David Damrosch - Auerbach in Exile

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Auerbach in ExileAuthor(s): David DamroschReviewed work(s):Source: Comparative Literature, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), pp. 97-117Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of the University of Oregon

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SPRING 1995

Volume

47,

Number

2

DAVID

DAMROSCH

uerbach

n

x i l e

FEW WORKS

of

modern

literary

criticism

have

been

so

widely

admired

as Erich

Auerbach's

masterwork

Mimesis,

and

yet

Auerbach has found

surprisingly

few followers.

Though

Mimesis

is

one of a handful of

works

that

defined

comparative

literature

in

the

postwar

era,

the scholars

who

continue to cite and to

study

the

book

show

little interest

in

doing

anything

of the

kind

themselves.

The book lives on, in effect, only in fragments; while people will

dispute

or refine

an

argument

in one or

another

of Auerbach's

chapters,

the book as a

whole

has not

inspired

further

work

of

comparable

range

or

synoptic

ambition.

The

case of Mimesis

is

part

of a more

general

question:

why

have

the students

of such

generalists

as

Auerbach,

Ernst Robert

Curtius,

and Leo

Spitzer

confined

themselves

to far

narrower

fields of

study?

Auerbach's

exile in

Istanbul

seems,

in

retrospect,

to

have

been

neither so

pro-

longed

nor so

complete

as

his

book's

later exile here

in

America.

Why is this so?

We

may

observe

that,

as

early

as the

publication

of

Frye's

Anatomy of

Criticism

n

1957,

theory began

to

eclipse literary history

as

the

ground

of

broad,

generalizing

work.

Yet

the

question

re-

mains

why

this shift occurred to

begin

with.

One

might go

further

and

say

that

even

at

the

time Auerbach

was

writing

Mimesis,

the era

of the

philological

method

had

ended,

and no

new

generation

was

being

trained

to do his

kind

of

work even

if

they

wanted

to. This

is

Edward Said's

view,

for

example,

in a recent

article

on

the

state of

literary studies. Even as he argues that "the tiresome wheel-spin-

ning

and elaboration"

of much

literary

theory

have

gotten

out of

hand

by

now,

he

adds

a

caveat:

This is

not to

say

that

we

should

return

to

traditional

philological

and

scholarly

approaches

to

literature.

No one is

really

educated to do

that

honestly

anymore,

for

if

you

use Erich

Auerbach and Leo

Spitzer

as

your

models

you

had

better be

familiar

with

eight

or

nine

languages

and most of the

literatures

written

in

them,

as

well

as

archival, editorial, semantic,

and

stylistic

skills that

disappeared

in

Eu-

rope

at

least two

generations ago.

("News

of

the World"

14)

97







COMPARATIVE

LITERATURE

Auerbach

and

Spitzer

themselves

felt uncertain as to

whether

their

methods could be

transplanted

to this

country,

a

concern

Spitzer directly expressed

as

early

as

1951

in

his

uncomfortable

article

"The

Formation of an American

Humanist." Yet

there

are

still

many

fields,

from

Classics

to Indic

studies,

where no one

thinks

it remarkable

for scholars to be

expected

to

master half a

dozen or more

languages,

and

in

which

philological

method re-

tains

a

broad

prestige.

The real

question

is

why

students

of

Euro-

pean literature no longer feel it important to retain these skills.

Equally, many

scholars do

still

practice

"traditional

scholarly

ap-

proaches

to literature"

-

but almost

always

in

relatively narrowly

defined

fields and

periods,

without

the

grand

historical

sweep

of

an

Auerbach,

a

Curtius,

or indeed a

Northrop

Frye. Why

do

people

no

longer

feel that

a clear

view

of the

whole

is a

necessary

basis

for

the

study

of

individual

moments

in

the

history

of Euro-

pean

literature?

Of

course,

in

order

to

consider a view

of the

whole as

necessary,

we would first of all need to feel that it is possible. Can one ad-

equately

survey

the

long

history

of

Western

European

literature

(not

to

range

more

widely

still)

without

one's

own

parochial

con-

cerns

and

competencies

distorting

the

picture

to

an

unacceptable

degree?

From

the

first,

even

Auerbach's admirers had

an

uneasy

sense

that

what

he

was

attempting,

however

brilliantly

and

movingly presented,

was

inherently impossible. My

argument

here

will

be that Auerbach

shared

his

readers'

uncertainty

to a

surpris-

ing

degree;

Mimesis itself

is

deeply

divided

as to the

nature

and

even the viability of its own project. The tensions within

Auerbach's work

may

have

strengthened

his

early

readers' inclina-

tion to focus

on more circumscribed

bodies of

material,

yet

his

students did not

resolve

those

tensions but

merely displaced

them

when

they

turned to

specialized

work

and

to

literary

theory.

Auerbach's

problems

are

very

much

with

us to

this

day,

and

exam-

ining

them

can

have

more than

historical interest.

Like much

current

work,

Mimesis is

caught

in

a double bind be-

tween

scholarly

objectivity

and

personal

commitment,

fidelity

to

history versus the shaping force of the scholar's own moment.

Auerbach both

reveals

and

represses

his

own

present reality

as

he

investigates

"the

representation

of

reality

in

Western

literature."

He set

himself,

in

fact,

an

impossible

task: to become an

objective

relativist,

faithful to

his

texts

on their

own

terms

while

also ac-

knowledging

his

own

role as observer

and

interpreter,

a role

placed

under

particular

stress

by

the

exigencies

of

the Second

98







AUERBACH

World War.

Watching

Auerbach's

efforts

to

negotiate

these treach-

erous

waters

can

give

us a

vantage point

to assess our

own

efforts,

rarely

more

successful than

Auerbach's,

to do

justice

both to the

traditions

we

have received

and to the needs of

our

contemporary

cultural moment.

Begun

in

exile

in

1942

and

completed

in

April

1945

(the

very

month of Hitler's

death),

Mimesis

stands as an affirmation

of

the

scholar's

ability

to rise

above

every

obstacle that

adverse

historical

circumstances can present. Or, to put it differently: Auerbach re-

sponds

to the loss of his

homeland and the

collapse

of his

scholarly

world

through

the

recreation of

European

culture,

both

in

the

evocation

of texts

from across the tradition and

by

the

display

of

humanistic

scholarship

at its

best,

with

analyses

at once

judicious

and

loving, objective

and

deeply personal.

As

Said's

long,

ambiva-

lent interest

in

Auerbach

attests,

the

book's

power

was

by

no

means limited to the

early

postwar

years.

Over

the

years,

Mimesis

has seemed to

many

to be the essence

and

the culmination

of

liter-

ary analysis, literary history, and comparative literature, all rolled

into one.

More than that:

Mimesis

is

an entire

world.

Auerbach's readers

were drawn into this

world first and foremost

by

his

voice,

so often

labelled

"magisterial,"

yet

curiously

intimate

as

well,

with

its

strangely intoxicating

blend of ironic

detachment

and

moral ur-

gency.

Then

too,

to

read

Mimesis

is to

live

in

its

world

for

a

long

while,

and this

world,

like

Proust's,

is

a

true modernist heter-

ocosm:

not an alien

world,

but our

own

world

made

new.

Our

world, in fact, both lost and found at once: the loss symbolized by

the

cataclysm

of the

Second

World War

and

Auerbach's own

exile

during

it,

often

hinted at

in

the

body

of the book and

movingly

brought

forward

in

the

epilogue,

almost

as an aside

-

"I

may

men-

tion that the book

was written

during

the

war

and

at

Istanbul";

and

at

the

same time

a

recovery

of that lost

world,

a

recovery

staged

precisely through

reading.

Auerbach indicates as much in

his

clos-

ing

lines:

"Nothing

now remains but to find

him

-

to

find the

reader,

that is.

I

hope

that

my study

will reach its readers

-

both

my friends of former years, if they are still alive, as well as all others

for

whom

it

was intended. And

may

it contribute to

bringing

to-

gether

again

those

whose

love

for

our

western

history

has

serenely

persevered"

(557).

Like

Joyce,

Auerbach

filters this recreation of a

library,

a

com-

munity,

and

a

history

through

an

interpretation

of

the

figure

of

Odysseus.

In a

reversal

suggesting

an inverse relation

of scholar-

99







COMPARATIVE

LITERATURE

ship

to

literature,

he

presents

this return not

at the end

but

in

the

very

first words of his book: "Readers of the

Odyssey

will

remember

the

well-prepared

and

touching

scene

in

book

19,

when

Odysseus

has at last come

home,

the

scene

in

which

the

old

housekeeper

Euryclea,

who had

been his

nurse,

recognizes

him

by

a scar on his

thigh"

(3).

The

great

modernist themes are

here,

in

these

opening

words:

reading,

memory,

the intimate

linkage

of

form to

emotion

(well-prepared

and

touching),

the cautious

homecoming

from a

long exile (a nostos without nostalgia), the crucial value of recogni-

tion,

and the

crystallization

of all

these themes

in

the

reading

of

history

in

the

message

of

the

body,

as

figured

in the

scar on the

hero's

thigh.

Auerbach's

focus,

however,

immediately

shifts

away

from

Odysseus

to his

wife

Penelope

and

his

nurse

Euryclea,

and

in

this

we

may

sense

as

much

of

Woolf

as of Proust and

Joyce.

Auerbach

subtly

invites

us to see

ourselves

reflected more in

the

women

than

in

Odysseus:

it

is

they

who

observe, react,

respond,

they

who

tend

Odysseus, they who have nurtured him, and the memory of him,

all

along.

Odysseus

may

be the author

of the

scene of his

home-

coming,

but the

women

are its

interpreters,

an

audience

who also

must take

part

in

the action.

They

must

do so

with

understanding,

sympathy,

and

tact,

if

the hero

is to be restored

to his home.

Like

memory

itself

-

her

self,

in

Greek

thought

-

Euryclea

and

Penelope

are the muses

of

Odysseus's

story.

On

Auerbach's first

page

(to

adopt

an

appropriately

stylistic

analysis), Odysseus

is the

subject

of

five active

verbs;

Euryclea

and

Penelope

are

the

subjects

of fourteen. Woolf, who privileges the feminine eye and mind in

this

way,

is the

subject

of

Auerbach's

final

chapter,

in

which

Joyce

and Proust make brief

appearances

as

well.

As Bruce

Robbins has

noted,

Auerbach

often focuses

on

servants;

his

emphasis

here on

Euryclea

as

she

tends

Odysseus

inaugurates

a

frame that

will

close

with

his

long

quotation

from To

the

Lighthouse,

in

which

Mrs.

Ramsay

talks

with

her

son,

measuring

her

knitting against

his

leg

even

as

the maternal

figure

of

Odysseus's

nurse

takes

the measure

of the

scar on his

thigh

as

she

bathes him.

Long

before we can

begin

to perceive the beauties of

Auerbach's narrative

structures,

we

are

already

seduced

by

his

style,

itself

both

his central

subject

and the

ground

of

being

of his

own

presentation.

Auerbach's

characterization of

Homeric

style

could

apply

to

his

own

writing

as

well:

The

separate

elements of a

phenomenon

are most

clearly

placed

in

relation

to

one

another;

a

large

number of

conjunctions,

adverbs,

particles,

and other

syntac-

100









COMPARATIVE

LITERATURE

bilitate

Western

culture,

and

particularly

Judeo-Christian

culture,

from the nationalistic

Aryanism

of the

Nazis. Thus

the

apparently

neutral

juxtaposition

of Genesis

and

the

Odyssey

serves

as a

power-

ful,

and

polemical,

counter

to

anti-Semitic

dismissals

ofJewish

cul-

ture,

with

Jewish

psychological complexity

and

historical con-

sciousness

complementing-or

even

trumping-Winckelmannian

Greek

clarity

and

harmony.

There

is

evidence

in

Mimesis

to

support

Green's

thesis,

but

there

is little in the book that supports it openly. Any direct cultural po-

lemic

in

the book

occurred

not

by

Auerbach's

wish

but

despite

his

own

intentions.

The

contrast

both

with

Spitzer

and

with

Curtius

is

notable.

The

prefaces

and

opening

chapters

to

their

major

works

of the 1930s

and

1940s locate their

work within

their

own

careers

and

their

own

times,

emphasizing

their anti-Nazi

intent.

Curtius

first attacked

the Nazi cultural

program

in

a

remarkable

polemic,

Deutscher Geist

in

Gefahr,

which

he

published

in

1932,

on

the

eve

of

Hitler's accession to

power.

His

preface

to

European

Literature

and

the Latin Middle Ages (1948) also stresses that his book "is not the

product

of

purely

scholarly

interests,

that it

grew

out of a concern

for

the

preservation

of

Western

culture"

(viii).

It is also

notable

that he

made a

point

of

publishing

a

version

of

this

preface

in

1945,

as a sort of call

to

postwar

cultural

reconstruction,

three

years

before

the

actual

publication

of

the book.

Spitzer

prefers

to rise

above

political

disputes

as

such,

but

he

does so in

such a

way

as to

emphasize

both

individual freedom and

cultural

commonality.

Thus,

his

Essays

in

Historical

Semantics,

pub-

lished in the United States in 1948, consists of six essays, three

written

in

English

and three

written

in German.

He

leaves

the Ger-

man

essays

untranslated

-

in

order,

he tells

us in

his

preface,

"to

attract scholars

in

German

and

English

toward

that common stock

of

European

semantics that informs our

vocabulary;

in

this

volume

all

nations will

appear

as

equal

citizens

of

'quella

Roma

onde

Cristo

&

Romano"'

(13-14).

As

important

as

commonality

for

Spitzer

is

personal

liberty, typified by

his

remarkable

suggestion

in

"Linguistics

and

Literary History"

that his

autobiographical essay

is his "MeinKampf as it were - without dictatorial connotations,

of

course"

(1).

This

is

a

bold

gesture

indeed:

Spitzer's

sovereign

scholarly

liberty

will

be such that Hitler

will

be

unable to

deny

him

even the

use of his

own

autobiography

-

stripped

of its "dictato-

rial

connotations,"

no

less.

Auerbach's

approach

is

very

different. He takes us

without

any

preface directly

into

his discussion of Homer.

Contemporary

his-

102







AUERBACH

tory

figures

only

in

passing,

as

providing

illuminating

contrasts to

issues

in

the

works

under

discussion rather than as the

overriding

context and

shaping

force that

Green

believes

them to be.

In his

Epilogue,

Auerbach

speaks

of

the

evolution

of his

subject

almost

entirely

as

an

intellectual

problem

of

shaping

and

of

presentation;

even

his

mentioning

of

the

war serves

only

(or

"only")

to

explain

why

he lacked

adequate

library

facilities.

Just

how, then,

does the

war

enter into his book?

I

would

like to

draw

attention to three basic

ways

in

which Auerbach reflects his

times:

through

explicit

analogies;

through implicit guiding

of se-

lections;

and

through

an

often unconscious

shaping

-

and

even

distortion

-

of his

interpretations.

This third sort of

case

is

the

really problematic

one,

but Auerbach's direct

analogies,

and his

ambiguous

comments on his

principles

of

selection,

already

show

the

delicacy

of

the

problems

involved.

On the

level

of

direct refer-

ence,

Auerbach

allows

his moral

passion

and

his

contemporary

concern to

appear

in the

form of

analogies,

particularly analogies

that clarify the difference between past ages and the present. To

give

one

example:

Whenever

a

specific

form

of life or a

social

group

has run

its

course,

or has

only

lost

favor

and

support,

every

injustice

which

the

propagandists perpetrate

against

it

is half

consciously

felt to be

what

it

actually

is,

yet people

welcome

it

with

sadistic

delight.

Gottfried Keller describes this

psychological

situation

very finely

in

one of

the

novellas

of his

Seldwyla

cycle,

the

story

of lost

laughter,

in

which

a

campaign

of

defamation is

discussed.

It is

true,

the

things

he

describes

compare

with what we

have

seen in our time as

a

slight

turbidity

in

the clear

water

of

a brook

would

compare

with

an ocean of filth and blood

...

Keller

was

fortunate

in

that he could

not

imagine

an

important change

of

government

which would

not entail

an

ex-

pansion

of freedom.

We have

been

shown

otherwise.

(404)

As

explicit

as Auerbach is

prepared

to be

in

such

contrasts,

he

usually

refrains from

any

direct comment when the

analogy

would

strike

closer to home.

In

his

chapter

on

Shakespeare,

for

example,

he

opens

with

a

passage

from

Henry

IV,

Part

1,

discussing

the

every-

day

realism

that

shows

through despite Shakespeare's persisting

attachment to noble

figures

as

his

protagonists.

He then

abruptly

devotes

a

page

and

a half

to

Shylock,

whom

he

describes as

"a bor-

derline

case": "To be

sure,

in

terms

of his

class,

he is not

a

com-

mon or

everyday

figure;

he is a

pariah;

but

his

class

is

low.

The

slight

action of the Merchant

of

Venice,

with

its

fairy-tale

motifs,

is

almost

too

heavily

burdened

by

the

weight

and

problematic

impli-

cations

of his

character"

(314).

Far

from

drawing

any

direct

com-

parison

to

contemporary

treatments of

Jews,

Auerbach doesn't

even

mention that

Shylock

is

aJew

until the tail end of

the

discus-

103







COMPARATIVE

LITERATURE

sion,

and

then

only

to contrast

Shylock

to

Marlowe's

Jew

of Malta.

In

his

discussion,

"race"

(as

the Nazis would

have

described

Jewish

identity)

is recoded

in

terms of class and

personal

character.

This

treatment

of

Shylock

can

be

seen either

as a

retreat

from

the

problem

-

a

virtual

denial that

Shylock

is

a

Jew

at

all

-

or

as

an

implicit

defense

of

Shylock

(his

weaknesses

stem

not from his

ethnicity

but

from his

character,

or from

Shakespeare's

inability

to

give

lower-class

figures

true

tragic depth).

In

either

event,

it

is

clear that Auerbach prefers to draw a direct analogy to contempo-

rary society

when

the

situation

differs

sufficiently

from

the

present

that he can maintain a clear distance

between

his

time

and the

events

in

the text.

In the

end,

Auerbach

treats

Shylock's

Judaism

with

something

of the "heedless

Olympian

serenity"

which

he

sees

as

characterizing Shakespeare's

own

treatment

of

Shylock's

tragic

situation

(314).

As

Carl Landauer has

put

it,

Auerbach's discus-

sion

of

Shylock displays

"a strained

objectivity

.

.

.

a sort of

self-

conscious lack

of

self-consciousness"

(95n.).

Auerbach is consistently reluctant to allow his personal con-

cerns to intrude

whenever

they

might

distort

his

view

of the

past

-

even

to

the

point

that

this

distancing may

itself constrain

his dis-

cussion,

as

in

the case

of

his

treatment of

Shylock.

Yet he

was well

aware

that a scholar's

perspective

cannot

simply

be turned on and

off at

will.

His drive

toward

synoptic

completeness

was

fueled

by

his

hope

that

the

totality

of

literary history

could

ultimately

resist,

and

guide,

his

own

relativism.

This

hope

can be seen

in

one

of his

major methodological

statements

of

the

1950s,

"Vico's

Contribu-

tion to Literary Criticism":

Our

historistic

way

of

feeling

and

judging

is

so

deeply

rooted

in

us that

we

have

ceased

to

be

aware

of

it.

We

enjoy

the

art,

the

poetry

and the music of

many

differ-

ent

periods

and

peoples

with

equal preparedness

for

understanding

.

.

.

The

variety

of

periods

and

civilizations

no

longer frightens

us: neither the critics

and

historians

nor an

important,

continually

increasing part

of the

general public

...

Historical

relativism

has a

twofold

aspect:

it

concerns

the

understanding

historian

as

well

as the

phenomena

to be understood.

This is an extreme

relativism;

but

we

should

not fear

it

...

Only

in

the

entirety

of

history

is there

truth,

and

only by

the

understanding

of

its

whole

course

may

one obtain

it.

(33-37)

It is somewhat ironic that later scholars have focused on period-

based

studies

as more "honest"

(to

recall

Said's

phrase)

than

broad

literary history,

which

they

presumably

feel

is

too

likely

to

be

shaped by ungrounded projections

of

the

generalizer's precon-

ceptions.

Auerbach

believed

just

the

reverse:

that

only

the

totality

of the tradition

could

provide

a check

against

the

interpreter's

rage

to

(re)order

the material at hand.

104







AUERBACH

In

the

Epilogue

to

Mimesis,

Auerbach

both

stresses and

limits

the role of his

personal

concerns

in

the

shaping

of

his

book:

The method of textual

interpretation

gives

the

interpreter

a

certain

leeway.

He

can

choose and

emphasize

as

he

pleases.

It must

naturally

be

possible

to

find

what

he

claims

in

the text.

My

interpretations

are no

doubt

guided

by

a

specific pur-

pose.

Yet

this

purpose

assumed form

only

as I

went

along,

playing

as it

were with

my

texts,

and for

long

stretches

of

my way

I

have been

guided

only by

the

texts

themselves.

Furthermore,

the

great

majority

of the

texts

were

chosen

at

random,

onil

the

basis

of

accidental

acquaintance

and

preference

rather than in

view

of a

definite

purpose. (556)

In

principle,

Auerbach

is

perfectly willing

to

acknowledge

the

shaping

force of his

interests

and

of

his

own

historical

moment,

but

in

practice

he

displays

a

deep

ambivalence

whenever that

shaping

goes beyond

an almost

random selection

of

themes

and

texts and

begins

to affect

the

actual

interpretation

of

the

material.

The

ambiguity

of

Auerbach's

relation to

what we

might

call the

otherness

of

his material

was

not lost

on

his

early

reviewers.

Helmut

Hatzfeld,

for

example,

criticized

Auerbach for

reading

the Chanson de Roland "with the eyes of an enlightened pacifist"

(335).

More

generally,

Rene

Wellek,

in

a

review

filled

with

faint

praise,

wrote

that Mimesis

"must be

judged

as

something

of

a

work

of

art,

as

a

personal

commonplace

or

rather

uncommonplace

book,"

adding

that "his results are

peculiarly

shifting

and

discon-

certingly

vague"

(300, 305).

Charles

Muscatine

spoke

glowingly

of

Mimesis as "one

of

those

rare books that

speak

to

everyone

in

the

literate

world,"

and

yet

he found the

book

"strikingly

ambivalent...

The book

contains a

wealth

of historical

data,

and

repeated

rec-

ommendations of historicism, yet it is itself only semi-history. At its

center is

something

intuitive

and

creative,

aesthetic,

even

moral,

though

for himself

Auerbach treats 'ethical' literature

tangen-

tially

and even

slightingly.

This is the

book's

encompassing

am-

bivalence"

(448,

456).

Auerbach's

ambivalence was

still

apparent

when

he

responded

to his

first

reviewers,

in

an article called

"Epilegomena

zu

Mime-

sis,"

published

in

1954.

In

this

article,

he

was

especially

concerned

to counter

charges

that his

representation

of the

history

of

realism

had been skewed by personal biases. To critics who claimed that

he

had

understated

the

extent

of

realism

in

classical

antiquity,

he

replied

that

those readers had

failed to understand the

kind

of

re-

alism

he

was

discussing. "Perhaps

I

should

rather

have

spoken

of

'existential

realism,'"

he

continues,

"but

I

was

reluctant to

employ

this

all-too-contemporary

term for

phenomena

of the distant

past"

(4).

"Existential

realism,"

a term

openly

expressive

of

a modern

105







COMPARATIVE

LITERATURE

perspective,

is thus

a term he both

suggests

and

withholds.

Auerbach returns

to the

problem

of his

perspective

later

in

the

article,

but

modulates the issue

to

one of

generalization:

"abstract,

comprehensive

concepts

falsify

and

destroy

the

phenomena.

The

order

must

develop

in

such a

way

that

it

allows

the

individual

phe-

nomena to

live

freely.

If

it had

been

possible,

I

would

not

have

employed any general

terms

whatsoever"

(15-16).

He

continues

by

praising

the

nineteenth

century's

renunciation of

"any

absolute,

externally-imposed judgment of phenomena as unhistorical and

dilletantish"

(17).

The

slippage

in

Auerbach's

usage

of

key

terms

like

Wirklichkeit

tems in

part

from

his

ambivalence

concerning

his

role in

shaping

his

narrative,

an

ambivalence

that also

yields

an

overall

narrative

progression variously

described either as

sym-

phonic

(Holdheim)

or

as

chaotic

(Landauer).

Neither

character-

ization alone

suffices;

to an

unusual

extent,

Mimesis must be read

along

both

registers

at once.

This

doubleness is

at

once

Auerbach's

achievement

and his fail-

ure. Paul Bove may be right in seeing Mimesisas "an engaged his-

tory

of

the

present

meant to

intervene

authoritatively

in moder-

nity"

(Intellectuals

in

Power,

89).

Yet

it

appears

that such

an

engage-

ment

proceeded

largely

in

spite

of

Auerbach's

own

conscious

wishes.

The

"strange

failure,"

as

Bov6

calls it

(99),

of

Auerbach's

early

commentators to

appreciate

the

political

force of the book

is

less

strange,

on the

whole,

than Auerbach's own blindness

to the

shaping power

of his

cultural-political

concerns.

We

have

seen

Auerbach's assertion that his texts

shaped

his

topic

more

than

he

did himself: his texts were chosen "at random," his themes devel-

oped through

"play,"

under the

guidance

of the books

themselves.

On closer

examination, however,

his choices

of texts

rarely

look so

very

random,

even when

less

charged

figures

than

Shylock

are

in-

volved.

Consider "The

World

in

Pantagruel's

Mouth,"

one

of

the

most

famous

of his

chapters.

Auerbach centers his discussion of

Rabelais

on

a

long

passage describing

Monsieur

Alcofrybas's

jour-

ney

into

Pantagruel's

mouth,

where

he encounters

whole

cities

and landscapes. A splendid passage for a discussion of Rabelais's

techniques,

to be

sure;

but

hardly

randomly

chosen. Auerbach

be-

gins

a

few

paragraphs

into the

chapter

from

which

he

is

quoting,

just

in

time to

give

Alcofrybas's

reaction to the

strange sights

he

saw:

"But,

oh

gods

and

goddesses,

what

did

I

see there

Jupiter

confound me

with

his

trisulk

lightning

if I lie I

walked

there as

they

do

in

Sophie,

at

Constantinople"

(264).

106









COMPARATIVE

LITERATURE

earthly historicity

into his

beyond;

his dead are cut off from the

earthly

present

and its

vicissitudes,

but

memory

and

the most intense

interest

in

it stirs them so

profoundly

that the

atmosphere

of the

beyond

is

charged

with

it.

(192-93)

This

seems

to

me

a

perfect

description

of the

presence

of

Auerbach's

own

European past

(or

his vanished

present)

within

his Istanbul

masterwork.

In

contrast to the

cosmopolitan Spitzer,

Auerbach

never

lost his sense that the

center of his

world

was

Eu-

rope,

and

not

merely Europe

in

general

but

Germany

in

particu-

lar. As

he

later said of

Mimesis,

"it is not a German book

in

its

lan-

guage

alone ... It

arose

from the themes and

methods

of

German

intellectual

history

and

philology;

it

would

not

have

been think-

able in

any

other tradition than

in

that

of

Hegel

and the

Ger-

man

Romantics;

it

would

never have

been

written

without

the

influences

which

I

experienced

in

my

youth

in

Germany"

("Epilegomena"

15).

In

Auerbach

we

see

both the stern

serenity

of

Farinata and the

melancholy passion

of Cavalcante:

wholly

disregarding

his

situa-

tion,

at the same time he is

inseparably

attached

to the

world

he

has

lost.

Even

the

structure

of Mimesis is

comparable

to

that

of

the

Inferno: guided

by

Auerbach,

as Dante

is

by

Virgil,

we

travel from

one area to the

next,

and at each

stop

a text

arises

and

announces

itself,

in

a

single passage

from

which

Auerbach then

draws

its

whole

being.

Mimesis as

a

whole

radiates

out from the

chapter

on

Dante,

that

greatest

of

writers-in-exile.

Auerbach's discussion of Dante

stands

on the borderline

of

the

problem

of

the

shaping

consciousness.

Who,

finally,

has

shaped

whom the most? To the extent that Dante has inspired Auerbach's

method

and

themes,

the

chapter

illustrates Auerbach's

own

theory

of his

method.

To the

extent,

though,

that

the

shaping

has

gone

in

the

opposite

direction,

modernity may

invade

the

repre-

sentation of the

past

in

a

way

that would violate

Auerbach's histori-

cist creed.

I

do not find

that

a consideration

of

Auerbach's

per-

sonal stake

in

the discussion detracts

in

any way

from

the

lucidity,

the

brilliance,

or

the

persuasiveness

of

his

analysis

of

Farinata and

Cavalcante.

It

does,

on

the

other

hand,

help

to

explain

the

chapter's one real weakness, Auerbach's inability to do justice to

the least visible

yet

most

pervasive

character

in the Commedia:God.

As

striking

as Auerbach's

sensitivity

to

the

humanity

of

Dante's

characters is

his

lack

of

sympathy

for the

poem's theology.

From

his

exposition,

we

see

Farinata

as a noble

exile,

but

we would

scarcely imagine

he

had

done

anything

wrong

on earth. Auerbach

closes his

chapter,

in

fact,

by

deconstructing

the entire

theological

108







AUERBACH

framework

in

which

Dante

places

his characters:

Their eternal

position

in

the

divine

order is

something

of

which we

are

only

con-

scious as a

setting

whose

irrevocability

can but

serve

to

heighten

the

effect of their

humanity,

preserved

for

us in all

its force.

The

result is a direct

experience

of life

which overwhelms

everything

else

.

. an illumination

of man's

impulses

and

pas-

sions

which

leads us to share

in

them

without

restraint and indeed

to

admire

their

variety

and their

greatness.

And

by

virtue

of this immediate

and

admiring

sympathy

with

man,

the

principle,

rooted

in the

divine

order,

of the

indestructibility

of the

whole

historical

and indi-

vidual

man turns

against

that

order,

makes

it

subservient

to

its

own

purposes,

and

obscures it. The

image

of man

eclipses

the

image

of God. Dante's work made

man's

Christian-figural

being

a

reality,

and

destroyed

it

in

the

very

process

of real-

izing

it. The tremendous

pattern

was

broken

by

the

overwhelming

power

of the

images

it

had

to contain.

(201-2)

These

are

astonishing

claims.

The

Romantic admiration of

a

few

free-thinking

figures

like

Francesca

da Rimini

and Brunetto

Latini

is

here

extended to all of the sinners

in

hell,

whom we

are

sup-

posed

to admire

"without

restraint"

Needless

to

say,

alternative

readings

of

the Commedia

were

possible

at the time

Auerbach

was

writing; compare Curtius's treatment of Dante in his EuropeanLit-

erature,

where

the

stress

is

very largely

on the

theological

elements

Auerbach believes have

been

obscured

by

the

power

of Dante's

art.

What

are

we

to make of

Auerbach's

selectivity,

an

emphasis

amounting

to

outright

distortion?

In

part,

Auerbach's

analysis

is

more an

expression

of

his

per-

sonal

preferences

(in

this

instance,

his

secular

humanism)

than

an

inherent and

inevitable

response

to the

text-in-itself.

More

par-

ticularly,

it

seems as

though

God

is

a source

of

discomfort

for

Auerbach less as an ethical force than as an orderingforce. What

Auerbach

stresses

is

not so much the

obscuring

of

the

divine

mo-

rality

as

the

individual's

power

to

overturn the

divine

order.

We

can see

played

out

here a

version

of

Auerbach's

ambivalence

to-

ward

his

own

shaping activity: withholding,

as he

believes,

any

prior

or external

conceptual ordering,

he

allows

himself to be

guided by

his

texts;

the

phenomena,

"allowed

to

live

freely,"

create

such order as

they

choose for

themselves

and do not

allow

it to

dominate

them.

In Auerbach's eyes, Dante tried to do just the opposite, to im-

pose

God's

order

on his

characters,

only

to have the characters'

ineluctable

individuality

triumph

over

the

divine

aggression

that

would

put

them forever

in their

places.

Against

the

fascist insis-

tence on

the

purified

collective

will,

Auerbach finds

in

Dante the

origin

of modern

individualism:

"he

opened

the

way

for that

aspi-

ration

toward

autonomy

which

possesses

all

earthly

existence.

In

109









AUERBACH

tions it

has

generated.

As for

the historian's

duty

"to attain

a

clear

understanding"

and

to

interpret

as

little

as

possible,

it

is

striking

that

Hamete's difficulties

in

this

regard

form

the

subject

of

the

opening

paragraph

of the

very

chapter

from

which

Auerbach has

taken

his

representative

Cervantes

passage.

The

chapter begins:

When

the

author

of

this

great history

[i.e.,

Benengeli]

comes to relate the

events

of

this

chapter,

he

says

that he

would have

liked to

pass

them

over

in

silence,

through

fear of not

being

believed,

for

the delusions of

Don

Quixote

here

reach

the

greatest heights

and

limits

imaginable,

and

even

exceed

those,

great

as

they

are, by two bow shots. However, he wrote them down finally, although not without

fear and

misgiving,

just

as

they

occurred,

without

adding

or

subtracting

one

atom

of

the truth from

the

history,

or

heeding

any objection

that

might

be

brought

against

him as a liar.

And he

was

right,

for

truth,

though

it

may

run

thin,

never

breaks,

and

it

always

flows

over

the lie as oil

over

water.

(558)

Auerbach,

then,

echoes

Benengeli

even

as he

suppresses

him,

and

this

double treatment

of the

historian

is

paralleled by

his

treat-

ment

of Don

Quixote.

Auerbach discusses

Quixote

twice

in

Mime-

sis,

in

opposite

terms.

In his

chapter

on Chr6tien de

Troyes,

he

gives a sociological interpretation of Quixote's motives:

Cervantes

makes

it

perfectly

clear,

at the

very beginning

of his

book,

where

the

root

of

Don

Quixote's

confusion

lies:

he

is

the

victim

of a social order

in

which

he

belongs

to a

class

that has

no

function. He

belongs

to this

class;

he

cannot emanci-

pate

himself from

it;

but

as

a

mere

member of

it,

without

wealth

and

without

high

connections,

he has

no role and no

mission. He feels his life

running meaning-

lessly

out,

as

though

he

were

paralyzed. Only

upon

such

a

man,

whose

life

is

hardly

better than

a

peasant's

but

who

is

educated

and

who

is

neither

able nor

permitted

to

labor as

a

peasant

does,

could romances

of

chivalry

have

such

an

unbalancing

effect.

His

setting

forth

is a

flight

from a

situation

which

is

unbearable

and

which

he has

borne far

too

long.

He

wants

to enforce his claim

to the function

proper

to

the class to which he

belongs.

(137)

Another

self-portrait-all

the more

clearly

so

if,

as

in the

discus-

sion of

Shylock,

we

consider

that

a class can be

constituted

on eth-

nic as

well

as economic

grounds.

Yet

in

the

actual

chapter

on Don

Quixote,

he

argues against

this

viewpoint, seeing

Quixote

instead

only

as the focus of Cervantes's

"merry

play

on

many

levels."

Auerbach

himself notes

the

contradiction,

without

resolving

it:

discussing

Quixote's

decision

to

set out

as

a

knight-errant,

he

says

that

one

might suppose

that

his

mad

decision

represents

a

flight

from

a

situation

which

has

become

unbearable,

a

violent

attempt

to

emancipate

himself

from

it.

This

sociological

and

psychological

interpretation

has

been advocated

by

various

writers

on

the

subject.

I

myself

advanced

it in

an earlier

passage

of this

book,

and

I

leave

it there

because

in the context of that

passage

it

is

justified

.

.

.

That

this

should

happen

to

a man in his fifties

can be

explained

-

from

within

the

work

-

only

in

aesthetic

terms,

that

is,

through

the comic

vision

which

came to

Cervantes

111







COMPARATIVE

LITERATURE

when

he

conceived

the

novel

...

(348-49)

Why

the

shift

away

from

the

sociological

and

psychological

view

to

the

very

different

view

of

Quixote

as

pure play?

Alone

among

the

chapters

of

the

book,

the

Cervantes

chapter

was written

after the

war,

added

only

in the second

edition,

apparently

in a desire

to

close

a

perceived

lacuna

in

the

history

of realism.

It

may

be

that

the

wartime

composition

of the

"Chr6tien"

chapter

had

provided

a

special

impetus

toward

the stress on

Quixote

in

flight

from the

unsupportable situation in which he is denied work, and is not

even

permitted

to

work

as a manual laborer.

What

is

most remark-

able, however,

is the fact that Auerbach lets

both

representations

of

Quixote

stand

-

each

one,

moreover,

presented

as the

whole

truth

and

nothing

but the truth.

The

two

Quixotes

illustrate a fundamental

duality throughout

Mimesis.

Everywhere

in

the book there

is

a tension

between

Olym-

pian

classicism

and

exilic

modernism,

and Auerbach

continually

oscillates

between

these

perspectives.

This

duality

is

first

staged

in

the contrast of Homer to the Bible. Homer's style is analyzed in

great

and

loving

detail,

and

I still

think it fair

to see

Homer as a

model for

Auerbach's

own

style.

As the

chapter develops,

however,

Auerbach contrasts Homeric

psychology

most

unfavorably

with

that

found

in

Genesis.

Discussing

Abraham's reaction

to the

command

to sacrifice

Isaac,

Auerbach

says,

Such a

problematic

psychological

situation as

this is

impossible

for

any

of the

Homeric

heroes,

whose

destiny

is

clearly

defined and

who wake

every

morning

as

if

it

were

the first

day

of their

lives:

their

emotions,

though strong,

are

simple

and

find

expression instantly.

How

fraught

with

background,

in

comparison,

are

characters like Saul and

David

. . .

the

Jewish

writers

are able

to

express

the simultaneous

existence of

various

layers

of consciousness and the conflict

between

them.

(12-13)

The

Hebrew

writers

(whom

Auerbach calls

"Jewish,"

as

though

he

were

speaking

of a much later

period)

excel at the

very psycho-

logical

analysis

of

conflicting

layers

of consciousness that

Auerbach

will

identify

in

his final

chapter

as

the

great

skill of mod-

ernists

like

Woolf

and

Joyce. They

might,

then,

seem to be the he-

roes of the piece (as Green and others have taken them to be),

except

that it is the Bible that strives

for

a totalitarian

effect:

The

world

of the

Scripture

stories is not

satisfied

with

claiming

to be a

historically

true

reality

-

it insists that it

is

the

only

real

world,

is destined for

autocracy...

Scripture

stories do

not,

like

Homer's,

court our

favor,

they

do not flatter us that

they may

please

and

enchant us

-

they

seek to

subject

us,

and

if

we

refuse to be

subjected

we

are rebels... Far

from

seeking,

like

Homer,

merely

to make us

forget

our

own

reality

for a

few

hours, [the Bible]

seeks to

overcome

our

reality:

we

are to

112







AUERBACH

fit our

own

life into its

world,

feel

ourselves

to be

elements

in

its structure of uni-

versal

history.

(14-15)

Throughout

Mimesis,

in

many guises,

there

appears

a

conflict

between

two

sets of

values that

Auerbach

sets

sharply against

one

another,

but

both

of

which

he himself

holds: classical

(Greek)

har-

mony,

order, balance,

free

play,

and

presence ("foregrounding,"

in

his

discussion

of

Homer);

all

in

opposition

to modernist

(Jew-

ish)

fragmentation,

psychological complexity,

and exile

or

ab-

sence. These

latter traits

may

militate

against

the

repressions

that

Aryan

theorists

were

associating

with

a return to classical

order;

but

they may

also

only

reinforce those

same

tendencies.

In his

fi-

nal

chapter,

Auerbach associates himself

with Woolf's

stream-of-

consciousness

technique,

and

her focus

on

small

fragments

of

time

and

place:

"It is

possible

to

compare

this

technique

of

mod-

ern

writers with

that

of

certain

modern

philologists

who

hold that

the

interpretation

of a

few

passages

from

Hamlet, Phedre,

or

Faust

can be made

to

yield

more

... than

would

a

systematic

and

chrono-

logical treatment" (548). He goes on, though, to suggest that the

modernist

retreat

from

system

and

chronology

itself

paved

the

way

for

the

rise

of

fascism: "These forces threatened to

split

up

and

disintegrate. They

lost

their

unity

and clear

definition

.

.

.

The

temptation

to entrust

oneself

to a

single

sect

which

solved

all

prob-

lems

with

a

single

formula ...

was

so

great

that,

with

many

people,

fascism

hardly

had to

employ

force

when

the

time

came

for

it to

spread through

the

countries of old

European

culture,

absorbing

the smaller sects"

(550).

The dualism of Auerbach's thought finds a structural expres-

sion

in

the doubled frame-tale

within

which

he encloses

his book.

I

have

already

alluded to one

of

these

frame-tales,

in

which

Euryclea

and

Mrs.

Ramsay

become

the foci for the discussions

of Homer

and

Woolf.

There is a second

frame as

well,

corresponding

to

the

other term

of

the first

chapter,

for the Bible

is

recalled

in

a

second

long

quotation

that

Auerbach

gives

in his final

chapter.

The

pas-

sage

comes from

Proust,

whom

Auerbach introduces

not to stress

modernist

subjectivity

but

on

the

contrary

in order to

give

an

ex-

ample of the objectivityattainable by self-conscious recollection of

a vanished

past:

A

consciousness

in

which

remembrance causes

past

realities to

arise,

which

has

long

since left behind the states

in

which

it

found itself

when

those

realities oc-

curred as a

present,

sees and

arranges

that content

in

a

way very

different from the

purely

individual

and

subjective.

Freed from its

various

earlier

involvements,

con-

sciousness

views

its

own

past

layers

and their content in

perspective;

it

keeps

confronting

them

with

one

another,

emancipating

them from their exterior tem-

113







COMPARATIVE

LITERATURE

poral

continuity

as

well

as from the

narrow

meanings

they

seemed

to

have when

they

were

bound to a

particular present.

(542)

Another

self-portrait,

it

appears:

the

observer,

seeing

and

"arrang-

ing"

(but

not

distorting)

events

of the

vanished

past,

"emanci-

pates"

them from

time

by

viewing

them

"in

perspective";

we

may

recall

that Auerbach's

favorite

term

for his

own

method

is

"perspectivism."

The

passage

Auerbach

gives

to illustrate this

per-

spectival objectivity

is

an

interesting

one indeed: he chooses a

long

paragraph

from the

opening

section of the

Recherche,

n

which

the

young

narrator,

desperately longing

for his mother's

company,

has

been

banished

to his room for the

night; unexpectedly,

through

his

father's

arbitrary

whim,

he is

allowed

to

spend

the

night

with

his mother rather

than

alone.

Auerbach

arranges

to

begin

this

quotation

with

a

highly

appro-

priate image:

"It

was

impossible

for me to

thank

my

father;

what

he

called

my sentimentality

would have

exasperated

him.

I

stood

there not

daring

to

move;

he

was

still

confronting

us,

an

immense

figure in his white nightshirt .

. .

standing like Abraham in the

engraving

after

Benozzo Gozzoli

which

M.

Swann

had

given

me,

telling

Sarah that

she

must tear

herself

away

from

Isaac"

(543-44).

Now,

this

metaphor

recalls

the

very

scene from

Genesis

with

which

Auerbach has

begun

his book: the

Akhedah,

"the

Binding

of

Isaac."

If

Euryclea

and Mrs.

Ramsay

form

a

feminine frame

for his

book,

this frame

is in

turn

paired

with

the

patriarchal binding

of

Isaac,

first

in

its

biblical form and then

in its

metaphorical

recre-

ation

in

Proust.

As Shalom Spiegel has eloquently shown in The Last Trial,Jews

since

antiquity

have

turned to the Akhedah

in

times

of

persecu-

tion,

finding

in

ever

renewed

interpretations

of that

enigmatic

story ways

to come to terms

with

God's

willingness

to countenance

his

people's

destruction.

Auerbach has

a

private

hope,

the

hope

of

many

Jews

in

many

times of

persecution:

that

like

Isaac

he

and

his

beloved

lost

world

may yet

be

snatched

from

destruction,

freed

from

the

bondage

of

death.

So

far,

this

private

hope

need

not im-

pinge

in

a

problematic

way

on his

reading

of

Proust,

since the nec-

essary elements are all there in the passage he cites, in which

Proust

describes

how

the

vanished

past

lives

on

in

memory

and

in

memory

alone.

But Auerbach has

misquoted

the

passage.

I

have

given

the lines

in

their

correct form

above,

but this

is

how

Auerbach

himself has

transcribed,

or

remembered,

the

metaphor:

"standing

like

Abraham

in the

engraving

after Benozzo Gozzoli

which

M.

Swann

114







AUERBACH

had

given

me,

telling

Hagar

that

she must tear herself

away

from

Isaac"

(544;

French

text on

543).

Auerbach

gives

us the

wrong

wife.

In order

to harmonize the

passage

and

its

translation,

Willard

Trask

quietly

altered the Moncrieff translation of Proust that

he

used

in

his

English

version;

the

error

has

stood uncorrected

in

subsequent

German editions as

well,

and

I do

not

know

of

any

published

discussion

of

it.

This

is,

however,

a resonant

slippage

of

transcription

or of

memory.

Auerbach has not

only

a secret

hope

but also a secret fear: that he may most resemble Abraham's other

"first-born"

son,

Ishmael,

reprieved

from

death

only

to

be sent

with

Hagar

into a

permanent

exile

in

the

wilderness

(Genesis

21:20).

Writing

his

great

book in

Istanbul,

Auerbach both

responded

to

his

exile

and refused to

submit to it. But

he

was

wrong

as to the

nature of this exile: his

problem

was

not that

he

was

cut off from

earthly

life like

Alcofrybas,

Farinata,

Quixote,

the Proustian narra-

tor,

all

of

whom

in

varying

ways

recover this

loss

through

memory,

stories, interpretation. Auerbach's exile is the reverse: far more

irrevocably

wedded

to

his

present

age

than

he

would wish

to

be,

he

lives

in exile from

the

past,

from

the

worlds

of his

beloved

texts,

which

cannot

finally

provide

an

Olympian

refuge

from the

dual

tyrannies

of

time

and

of

political

pressures.

Amid

the

ringing

affirmations of the

power

of

perspective

in his

article

on

Vico,

Auerbach includes a

disquieting

aside:

after

tell-

ing

us that "the

variety

of

periods

and civilizations

no

longer

frightens

us,"

he

adds: "It

is

true that

perspectivistic

understand-

ing fails as soon as political interests are at stake; but otherwise,

especially

in

esthetic

matters,

our historistic

capacity

of

adaptation

to the

most various forms of

beauty

is

almost

boundless"

(34).

The

absolutes

in

this

sentence

are

striking:

perspectivism

does not

merely

falter,

it

fails,

and it

does

so not

gradually

but

just

as

soon

as

political

interests

are

at stake.

For

a

generation,

Auerbach's

readers

shared

his

deep

wish

for

an

objectivity

unswayed

by political

interests,

for

an historicism all

the

more

profound

as

it could transcend

its

own

time-

boundedness. Little wonder that they admired but did not imitate

his

synthetic project,

and turned to

far more circumscribed fields

of

study,

in

the

hope

that more

knowledge

of a more

manageable

body

of

material could enable them

truly

to

escape

themselves

and

do

justice

to the material on its

own

terms.

Little

wonder,

too,

that

they

did

not

succeed.

The

specialized

projects

characteristic

of

scholarly

work

in recent

decades have

not

resolved

but

only

115







COMPARATIVE

ITERATURE

masked

the contradictions

we

can

now

see

in

Auerbach's

work,

while

the

global

generalizations

in

which

local

readings

are now

often framed

give

these contradictions

a

new

urgency.

To return

to

Mimesis

now

is to be

warned

that our

own

perspective

can all

too

easily

harm

the books

we wish

to

bring

to

life,

even

as

Auerbach

illustrates

(in

part deliberately)

the reasons

why

an

outright

era-

sure of

our

perspective

is

unattainable and undesirable.

The chal-

lenge

for us

is

to find

ways, by facing

the

problem squarely,

to

see

the benefits of our own perspective while resisting our often unre-

flective will

to

power

over

our

material.

Auerbach's

problem

was

not that

he

knew

too

little,

about

Dante

or

even

about

the

Bible;

he

knew

too

much

about

his

own

times,

and

that

knowledge,

so

often

repressed, continually

returned

to

shift

the course

of his

argument away

from the free

play

of the

material

in

itself.

Though

Auerbach

takes

up

Homer and

the Bible

without

any

prefatory

remarks,

he

does

begin

with

an

epigraph,

from

Marvell:

"Had

we

but

world

enough

and time . .

." His

wish

was granted only too well: there is, in Auerbach's terms, all too

much

world

within

his

book,

all

too much

of his

own

time. Thanks

to the

work

of Said and

others,

we

are now

willing

to

advance

an

openly

worldly

criticism,

and

we

can

see more

directly

than

could

Auerbach

and

his

early

readers the extent

of the

shaping

force

of

our

own

moment,

our

own

needs. This

shaping

force can enrich

our

work,

as

it has enriched Mimesis

more

than

Auerbach

himself

desired,

but

it can also

impoverish

it,

if

we

simply

recreate

past

works

in

our

own

image,

or

reject

out of hand

any

that

we

cannot

readily bend to our will. The best corrective to such a narrowing of

our

outlook

may

well

be to recover

Auerbach's breadth and

gener-

osity

of

perspective,

too often

foreshortened

through

a focus

on a

single period

or a

few

favorite

theorists. Mimesis

may

now,

finally,

begin

to

find its true readers.

Columbia

University

Works Cited

Auerbach,

Erich.

Dante:

Poet

of

the Secular World.

Trans.

Ralph

Mannheim.

Chicago:

University

of

Chicago

Press,

1961.

--- . "Epilegomena

zu

Mimesis."

Romanische

Forschungen

65

(1954):

1-18.

Mimesis:

Dargestellte

Wirklichkeit

n der

abendliindischen

Literatur.

4th ed.

Bern:

Francke

Verlag,

1967.

116







AUERBACH

--- .

Mimesis:

The

Representation of

Reality

in Western Literature.

Trans.

Willard

R.

Trask.

Princeton:

Princeton

University

Press,

1954.

-

"Vico's Contribution

to

Literary

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Philologica

et

Litteraria

in Honorem

L.

Spitzer.

Ed. Anna

G.

Hatcher and

K. L.

Selig.

Bern: Francke

Verlag,

1958. 31-37.

Bove,

Paul. Intellectuals in

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A

Genealogy of

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New

York:

Co-

lumbia

University

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1986.

Cervantes

Saavedra,

Miguel

de. Don

Quixote of

La

Mancha.

Trans.

Walter

Starkie.

New

York:

New

American

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1957.

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1932.

European

Literature

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the Latin Middle

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Trans.

Willard

R.

Trask

Princeton: Princeton

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1953.

. "Preface

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Literature."

1945.

Essays

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Literature.

Trans.

Michael

Kowal.


University

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1973. 497-501.

Edelstein,

Ludwig.

Review

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Mimesis.

Modern

Language

Notes 65

(1950):

426-31.

Green,

Geoffrey.

Literary

Criticism and the Structure

of

History:

Erich Auerbach and Leo

Spitzer.

Lincoln:

University

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1982.

Hart, Thomas R. "Erich Auerbach's Don Quixote." Cervantes and Ariosto: Renewing

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University

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1989.

6-15.

.

"Insight

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Literary Theory

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Criticism:

Festschrift

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Reni Wellek in

Honor

of

his

Eightieth

Birthday.

Ed.

Joseph

P.

Strelka.

Bern and

New

York:

Peter

Lang,

1984.

249-65.

Hatzfeld,

Helmut.

Review

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Mimesis.

Romance

Philology

2

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333-38.

Holdheim,

W.

Wolfgang.

"Auerbach's

Mimesis:

Aesthetics as Historical Under-

standing."

CLIO

10

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143-54.

Landauer,

Carl.

"Mimesisand Erich Auerbach's

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German Stud-

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11

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83-96.

Luk~cs,

Georg.

The

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the Novel. Trans. Anna Bostock.

Cambridge,

Mass.:

MIT

Press,

1971.

Muscatine,

Charles.

Review

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9

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448-57.

Robbins,

Bruce. "The

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Raritan

4.4

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57-77.

Said,

Edward W. "News

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Village

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Literary

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68

(1988):

14.

The

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the

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and

the Critic.

Cambridge,

Mass.:

Harvard

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1983.

Spiegel,

Shalom. The Last

Trial.

Trans.Judah

Goldin.

New

York:

Pantheon,

1967.

Spitzer, Leo. Essays in Historical Semantics. New York: S. F. Vanni, 1948.

--- . "The

Formation

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PMLA

66

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39-48.

Linguistics

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Literary History.

New

York:

Russell

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Russell, 1948;

repr.

Princeton

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1967.

Wellek,

Ren6.

Review

of

Mimesis.

Kenyon

Review 16

(1954):

299-307.

117

Documents

David Damrosch - Auerbach in Exile