BERNSTEIN, Michael Andre 1947-

PERSONAL: Born August 31, 1947, in Innsbruck, Austria; immigrated to Canada, 1956; naturalized Canadian citizen, 1956; son of John Vladimir (a diplomat) and Marion (Sklarz) Bernstein; married Jeanne Wolff von Amerongen (a clinical psychologist), November 3, 1980; children: Anna-Nora. Education: Princeton University, B.A., 1969; Oxford University, B.Litt., 1973, D.Phil., 1975.

ADDRESSES: Home—44 Highgate Rd., Kensington, CA 94707. Office—Department of English, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.

CAREER: University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor, 1975-81, associate professor, 1981-87, professor of English and comparative literature, 1987—.

AWARDS, HONORS: Danforth fellowship, 1969-75; fellowships from Association of Commonwealth Universities, 1969-73, Canada Council, 1973-75, American Council of Learned Societies, 1977-78 and 1981, and University of California, 1977-89; Koret Israel Prize, 1989; President's Research in the Humanities fellowship, 1991; Guggenheim Memorial fellowship, 1993; American Academy of Arts and Sciences (fellow), 1995.

WRITINGS:

The Tale of the Tribe: Ezra Pound and the Modern Verse Epic, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1980.

Prima della Rivoluzione (poems; title means "Before the Revolution"), National Poetry Foundation/University of Maine Press (Orono, ME), 1984.

Bitter Carnival: Ressentiment and the Abject Hero, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1992.

Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1994.

Five Portraits: Modernity and the Imagination in Twentieth-Century German Writing, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 2000.

Contributor to numerous books, including George Oppen: Man and Poet, edited by B. Hatlen, National Poetry Foundation/University of Maine Press (Orono, ME), 1981; Ezra Pound and History, edited by Marianne Korn, National Poetry Foundation/University of Maine Press (Orono, ME), 1985; Bakhtin: Essays and Dialogues on His Work, edited by Gary Saul Morson, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1986; Ruth Francken: Antlitze, edited by Wolfgang Horn, Kunsthalle Nürnberg (Nürnberg, Germany), 1986; Ezra Pound: Modern Critical Views, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House (New Haven, CT), 1987; Politics and Poetic Value, edited by Robert von Hallberg, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1987; Rethinking Bakhtin: Extensions and Challenges, edited by Morson and Caryl Emerson, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1989; Shimon Attie, Die Schrift an der Wand, Edition Braus (Heidelberg, Germany), 1993, translation published as The Writings on the Wall: Projections in Berlin's Jewish Quarter, Edition Braus, 1994; and World War II: Fifty Years Later, edited by Alvin Rosenfeld, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1995.

Also contributor of critical essays, poems, and reviews to various American and European journals, including Via, Poetics and Theory of Literature, University Publishing, St. Andrews Review, Yale Review, Critical Inquiry, Sagetrieb, Yeats Annual, TriQuarterly, New Orleans Review, Times Literary Supplement, New Republic, Modern Philology, and Modernism/Modernity.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Progressive Lenses, a novel.

SIDELIGHTS: Michael Andre Bernstein's writings reflect his interest in literature and how it is influenced by philosophy, psychology, and history. In Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History, Bernstein makes the argument that people and societies are weakened by the tendency to consider their paths to be determined by fate. He uses literary examples of foreshadowing to bolster his case. Bernstein introduces various illustrations of this idea, including the Holocaust. In The New Republic, Michael Ignatieff remarked, "Michael Andre Bernstein's splendid book is a hearteningly affirmative product of this new age of uncertainty and self-doubt." In response to the book's handling of the Holocaust and foreshadowing in literature, Ignatieff observed, "These forms of thought betray an effort to avoid the full weight of sorrow, to find some form of thought, however cruel, that would shield us, the living, from what we have lost. We would rather believe that it could not have happened otherwise than to entertain the still more agonizing thought that it need not have happened at all." David H. Hirsch of Criticism, however, found many failings in Bernstein's arguments. He found that Bernstein's book suffers from the author's "academic vanity" and inability to recognize his own strong biases. He particularly noted what he called "highly oversimplified terms" and a disregard for historical accuracy in the discussion of the Holocaust.

Five Portraits: Modernity and the Imagination of Twentieth-Century German Writing tackles the writing careers and influences of five important German writers. Shorter versions of the profiles were first published in The New Republic, and Bernstein expanded them to create a single volume for reference by students, academics, and readers who admire German literature. Ulrich Baer of Library Journal concluded that this book of "deftly written essays is sure to knock many a full-length study of any of the five German writers under discussion off the shelf."

Bernstein once told CA: "I consider all of my writing, from my volume of poetry to my three critical works as well as my novel-in-progress, to be part of the same constellation of concerns, and in that sense, even part of the same project. The intersection of the imagination with history, and the search for an ethical language that engages moral issues without being moralistic is at the heart of my work.

"My writing stresses that in our culture it is not the attractiveness of extreme risk nor the darkest teachings of violence and domination that are repressed. Exactly these issues have long constituted an enormous, if not actually the major, portion of our intellectual conversation about history as well as about the human psyche. What is repressed, though, is the value of the quotidian, the counter-authenticity of the texture and rhythm of our daily routines and decisions, the myriad of minute and careful adjustments that we are ready to offer in the interest of a habitable social world. It is those adjustments, the moment-by-moment way we experience our lives and make our plans that most grip my imagination and inspire all of my writing."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, April, 1995, p. 1294; April, 2001, pp. 1467-1468.

Commentary, October 1, 1993, Gary Saul Morson, review of Bitter Carnival: Ressentiment and the Abject Hero, p. 62.

Criticism, March 22, 1995, David H. Hirsch, review of Foregone Conclusion: Against Apocalyptic History, p. 348.

Library Journal, August, 1980, p. 1634; May 1, 1992, p. 80; October 1, 2000, Ulrich Baer, review of Five Portraits: Modernity and the Imagination in Twentieth-Century German Writing, p. 94.

Modern Fiction Studies, winter, 1996, p. 929.

Modernism/Modernity, April, 2001, p. 359.

Modern Philology, November, 1996, p. 276.

New Republic, February 13, 1995, Michael Ignatieff, review of Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalyptic History, p. 29.

New York Times Book Review, September 25, 1994, p. 24; October 30, 1994, p. 40.

Times Literary Supplement, March 6, 1981; March 3, 1995, p. 12; March 5, 1999, p. 4; January 12, 2001, p. 27.*