The Klingsor Paradox
The Klingsor Paradox (Spanish original title En busca de Klingsor ) is the best-known novel by the Mexican author Jorge Volpi . It was published in 1999 by the Spanish publisher Seix Barral . The German edition was translated by Susanne Lange .
construction
The novel is divided into three "books", each of which is divided into different chapters and tells the individual periods of the story. Each book begins with three chapters called mathematical theorems , comparable to Newton's laws . Some other chapters are called hypotheses or studies , as is common in scientific texts. Some of the characters in the book are purely fictional, some are historical personalities, mostly physicists and mathematicians , and some of the text contains very detailed biographical excerpts. The Klingsor sought in the book is named after the magician from Richard Wagner's Parsifal . The story of Parsifal is referred to several times in the course of the plot.
action
The narrator and one of the main characters of the book is the fictional mathematician Gustav Links. This tells the story, which mainly extends over the period from the 1930s to the late 1940s, starting in 1990. He was born in Munich in 1905 and was later professor of mathematics at the University of Leipzig . After completing his studies, he was one of Werner Heisenberg's employees.
Book 1
Book 1 begins in the 1930s with the main character Francis Percy Bacon, usually called Frank, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (New Jersey) , at which Albert Einstein is also working at the same time and Kurt Gödel as a guest , with whom Bacon works also comes into contact. Bacon has been raised by his acquaintances since he was a child because of his similar name to Francis Bacon . At the beginning of the story, he is a shy, ambitious and highly gifted physicist in his mid-twenties and assistant to John von Neumann . Bacon often spends his free time intimate with the black worker Vivien. However, he keeps this connection a secret, as such a relationship was considered scandalous in his environment. Later, his mother arranges a meeting with the white entrepreneur's daughter Elizabeth, who later becomes constantly jealous of him and is to marry Bacon. However, he does not break off his relationship with Vivien. One day, when Frank and Elizabeth are already engaged, she realizes she's being too rough with her fiancé and decides to visit him in his own apartment for the first time. There she meets Vivien. Furious, she storms into a lecture by Gödel at the institute in which Bacon is one of the listeners and yells at him in front of the entire audience. This incident is the trigger, but not the sole cause, of Bacon's expulsion from the institute. However, due to his good reputation, he is not simply dismissed. Instead, he is offered a position for a special mission in the United States Navy , as he is young, intelligent and speaks fluent German. It is now shortly before the end of the war.
Book 2
Bacon becomes a first lieutenant in the Navy and is given the secret assignment to investigate the scientific structure of the Third Reich immediately after the war . To this end, he analyzes, among other things, the files of the Alsos mission . He comes across the name “Klingsor”, which only appears in a copy of the file because the original entry has been removed. Wolfram Sievers , who put this name on record during the Nuremberg Trials , denies ever having said it. He asks von Neumann for advice. He uses his influence in the USA and finds out that Gustav Links is associated with Klingsor. Bacon meets Links in Göttingen and, after a long hesitation, Links tells him everything he knows about Klingsor. However, these are only partly contradicting rumors. These rumors all have in common that Klingsor had the greatest possible influence on science in the German Reich and probably only owed Adolf Hitler personally accountable. Links believes, if any of the rumors are true, that Klingsor must be a specific person, not a group or organization. Together they collect a lot of information about the physicists of the time and even ask some of them personally: Max Planck , Johannes Stark , Arnold Sommerfeld , Max von Laue , Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger . Bacon and Links agree that of these physicists, Heisenberg best fits the role of Klingsor. During this time, Bacon met the German widow Irene, with whom he had a relationship. He reveals his secret investigation results to her. During this investigation, Bacon found a letter in his apartment one day, allegedly signed by Johannes Stark, who knew about their investigations and ended the letter with a slightly modified paradox of Epimenides : All physicists are liars . In the meantime, Irene advises Bacon not to work too much with links, as the collaboration with him has so far not been successful. Left is aware of Irene's dislike and, for his part, suspects that she is only acting out the role of the single mother and that she is actually a spy. One day he begins to follow her secretly every day and finds that every third day in a church she meets a man to whom she always slips a letter. As the last physicist, Bacon asked, this time without a link but with Irene, Niels Bohr in Copenhagen about his version of the history of quantum mechanics and his personal relationship to the other physicists of the time. After the two are back from Copenhagen, Bacon distances himself further and further from Links. Thereupon Links takes the offensive and tells him about the secret delivery of letters between Irene and the stranger. When Bacon asks her about it, she claims to work for the Russians, who are just as interested in Klingsor's identity as the USA. Bacon then leaves her.
Book 3
This part of the story takes place in 1989 in the GDR , at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall , but mainly contains retrospectives that bring the story together. Left has been in a closed psychiatric ward since the late 1940s, after Bacon left Irene, and is being interrogated by various psychiatrists . Left shows signs of paranoia and is of the opinion that Klingsor is solely to blame for the ruin of his life. He tells his newest psychiatrist, Ulrich, about his involvement in the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler. As a result of the assassination, Link's best friend Heinrich and his wife Natalia, who had a secret relationship with Link, were executed. Left Frau Marianne took her own life. Links was also arrested as an involved conspirator, but was fortunate that the war came to an end shortly before his planned trial. He suspects that Heisenberg betrayed him shortly after the assassination attempt, as Links tried in vain to win him over to the conspiracy. He also tells Ulrich the story of Bacon and Irene: Bacon has returned to Irene after the separation, she reveals to him that her real name is Inge, is a Russian spy and wants to accompany him to the USA. Before that, however, she had to deliver Klingsor to her Russian clients - or someone who could be Klingsor, otherwise she would be killed by her clients before she left for the USA. She really wants links to be used for this. Bacon agrees and delivers Links to the Russians, who then torture him and put him in a psychiatric ward.
The true identity of Klingsor is never dissolved, but Links is convinced to the end that it was Heisenberg.
Awards
The novel was awarded the Spanish literary prize Premio Biblioteca Breve .
review
The novel received a positive response from the press, but there have also been reviews.
"A novel by the young Mexican Jorge Volpi tells of the Nazis' atomic bomb project, of love and espionage - and virtuously mixes facts and fiction."
"It remains a mystery why the Latin American intelligentsia Jorge Volpis immediately described the sophisticated, but linguistically staid and flat brain teaser novel as a masterpiece."
"The young novelist Jorge Volpi has written a great thriller about quantum physics, the Nazi era, love and passion."
"'The Klingsor Paradox' is full of topics that can easily get in each other's way."
expenditure
- En busca de Klingsor . Seix Barral, 1999; Rayo, 2008 ISBN 978-0061626722
- In Search of Klingsor . 1999; Fourth Estate, 2004 ISBN 978-1841153896
- The Klingsor Paradox . Klett-Cotta, 2001 ISBN 9783608930665
- À la recherche de Klingsor . Editions Plon, 2001 ISBN 978-2-7578-1115-3
- Well, Klingsora . WWL Muza SA, 2002 ISBN 83-7200-099-9
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rainer Traub: Code name Klingsor. In: spiegel.de. November 19, 2001, accessed on November 23, 2011 (German).
- ↑ Stephan Maus: Gödel, Hitler, Quarks. In: literaturkritik.de. October 2001, accessed on November 23, 2011 (German).
- ↑ Klaus Taschwer: The Klingsor Paradox. In: falter.at. October 10, 2001, accessed on November 23, 2011 (German).
- ^ Ernst Peter Fischer: Heini, Hitler and Heisenberg. In: faz.at. December 31, 2002, accessed November 23, 2011 (German).