BOOKS
711
Negro largely can is needless to remark; and in the Negro of the South
Faulkner finds an enduring embodiment of human wrong and human
possibilities. To
him
the possibilities are quite as important as the wrong.
As
developed in a heroic portrait like that of Dilsey in
The Sound and
the Fury,
the Negro, in his singleness of being, his concentration of ani–
mal and moral qualities, is Faulkner's great image of a natural humanity.
But Faulkner's naturalism-which requires further definition- is
entirely alien to the classical Southern mind. It places him in the tra–
dition of Whitman and Mark Twain and Hemingway. Thus, in the
very process of showing Faulkner's dependence on Southern conditions,
we are thrust out upon this larger-or at any rate other--stage.
F. W. Dupee
THE POSITION OF HOFMANNSTHAL
SELECTED PROSE. By Hugo von Hofmonnsthol. Tronsloted by Mory
Hottinger ond Tonio
&
Jomes Stern. Introduction by Hermonn Broch.
Bollingen Series. $4.50.
Among the European centers of art and learning round the
turn of the century Vienna was perhaps the most curious, ambitious,
and the one most riddled with contradictions. It has remained, to this
day, one of the most neglected. Berlin, Paris, London, even Rome, have
furnished the cultural historian with what seems to be inexhaustible
matter for contemplation, evaluation, gossip: the story of Austria's
contribution to the great awakening, as exciting as any, has never been
told, except piecemeal, discipline-wise, and for local consumption. This
in itself is a remarkable fact, worthy of the attention of both scholars
and students. But it cannot concern us here; nor can we hope,
in
this
space, to sketch a panorama complete with Schoenberg and Alban Berg,
Klimt and Egon Schiele, Bahr, Karl Kraus, Schnitzler and Hofmanns–
thal, Freud and his early disciples, Schlick, Buehler and Wittgenstein.
The liveliness, the sense of constant discovery prevailing in Vienna
between 1900 and World War I, the reader is left to infer from these
names. What interests us is the fact that Hofmannsthal was one of
them, that he operated in that particular field of force, that he
achieved his definition as well as his distinction through concord with
some of the intellectual currents around
him,
through silent ignoration
of the rest. And the rest comprised, oddly enough, the three most
pow–
erful
movements then centered in Austria: logical empiricism, psycho–
analysis, and the musical avant-garde.
