Casual chat about Austrian versus German literature.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 พ.ค. 2024
- A hopefully somewhat coherent chat about Austrian versus German literature by a still somewhat frazzled Grimm Reader towards the end of the academic year. Thanks for the great question!
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This was very interesting, thank you 😊
Thank you for responding. (It was me that asked the question.)
I've long found it fascinating, and strange, how many of the great 20th century authors were Austrian: roth; musil; broch; bachmann; doderer; bernhard; handke; jelinek.
It seems to me that if you did 'top 10's' for Austrian and German 20th century writers, that Austria might win, which seems bizarre, given the population ratio.
(Perhaps a similar case can be argued for Ireland vs England.)
Another thing that got me interested in the Austria-Germany distinction, was Bernhard's (narrator's) harsh, funny take on Thomas Mann, in 'Auslösing'.
'The patrician Thomas Mann produced thoroughly lower-middle-class works, I told Gambetti, addressed to lower-middle-class readers who fall upon them with gusto. For at least a hundred years we’ve had nothing but what I would call binder literature, lower-middle-class bureaucratic writing, and the masters of this literature are Musil and Thomas Mann, to say nothing of the others. The one exception is of course Kafka, who actually was a bureaucrat, though he didn’t write bureaucratic works, but none of the others could write anything else. '
Austrian authors, particularly Bernhard and Handke, have had a marked influence on norwegian authors since the 1980's. Particularly through the translations of Sverre Dahl, whom has translated nearly all of Bernhard's work, roughly 15-20 titles. Limeworks (1970) and Correction (1975), are as far as I can tell, the only books that haven't been translated.
All of Bachmann has been translated. And most of Handke.
This is such a wonderful comment! The Bernhard quote is just so "Bernhardian" - I have so many thoughts! And it is true that there seems to be a preponderous particularly of great19th century novelists who are Austrian. When it comes to German, of course Goethe overshadows all, but after that in terms of novels I mainly think of Fontane. There is Kleist, whom I love, but his works were shorter. I suppose Michael Kohlhaas is a novella. (It's wonderful). I suppose my dissertation topic person: Novalis wrote Heinrich von Ofterdingen. More people are popping into my head: ETA Hoffmann, Eichendorff, Raabe, Freytag,and so forth into the 20th century. I apologize for responding in Danish, if you are Norwegian!
Im fond of German writeres like Broch and Dublin. Unfortunately i have not found them in my country.
Where are you located redouane? Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz is fairly well known even in English speaking parts of the world.
@@thegrimmreader3649 Casablanca, Morocco.
@@redouane-is9qk do you read in German or English? Perhaps I could send you something? Thanks for watching!
@@thegrimmreader3649 i read in English though i love German writers like Boll/Mann/Hesse/Brecht.
Hey @The Grimm Reader can you give us some recommendations for those who are starting their adventure into German language literature?
Sure!
Do you mean German language recommendations or in translation?
@@thegrimmreader3649 I want you to tell me which books are good for beginners, intermediates, those who love certain those who like this authors, modern books, postmodern books, etc.
@@JoeMama-rf6nm Bertold Brecht has some shorter fictional works that are good for intermediate readers. This is a great short story by Rilke: www.projekt-gutenberg.org/rilke/erzaehlg/chap052.html that I have taught to intermediate students. Kafka is good too. A very good collection of simply wonderful short stories that also has vocabulary prompts is "Im Spiegel der Literatur" edited by Brigitte Turneare.