British novelist/poet Feinstein, who tackled some curious aspects
of Jewish identity in The Shadow Master (1979), now fashions a
slight narrative collage to explore a knotty tangle of conflicts -
ethnic, political, sexual - in the late-1930s marriage of two
assimilated Austrian Jews. The first part of the story emerges from
the 1938 Vienna diary of poet/professor Hans Wendler: he grumbles
about the lack of romance in his marriage to physicist Inge,
blaming it largely on her devotion to her career; he frets over his
increasing nervousness in lecturing, which parallels the increasing
drift of Vienna towards Nazification; and he glories in his new
affair with adoring young Hilde, a shadowy Communist agent who
suddenly departs for France. Then, six months later, Inge's diary
continues the tale: she and Hans have fled from Vienna to Paris,
where he resumes the Hilde affair - despite Inge's knowledge and
anguish; she broods guiltily over having sent their young son to
live with American relatives ("Why did I deny Hans the decent
ordinary home he demanded for his son?"); but she and Hans do come
closer together - after their path crosses that of fellow-refugee
Walter Benjamin, with his philosophic blend of Marxism and Jewish
mysticism. ("It is almost as if, a book-list, and a few holy names,
and sacred texts, have led him to forgive me for my Jewish
grandparents.") And finally, in 1983 Australia, the very old Inge
tells her visiting grandson the last chapter of the story: the
refugees' flight from Paris to the France/Spain border; the
reported suicide of Walter Benjamin; and Hans' own, perhaps similar
death - a fate preferable, it seems, to that of the permanent
refugee. (The epilogue is a final Hans Wendler poem: "I am not
prepared for white soot, cold ash,/or the red sands of Australia.
Forget me,/Dido: The cruel cannot be blessed.") Fragmented and
unsatisfying, with a dense cross-hatching of blurry events and
implicit issues - but mildly intriguing reading for those
especially interested in Walter Benjamin, German-Jewish identity,
or the traumas of refugeedom. (Kirkus Reviews)
General
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