RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 A Faustian <em>Versprechen</em>: Dürrenmatt, Staiger, and Late Goethe
JF Monatshefte
FD University of Wisconsin Press
SP 16
OP 36
DO 10.1353/mon.2012.0002
VO 104
IS 1
A1 Teraoka, Arlene A.
YR 2012
UL http://mon.uwpress.org/content/104/1/16.abstract
AB Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s detective novel of 1958, Das Versprechen, begins by mentioning a lecture by Emil Staiger on late Goethe that draws a large audience in the Swiss city of Chur, leaving only a few to attend a competing talk that same evening by a Swiss author on the art of writing crime novels. This essay makes an argument for Das Versprechen as Dürrenmatt’s critique of the ethical and political stance embedded in Staiger’s aesthetics and, in particular, in Staiger’s reading of Goethe’s Faust. The discussion draws connections among the powerful aura of the Swiss literary critic Emil Staiger in the 1950s postwar era; the comforting idyllic self-image of Switzerland as a country of democracy, prosperity, and neutrality; and disturbing references to Goethe’s Faust in Dürrenmatt’s novel of a serial child murderer. (AAT)