Joseph Roth's novella Der Leviathan (1934) about the coral merchant Nissen Piczenik has been understood as an allegory of the conditions of literature in a modern capitalist market, and most readings focus on the eponymous mythical creature of the Leviathan. This study instead explores poetical implications of Piczenik's artisanal practice and material consciousness. Using Benjamin's conception of storytelling as a form of craft, the article sheds light on how the depiction of artisanal practice and sensibility can be understood in terms of literary self‐reflection. It further analyzes passages in which storytelling occurs, focusing on the storytellers and on the heterotopical spaces in which stories are exchanged. This results in a re‐evaluation of the novella and its ending, which in this reading depicts the deterritorialization of the storytelling craftsman while simultaneously staging—and inviting readers to take part in—a scene of storytelling.
Many contemporary autobiographical texts that depict a transcultural self prominently feature waterscapes in the foreground. The present study focuses on how rivers are functionalized in two autobiographical accounts: the essayistic Flodernas bok (The book of rivers, 2012) by the Swedish poet and essayist Nina Burton, and the autofictional novel Am Fluß (2014) by Esther Kinsky. Both combine the literary representation of travels along rivers with an exploration of European cultural history, but also the history of the self.Using Schmitz-Emans’s (2008) concept of ‘water writing’ for studying ‘riverlike’ writing modes and discussing the findings against the backdrop of research on the cultural significance of water, this article demonstrates how both texts challenge the presumed linearity of rivers by focusing on how they are embedded in a global circuit of waters. It shows that a river’s ability to transgress national borders makes ‘river writing’ attractive for autobiographical enterprises. Finally, both texts emphasize the relationship between man and water as well as that between man and the environment through water. This relatedness of humans and landscape through the fluid element indicates that the self is not sovereign, stable and hovering above its environment, but rather an embedded entity, interwoven in complex fluid networks of interaction.
In Annette Pehnts 2003 erschienenem Roman Insel 34 bricht eine junge Studentin auf, um die Inseln vor der Küste ihres Landes zu erforschen. Diese sind nummeriert, ,,[w]eil niemand ihnen jemals einen Namen gegeben hatte“.4 Insel 34 ist der zweite Roman der in Freiburg wohnhaften Autorin und Literaturwissenschaftlerin, die 1997 mit einer Arbeit zur irischen Literatur promovierte und somit in gewissem Sinne das Inselinteresse ihrer Protagonistin teilt. Motive des Aufbruchs, der Bewegung und des Außenseitertums ziehen sich als roter Faden durch ihr Werk, zu dem neben Romanen wie Ich muss los (2001) und Erzählbänden wie Man kann sich auch wortlos aneinander gewöhnen das muss gar nicht lange dauern (2010) auch Kinderbücher gehören.
Metaphern des Archipelischen werden oft verwendet, um das Schreiben der deutsch-japanischen Autorin Yoko Tawada zu charakterisieren, wobei die vielen tatsächlich in ihren Texten vorkommenden Insel-Darstellungen weitgehend unbeachtet bleiben. Ausgehend von John Gillis’ Feststellung, „Western culture not only thinks about islands, but thinks with them“ (2004:1), untersucht der vorliegende Beitrag Formen und poetologische Funktionen des Insularen und des Archipelischen in zwei Texten aus Tawadas Sprachpolizei und Spielpolyglotte (2007). Beide Texte, „Ma und Mu“ und „U.S. + S.R. Eine Sauna in Fernosteuropa“, bedienen sich der Insel als Raum und Denkfigur, um häufig mit (abgelegenen) Inseln verbundene Vorstellungen von Originalität und kultureller ‚Reinheit‘ herauszufordern und an ihrer Stelle die archipelischen Interrelationen und die Bedeutung des verbindenden, die Insel mitformenden Wassers zu akzentuieren.
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