SOURCE: Bernd, Clifford Albrecht. “Clarity and Obscurity in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff's Judenbuche.” In Studies in German Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Festschrift for Frederic E. Coenen, edited by Siegfried Mews, pp. 64-77. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970.

In the following essay, Bernd assesses the influence of Novelle: Die Schwester, by Droste-Hülshoff's friend and mentor Levin Schücking, on her purposeful use of obscurity in Die Judenbuche. Bernd proposes that the narrative ambiguity drives the readers' awareness of life's inherent mysteries.

Much that is illuminating has been written on one of the most dense pieces of German narrative in the nineteenth century: Die Judenbuche by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff.¹ But a remarkable clue to the understanding of this elusive Novelle has, it seems, gone unnoticed. I am speaking of the impact that Levin Schücking's concept of narrative form had on the inception...