Table Of ContentThe German Joyce
The Florida James Joyce Series
University Press of Florida
Florida A&M University, Tallahassee
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers
Florida International University, Miami
Florida State University, Tallahassee
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The German Joyce
Robert K. Weninger
Foreword by Sebastian D. G. Knowles
University Press of Florida
Gainesville/Tallahassee/Tampa/Boca Raton
Pensacola/Orlando/Miami/Jacksonville/Ft. Myers/Sarasota
Copyright 2012 by Robert K. Weninger
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America. This book is printed on Glatfelter Natures
Book, a paper certified under the standards of the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC).
It is a recycled stock that contains 30 percent post-consumer waste and is acid-free.
The publication of this book was funded in part by a grant from King’s College London.
This book may be available in an electronic edition.
17 16 15 14 13 12 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weninger, Robert K.
The German Joyce / Robert K. Weninger ; foreword by Sebastian D. G. Knowles.
p. cm.—(The Florida James Joyce series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary: An exploration of the influence of and connection to German writers
and literary traditions in the works of James Joyce.
ISBN 978-0-8130-4166-7 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-8130-4166-X (alk. paper)
1. Joyce, James, 1882–1941—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Joyce, James, 1882–
1941—German influences. 3. English fiction—German influences.
I. Knowles, Sebastian D. G. (Sebastian David Guy) II. Title. III. Series: Florida
James Joyce series.
PR6019.O9Z943 2012
823.'912—dc23 2012009910
The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State
University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic
University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida
State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University
of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University
of West Florida.
University Press of Florida
15 Northwest 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32611-2079
http://www.upf.com
Contents
List of Figures vi
Foreword vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part I. The Nacheinander: The German Reception of Joyce
1. Exiles, Act I: Enter James Joyce, a “Poet of Silence and Truth” 13
2. “The Homer of Our Time”: The German Reception of Ulysses,
1919–1945 24
3. “Joyce has made me a different reader: I am just glad I don’t have to
understand him”: The Institutionalization of “Joyce” after 1945 65
Part II. The Nebeneinander: Intertextual Echoes
4. “A Great Poet on a Great Brother Poet”: A Parallactic Reading of Goethe
and Joyce 99
5. Joyce, DADA & Co.: Modernist ConInfluences 133
6. The Epitome of the Epiphany: Stephen and Malte, Joyce and Rilke 158
7. “‘Concordances’ of Utter Chaos Post Rem”: A Portrait of James Joyce as
a Chapter in German (Marxist) Literary History 174
Notes 205
Bibliography 225
Index 249
Figures
5.1. Hugo Ball reciting his sound poems in 1916 137
5.2. Hugo Ball, “Karawane” 137
5.3. Richard Huelsenbeck, Marcel Janco, and Tristan Tzara, “L’Amiral
cherche une maison à louer” 144
Foreword
Effi Briest’s father had a favorite phrase, as Robert Weninger reminds us at
the end of his introduction: “ein weites Feld”—“a wide field.” It was his way
of dismissing the incomprehensible, and as such has made its way into the
lexicon of useful German phrases, along with Schadenfreude, Lebensraum, and
Schlimmbesserung (the act of making something worse by improving it). The
study of Joyce’s reception history in Germany is truly ein weites Feld, yet in
Robert Weninger we have a scholar with the historical and critical range to
scan the entire ground.
Within these pages you will find not only an exhaustive review of Joyce’s di-
rect influence on German literary production in the twentieth century (what
Weninger calls rapports de fait), you will also find detailed those elective affini-
ties, or intertextual echoes, that defy categorization, as when Goethe, Rilke,
and the Dadaists appear to be writing in the key of Joyce. The dynamics of
reception are never so compelling as here, as the march of Nazism across the
landscape of German ideas gives real urgency to the terms of the debate, and
as the shifting requirements of Marxist ideology on the other side of the po-
litical spectrum place Ulysses front and center as the quintessential literary
object of the twentieth century. To critics of both the left and the right, Ulysses
is “entartete Kunst” (degenerate art); it is Weninger’s great gift that he can find
a balance between so many one-sided arguments, and steer his craft safely past
the fascist rock and the Marxist whirlpool. He shows us Bloch’s corrective to
Lukács’s rejection of Ulysses, and Brecht’s defense of the book as more popu-
list than the work of Thomas Mann. He points out that Ulysses, despite being
blacklisted in Nazi Germany for its lack of “any healthy ethically racial bond,”
was allowed to stay in print in Germany until April 1939, an act attributed to
“commercial cynicism.” The subject of these critiques is the real story: Ulysses
becomes, as Weninger suggests, “a defining space” for critics of all political
viii · Foreword
persuasions. Oscillating between the nacheinander (Weninger’s term for re-
lations that are real, and take place in time) and the nebeneinander (textual
simultaneities that take place out of time, in literary space), The German Joyce
is a masterwork of sustained analysis, assured writing, and careful conviction.
Three things are clear as a result of this book. First, if Joyce can come un-
der attack from both Marxists and fascists, then he must be doing something
right. Second, if Fitzgerald is right that the test of a first-rate intelligence is to
be able to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time, then Weninger
passes that test. And third, we now know that Joyce’s connection with German
literature and criticism is a rich field for scholarly study; it has taken an expert
gardener to make the flowers bloom.
Sebastian D. G. Knowles
Series Editor
Acknowledgments
This volume has been long in the making. In many ways, its point of origin can
be traced back to the moment sometime in the mid- to late 1970s when I began
studying the works of James Joyce and when I embarked on my dissertation
on the reception of James Joyce by the German writer Arno Schmidt. As I will
note in my “Introduction,” this book represents something of a return to these
roots in reception studies. But in doing so it combines my old interests with
more recent ones, such as comparative literary theory, European Modernism,
Goethe, Rilke, and twentieth-century art and art theory.
Here I wish to take the opportunity to thank all those academic colleagues
and collaborators, research assistants, and friends as well as institutions who
have helped me on my journey mostly in intellectual terms (by reading and
commenting on drafts, collecting and referencing resources, answering que-
ries, providing inspiration and encouragement) but at times also in more
material ways through travel and research funding, sabbatical release time,
or sending me materials, essays, and information that would have otherwise
remained inaccessible; I list them in alphabetical order: Jeremy Adler, Derek
Attridge, Meghan Barnes, Morris Beja, the British Academy, William Brock-
mann, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Jörg Drews, Ruth
Frehner, Michaela Gelsenkirchen, Gerald Gillespie, Marta Goldmann, Mi-
chael Groden, King’s College London, Sebastian Knowles, Susanne Kord,
Paul Michael Lützeler, Friedhelm Rathjen, Egon Schwarz, Fritz Senn, Sam
Slote, Miriam Steuer, Rainer Vollmar, Washington University in Saint Louis,
Andreas Weigel, John J. White, and Ursula Zeller, as well as the anonymous
reviewers of the manuscript. Special thanks go to Eivind A. Boe for his metic-
ulous copyediting of the manuscript and alerting me to some of my eccentrici-
ties of expression and style, Klaus Reichert for getting me hooked on Joyce
when I was a student at Frankfurt University, and David Hayman for helping
