SOURCE: A review of Rahel Varnhagen, in New York Times Book Review, November 24, 1974, pp. 27, 30.

In the following review, Dickstein objects to the dispassionate narrative tone and the lack of psychoanalysis of the subject in Rahel Varnhagen, especially since "the reader … would have expected more from so brilliant a theorist."

[Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman] was written more than 40 years ago and the woman it deals with lived more than 170 years ago, but the story of Rahel Varnhagen survives the passage of time. Rahel Varnhagen was one of the more renowned "salon Jewesses" of Berlin at the turn of the 19th century. Her charm and brilliance not only reflected the cultural awakening of her time, but influenced it: she was a strong proponent of the Romantic movement in Germany and the originator of the Goethe cult. In this biography by Hannah Arendt, the distinguished political philosopher...