Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

232 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

the world.^139 However, he insists this feeling has nothing to do with how Menzel

will receive him: “Just as little was I concerned that a literary police would plant

thoughts in my mind. I consider it the duty of every writer who takes the honor

of German literature to heart to speak out openly and frankly about the activities

of Hrn. Menzel.”^140 Auerbach claims not to fear how a “literary police”—that is,

Menzel—might plant thoughts in his mind, or fill out his Seele with a “Jewish”

character. Appearing in a passage devoted to Menzel stretching to some five

hundred words, Auerbach’s statement that “Hr. M. may consider me a later-

born member of Young Germany or place me under a rubric of Jewish writers;

it is a matter of indifference to me” is a classic case of protesting too much.^141

In the midst of so much authorial insecurity, ambiguous relationships to po-

tentially divergent audiences, willed or unwilled dramatization of the ironies of

an 1830 s German-Jewish writerly self, and intricate defensive strategies on Au-

erbach’s part, it is surprising to come upon the following statement: “I tried to

approach that original form of story telling [Erzählung] that has nothing but

the word. I didn’t think of myself even as reading aloud and thus inserted some

questions from listeners.”^142 Everything in “Das Ghetto” bespeaks an apprehen-

sive hyperawareness of a textualized literary culture and a commodified literary

economy that trade in stereotype and cliché. Yet Auerbach wants to imagine

himself as a pure Erzähler, an oral storyteller, very much in Walter Benjamin’s

sense of a community-binding transmitter of experience.^143 In this fantasy, no

text disrupts the flow of the spoken word between Erzähler and Zuhörer.

Of course, precious little in Spinoza bears out Auerbach’s fantasy of immedi-

ate oral narration or, more important, the imagined community of readers that

such an idealized speech situation would consolidate. Yet it is highly significant

that Auerbach emulates this narrative effect, in fantasy, already in Spinoza. Auer-

bach’s preface to Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten echoes his description of his

oral narration in “Das Ghetto” in striking ways.^144 He states in the later text: “I

almost always thought of myself as narrating orally; the events are like historical

facts [stehen als geschichtliche Thatsachen da]. Therefore every so often [the

narration] had to be sprinkled with rules of life and general observations.”^145

Auerbach’s self-stylization as an Erzähler offering a community-binding mode

of oral narration to a listening audience is not the only thing that links his Spi-

noza novel to his village tales of the 1840 s. Recall Auerbach’s wish to preserve

the treasure of folklore before it vanishes from the mouth of the Volk: “There is

a rich treasure of legends, miracle tales, etc. in the mouth of the people; we wish

to salvage of this whatever can be salvaged.” Taken out of context, this sounds

like a folklore collection project à la Brothers Grimm, and in many ways it is.

The Volk in this case, however, is Jewish, and the Sagen and Wundergeschichten