Beerholm's idea

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Beerholm's conception is the debut novel by the German-Austrian author Daniel Kehlmann , which he wrote at the age of 22. The novel was first published in 1997 by Deuticke Verlag and tells the life story of the magician Arthur Beerholm, who is on the search for a higher, magical existence. In 1998, Kehlmann received the sponsorship award of the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft for Beerholm's performance .

content

At the beginning of the novel, the twenty-nine-year-old protagonist Arthur Beerholm sits on the viewing terrace of a television tower, where he came every day for a month to write down his life story. This review is the content of the twelve chapters in which the protagonist as the first-person narrator chronologically describes his life to date. In his report, the narrator repeatedly addresses a woman who appears in several places in his story, but remains mysteriously in the background.

Beerholm is given up for adoption by his mother after he is born; his father is unknown. He came to live with wealthy adoptive parents, but later as a child had to watch his adoptive mother being struck by lightning. When he was ten, he was sent to a Swiss boarding school. There he teaches himself card tricks and seems to have found his calling early on. But his first performance at school is a failure. After the death of his adoptive father, his second wife deprives him of his inheritance.

Due to the mathematical problems of infinity is Beer Holm turned in his youth of religion to. He decides to study theology and even receives minor ordinations . After weeks of retreats, he becomes desperate and turns into a magician, performs small tricks and regularly cheats at poker . In the end it imposes itself on the great magician Jan von Rode as a student. With his support, Beerholm becomes a famous artist of deception.

His dream, however, is how to produce real creations like the legendary magician Merlin . At the climax of the novel he actually succeeds in submitting matter to his will. According to his own account, he can shatter shop windows and set a bush on fire in a park. He is deeply confused by these experiences and fled from the public. He loses his magical abilities again, his companion disappears as well. It is unclear whether this woman is a self-deception or a creation of Beerholm. At the end of the novel, Beerholm announced that he would throw himself off the television tower. At first he hopes that with one last magic trick he may be able to survive this fall. Finally he realizes that by falling he will put an end to his life, but this is beyond his imagination.

style

Kehlmann explained that he tried to use Beerholm "to produce a narrative voice that is more neurotic and mannered" than himself. This intention corresponds to the fact that the reader of Beerholm's idea cannot be sure until the end how much of Arthur's story is truth is ( unreliable narration ), and what is just his imagination or "imagination". The mannerisms of the narrator realizes Kehlmann through to the linguistic details into tangible effort Arthurs, the reality dominate and life to give a form that is more reasonable than its original Chaotik. The entire text is therefore also an "idea" in the sense of a self-presentation. Clearly recognizable is Kehlmann's influence through the style of magical realism with Latin American influences, because Arthur actually creates (and happens to him) something magical in his own narration. In addition, Beerholm's idea shows numerous features of postmodern narration , such as: B. the numerous intertextual references (including to Nabokov ) and the thematization of the writing process as well as the problematization of the truth of the story.

Press reviews

“In his debut, Daniel Kehlmann has not yet succeeded in turning good craft into magic. The novel is still too self-confident, too caught up in a web of ideas and seductive scenes that rob the hero of the air. But the author may be on the right track. "

- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“Daniel Kehlmann tells it all very skillfully. Everywhere he sets signs like warning lights in the action. Sometimes he accelerates the narrative pace, but only in order to drag out the plot for pages later. You can feel his talent for the choreography of the characters and the dramaturgy of the plot. Admittedly: he uses the metaphor box with a blind grip and often goes wrong: sometimes his pictures are simply silly, but sometimes downright outrageous. "

- Neue Zürcher Zeitung

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See. Kulturkreis.eu ( Memento of 17 January 2016 Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Daniel Kehlmann, Telling is ideally I-less, in: The truth lies. The renaissance of storytelling in young Austrian literature, ed. by Helmut Gollner, Innsbruck: Studienverlag 2005, pp. 29–38, here p. 35.
  3. ↑ See Daniel Kehlmann, These very serious jokes. Poetics lectures, Göttingen: Wallstein 2007 (= Göttinger Sudelblätter), p. 14.
  4. ↑ Cf. Markus Gasser, Daniel Kehlmanns unheimliche Kunst, in: Daniel Kehlmann, ed. von Ludwig Arnold, München: Edition Text + Critique 2008 (= Text + Critique 177), p. 12–29, here p. 15
  5. ↑ Quoted after review: Fiction retreat with ringing in the ears
  6. ↑ Quoted from amazon.de

Web links