Refractions of Germany in Canadian Literature and Culture.

Burke, Myka

Refractions of Germany in Canadian Literature and Culture. Heinz Antor, Sylvia Brown, John Considine, and Klaus Stierstorfer, eds. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2003. viii, 377 pp. $140.00 US hc.

This volume brings together several thought-provoking prisms through which the multifaceted German and Canadian cultural and literary crossroads can be viewed and studied. It is the fruit of the first of two conferences. The second, or rather twin, conference, "Refractions of Canada in European Literatures and Cultures," was held in Dusseldorf in 2003. Both initiatives represent fresh perspectives for the examination of a protracted, albeit fragmented, corpus of intercultural testimony.

The three main sections of this volume: "Diaspora and Settledness," "Jewish Experience and the Holocaust," and "Literature and Cultural Exchange," are preceded by the foreword and introduction, as well as the opus "Occupying Landscape We Occupy Story We Occupy Landscape" by western Canadian writer Robert Kroetsch. In "Occupying Landscape," the Canadian riddle "Where is here?" is intimately subsumed into the question "Who am I?" Kroetsch testifies that the Canadian story is "obsessively" rooted in the cycle; "place and how we occupy that place, shape it, are shaped by it." He begins with the enlightening words: "I am a Canadian writer. I am of German descent. We live as well as write in just such middles. That is our predicament. And our good fortune" (p. 23). This kind of refracted presence of Germany is the focus of each of the seventeen contributions to this volume.

By using wide ranges of disciplinary, methodological, and national perspectives, the contributors to this volume reveal complex parallels in literature and lived realities of all speakers of German in Canada; they expound upon why these impressions and literatures should also be considered Canadian: they enrich our understanding of the plurality of Canadian identities. Brown's essay, "The Problem of 'Home' in Oral Histories of German Expellees in Canada," purports that telling painful and complicated histories makes it more difficult to "label and file away" (p. 55) experiences, and that these stories are needed to problematize categories like identity, ethnicity, and nationality--categories that were so horribly corrupted during the twentieth century. In "From Hungary to Germany to Canada: Gheorghui's Twenty-fifth Hour and Shifting Swabian Identities," Wittmann reflects on imposed identities faced by German-Hungarians and uses Gheorghui's novel Twenty-fifth Hour as a "fictional and historical beacon" (p. 86) to shed light on the dangerous infringement of human rights when there is no space for individual identities. "Dialectology, Storytelling, and Memory: Jack Thiessen's Mennonite Dictionaries" by Considine examines Thiessen's personal motives for his study of Plautdietsch as a native speaker of the language as well as Thiessen's impetus to write creatively in this language--and how both aspects fuelled the other. Stahler's contribution, "The Black Forest, the Unspeakable Nefas, and the Mountains of Galilee: Germany and Zionism in the Works of A.M. Klein," analyzes Klein's acuity of Germany and of the Germans as the Other in his journalistic writing, his mock epic poem "The Hitleriad," and his novel The Second Scroll. Stierstorfer's essay "Canadian Recontextualizations of a German Nightmare: Henry Kreisel's Betrayal" (1964) looks at the University of Alberta professor's reflections in both The Rich Man and Betrayal, and reads Betrayal as a complex narrative of reconciliation and hope. Volkmann, in "'Flowers for Hitler': Leonard Cohen's Holocaust Poetry in the Context of Jewish and Jewish-Canadian Literature," proposes two avenues for interpretation of the literary achievements of the apocalyptic humorist from Montreal: eclectic detachment and imagology. Volkmann suggests that Cohen's controversial and "irritating" writing of the Holocaust has been a way for him to move on, not in denial but also not wishing to be solely defined by it--to eventually be "free" (p. 210) of the nightmare. Glaap's "Views on the Holocaust in Contemporary Canadian Plays" reviews both Canadian political history and reflection there upon in Canadian theatre with reference to Canada's racist and anti-Semitic restrictionist immigration policies that saw only 5,000 Jewish refugees admitted to Canada during the twelve-year Nazi Regime. Australia, by comparison, took in 15,000; the United States, 200,000; and Brazil, 272,000.

The final section of the volume begins with Kern-Stahler's essay "'The Inability to Mourn': The Post-War German Psyche in Mavis Gallant's Fiction." Gallant's fictional German psyche, proposes Kern-Stahler, is remarkably akin to the socio-psychological Mitscherlich observations of a collective German behaviour too eager to forget the past.

Wolf's article "Dividing and Reuniting Grandmothers, Mothers and Daughters: The Black Motherline, Vergangenheitsbewaltigung Studies, and the Road Genre in Suzette Mayr's The Widows" is a careful study of Mayr's second novel. The Widows, she insists, offers a prophecy of the conclusion of a patriarchal trajectory with its ostensible "sexist, racist, and homophobic attitudes" and makes room for a powerful female constellation that no longer adheres to the confines of "age, sexual orientation, and race" (p. 294). Skidmore's essay "Urquhart's Fairy Tale: The German Cultural Imaginary in The Stone Carvers" explores several "mainstream" fictional works by eminent Canadian writers where "German culture cannot be overlooked" (p. 320)--including Urquhart's The Stone Carvers. Skidmore argues that the German image in Urquhart's novel is more primary, as the story's architecture reflects and is propelled forward by the folk and fairy tale compositions of the German cultural imaginary. Kroller's "The New Canadian Embassy in Berlin" dissects the architecture of Canadian diplomacy by looking at the difficulties faced when trying to mesh national identity with international presence, city planning regulations, and embassy security codes. Her semiotic approach to the historical, political, and artistic aspects of diplomatic architecture is a well-chosen final contribution to the volume. It places the proverbial ball in Germany's court--the location of the second conference.

The many overlapping and intersecting themes in this volume appositely reflect various aspects of the complex history of "Germany" in Canada's literature and culture. This volume has so eloquently expanded our understanding of Canadian identities and culture; yet I must wonder why the references, studies, and essays presented here make so little mention of those Canadian writers who have written, or are still writing, in German.

Myka Burke

German Department

University of Leipzig

Email: mykaburke@T-Online.de