Five portraits : modernity and the imagination in twentieth-century German writng / Michael André Bernstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bernstein, Michael André, 1947-

Series:

Rethinking theory

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Celan, Paul.

Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940.

Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976.

Musil, Robert, 1880-1942.

Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875-1926.

German literature--20th century--History and criticism.

German literature.

Modernism (Literature)--Germany.

Modernism (Literature).

Criticism and interpretation.

Germany.

Imagination in literature.

Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875-1926--Criticism and interpretation.

Rilke, Rainer Maria.

Musil, Robert, 1880-1942--Criticism and interpretation.

Musil, Robert.

Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976--Criticism and interpretation.

Heidegger, Martin.

Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940--Criticism and interpretation.

Benjamin, Walter.

Celan, Paul--Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

x, 150 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Evanston, Ill. : Northwestern University Press, 2000.

Summary:

In Five Portraits, one of the most acute critical thinkers of our time presents essays on five of the most important writers of the past hundred years. The result is a remarkable examination of a moment of cultural crisis--a time when these writers, caught between the dream of creating an abiding masterpiece and the reality of a brutal culture fascinated by apocalyptic catastrophe, deliberately put themselves and their work at the center of the storm.

Five Portraits analyzes the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Celan, Robert Musil, Martin Heidegger, and Walter Benjamin: two poets, a novelist, a philosopher, and a literary and cultural theorist. Michael Andre Bernstein's essays, written in elegant and jargon-free prose, create a vivid image of a cultural epoch whose aspirations and torments continue to shape the world we inhabit today.

Bernstein's concerns are not limited to literary and philosophical issues. The complex relationship among the worlds of politics, history, and high culture is at the heart of Five Portraits. Bernstein shows how the seductiveness of solitary introspection can, when combined with a will to political power, produce devastation. What Hitler called the Fuhrerprinzip, the right of the superior being to the unquestioning obedience of others, depends on a culturally shared mythologizing of the genius's special insight. The charismatic power of such a claim is inextricably bound up with the history of modernism itself. It is that era when modernism flourished, its inspiring triumphs as well as its monstrous excesses, that Five Portraits lets us see in all its fascinating detail.

Contents:

Introduction: Five Portraits and the Modernist Masterpiece 1

Chapter 1 Rainer Maria Rilke: The Book of Inwardness 11

Chapter 2 Robert Musil: Precision and Soul 35

Chapter 3 Martin Heidegger: Judgment Terminal and Interminable 57

Chapter 4 Walter Benjamin: Apocalypse and Memory 79

Chapter 5 Paul Celan: Radiance That Will Not Comfort 99.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 125-141) and index.

ISBN:

0810117746

OCLC:

45191698