2024-09-17 11:05:56
The police want Agatha Christie. Proust had to go to a duel – and Handke was a total loss. Writers’ lives are full of stories. Now you find the “best acting scenes in the world’s magazines” to explore in one book.
Can book history come alive as if you were there yourself? Traditionally, the answer is no dust. In German education we learn author biographies, epoch characteristics and culture-historical milestones, critical and styles, but everything almost always comes across as abstract, schematic and soulless: literary history – a blackboard diagram.
The fact that there are real people behind the books of the world, that the classics have always been people made of flesh and blood, whose experiences, exercises and follies often tell us a lot about work Their literature, like the works themselves, is theirs alone. who continue reading beyond school reading learn. For example, in the biographies of writers, diaries, manuscripts and travelogues: The accounts are hidden there that do not become school knowledge – they show a completely different, concrete, historical a true-to-life book that can still be experienced decades or even centuries later.
The fact that Agatha Christie was wanted by the police once, that Marcel Proust fought a duel and that a great hotel that Friedrich Dürrenmatt burned down in the story actually went up in flames some time later, these are what we call: scenes act from world literature. By this we do not mean the influential words in the works of world literature, but rather the important, interesting, unheard of events in the lives of their creators.
Literary characters go to war (Miguel de Cervantes in the naval battle of Lepanto), threaten to be shot (Fyodor Dostoyevsky in 1849), and become the victim or victims of knife attacks (Samuel Beckett, Norman Mailer ). There are amazing coincidences (Ernest Hemingway, Saint-Exupéry, Bob Dylan), attacks in the face (Karl Kraus) or fights (Thomas Wolfe). Other scenes tell about escape, capture and release (Schiller, Dante, Victor Hugo, Hilde Domin), of pre-trial detention (Christa Wolf), pillory (Daniel Defoe) or prison (Denis Diderot, Theodor Fontane).
Lifelike and lively
Our concept of action also extends to relationship plays (August Strindberg, Helen Hessel), affairs (Patricia Highsmith) and progress (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe). On the strange phenomena of illness (Stendhal, Franz Kafka). Curious home visits (Susan Sontag to Thomas Mann, Rainald Goetz to Marcel Reich-Ranicki). Embarrassing moments (Anna Seghers was insulted by Johannes R. Becher on the nudist beach). Strong impressions (Stefan George sent Hugo von Hofmannsthal red roses), traumatic experiences (Joseph Conrad in the Congo). Or conditions that remain a mystery to this day (Heinrich von Kleist in Würzburg).
Sometimes the line between what could have been and what really is is blurred (Francesco Petrarca on Mont Ventoux, Max Frisch on Piz Kesch). Sometimes the simple truth turns out to be overwhelming for someone who has traveled only in imagination (Karl May). In other biographies, the process of action takes place inside, which is why we also have to look at silent tremors (Robert Walser) and structural experiences from childhood or youth (Herta Müller, who plunged the accordion into the fountain , Sylvia Plath on the first date).
The French historian Roland Barthes called everything that we encounter on the level of history, dispersed and classified as part of the “biographemes” narratives. In all the action scenes in the world literature, these are guaranteed or rumored events. In some cases, people from modern history even appear, such as Napoleon, who met Christoph Martin Wieland in 1808, or Angela Merkel, who argued with Karin Struck on a talk show in 1992.
The book “111 Action Events from World Literature” is based on a series that has been published by WELT since 2019 appear. When the idea for the book takes place in the exchange of ideas of the editor, the format is quickly designed: it should be entertaining, tell the life and truth-to-life from the world of the authors, and show them as people , with quirks. and quirks, but also special abilities, interests and whimsy – biographical circumstances that often have a diverse connection to the literary work. Our colleague Wieland Freund came up with the motto of the series, which is still written under every event today: “All the writer’s life is a book, they say.” In this series we provide evidence to the contrary. “
The collection also challenges the cliché that a writer sits at his desk at home and experiences nothing, his work and life are neatly separated from each other. Life and approach to life have already been emphasized in our historical ancestor “The Literary World”, founded by Willy Haas in 1925. A literary journal that attracted attention with its research among writers, the first list of the best seller in Germany, multi-page essays by intellectuals such as Thomas Mann and Walter Benjamin, a world view on the world and all clever games and jokes (the most important beards in world literature) – until Willy Hass was forced into exile in 1933 – inspired in 1998 when the title was revived for an additional WELT weekend. We still feel this tradition today, as the “Literary World” as a monthly supplement from WELT AM SONNTAG appear, oblige.
Writers with very different temperaments have contributed to “Action Events from World Literature”. We are especially happy that they found a home with 111 selected events in another Library, which has been promoting the concept of electronic games, the canon of choice since its inception. This is another reason why our collection is not sorted according to alphabet, time or cultural area, but is designed as a book to explore.
One can – inspired by the Illustrations by Paul Fretter – leaf and stay on, where all the writer’s life and related work that appeals to you is also open. Our description is a serious but entertaining story whose best scenes, once heard or read, remain in the memory and maybe even in the heart. And now please: action!
111 step back from the world of literature. Edited by Mara Delius and Marc Reichwein. Another library. Volume 477, 384 pages. Limited original edition 48 euros, additional edition 26 euros. Out September 17th.
Berlin book launch at the Georg-Büchner store, on September 24, 2024 at 8 pm. We look forward to your visit!
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