ModernGermanLiterature18801950

468 MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE

ation here and in America as Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel; both
equally do justice to the enemy as fighting men; but just because
of this Carossa was denounced to the Naxis as a pacifist. The sense
of this war diary, which eschews description of fighting, is that
Carossa amid the crash of civilization resolutely and with quiet
foresight sets about the work of reconstruction; in this sensed
Roumanian Diary prepares the way for Dcr Ar^t Gion (1931), in
•which the heroic way is shown to be the healing of the mental
and moral degradation that comes in the wake of war. Three
women are grouped round Dr. Gion: Cynthia and Emerens as
patients, Alruna as his dispenser; he has to tell Hmcrenz, a young
country woman, who is pregnant, that to bear the child will cost
her life; she chooses death, that the child may live. To Cynthia,
a sculptress and painter, he makes it clear that marriage would
cure her temperamental instability; he cures her by himself marry-
ing her. F$brtm& mid Gehit (1935), the fourth volume of the auto-
biography proper, gives the story of Carossa's development as a
writer and of his contacts with those who helped him; there are
fascinating glimpses of Dehmcl, Karl Wolfskehl, Stefan George,
Rilke, and others. The autobiographical Case of Geheimnisse des
reifen Lebens (1937) is obvious, but its contents are problematical
In an old cottage near Passau lives Angermann with his invalid
wife Cordula. He is an author, and, though this is not stated, the
presumption is that he is a retired doctor. As in Dtr Ar%t Gion
the symbolic theme is the problem of child-bearing; and, also as
in Der Artf Gion, round the central male figure there is a group
of three women; Cordula, Angermann's sick wife; Barbara, the
owner of a pottery in the woods near-by; and Sibylle, Barbara's
companion. la Rumanisches Tagtbuch there is a Freudian dream in
which to the diarist are revealed the elective affinities of his wife,
their servant, and a young Hungarian woman, in whose house he
is sleeping, and the comment is: Aber wit fob ft ich dk dm Frauen in
der e in en Gesialtl Wie warm sit tin Wesen, m&chtigsmnd eim in der
anderen /* We are apparently intended to feel that the three women
are the three norns - Past, Present, and Future - of the Nornen-
brunnen at Munich; man is enfolded by three elemental radiations
of his female partner, these having their roots in the three phases
of time. Das Jabr der schonen Hawchwgen (1941) gives the auto-
biography from the beginning of Carossa's university studies in
1908 to the end of his first year as a medical student. There is some