Matthias Weichelt: Gewaltsame Horizontbildungen: Max Kommerells lyriktheoretischer Ansatz und die Krisen der Moderne, Winter 2006, Heidelberg.

• Paul Fleming

Weichelt begins his study on Max Kommerell with an understandable gesture: with an appeal to authority. Ever since Giorgio Agamben called Kommerell ‘the greatest German critic after Benjamin’ and ‘perhaps the last great personality from between the two wars to be discovered’, it is hard to write an essay, much less a book-length study on Kommerell without alluding to or citing these words from 1991. Such a seal of approval seems necessary, because Kommerell does occupy a rather unique position in literary studies. Weichelt rightly calls him “den präsent gebliebenen Unbekannten”, the epitome of a critic who never really ‘makes it’, but also never fades away.

Seiten 630 - 632