“Hermann Hesse spent his life searching for truth and inner harmony outside Germany. Yet his quests to the East ultimately led him back to the West and to the realization that the alternatives he found in the East offered no short cut to salvation. To mark the 50th anniversary of his death, Gunnar Decker presents a new biography of the successful author, one which also explains the Orientalism in his work.” >review (c) Qantara.de 2012
Archive for Literature
Hesse has been dead for 50 years now…
Posted in Uncategorized with tags biography, Germany, Hermann Hesse, Literature, review, Switzerland on 9 August 2012 by delclemLidice massacre anniversary
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Czech Republic, Germany, Lidice, Literature, Reinhard Heydrich on 10 June 2012 by delclem
The Czech village Lidice
was destroyed by German occupying forces on 10 June 1942 in reprisal for the assassination of Nazi deputy governor and Holocaust mastermind Reinhard Heydrich by British-trained Czech patriots in late May (“Operation Anthropoid”; see my earlier post on the subject matter). The exiled Bertolt Brecht dedicated his script to the Hollywood movie Hangman Also Die! from 1943 to Heydrich’s assissination; the director was the Austrian Fritz Lang). However, most inhabitants of Lidice perished after the attack… > Text on the literary legacy of the massacre (c) Radio Prague, 2012
Also see the letter the German president J. Gauck wrote to the Czech president on the occasion of the anniversary.
A German poem that caused global turmoil
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Antisemitism, Antizionism, Günter Grass, Germany, Iran, Israel, Literature, nuclear bomb, poem on 7 April 2012 by delclem
“During his long literary career, Günter Grass has been many things. Author, playwright, sculptor and, unquestionably, Germany’s most famous living writer. There is the 1999 Nobel prize and Grass’s broader postwar role as the country’s moral conscience – albeit a claim badly undermined in 2006 when it emerged that the teenage Grass had served in the Waffen SS. But at the ripe old age of 84, Grass has triggered a furious row with a poem criticising Israel.”
Article and English translation of the poem (c) THE GUARDIAN, 2012
Photo: Graeme Robertson
Original version of the poem (in German) (c) SZ, 2012
“War dog”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Aleksandar Hemon, bosnia-hercegovina, Bosnian War, dogs, Literature, USA on 2 April 2012 by delclem
“How an Irish setter helped my family get through the Bosnian War.”
A literary essay in Cultural Kynological Studies by Aleksandar Hemon
“My sister and Veba remember the last time they took Mek and Don for a walk before the war started. It was April 1992, and there was shooting up in the hills around Sarajevo; a Yugoslav People’s Army plane menacingly broke the sound barrier above the city; the dogs barked like crazy. They said: ‘See you later!’ to each other as they parted, but would not see each other for five years.”
>read full text (c) GRANTA / Slate.com, 2012 (reblogged)
“Lives Crisscross in Hungary”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags hsitroy, Hungary, Literature, Péter Nádas, review on 7 March 2012 by delclem
“Péter Nádas’ Parallel Stories is actually a hugely ambitious, breathtakingly inventive and at times maddeningly dense novel intent on obliterating historical, geographical, literary and structural borders. ‘Parallel’ doesn’t really begin to describe how these stories interact with one another. They converge and diverge; they overlap; they crisscross, loop around and double back on one another, resulting in a defiantly nonlinear novel that attempts the daunting feat of recreating the fragmented, and perhaps even shell-shocked experience of living in Hungary during the 20th century.”
…
> full text by Adam Langer; photo: Barna Burger (c) NYT, 2011
“The Tolstoy of Transylvania”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Hungary, Literature, Miklós Bánffy, review, Transylvania on 29 February 2012 by delclem
“In his column in the Daily Telegraph, former editor Charles Moore praises Miklós Bánffy as ‘the Tolstoy of Transylvania’. Ardent Banffyites like yours truly are always pleased when the Hungarian novelist gets attention in the English-speaking world, which happens all too rarely. (…) Simply put, Bánffy is a must-read.” Reblogged text (c) andrewcusack.com, 2008
Between South Korea, Austria & Kosovo
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Anna Kim, Austria, Kosovo, Literature, review, South Korea, yugoslavia on 14 January 2012 by delclem
On Anna Kim’s novel Frozen Time (2010)
“Written by the South Korean-born author, who moved to Austria from Germany aged seven and regards German as her mother tongue, the narrative follows a young researcher in Vienna’s Red Cross Tracing Service as she attempts to help a Kosovan man discover what happened to his wife during the war in former Yugoslavia.” > article (c) A Year of Reading in the World, 2012 (reblogged)
> homepage Anna Kim (c) photo.
Josef Škvorecký (1924 – 2012)
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Czech Republic, Czechoslowakia, jazz, Josef Škvorecký, Literature, National Socialism, obituary, publishing on 6 January 2012 by delclem
“Just over two weeks after the death of Vaclav Havel, another Czech literary figure who played a key role in his country’s Communist-era dissident movement, Josef Skvorecky, died of cancer Tuesday. He was 87.”
k. & k. Manhunter
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Andrew Krivak, First World War, Literature, Slovakia, sniper, United States on 29 December 2011 by delclem
Set in a world that has faded from living memory, The Sojourn by the Slovak American author Andrew Krivak is a searing coming-of-age story about a sniper in the Austrian Army on the Italian front in the First World War.
Review (c) THE VIENNA REVIEW, 2011.
The Dialectics of Dialect
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Austria, censorship, H.C.Artmann, Literature, poety on 13 December 2011 by delclem
When marketing goes wrong in Austria:
“Quotes from H.C. Artmann‘s Austrian-German dictionary provoke public reactions at Vienna Airport. Artmann, Austrian post war avantgardist and recently ‘mainstreamed’ author with quotes from his poems used as ornaments on several buildings (e.g. on the Donauinsel), has posthumously instilled protest by guardians of public morales. 1:0 for the avantgarde spirit!” (quote Kunzelmann/Liebscher, 2011)
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> Article on the incident (in German)
delirium clemens 