The Politics of Cultural Mediation: Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Felix Paul Greve

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

This book, originally published as a special issue of the Canadian
Review of Comparative Literature in 2002, began with two sessions at a
conference devoted to the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, now
recognized as a central figure in Dadaism, and to her lover and
(briefly) husband Felix Paul Greve, known to Canadian literature as
Frederick Philip Grove.

The title is not only unappealing but inappropriate. The tortuous
introduction, written in the characteristic style of literary theory
that makes Grove’s stilted Germanic English seem limpid and elegant by
comparison, vainly attempts to detect a unity in the variety of
contents, and is best ignored. Part 1, devoted to the Baroness, contains
three essays that bring together a good deal of information about
avant-garde art istic movements in New York and Paris in the early
years of the 20th century, and will prove valuable to cultural (or
countercultural) historians. Part 2, consisting of three equivalent
essays on Greve/Grove, is notable for a solid and thoughtful discussion
by Paul Hjartarson of the Canadian immigrant’s situation as “enemy
alien” at the time of World War I. Another article, on Greve as a
German journalist, is informative, but an attempt to see the influence
of Oscar Wilde on Grove’s prairie novel Settlers of the Marsh seemed
to me forced and unnecessary.

Part 3 is devoted to a reprinting of Greve’s pamphlet Randarabesken
zu Oscar Wilde, originally published in 1903, together with a
translation by Paul Morris printed on parallel pages. This is, in many
respects, the most important feature of the volume. The German text has
hitherto been virtually inaccessible, and an English translation is
especially welcome. Unfortunately, however, it turns out to be a
frustratingly oblique production on Greve’s part, mainly interesting
for its application to Greve/Grove rather than to Wilde himself, while
the translation is marred by a number of errors and/or misprints.

In short, scholars of Dada, of early 20th-century German intellectual
movements, and of Canadian literature will find useful material here,
but the book could prove baffling for general readers.