“Wie ein Kind ist unser Volk”: Hybrid Identity and National Consciousness in Rilke's Zwei Prager Geschichten

Rilke's early prose work Zwei Prager Geschichten (1899) has received scant critical attention, even by the standards of Rilke's much-maligned "immature" period. What attention these two interrelated stories have received has generally addressed the socio-political context within which they unfold: the social tensions between the German- and Czech-speaking inhabitants of fin-de-siede Prague, and particularly the radicalization of Czech nationalist movements over the course of the 1890s.1 This is not surprising, since Rilke's focus on these divisive issues was striking and, in many respects, courageous for its time. Further, Zwei Prager Geschichten is structured around a series of binary pairs-two stories, two siblings, two analogous character conflicts -and this binary structure reinforces the impression that the paradigm of political conflict is central to the stories' concerns.2 Indeed, Rilke's title may well be a subtle reference to the conflicting histories of Prague's two major linguistic communities. Nonetheless, it is difficult to ascertain what exactly Rilke intended to communicate in this regard, as the stories interweave both sympathetic and scolding tones towards Czech national aspirations. As if reflecting an inherent ambivalence, the structure and symbolism of the stories are often convoluted: for example, seemingly negative characters become more sympathetic; extensive narrative parallels between the two stories are established only to be confounded later; and the text contains a range of quirky and puzzling details of uncertain function.3 While the two stories unfold within a binary structure, they repeatedly demonstrate the breakdown of precisely those binaries: analogous pairs are disrupted by a third element, and individual elements simultaneously embody opposing principles. Indeed, Rilke himself claimed shortly after the publication of Zwei Prager Geschichten : " [i] ch verstehe stellenweise meine eigene Absicht darin nicht mehr."4 These idiosyncrasies have often been attributed to political naivete or stylistic immaturity (or both). But it is also possible to read these ambiguities as central to the stories' meaning. The following analysis will read Zwei Prager Geschichten not as confused socio-political allegory attempting (and failing) to resolve a dispute between rival nationalisms, but rather as a complex literary structure that critiques the very notion of rounded subjectivity underlying the idea of national consciousness. I shall thus be challenging the interpretation of these stories as documents of how the young Rilke, even when attempting to be provocative, simply remained beholden to certain social and literary conventions common among middle-class Prague Germans of the time. As Donald Prater has put it, Rilke's evident sympathy for Czech national claims in these stories is colored by "a sentimental and somewhat condescending view, not surprising with his upbringing, of the Czechs as a people still in infancy, thwarted in its attempt to grow up among the serious, adult Germans."5 There may be some truth to this claim, and indeed one must also point out that if Rilke intended Zwei Prager Geschichten to help bridge the cultural divisions between contemporary German- and Czech-language literature in Bohemia, then here, too, one must speak of a degree of either naivete or ignorance on his part.6 Nonetheless, there are solid reasons to question whether the scattered references to the Czechs as a "child-like" people (with the implication that they are best suited to political passivity) in the two stories are to be taken at face value. Indeed, the very distinction between political passivity on the one hand and active national consciousness on the other is one of the central binaries that the stories collapse. Zwei Prager Geschichten thus explore the tension between two paradigms for national and personal identity: that of "childlike innocence," with its corollary of passivity and Unmundigkeit, and that of a "coming to consciousness" that inevitably results in opposition, bitterness, and conflict. …