“What a Precious and Skillfully Forged Little Thing.” Richard Schaukal – Modernist Literary Critic

Abstract

Richard Schaukal (1874-1942) was ignored as a writer, valued as a translator, and respected as a literary critic. It is a surprising fact that there have been, to date, few studies of his activities as a critic, given that important literary figures of the period such as Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse and Rainer Maria Rilke requested Schaukal to review their works. Schaukal was the author of inconvenient essays for numerous publications and with these, more than with his literary work, wrote himself into the discourse of the culturally conservative wing of critical Modernism. This piece focuses on Schaukal’s early literary criticism, and in particular on questions about its aesthetic positions, influences and functions. Finally, Schaukal’s article on Ferdinand von Saar (1899) will be analyzed as an example.