About book Mimesis: The Representation Of Reality In Western Literature (2003)
This book is encompassing and mind-bending in that specifically unique way that will make some people revere it like a religious text and will drive other people absolutely nuts. As you can see from all the stars I threw at it in my rating, I lean more towards the former camp. I can very much understand why/how someone would wind up disagreeing with Auerbach's thesis (and even more so with his methodology in getting there), but at the same time this book has such an open, ambitious, and kind of lovely approach to literature that I couldn't help but falling in love with it a little. And I honestly do believe that reading it will make you a better reader and a better writer.Auerbach's main theme is the issue of how reality is represented in literature, particularly how a relatively strict separation of styles and classes gave way in slips and bursts towards a more modern sense of realism in which everyday accidentals could be imbued with tragic weight. He traces the main impetus behind this trend to Christianity, particularly the manner in which the story of Christ broke down traditional literary barriers by allotting tragic weight and grand importance to people who were frequently from the lowest classes of society. This, however, did not immediately lead to a modern sense of realistic representation, predominantly because Christianity also brought with it the concept of figuralism - the idea that every little detail to be represented stands not only for itself, but something in the future and the past, all the better to tie together universal history in a Christian framework. Dante's Comedy is particularly key for Auerbach in this argument. Modern realism takes longer to get going, needing to proceed through a labyrinth of expressions from Shakespeare's limited mixing of styles to neo-classicism in the 18th century, and leading to the birth of modern realism in the Romantic movement. That's a summary that really doesn't do justice to the work, which is just bursting at the seams with ideas and observations. Auerbach clearly knows loads of stuff about loads of things, and he brings all of it to work for him here - the work covers a solid 3,000 years of literary history but never feels too diffuse. I think a lot of that is because Auerbach grounds all of his chapters in specific, concrete texts. That opens him up to accusations that he simply cherry-picked unrepresentative examples to suit his case, and that's a fair point (and one that Auerbach is explicitly acknowledges). But I think on the whole he makes a compelling case, and this work deserves 5 stars if only for its sheer breadth of ambition and imagination.PS: It's an undeniably dense book, but one that can be understood even if you're not familiar with literary theory (I'm definitely not) and even if you haven't read all the works he spotlights. I'd love to hear how a modern literary scholar would view this work.
Fleeing the Nazis in 1935, the noted German philologist and scholar of comparative literature and criticism Erick Auerbach settled in Istanbul where, without access to his extensive library, he wrote Mimesis – The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, a prime example of what subsequent scholars have come to call historicism. This is an amazing book, as fascinating as it is dense, as provocative in its ideas as it is impressive. For the interested reader I would suggest beginning with Auerbach’s four-page Epilogue, rereading it at the end. I wish I had done so; it would have clarified Auerbach’s argument for me at the onset and helped me avoid floundering with definitions and connotations (especially of “reality”) for the first one hundred pages or so.Auerbach proceeds chronologically, starting with Homeric and Hebraic literature and continuing through the modernist novels of Woolf, Proust, and Joyce. Throughout the book he strives to follow the process by which literature became progressively “realistic,” by which he means that it deals in a serious way with the day-to-day life of ordinary people. After his initial Homeric/Hebraic chapter he moves on to early Christian religion/philosophy and its writings before tackling the works of Roman authors during the early and middle parts of the first millennium CE. He moves on to medieval epics from France and Germany, touching upon French romance poetry as well, before arriving at the works of Dante and Boccaccio. His insights into all this literature go beyond supports for his primary thesis, and the informed reader will find himself enlightened and challenged at every turn. Not that all of Auerbach’s arguments are convincing, but that hardly matters – rarely has there been such a delightful opportunity to learn from and argue with such an erudite thinker.Continuing, Auerbach uses an exploration of Rabelais to develop his theme, then turning to Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Cervantes. Molière is next, and then Prévost. Not to neglect the Germans, he discusses the works of Schiller before returning to France and Stendhal. This leads almost inevitably to Flaubert, Balzac, and Goncourt, which then brings the text at last to the English modernists.This summary suggests more of a romp than this long, carefully crafted, deep and thoughtful book actually represents. Its 555 pages are best taken in small bites, carefully chewed and digested – I read only ten pages a day, finding that I needed to ruminate upon and assimilate those pages before I was ready for another meal. But what a treat it was to be exposed to a mind and to ideas so stimulating, so fresh, and so incisive. I am so glad that I discovered the book and took the time and effort to immerse myself in it.
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The title, Mimesis, is very insightful just by itself. The idea put forth by Auerbach is that literature is an imitation of the contemporary society from which it was spawned. The protagonist's feelings, mental agility, ability to think beyond the foreground is all very well "painted" in the literature itself. In reading reviews of Mimesis, I came across Benjamin Walter's 1953 analysis of the book, in which he makes a comparison between Plato's skeptical and hostile feelings toward mimesis (read: literature). Mimesis is something we must get beyond in order to experience or attain the "real."Walter juxtaposes Plato with Aristotle. "Aristotle views mimesis as a fundamental expression of our human experience within the world - as a means of learning about nature that, through the perceptual experience (read: literature), we get closer to the "real." Somewhere beyond Plato and close to Aristotle lies Woody Allen's charming 1983 movie, "Zelig." Set in the 1920s, the film focuses on Leonard Zelig, an everyday man with an ability to transform his appearance to that of the people who surround him. He soon gains international fame as a "human chameleon." In the movie, Bruno Bettelheim contemplates the question of whether Zelig was psychotic or merely extremely neurotic. Bettelheim states, "Now I myself felt his feelings were really not all that different from the normal, what one would call the well-adjusted, normal person.So is it better to read fiction with an eye toward "becoming" a more real person by getting beyond the literature (Plato), or is it better to read as if the protagonist is sharing his/her own imitation which is a fundamental expression of human experience and much closer to a need for all people within a society to acquire (Aristotle). On the most basic level, is my desire to imitate Jennifer Aniston's clothes something I should get beyond to find my own style, or is my Aniston-mimesis a fundamental expression of my human experience as a person living within an aging society.Auerbach seems to be arguing for the latter.
—Dayla
Someone who reads Mimesis and expects an orderly treatise with a very particular and all-encompassing claim may be a bit frustrated by Auerbach's tendency to linger on the specific examples and works that he cites and his occasional tangents and loose organization... but others will find that the insights he provides for these works are piercing and erudite and that, though there is no clearly stated thesis to encapsulate the evolution of representation over the centuries, one still leaves with a much clearer understaning of what has been gained and lost over time and, in some cases, who lead the pack in bringing about these changes. This journey on which he guides the reader from Homer and the Bible to Virginia Woolf is not intended to be a straight and well-paved road, but a glorious trek through the arcadian wilderness of literature, where it would be careless to not take time to delight in everything encountered on one's path. All the more exciting is that he approaches some works that might be obscure to some readers, as he wrote this text during the Second World War and had only a limited library at his disposal. This book is a treasure for anyone who enjoys literary criticism.
—Vincent Flock
A biggun' in literary criticism. Auerbach's book is a series of discussions about discrete works, progressing from Homer to Virginia Woolf. I felt like I was prepared to dive into this book based on my high-school curriculum and some more recent "Great Books" remedial reading (Dante). The book doesn't so much lay out a theory of literary criticism, but instead provides examples of how Auerbach reads and thinks about reading. He stays very close to the text of every work he selects, so you won't get lost in jargon or citations. As the chapters progress, he begins to make references to writers' advancements in portraying the world, which culminates (for him) in the post-realist works of Woolf. Along the way, he makes a side by side comparison of, say, the Odyssey and Exodus seem like something you might do for fun.
—Andrew
