Georg Büchner: The Shattered Whole

by John Reddick

Description

* Major and provocative study of Buchner -- the first in English for nearly twenty yearsUnflagging revolutionary, closet Christian, extreme nihilist? Different periods and critics have interpreted Georg Buchner in a variety of ways. Although he died when only twenty-three - an age at which Goethe had not yet even written Werther - Buchner's handful of works count amongst the greatestachievements of modern German writing, and seem to speak with ever greater power and immediacy.This major new show more study of Buchner includes original readings of works such as Dantons Tod, Leonce und Lena, and Woyzeck. Showing the plays in a new light, John Reddick provocatively argues that Buchner was aesthetically so far ahead of his time mainly because he was seriously behind the times inhis essentially idealist premises and aspirations. Beyond any particular interpretation, however, Reddick seeks above all to make the reader more fully alive to the sheer vitality of Buchner's extraordinary oeuvre. show less