Description II

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Description II is a short story by Wolfgang Hilbig that was written in 1980 and 1981 and appeared in 1985 in the author's second volume of prose in Frankfurt am Main. On February 28, 1985 , the Office for Copyrights rejected an application for reprint made by a GDR publisher .

The “work” of the Stasi is discussed. Eckart calls the three texts collected in the 1985 first edition (see below) “ ghost stories ” as the successor to ETA Hoffmann . In addition, the author was inspired by Kafka .

title

Wolfgang Hilbig deals with a few “descriptions of power” in GDR times within the Stasi “work” topic listed above . The text is divided into two parts. In Part I, the first-person narrator, a writer, visits the hotel "Zum Hammer von W." from Dresden by Elbe steamer . In Part II, which gives the title, the reader experiences the writer on the run by train and finally back to Dreßden on foot. At the end of the first part, the narrator encourages himself to write the rest - a difficult subject. One wrong word and he could be arrested for it, the despondent and courageous scribe worries.

Heising sees the idiosyncratic title as follows: First, "the self-descriptions of power are done to the point of vomiting." The author contrasts these descriptions with the "text from defeat", "the description from the catacombs".

content

I.

In the autumn the narrator and his companion drove four hours up the Elbe to W. The narrator had visited the writer friend FS (who usually surrounds his texts with a conspiratorial aura) in his Dresden apartment and received a useful tip: The narrator could follow up with FS His recommendation to start as a waiter in the hotel mentioned above. In addition to the waiter, the writer intends to "describe power from one's own perspective". FS had promised to take part in the river trip, but did not appear at the Dresden landing stage; apparently for good reason as it turns out. FS had apparently begun such a description.

In the hotel the narrator is received by his future superior, the head waiter. The receptionist Marcel always interferes in the interview. You don't know anything about a FS in the hotel. After some back and forth talk, it dawns on the two gentlemen: The waiter Hands is meant. Hands quit last week and was recently arrested in Dresden. The writer feels sick at the last opening. He escapes and reaches the station unmolested. The refugee rhymes, he should continue and complete the description of power, started by the friend, as part II.

II

On the way back to Dresden, the writer has a nightmare in the train compartment . He feels as if he is going down the Elbe steamer mentioned above and the head waiter is serving him beer after beer. Of course Marcel is there too. Everything that happened before is now turned into its opposite. There is no longer any talk of rejection of the employee. Of course, the writer must not forget to sign the contract before leaving the steamer, but first two questions are answered: How is it in the above hotel? What will the waiting writer do? The informant has to "record" the reactions of the hotel guest concerned and communicate them to the head waiter. After all, it depends on the “revelations.” Has “this person made contact with other countries”? Such a question is of interest first. The head waiter doesn't skimp on useful openings. For example, anyone who mentions an unknown person makes himself suspicious. "Because", so the head waiter, "there is no unknown person among us."

Woke up and arrived in Florence on the Elbe, the writer describes the place Dreßden as "hell", as "part of the underworld: Dreßden, with its hideous plaza in the form of a male urinal symbol, was a cabinet of hell projected on earth."

reception

  • June 30, 1985: Jürgen Peter Wallmann in the Tagesspiegel : The Elbe as Styx .
  • October 14, 1988: Karol Sauerland in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung : Power is nothing .
  • Genia Schulz notes an “atmosphere of insecurity and indefinite threat” that surrounds the writing I; something like in the shower romance . The main motifs of the description are the “lost” journey and the splitting of the ego at the moment of self-reflection / self-recognition of the narrator. One more thing to say is: "Once in contact with power, it [the writing I] remains under supervision, even where it thinks it draws from within ."
  • With Wolfgang Hilbig, the outcast usually has to do with a correctly dressed / appearing opposite - as here in the story of the writer with the head waiter.
  • Eckart writes: "... a totalitarian state [meaning the GDR] has to invent an enemy in order to ensure its own reality". And the writer in the story pushed himself into the role of such an enemy.
  • Above, under content , a travel companion of the first-person narrator is mentioned at the beginning. Bordaux goes into this companion. He is nothing more than the writer's double, which is almost obligatory for Wolfgang Hilbig. This double is used for dialogues. In places, the original and the copy are almost indistinguishable.
  • Loescher discovers features of the Picaro novel and philosophizes about the myth, i.e. the pleasure trip on the Acheron Elbe.
  • Steiner cites the text as an example of retrospect. This is a multilevel term for narrative times .

literature

Text output

Secondary literature

  • Jan Strümpel: Bibliography on Wolfgang Hilbig. S. 93–97 in Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): Text + criticism. Issue 123. Wolfgang Hilbig. Munich 1994, ISBN 3-88377-470-7
  • Genia Schulz: Postscriptum. To the volume of stories "The Letter". Pp. 137–152 in Uwe Wittstock (Ed.): Wolfgang Hilbig. Materials on life and work. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-596-12253-8
  • Uwe Wittstock : The excommunication principle. Hikes in Wolfgang Hilbig's immense prose landscape. Pp. 229–245 in Uwe Wittstock (Ed.): Wolfgang Hilbig. Materials on life and work. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-596-12253-8
  • Gabriele Eckart : Speech trauma in the texts of Wolfgang Hilbig. in Richard Zipser (Ed.): DDR Studies , Vol. 10. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 0-8204-2645-8
  • Bärbel Heising: "Letters full of quotes from oblivion". Intertextuality in Wolfgang Hilbig's work. ( Bochum writings on German literature (Martin Bollacher (Hrsg.), Hans-Georg Kemper (Hrsg.), Uwe-K. Ketelsen (Hrsg.), Paul Gerhard Klussmann (Hrsg.)) Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1996 (Diss . Bochum 1995), ISBN 3-631-49677-X )
  • Sylvie Marie Bordaux: Literature as Subversion. An examination of the prose work by Wolfgang Hilbig. Cuvillier, Göttingen 2000 (Diss. Berlin 2000), ISBN 3-89712-859-4
  • Jens Loescher: Myth, Power and Cellar Language. Wolfgang Hilbig's prose in the mirror of the aftermath. Editions Rodopi BV, Amsterdam 2003 (Diss. Berlin 2002), ISBN 90-420-0864-4
  • André Steiner: The narrative self - studies on Wolfgang Hilbig's narrative work. Short stories 1979–1991. Novels 1989–2000. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2008 (Diss. Bremen 2007), ISBN 978-3-631-57960-2
  • Birgit Dahlke : Wolfgang Hilbig. Meteore Vol. 8. Wehrhahn Verlag, Hannover 2011, ISBN 978-3-86525-238-8

Remarks

  1. ↑ In the edition used, p. 138 to p. 166 center.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Hilbig means by W. the small town of Wehlen .
  3. ↑ In the edition used, p. 166 middle to p. 190.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Hilbig allows himself a gag. From p. 176 of the edition used he gives up the spelling Dresden and uses Dreßden. Eckart (p. 162, 10th Zvu) sees this in connection with Hilbig's step in ETA Hoffmann's footsteps. However, Hoffmann always wrote the place correctly in his Dresden ghost stories.
  5. ↑ Eckart (p. 160, 15. Zvu) writes that the head waiter and receptionist are "easily recognizable as functionaries of the GDR State Security".
  6. ↑ Edition used.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 763 and 765 (see also Eckart, p. 159, 9th Zvu)
  2. ↑ Dahlke, p. 82, 18. Zvo
  3. ↑ Eckart, p. 159, 5th Zvu
  4. ↑ Genia Schulz, p. 139, 2nd Zvu
  5. ↑ Heising, p. 63, 11. Zvu
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 166, 1. Zvo to 6. Zvo
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 173, 5. Zvo
  8. ↑ Eckart, p. 162, 10. Zvo
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 188, 6th Zvu
  10. ↑ Strümpel bei Arnold, p. 95, right column, 3rd entry
  11. ^ Strümpel bei Arnold, p. 95, right column, 11th entry
  12. ↑ Genia Schulz, p. 138
  13. ↑ Genia Schulz, p. 139
  14. ↑ Wittstock, p. 239, 10th Zvu
  15. ↑ Eckart, p. 161, 3rd Zvu
  16. ^ Bordaux, p. 224, 1st Zvo and p. 224, 8th Zvu
  17. ↑ Loescher, p. 198, 8. Zvo
  18. ↑ Loescher, p. 279, 7th Zvu
  19. ↑ Steiner, p. 74 below