2024-08-29 10:53:09
On October 17, 2022, the German Book prize Kim de l’Horizon was awarded for the novel “Book of Blood”. Kim de l’Horizon used the ceremony in Frankfurt’s Römer for an amazing performance: a hug of friends in the audience followed by a tearful speech, thanks to his mother in Swiss German and the song “Call Night”, performed a cappella and in lieu . Finally, Kim de l’Horizon pulled out the wind and shaved her head in a coach in front of the crowd to show solidarity with oppressed women in Iran: “This award is obviously also for women in Iran. “
Kim de l’Horizon is the first genderfluid person to receive the German Book Prize; However, the painting campaign at the award ceremony is part of a long series of public appearances by writers – not least by Rainald Goetz, a master of the arts, who cut his forehead with a razor in Klagenfurt in 1983.
Anyone who is not put off by the appearance or even intrigued by the “Blood Book” will find a powerful, multi-layered text that, although classified as a novel, pushes the boundaries of the genre. A stream of reflections and commentaries, views and dialogues, quotes and poems, some in standard language, some ambiguous, with Helveticisms and a final chapter in English, shows the struggle to overcome the gender dichotomy and replace it with urine identification. “Blood Book” is addressed to the grandmother; In dealing with it, Kim de l’Horizon tries to find a language for his own, non-binary body.
The water as a “language concept”
Surprising at first glance, Kim de l’Horizon weaves references to the past into the text of the “Book of Blood” alongside Derrida, Foucault, publications of nature and gender-politics. The most famous is Odysseus, mentioned in the last pages as an example of the fact that one – Kim de l’Horizon will write “man” – cannot return home and, when it comes to finding identity, the number of Circle. with the spiral should be replaced. Odysseus appears in the first of five parts, also important at the end. Here Odysseus is not only a returner, but also travels on the sea: “The medium that Odysseus lives in is sea and language.” The connection between sea and language does not come without preparation – Kim de l’Horizon tells us that the word water is a “composite of language” and compares writing to a waving line, “a wave coming from a long distance that begins in my future, and that will continue for a long time after me.”
Kim de l’Horizon uses an image that is widespread in ancient literature and is also documented in other languages. Homer has compared speech to a water when he praises old Nestor for the fact that “his voice flowing from his tongue is sweeter than honey”. Hesiod, in turn, honors the Muses, “from whose mouth the sweet voice flows abundantly.” When Kim de l’Horizon describes himself as water, one is reminded of Pindar, who speaks of “Rocky Delos”, “upon which I was poured out”. Now there is no indication that Kim de l’Horizon has any scientific knowledge. -science – ancient science; Nevertheless, a comparison of the language imagery in the “Book of Blood” and in the works of ancient writers is illuminating.
Further development of the water model
The description of poetic water in Greek and Latin literature is based on the idea that matter flows like a river. Early on, not only did the sound flow, but the speakers also let their words flow. Pindar compares his music to nectar. At the same time, inspiration is depicted as water in Hesiod, the muses “shed sweet dew on the singer’s tongue.” The authors later developed the fluid model to calculate the length and form of the works. In a hymn, the Hellenistic poet Callimachus puts his own cultural metaphor in the mouth of the god Apollo: the sea, known with the Homeric epic, is exemplified by the mighty Assyrian stream, i.e. the imitation of Ile. But its flood carried “mud and much rubbish upon its waters.” Much better – here the Hellenistic preference for brevity and sophistication is obvious – is, on the other hand, “what flows cleanly and flawlessly from the holy spring, a small sip – the best of the fine!”
During the reign, the author of the work “On the Sublime,” known by tradition as Longinus, but unknown to us, had a completely different opinion. He noticed that we do not like small rivers, even if they are clean and useful, but big rivers like the Nile and the Rhine, but most of all the Ocean. The same is true with books. Even if Homer, Plato and Demosthenes are not always perfect, they still have the power to shake us and give us a feeling of superiority. For other literary critics, the origin of the water metaphor comes to light again as an expression of an unstoppable flow. They are described as clever words that are interesting in their attractive and easy to understand form, such as the tragedies of Euripides, which are different from the dramas of Aeschylus.
Self-discipline and identity
In “The Book of Blood” the metaphor of water does not work to criticize the body; Kim de l’Horizon carries French traces in Bernese German, in which the mother is also called “mère”, referring to her mother as “Meer” and her grandmother as “Großmeer”. Not only in Klaus Theweleit’s “Men’s Fantasy”, a study of body images in Freikorps literature, water is associated with femininity, while strength and hardness are associated with masculinity. Kim de l’Horizon also speaks repeatedly about water, the ocean within her body, to describe the female parts of humanity. The connection between water and language takes shape in the concept of “sea language”, the language of the all-powerful grandmother, which de l’Horizon works in reform efforts before turning to English in the last chapter, language that its “great sea” can not rule.
Body opposition and gender identity – the meanings and use of water imagery by ancient writers and Kim de l’Horizon could not be more different. And yet their language worlds are not sealed in their own way. In many parts of “The Book of Blood” the narrative flows in a loose parlando, close to the spoken language; the short, clear sentences follow each other seamlessly. Ancient literary critics would have easily noticed the brilliant style here. The combination of this style with the awkward words may lead them to ask what kind of water the Book of Blood can be compared to. On the other hand, Kim de l’Horizon’s play with the shape of water invites us to trace the feminine dimension in the ancient body discipline. Is it a coincidence that Sappho was one of the writers to whom Greek grammarians owe a good deal? The comparison of the “Blood Book” with ancient literary criticism raises the question of the content of the form and the style of identity.
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