Benjamin Fondane Was a Poet, a Literary Critic, and a Disciple of the Philosopher Lev Shestov

Benjamin Fondane was a poet, a literary critic, and a disciple of the philosopher Lev Shestov. He had ties to other Romanian emigres in France, most notably Emil Cioran who characterized Fondane as a profound existentialist who was less interested in�what an author said than in what he concealed. In this sense he differed greatly from the French existentialists of his generation. "Philosophical existentialism was a return to the Bible, a book hardly known to the philosopher" (p. 19). Fondane was heavily influenced by Shestov whose "fundamental faith that man was lost if dependent exclusively on knowledge pervaded everything. Knowledge would reduce man to a generality" (p. 25). Shestov encouraged Fondane to criticize philosophy from within. For Fondane poetry and philosophy belonged to each other. As a Jew, Kluback argues, Fondane lived as an exile in both Romania and France. This status as an exile pervades and influences Fondane's writing, although he only discovered his own Jewishness late in life. Finally, there is the dramatic story of his arrest, deportation, and death. Through the intervention of friends, among them Cioran, Fondane could have been freed, but he refused to leave his sister Line. As a result he was sent to Auschwitz and gassed at Birkenau on October 3, 1944. The first nine chapters of the book concentrate on Fondane's poetry and philosophy and do a fine job of revealing his thought. The final chapter of the book relates Fondane to the contemporary Romanian-American Jewish writer Norman Manea. It is worth noting that Kluback also dedicates this book to Manea. This little book does a fine job of presenting the work and thought of Benjamin Fondane. Nevertheless, it is more of an essay than a book, and it is by no means a biography. One is left wanting to learn more about Fondane, the man, and his life experience - those things that influenced him and made him what he was. Very little detail is given about Fondane's early life in Romania. Kluback's success in this small volume is in presenting the thought of this little known poet/philosopher. He admirably reveals the intellectual side of the man and the ideas that influenced him, but fails to connect Fondane with the world in which he lived. Despite this criticism, William Kluback has written a useful volume which, for the first time, makes the thought of this lesser known, but important poet/philosopher accessible to English language readers. It is an auspicious beginning for this promising series. Kurt W. Treptow The Center for Romanian Studies Eliten, politische Kultur und Privatisierung in Ostdeutschland, Tschechien und Mitte- losteuropa. Edited by Ilja Srubar. Konstanz: UniversitÃ¤tsverlag Konstanz, 1998. 361 pp. DM 68 (paper). An edited volume of sixteen articles together with an introductory chapter, Eliten, politische Kultur und Privatisierung in Ostdeutschland, Tschechien und Mittelosteu- ropa is the product of a 1995 conference of Czech and German scholars who reported on various aspects of democratic transition in Eastern Europe. The articles represent an interdisciplinary effort with contributions from scholars in both the social sciences and the humanities, including sociology, economics, and philosophy. Although the primary focus is on the transitions in the Czech Republic and East Germany, many of the authors have expanded their analysis to cover other countries in Eastern Europe, most notably Poland and Slovenia. While these articles appear at first glance to have little in common beyond their broad thematic groupings, the editor is careful to note a set of common themes running throughout the articles: the impact of wholesale institutional change on social continuity; the categorization of the process as a break, transition or return; the role of old elite actors in constructing a new order; the effect of foreign agents; the impact of both old and new orientations on the economy, political culture, and identity shaping; and finally, the difference between transition and transformation. Kabele's introductory chapter outlines the common theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the ensuing articles. In discussing the theory, he makes a firm dis- tinction between two often confused processes of societal change - transformation (defined as a path-dependent sequence of interconnected changes associated with modernization theory) and transition (an open, highly uncertain process characterized by the breakdown of an old order and emergence of a new) - and then outlines methodological techniques with which to construct and test theories of transition/transformation. Kabele clearly advocates the use of transition to describe the on- going societal change in Eastern Europe and frames the articles in this volume as those social, historical, and biographical processes active within the transition. While questionable as a general path for theory construction, Kabele's largely inductive ap- proach to theory building is appropriate for this work given the diversity of the schol- arly contributions. The sixteen substantive articles are centered on two themes: changes in political culture and social aspects of the economic transformation. Although it is not possible within this short review to discuss the individual merits of all sixteen articles, a brief . description of each is perhaps helpful. More specifically, the eleven articles on political culture treat the development of pre-1989 opposition movements (Flam), semantic discourse and elite competition (Fehr), elite transfers (Solga and Neckel), the function of civil society in democratic transition (Endress), the role of neocorporatist structures in securing support for economic reforms (Adam), a sociological explanation for the rise of leftist parties (Mat6j6), the devaluation of public space (Znoj), the difficulty in overcoming the past (Mucha and Sldma), and changing social identity (Stehlilovd). The five articles on the economic transition deal with the impact of past institutional structures on economic restructuring (Mense-Petermann), property rights and privati- zation (Mlcoch), the role of the self-employed in the transition process (Thomas), in- teraction effects between management and the workforce (Lohr), and problems for European integration (Srubar). I Most of the articles are descriptive or comparative case studies. Only a few of the authors, most notably Mateju, present structured research designs and statistical analyses more indicative of rigorous quantitative social science research. The most methodologically sophisticated of these articles require only a basic working knowledge of statistics. The difference between these methodological styles is used as a cri- terion for subdividing the eleven political culture articles. Whereas the "Studien"'are .

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