„Da die Tränen der Frauen stark genug sein werden…“. Zum Bild der Frau im Erzählwerk Ina Seidels

Author(s): Nina Nowara-Matusik / Language(s): German / Publication Year: 2016

The literary works of Ina Seidel, the author of one of the best-selling books in the history of German literature, the novel “Das Wunschkind”, are slowly sinking into oblivion. Called „Ernst Jünger in a skirt”, the writer did not hide her sympathies for the fascist ideology, which also echoes in her works. Not surprisingly, in previous literary studies, her writings were perceived, as a rule, through the prism of criticism of ideology and situated in the context of the literature of the Nazi Germany. However, the starting point for our dissertation is different. Shifting the research paradigm, in the theoretical part the author sums up the gender theories existing at the time of the Weimar Republic, which was also the period when most Ina Seidel’s texts were written, texts to which the main body of this dissertaion is devoted. These theories constitute a conceptual foil for the analyses conducted in its further part. The concepts discussed are founded on the model of differentiality. The author alludes to the matriarchy theory by the Swiss anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen, the notions of feminity and masculinity by the German sociologist Georg Simmel and views on a woman’s role in society from leading representatives of a moderate wing of the feminist movement in Germany – Helena Lange and Gertrude Bäumer. The analytical part of the dissertation carries an argument focused on the women characters created by Seidel. They are protagonists of both the foreground and the background, representing various types of womanhood: mothers, wives, single women, femme fatales, artists, women professionals and scholars. By way of these, Ina Seidel explores some of her central topics related to being a woman: maternity, childlessness, moral mission of a woman and her role in society. The close reading of her novels leads to the conclusion that the writer applies a specific aesthetic of a „squinting look”. The German literary critic Sigrid Weigel uses this metaphor in reference to the writings of women who, accepting the traditional patriarchal models of gender and moving within the frame of these, simultaneously search for the ways to articulate their own, specifically feminine experiences. On the one hand, Ina Seidel’s narration follows the conservative model of thinking about a woman, typical of her times, in which the superior category is motherhood. On the other hand, however, it indicates that, paradoxically, it is motherhood that can become a woman’s weapon and a starting point for her emancipation.

AGLAJA VETERANYI AND THE MYTH OF ALL POSSIBILITIES

Author(s): Marius Mihet / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

Aglaja Veteranyi's short novel, Why the Child Is Cooking in the Polenta, shows the boundaries of a solitude assaulted from all directions. Only within the mirror-games of an improvised stage reality did she find the outlet to transfer her anguishes. An infantile narrator gets different distancing from the limits of the language and the limits of freedom. Aglaja Veteranyi lends the narrator her own mirrors. Unable to export feelings, she is aware that they return as fears and sufferings: ”I don’t scream. I’ve thrown my mouth away”. Her destiny is, from this regard, under the sign of simulacrum. The circus is in itself a simulacrum of the world. It cannot change anything consistently in the people belonging to it. The mask of happiness becomes compulsory for the narrating self. Why the Child Is Cooking in the Polenta is a collection of impossibilities. Reading the story of Veteranyi one has the feeling of being captive into an orphanage that has replaced the world. The result is a tension that excludes any idea of a paradise.

Alman Yazar Heinrich Böll’ün Kisa Hikayelerinde Ii. Dünya Savaşi’nin İzleri

Author(s): Fesun Kosmak / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 66/2011

German author Heinrich Böll narrates the Second World War in his short stories and expresses the problems which people have to face after the war. As he experienced the war, Böll deeply understands how lives changed after the war. Böll, writes about people in desperate situation. The war changed lives of people from each social class negatively. However, Böll underlines the fact that it were children and elderly who were affected severely by the war. The aim of this paper is to display how the traces of war are reflected in Heinrich Böll’s “Die Botschaft” and “Mein teures Bein”.

Anna Seghers’in Ölüler Genç Kalır Adlı Romanında Narsisizm Ve Ötekilik İzlekleri

Author(s): Cihan Tuncer / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 28/2015

This study explores one of the most important writer Anna Seghers’ work called The Dead Stay Young. It is considered important as it reflects Hitler’s impact on German society socially and psychologically. The novel was analysed in the context of narcissism and otherness and these themes were scrutinized through the novel characters.

ANNAMARIE SCHIMMEL (1922-2003)

Author(s): Enes Karic / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 15/2003

This text gives a review of the most important facts relating to the life of Annemarie Schimmell and includes her most significant works. The author placed an emphasis on her role in promoting Islamic studies in Europe and in the West and particularly on the role she had in the translations of the great works of Islam into the Western languages. The author calls her a diva of Islamic - oriental studies in Europe and believes her to be perhaps the greatest woman authority on Islam in the West. Her death in 2003 meant a great loss for Islamic studies in Europe and particularly in Germany.

Autobusem i tramwajem w przeszłość. Berlińskie zaszłości w twórczości Annett Gröschner

Author(s): Ewa Pytel-Bartnik / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 24/2015

This paper concentrates on the strategies of reconstructing the past as inscribed into the urban space of Berlin and discussed within the literary field. Developed by the German writer Annett Gröschner, they have been used to reexamine the history of the city – only dimly reflected in the present urban landscape. Her perspective emphasizes the distinctive spatial and architectural organization of the city, particularly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In order to harness her dialec-tical composition of the spacing-of-the-past, Gröschner uses the map of various routes on the Berlin public transport network, some inner-city artefacts set along those lines, and also the city map with its constant modifications to create appropriate landmarks through which she [re]constructs Berlin's past-present.

Barbara Honigmanns literarische Topographie in Chronik meiner Straße (2015)

Author(s): Malgorzata Dubrowska / Language(s): German / Issue: 5/2016

The article presents the strategies of literary topographies, that the writer has included in her new work. The author of the article concentrated her efforts on grasping the performed act to sketch the topography in the text, and completed the analysis based on J. Hillis Miller, Michel Foucault and Marc Augé concept of a space.

Barbarzyńca w ogrodzie Suhrkampa. Zbigniew Herbert i jego niemiecki wydawca

Author(s): Pawel Zajas / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 5/2015

This article offers an insight into Zbigniew Herbert’s correspondence with Siegfried Unseld, the director of the German publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag, as well as other important figures in the publishing field, such as translators, editors and, crucially, representatives of organizations dealing with foreign cultural politics. Zajas discusses material held at the Siegfried Unseld Archiv (SUA), which was purchased by the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach am Neckar in 2009. These materials, Zajas argues, shed light on the production of Herbert’s works in German translation, which would often become a point of reference for Polish editions, thus anticipating the composition of the ‘original’ collections. What is more, Herbert’s correspondence paints a fascinating portrait of the long friendship between the poet and the publisher – a friendship that also functions as an important interactive element in the literary field.

Baron, Tkaczyk, Heiduczek i inni

Author(s): Grazyna Barbara Szewczyk / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2017

The media image of Janosch, the author of novels about Cholonek, the promotion of his books’ translations for children and adults, and the huge number of accompanying events have caused, paradoxically, that the works of many other talented German writers coming from Zabrze have quickly been forgotten. Wykreowany w mediach wizerunek Janoscha, autora powieści o Cholonku, promocja przekładów jego książek dla dzieci i dorosłych oraz towarzysząca im ogromna liczba imprez spowodowały, że – paradoksalnie – twórczość wielu innych utalentowanych niemieckich pisarzy z rodowodem zabrzańskim szybko została zapomniana.

Baśń jako metafora całości ludzkiego doświadczenia.

Author(s): Urszula Losiowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 27/2016

This article treats about the book The Brothers Grimm and the Sister Death of Jadwiga Wais, which is about circumstances attending a passing, inalienable subjectivity of moribund, ways of handling with the fear of death, and interprets selected writings of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm. The fairy-tale serving a therapeutic and compensatory functions and being a narration, can be and it is the very important element of education not only to life, but also to death understood as an immanent part of lifetime. It is also part of children’s literature focusing on death issue and facing with often parents and teachers helplessness with conversations about this difficult theme. Fairy-tales by using metaphors have an ability of gradually uncovering next, important for development contents, which have also cognitive nature, and answer the individual fear of Unknown.

Begehren und Erzählen in Peter Stamms Roman Agnes

Author(s): Monika Szczepaniak / Language(s): German / Issue: 5/2016

The aim of the article is twofold. Firstly, to analyse the main character of the novel Agnes (1998) by Peter Stamm as well as his narration within the novel—a story about a woman and a love, accompanied by reflections on the process of storytelling itself and of possibilities as well as limits of contemporary love stories. Secondly, to answer questions of the significance of the man’s story for the narrator itself, for the woman, for their relationship, for the image of their love in the world of the narration as well as for the interpretation of Stamm’s novel.

Byronism as Madness in Zygmunt Kaczkowski’s Bajronista (The Byronist)

Author(s): Monika Coghen / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2016

The significance of Byron’s presence in Polish culture and its diverse aspects have been widely noted. Not much has been said, however, on the representation of Byronism as a disease. The rumours of Byron’s madness were spread by Annabella, but the very cult of Byron as a celebrity and in particular the attempts of many men who tried to model their life on that of Byron could have been seen as a mental disorder. A fictional study of Byronism as a disease was of ered in Zygmunt Kaczkowski’s novel Bajronista (The Byronist, 1855–1856; 1857), which used as its epigraph the memorable lines from Słowacki’s poem Beniowski, in which the poet declares himself to be a “Byronist”. The aim of this paper is to discuss the representation of Byronism in Kaczkowski’s novel in the context of the Polish reception of Byron. Kaczkowski attempts to present Byronism as a destructive social and cultural phenomenon; hence he uses the image of a disease, which eventually results in actual illness and death. Kaczkowski’s portrayal of Byronic madness is expressive, on the one hand, of the critical tradition represented by Friedrich Schlegel’s charges of atheism against Byron and by Kazimierz Brodziński’s warnings against dangers of following models of English and German poetry, and on the other hand, of the novelist’s disillusionment with the ideology of Polish Romanticism.

Canis lupus i tajemnice ludzkiej duszy. O literackim obrazie wilka na przykładzie wybranych dzieł niemiecko‑ i anglojęzycznych

Author(s): Aneta Jurzysta / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2016

The article is devoted to the literary representation of the wolf, and the texts analysed include Hermann Hesse’s “Steppenwolf” and Mark Rowlands’ “The Philosopher and the Wolf”. In both texts the wolf becomes the mirror in which the man’s inner life is reflected, and the authors search for the answers to existential questions in the wolfish nature. “And so the Steppenwolf had two natures, a human and a wolfish one. This was his fate, and it may well be that it was not a very exceptional one.” Those words of Hermann Hesse refer to the complicated, split personality of the main protagonist and the complex nature of every man. Harry is partly a man, who desires social respect and the comforts of the middle‑class life, and shares human ideas and interests, and partly a wild beast, who mocks these vain and absurd desires, and remains untamed and impulsive. Mark Rowlands’ wolf is not only part of the author’s inner self, but a wild animal, with which the American philosopher spent 11 years of his life. The wolf companion changes completely the man’s way of thinking, becoming an inspiration for philosophical considerations over the nature of love, death, happiness and humanity, the purposefulness of human actions, the sources of despair and hope, the nature of the fear of death. The wolf ’s company makes it possible for Rowlands to find his human nature, makes him eventually become a different person: of partly human and partly wolfish nature. In both cases the wolf (being either part of a man’s personality or a real wild companion) determines the protagonists’ lives and helps them understand themselves.

Carmen Francesca Bancius Reisen zwischen bekannten und imaginären Geographien

Author(s): Veronica Buciuman / Language(s): German / Issue: 1/2012

This study pursues the goal of signalizing the meaning of culinary experiences in the process of identity construction. The spiritual stomach is the metaphorical expression of that perception organ, which helps the writer to integrate the personal past from the communistic Rumania into the new Berlin environment. Berlin in the Novel Berlin ist mein Paris of Carmen Francesca Banciu constitutes both a real geographical space as well as an imaginary geography. Experiencing time and space by means of culinary acts is the way Carmen Francesca Banciu describe the difficulties of integration and identity definition in a foreign land.

Christa Wolf, Ein Tag im neuen Jahrhundert 2001-2011

Author(s): Malgorzata Dubrowska / Language(s): German / Issue: 05/2015

CONSTANCY AND CHANGE İN CĂTĂLİN DORİAN FLORESCU’S NOVELS

Author(s): Florin Cioban / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2015

Cătălin Dorian Florescu admits that he feels split between his Romanian and Swiss identities, trapped between the West and the East. The autobiographical elements he includes in his novels project this feeling on his characters, who are looking for a sense of belonging, and are trying to understand their true identities by going back to their homeland.

Czytając Elegie Rainera Marii Rilkego

Author(s): Barbara Surowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 19/2012

The article discusses the book Rycerz i śmierć written by Katarzyna Kuczyńska-Koschany. The book includes essays on Reiner Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies published earlier that have been revised and updated. The poem cycle called the Duino Elegies is composed of ten separate poems written in 1912, 1913, 1915 and 1922, i.e. at the peak period of the poet’s imagination and mental activity. The reviewer provides a detailed analysis the first four chapters of the book in which three elegies written before the outbreak of the first war, and the fourth that originated when the war was raging on, are presented. The reviewer appreciates the author’s careful preparation for the book and the ambitious agenda of the author to describe in a synthetic form, for the first time in Poland, the whole cycle of Rilke’s elegies with their Polish translations along with their quality evaluation and comparison taken into consideration, as well as some presentations of German interpretations from prominent specialists in the life and the literary output of Rilke. However, the reviewer is not ready to buy all of the author’s claims and points at numerous, perhaps too numerous, errors, distortions in facts and erroneous reading of the original texts written in German, which, to a high degree, lowers the perceived quality of the discussed book.

Danzig oder Das verlorene Paradies. Vom Herauserzählen und vom Hineinerzählen

Author(s): Peter Oliver Loew / Language(s): German / Issue: 2/2016

For a century and a half, the town of Danzig / Gdańsk has been an object of constant writing and re-writing of history. Germans tried to “recount” Polish history out of the German present, and Poles similarly attempted to excise German history from the Polish present, especially after 1945 when the Germans had to leave Danzig, which turned into Gdańsk. The paper argues that those multiple “recountings” were connected with all earlier ones and prepared the ground for several narrative changes. For example, the German mourning for the lost city after the Second World War nearly literarily repeated manifold poems from the years before. Or Poles consciously “recounted out” the “colonial” German past, even if their forced construction of a Polish local narrative did not make sense without the former. Since the 1980s Polish authors have themselves discovered the “colonial” German history as a context for their own search for a contextual change. Maybe in the near future Gdańsk will lose its colonial grip on local literature, since more and more writers focus on social or economic problems, forgetting about the predominant history.

Danziger / Gdańsker Literatur postkolonial? Ethnien in der großen Geschichte

Author(s): Mieczyslaw Dabrowski / Language(s): German / Issue: 2/2016

This article raises the question of the productivity of postcolonial readings for Polish- and German- language works of Gdańsk literature such as Hanemann and Krótka historia pewnego żartu [Short History of a Certain Joke] by Stefan Chwin, Weiser Dawidek [Who Was David Weiser?] Castorp, Opowiadania na czas przeprowadzki [Moving House and Other Stories] and Śpiewaj ogrody [Sing Gardens] by Paweł Huelle, as well as Die Blechtrommel [The Tin Drum] and Katz und Maus [Cat and Mouse] by Günter Grass. Less prominent texts such as Fara na Pomorzu [A Parsonage in Pomerania] by Marian Pankowski and older works such as Wiatr od morza [Wind from the Sea] by Stefan Żeromski, which deal not only with the city itself, but also with the wider region (Kashubia) and its history, are considered here as well. In this contribution Günter Grass encounters the Polish authors, Poles face Germans, the ethnical discourse is confronted with the postcolonial one, political history is challenged by the memory of individuals, and lived existence meets philosophical concepts. In terms of methodology it is argued that several, but not all, texts of Gdańsk literature in fact can be approached as examples of postcolonial narration. It is, however, essential to distinguish such texts for which the postcolonial gaze is an element of construction from those which, even if they allow postcolonialism ex post as an element of interpretation, have not been initially constructed with regard to postcolonialism.

Debata o połączeniu trzech niemieckich PEN-Clubów 1989–1998

Author(s): Monika Wolting / Language(s): Polish / Issue: IX/2013