Peter V. Zima. Essay / Essayismus. Zum

theoretischen Potential des Essays: Von

Montaigne bis zur Postmoderne. W€urzburg:K€onigshausen & Neumann, 2012, 292 pp.

In The Essayistic Spirit (1995) Claire de

Obaldia calls attention to the fact that the

essay as a genre is often regarded as unsta-

ble and open, as an anti-genre or a non-

genre or a hybrid, and she explains this by

describing the essay as literature in poten-

tia, charged by ‘the essayistic spirit’.

The Austrian professor Peter V. Zima

has now published Essay / Essayismus.

Zum theoretischen Potential des Essays:

Von Montaigne bis zur Postmoderne; in

many ways he follows the ideas of de

Obaldia. ‘K€onnte es nicht sein’, Zima

writes in his opening chapter, ‘dass der

Essay keine Gattung im herk€ommlichen

Sinne ist, sondern ein Text, der zwischen

allen Gattungen gleichsam vermittelt?’

(p. 5). He describes the essay as a ‘symbio-

sis’ between all kinds of text and declares

the essay to be ‘Intertext par excellence’

(p. 6). Zima does not refer to de Obaldia

but joins a German tradition, with Theo-

dor Adorno as the outstanding model –Adorno who once embraced the essay as

‘the critical form par excellence’.

Zima’s history of the essay starts where

one normally starts, with Montaigne, and

ends with Roland Barthes and J€urgenBecker. On the way he discusses Diderot, a

few German Romantics, Nietzsche, Luk�acs,Adorno, Pirandello and Musil. The selec-

tion shows that he mixes philosophers and

novelists in order to substantiate his idea of

the ‘theoretical potential’ of the essay and

its capacity to unite otherwise diverging

texts.

Zima’s ideal essay is no essay, but a

hybrid exposing an essayistic mode or

‘spirit’. This mode is critical and dialogi-

cal. Zima does not hesitate in situating the

essay in the tradition of critical philosophy

and seems to mean that the essay could

save philosophy from some of its prob-

lems. He even seems to think that the

essay could save mankind. On the last

page of the book he declares that the essay

unfolds the ‘“M€oglichkeitssinn” des kriti-

schen Intellektuellen’ leading to the insight

‘dass es Perspektiven jenseits des scheinbar

unab€anderlichen Wirklichen gibt’ (p. 269).

In Zima’s history of the essay the Eng-

lish and American essay is conspicuously

absent. Just as absent are the practical and

institutional conditions of the essay. Zima’s

essay takes place in the mind alone, while

the essayistic reality has to do with the art

of printing, with newspapers and journals.

Zima insists that the essay is, and has

always been, ‘critical’ – an idea that belongs

to the German tradition, emphatically

declared by Adorno. Zima therefore has to

credit his essayistic favourites with the criti-

cal ambitions that he believes they must

have. He even makes Montaigne – a coun-

try gentleman from Gascony, who never

questioned God or Law – an exponent of

the critical essay.

So: add the English-American tradition

and the institutional preconditions to

Zima’s essay, subtract some ideas of its

critical character, and you have a history

of the essay.

Arne Melberg

University of Oslo

Orbis Litterarum 68:2 176, 2013© 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd