SOURCE: “‘A Little Susceptible to the Supernatural?’: On Christa Wolf,” in Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature and Culture, edited by Jeanette Clausen and Sara Friedrichsmeyer, University of Nebraska Press, 1991, pp. 1–22.

In the following essay, Love identifies aspects of psychic experience and intuitive understanding in Wolf's writings that challenge and transcend the Western concept of rationality.

I see what is beneath me, what is above me, what men say is-not … 

(H. D., “The Flowering of the Rod”)

I. Introduction

In first setting out to write this essay, I intended simply to address a topic with little currency in academic discourse: the thematization of prophecy, clairvoyance, and extraordinary or psychic healing in the writings of Christa Wolf. The presence of references to such phenomena in her writing, the absence of a functional vocabulary suited to discussion of the topic, and the tendency of literary critics and...