Kreis ohne Meister. Stefan Georges Nachleben. By Ulrich Raulff. Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck. 2009. Pp. 544, 92 illus. Cloth €29.90. ISBN 10: 3406592252. ISBN 13: 978-3406592256.

摘要

Ulrich Raulff opens his book with a remarkable proposition. The poet StefannGeorge (1868–1933) created twoworks of art of outstandingweight and originality.nThe “George Circle” was one. In Raulff’s deft formulation this was not so much ancircle as a “vast mobile of men, images, and ideas, with George the ‘Master’ at thencenter, constantly adjusting it like a great clockmaker.” The second, however, wasn“perhapsGeorge’s greatestwork of art of all”: the break-up of the vastmobile in thenabsence of itsmaster. EvidentlyRaulff (who thinks little ofGeorge’s actual poetry) isnbeing paradoxical: a work of art created by a dead man whose claims to weight andnoriginality lie in the work’s dissolution. Yet this “perhaps greatest” of George’sartnworks is the subject of his book.With his customary wit Raulff notes that whereasnAby Warburg once half-jokingly said that he existed for reminiscences, Georgenmight have said that he was made for a beautiful ghost story.