Erich Auerbach (1) (1892–1957)
Author of Mimesis: the representation of reality in western literature
For other authors named Erich Auerbach, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
At the time of his death Erich Auerbach (1892-1957) was Sterling Professor of Romance Philology at Yale University
Works by Erich Auerbach
Mimesis: the representation of reality in western literature (1942) — Author — 2,660 copies, 17 reviews
Kultur als Politik Aufsätze aus dem Exil zur Geschichte und Zukunft Europas (1938-1947) (2014) 4 copies
Auerbach Erich 1 copy
Neue Dantestudien 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Auerbach, Erich
- Birthdate
- 1892-11-09
- Date of death
- 1957-10-13
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Greifswald (Ph.D|1921|Romance Languages)
University of Heidelberg (Dr. Phil|1913|Law)
Französisches Gymnasium - Occupations
- teacher
philologist
literature critic
comparative literature professor - Organizations
- Yale University
Institute for Advanced Study
Pennsylvania State University
Istanbul University
University of Marburg
Prussian State Library - Awards and honors
- Iron Cross Second Class
- Short biography
- Erich Auerbach was born to a Jewish family in Berlin. After serving in the German military in World War I, he earned a doctorate in philology at the University of Greifswald. He was the librarian at the Prussian State Library and in 1929, joined the faculty at the University of Marburg. He published Dante: Poet of the Secular World (1929), which is now considered a classic. He became one of the best-known philology scholars and comparative literature experts. Dismissed from the university by the Nazi regime in 1935, Prof. Auerbach fled to Istanbul, Turkey. There he taught at the Turkish State University and completed his masterwork, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946). He wrote most of it from memory because he had been forced to leave his papers and books y behind in Germany. In 1947, he moved to the USA, taught at Pennsylvania State University, and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. He was appointed Sterling Professor of Romance Philology at Yale University in 1950, a position he held until his death. His wife was Marie and his son Clemens.
Other works included Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages (1958). - Nationality
- Germany (birth)
USA (naturalized) - Birthplace
- Berlin, German Empire
- Places of residence
- New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Princeton, New Jersey, USA
State College, Pennsylvania, USA
Istanbul, Turkey
Marburg, Hessen, Germany - Place of death
- Wallingford, Connecticut, USA
- Burial location
- Evergreen Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Discussions
Erich Auerbach in Philosophy and Theory (May 2009)
Reviews
Not my usual practice to review a book seven years after I have read it, but have just looked in some disbelief at the mostly negative reviews here, including one that sees this book, written in 1942, as an example of unfortunate trends in contemporary criticism. I consider this one of the most brilliant and interesting books I have ever read, both in concept and in detail. Writing in scholarly exile in Istanbul with no access to secondary sources Auerbach explores the subject of show more “reality” by a close reading of a selected passage in a chronological series of works from the Odyssey to To the Lighthouse and Proust. The scope is breathtaking, the insights always engaging even when one is unfamiliar with the work in question, or unable to read the passage in the original. Not to be missed. show less
This is one of the epics of lit crit, and another of those books that I used excerpts from as a student and have been meaning to read in full ever since. I ended up reading it on Scribd in the English translation by Willard Trask, which is probably not the ideal way, but turned out to be agreeable enough.
It's a work of vast scope, looking at the development of literary realism from Homer to Virginia Woolf, by way of twenty chapter-length case studies covering different periods, each of show more which looks in close detail at one or two passages from literary texts. Auerbach wrote it while in exile from Nazi persecution in Istanbul during World War II. As he explains in an afterword, he would probably never have attempted something so wide-ranging if he hadn't been stranded in a place without the sort of library facilities he was accustomed to. As it was, he had to work without extensive preliminary research into scholarly work in the field, and he came up with the idea of following a small number of connected themes through a series of texts he was already thoroughly familiar with.
He doesn't claim that his choice of texts is anything but arbitrary and personal, so it isn't really fair to play "what's in and what's out" with his selection, much as we would like to. He does comment on some of the most obvious omissions - Ibsen and the Russians, for instance, are out because he wants to work only on original texts - but there are others he never mentions. How did he come to leave out Chaucer and Sterne, for instance? And Dickens!
I got the feeling that there was a certain amount of (very understandable) anti-German sentiment affecting the choice of texts too. Goethe and Schiller are brought in only to be hauled over the coals for being too conservative, and most other 19th century German writers are dismissed as too provincial. Thomas Mann is mentioned favourably but only as a kind of passing gesture, and Kleist, who might have made an interesting counterpart to Stendhal, is overlooked completely.
The "original language" aspect is a large part of the fun. We are presented with texts in several varieties of Latin and French, in Provençal, in Spanish, in medieval Italian, in English and in German. Fortunately the Trask translation includes some sort of translation of each piece into English, with the help of which anyone with a basic understanding of Romance languages ought to be able at least to pick their way through most of the texts. (Oddly enough, ch.1 doesn't reproduce the two texts being discussed: presumably he assumed that anyone capable of reading Greek and Hebrew would have the Odyssey and Genesis Ch.22 within easy reach anyway?)
What's really wonderful about the case studies is the way that he manages to approach each of the texts he examines with a degree of assurance, knowledge and affection that would normally be enough to convince any reader that it could only come from someone who has spent his entire career studying just that period and that author in particular. Yet he can do it as convincingly for Dante as he does for To the lighthouse; he's as comfortable with the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes as with the courtly memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon. And not only does he convince you that he knows his way around these texts exceptionally well, but he also manages to convince you, as reader, that you are also clever enough to understand how the style and structure of these passages can be unpacked to reveal how these writers carried out their task of representing the world on paper.
Everyone who's looked at ch.1 in the course of their studies knows about the conflict which Auerbach sees as going on in Western literature between the stable, rather conservative ways of representation coming from classical Greek and Latin rhetoric and the much more dynamic and subversive world-pictures arising from the Jewish and Christian religious texts. Auerbach, of course, is very much anti-rhetoric. He approves of authors who explore the random, arbitrary nature of the real world and tut-tuts at those who like to keep everything at its proper level of style.
Definitely a challenging and satisfying book to read, but it's also one that is likely to leave you with a much higher TBR pile than you started with... show less
It's a work of vast scope, looking at the development of literary realism from Homer to Virginia Woolf, by way of twenty chapter-length case studies covering different periods, each of show more which looks in close detail at one or two passages from literary texts. Auerbach wrote it while in exile from Nazi persecution in Istanbul during World War II. As he explains in an afterword, he would probably never have attempted something so wide-ranging if he hadn't been stranded in a place without the sort of library facilities he was accustomed to. As it was, he had to work without extensive preliminary research into scholarly work in the field, and he came up with the idea of following a small number of connected themes through a series of texts he was already thoroughly familiar with.
He doesn't claim that his choice of texts is anything but arbitrary and personal, so it isn't really fair to play "what's in and what's out" with his selection, much as we would like to. He does comment on some of the most obvious omissions - Ibsen and the Russians, for instance, are out because he wants to work only on original texts - but there are others he never mentions. How did he come to leave out Chaucer and Sterne, for instance? And Dickens!
I got the feeling that there was a certain amount of (very understandable) anti-German sentiment affecting the choice of texts too. Goethe and Schiller are brought in only to be hauled over the coals for being too conservative, and most other 19th century German writers are dismissed as too provincial. Thomas Mann is mentioned favourably but only as a kind of passing gesture, and Kleist, who might have made an interesting counterpart to Stendhal, is overlooked completely.
The "original language" aspect is a large part of the fun. We are presented with texts in several varieties of Latin and French, in Provençal, in Spanish, in medieval Italian, in English and in German. Fortunately the Trask translation includes some sort of translation of each piece into English, with the help of which anyone with a basic understanding of Romance languages ought to be able at least to pick their way through most of the texts. (Oddly enough, ch.1 doesn't reproduce the two texts being discussed: presumably he assumed that anyone capable of reading Greek and Hebrew would have the Odyssey and Genesis Ch.22 within easy reach anyway?)
What's really wonderful about the case studies is the way that he manages to approach each of the texts he examines with a degree of assurance, knowledge and affection that would normally be enough to convince any reader that it could only come from someone who has spent his entire career studying just that period and that author in particular. Yet he can do it as convincingly for Dante as he does for To the lighthouse; he's as comfortable with the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes as with the courtly memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon. And not only does he convince you that he knows his way around these texts exceptionally well, but he also manages to convince you, as reader, that you are also clever enough to understand how the style and structure of these passages can be unpacked to reveal how these writers carried out their task of representing the world on paper.
Everyone who's looked at ch.1 in the course of their studies knows about the conflict which Auerbach sees as going on in Western literature between the stable, rather conservative ways of representation coming from classical Greek and Latin rhetoric and the much more dynamic and subversive world-pictures arising from the Jewish and Christian religious texts. Auerbach, of course, is very much anti-rhetoric. He approves of authors who explore the random, arbitrary nature of the real world and tut-tuts at those who like to keep everything at its proper level of style.
Definitely a challenging and satisfying book to read, but it's also one that is likely to leave you with a much higher TBR pile than you started with... show less
The gist of Auerbach's claim for a secular Dante lies in his emphasis on human, particularised fates as embodying the essence of each distinct earthly personality as opposed to the divinely-fixed fate of classical tragedy, which closes off all avenues for meaningful individual action and expression until destiny is inescapable. The heavens now reflected the world instead of the world the heavens, more or less. I'd have no reservations if it weren't for Auerbach's odd flight of teutonic show more literary fancy, but even at its worst it's a bleary morning-after compared to the black vomit of something like Benjamin in full flight. show less
This book is extremely difficult. In each chapter, Auerbach compares two texts. Usually at least one of the texts is in another language besides English, and many of the points he makes have to do with language usage, puns, and so forth, in the other language. For example, Auerbach will refer to a sense of humor evident in the Latin descriptions or sentence constructions - alas, untranslatable - that we non-polymaths can only imagine. In the bits and pieces I could understand, he makes some show more interesting points about how different types of historical consciousness are evinced by different works; that is, the farther back in time one goes, the less sense there is that there is a past and a future, and that there are historical trends or forces. Auerbach also makes an effort to don the authors' conceptual lenses when he examines the ethics invoked, or what is visible and invisible to the author, for instance . He frequently uses passages from the Bible to illustrates his points, and this should be of great interest to those fond of exegesis. I am such a fan, and yet I just could not make it through all of this book. Perhaps if I were smarter, younger, spoke at least ten languages, or all of the above...?
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