Germanistische Beiträge 37.2015
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This paper intends to briefly analyze the features of the popular writers of the 19th century. This is a period, in which the literary manifestations may be regarded under extremes: the interest lies primarily on the syncretism of literary currents and movements, among which worth mentioning is the “other” Romanticism, i.e. a decorative form of Romanticism. A short presentation of some successful writers of the 19th century, who could be considered mass literature authors, allows one to sketch the portrait of the typical mass literature author and subsequently of the typical mass literature reader, which should be understood under the cultural and social circumstances of that specific period. The stylistic and thematic similarities among these authors may be extrapolated to such an extent that one may conclude the Romantic mood (here one should understand this “other” Romanticism) is indeed a characteristic of the mass literature authors of the 19th century.
Die synästhetische Darstellung der Welt als erotische Reise in Gheorghe Crăciuns "Femei albastre"
(2015)
The novel Femei albastre, published in an unfinished version six years after the death of its author, the Braşov born writer Gheorghe Crăciun, registers a complex symptomatology of losing and finding oneself on the background of the Romanian post-communist transition. The main theme is the narrative depiction of the senses‘ polyphony, the daily drama of the body, whose fundamental loneliness can be observed both in the pain, as in the Eros. The main aim of this article is to present the narrative filtering of various synaesthetic aspects, the written transfiguration of the nformation received through the senses. This is done through a series of experimental techniques, such as photographic reproduction, camera perspective and commuting between the real and the imaginary. Just like one of Crӑciuns earlier novels, Pupa russa, Femei albastre is also not an entirely epic novel, the story is replaced also in this case by a detailed observation and a profound introspection, by a sensory exploration of the world, including its internal transformations and the physical perception. The author himself claims that this novel is to be understood as a conglomerate of eroticism, sensuality and somatic investigation: „Şi acest roman este focalizat asupra erosului, cu nu puţine deschideri spre erotism, senzualitate şi explorare somatică“.
The historical events during 1918, which marked the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, along with the violent acts of World War II were for the majority of the “Austrian-Bukovina” Jews the catalyst leading to profound identity disruption and disorientation. The destruction of the old “foundation” and the loss of the existential centre of reference were perceived by a large number of Bukovina Jews as extremely painful. The most of them continued to cultivate the old “Austrian” values. The experience during the war and the Holocaust shattered the survivors in an irremediable way. In this paper, I rely deliberately on the short story „In fartogikn groy” written by the Yiddish writer Alexander Spiegelblatt in order to illustrate the traumatic transition from a multinational to a “national(-istic)” construction, marked by severe and irreconcilable conflict between “old” and “new” values.
In his novel How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, the author Saša Stanišić shows the complex relationship of the narrator (Aleksandar) to his native Bosnia and Herzegovina on the one hand and Germany on the other hand, which becomes (because of the Civil War in Bosnia and Herzegovina) the new random home of Aleksandar’s family. The resulting problems such as loss of home, integration, construction and reconstruction of „auto-image“ and „hetero-image“ are treated from a unique perspective - of a growing child. In this work, using the example of the novel How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone will be examine, what specific child perspective as a narrator in the construction of „auto-image“ and „hetero-image“ and what is a difference in a perspective between the child and the adult narrator.
The present contribution deals with the reception of the figure of Alkestis both in Greek antiquity (Euripides) and in German literature around 1900 (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Rainer Maria Rilke). The contribution shows on the one hand that already Euripides had problems with the dramatic transformation of the antique mythological narrative into a tragic subject. On the other hand it shows that the two modern versions of the narrative of Alkestis around 1900 deal with it quite differently: Hofmannsthal’s free adaptation of the Euripidean Alkestis shifts the subject matter into a Dionysian context, in the light of Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s philosophy, whereas Rilke implants themes and motifs of his own poetry in the narrative of Alkestis and amalgamates them with it.