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Podcast: New Books in German Studies
Episode: Michael Gorra, “The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany” (Princeton UP, 2006)
Description: Despite being Germany’s most famous literary lion, in 1786 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had to jump on a mail coach incognito to begin his travels to Italy (of course, he asked permission first from his patron the duke Karl August).
InThe Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany (Princeton University Press, 2006), Michael Gorra takes the reader on a reverse journey, for it is by slipping in “incognito” that we will begin to find Germany in all its imponderables. The result of a year’s sabbatical residence in Hamburg, this book is a deep and discursive exploration of a country...