature of its presentation go beyond merely German considerations,

though the extremity with

which the problems emerge in Germany is not forgotten. The real difficulty comes via the way in which collective entities are evoked in the text. Zeitblom wishes to suggest a kind of collective guilt: in order to do so he is forced into an irrational position. Whereas the collective, systematic implications shown in the crisis of bourgeois production re la tingto the Apoca"lipsis had a valid basis for the syntheses entailed,

the systematisation inherent in the

following passage, which concludes the historical introduction to the Cantata,

is unacceptable,

even seen as

a part of Zeitblom's subjective view: 'Kar diese Herrschaft nicht nach worten und Taten nur die verzerrte, verpobelte, verscheusslichte

I

264. Wahrwerdung einer Gcsinnung und Weltbeurteilun~, der man charakterliche Echtheit zuerkennen muss, und die der chris-rlich-humane !-iensch nicht ohne ;;r.heu in den Ztigen unserer Grossen, der aT1 Figur ge\\'altig:sten Verkorperungen des Deutschtums findet? Ich frage _ und frage ich zuviel. Ach, es ist wohl mehr als eine Frage, dass dieses geschlagene Yolk jetzt eben darum irren Slicks vcr dem ~ichts steht, weil sein letzter und ausserster Versuch, die selbstLigene politische Form zu linden, in so gr~sslichem Misslingen un t erg e h t .' ( p. 639 ) Such direct attempts to constitute a collective level result in the text resorting to personalisation and suspect metaphor. The 'Yolk' makes a unified attempt to find 'its'

appropriate political form in the paragraph which

precedes the major SOlution7the

~

main musical problem

posed in the novel. The integrative temptation that results from the concentration of the novel on individuals whilst attempting also to move on the collective level coincides with a conception of national essence which merely

mys~ifies

the problems. The reduction of the complex political issues involved - not least of the opposition to the Nazis and the reasons for its failure large-~cale

is characteristic of the

bourgeois German novel: much the same could be

observed in Broch's treatment of the German Revolution. The problem is later further emphasised by the novel's apocalyptic conclusion. Before this conclusion comes the final composition of Leverktihn. It has already been suggested that the novel is often more successful in mediating history in its use of music and the textual juxtapositions and potential metaphors which relate to the music. The section of the narrative dealing with the final composition opens with a typical parallel: 'die letzten Jahre des geistigen Lebens meines HeIden' ... 'sie gehorten ja schon dem Heraufsteigen und Um~ich­ greifen dessen an, was sich dann des Landes bem~chtigte und nun in Blut und Flammen untergeht.' (p. 639) This is followed by a description of

\ I

'Jahre einer unFeheuercIl und hbcherregten, :l1an ist versucht. zu sagen: rnonstr~sen, den teilnehmenden Anwohner selbst in einer Art von Taumel dahinreissenden sch~pferischen Aktivitat, und unmoglich konn te man sich des Eindruckes er\o,"ehren , als bedeute sie ~old und Ausgleich ftir den Zntzug an Lebensgltick lnd Liebeserlaubnis, dem er unterworfen ","ar.' (p. 639-40) The immediate reference is to the failure to win Narie Godeau and the death of Sepomuk. However,

echoes of the

Faustian pact and of Alberich and the Ring are not to be overheard. The price of domination and productivity is a renunciation of the claims of the human subject. This corresponds to what has already been said in relation to the Apocalipsis. The basic structure present is one which allows a considerable degree of translation onto personal, social, and historical levels, without the result necessarily heing falsely integrative or

irrational~

The structure

reflects dangers and fears resulting from the process of reification that accompanies the establishment of new means of control over the social and natural worlds. The Faustian pact points to the dangers in the growth of modern science;

the Ring stands for the price which

total political authority demands, namely the-renunciation of the one thing that would be able to justify it. These two aspects of German cultural history (which are equally valid in many other contexts whilst being of largely German provenance) are then historically reflected in Fascism, with its total control of the social world in the service of productive forces which lead to self-destruction. The clich~ aspect of Nazism makes such connections somehow appropriate: ,,:hat Narx already observed in the events of 1848 reached a culmination at this point. This appropriate-

ness is underlined by the tendency of modern history to surpass the banality that such structures necessarily entail. How,

then,

does the composition relate to the

historical issues inherent in this scheme?

266. The work makes interpretation difficult by having a dual status: it is represented as a musical success at the same time as being closely involved with the catastrophes that follow for Leverktihn and,

later, for Germany.In

order to clarify this the work's representation can be divided into three levels:

the technical level, with its

associations of value-free formal rationality; of musical meaning and content;

the level

and the level of meaning

which translates into other areas, particularly Leverktihn's biography and German history. It is important to consider the first two levels in some detail as the technique I ."

have suggested makes much of the novel successful depends upon giving full weight to the material and not merely using it in the service of larger aims.

(29) The relevant

technical details are: an extensive use of echo effects in the manner of Monteverdi;

the whole work is written so

that there is nothing which is not a immer Gleichen',

'Variation eines

the identical basis being a twelve-tone

row which appears in the music with the words 'Denn ich sterbe als ein boser und guter Christ'

(p. 646);

movement lasts over one and a quarter hours,

one

another is

written in correct madrigal form;

it uses a wide range

of techniques from Western music;

the motif h e a

€

es

(b e a e e-flat) recurs when the text refers to blood pacts; it has no solo voices and has orchestral intermezzi, concluding with a purely instrumental movement where the instrumental groups fade out,

leaving at the end a high

g on the cello. This is not a great deal and would appear to confirm the intepretation of the text which sees the music as totally subordinate to the metaphorical aims of the novel. (30) The level of musical meaning and content must,

then,

carry

a substantial part of the weight necessary to make the music convincing. The basic technical details, particularly the work's twelve-tone structure,

suffice at least to prevent

?6'"I '

-

the music being characterised by merely affective respon5es: the systematic aspect of this method 01 composition makes its use apt in the general historical context. The musical conterlt is constituted further by a whole web of historical associations to existent music,

some technical , some

created by the specific nature of Zeitblom's response, which is thereby more objectified. The motif h e a e es is the basis of the 'alte Weise' from the beginning of the third act of Tristan und Isolde, perhaps the most radical music in the opera. The high g on the cello which concludes the work is taken from the end of the first

'Kachtmusik'

of Mahler's Seventh Symphony ()1).

This link to Mahler can be taken further if one considers his Eighth and

~inth

premiere Mann was,

Symphonies. The Eighth, at whose

incidentally, present,

sets the concluding

scene .of Goethe's Faust. The 'Erlosung' which takes place in that work,

composed shortly before the First World war

was to fulfil the darker side of Mahler's vision, is now negated in Leverktihn's work by the return to the older Faust tradition,

where no 'Erlosung'

takes place ()2).

This has a further musical c"'-orrelate in Hahler's Ninth, whose

conc~~sion

bears a similar relation to the positive

conclusion of the Eighth as Leverklihn's work does to Beethoven's Ninth. The concluding Adagio of Dr. Fausti Weheklag,

it

allowing for the fact that is twelve-tone where

Mahler's music is not,

t1

is reminiscent in the gradual fading

away of the instrumental groups at the end and in its refusal to reach a positive conclusion,

of the Adagio of the

Ninth ())). The Cantata also extends a tendency which is central to Mahler's compositional method, as can be seen in the following description: 'Aufgeboten aber, im Sinne des R~sum~s geradezu, die erdenklichsten ausdruckstragenden ~lomente tiberhaupt: nicht als mechanische ~achahmung und als ein ZUi'uckgehen, versteht sich, sondern es ist \>."ie eirl allerdings bewusstes Verftigen tiber s~mtliche ~. erden

\

268. Ausdruckscharaktere, die sic~ "in der Geschichte der Husik je und je niedergeschlar,-en ... ' (p. 6 4 7) The more radical aspect of the music takes it in the direction of Berg (34), v.:ho exten"ded Hahlerian techniques wi~h

the means of the Zweitel Wiener Schule. The possible

sound of the music can be sought in many compositions of that School:

the choir in Schonberg's A Survivor from

Warsaw or aspects of Moses und Aron seem to me possibilities, allowing for evident differences of context. Such parallels can be extended further (35). The main point is,

though,

that the description has real substance. It adopts, in the manner of the work it is describing,elements of historically existent musical language and synthesises possible significances out of them. The process of universalisation of social fOI?ms that has been shown as both a problem and a source of new aesthetic possibilities for the novel is again the basis upon which this is possible. The description leaves enough imaginative room at the same time as relating 'itself to existent, historically generated structures. Twelve-tone music with Monteverdian effects, and orchestral movements with, and Bergian accents,

large choral

among many others,

~!ahlerian

seems not only feasible but encompasses

a whole area of musical questions of a particular period .. (J6) If,

then,

this level can be accepted, what of the third

level, where the structure and content of the piece moves onto other levels, particularly to do with the mass historical events of the age? The question depends upon the consequences of the link of Germany's attempt to find a politische Form'

'selbsteigene

to the formal solution in the

Can~ata

to the problem of musical organisation. On a very simple level the c6nnection is a common totalitarian organisation: the music allows

'keine freie Note mehr'

in a vague sense is evidently true of the does not get to the heart of the ma~ter:

(p. 645), which ~azis.

This

a straightfor~ard

metaphorical correspondence does not obtain most of the time. The work of art is not just a symbol of large-scale historical process. It is precisely the indeterminacy

269. of' the resulrf1ol: :;,ontil. t ':8 that can pro\-oke insight and L

que3 tioning. Onl}- ,,,hen it becomes unambiguous does the aesthetic dimension suffer.

~iost

illiportant is to see

how the description of the composition uses material from the rest of the novel,

thereby echoing musical

methods of construction as well as setting up historical issues. The material echoed is very extensive. The central fact about the composition is seen as its being the '"Durchbruch'" ... 'die Wiedergewinnung, ich mBchte nicht sagen und sage es urn der Genauigkeit willen doch: die Rekonstruk~ion des Ausdrucks ... ' (p. 643) This takes one back to the part of t":le novel dealing with the ou tbreak of the Firs t 'forld War 1 where the term 'Durchbruch' political,

recurs in two main contexts, the one largely

the other aesthetic. The first is the following,

on the state of Germany before the War and the common reaction in bourgeois circles to the War: 'Die Kultur war frei gewesen, sie hatte auf ansehnli~cher Hohe ges tanden, und ,,"'ar sie von langer Hand an ihre vBllige 8ezugslosigkeit zur Staatsmacht gewehnt, so mochten ihre jugendlichen Trager gerade in einem grossen Volkskrieg, wie er nun ausbrach, das MitIel sehen zum Durchbruch in eine Lebensform, in der Staat und Kultur eins sein WUrden.' (p. 400)

A further conception of 'Durchbruch' on the political level is also observed:

'Fallig erschien ein neuer Durchbruch:

derjenige zur dominierenden Weltmacht ... '

(p. 401). The

second conception begins as something similar but then, characteristically, moves onto the

aestheti~

level.

Leverktihn and Zei tblom discuss the \.iar, which Zei tblom, in his enthusiasm,

regards as a German

'''Durchbruch zur.Welt - aus einer Einsamkeit, deren wir uns leidend bewusst sind, und die durch keine robuste Verflechtung ins Welt-Wirtschaftliche seit der Reichsgrlindung hat gesprengt werden kennen."' (p.40S-9) Leverktihn poses the problem on a level which includes his own activity as well as a more general reflection upon the relationshjp

o~

aesthetics to society:

, "Es gibt im Grunde nur ein Prob lem in der We I t

I

270. und es hat diesen Xamen: ~ie brich~ man durch? Wie kommt mnn ins Freie?"' (p. 410) This is related to the Romantic tradition via Kleist~ Marionettentheater essay (37). What does the conception of 'lJurchbruch' mean? It is both dangerously vague and, in certain contexts, appropriate because of its indeterminacy. The common factor in the uses seen here is the notion of form or organisation which has become a hinderance and has to be broken through in order to establish new forms and organisations. Around the time of the First World War such conceptions were dominantin many spheres of thought and activity,

aspects

of this being clear in the analysis of Der Zauberberg. The catastrophic consequences on the political level of such thinking in Germany have, writi~g

by the time of Zeitblom's

of the narrative, become more ·than evident:

the

unification of the state and culture is the 'Gleichschaltung' of the Nazis. Instead of freedom being the result of the break out from received forms,

the result is the opposite.

In the aesthetic field this was reflected much earlier, as the following observation of Adorno makes clear: 'Das Heer des nie Geahnten, auf das die revolutionaren Kunstbewegungen urn 1910 sich hinauswagten, hat nicht das verhiessene abenteuerliche GlUck beschieden •. Statt dessen hat der damals ausgeloste Prozess die Kategorien angefressen, in deren Namen er begonnen wurde. }.fehr stets wurde in den Strudel des neu Tabuierten hineingerissen; allerorten freuten die KUnstler weniger sich des neu gewonnenen Reiches der Freiheit, als dass sie sogleich wieder nach vorgeblicher, kaum je tragf~higer Ordnung trachteten. Denn die absolute Freiheit in der Kunst, stets noch einem Partikularen, gerat in Widerspruch zum perennierenden Stande von Unfreiheit im Ganzen.' (3 8 ) Twelve-tone music emerged before the

poss~bilities

of free

atonality had had more than a few years to develop. The radical order established by twelve-tone music can be seen in the context of LeverkUhn's compositions as absorbing into the aesthetic form the total reified organisation which is the political response to the crisis of bourgeois

271 .

order. As such the composition is a recognition historical situation:

or

the

the aesthetic aspect is only saved

by the fact the artistic expression of the situation, whose form repeats the problem,

is in some way a step

beyond the situation itself: 'dies dunkle Tongedicht lasst bis zuletzt keine Vertrestung, Versehnung, Verklarung zu. Aber wie, wenn der klinstlerischen Parodie, dass aus der totalen Konstruktion sich der Ausdruck - der Ausdruck als Klage - gebiert, das religiose Paradoxon entsprache, dasS aus tiefster Heillosigkeit, wenn auch als leises:e Frage nur, die Hoffnung keimte?' (p. 65 1 ) The only justification of the art work in such a situation is on the level of 'Erkenntnis' which in some way transcends the pressure of the historical situation that it reflects. The same reflection applies also to the novel itself: my ".

remarks in the c~eter on Der Zauberberg to the effect tha t Mann rare ly transcends the dominan t- ideo logical possibilities of his

h~orical

position are confirmed

again here. The novel is an often brilliant resum~,

whose

only hope is that the deeper understanding of the problems it deals with can ultimately lead to their being overcome. Where the novel fails to

liv~

up to this hope is in the

aesthetically most weighted point,

the conclusion. The

conclusion of the novel takes up the question posed in relation to the composition and connects it with a reflection on the same theme that. had occurred in the interview with the devil. The problems of level between individual and collective become typically extreme and the novel form is put into question. The conclusion of the novel is the burial of Leverklihn in August 1940: 'Deutschland, die Wangen hektisch geretet, taumelte dazumal auf der Hehe wtister Triumphe, im Begriffe, die Welt zu ge~innen kraft des einen Vertrages, den es zu halten gesonnen war, und den es mit seinem Blut gezeichnet hatte. Heute stlirzt es' ... 'hi~ab von Verzweiflung zu Verzweiflung. Wann wird es des 5chlundes Grund erreichen? Wann wird aus letzter

272. Hoffnungslosigkei t, ein h'under, d~s tiber den Glauben geht, das Licht der Hoffnung tagen? Ein einsarner Mru1n faltet seine Hande und spricht: Gott sei eUrer arrnen Seele gna_dig, mein Freund, _mein Vaterland.' (p.676) Counterpoint gives ~ay here to harmony. Only Zeithlom's s ta tus as narra "tor comes between thi s conc lusion and a wholly suspect synthesis. Whilst it has already been suggested to what extent historical

clich~s

of the kind

shown above, which parallel Faust and Germany, for example, tend to be surpassed by the banality of real modern historical occurrences,

the wholly integrative approach here repeats

the ideology of identity seen at th; end of Der Zauberberg. A basic principle of the successful parts of the _novel is contradicted. The novel's concluding gesture brings together its own end,

the implied sense of the final

composition of the novel's central figure,

and the mass

historical events that accompany both. The striving for consonance contradicts the novel's success elsewhere in both sustaining material for its own sake as well as in terms of significance on the level of the historical totality. The Apocalipsis chapter depended upon the counterpoint of music and history, where bo"th related without being in a position of mere functionality for the other. This dialectic of musical material and historical events made it possible for systematic aspects of the history which were otherwise in contradiction to the nature of the novel form to be an effective part of the novel. The conclusion, when considered together with the final composition and that part of the interview with the devil where Leverktihn talks of 'Eine Stindhaftigkeit, so heillos, dass sie ihren Hann von Grund aus am Heile verzweifeln Iasst' being 'der wahrhaft theologische Weg zum Heil.'

(p. 329),

introduces

a dialectic (whose associations are mainly Kierkegaardian) that makes into

straig~orward

metaphors aspects of the

text which up to this point had led their own existence as well as that of their potential historical implications.

(39)

273. Leverklihn'

5

indiv i.c!.uali ty, \yhich is sustained despi te his

lire being a r.lOntage of elements of Xietzsche' s, Berer's to. , ':;chont"Jerc's and others' p ct t he tic at t e 111 p t ~ith

careers,

is here reduced to the

to reach the grande ~ t

hi s "Co ric 2_1 sea 1 e

the biography of an individual. The danger which

Marx pointed to in the Louis l\"apoleon texts arid v;hich reached its climax in history with the figure of Hitler has a literary echo in the last paragraph of Doktor Faustus. At this point the_ novel's dual concentration on individuals and the 'allgemeinen Verlauf menschlicher Dinge' becomes an ideology by the two sides becoming identical in the interests of the text's ability to create a totality. The novel succeeds most of the time because neither Leverklihn, nor Zeitblom, nor any of the fictional compositions give a complete image of the historical problems that cannot be either put in question or deepened the novel -

hi

other aspects of

think of how often LeverkUhn refuses to

identify with Germany.(40) The synthetic conclusion puts a stop to this. To conclude the chapter some consequences for the question of the large-scale novel whi~h deals with mass history can be tentatively indicated. The successful aspects of Doktor Faustus can be schematically listed

as:

the

concrete social aspect provided by the biographical form; the use of material which leads to a systematic approach to certain areas of the history dealt with -

the fact that

this is music serves to emphasise the process of universalisation that has been proposed as the central issue in the question of the novel and modern historical developments the use of this material in a manner which generally does not reduce its specific qualities;

the montage technique

resulting from "Che temporal construction of the narrative. The implications of this final aspect have already been indicated:

the aesthetic text dealing with a phenomenon

such as :-;azism is faced with a reified historical reality.

-j

274. A purely nnalvtical anoroach which StraiRhtforwardlv .t..

~

L.

_

~

reprorluces reasons and causes of such a historical situation necessarily rails to compete with more discursive forms: their open-endedness contrasts with the

closu~e

of the

aesthetic text. The montage technique as it appears in Doktor Faustus can create historical perspectives which might be ignored in a more rigorous analysis:

the continual

linguistic and historical references to potentially related areas,

such as the parodic use of Reformation German,

links to Nietzsche's and others' hiographies, arguments,

the

the musical

set up a questioning procedure which refuses

to accept simple historical causes and which seeks ever more deeply for the roots of the irrational course of modern Germany. Combined with the systematic aspect that I

have tried to show by the conception of the crisis

of bourgeois production in Weimar,

the results are often

impressive. The problem comes when the montage is harmonised in the

m~lner

suggested in the final paragraph. This is

in some ways inherent in the desire of the novel to create a totality despite the biographical material being unsuitable: Leverktihn is not a Huguenau figure who embodies a central principle as was the case in Die Schlafwandler. The integrative temptation is reinforced by the manipulability of the fictional biography. The historical developments reach an apocalyptic conclusion and the novel's superficial unity can be produced by following suit: once again the ro~

of the individual,

as was observed with Castorp,

becomes suspect because the weight of significance is too great. A possible logical deduction from these ohservatioIls is that the fictional historical text should sustain the montage levels,

the systematic approaches,

as well as the

concentration on the specific empirical nature of the material being dealt with in the historical context, but be wary of the concentration upon a limited number of individuals as a means of synthesising-large-scale historic2.!

275. implicariollS. This hy no means excludes a biographical element but does not hold to the illusion that the concentration upon particular ficLional figures will ultimately prove to be adequate. In the Conclusion I want to take an example of ho\\' such an approach has been attempted. As suggested in the Introduction,

the

works in question abandon the novel form. Notes (1) On this issue see: Ernst Fischer,

'Doktor Faustus und

die deutsche Katastrophe. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit ,. Thomas

~ann.'

in Kunst und Menschheit Essays Wien 1949 p. 37-

97. H. Vaget, 'Kaisersaschern als geistige Lebensform.' in ed. Wolfgang Paulsen, Der deutsche Roman und seine historischen und politischenBedeutungen Bern 1977 p. 200-35. D. Sternberger,

-

'Deutschland in Doktor Faustus und Doktor Faustus in Deutschland.'

in Merkur 29 1975 p. 1123-40. Horst Meixner,

'Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus. Zum Selbstverstandnis des deutschen Spathlirgertums.' Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft 16 1972 p. 610-22 (2) Cf.

the not particularly~enlightening article by

W.H.Honsa,

'Parodv .. and narrator in Thomas Mann's Doctor

Faustus and The Holy Sinner.' in Orbis Litterarum 29

1974 p. 61-76 which does at least atress the narrating status of Zeitblom.

(J) Adorno, Asthetische Theorie Ope cit. p. 146 (4) See Bodo Heimann's excellent 'Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus und die Musikphilosophie Adornos.' Karol Sauerland,

DVJS 38 1964 p. 248-60,

'''Er wusste noch mehr ••. " Zum Konzeptions-

bruch von Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus unter dem Einfluss Adornos.'

Orhis Litterarum 34 1979 p. 130-45. The latter

attempts to suggest that Adorno's theory clashes with the image of Germany Mann intended. My view is in some ways a counter to this,

though,

as my conclusions will suggest,

it has a certain validity. Patrick Carnegy's Faust as ~rusician Xew York 1973 pays little attention to Adorno's theory and to my mind suffers accordingly.

276. (5)

cr.

Sternberger Ope

CiT. p.

1138

(6) The necessity of going- oUTsid2 the text might seem to be a weakness of the novel. The opposite seems to me the case. The need tolook.at Adorno's work deepens the text, as· does hearing Opus

111 or the fugues in the Missa Soler.mis.

It is precisely the continual establishment of such external linkages that makes the novel so fascinating. One could add here that the novel reawakened the present writer's interest in classical music, as well as giving the initial impulse for an interest in new music.

(7) Adorno, Einleitung in die Husiksoziologie Ffm 1975 p. 239 (8) See L. Voss, Die Entstehung von Thomas Manns Roman 'Doktor Faustus' Ttibingen

1975

(9) Adorno, Philosophie der neuen ~rusik Ffm 1958 p. 36 (10) Einleitung in die Musiksoziologieop. cit. p. 199 ( 11) 9 f. the fo llow ing: ' ... man htitet sich vor dem Chaos und vor der Sterilitat zu der es ftihren konnte; man verlangt immer starker nach einer Regel. Dieses Bedtirfnis ist besonders augenfallig bei den beiden ktihnsten Geistern: Schonberg und Kandinsky; es tritt aber auch bei Strawinsky deutlich hervor. Die Regel 5011 nicht vor dem Abenteuer schtitzen, sondern den Geist d9r Erfindung starken, ihm die Arbeit erleichtern, seiner ZUkU . . lftsforschung zu Hilfe kommen. Der Gehorsam gegentibe~ ei~esetz wtirde von Nutzen sein bei d~r Ausbildungeines Stils - eines allgemeinverbindlichen Stiis sogar; Traume von Ordnung und Anordnung im im Anschluss an eine rapide,mitunter chaotische Revo Iu tion. ' Pierre Bou lez, schwunds).' Munich

'Sti I oder Idee?

(Zum Lobe des Gedachtnis-

in Anhaltspunkte. Essays Trans Joseph Hausler

1979 p. 270

(12) Philosophie der neuen Musik Ope cit p. 119

(13) See H. Gu tmann,

I

Das Musikkapi tel in Thomas Nann's

Der Zauberberg.' German Quarterly

47 1976 p. 415-31

(14) Philosophie der neuen Musik Ope cit. p. 7

(15) GUnter Nayer, Weltbild -

~otenbild.

mus ike 1 is chen ~;a t erial s Leipzig 1978 p.

Zur Dialektik des

134

(16) Criticisms like that of Meixner cited above resolve the

-"'~7 I •

text intc metaphor at far too early k stage. The bulk and variety of the historical material in the novel should prevent

this.

(17) Cf. the passage from Boulez cited in note (11) as well as the essays themselves in the collection.

(18) Alfred Sohn-Rethel, 0konomie und Klassenstruktur des deutschen Faschismus Ffm 1973 p. 48. Sohn-Rethel's theory is much contested and one cannot write a defence of it here. It does,

though, pose questions of considerable

interest, basing itself on inside

kno~ledge

of the

development of the German economy in Weimar. Even if the general thesis of the work is contested,

the material

it presents is valuable. ( 1 9)

- do - p. 47

(20) - do - p. 186 (21 ) - do - p. 188 (22) Alexander Kluge, Gelegenheitsarbeit einer Sklavin. Zur realistischen Methode op. cit. p. 246 (23) Asthetische Theorie Ope cit. p. 261 (24) - do - p. 261 (25) Cf. H. Vaget, Ope

cit.,~who,

though, massively over-

estimates the importance of Kaisers·.schern in the novel, going so far, in an outburst of philological fervour,

as

to see the transferral of the burial of Otto III there (who was in fact buried in Aachen) as the historical 'key' to the novel!

(26) For a different view (almost the opposite) to mine, see: Wolf-Dietrich Forster,

'Leverktihn,

Schonberg und Thomas

Nann. Husikalische Strukturen und Kunstreflexion in Doktor Faustus.

f

DVJS 49 1975 p. 694-720

(27) This, of course, despite the fact that the description of one of the works is based on Schonberg's string trio Ope

45, which is a twelve-tone work from a later period.

(28) Cf. Srnst Fischer and Horst Meixner Ope cit. above. (29) As Forster claims happens. in the article cited above. (3 0 ) This view might draw ammunition from the possible

273. contradic~ion

is strictly

contained in the description. IC the work

~welve-tone

the motiC h e a e es cannot be a basic motif. It is described thus, that it 'sehr oft N e 1 {) d i k

un d II arm 0 l! i k be her r s c h t ' (p. 648 1\

,

wh'lC h is not

totally clear. The repeated e contradicts the principle that no note can recur until the row is repeatedj as such it could not belong to the same voice, which would prevent it being a basic motif. The phrase could naturally appear in the piece, but it would be a variation, not a motiC. Here the desire to extend the associations with the biography of Nietzsche and Leverklihn seems perhaps to conCuse the ,~

musical structure. That Adorno dld not remark upon this does,

though,

suggest that he saw the description as

feasible. (31) Adorno, Mahler Ffm 1960 p. 69 -

(32) See Erich Heller's essay on the Faust theme in Die Reise der Kunst ins Innere Ffm 1966 p. 13-54. A verbal echo of the conclusion of Goethe's Faust underlines this: 'Formenstrenge, die erreicht werden musste, damit dieses Umschlagen kalkulatorischer Kalte in den expressiven Seelenlaut' ... 'Ereignis werden konne ... '(p.643) (33) See Hanspeter Brode,

'Musik und Zeitgeschichte im

Roman: Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus.' Schiller Jahrbuch 17 1973 p. 455-72. The article makes some of the parallels suggested here,

as well as being invaluable in showing

the complexity of the historical material in the novel. Particularly interesting is the reference to Schonberg's Matller-Rc~e

held in Prague in 1913, where Schonberg states

of ?>tahler: 'Seine N eun te i,s t hochs t merkwlirdig.' In ihr sprich t der Autor kaum mehr als Subjekt. Fast sieht es aus, als ob as fUr dieses Werk noch einen verborgenen Autor gebe, der Mahler bloss als Sprachrohr benu~zt ha t . ' ( p. 4 6 1 ) (34) Srode Ope

cit. states:

'Die in den Roman hineinkonstruierte Berg-Biographie scheint jedoch keine besonderen Tiefendirnensionen zu besitzenjdieses Ma~erial dient wohl vor allern dazu den fiktiven Komponisten solider in der musikalischen

~irklichkeit des zwanzigstcn Jahrhunderts

zu verankern.' (p.~59)

(35) Hanns Sis ler' s Deu t scne Symph9_n ie, comple ted after the novel,

provides an interesting

parallel from a very

different stand-point. The elegaic twelve-tone first movement with its sudden quotation of the'Internationale', as other musical aspects, are,

as well

technically at least,

related to the Faustus cantata. A causal connection is more than unlikely,

though Eisler did plan a Faust opera

and knew the novel.

(36) Eisler states: 'Die Beschreibung von Leverktihns Orator~um 'Dr. Faustus Wehklag' (sic A.S.B.) hat Thomas Nann, der mit: SchBnberg, Adorno ... und mit mir persBnlichen Umgang pflog, sehr interessant gestaltet. Sie ist elne ZwBlftonkompomposition im Stile SchBnberg's. Die technischen Details dieser Beschreibung, die fachrnassig stimmen, bekam Thomas Mann von Adorno, der von SchBnberg daftir als Verrater bezeichnet wurde.' From Hanns Eisler,

'Notizen zu Dr. Faustus.'

zu einer Dialekt:ik der Husik Leipzig 1976 p. wrongl~

had a habit of quoting, of his remarks, though,

(37) See G. Reiss,

from

memory~

in Haterialien

193. Eisler the content

tends to be far more exact.

'SiindenfaIl-Hodell und Romanform: Zur

Integration von Kleists Narionett:entheater Thematik im Werk Thomas Manns.'

Schiller Jahrbuch 13 1969 p. 426-54·

for an interpretation of one aspect of this theme.

(38) isthetische Theorie Ope cit. p. 9 (39) Cf. Ronald Gray, The German Tradition in Literature 1871-194~ Cambridge

1965

(40) Sauerland's article Ope cit. gives one explanation of why this might be the case, based partially on biographical evidence. The point is,surely,

that the trap Mann falls

into has more objective historical and aesthetic bases.

.. ,',

280. Conclusion

In the presen~ work the tendency 01 large-scale novels dealing

~ith

major

his~orical

crises to end in a manner

which strives towards an inteerative totality has been often criticised. It would,

therefore, be some~hat self-

contradictory to attempt a synthesising conclusion here ~he

on the possibilities of

novel as a mode of response to

modern European mass history. What I

should like to do

instead is to suggest in a very direct way possible consequences deriving from the general argument of the thesis,

thereby, I

limitations

hope,

remaining consistent with the

imposed at the outset on the theme and the

material examined. I do not propose to review developments since the end of the Second World

Waro~

attempt to take

into account as many as possible of the works that belong in the thematic area that have been neglected. This :would be superficial and is, in

~~y

case, beyond my powers

of research. The way I propose to suggest further consequences deriving from the questions I

have tried to outline is

to take a brief look at an author who seems to me to point to possibilities in fiction dealing directly with mass history beyond the novel form. By doing this I hope my tentative conclusions can be suggested whilst remaining concrete and avoiding the

'integra~ive

temptation'. The

task is made both more difficult and more easy by the fact that,

to my knowledge,

the work of Alexander Kluge is

still alrr.ost wholly unknown in England. Besides being a prose-writer Kluge also makes films. I

suspect the only

work of his that has received any substantial public attention in England is the film Deutschland im Herbst, a co-production with several other film-makers, whose nature was largely determined by Kluge,

but one

a fact

confirmer!. by KluGe being the only film-maker concerned ~o extend the work begun by ~hatfilm: Patriotin.

--------

his latest film,

Die

is another attempt to get to the roots of modern

.:::: () I •

S-erInan history, using montage methods.

in looking at Kluge's prose work,

The diffiCUlty

then,

is that,

unlike

in the rest of the thesis, where I presumed the reader to be familiar \..'i th the \,:orks in question,

the

'~ork

of

h.luge must be described. What makes the matter more easy is that a description of Kluge's work forces one to do ~ork,

large amounts of analytical

as well as quote a great

deal. The description will attempt to pick up the major theoretical issues examined in the thesis which play a substantial role in Kluge's work. What I wish to show in doing this are other possibilities in fiction as a response to history ,~hich reveal th:' limi tations of the novel form as a response to similar material. It seems to me that Kluge has made a greater contribution in this area than anyone since the War. Kluge is, besides being a a

lawyer and theoretician:

prose-wrlt~r

and film-maker,

elements of all these activities

find their way into his prose. The two texts that will be considered in some detail here are:

Schlachtbeschreibung~

Der organisatorische Aufhau eines Unglucks and

~eue

Geschichten. Hefte 1-18 'Unheimlichkei t del' Zei t '

(1). The

former is the new,

and altered,

edition of a work first

published in 1964,

the latter his latest large-scale work.

Schlachtbeschreibung has particular relevance to the questions raised in the first half of the thesis,

~~

Geschichten to those in the second. Both, however,

involve

points relating to the thesis as a whole. An initial description of Schlachtbeschreihung can show how familiar themes the work. If it were not for the which introduces the mif';'ht be led

~ork,

'~achricht'

the reader beginning the text

into thinking that the first part,

linien fUr den "'interkrieg',

'Richt-

is part of' a collection of

contemporary documents relating to the events of Stalingrad. Tho section consists simply of extracts from the German army rer10 r t s in prepara t ion for the Rus s1 an campa ign. Such

2~2.

material recurs in cO!l5Lderable quantities in the book. H0wever,

the introductory piece makes it clear that more is

at stake than a historical documentation: 'Dies Buch hier tiber Sralin~rad muss der Leser gegen den S t ri ch les en, _ in einem gan z unprak tis chen, inak tue llen, von der BRD-Gegenwart abgev.;ende ten, ~ahen Interesse, so realistisch wje die Wtinsche und die Gewissheit, dass Realitaten, die Stalingrad hervorbringen, bose Fiktionen sind. Dass ich auf Stalingrad beharre, hat den Protestgrund, dass Erf.::l\nerungslosigkei t irreal ist. "Ein Ungliick wie Stalingrad hat den Vorteil, dass es unmoglich mit zwei Augen zu sehen ist. So sah keiner von uns alles ... "' (References are to Schlachtbeschreibung Der organisatorische Aufbau eines Ungliicks ~lunich 1973 1Sb) Here p. 7.)(Kluge's emphases.) T .....·o aspects emerge here:

a particular

conceptioi~

of fiction,

and of the historical subject. These are central to Kluee's work. The Jictional conception is dialectical: instead of establishing a straightforward difference between fiction and historical fact or of claiming that the presentation of history necessarily entails fictional aspects,

the fact that

'Realitaten, die Stalingrad hervor-

bringen, bose Fiktionen sind.' is stressed. This can b? explain- .. ed by considering a polemical statement of Kluge's (related to a famOl-3 statement of Engels') made in the essay on realism in film quoted in Chapter Two: 'Es muss moglich sein, die Realitat als die geschichtliche Fiktion, die sie ist, auch darzustellen. Sie hat eine Papiertiger-Xatur. Den Einzelnen trifft sie real, als Schicksal. Aber sie ist kein Schicksal, sondern gernacht durch die Arbeit von Generationen von ,Henschen, die ejgentlich die ganze Zei t tiber etwas ganz anderes wollten und wollen. Insofern ist sie in mehrfacher Hinsicht gleichzeitig wirklich und unwirklich. Wirklich und unwirklich in jeder ihrer einzelnen Seiton: kollektive Wtinsche der Menschen, Arbeitskraft, Produktionsverh~ltnisse, Hexenverfolgung, Geschichte der Kriege, Lebensl~ufe der Einzelnen.' (2) This begins to make it clear why Stalingrad should play the major role it does in Kluge's work. It is a collective e 'v e

C1

t

..... her (~ tho U

S

an d

5

0

r

rn en b e co Dl e in v 0 I v e din

5 0

rn 0 t hi n g

v; h

1 c has is 0 1 ("1. ted ill d i vi d u a 1 s

becoming involved in. The gap

the y

'.~ 0

bet~een

u 1 d n eve r cl rea m what

0

.f

they think

and de sire as in(li vilual sand wha t they do as a co llec t i ve has to be filled by a new conception of fiction.

The

following passage suggests ways 01 understanding this gap: 'Einige Offiziere meinten, sie h~tten sich schuldig gemacht, weil sie die Mannschaften in die aussichtslose Lage nach Stalingrad gefUhrt hatten. Sie hatten zu solcher "Ftihrung" aber gar nicht die Hacht. Die 6. Armee war nie eine Maschine, das Instrument, das die Stabe zu flihren meinten. Vielmehr sind es Arbeitskrnft, Hoffnungen, Vertrauen, der unabweisbare Wille, in der Nahe des Realit~tssinns zu bleiben einmal durch die Mangel von ROO Jahren Vorgeschichte gedreht -, vor allern: in Gesellschaft zu verharren, der die 300 000 Mann auf die Marsche in die Steppen Stidrusslands fUhrt, in eine ~eltgegend, an ein Flussufer, an dem keiner dieser ~lenschen irgend etwas zu suchen hatte. Dies ist organisatorischer Aufbau eines UnS- lUcks. Es bau t sich quas i- fabrikm::is s ig in den Formen der Staatsanstalt auf; die rnenschlichen Reaktionen darauf bleiben privat. ;:'le addieren sich nicht fabrikrnassig.'(Sb p. 8)(Kluge's emphases.) Such a conception thematises in a new way the disjunction of individual and collective movement of events which was seen as a vital factor in the texts in the rest of the thesis. Fiction thereby becomes related on one level to the collective products of history which motivate such events as Staling-rad: fDa die Phantasieform zerspalten ist, k~nnen die Menschen' ... 'zwar Krafte konzentrieren, die sie bis Stalingrad marschieren lassen, aber sie konnen in dieser Produktionsform weder ihre Ziele noch ihre eigene Froduktionsform entwickeln.' (3) This also,

it ~ill be evident, reformulates the question

of ethical responsibility, a point I

shall return to later.

The consequences of such conception for the text relate closely to the question of information and the subject that was looked at in the first two chapters. The historical material in such a perspective as Kluge's cannot be related merely to an individual or a few characters: 'sah keiner von uns alles ... '. At the

Sillne-

time individuals are the

28 ~~ •

carriers of

~he

material, including the

of 800 years of history. What is, the rna t e ria 1

0

f

residues

then, more specifically

S chI a c h the s c h rei bu n g ,

an d

,oJ

hY sh0 u 1d i t

be considered at the end of a thesis dealing \\ith the novel and history? The latter question can best be ans"'-ered by an analysis of the former. The book consists to a signiricaTIt extent of documentary elements:

the army reports on winter

war; interviews with participant soldiers, doctors;

a

chronicle of the growing catastrophe of Stalingrad for the Germans; war plans; aspects of the language of certain military circles in Germany;

aspect~ N

political history of the army; of news about Stalingradj

of the social and

an acount of the censorship

the state-controlled press-reports;

and the 'Rechenschaftsbericht

l

•

This

~ould

seem to make it

into the raw material for what could later become an analytical piece of narrative history. However,

the 'Nachricht',

in tercala teel other sec tions, and the 'Nachbemerkung I, make something quite different out of the material: 'Das Buch, wie jede Fiktion (auch die aus dokumentarischem Material bestehende), enth~lt ein Gitter, an das sieh die Phantasie des Lesers anklammern kann, wenn sie sich in Richtung Stalingrad bewegt.' \ (Sb p.,68) The text is not just concerned to explain the organisationalbuild up of a disaster,

to provide material, it also

wishes to justify why this explanation is, or might be, important. The necessity of bringing a framework to bear on any historical material is thereby reflected:

should

Stalingrad be analysed in terms of tactical failure,

in

terms of a chronicle of direct events - which troop was defeated when and where -

in terms of its origins in

a particular social system? and so on. In each of these cases

~he

'Erkenntnisinteresse'

changes.

Wha~

relevance

do tactical mistakes have if one does not intend to attack the Soviet Union in winter? Do the individual failures and successes tell us much about what really happened? Does St2..1ingrad have any relevance to what is happening in the

285. present social system: The material in the text of Sch1achtbeschreibung contributes to all these ways of looking at history,

and suggests their inadequacy. The text does not

itself constitute a history or explanation of Sta1ingrad ina direct sense. Referring tOo the book's documentary charac~er,

the

'Nachbemerkung'

states:

'Insofern konnen die im Buch beschriebenen Szenen dokumentarisch be1egt werden. Das Buch wird dadurch nicht dokumentarischer. Wer in Sta1ingrad etwas sah, Aktenvermerke schrieb, Nachrichten durchgab, Que11en schuf, stutzte sich auf das, was zwei Augen sehen konnen. Ein Ung1uck, das eine Maschinerie von 300 000 Menschen betrifft, ist nicht so zu erfassen (abgesehen von der Trubung der Wahrnehmungskrafte durch das Dngluck selbst ~ (Sb p. 368) The whole question of the subject is posed in a different form:

the text is neither retrospective narrative history,

nor novel narra-tive, nor philosophy of h,istory. It is a kind of reflection on all these modes as ways of grasping history. In certain parts of the work fictional characters in the received sense, appear in a variation of montage technique (the techniquo central to Kluge's film and literary prose work), as do aspects of hist9ry from quite different periods. These, and other intercalated aspects, add essential new dimensions. In recent work Kluge has often used the fictional figure of Gabi Teichert as a meruls of setting up processes of historical reflection - often in a splendidly anarchic fashion:

in the latest film,

Die Patriotin,she is, for

example, seen at the real SPD Congress in Hamburg putting questions to real prominent SFD

con:fe~ence

po1i~ician,

participants, among them a

on the unsuitability of German

history as material to be taught in schools, because up to now German history has been so negative. In Schlachtbeschreibung she appears in a characteristic section entitled 'Der Bau von Begriffs-Hutten'. In this section an important reflexive procedure appears in a manner typical of Kluge's writing. The section begins under the sub-heading

286. , HUt ten b au 1 9!.~ J'

( S b p. 292),

whi

c h 'd esc rib e s h 0 ',,' u r g e n t 1 Y

needed huts were t;ransported to a landing-field in the area of S1:alingrad by cooperation and the refusal 1:0 observe 'Dienstende'. The next section, in a typical jump from the highly practical and concrete to the abstract: (but related), is enti tIed 'Mangels Zusammen""irken werden die Begriffs-Gebaude, auch die Begriffs-HUtten, nicht erst produziert.'

(Sb p.

1978 gar

293) This passage concerns

the activity of historical understanding and is exemplary for Kluge's work in general. It can, therefore, be quoted at some

length~

'Z~berlein,

Strukturforscher, insbesondere ~archen und ~Iythen, ha t te die no tigen Langzei tperspekti ven gewusst, die grosszUgige geschichtliche Operationen ermoglichen' .•. 'Er stand in keiner Verbindung mi t dem Zeitgeschichtler A. Fischer und den Historikern Berthold Semmler und Fritz Dresch~r, ciie die Faktensammlungen besassen' ... 'Sie hatten ftir Zeberlein die Gross- und Zacklinien gewissermassen mit Backsteinen oder Lehmstroh ausfUllen kennen; obwohl sie in ein und demselben Vorlesungsverzeichnis mit ihm firmierten, ~tandcn sie in keiner Verbindung, ja hatten niemals miteinander telephoniert. Wie Panzer riechen, was einer im engen Vieleck urn den Sitz des Fahrers oder Richtkanoniers bei beweglicher KampffU.hrung am kalten und spater, mit zunehmender Fahrstrecke, zitternden und erwarmten Metall CU.hlt, diS konnte Gencralmajor von Westermann von der 2. Jagerdivision in Kassel benennen. Gabi Teichert wiederum hatte Interesse gehabt, alles dieses Wissen zusrunmenzufUgen, traf aber nie auf,einen anderen. Hillionen hatten, wenn sie irgendeiner befragt hatte' ... 'Ahnungen gehabt inwiefern Stalingrad sie etwas anging~ da dessen Geschichte ja keineswegs abgeschlossen ist, sondern alle zu seiner Verursachung zur Verftigung stehenden Nerkmale der Gesellschaft andauern. In gewissem Gegensatz zu den oben genannten Wissenschaftlern ",,'ussten" sie nichts im strengen Sinne, es war ihnen aber hitter ernst. Eine Nachricht war in ihnen vergraben. Das alles krun nirgenos zusammen, obwohl es benachbart ruhte. In keinem der Betriebe, die im Handbuch der deutschen Industrie und des Einzelhan'dels aufgefUhrt; sind, wurden im Herbst 1977 Geschichtsbegriffe hergestellt, die, wenn es die gaoe, wie ~ohnr~um9 oder Hauser waren.' (Sb p. 293- 4 ) (Kluge's emphases) First the problem of establishing links between an event-

based and a structure-based approach to history is concret':seCl in a

typically ironic, but serious, manner by the in~roduction

of peoDle whose activity constitutes the various kinds of his'tory. Ihis includes both the academics who write histor\and the people ,\'110 make history in terms o.f their participation in events: Kluge constCintly sees the historical sphere as a product of all forms of human ac'tion, none of which can be excluded a priori, as they may in another perspective prove to be of vital importance. The level of direct historical experience 'thus belongs together with the level of historical reflection:

.

the two major levels

,

of the 'realist' novel are thereby included. Both the level of history as sensation,

the tank in battle, and

of retrospective research are, in some not fully determinable way,

important., History is also that which determines the

way the present is and this creates the -need for a more active way of grasping history. The kind of commit'ment that builds huts in impossible weather conditions is necessary to achieve this. The last part of the passage is more complex. The whole passage

relates~to

how collective activity

achieves particular results. The basic general result that the text deals with is the ability to get 300 000 men to do something they do not really wish to do, and, having done it,

to achieve further enormously difficult

tasks by cooperation. The implication is that this is a continuing general state of affairs:

'aIle zu seiner

Verursachung zur Ver.fligung stehenden II-Ierkmale der Gesellscha.ft; andauern.' The people who' "wussten" nichts im strengen Si.nne' can, indeed are,

affected by the same kind of

mobilisation of their activity, way,

albeit in a less spectacular

as happened in the case of Stalingrad. The text does

not, and cannot, because of the lack of the necessary categories to grasp the issues .fully, make the matter .fully clear: it speculates on how such an event lives on in the

288. society

~hich

emerged from the disintegration that started

at the latest with Stalingrad. The whole activity of organised production in that society, with the attempt to and,

thus,

the ERD, has nothing to do

un~erstand

the history it emerges from

is open to the suspicion of being nothing more

than a continuation of the same in a different form. All the buried experience of what such events mean is never reached, despite the continuing presence of the actors. A further speculation of Gabi Teichert's suggests critical consequences via an isolated example of history which moves in another direction, thereby further illustrating both the literary and conceptual method at the base of the text. She asks: 'Wie h~tten denn 300 000 Mann, falls z.B. General Paulus den Ausbruch (out of the Stalingrad 'Kessell) nicht befahl, am Abrlicken aus der FaIle gehindert werden kennen?' (p. 294) _. Another history teacher suggests reasons why

no~

such as

the necessity of 'Vorverstandigung' or the presence of the 'Feldgendarmerie (im Hintergrund die Kriegsgerichte), eingeschli:ffene Befehlsordnung, Gewohnheiten, Weihnachtsfesi:, Vertrauen in fruhere Taten der verschiedenen Vorgesetzten.' (Sb p.

295~.

Teichert's opinion is that

'" in der Not solche allgemeinen Verstandigungen un.d Verabredungen geradezu blitzartig, entgegen aller Medienarbeit oder sonstigen Ordnung, stattzufinden pflegen." So sprach sich z.B. im April 1945 in HamburgHarburg sehr rasch herum, dass ein Zug, beladen mit Lebensmitteln, und im Sliden Hamburgs ein weiterer Zug mit 22 Waggons, der Kohle geladen hatte, herumstlinden, so dass bald 9000 Frauen oder Halbwtichsige mit Handwagen und S~cken herbeieilten, ohne dass nachzuweisen ware, wie sie sich zuvor in so kurzer Zeit hatten verstandigen kennen.' (Sb p. 295) In a related sector of history in the same society, collective praxis of another kind is suggested which is based on real needs. The juxtaposition can be put down to the eccentricity of Frau Teichert, but the whole text depends upon the creation of historical margins within which

critical B\o.'n.reness can be generated.' The juxtapositions are often of an even more

ex~reme

nature. Two

example~

can be cited here. Fiction can be used

8S

a means of combatting 'Erin!1prungs-

losigkeit' hy seeking ways of keeping historical experience from becoming immobile data. It can also be used in a prospective sense, as speculation on possible historical consequences of developments observable in the present. This is one of the most difficult aspects of Kluge's to interpret.

~\

work

Schlachtbeschreibung contains part of a larger

text which appears in Lernprozesse mit todlichem Ausgang. (Kluge often uses the same material in different contexts.) In this section the story of four soldiers who decide to get ou t of Stalingrad in the direction of China because they have nothing more to hope for except survival is carried on into the future, not just up-to the present day but beyond, ~ld

into a period involving a Third World War

interplanetary warfare. The story thereby becomes -

I understand it rightly -

if

an allegory of the senselessness..-"

of so much human activity that becomes nothing more than its own purpose, even to the-,

point of that purpose involving

total destruction. The observation

~hat

the major causes

of an event such as Stalingrad continue to exist in present-day society is thereby played out as a fictional game which reflects back on the nature of present-day society. The major factor in this is the threat of atomic war,

w~ich

~nvolves.the

preparedness of people to destroy

the only possible location of sense - the human world for ~easonsl generated by ~ctivities in that location. The absurdity of the situation is demonstrated in the example of the suggestion that the U.S. Secret Service, for which the four men are ~orking in 1978, should raise salaries. One of the men, who are all solely obsessed with survival in cOllsequence of their Stalingrad experience, nonsensical this is for them:

reflects how

290.

!GeldzClhlungcn, ja der gesamt2 in der Borse zusamrnengeCasste Reichtum sind unter dem Gesichrspunkt der sicher zu er~artenden Endka~astrophe, die flir uns Geheimdienscexperten bereits eine Tatsache ist ("auch wenn wir den Zei~punkt noch nicht bestimmen konnen ll ) , tiberhaupt kein Wertobjekt. Wert hat allein ein Informationsvorsprung von 6 Stunden im Faile eines kommenden Weltkriegs .•. ' (Sb p. 273) The reasons why they should always merely wish to survive are never reflected on. This is then

extr~polated

into

an image of the mechanisms which tend to control politics and which continually find people prepared to fill the roles they create. Such speculative fiction depends in one of its aspects upon an underlying sense of the continuity of certain collectively produced historical mechanisms. The absurdity of such aspects of the text:

the four men

live on and ·on and reach the situation where,

in a hidden

base on a moon of Jupiter: 'der Sinnzusammenhang, der bisher ihre Personlichkeit zusammengehalten hatte - der Plan, der Erdkatastrophe zu entkommen -, war hinfallig. Sie waren hier in den sargahnlichen Abteilen der Geheimbasis Mimas in Sicherheit.' (Sb p. 277) is the absurdity of the real historical world the text is reacting to:

the world which can get to the planets and

produce its own destruction but cannot feed its own inhabitrults. The interpolation of such passages into a book about Stalingrad at first simply surprises but then gradually develops implications, which are,

as it should

be evident, by no means unambiguous. The process of historical reflection is kept open. Less surprising juxtapositions with the historical present are also possible. The text reflects upon the fact that the Generals in Stalingrad ~ere not got out by their comrades; 'Die hochsten Vorgesetzten werden von ihren hohen Kameraden nicht zurlickgeholt: Hanns Nartin Schleyer wird nicht ausgelost, 1977 - Feldmarschall Paulus nicht gerettet, 1942. An den ~ahtstellen zwischen den zentralistischen Zustandigkeiten en~stehen die

291 . Pannen: 6. Armee, ihr~? \":::tchbarn 19~~2; BIC-\/Xorrlrhpinliestfalen, c.:rf3TCldt-Lihl,~r, 1977' ... 'Obh"ohl sich _ VerLl'..ltlich durch beliebig viele oeispiele zu erharten _ aIle Details des Kessels und der Jetztzeit verknUpfen lie558n-" ... Die Geschichte aller toten Geschlechter liegt w i e e inA 1 p auf' de n H i r n end e r L e ben den" = Ka r 1 ~ ra r x . Der 18. Brumaire des Louis 30naparte, 5. 7 - ist " auf der tieren Vergangenheit und unzuganglichkeit Stalingrads, auf der Basis des akt~ellen Blicks , zu beharren. Es gibt keinen einzigen Menschen in Deutschlruld, der so fUhlt, sieh~ octer denkt wie ir endeiner der Beteiligten 1942.' (Sb p. 298) Kluge's emphases) "

(The recent references are to the kidnapping and eventual murder of the ex-55 Oflicer and Chairman of the Employers' Association,

Schleyer, by the Rote Armee Fraktion, which

was helped by the mistakes made by the police.) The text's mode of historical present?tion has to reveal the collective mechanisms in the form of specific kinds of organisation which can be hi"storically transmitted and the individual subjectivity which cannot be transmitted in the same way, and which is anyway far less likely to be transmitted. In the fiction analysed above of the four soldiers who get out in the direction of China,

the text in fact tekes

up the statement of a participant officer intervie"'"ed earlier in the book relating "to reactions in Stalingrad which

resu~ted

when it became clear the situation was

hopeless: 'wir uns aIle in zunehrnenden ~ra.sse damit berassten, .,\ wie k~nnen wir uns seIber, wenn der Zusammenbruch da ist, noch irgendwie weiterbringen' •.. 'Da gab es welche, die sagten: "Am wenigsten passt der Russe im Osten auf." Die wollten also im tiefen Winter nach Osten bis irgendwo in Richtung China.' (Sb p. 59-60) This wish is far less ludicrous than the wish to invade Russia in

win~er.

kind can in many

The realm of possible wishes of this ~ays

be seen as replacing in such a text

the role of the subjective fictional sid~ of the 'realist' novel. The collective unanimity of such events leaves little effective room for how subjectivity opposed them. Instead the te~~100k5 at those aspects of subjectivity which made l

the events possible by their being organisationally

292. chRnneljed in particular directions b'y pre-existent syster.1:3. This gives rise to the use of so much documentary material which helps reveal what sytems were at hand. A simple reproduction of thes2 reified systems is,

though,

avoided

by the consideration that if such wishes make such events as Stalingrad possible (and implicitly the whole revolution of Nazism) different ways of channe]ing wishes,

including

those developed by the participants themselves, might achieve similarly impossible-seeming tasks in a positive direction. Such a perspective takes over from the opposition of the central figure to the course of events which was the 'realist' novel's main way of opposing the weight of negative historical reality. In this sense the text attempts far more radically than a work such as Les Thibault to get to grips with the material of mass history,

sustaining the

data which otherwise plays its role in a narrative account as trerealm in which suppressed fantasy and wishes become the driving force behind collective events. The text gives up the illusion of the self-determining individual by revealing how the mechanisms of modern mass society and the residues of past history penetrate into the most private realms or take over from those real',ls. The approach has evident risks,

but it is one which tries in the face of

such phenomena as Nazism to take on the radicality of that which is being reacted to. The text thus becorne$ concerned in. some detail with the roots of collective phenomena. This is first achieved by th9

ci ting of the language and the forms of the organi s-

ations involved: individual aspects disappear behind a 'Formen,,'elt',

as the army and its traditions are called.

The organisational forms determine how the collective approaches reality,

a kind of reified 'subject'

results:

'Wie sah die Armee? Wenn der ~nteroffizier A etwas sah und ~einen Vorgesetzten B, C und D sagte, so erfuhr as praktisch hochstens der Kommandierende General. Dami t et\o,'as von der Armee wahrgenommen

293. wurcie, ,.;ar ein Auf trag erforderlich.'

(Sb p. (4)

The passage is followed by a description of ho~ the experience of the army's members (which the book tries to get at via the intervie~5,

for example) fails to reach tho decisive

pOints of the organisation. Again the implication is

tha~

this experience could have achieved radically different results had it not fallen prey to the organisational forms. Later in the book in a splendid section, entitled '''Unser heiliges Deutschland", das Reich; isation'

zum Begriff der Zentral-

the historical roots of the failure are part

systematically, part polemically approached. The section "

is part of a larger unit called 'Die wunsche ... sind urn 1200 etwas sehr Einfaches', which is a montage attempt to trace the genesis of the particular German forms of organisation involved in Stalingrad in the history of the 'Reich'

idea and its realisations. Stress is laid upon the

committment and endurance of various figures on all levels and in all classes of the various societies in the service of this idea,

an idea which "Unser heiliges Deutschland"

takes apart. This section begins with one of Schinkel's paintings of imaginary Gothi~ cathedrals which gro,V' organically out of the landscape (Kluge regularly illustrates his prose texts with all manner of pictorial material from comics to high art):

the comment under the picture is:

'Der "Reichs-Gedanke", ein !-larsch in Widersprilchen, liEs lebe unser heiliges DeUtschland!", ruft Stauffenber~ im HoC des Bendler-Blocks (Kriegsministerium) 1944, als er erschossen wird.' (Sb p. 318) This sets up the basic poles:

the idea of the organic 'Reich'

is opposed to the reality of the 'Reich', what

i~

does.

The illusion can, as a fiction in the sense described at the outset, be mobilised in the organisation: 'Kein einzelner ~~re je nach Stalingrad gekammen; h~tte auch keinen Grund gehabt, dart etwas zu suchen. Es ist das ReiCh, 1000-jahriges Gebilde ("Gemisch aus 1,'Unschen und Z","ang l ' ) , das sie in ~Iarsch setzt. Dieses Reich ist e in eSt a a t 5 an s tal t . ' (S b p. 3 1 8) (K lug e ' s em ph as is) The way this centralised organisation takes ov'?r the wishes

294. of" individual s i s then analys ed. .An oppo si t ion is up betwee:1 the 'Form'

and the

se t

'Substanz' of the collective

entity, an opposition particularly evident in the illusion 'Ger b 10 S5 en

Id2~,

da~ 5

durch beho rdli chen Aufbc.u, gedach t e

Befehlslinien, etwas ein Ganzes wird ... '

(Sb p. 319). The

illusion is evident; it is suggested in the language of the documents cited earlier in the text. The breakdown occurs in Stalingrad: 'Hier f~llt (bis zuletzt Versuche sie aufrechtzuerhalten) unter den Stossen des Gegners, fast aber noch mehr selbsttatig durch das Warten, Hoffnungssch~und, die Zentralisation in beiderlei Gestalt in sich zusammen. Es war, rlickblickend keine Substanz, sondern Formalsache, eine Einbildung.' (Sb p. 320)(Kluge's emphases) Both the organisational form of the collective and the distorted substance, which is portrayed

in the typically

anarchic list:

'die gestauten BeflirchtUI).gen, Augen, auch:

B~ume:

Sicherheit usf. Auch: Irger libel' Blirohengste

G~rten,

als Vorgesetzte,aber wichtiger ist: :nicht flir unmoglich halten!

"Das, was wir absolut

(Sbr319-20) prove to be a total

,,'as te of fantasy, abili ty and experience. Just before the concluding parts of the text the 'Rechenschaftsbericht'

is included. It concludes with the following:

'Genera.le, Offiziere, Unteroffiziere und Nannschaften fochten Schulter an Schulter bis zur letzten Patrone. Sie starben, damit Deutschland lebe. Ihr Vorbild wird sich auswirken bis in die fernsten Zeiten, aller unwahren bolo Propaganda zum Trotz. Die Divisionen der 6. Armee aber sind bereits im neuen Entstehen begriffen.' (Sb p. 365) The passage, intended to sustain that which Schlachtbeschreibung is out to comprehend and overcome,

is, in its context,

a summary of the major implications of the text that I have tried to show. The hierarchy of the first sentence symbolises the organisa'1;ional structure that leads to the catastrophe. Its simple untruth -

the Generals are frequently shown as

r are I yin d ire c ten 0 ugh con t act wi 1; h the :" est

0

f

the a rr:1 y -

suggests the rnyths of military tradi"tion which persist despi te all the aspects of modern mass warfare that contradict them. The death for Germany points to the 'Reich'

idea.

.

The exa;nple they set is reflected in- the connee-tions to pre~ent-day

history a..L'ld the av;aren.ess that the causes of

Stalingrad have by no means totally disappeared, as well as in the extrapolarory fiction of the four

soldier~

that ends 'in fernsten Zeiten'. The renewal of the divisions suggests the potential for related developments which the text wishes to help counter - connections to the re-militarisation of Germany are also not to be ignored. The major

poin~

that becomes very clear in this example

is that Kluge's text is able to take the kind of historical data that was looked at in terms of its role in 'realist' fiction in the first two chapters and transform its significance. The reified material of the 'Rechenschaftsbericht' is made ,by virtue of its place in the text and by the material it shares the text with,

to negate its own content.

Compare the following from Solzheni tSyTI '-s August 1914 on the role of the historian in the 'realist' novel text: 'Without allowing any more scope to one's imagination than what can be learned from precise data, preferring historians to novelists as sources, we can only spread our hands and admit it once and for all: no one would dare to writ~ a fictional account of such blackness; for the sak~ of verisimilitude a writer would distribute the light an~ the shade more evenly. But from the first battle onwards, a Russian general's badges of rank come to be seen as symbols of incompetence; and the further up the hierarchy, the more bungling the generals seem, until there is scarcely one from whom an author can derive any comfort.' (4) (The reference is to the Russian disintegration at Tannenberg.) Schlachtbeschreibu~~,

it seems to me, does not reduce the

blackness of its historical object and all that is or might be associated with it. It stays very close to sources, often simply reproducing the data,

and yet, via the possibil-

ities of the literary reorganisation of material and other possibilities of fiction,

does not allow the data to stand

merely as an account of a past catastrophe. The most unrnediated document, bericht',

as in the

ex~mple

of the 'Rechenschafts-

loses its unmediated character via the processes

296. of reflection the text sets up. History is no longer the past but also the present in which the reader must act. The freedom open to the literary organisation and constitution of historical material opens up a kind of writing which can transform the material's significance without giving up the documentary aspect of 'realism'. The affinities to what was said in Chapter One about Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale and its use of data should, I hope, be clear. Schlachtbeschreibung is,

though,

a text in which fictional

characters do not play the determining role in the overall constitution of the work (even when their reflections have "

decisive effects). In this sense it is some way from the novel which centres largely upon a figure or figures in a particular historical context. Given the major topic, a mass event involving 300 000 men,

the restrictions imposed

by the concentration upon the reactions of certain fictional participants would lead one back to the contradictions of Chapter Two. The means of the 'realist' novel impose limitations and have consequences which seem inappropriate to their object in a situation where the powerlessness of the individual is as evident as it is, for example, in Stalingrad. Traditional fictional means are, putting it reductively, a way of introducing the subject into past, therefore objectified, history,

thereby conveying kinds of

-experience and a sense of history as the present. Benjamin's remarks cited in Chapter Two on how the First World War made people 'armer an mitteilbarer Erfahrung'

and how

this affects the possibilities of story-telling point in certain ways to the consequences drawn by Schlachtbeschreibu~.

If I

can briefly ignore my intention not to

developments',

'revie~

it is worth mentioning, in this context,

Alfred Andersch's Winterspelt, which was influenced by the original version of Schlachtbeschreibung. Winterspelt sustains the novel form having begun,

in a

m~~ner

analOGOUS

297. to h lUt,,:,e' s text, wi th documentary material relating to the military situation in the Ardennes in 1944. The text then continues by stressing its own fictionality, making clear how its story is related to what really happened: berichtet, wie es gewesen. keit durch.'

(5).

Erztihlung spielt eine

'Geschichte M~glich-

By then limiting the context to one fraction

of the line and a very small village and its surroundings, the textlmoves more on the level of existential decisions ;

of individuals, history which,

thereby adopting the indirect approach to it has been suggested, has in some

~ays

more

chances of success. The links to the historical totality are provided by the historical frame;

the text,

though,

lives from its playing with non-actualised possibilities in the face of a general historical context. Such possibilities are generated by the overall situation and particularised in a

~lore

tradi tional novel foro. The difficul ties and

resistances of the situation to individual attempts to affect it are thereby mediated:

the central figure wishes

to surrender his battalion in order to make a break in the line that will speed the end of the War. As such, is a fairly successful compr9mise 'realist'

the work

text: it

acknowledgns the difficulty of using historical data in novel fiction (thereby finding a sort of way round the issue of retrospection) and attempts to sustain the kind of realism Auerbach intends and that I have sugges"ted is one of the sifengths of !-es Thibaul t, namely a realism which tries to give a sense of the density of experience in a socio-historical context. Kluge's radicality seems to me more successful because it abandons the novel form without aband'.)ning the possibilities of fiction. Schlachtbeschreibung is something of an exception in Kluge's work: his other literary works involve more of the received conception of fiction and fictional characters. His first

literary

~ork,

plural in it5 "title, are pr-8sen ted.

~;o

Lebensl~ufe,

"though,

indicates by the

the way in which the fiffures

direct synthesi s of the various 'Lebenslaufe'

.'

298. is made,

althou~h

it is clear that certain

latently present,

s~lthe5es

are

particularly with regard to continuities

between the Xazi period and the BRu. The 'Lebenslauf' 'Ein Volksdiener', dealing with the judge Korti, becomes a general critique of the system of justice in the BRD via its relation to its historical origins, which are related to the particular case of Korti. Xeue Geschichten has simi lar e lemen ts to this but is far more comple..x and varied. This makes it extremely difficult to describe in the limited space available and in terms of the main themes I

am concerned to develop. The 'Vorwort'

suggests why:

'Die Geschichten dieses Buches sind in der Folge von Heften (1-18) wiedergegeben. Geschichten ohne Oberbegriff. Ich behaupte nicht, dass ich seIber ihre Zusammenhange immer begreife.' (References are to Neue Geschichten. Hefte 1-18 "Unheimlichkeit der Zei til Ffm 1977 (NG) Here p. 9.) (Kluge's emphasis) This would seem a recipe for a merely chaotic collection of stories. To some extent such a chaos is present:

the

storie3 - nearly all very brief, but over six-hundred pages ",'orth of them - deal with the most disparate material, ranging, in der to

to take two random examples, from

Auf~arung',

'Eine Episode

which takes place during the

, Aufklaruno-' b

'Ostervorabend 1977', which begins with the murder by

the Rote Armee Fraktion of Generalbundesanwalt Buback. Despite the multiplicity and variety,

there are plenty of

indications in the text of what is at stake. Neue Geschichten begins with a photograph of a mother and new ly- born child, fa llowed by the short section q,-as ein Mensch ist, nach Ingenieur Schafer'. This section concludes that it would be necessaiy to build up the ,,'hole sUI'lace of the earth 'urn auch nur einen Henschen zu haben, der wirklich funktioniert', nachzubauen,

was ein Hirn vermag'

if one wishes 'mechanisch (KG p. 14). The juxtapos-

ition implies both the individuality and specificity of human existe:1.ce,

experience,and activity, ~d the syste~?.tic

reductiollS they are subject to in rationalised modern society.

The follo~ing section emphasises this by describing a child's

.'

299. reaction to

che learning of abstraction, which is affected

by the fact that his brother, who looks and acts more 'normally',

receives preferential treatment:

'Als M~nnchen ~ezeichnet, waren ~artin und er sicher vergleichbar, weil ja die ~tinnchen Abstraktionen sind wie Kreuze und Striche. Er ist aber nicht willig, die Mengenlehre zu begreifen, weil er sicher weiss, wie ungleich in der Praxis alles Gleiche (oder nur urn ein Jahr im Altersunterschied Vers~tzte) gehandel t wird. Er sternmt sich gegen den ideologischen Druck der Schule, einen abstrakten Humangedanken, den die Bauerin (his mother) doch nicht teilt, der aber Gerhards Wahrnehmungen verwischen will.' (NG p. 15) In order to show how the text works. the general theme of abstraction can be considered in two other parts of the text. Kluge frequently uses key theoretical statements from the German philosophical tradition which recur as expressions of fundamental insight or as summaries of

-

questions his own texts actualise and differentiate. One such is Hegel's 'Das Allgemeine, von welchem das Besondere wie von einem Folterinstrument zusamrnengepresst wird, bis es zersplittert, arbeitet geeen sich selbst, weil es seine Substanz hat am Leben des Besonderen. Ohne es sinkt es zur abstrakten, getrennten und tilgbaren Form a b.' ( NG p. J 03 ) ( 6 ) which occurs in a passage about the difficulties of a post-'Studentenbewegung' student with the role of theory in his personal life, which lacks a

'Handlungszusammenhang',

a by no means infrequent problem in the BRD of the seventies. (Think of the Rote Armee Fraktion's founders'

concern with

revolutionary theory.) The passage from Hegel gains a grotesque significance if considered Heft 4, which

describ~s

in relation to

the 'Aussenlager Langenstein' ,

a concentration camp south of Halberstadt. is,

as will be seen,

(Halberstadt

central to the book.) The aims

embodied in the camp are: ".Praktisch: Vntertunnelung des Harzsandsteingebirges, ein Produktionsziel; 2.Einsperren und sukzessives Beiseiteschaffen des Arbeitskraftmaterials, gestellt vom Stammlager Buchenwald, Vernichtungsziel.' (~G p. 132) (Kluge's emphases)

)00.

The camp commandClnt LUbeck 'Hiess spater: der "Sadist LUbeck"; urspriinglich Realschullehrer, besonderes Interessengebiet: Sturm und Drang, Zeitalter der Aufkl~rung, Hirtengedicht und Vernunftgedanke.' (NG p. 133) This relationship to Rationalism is transfomed by the following: 'Er musste sich bezwingen, die H~ftlinge, insbesondere die Politischen, mit roten Winkeln an Jacke und Beinkleid gekennzeichnet (einige mit Abitur oeer Nittlerer Reife), nicht als treue Helfer wahrzunehrnen. Sie schienen ihm so in den ersten Tagen, als sie noch nicht zahlreich waren. Die Gesichter pragten sich ein. Sie benutzten die gleiche Toilette w~e ere Die rasch folgende tberflillung brachte ihn wieder zur Abs traktion.' (NG p. 132- 3) Anyone who has seen the film Aus einem deutschen Leben, ing with Hoss,

deal~

the commandant of Auschwitz, will recognise

a similar mechanism being represented. The capacity to abstract can lead to men becoming merely numbers, material to be dealt with by a system: what was observed in the ,chapter on Die Schlafwandler about Huguenau here is historically realised in its logical form. The text takes up further , ,-

examples from the camps, which suggest the relation of abstraction to what happens in the camps, following,

as in the

referring to Hadloch, a high-ranking Xazi

theoretician: 'Hadloch war nicht sentimental. Warum stehen die Leute hier herum, fuhr er die Luftwaffen-Soldaten an, die als Wachter mit der Kolonne vor dem Hohleneingang warteten. Sie hatten die Kolonne nicht nah ~enug an der Felswand aufgestellt, urn den Windschatten zu nutzen. Sie wussten nicht warum sie hier standen. Die Stunde frieren kostet pro Mann 800 cal, bei 1100 cal/24h, die liberhaupt flir den Tag zur Verfiigung standen.' (~,G p. 148-9) The nature of the link between the examples of Gerhard, the Hegel quotation from the passage on the student, and the activities in the concentration camps is important. There can be no doubt that there is an element of identity in Gerhard's refusal to alter his differentiated,

personal

perception to fit abstract categories which do not do justice to it and the easy willingness (or incapability

301 •

of doine anything else) of LUbeck or ~adloch to use a system of abstraction which regards humans as destructible material. will. I

(Further links to Chapters Three, Four, and Five

hope, be evident.) At the same time the passage from

Hegel warns against simply making the link part of a general theory (which would essentially be that of the Dialektik der Aufklarung). This warning is also reinforced by the form in which the examples appear:

they are scattered ,,,i thin

the general montage of Neue Geschichten and it is only via the activity of the reader that the theoretical identities,

the theoretical syntheses come into direct

existence. This does not mean that the links are not objectively present, but that the form given to the material strives against an easy synthesis. Again other possibilities of fictional organisation of historical material are suggested. By not creating the

'Oberb~g~iff'

by formal

synthesis (which is essentially the opposite to what happens in Broch, for example) Kluge's text is more able to bring out particular experiences that are the basis of the various stories. In doing so other 'Zusammenhange' not expressible via the general theory become possible: historical reflection is able to

the process of

pe~etrate

areas that

discursive theory cannot fully conceptualise. This can be further illustrated by considering the story entitled 'Ein KZ-Einfall in der Sommernot, Trauerarbeit'

180). The actual story concerns the members of a

(XG p.

present-day 'Wohngemeinschaft' in which a cat produces unwrulted kitten5~ The story is simply of how the members of the 'Wohngemeinschaft' kill some of the kittens by gassing them with ether and putting them in a plastic bag in the deep-freeze; one kitten is later saved in a fit of guilt by on~ of the members, but the kitten is evidently damaged by the experience. But for the title

.

and the locati0~ of the stery in a text largely concerned to get at the roots of that which is suggested in the title, the small-scale shiver of horror the story evokes would

302. remain just That. As it is, able,

~his

via the dialectic of scale,

small-scale horror is LO

suggest The

monstrosi~y ".'J

~hat

the

took place in the same country not long before. -'''ihether 'Trauerarbeit'

is to be related to that which never

took place in Germany after

~he ~ar

is unclear,

and thus

more provocative. What was said about the tension of juxtaposition and metaphorical significance in Doktor Faustus, whereby material sustained its immanent significance whilst also potentially contributing to a

totalit~

is also the

case in Neue Geschichten.(7) The subtitle 'Unheimlichkeit der Zeit' ~hich

suggests a theme

was looked at in the chapter on Der Zauberberg, where

the way in which questions of time were the key to largescale problems was shown. Time in Keue Geschichten is seen in terms of both objectively produced structures and experience:

the two are dialectically related. In the

passage describing Madloch's reasons for wishing to protect the prisoners against the cold a whole system of production (and destruction) is presupposed by the way in which a day is reduced

~o

the number of calories

calculated for a person to be able fill that day with work. In Neue Geschichten Nazism is both a 'point limite' in the reification of time, by its taking the logic of capital to its full extreme, and something whose mechanisms are by no means discontinuous \oJ! th the present. Consider the following, where the consequences of the concept of production which Madloch embodies in his action are theoretically reflected by him in terms of the

'Produktions-'

and the 'Vernichtungsziel' in the camps: 'Zun~chst

verwahrt sich Madloch dagegen, dass der Begri:ff der "Verschrottung der Arbeit" eine Herabsetzung enthalte. Sofern "eine -rapiere Truppe zu Scll lacke ausbrenn t" oder eine Fabrikgefo 19schaft im Lebensalter Yorrlickt, bis sie irgendwann einmal bis zum letzten Glied ausgebrannt, verstorben oder' invaliC! ist, inso.f'ern als Frauen llt.4.nter rlicksichtsloser ZurverfUcungstellung ihrer K~rper den ~ach~uchs an Jug-end ersch2:.fen" usf., geht es in allen diesen

303. F~llen letzten Endes um eine Verschrottung, da das Orie-inalmacerial an ).rbcitskraft alle diese Vorgtinge nicht un~eschadigt iibersteht und geradezu der Sinn des Ganzen darin liegt, dass der Einzelne untereeht und gigantische Produkte wie Industrie, das Volksganze, Front, Sieg usf. hieraus, eben unsentimental, arbeits- ·und wehrphysiologisch hestimmt, durch Verschrottung entstehen. Dies ist zuletzt auch auf den FUhrer anzuwenden, de~ nicht derselbe bleiben kann. Alles andere w~re unlogisch.' (NG p. 385-6) (Kluge's emphasis)

All Madloch really does (in this he resembles many figures in Kluge) is to draw the logical consequences from dominant historical developments:

the logical consequence of alien-

ated labour in a situation where almost unlimited 'Arbeitskraft' becomes available is to use it at the absolute minimal cost; as industry,

the logical consequence of such collectives the army and so on is that the reduction

of the individual necessarily entailed should be completed

(echo~s of the Kridwiss circle are clear). Individual experiential time becomes wholly a function of an alienated production system. The point is, of course, that these examples of historical totality actually came into existence, unthinkable as they may

see~

,whereas rational collective

organisation of production which would allow room for individual time has not. The coldness that is often present in Kluge's texts is a reflection of this. Against the background of the fact that the most extreme form of reification of time has already taken place, other, less extreme, examples have a different resonance. The degree to which similar structures are still present in the less extreme form since

~azism

is shown in other parts

of Keue Geschichten. In 'Addition von Ungerechtigkeiten im Lau:f von 2 Jahren

ArbE~i t

skampf gegen einen Un t ernehmer

mit Wohnsitz an weit entrUcktem Ort' describes

wh~t

(NG p. 219), which

the title says rather in the manner of

GUnter Wallraff's 'Industriereportagen'

(nearly all the

aspects of the story have their exact correspondences Wallra:f:f's texts), I

the small-scale oppression of the

Vert rauer:.s 3t:1nn I Ga.rtncr be trays aspec ts

0

f

the same

~ith

J O~I • structures seen in the camps: 'Von ihm heisst es: Gartner hat ein Stopp-Ohr. Das Gerilcht ist unsinnig. Richtig ist, dass er horcht, das Arbeitstempo tiber die Gerausche des Betriebs kontrolliert. Ausserdem besitzt er eine Stoppuhr, mit der er Arbeitszeitmessungen durchfUhrt. Sr misst auch die Zeit, die die Kolleginnen auf der Darnentoilette verbringen. Er behauptet, sie lesen dort Comic-Hefte, legen heimliche Frtihsttickspausen ein. Er kann das nur durch Hinweis auf die gestoppten Zeiten beweisen.' (KG p. 222) Lest this seem exaggerated, it is interesting to note how, for example, in \{allraff' s Neue Reportagen, Un tersuchungen und Lehrbeispiele, particularly the report 'Brauner Sudim Filterwerk Melitta-Report'(S) ex-Nazis playa leading role in large profit making firms with labour relations involving far worse practices than the ones described here. If it is objected here that all Kluge essentially does, then,is to create a montage criticising the worst aspects of capitalism and commodity-based societies, one only needs to describe further aspects of the work to show how much differentiated complexity is in fact involved. Whilst it is undeniable that much of the text can be used to constitute such a cri tique,

the manner in whic:l it is carried out

adds ever more dimensions. This is particularly evident in the theme of time and experience when it appears in relation to very specific historical material. In Heft 2 'Der Luftangriff auf Halberstadt am S. April 1945' the relationship betwesn experience,

the general course of

events and the sense of modern mass history which determines this general course is presented in an exemplary manner. The text is neither simply 'Erlebnisbericht', nor overabstract synthesis in novel form, nor historical narrative in the analytical sense. As such, a brief analysis of it and some of its resonances can serve as an open-ended conclusion to the thesi3. It is evident from the 'Vorwort ' of Kelle Geschichten that Kluge was there on the day Halberstadt was bombed,

305. a bornhint;' ".;hich resulted ultimately in a .fire-sl:orm. K lup.-e_' s pres enc e

(he was 1 J a t

the time and Ii ved in

Halberstadt) emerges from the following somewhat difficult, but

impor~ant,

passage:

'Es hat den Anschein, dass einige Geschichten nich~ die Jetztzeit, sondern die Vergangenheit betreffen. Sie hande}n in der Jetztzeit. Einige Geschichten zeigen Verklirzungen. Genau dies ist dann die Geschichte. Die Form des Einschlags einer Sprengbombe ist einpr~gsam. Sie enth~lt eine VerkUrzung. Ich war dabei, als am 8. April 1945 in 10 r-ieter Entfernung so et\o,'as einschlug.' (~G p. 9) (Kluge's emphases) A

story is characterised by a specific temporal significance

which is here seen in terms of 'Jet:!.t:zeit'. The meanin~ of this can be explained by considering Benjamin's 'Uber den Begriff der Geschichte', from which Kluge adopts the term.

(Neue Geschichten,

as well as other works of Kluge

can be interestingly interpreted in terms of Benjamin's text

(9).)

The relevant passages from Benjamin are the

following: 'Die Geschichte ist Gegenstand einer Konstruktion, deren Ort nicht die homogene und Ie ere Zeit sondern die von Jetztzeit erflillte bildet. So war flir Robespierre das antike~Rom eine mit Jetztzeit geladene Vergangenheit, die er aus dem Kontinuurn der Geschichte heraussprengte ... ' (10) 'Der Historismus begnligt sich damit, einen Kausalnexus von verschiedenen :-Iomenten der Geschichte zu etablieren. Aber kein Tatbestand ist ais Ursache eben darum ein historischer. Er ward das, posthurn, durch Begebenheiten, die durch Jahrtausende von ihm getrennt sein mogen. Der Historiker, der davon ausgeht, hart auf,sich die Abfolge von Begebenheiten durch die Finger laufen zu lassen wie \.!:in Rosenkranz. Er erfasst die Konstellation, in die seine eigene Epoche mit einer ganz bestimmten frUheren getreten ist. Er begrlindet so einen Begriff der Gegenwart ais der 'Jetztzei t', in \velcher Splitter der messi2Jlischen eingesprengt sind.' (11) Leaving aside the question of the Messianic tradition with its hints of historical 'Erlosung', an issue too complex to be gone into here (12),

the relevance of such conceptions

to Kluge's approach will be plain. The analysis above of

.~.

,~

\

30b.

how Schlachtbeschreibunfi aIsected his1:orical data, endowir:g it with different significance so that it did not freeze into historical imr.1obility, involves this conception of 'Jetztzeit', of the constellation which can result from the juxtaposition of the past· with an historical present. In this light even a traumatic moment such as being present when a bomb explodes can lead to other historical consequences: the unforgettable impact produces a particular constellation. The concern with the bombing of Halberstadt is,

then, based

on an irreducible personal story, but one which as a moment of 'Jetztzeit' Why,

then,

leads to historical insight (13). is the bombing of Halberstadt so important,

and how is it presented? A detailed analysis is impossible here:

the text is simply too dense and var±ed to cover

in a short space. The important historical fact about the bombing of Halberstadt is that, even more than the bombing of Dresden,

it had little, if any,

strategic sense; it

}

is important to keep in mind just how late in the War it took place. Its effects, as the account shows, were appalling in the extreme. One of the consequences of Kluge's text is to make the question of ethical responsibility for the -events

hi~~ly

problematic,

thereby leading to a

funda~lental

insight into the nature of modern histoFY. The text is concerned at the same time with the experience of the 'participants'. The basic levels that have been considered in the thesis thus playa major role. The text begins with the 'Abgebrochene Matinee-Vorstellung im "Capitol", Sonntag 8. April, Spielfilm "Heimkehr" mit Paula Wessely und Attila H~rbiger'

(NG p. 34), which describes how the

cinema was destroyed. A degree of absurdity is present: 'Dies war wohl die starkste Erschlitterung, die das Kino unter der FUhrung von Frau Schrader je erlebt hatte, kaum vergleichbar mit der Erschtitterung, die auch beste Filme ausl~sten.' (NG p. 35) The pressure of events of this kind makes Frau Schrader's everyday temporal order totally redundant. The same fact is

unde~lined

in the next section by the fate of high

307. quality turf (!) planned to be laid "in d'2r Zei t Krieg'

n?ch dem

(Kluge's emphasis) in the park: 'Flir diese Wiedererweckung war jetzt, da die S~ad~­ verwaltung andere Sorgen als die Wiederanlage der Plantage hatte, die organisatorische Grundlage enr-fallen.' (NG p. 37)

The constant concern in Kluge's texts with the organisational structures within which individuals' experience unfolds has a particular ironic aptness in the situation where these structures are destroyed from outside by far more massive and powerful organisations. In the next section photographs of an unknown photographer are brought into the text,

thereby giving a more direct impression of the

experience of the people in the town. Even the photographer, though,

c~~not

escape the systems of organisation: he is

arrested on the charge of spying, even though he maintains fer hat aus dieser Ferne die b~e~riende Stadt, seine Het~~tstadt in ihrem Ungltick, festhalten wollen. Er behau~te, Inhaber eines Fotogeschafts am Breiten Weg zu sein .•. ' (NG p. 39) As his pictures prove, he gets away,

though how 'weiss man

nicht'(NG p. 43). The concern of a family with a marriage ruld the social difficulties obliterated:

~nvolved

is described and

'Wie gesagt, es entkaw keiner.'

(NG p. 50)

The overall event of which these are aspects becomes more clear in the way time is affected:

.

J '~

t'

I

the experience of the

victims is not up to the systems it faces: 'Die Katastrophe lauft jetzt seit 11.32 Uhr, d.h. seit fast anderthalb Stunden, aber die Uhrzeit, die gleichrnassig wie vor dem Angriff vorbeischnurrt, und die sinnliche Verarbeitung der Zeit laufen auseinander. Hit den Hirnen von morgen konnten sie in diesen Viertelstunden praktikable Notmassnahmen ersinnen.' (NG p. 53) This break between the

'sinnliche Verarbeitung der Zeit'

and the objective necessity of temporal processes in a humanly produced crisis is often seen elsewhere in ~eue Geschichten. It becomes a constitutive element of the text's view of' the modern historical ",;orld. It is sho .... n most clearly in the case of the atomic bomb in a section

..-

308.

dealing 1,o,'i th army training for atomic \,'Ci.r: 'im Augenblick, in welchem der Fe~erball erscheint, sind die ein~ugigen Fahrer, die in Fahrtrichtung direkt hineinsehen, erblindet' ... '''Es gibt praktisch keinen Re flex ur..d keine wi llk:1 rl~ c he l-rand lJ"f':' La e schnell genug w~re, urn die Augenverletzung prinzipiell zu verhindern. Pupillen- und Blinkreflex sind zu langsam, vermindern den Zutritt der Lichtenergie erst nach 0,1 Sekunden.'" (XG p. 452) The 'Unheimlichkeit der Zeit'

is thereby demonstrated

in the way man-made processes affect time

so

that even if one knows of the fact nothing can be done. The historical move beyond Der Zauberberg is clear. Such linkages make it evident

ho~

the events in Halberstadt \,

are part of 'Jetztzeit'. This is developed in the second part of the account of the bombing. Under the title 'Strategie von unten' observations of Benjamin cited in Chapter Two are taken further. Benjamin- stated: 'nie sind Erfahrungen grlindlicher Ltigen gestraft worden als die strategischen durch den Stellungskrieg, die wirtschaftlichen durch die Inflation, die k~rperlichen durch die Materialschlacht, die sittlichen durch die Machthaber. Eine Generation, die noch mit der Pferdebahn zur Schule gefahren war, stand unter frei.em Himmel in einer Landschaft, in der nichts unverandert geblieben war als die Wolken und unter ihnen, in einem Kraftfeld zerst~render Str~me und Explosionen, der winzige, gebrechliche Menschenk~rper.'

(14)

In 'Strategie von unten' a teacher tries to defend herself and her children: 'Es war keine Zeit. Leits~tze einer"Strategie von unten", die Gerda in diesen Sekunden in ihrem Kopf zu versammeln suchte, konnten nicht tibermittelt werden. Hier von ganz unten gesehen, zu den fUr Gerda nicht sichtbaren Planern in JOOOm Hohe tiber der Stadt hinauf, oder auch ganz fern zu den Ahsprungbasen der Bomber hin, wo die hoheren P lanungs s U=ibe sassen.' (;-'IG p. 56) The individual feels that something must now be undertaken to preserve his or her existence and the existence of the children. It is, however,

too late:

individual means

are at the mercy of mechanisms that, although created by individuals, function beyond indivirlual considerations.

\

The o:liy '\CJ.y out i3 si-ated in the '7:usatz', :3

i mil a r t 0

ung':

\,' hat

I

s u g g e :3 ted \\ a

:3

i

ltl

in a !:-!anner

P 1 i cit in S c h lac h "[ be s c 11 rei h -

the capacity collecTively to organise the technolo[';y

and personnel involved .in a complex bombing raid could ultimately be reversed: 'Urn eine strategische Perspektive ~u er5ffnen, ~ie sie sich Gerda Baethe am 8. April in ihrer Deckung wtinschte' ... 'hatten seit 1918 siebzigtausend entschlossene Lehrer, aile wie sie, in jedem der am Krieg beteiligten Lander, je zwanzig Jahre, hart unterrichten mtissen; aber auch liberregional: Druck auf Presse, Regierung; dann hatte der so gebildete ~achwuchs Zepter oder Ztigel ergreifen konnen (aber Zepter und ZUgel sind keine strategischen ~affen, es gab kein Bild flir die hier erforderliche Ge,,,altnar.me). "Das ist alles eine Frage der OrganisaTion".' (NG p.59) This is evidently utopian, absurd, even, but if i t is accepted that the type of event seen in Halberstadt's destruction is man-made via particular organisational forms,

then

other forms must be conceivable. Such an absurd passage is simply a reminder that history is not natural history: the corrective this entails to major aspects of some of the novels I

have looked at has to appear absurd given Lhe

nature of its object. The in

exc~ple

of Gerda Baethe is developed much further

'Strategie von oben', where the perspective of the

bomber pilots is given: 'Sie konnten weder Genaueres von der Stadt \. . ahrnehmen. noch ernpfanden sie die im Moment vorsichtig gebremsten Wtinsche der Baethe.' (~G p. 62) The reduction of perception is not coincidental in such bombing. It is inherent in the organisation of the raid, a fact which is driven home by the parallels to subsequent deve lopmen t s gi ven both here and e Isel"here in ~ eue Geschich ten. An interpolated 'discussion'

(made up of passages of

published books on related topics,

a frequent procedure

in Kluge's use of material) dealing with the Stellenwert'

0:[

to'" ard 5 the end

'Evolutionar8r

the bombing tectmiques that had developed 0

f

the Ivar draw s

the consequence s :

3 1 0. '£.5 ist weder der Einzelkampfer von Valmy,

der bewaffncte 8tirger (Proletarier, Lehrer, Kleinunternehmer), cer diese Angriffe durchfUhrt, sondern der eeschulte Fachbeamte des Luftkriegs: analytische Begrifflichkeit, dedukrive ~trenge, prinzipieller Begri..indungszwang in den GefechtsberichLen, Fachverstand usf.' ..• 'Der Angriff unterstellt der Besatzung oder den St~ben ausser einem generellen Gehors~n keine sittlichen Motive oder Sinnzwang, bestraft wird nicht bose Gesinnung, sondern normabweichende Handlung ... ' (KG p. 63)

.A process of abstraction of devastating inhumanity becomes apparent which cannot be straightforwardly morally condemned or even easily explained: 'Es ist eanz deutlich, da5s diese 'V"urzel des strategischen Interesses, die Beute, bei den Bomberbesatzungen in Wegfall kommt, da sie ja in die angeflogene Stadt etwas hineintun, niemals etwas aus ihr mitnehrnen werden, "urn es, sei es nur im abstraktesten Sinne, auszusaugen". Sie konnen hier nichts 'haben wollen", sind was Benzin odeI' Abwurfrnaterial betrifft, Selbstversorger. Allenfalls konnte man es so verstehen, dass sie die Arbeitskraft von den Monteuren in den F1ugzeugwerken zu Hause oder das 01 von Texas und Arabien ansaugen, oder dass die Besatzungen Sold auf ihre Privatkonten ziehen, odeI' dass die gesarnte Transaktion Ertrage flir RUstungsunternehmen erbringt. AbeI' flir keine dieser Vorg~ge wtirden die Besatzungen hinreichend odeI' willig t~tig. Sie verteidigen auch nicht zurn gegenw~rtigen Zeitpllnkt ihre Heimat oder H~user. Insofern feh1t das Rohstoff, aus dem Strategie hergeste11t wird, inzwischen v011komrnen ... I (NG p. 65) It is suggested that 'der Schrott'weit zurtickliegender Klassenk~mpfe oder Geftihle oder Arbeitskraft sich in der Form dieses Ereignisses organisiert ' ... 'Auf jeden Fall steckt ~n dem Dahinfliegen und Bombardieren, der allm~hlichen Reinigung von beschwerendem Real-Ballast wie personlicher Motivation, mora1ischer Verurteilung des zu Bombardierenden (" mo ral- bomb ing" ), in e rre c hne t ern know - ho,",' , der Automatisierung, Hinsehen, das durch Radio ersetzt Wird, usf., ein Formalismus. Hier fliegen nieht Flugzeug'e im Sinne der Luftschlacht urn England, sondern es fliegt ain Begriffs-System, ein in Blech eingehtilltes Ideengebiude.' ~G p. 6S-6)(Kluge ' s emphases) That this is not an isolated phenomenon becomes evident much later in \"E'ue Geschichten, when a contemporary U.S.

J11• 'Sicht~fCnung

bomber with no

nach aussen' is described:

'liel ist es, dass die Besatzuneen, ~~hrend sie die Gerate beobachten "gar nichts wahrnehmen oder denken ... · (~G p. 453) I

The abstractions of classical Rationalism reminded of Leibniz -

here one is

become a very concrete historical

threat to the re~l subject. During the Halberstadt raid most of the bombers bombed by radar 'aus psychischen Grunden', which 'zeigt die Eigenschaft der Augen als StraTegie und nicht als personliche Organe der betreffenden Ausgucker. Andrerseits USAF-Oberst a.D. Douglas 10.4.77: Horen sie auf mi t dem -W-ort "::;trategie". Wir kommen darauf, wendet einer der Wiss~nschaftler ein, weil Sie sich "strategic bombing command" nannten, oder auch noch nennen. Kokolores, sagte der Oberst. Sie mussen das als eine normale Tagesschicht in einem Industriebetrieb auffassen ... ' (NG p. 69) The logic of the text then takes it to a consideration of the bombs as

'Die Ware': ever more levels and associations

of the event are taken in in this manner. The reasons why the bombers carried out the attack are gone into in an interview with the Commander of the squadron after the War: 'Die Ware musste runt~r auf die Stadt. Es sind ja teure Sachen. Han kann" das praktisch auch nicht auf die Berge oder das freie Feld hinschrneissen, nachdem es mit viel Arbeitskraft zu Hause hergestellt ist.' (NG p.79) This is the material consequence of Broch's idealist formulation: 'dies alles besagt das namliche, dies ist alles von der namlichen Radikalitat, ist von jener unheimlichen, ich mochte fast sagen, metaphysische Rticksichtslosigkeit, ist von jener auf die Sache und nur auf die Sache gerichteten grausamen Logizitat, die nicht nach rechts, nicht nach links schaut ... ' (15) I

do no t kno,,, if the lnterview is fictional -

terms used suggest it is, plausibly -

i't is not,

the Harxian

"though the rest reads very

though,

matter being dealt with allows,

that important, in that the indeed compels,

such

formulations. The problems deRlt with in the interview are dictated by the nature of the system of aerial warfare involved,

and,

as such,

can be abstracted into a fictional

312. intervie ..... The terms used are, of

~he

of

~eue

text cited up to GeschichteIl,

no~

as is clear from t:he parts reflect:ed in other areas

such as those concerning 'Arbeitskraft

r

in the concentration camps. The text then moves back onto the experient:ial level of the victims. The leader of the fire-service describes how he could have stopped the fire-storm, had he had the appropriate organisational means at his disposal. Near the end of

~eue

Geschichten he appears again,

suggesting the implicit importance of the

thereby

topic~

he

describes the difficulties posed by the new bombs: 'Drei Meter starke bewehrte Eisenbetondecken werden glatt durchschlagen. Was sollten wir da eigentlich machen? ~Ian hatte die Stadte unter diesem Gesichtspunkt ganz anders bauen mlissen' •.. 'Fachkundiges Loschen ist deshalb der entsprechende Umbau der gesamten GesE'llschaft, ihrer Bauweise, ihrer ~lenschen, angefangen mi t sechsjahrigen Kind-ern, denen das ABC nichts gegen das Bomberkommando hilft. Es ist nicht so, dass ich das aus Verzweiflung sage, weil unsere Warnung z.B. vor dem Betreten der Betonbunker in Fr'ankfurt/Hain oder Mannheim' •.. 'im Funk'.... eg an die Kollegen ging, die das eh wussten, wahrend man gewissermassen gar keine Moglichkeit hatte, diese Informationen zu den Menschen zu geben, die sich an den Bunkereingangen drangten. Vielmehr war es zum ~eispiel im April 1945 so, dass wir auf Grund unserer - in Friedenszeiten so nicht zu sammelnden Erfahrungen den direkten Eindruck hatten, die Sache doch in den Griff zu bekommen ... ' (NG p. 611-2) Such a passage contains in essence the paradoxical image of history that

~luge

communicates:

the possibility for

radical chru1ge is revealed by the sheer will and ability of such highly individual figures, logic

reflec~sthe

whose slightly crazy

world they are up against,

to come

to terms '~'i th such massive difficul ties, given the right forms of organisation that his~ory could provide. At the same tir.!8 the negativity is not forgotten: does not get through.

the message

Such figures sustain the text by

constantly suggesting aspects of the problem of the subject,

and by their concreteness in the face of the

J 13 .

Before the last section of Eeft ') a photograph appears of the remains of Halberstadt after the bombing, 1,\'i th the fe llowing ~raL'( quo ta tion undernea th,

i.;hich sugges t s

the major theme: ~lan

sieht, wie dIe Geschich te der Indus trie und das gewordene gegenstandliche Dasein der Industrie das aufgeschlagene Buch der menschlichen BeWu5stseinskrafte, die sinnliche vorliegende menschliche Psychologie ist ••. '(~G p. 103) (Emphases in text) I

This introduces the story of an American psychological researcher who comes to Halberstadt at the end of May when the War is over. What the text in fact becomes is a brilliant demonstration of why the novel tends to fail as a means of response to the most extreme events of the century. The researcher 'suchte alle Stadte auf, "die an Bombardierungen teilgenommen hatten", urn Material zu sammeln fUr eine grundlegende psychologische 5tudie' ... 'Die Leute redeten alle ziemlich gern. Er wusste praktisch schon allesim voraus. Er kannte die Redensart: "An jenem furchtbaren Tag, an dem unsere schone Stadt dem Erdboden gleiche,-emach t ,. . urde" usf. Die Speku la tion nach dem Sinn, die "sl:ereotypen Erlebnisberichte", er hatte diese ge""isse"rmassen fabrikmassigen Phrasen, die sich aus den NUndern hera'lsflitterten, schon "/ gehort in F~rth, Darmstadt, Nurnberg, Wurzburg, FraIlkfurt, \~uppertal usf. I • • • 'Es liess sicll nicht unterscheiden, ob sie rachsUchtig waren. Abgesehen von einer Tiefenschicht, die er vielleicht nicht erreichte (irgendwie funktionierte die Lligenskala nicht), waren sie od und leer wie die Stadtflache, tiber der die Sonne b~litete' ... 'Es schien ihm, als ob die Bev~lkerung, bei offensichtlich eingeborener Erzahllust, die psychische Kraft, sich zu erinnern, genau in den Umrissen der zerstorten Flache der Stadt verloren hatte. Qualitative Antwort einer Befragten: !IAn einem gewissen Punkt der Grausamkeit angekommen, ist es schon gleich, wer sie begangen hat: sie soll nur aufhoren." , (~G p. 10L~-6) (Kluge I s emphasis) The juxtaposition of

~arx's

conception of a materialist

psychology and the destroyed town, industry,

and

the product of human

thus psychology, with the researcher's attempts

to get at the events in terms of a traditional psychology

J14. suggests that at the most extreme points of' modern collective history the literary text can best succeed by a kind of renunciation. Experience is so radically affected, repressed,

reduced,

that the value of literary discourse depends

initially upon a m6re objectified reflection of how this comes about. The scale upon which such situations are generated, and the nature of the systems which generate them,

far transcend the individual and the kind of experience

an individual can ha~e and recount. The text's appropriateness depends upon the extent to which it is'able and prepared to respond to such a dilemma. Neue Geschichten .7

make a radical, difficult approach to it, as well as creating new possibilities for historical experience out of such material by its reflection in the context of the whole work. The horror of the history in question cannot be redeemed by such an approach, but it is prevented from becoming merely another historical 'fact'. It becomes penetrated with the need for things to be different, with the wishes of a non-alienated human subject This is perhaps Kluge's most important achievement in the context of the present study. He, more than any of the novelists considered, finds ways, within a modified epic form,of presenting and reacting to the systems that determine so much of modern history, whilst staying 'close to the data and experience of that history. The texts continually provoke the sense of how such systems are constituted by experiencing individuals,

seeing this

experience as specific historical experience. The synthesis the material is submitted to is not determined by the form of the texts,

as was so often the case with the novels

examined, but by the theoretical mediation which penetrates even the most empirical, documentary aspects. The montage principle then allows the form to create a margin of potential beyond the theoretically mediated material. This does not lead to a totalising synthesis,

rather

)I

J 15. "to a sense of' potentiCll ne"" historical insight.

\;-~il:3t

unambiguously adopting elements of a "transcendental perspective in "their constant use of

theore~ical

material and

their theoretical mediation emDirical material , the . of . texts avoid by their dialectical use of form the kind of synthetic results that were so characteristic of "the novel that attempts to integrate mass history. Notes (1) The main relevant texts by Kluge are the follo~ing: with Oskar ~egt, Offentlichkeit und Erfahrung Ope cit.; Gelegenheitsarbeit einer Skiavin. Zur realistischen Methode Ope cit.; Lernprozesse mit todlichem Ausgang Ffm 1973; Anwesenheitsliste fUr eine Beerdigung Ffm 1974;

Lebensl~ufe.

Neue Gesehichten. Hefte 1-18 'Unheimlichkeit der Zeit' Ffm

1977; . Schlachtbeschreibung. Der organisatorische Aufbau eines UnglUcks Hunich 1978. In all cases I

shall be dealing with the most recent edition

of the work in question. Kluge nearly always revises his fictional work when it is republished. The revision is often substantial, generally. expanding and deepenine the work,

as i-'. Lebens laufe und Schlachtbeschreibung, whose

earlier editions were more limited. Secondary literature on Kluge is, as yet, one can mention: Wilhelm Vosskamp,

limited. Here

'Literatur als Geschichte?

Uberlegung zu dokumentarischen Prosatexten von Alexander Kluge, Klaus Stiller und Dieter KUhn.' p.

in Basis 4 1973

235-50, which refers to the earlier edition of Schlacht-

beschreibu~.

The same applies to Vilmar Geppert,

Der

'andere' historische Roman. Theorie und Strukturen einer diskonti~uierlichen Gatcune Tilbingen

Selli rl1ding,

'l~ein Abs chied von ge s te rn.

Kl;..lges )jeue Geschichten.' a

splendid review,

nc\\'spapers.

1976. Albert von tber . .\lexander

in ?-:erkur 32 1978 p. 205-8 is

but very brief. I have not combed the

J 16. (2) Gelegenheitsarbeit einer 3klnviM Ope cit. p. 215. The final statement is an imaGe of \"eue Geschich-cen.

(3)

- do - p. 200

( 4) Sol z hen i

1:: S

yn, A u ~u s t

1914

0

p.

cit. p. 3 99- l~ 0 0

(5) Alfred Andersch, ~'interspelt Berlin and \{eimar 1976 p. 15 (6) Also in Lernprozesse mit t~dlichem AU5cang p. 71 (7) This aspect of Neue Geschichten can be expanded by considering Kluge's remark in an interview, quoted in 5chi rnding op.

ci t ., that 'er habe in seinem Buch von

Terrorismus sprechen konnen, ohne eine einzige Geschichte tiber einen Terroristen zu schreiben.' p. 208. The general lack of comprehension in the BRD of the links between the failure properly to overcome the Nazi past and the apparently irrational and unjustified violence of the Rote Armee Fraktion is not shared by Kluge. Establishing the nature of such links is difficult and runs the risk of distortion or of easy analogy:

the nature of Neue Geschichten prevents

this. Its major approach to the topic is in terms of how revenge for past evil lives on in a society even when it may seem to have disappeared. The topic is too large to go into in the present context. It does,

though, help suggest

how Kluge's method refuses to let t.istory become the past.

(8) GUnter Wallraff, Neue Reportagen Hamburg 1974 p. 7-29. Wallraff himself is an adherent of the possibilities of the montage principle, 'as he states in Neue Reportagen p.

134.

(9) E.g.: Paragraph 8 of the theses: 'Die Tradition der UnterdrUckten belehrt uns darUber, dass der IIAusnahmezustand", in dem wir leben, die Regel ist. Wir mUssen zu einem Begriff der Geschichte kommen, del' dem entspricht.' Illuminationen Ope cit. p. 254 which describes substantial aspects of Kluge's conception. Benjamin is r8ferring to Nazism: Kluge always has Nazism somewhere present in his work. Fu r t ~L e r

cor res p 0 n den c e 5 are,

of the theses,

for exam p 1 e, p aragr a p h 1 1

a critique of the misinterpretation of

".. ork in Germ~l Social- Democra tic theory (rela ting to ~larx' s

j 1 '/ •

crit:ique of the Goth,'"!. programme), r,.;hich relates to the consequences drawn by ;·Iadloch from a raclicalised version of the same theory. Also, Paragraph 3 of the theses:

'Der Chronist, ~elcher die Ereignisse hererz~hlt, ohne grosse und kleine zu~ unterscheiden,tr~gt damit "der Hahrhei t Rechnung, das~ nichts, was sich je ereignet hat, fur die Geschichte verloren zu geben ist.' (p. 252) which has a lot to do with Kluge's general method . .

(10) Illuminationen Ope cit. p. 258 (11) - do - p. 261 (12) On this issue see Jurgen Habermas,

'Bewusstmachende

oder rettende Kritik. Die Aktualitat Walter in Kultur und Kritik OPe cit. p.

(lJ)

Benj8~ins.'

JJf-2

Cf. L~mmert's essay quoted in the Introduction p. 514,

which suggests the tendency in new developments in fiction and history 'dass die Autoren mindestens ein Stuck ihrer Geschichte ais Beteiligte, arbeitend, hahen .•. I(L~mmert's emphasis)

(14) Illuminationen OPe cit. p. 386

(15) Die SchIafwandler op. ci t. p. 496

~edend

mitgemacht

318.

ei. b 1 i of3' raphy The text 5 are

0

rgaIlised as fo llo',,"s:

the works of the

main individual authors dealt with are given together with the direct secondary litBrature on those authors; then come other literary works mentioned in the text;

then

come general works. Given the nature of the topic no attempt at completeness has been made. Certain works that are not cited ill the text are mentioned because they at some stage were important for the development of the argument. As the thesis was written in Berlin-a few books are cited in the German edition where the tracing of an original English edition did not seem worth the effort. Flaubert Fla~b~rt,

Gustave, Bouvard et P~cuchei,Paris 1965

L'Education sentimentale,Livre de Poche, Paris 1965 Salammbo, Paris 1970 Bruneau, Jean,

'La pr6sence de Flaubert dans L'Education

sentimentala'

in Langages de Flaubert ed. Michel Issacaroff,

Paris 1~76 p. 33-42 Culler, Jonathan, Flaubert:The Uses of Uncertainty, Danahy,

~1.,

'The Esthetics of Documentation:

L'Education sentimentale.' Denomme, R.T.,

1973

Donatio, E.,

1976

in Kentucky Romance Quarterly

'Flaubert and the question of history: notes

for a cri tical anthology.'

91

in Romance Notes 14 1972 p. 61-5

163-71

p.

p.

in Ho dern Language

~o

tes

850-70

Duquette, J .-P.,

'Flaubert,

l'Histoire et l'his"toire.' ;in

Revue d'Histoire Litteraire de la France 1975 p. 344-52 Hill, Leslie,

1974

the case of

'The Theme of Disintegration in Flaubert's

L'Education sentimentale.' 20

Lo~don

'Flaubert and the Rhetoric of Stupidity.'

in Critical Inquiry 3 1975 p. 333-44

319. :< a k am, Gera 1 de,

I

Lei ,3 Bru m air e de L":S d u cat ion

s (' n t i men

tal e

• '

in Europe :'+RS-7 Colloque Flauberc 1969 p. 239-~8 Prendergas~,

Christopher,

'Flaubert: Writing and Xegativity.'

1975 p. 197-213

in Novel 8

Sartre, Jean-Paul,

'La conscience de classe chez Flaubert.'

in Les Temps Modernes 240-1

1966 pp. 1921-51, 2113-2 153

Sherrington, R.S., Three Novels by Flaubert. A Study of Themes and Techniques, London 1970

T~tu, J.-F.,

'Desir et r~volution dans L'Education sentimen1:ale.'

in Litterature 15 1973 p. 88-94 Vidalenc, Jean,

'Gustave Flaubert, historien de 1a revolution

dB 1848.' in Europe 485-7 Colloque Flaubert 1969 p. 51-71 20la Zola, Emile, L'Argent, Paris 1974 La D~b~cle, Fasquelle, Paris 1959 Germinal Paris 1959

Berie, Jean,

Zola et les mythes ou de 1a nausl:e au salut,

Paris 1971 Cirillo, N.R., 'Marxism as Hy:th in Zola's Germinal.' in Comparative Li terature Studies 1 '!. 1971 p. 244-55 Descotes, Haurice, Le personnage de Napoleon I I I dans les 'Rougon-Nacquart', Paris 1970 Dezalay, Auguste (ed.), Lectures de Zola, Paris 1973 de Faria, Neide, Structures et Unite dans les

'Rougon-Nacquart'.

La Po~tique du cycle., Paris 1977 He\\'itt, Winston, Through Those Living Pillars:

:~Ian

and

Nature in the Works of Emile Zola, Paris, The Hague de Lat1:re, Alain, Le realisme se10n 20la.

Arch~ologie

197~

d'une

intelligence, Presses Universitaires de France 1975 ~lann,

Heinrich,

Pelletier,

41 1971

'lola' in Geist lind Tat, Munich 196J p.138-21J

'Lukacs, p.

lecteur de Zola.' in Cahiers

~aturalistes

58-74

Serres, Nichel,

. 10""" Zola:Feux et signaux de brume, p arl.S -,I't

]20. \~- a 1 t

'z 0

e r , Rod 0 1 p he,

1a

e

t;

1 a C 0 mIn u n e:

L-n e xiI vol 0 n t air e . '

in Cahiers Xaturalistes ~J 1972 p. 25-37 TolstoJ:: To lstoy, Leo, ....-ar and Pence Trans. Rosemary Zdmonds, Harmondsworth 1957 B~rlin,

Sir Isaiah, The Hedgeho~ and the F_o_x__:A __n__E~s_s~a~y~~o_n

Tolstoy's View of History,

~ew

York 1953

Greenwood, E.B., Tolstoy: The Comprehensive Vision, London 1975 Martin du Gard Martin du Gard,

Roger, Oeuvres

compl~tes,Pleiade

edition,

Paris 1955

Boak,

Denis, Roger Martin du Gard, Oxf~rd 1963 Roger Martin du Gard, Paris 1961

Brenner, Jacques, Garguillo, du Gard:

Ren6, Ie

La gen~se des

probl~me

'Thibault' de Roger Martin

de la rupture de construction

entre 'La mort du p~re'

'L'~t~

1914', Paris 1974 Gibson, Robert:, Roger Martin du Gard, London 1961 Gilbert, John,

et

ISymbols of Continuity and the Unity of

Les Thibault.' in Image and Theme. Studies in Modern French Fiction ed. Frohock, Harvard 1969 Roger Martin du Gard, New York 1968

Savage,

Catherine,

Schalk,

David L., Boger Har tin du Gard. The Novelist and

History,

Ithaca, New York 1967

Schlobach, Jochen, Geschichte und Fiktion in

'L'Et~

1914'

von Roger Martin du Gard,Munich 1965

~lan!1

Mann, Thomas, Buddenbrooks. Verrall einer Familie, Ffm 1960 Stimtliche Erztihlungen,Ffm 1963 Der Zauberber~,Fischer paperback, Ffm 1967 'EinfUhrung in den Zauberberg.'

in Schriften und

Reden zur Literatur z Kunst lind Philosophie, FI~m 1968

., !

.~

~'iann,

Thomas,

Doktor FausTus.

F i s c ne r

Fa u s t 1.1 s,

Die Lntstehun,2' d9s Doktor

Son d era u s ~~ a t\ e,

F fm 1 97 6

Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen in Politische Reden und Schri:ften I,Ffm

1960

Essays III from ed. Hermann Kurzke, Ausgewahlte

1978

Essays in drei Banden,Ffm

Schriften zur Politik, Ffm

Brode,

Hanspeter,

1970

'~lusik und Zei tgeschichte im Roman:

Thomas Hanns Doktor Faustus.', Schiller Jahrbuch

17 1973

p. l~55-72 Carnegy,

Patrick, Faust as Musician,

Cunliffe,

w.G.,

'Cousin Joachim's steel helmet. Der Zauberberg

and the War.' Fischer,

Ernst,

68 1976

in Monatshefte

p.

409-17

'Doktor Faustus und die deutsche Katastroph€.

Eine Auseinandersetzung mi t Menschheit,

1973

New York

Vienna

Thomas Mann.'

in Kunst und

1949 p. 37-97

Forster, l{olf-Dietrich,

'Leverklihn,

Schonberg, und Thomas

Mann. Musikalische Strukturen und Kunstreflexion in D?ktor Faustus.' Gutmann, H.,

in ~VJS

'Das Musikkapit€l in Thomas

in German Quarterly Heimann,

Bodo,

47 1976

W.M.,

p.

..

~lanns

Der Zauberberg.'

415-31

'Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus und die

philosophie Adornos.' Honsa,

1975 p. 694-720

DVJS

~lusik­

38 1964 p. 248-60

'Parody and narrator in Thomas Mann's Doctor

Faustus and The Holy Sinner.'

in Orbis Litterarum

29

1974 p. 61-76 Karthaus, ~VJ~

Ulrich,

'Der Zauberberg -

ein Zei troman.'

44 1970 p. 269-305

Meixner, Horst,

'Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus.

verstandnis des deutschen Spatbtirgertums.' Jahrbuch Reed,

in

Zum SelbstSchiller

16 1972 p. 610-22

T.J., Thomas Nann. The Uses of Tradition, Oxford 1974 'Thomas

~rode~n

~lann:

The Writer as Historian of his Time.'

Lw"lguage :::\evi '.:~V

71 1976

p.

82-96

in

322. Reiss, G.,

I

SUndenfall-~rodell

von Kleists ~lanns.!

und 26manform: Zur lntegratior,

~larionettentheater

Thematik im h'erk Thomas

Schi ller ,lahrbuch 13 1969 p. 426- 54

Sauerland, Karol,

I

"Er wusste noch mehr ... " Zum Konzeptiol1s-

bruch von Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus unter dem Einflu5s Adornos.'

in Orbis Litterarum 34 1979 p.

Schroter, Klaus,

130-45

'Der historische Roman. Zur Kritik seiner

spatbUrgerlichen Erscheinung.' in Exil und Innere Emigration, ed. Jost Hermand Ffm 1972 Sera, Manfred, Utopie und Parodie bei Musil, Broch, und Thomas Mann,Bonn 1969 Sternberger,D.,

'Deutschl~ld

in Doktor Faustus und Doktor

in Deutschland.' in Herkur 29 1975 p. 1123-40

Faustus

Swales, Martin, Tobin, F.J.,

'The Story and the Hero.' DVJS 46 p. 359-76

'Final Irony in Der Zauberberg.' in German Life

and Letters JO 1976 p. 72-6 Vaget, H.,

'Kai sersaschern als geis tige Lebensform. Zur

Konzeption der deutschen Geschichte in Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus.' in Der deutsche Roman und seine historischen und politischmBedeutungen ed. Wolfgang Paulsen,Bern 1977

p. 200-35 Voss, L., Die Entstehung von Thomas Ha....'1ns Roman 'Doktor Faustus, Ttibingen 1975 Walser, Martin,

'Ironie als hochstes Lebensmi ttel oder:

Lebensmittel der Hochsten.' in Text und Kritik Thomas Hann Munich 1976 p. 5-26 Broch Broch, Hermann, Die Schlafwandler, Vol.

1 Kommentierte

Werkausgabe ed. P.M. Ltitzeler, Ffm 1978 Der Tod des Vergil, Vol 4 Kommentierte Werkausgabe cd. Lutzeler Ffm 1976 Die Schuldlosen,. Roman in elf Erzahlungen \"01. 5 Kommentierte Werkausgabe ed. LUtzeler Ffm 197~

,

)2J.

Broch, Herr:1an:1,~chriften zur Literrltur/Kritik Vol. 9/1 ~erk2usgabe

Kommentierte

ed. LUtzeler Ffm 1975

Schriften zur Literatur/Theorie Vol 9/2 Kommentierte Werkausgabe ed. LUtzeler Ffm 1975 Ph!~osophischc Schriften/Kritik Vol 10/1 Kommentierte

Werkausgabe ed. LUtzeler Ffm 1977 Philosophische Schriften/Theorie Vol 10/2 Kommentierte Werkausgabe ed. LUtzeler Ffm 1977 ~Ia5senpsychologie.

Schriften aus dem Xachlass. ed.

Wolfgang Rothe,Ztirich 1959 o

Brude-Firnau, Gisela,(ed.), Haterialien zu Hermann Brochs 'Die Schlafwandler', Ffm 1972 Cohn, Dorrit C.,

'The Sleep,,'alkers' Elucidations of Hermann

Broch's Trilogy,The Hague and Paris 1966 Durzak, Manfred, Hermann Broch in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Hamburg 1966 'Hermann Broch und James Joyce.' in DVJS 40 1966 p.4J-85 (ed.), Hermann Broch. Perspektiven der Forschung, ~funi,ch 1 9-; 2 Geissler, Rolf, 'Hermann Broch. Die Schlafwandler.' in ' MBglichkeiten des moderneh deutschen Romans, Ffm,

Berlin Bonn 1962 p.

Hasubeck, Peter,

ed. Geissler

102-60

'Geschichtsphilosophie und Erzahlkunst.

Bemerkungen zu Karl Gutzkow und Hermann Broch.'

in

Etudes Germaniques 22 1967 p. 515-J7 Hund, Wulf D.,

'Zerfall der Werte 1-10:Uber den erkenntnis-

theoretischen Ansatz bei Hermann Broch.' in Literatur und Kriti~ J6/7 1969 p. 400-10 Kreutzer,

Leo, Erkenntnistheorie und Prophetie. Hermann

Broehs Romantrilogie 'Die Schlaf\-"culdler', Tlibingen 1966 Lutzeler, P.H., Hermann Broeh - Ethik und Politik: Studien zum FrilhhTerk lind zur

RO:1!an

tri logie 'Lie Schlafw2nd leI' '

!vlunich 1973 ~lnndelko\~',

Karl Hobert, Hermar~n Drochs Rcmantrilogie 'Die

.schlClfw211ctl"?r t }!ejdelberg 1975

Second edi"tion, ,. . ith ne\\' postscript,

32~.

:-lene;es, Karl, h.ri tische Studien zur h-ertph; l050phie Hermann 3rochs, TtibinGen 1970 Osterle, Heiuz D.,

'Hermann Broch, Die Schlaf\,:andler:

Kri tik der zentralet1 ~':etapher.'

in DVJS 44 1970 p. 229-63

'Hermann Broch, Die Schlafwandler: Revolution und Apokalypse.' Roberts, David,

in Pi·lLA 86 1971 p. 946-58 'The Sense of an Ending: Apocalyptic Per-

spectives in the Twentieth Century German Novel.' in Orbis Litterarum 32 1977 p. Steinecke, Hartmut,

140-58

'Hermann Broch als poli tischer Dichter.'

in Deutsche Beitrage zur Geistigen tberlieferung 6 1970 p.

140-83

Hermann Broch und der polyhistorische Roman. Studien zur Theorie und Technik eines Romantyps der yloderne, Bonn 1968 White, J.J.,

'The Identity of Bertrand in Hermann Broch's

Die Schlafwandler.' in German Life and Letters 24 1971 p.

135-44

Kluge Kluge, Alexander, Gelegenheitsarbeit einer Sklavin. Zur realistischen Methode,Ffm

1975

Lebenslaufe. Anwesenheitsliste flir eine Ffm

Beerdi~,

1974 Lernprozesse mit todlichem Ausgang,Ffm

1973

Neue Geschichten. Hefte 1-18 'Unheimlichkeit der

Ze i t ' , F fm 197 7 Schlachtbeschreibung. Der organisatorische Aufbau eines Unglticks, Munich Kl u g e, .'.\. .L e x an d e r , an d 1

Erfahrung.

ZUT

~ 1,

1978

e g t , Oskar , affentlichkeit und

Organisationsanalyse von blirgerlicher

lind proletarischer affentlichkeit, Ffm 1972 Schirnding, Albert von,

'Kein Abschied von gestern. tiber

Alexander Kluge's ~eue Geschichten.'

in Merkur 32 1978 p.205-8

Vo s skarnp,

\~- i

Ihe 1m,

'Li 1: e ra tur als Ge'schi ch t e 7 Cber leg-ung

zu dokumentariEchen Prosatexten von Alexander Kluge, Klaus Stiller und Dieter Kuhn.'

in Basis 4 1973 p. 235-50

Other Literary "orks Andersch, Alfred, Winterspelt, Berlin and Weimar 1976 Barbusse, Henri, Le Feu, Paris 1916 Dablin, Alfred, November 1918. Eine deutsche Revolution, ~Iunich

1978

Eliot, George, Middlemarch, Harmondsworth 1965 Fielding, Henry, Tom Jones, Harmondsworth 1966 Goethe, J.W. yon, Die Wahlverwandtschaften,Berlin 1963 Grass, GUnter, Die Blechtrommel, Neuwied and Darmstadt 1974 Hesse, Hermann, Demian, Ffm 1971 Hofmannsthal, Hugo yon,

'Ein Brief' in Gesammelte Werke

in Einzelausgaben ed. H. Steiner, Prasa II Ffm 1959 p. 7-20 Hughes, Richard, The Fox in the Attic, Harmondsworth 1964 JUnger, Ernst,

'Die totale Nobilmachung.' in

Essa~I

Stuttgart

(No date) Kracauer,

Siegfried, Ginster, Ffm 1972

Lawrence, D.H., Women in

Lo~~,

Harmondsworth 1960

1964

Mann, Heinrich, Der Untertan, Hunic' r.lusil, Robert,

Der

ohne Eigenschaften, Hamburg 1952

~Iann

Die Verwirrungen des Zaglings Torless, Hamburg 1963 Pet e r sen, Jan, Un s e're S t ra 5 s e , Mun i c h 1 978 Proust, Marcel, Le temps retrouv~, Final volume of A 1a recherche du temps perdu, Paris 1954 Roth, Joseph, Das Scott,

Radetzkymarsch, Hamburg 1957

Spinnennet~

Ffm 1970

Sir Val ter, ',·iaverley, T. Nelson and Sons, no da1:e or

place of publication. Sol z hen its yn,

Ale x an d e r , Augu s t

i

91 ~ ,

t

ran s. N i c hae 1 G len ny,

Harmondsworth 1974 The Gul2g Archipelago I,

Glasgow

trans. Thomas P.

~hitney,

1971~

Lenin in ZUrich,

trans. H. T.

Willets, London 1976

Stencthal, La Chartceuse de Parme, Paris 1962 .!.ucien Lell\·;en, Pari s 1962 Sterne, La\.;rence, Tri s tra111 51-landy, Harmonds'.·;ort:h 1967 wallraff, GUnter, );eue Reportagen, H