Hardly had Johannes Bobrowski burst on to the literary scene in the 1960s, dominating the literary discourse of the time, when his sudden death in 1965 snatched him from us. Military service, the war, and its aftermath took up one quarter of his brief life – he just had time to complete his military service and his work service when the war broke out. At its very end he was taken prisoner and spent the next four years, until Christmas Eve 1949, in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps. Until the sixties he published sporadically, and then, quite suddenly, success came. He was published in both the East and the West, was in great demand as a speaker and reader, and was awarded literary prizes in both the DDR, where he lived, and in the BRD. Such success both sides of the border was rare at that time.

In the almost four decades since his death, there has been a steady stream of critical work, which, together with the six- volume annotated edition of his work (1987–1999), has gradually accumulated to make this difficult author ever more accessible. The general editor of the Gesammelte Werke, Eberhard Haufe, has been a major figure in Bobrowski scholarship, ably assisted by such as Bernd Leistner, Gerhard Rostin, Gerhard Wolf, Sigfrid Hoefert, Fritz Minde, and Alfred Kelletat. The Marbach exhibition and comprehensive catalogue by Reinhard Tgahrt is a gold mine of information. Brian Keith-Smith was an early writer on Bobrowski in English, and he was soon followed by John P. Wieczorek, who, in addition to his Oxford dissertation (1978), has published half a dozen articles at regular intervals since 1982.

Between Sarmatia and Socialism is the fruit of some three decades of scholarly research. It has benefited from the pioneering work of the above-mentioned critics, from a number of doctoral dissertations, and, above all, from the Bobrowski archive, which Wieczorek has used to good effect.

As the author puts it, his study is intended to “continue and deepen interest” in Bobrowski for the English-speaking world. It is “emphatically chronological,” in common with many of its predecessors, moving nicely and logically through a biographical survey, a section on “Sarmatia,” to the poems, the short stories, and the two novels Levins Mühle, and Litauische Claviere. Wieczorek’s thesis is that too much emphasis has been hitherto placed on the centrality of Sarmatia in Bobrowski’s work and too little on his position as a writer in the DDR. Bobrowski’s development away from his avowed theme (Sarmatia and the German guilt in Eastern Europe) is well documented here with good use made of the archival holdings. The biographical survey (the “Life” promised in the subtitle of the study goes too far) is sufficiently detailed for an understanding of the work, which Wieczorek examines carefully and in clear and impressive detail. He brings out the Biblical allusions particularly well and makes Bobrowski seem much less complex and dense than he is often perceived to be. The historical aspects are likewise described clearly and helpfully, and Wieczorek is particularly good with appropriate summaries. Sometimes he brings out a peculiarity or a salient characteristic of the poet with a brief phrase that perfectly sums up the particular trait. “Unsyntactical nominalism,” for example, is precisely what Bobrowski so often indulges in throughout his poems.

Wieczorek’s study is, then, a clear and detailed appraisal of one of the best German poets of the post-war years, stripping one more layer of “obscurity” from Bobrowski and revealing his literary qualities and subtleties in impressive fashion. Just very occasionally there is the odd statement that makes the reader stop and question its validity or appropriateness. He speaks of the “formlessness of Expressionist poetry,” for example, and the “dark and unnatural silence of night.” I find most Expressionist poetry to be clearly formal, and is not silence natural to the night? Just once in a long while the reader might have liked an explanatory phrase. Is the Gilgamesh hero Enkidu generally known, for example? But this is an exception. In general, Wieczorek uses his knowledge and his research in a most impressive and helpful fashion. Between Sarmatia and Socialism is an informative and useful study, and I highly recommend it.

DAVID SCRASE University of Vermont