Five Portraits: Modernity and the Imagination in Twentieth-Century German Writing

Rethinking Theory

by Michael André Bernstein

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 Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Celan, Robert Musil, Martin Heidegger, and Walter Benjamin. The result is a remarkable examination of a moment 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. Written in elegant and jargon-free prose, Michael Andre Bernstein's essays create a vivid image of an epoch whose aspirations and torments continues to shape the world we inhabit today.

150 pages, Hardcover

First published August 30, 2000

About the author

Michael André Bernstein was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, and winner of the Koret Israel Prize who made prolific contributions to the field of literary criticism. His novel, Conspirators, was selected as one of the three finalists for the 2004 Reform Jewish Prize for fiction, was named one of the 25 best novels of the year by the Los Angeles Times, and was shortlisted for the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Reviews

[Travis Timmons · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes, which were somewhat deflated by the book. Bernstein surveys the works of Rilke, Musil, Heidegger, Benjamin, and Celan (i.e. all 20th century German-language modernists). The chapters stood too alone, despite Bernstein's attempts to refer concepts from each back to other chapters, so I didn't get a sense of the broader sweep/trends of German modernism from this book. In this sense, the book read more like a somewhat loosely-connected essay collection.

Moreover, on a chapter-by-chapter basis, the results were uneven for my interests:
--Rilke: meh. Inverts some of the mystic-biographical stuff on Rilke, but I'm not sure what were left with in terms of Rilke and the modern German imagination. (That Rilke is the template-setter for "Innigkeit" and solitude?)
--Musil: a solid chapter, but clotted -- too many insights buried in the middle of long paragraphs! I liked the "essayism"/good life dichotomy for reading Musil's great novel.
--Heidegger: a tricky chapter. Smart take on Heidegger's "Nazi problem," but inconclusive; a powerful critique, but borrowed critique of Heidegger's politics/metaphysics, yet leans too heavily on reductive readings of Heidegger's latter work.
--Benjamin: a clotted chapter with matted paragraphs and insights. My least favorite.
--Celan: my favorite chapter. A illuminating read of Celan's difficultly austere, but rich stuff. I gained from it.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad to have been introduced to Musil, Rilke, Benjamin and Celan. (I already knew some about Heidegger.) Benjamin especially spoke to me. Overall the book was a satisfying, pleasant read.