The double focus: intersecting modes of fiction and reality

Since Ulrich P le n zd o rf s bold reconditioning o f W erther as a disaffected young East German in 1973, no text in German has earned the epithet ‘intertextual’ so thoroughly as Günter G rass’s Ein weites Feld^'^ The intertextual mode, in the form o f a biographical and literary invocation o f Theodor Fontane, is the tex t’s governing principle, a hugely ambitious, not to say audacious authorial task that the new text has to work to legitimate. Given the size and scope o f Ein weites Feld, and the centrality o f the figure o f Fontane within it, the intertextual mode cannot be accom m odated as a literary game o f references alone, even if this is also dem onstrably the case. It m ust be shown to bear its own, original fruit in the new text, beyond being an - albeit impressive - archival e x e r c is e .M o s t readers and critics, I suggest, alm ost universally begin the process o f deciphering the central character, Fonty, with a certain bewilderment, and would inevitably ask why Fontane is so predominant a figure, both from the point o f view o f his own historical, literary significance, and the importance which Grass has clearly attached to him in this m odem context. What, we m ight be forgiven for asking o f the text, does Fontane actually represent? What is his precise role in the construction o f Fonty? And, m ost importantly, what are the implications, literary and political, o f the intertextual tension that his presence in the text unquestionably provokes in the reader? These questions need to be addressed fully and fairly, especially because the text was m ired in controversy from the outset, and has found notoriety as m uch for the m anner o f its reception as for the grandeur, flawed or otherwise, o f its intertextual project. Latter critiques o f the text have inevitably had to negotiate the issue o f the tex t’s publication.

U lrich Plenzdorf, D ie neu en L e id en d e s ju n g e n W. (R ostock : Suhrkamp, 1973); Günter Grass, E in w e ite s F e ld (G ottingen: Steidl, 1995). A ll page references are to the hardback edition .

Grass had a researcher. D ieter S tolz, w ork in g in the F on tan e A rc h iv in order to ensu re anon ym ity before and during the w ritin g process. T he tw o d iscu ss the collaboration during an in terview w ith C laus- U lrich B ie le feld , ‘D er A utor und sein verdeckter V erm ittler’, in D e r A u to r a ls fr a g w iir d ig e r Z eu g e, ed. by D an iela H erm es (M unich: D eu tsch er T aschenbuch V erlag, 1997), pp. 2 4 7 -8 7 .

an event that quickly expanded into a much bigger debate as to the role o f the critic, the nature o f criticism itself and, as well, the issue o f literature’s legitim acy as a m outhpiece o f political thought. It is not my intention to detail this debate: the text itself slips out o f sight all too quickly as the forum for bitter attacks on G rass’s politics, not to m ention for discussions o f m edia issues o f marketing and sales, all o f which has in any case been extensively docum ented and analysed.^’ W hat I am concerned to do, in the following discussion, is to give an account o f the part played by intertext in generating a political critique in a fictional environm ent that is overtly, overwhelm ingly literary in nature, and thereby to further discussion o f those issues which, although broadly speaking responsible for the initial critical furore, have only in retrospect becom e established as the proper focus for critical responses to the text.

M any critics initially found fault with G rass’s use o f the Fontane intertext on the basis that it served as a device merely to establish implausible connections between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, historical liberty taking o f the worst kind. This seems to me to be a fundamental misapprehension o f the intertextual aesthetic and its function in Ein weites Feld, not least as such an approach takes no account o f the particular property o f intertext in the environm ent o f the new text: surely, such a heavy intertextual debt as we have here challenges us to do more than seek parallels or comparisons? Certainly, the reader, taken back and forth between the two centuries and the two ‘characters’, the historical Fontane and the fictional Theo W uttke, is asked to com m it to an historical understanding o f the text. But the intertextual m ode articulates a

S ee D e r F a ll F on ty: ‘E in w e ite s F e l d ’ vo n G ü n ter G r a ss im S p ie g e l d e r K ritik , ed. by Oskar N e g t (G ottingen: Steidl, 1996). V olk er N eu h au s d edicates a w h o le chapter o f his S c h re ib e n g e g e n die v er stre ic h e n d e Z eit: zu L eb e n u n d W erk vo n G ü n ter G r a ss (M unich: D eu tsch er T aschenb uch V erlag, 1997) to its reception, co m m en tin g t h a t ‘w enn der G erm anist W alter H in ck [ . . . ] in sein em D a n k b rief an G rass fur das V orausexem plar die B eflirch tu ng auBert, die Kritik w erd e sich “verm u tlich an der ‘Intertextual itat’ und den ‘p ostm od ern en ’ Z ügen des B û ch e s festbeiB en”, so hat er dam it sein e K ritikerk ollegen erheblich ü b erschâtzt.’ (p. 2 2 7 ) S ee also Jorg T h u n eck e’s sum m ary o f the initial reception, ‘“D ie Kritiken sind w ie von Verbrechern gesch rieb en ” : zur R ezep tion von Günter G rass’ R om an E in w e ite s F e l doder: der R om an cier als Frem der im eigen en Land’, in L ite r a tu r u n d G e sch ic h te: F e stsc h rift f ü r W u lf K o e p k e zu m 70. G e b u rtsta g , ed. by Karl M en g es (A m sterdam A tlanta, G A : R od op i,

w ider concern, namely the function o f fiction in debating history and our response to it, and more specifically the question o f whether the power o f fiction m ight ultimately prove itself more than the power o f a notional, historical reality. It is in the intertextual configuring o f Fonty where the novel’s historical weight m ost readily seeks to jo in forces with its contem porary political critique, and, furthermore, w here the intersection o f fiction and reality is m ost completely realised. The Fonty/Fontane figure has to be considered as both on the one hand a derivation o f reality, o f historical fact (the Fontane A rchiv as the narrative m outhpiece emphasises the role o f docum entary evidence in the painstaking reconstruction o f history as ‘truth’), and on the other as an instance o f fiction, freely reconstructed by Grass as a literary project. The duality at the heart o f the central character, so constructed as to refuse historical specificity as well as a singular identity, gives a double edge to the narrative that the reader, steeped in the whole replicating aesthetic o f the text, is required to hold in focus. This aesthetic requires the reader not only to see in relation ‘now and then’, Fontane and Fonty, the original G erm an unification and the reunification, and so on, but also to consider the text as a dialogue between the concepts o f fiction and reality, played out by w ay o f the layers o f historical intertext. The tex t’s historical awareness offers a critical purchase on our own time, as well as functioning as a comparative backdrop. Often the interplay between the old and the new (expressed in the m ovem ent between the two centuries) eventually reveals itself m ore precisely to be both an expression o f historical fluidity and, by the same token, o f the possibilities which this notion lends to a fictionalised account o f historical and personal identity.

W hilst the historical dim ension o f the text calls out for critical attention, it seem s to me that this dimension can only properly be understood within the context o f the intertextual patternings themselves. That is to say, history (and G rass’s use o f it) comes into focus as a consequence o f the structural doublings that characterise the text on all

levels. For this reason, I have chosen to structure my own discussion o f the text in two parts. Firstly, 1 shall consider the narrative workings o f the text, its doubling strategies, its literary games, its wholly intertextual constitution. W ith this as a basis, I shall then explore its historical aspect and the m ovem ent between past and present that the intertextual voice permits. In this way, the critical emphasis should rem ain, rightly, on the dynamics o f the intertext within a fictional text, and historical and political concerns view ed through this all-im portant lens. I would like to begin my discussion o f the intertextual m ode and its role in debating those issues I have sketched out above with an analysis o f the puzzling protagonist Fonty, whose inherent slipperiness perfectly captures the com plexities o f the text as a whole.

Literary doublings: Fonty and Hoftaller

From the start, biographical references to Fontane's correspondence with his friend G eorg Friedlaender and to his daughter M ete establish the link between W uttke and the Prussian author. Prom pted by the coincidence o f his birth date and birthplace, W uttke has dedicated his life to reflecting ‘die Miihsal einer verkrachten E xistenz’ (9), and his ‘N achleben’ is so convincing ‘dab er in dieser und jen e r Plauderrunde als Urheber auftreten konnte’. (9) Beginning with his ‘coincidental’ birth one hundred years to the day after Fontane, Fonty goes on to enact a biography that has already been realised, and that has already been set out and preserved for posterity in letters and documents. This biography can briefly be sketched out thus: bom on 30 D ecem ber 1819 in N euruppin, Fontane’s interest in literature and culture is established from an early age. His m arriage to Em ilie Rouanet-K um m er produces four children, George, Theodor, M artha (Mete) and Friedrich, but he is already the father o f two illegitim ate children. During the Franco-Prussian war, Fontane goes to France as a w ar correspondent, and is taken captive for three months. His interest in England, and his three journeys there, is

the inspiration for his early literary output (most important from this tim e are Aus England: Jenseit des Tweed, 1860, and Balladen, 1861), but his name is m ade (at a relatively late age) from his impressions o f his homeland, entitled W anderungen durch die M ark Brandenburg. In 1878 he begins his career as a writer o f fiction, and, apart from a break due to illness (when, on the advice o f his doctor, he replaces his fiction by an autobiographical account entitled Meine Kinder]ahre), continues to w rite and publish prolifically until his death in 1898/^ As the supreme chronicler o f W ilhelm ine Berlin (texts such as Irrungen, Wirrungen can usefully be read with a straet map to hand), Fontane is the acceptable face o f Prussianism, observing and gently ruing the downfall o f his protagonists as they fall victim to its iron fist.

This unemphatic, understated stance is exactly that taken by his alter ego Fonty. Som etimes by chance, sometimes intentionally, Fonty is always beholden to this other biography, living an entirely retrospective existence and inhabiting, often literally, a different voice. As the narrative voice quickly suggests, this is on the one hand a very conscious act on Fonty’s part, requiring practice and a good deal o f hard work and study. It is also, however, a phenomenon that goes into a fictional realm far beyond Fonty’s own often playful recollections o f Fontane: the biographical doubling extends into a narrative game which interweaves the characters so effectively that it leaves the reader struggling to distinguish the two figures. Thus, the narrative, initially informing us that Fonty, inspired by the happy accident o f his birth, is ‘copying’ the great Fontane, gradually reveals its own doubling strategy. Beyond Fonty himself, and his own efforts to recreate his literary hero, the insistence on m arking the parallels, the care with which the sim ilarities are presented, ensure that those coincidences which could conceivably be thought o f as within the bounds o f possibility are given an altogether different em phasis in an intertextually self-conscious narrative context. Furtherm ore, it is the

For a fu ller accou nt o f F on tan e's life and w orks, se e Charlotte Jolies, f o n f d n c . uAtt JiitL PoUlrfk.:

combination o f these two, namely the ‘real’ (the events o f F onty’s life 1989-91, described by an innocent, collective narrator, which will include referentially his deliberate embrace o f Fontane and his - equally real - idiosyncrasies) with the ‘fictional’ (the thoroughgoing double perspective created by the narrative as a structural w hole), which assaults the reader. Fonty is the central character in the text, but as a central character he is oblique, displaced by the strength o f the intertext through which the narrative articulates him. The co-existence o f narrative realism, em bodied by the often frustratingly stupid narrators who take Fonty at face value, and an extraordinary self-conscious textuality, with the narrative constantly indicating its own status as fiction, ensures that the reader be, at the very least, alert to the interplay betw een these two modes. The relationship between them lends the text a narrative perspective that is at once authoritative (historically and topographically grounded, solid and self- confident) and whim sical (intertextually non-com m ittal, diffident and ironic). From the vantage point o f old age, Fonty’s perspective (and, equally, the perspective o f those around him who have narrative command over his biography) takes on a m onum entally historical quality, further extended by the nineteenth century Fontane intertext. It is no coincidence that Fonty is created as an old man: in its homage to Fontane, the narrative reflects a tendency to picture the author in his later, productively literary years. Equally, from a m ore textual, structural perspective, the retrospective aesthetic perm its that mode o f reflection in which the present finds its momentum. And yet the intertextual mode is also self-consciously ironic in nature, holding the characters in a constant textual position o f interdependence and insubstantiality. The purchase o f the m onumental perspective is, in other words, always only relative to the shifting referential ground o f the text itself. W ithin this intertextual environm ent the characters and events are not subject to the logic o f tim e as a progression from past to present to future: tem porality unfolds in an altogether m ore complex manner.

Both Fonty and his shadowy companion, a spy in the employ o f the Geheimdienst,

are them selves them atic instances o f timelessness, o f course, Fonty as ‘der U nsterbliche’, Hoftaller as the eternal spy, resuscitated from his form er incarnation in Hans Joachim Schadlich’s T allhoverP Their endless peram bulations around the streets and parks o f Berlin establish them equally as spatial and as tem poral inhabitants o f the city/"^ They are conceived in portrait form, a singular presence in constant m otion through the topography o f the changing face o f Berlin. They quickly attain a status som ew here between icon and caricature, ‘Klein und GroB’ (12), ‘lang und schmal neben breit und kurz’ (12), ‘der erne bei ausholendem Schritt, der andere im Tippelschritt’ (13), contrasting in every respect, but captured early on in the narrative as an overw helm ingly physical unity. They are ‘verschmolz[en] zu einer im m er groBer w erdenden Einheit’ (12), ‘miteinander verwachsen und von einer G estalt’ (13), ‘ein D oppelportrat’ (16), they cast ‘einen gepaarten Schatten’ (17), are ‘M antel m it Mantel zu einem SchattenriB verwebt, obgleich sie nicht Arm in Arm gingen’ (21), and, although the image dissolves when they stop moving, ‘[i]ndem sie gingen, wurden sie w ieder zum Paar. Beide Mantel m iteinander verwebt. ’ (44) The image o f them is iterated in self-consciously artistic terms. The men are twice a ‘Stum m film ’ (13,21) (Laurel and Hardy come irresistibly to mind), and as they peer through a gap in the wall, the narrator com m ents that ‘[w]are aus ostlichem Bediirfnis noch immer ein G renzsoldat wachsam gewesen, hâtte er von beiden ein erkennungsdienstliches Photo schieBen konnen.’ (15) They are narrated as if they were being painted in a single portrait, picture, or sketch, as a ‘leicht zapplige SchattenriBbildchen’ (13), ‘wie gerahmt;

H ans Joachim Schad lich, T a llh o v e r (R ein h ek bei Hamburg: R ow oh It, 1986).

S ee M ichael Ewert, ‘S p aziergan ge durch d ie deutsch e G esch ichte: E in w e ite s F e ld von Günter G rass’,

S p ra c h e im tech n isch en Z e ita lte r , 37 (1 9 9 9 ), 4 0 2 -1 7 . For Ewert, the ‘S p aziergan g’ is a literary d ev ice to