Istanbul, 1945 Erich Auerbach's Philology of Extremity

Erich Auerbach's has a profoundly pessimistic conclusion. The present paper takes seriously the consequences of the apocalyptic rhetoric therein introduced for Auerbach's humanist historicist project, arguing that Auerbach holds responsible his own brand of secular humanism – whose story his book tells and whose method it implements – for the “Nivellierungseffekt” he so clearly deplores. As an exile on the outskirts of European space and time (Istanbul, 1945), Auerbach possesses a privileged philological perspective from which to synthesize a history nearing its end; the techniques he employs in order to do so, however, are for him complicit in the destruction. The final chapter of , so often considered a weak point of the work, provides a condensed and lyrical account of this predicament.

Duke Scholars

Author Sarah Milne Pourciau German Studies