The dervish and death
The Dervish and Death (Bosnian: "Derviš i smrt") is the most famous novel by the Yugoslav writer Meša Selimović . It also appeared in English and French.
Data
The work was written from 1962 to 1966 and first published in 1966. In 1972 it was published in German by Volk und Welt in Berlin, and in 1994 in a new translation by Werner Creutziger by Otto Müller Verlag, Salzburg. ( ISBN 3-7013-0837-3 ). An autobiographical background is said to have been the murder of Meša Selimović's brother as a result of party intrigue.
overview
The action takes place in 18th century Bosnia. Bosnia is a western province of the Ottoman Empire at this time . The focus is on Sheikh Ahmed Nurudin, from whose perspective the novel is also told. The sheikh, who lives withdrawn as a dervish in a kind of monastery, tries in vain to save his innocent imprisoned brother from death. Internal monologues of the dervish also discuss the problems of obedience, oppression and religious fatalism .
criticism
In a review in Die Zeit it says: “Ahmed Nuridin, sheikh of an order of dervishes in Sarajevo in the eighteenth century, reports on the last months before his death. First he, a godly man, got into politically tinged affairs through various coincidences, which led to his arrest. After the corrupt authorities who had thrown Nuridin in prison had been exposed, he, appointed cadi, now held power in his own hands and was forced to use the same methods of which he had previously been the victim. Suffering and exercising power drove Nuridin into nihilism ... The novel's resounding success in Yugoslavia was based on the one hand on its masterful language, on the other hand on its parable character. One can read it - with a current meaning - as a parable of the confrontation of the doubting intellectual with power. "
Adaptation
The Yugoslav film with the original title Derviš i smrt premiered on July 12, 1974. Under the title Derwisch und der Tod , it was mainly shown in German in the GDR.
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.uni-protocol.de/buecher/isbn/3701308373/
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from July 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. www.egotrip.de
- ↑ Dradio, broadcast
- ↑ Reinhard Lauer in: DIE ZEIT, No. 17, dated April 20, 1973
- ↑ http://www.imdb.de/title/tt0175560/
