european

Peter R. Erspamer, The Elusiveness of Tolerance: The "Jewish Question" from Lessing to the Napoleonic Wars, reviewed by Dr. David T. Murphy, Professor of History at Anderson University, in German Studies Review, Vol. XXII, No. 1, pp. 116-117

The title of Peter Erspamer's study of early German literature concerning what became known as the "Jewish question" is well chosen, in two ways: Not only have the goals of legal toleration and cultural acceptance for eligious and ethnic minorities in Germany and the West proven elusive, but, as this study makes abundantly clear, agreement upon the meaning of the term "tolerance" itself has turned out to be equally difficult to attain. In Germany during the Enlightenment and Revolutionary eras, for example, "tolerance" could and did signify a range of meanings. While the term evoked a narrowly conceived sense of permission or "sufferance of evil" to some, for a smaller group of others it suggested a much broader notion of freedom of convictions.

Erspamer's revised dissertation provides a competent introduction to the early decades of the literary debate over the proper status of Jews in Germany. Taking as his starting point Lessing's Nathan the Wise of 1779, a work whose impact upon public understanding of the struggle for Jewish rights led George Mosse to describe it as the "Magna Carta" of German Jewry, Erspamer follows the reactions which Lessing's philo-Semitic drama provoked among a number of German audiences over the next several decades. The author gives particular attention to the views of Prussian officialdom, as expressed in the writings of Christian Wilhelm Dohm, the responses of Germany's various Jewish communities themselves, the emergence of a short-lived school of emancipatory drama and of course, the beginnings of the more enduring anti-Semitic backlash against the drive for emancipation.

Among the strengths of this monograph is its insightful attention to nuance in the response of Germany's Jews to the public debate about emancipation as it was carried on both within the Jewish community and in the larger Gentile culture. Contrary to widespread Christian perceptions, German Jewry of the period constituted a highly fragmented and heterogeneous group, embracing the reform-oriented Maskilim of the Jewish Enlightenment, the considerable community of "Taufjuden", or converted Jews, and the German orthodox community. The diversity of Judaism conditioned a wide range of responses to the drive for emancipation, from the almost Deistic Judaism of Moses Mendelssohn, the most famous Jewish proponent of emancipation, to the involved struggle toward self-identity of the remarkable converted Jew Rahel Varnhagen.

Erspamer also does a nice job of explicating the emerging anti-Semitic ideology which began to be elaborated in response to demands for Jewish emancipation. At this time, the remarkably durable Judeophobic religious prejudices of the Middle Ages began to merge with the clearly racial anti-Semitism of theorists such as Ernst Moritz Arnt, crystallizing and then disseminating what Erspamer describes as popular "myths of ethnic homogeneity." The author's understanding of the paradoxical ideological appeal of anti-Semitism as both the tool of an authoritarian state as well as a form of political expression of an oppressed people is perceptive.

While this work is well edited in regard to technical matters, it is burdened by a few stylistic shortcomings, including unnecessary repition of key concepts and sometimes of almost complete sentences in the early portions of the book. Clumsy neologisms like "dialecticizing" also crop up occasionally, though that is perhaps unavoidable in a contemporary work of literary criticism. Taken as a whole, however, this is a study whose virtues considerably outweigh its defects and which provides valuable insight into the dynamics of the evolution of ideas.

The Elusiveness of Tolerance: The "Jewish Question" from Lessing to the Napoleonic Wars, by Peter R. Erspamer, reviewed by Erlis G. Wickersham, Professor of German at Rosemont College, in: Choice, July/August 1997--Vol. 34, No. 11/12, pp. 182-83

In this interesting, well-conceived study, Erspamer considers the tolerance debate in Germany and Austria from the publication of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Nathan the Wise (1779) to the end of the Napoleonic era. Erspamer makes excellent use of sources, presenting a balance of documents for and against the Enlightenment ideal promulgated by Lessing and influenced by the leading figure of the Haskalah: Moses Mendelssohn. He discusses both authors in fresh, insightful ways, while providing a balanced view of historical criticism. He analyzes pamphlets engendered by Lessing's book from writers like Pfranger, Dohm, Ascher, and Diez, and dramas with Jewish themes by writers like Reinicke, Bischof, Lotich, and Ziegelhauser. In such chapters as "Emancipatory Drama after Lessing" and "Myths of Homogeneity: Anti-Semitic Literature after 1800," he traces the devastating effects of nationalistic sentiments inspired by the Wars of Liberation. He illuminates the polemics of antisemitic Romantics like Achim von Arnim and Fichte, using well-chosen quotations in German. Despite quirks of style, Erspamer provides an integrated view of a seminal era for German-Jewish relations, needed materials, and valuable insights. Extensive bibliography, notes, and index. Recommended for all collections.

Thanks to Anthony Molino and Jane House's brilliant translation,Manlio Santanelli's play Emergency Exit has been made accessible to English speaking readers.Hailed in Italy as a masterpiece,Santanelli explores the physical and psychological condition of two Becket-like characters in a modern urban setting.Simultaneously witty,probing and disturbingthis translation demands to be read. Better still,it demands to be produced.

Emergency Exit by Manlio Santanelli is a rewarding read, both for it's metaphoric value as well as for its literary style.

I must confess that I am not fond of reading plays. While a work of prose allows your mind to spontaneously create its own images, a play does not. One must first create a mental image of a stage, then create the appropriate scenery, props, and the like. Then one must scrupulously follow what character is speaking, mentally attribute the corresponding voice and follow each character's entrances and exits so as not to have the wrong character on the stage at any given time. There is the whole business of delivery . . . how a written line is to be spoken; what emotion, how intense and so on.

Emergency Exit eliminates most of these problems. First, there are only two characters, Angelo and Martino. The setting is the interior of an abandoned dwelling in Naples. Santanelli is highly directive, providing copious directions for the characters - something that actors and directors may find confining, but removes much of the guess work for the reader. So, from the reader's stand point, it is direct, to the point and unambiguous.

But the real value is its content. Emergency Exit is a metaphor for life. Two characters, one of high birth and the other a commoner, represent the Everyman in each of us. They find themselves sharing quarters in a district of Naples which is largely deserted due to earthquake damage. The threat of another quake looms ever in the background. Angelo's and Martino's arguments and bickering vacillates from the trivial to the profound, but always has the texture of reality. Effusive with existential despair, it never wallows - you are constantly motivated to turn the next page.

Alan Franklin has been a professional journalist for 38 years (at the time of writing this book in 2002). He has followed the development of the European Union, collecting information from many sources, and has presented a chilling account of its real aims and objectives, which go far beyond what is usually presented in the media.

Any serious observer of the European Union will already be aware that the supposed community of trading nations that Britain joined in 1973, when Edward Heath was Prime Minister, was just an illusion. We were misled about its true intentions, and now we see it turning into a Superstate, with a single currency, a combined police force called Europol, and a European Army. However, Alan warns us that the real objectives of the EU go further than we have yet seen. It has systematically pursued a globalistic agenda since its foundation in the Treaty of Rome in 1957, so that the present European Union is just an intermediate stage in the move towards a future World Government.

The United Nations is in on the act, and in September 2000 they sponsored a Millennium Conference in New York where they laid down plans about how the world would be divided up, for the purpose of elections to the World Government. They produced a document called "How World Government will Work" stating that "Earth is divided into 1000 districts, 20 regions, ten magna regions and at least five continental divisions."

Alan also draws attention to various historical, mythological and religious aspirations of the European Union:

(1) They produced a poster depicting the Tower of Babel being rebuilt, with the caption "Europe: Many Tongues, One Voice". Then they opened a new Parliament building in Strasbourg, clearly designed to look like an unfinished Tower of Babel.

(2) The image of Europa riding the beast appears on coins, paintings and sculptures. She can be compared with the apocalyptic figure of Revelation 17, in the New Testament.

(3) The twelve stars of the European Union flag represent the twelve stars of the Madonna, indicating that Roman Catholicism is the recognised religion of the European Superstate.

Alan points out that the move toward globalism will eventually lead to the emergence of a future world dictator, with both political and religious authority - the Antichrist of Biblical end-time prophecy.

This book is a well-researched and verifiable account of important political facts that have been largely hidden from us. It is also a realistic assessment of what might become of the European Union as it moves forward relentlessly with its global agenda.

Mike Gascoigne

In this 224 page book, Alan Franklin, presents indisputable evidence that the European Union is the final world empire. He presents fact after fact in a style easily understood. Franklin shows his journalistic background with this well documented tome. This is a must read for any student of end-times, those interested in Christian prophecy, and for those who simply are interested in facts about the happenings in Europe. I have met Mr. Franklin and have had the distinct pleasure of private conversation with this astutue chronicler of the often misunderstood European Union. I have also had the opportunity to sit in a number of Mr. Franklin's lectures and have found his public presentation to be as engaging as his writing style. I highly recommend this volume for your edification.

A professor of mine told me that AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE is not a very good play, so I read it myself to find out...and I disagree with my professor! I think AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE is a powerful play on the timeless theme of the individual's relation to society. The "mob scene" in Act IV is a particularly intense piece of dramatic writing that reminded me of the "trial scenes" in such later, American plays as THE CRUCIBLE and INHERIT THE WIND. Several years ago I saw an outstanding local production of THE CRUCIBLE; I would love to see AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE onstage as well.
THE WILD DUCK, however, is my favorite play by Ibsen; I definitely agree with those critics who say that it is his masterpiece. I have read it three or four times, and each time I am amazed at Ibsen's skill. The play is a painful, poignant exploration of lost innocence, embodied in the character of Hedvig, a young girl on the verge of womanhood. If I could see only one more Ibsen play onstage (I've already seen HEDDA GABLER and THE LADY FROM THE SEA), it would be THE WILD DUCK. In fact, I'd love to direct it myself someday!

While Ibsen's other two plays in this volume are great, neither can come close to the genius of, An Enemy of the People. Dr. Stockmann's battle for truth against the self-interested masses is perhaps the most agonizingly wonderful exploration into truth and individuality. Ibsen is a master.

It appears that Roy Porter has a full-length book on British Enlightenment published by Penguin, and my review refers to that book and not this one, although both have the same title.

130 pages of endnotes in fine print for under 500 pages of text, plus another 77 pages (again in fine print) of bibliography, and then a full index - this book is a scholar's dream. Yet its easy style is aimed at a wide readership too.

Who can doubt the seminal role of Britain in the Enlightenment? The French may have started it. But Britain carried the movement forward. I'm impressed by the evidence.

Porter gives prominent place to the roles of Hume, Locke, and especially Priestley, with justice. Also mentioned are Gibbon, Swift, Malthus, and Samuel Johnson, and of course Adam Smith. Ben Franklin was a giant of the Enlightenment, but not of BRITISH Enlightenment, although he spent many adult years living in London, and knew many of these men. (Indeed Franklin brought Priestley over to America.) So Franklin is not covered in depth here. He was American.

This is the kind of book I'd love to read on the couch in many a long Canadian winter night. I also recommend Jenny Uglow's "The Lunar Men," which covers similar but not the same ground (and has much to say about Priestley too, who was also a "Lunar Man")

If you're searching for the definitive compendium about all aspects of epic heroism, this is the one book to buy. The author quotes famous as well as lesser-known epic stories, drawing mainly from Norse, Welsh, French, Balkanian and Persian sources among others, profoundly analyzing and interpreting the cultural specialities of their protagonists as well as their striking similarities, sometimes pronouncing obscure and even humorous aspects and episodes. The book is academical and down-to-earth with a lot of footnotes and cross-references, don't expect an esoterical, over-simplifying Campbellian take on the subject matter. Thankfully, Miller keeps a certain ironic distance which results in a more entertaining read than I expected. For writers, especially in the movie business, "The Epic Hero" can be a real treasure, a source of immense inspiration - not from the structural point of view, but regarding the many details, themes and characters Dean A. Miller puts on display here in his great effort. I consider it the perfect companion (though not a surrogate due to its different scholaric approach) to Christopher Vogler's "The Writer's Journey" of which it sometimes appears to be an accidental yet very valuable continuation.

The first thing that hit me in this book was its exuberance. It reminds me of "The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony" for its sheer joy in pressing ahead. Miller isn't afraid to let his sense of humor show, either. But, no mistake, this is a serious work of scholarship, deep and detailed.

The book starts off with an evolution of the hero, from the Greeks, through chivalry, the Renaissance, straight on to present day's concerns with the hero as he gets explained by anthropology, sociology, and psychology.

The next chapters deal with elements in the hero's life and adventures: his remarkable birth, strength as a youth, threatening family, problematic sex life and requisite death; his landscape, both exterior and interior, and his relation to the otherworld, to his quest, and to his king. Variations of the quest are laid out, including its structure in time (maturational, sequential, and the effect of the otherworld on times of day and year), and the hero's costars (helper, sovereign and woman).

In a chapter ironically titled "The Hero 'Speaks'" we find the many nonverbal ways the hero is expressed and described, from physique and coloration, to gesture, to weapon and armor, combat, and finally to actual speech, which is generally just as violent as his actions.

Next Miller takes up other characters the hero comes upon (or sometimes is), including the trickster, the smith, and the comic coward. He further discusses color and the hero, with an interesting passage on black, green, and other knights.

The hero exists on the edges of our experience; his relation to the shaman, to the gods, and the line between life and death, are discussed next.

The conclusion draws all this together into a series of graphs that show the connections of different hero types, the hero to royalty or to a trickster, and to the other characters in his life.

I read this book hoping for another point of view after reading Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" and other related books. I assume most readers who, like me, are not academics, will find this book for much the same reason. So some comments about the two works might be worthwhile.

Miller is not trying to draw all of human experience and mythology into some single linear form. As he says, he isn't interested in the monomyth. He limits his discussion to epics with Indo-European roots. This is a comforting strategy when set against Campbell's inclusion (and shaping) of many many cultures, with the problems that raises.

He also doesn't limit the discussion to what fits. Some heros, for example, will have childhoods that make it obvious they're something special, but some don't fit that mold, and may be entirely unpromising.

The problem (well, my problem) with Campbell is the limitation of the monomyth; not only is the story line constricted, its psychological meanings are too concerned with Freud and Jung. When you hear someone say that in myth, water represents X, suddenly this becomes a game of finding the correct meaning for the symbol, makes *everything* a symbol, and leaves me feeling like I've been watching a fortuneteller explaining away dreams. Surely by now we can subscribe to a different view of psychology, symbolism and meaning.

Miller, by refusing to create a central character and storyline that will explain all his examples, lets the literature be as vibrant as it wants to be, as problematic and multivalent. I found myself wishing at times that instead, he would create multiple spines for stories, a limited but useful number. This would sacrifice accuracy, but would offer more anchors for the discussion. I suppose I came to his book expecting a multimyth rather than monomyth, but that's not his intention. Then again, he gives the apparatus for constructing that kind of multimyth on one's own, so maybe that need can be fulfilled after all.

This is a lively, bountiful book, scholarly, aware of the possible pitfalls, and exuberant in its pursuit of the hero in all his epic forms.

Brilliantly lucid and maddeningly obscure by turns, this small book consists of an "enthusiastic poem" written in 1947, an essay written in 1960 which explores Sade's ideas, and another less positive essay of 1986 which recapitulates what Paz has felt and thought of Sade's life and work. Paz starts out, reasonably enough (though how few exhibit such sense!), from the position that "the main interest of Sade's work is of a philosophical order", and his book contains a wealth of profound insights into Sade's thought which resonate in the mind long after one has put it down. A book not to be missed, and one that shows clearly that only a philosophic mind of some depth can truly comprehend Sade.

I've read de Sade, and studied him in class at Harvard. Only NOW--after having read Paz--can I understand what was underneath all the "frigging" and "embuggering."

External structures that are often inflexible and ultimately produce ludicrous, harmful people & behaviors. This is what Sade was getting at.

Paz shows us that Sade can't be dismissed as an inept writer of pornography. There's oh! so much more going on.

This is a great introduction to Magritte's work. It's well organized, give's various quotes from Magritte himself and has serveral sidebars of information realted to Magritte's life and work. It is a quick read, and is not bogged down with a lot "artsy", hard to understand terminology (Any art teminology that IS included is clearly defined in common terms). The book is jammed full of Magritte's paintings, and they are all full color (which is not always the case with art books). To sum up, this is a great springboard into the work of Magritte.

What a wonderful little book. Clearly written with the appropriate amount of biography and historical reference. Excellent plates of many of Magritte's important works that represent his career from start to finish. In less than 30 minutes, your appreciation and understanding of Magritte will blossom! I recommend this book to anyone who loves modern art. I recommend this book to all who think they don't like modern art. I recommend this book for everyone!

A diligent experimenter and Abstract Expressionist who sometimes shocked, the Dutch born de Kooning was also a sculptor. After stowing away to America as an impoverished 22-year-old immigrant, this artist grew to become a leader in modern art, "a defining member of the most influential art movement created in the United States."
With the impact of his colors drawing gasps, he literally transformed the way many of us view our surroundings. Quite obviously, he had admiration for traditional Western art yet struck out on his own only to find the country floundering in the depths of a Depression.
Despite his lack of funds de Kooning "remembers the years of the Depression as nurturing, formative ones. A sense of shared community prevails, since everyone is poor and none of them is famous yet."

When I first got this book I was a little skeptical thinking an artist as gifted as de kooning couldnt be captured in a little book, particularly an artist in the abstract field. Glad to say I was wrong. The artist accomplishes what she sets out to do:

- comprehensive overview of de kooning's life and works; - introducing non-lovers of abstract art (not me but friends) in a non-overbearing manner to the world of abstract art; - highlighting de kooning's major works.

Accomplishing the above in a small book the size of a cd that you can read in one airline flight is pretty impressive. Aftert reading it I felt I knew de kooning -- already one of my favorite artists -- even more than I did before and I will certainly get other books in this series on different artists.

The Ethics of Spinoza is one of the hundred or so most brilliant books ever written. It is also one of the most amazing accomplishments Man has produced. Not easy reading, it is worth working through. By logical argument piled on top of each preceding argument, Spinoza states that "God" is co-equal with the universe (he was a pantheist) and details a remarkable analysis of the emotions and how we can best direct them so as to reach tranquility of mind. He does this all with what must have been an astonishingly powerful mind with rare skills of analysis. The odd structure he chose may not have been the best vehicle for his philosophy but it was based on the then popular Cartesian method. A truly magnificent view of religion, life and the universe. While there have never been many followers of Spinoza's system, its influence has been felt throughout philsophy. This book is a monument to what the human mind is capable of. A landmark in Western civilization.

Look in any history of philosophy and Spinoza's Ethics will be described as "one of the most difficult" works in philosophy.

About two years ago I set my self the task of working through Spinoza's geometrical system of God, Mind, Emotions, The Strength of the Emotions, And The Intellect. I tackled it 5 propositions at a time. It was like reading a lease. Very dry, but very important. In short, I loved it, and really not that difficult. (I don't read leases in my spare time).

What I most enjoyed was Spinoza's grappling with the emotions and his focus on intelligent introspection. The end result of this for Spinoza was the happy discovery, arrived at by geometrical proof, that deep down we are good, indeed blessed. This is not wishful thinking, but a meticulous application of logic and the facts. How he does it is amazing, and worth reading

Spinoza's conclusions point the way to a happy life of self-discovery. His broader picture of God lies waiting for others, especially theoretical physicists, to pick up the trail where he left it.