The fly palace
The Fly Palace is an artist novel by the Salzburg writer Walter Kappacher and was published by Residenz Verlag in 2009 . The book tells ten days of the life of the aging writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal .
content
The 50-year-old Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who is only known with the abbreviation H., went to Bad Fusch , a health resort in the Salzburg mountains, for a summer retreat in August 1924 . There the writer would like to revive his poetic creativity and build on earlier successes. But not only this place of childhood has changed dramatically in the years of the war, H. himself also has to recognize that time has not passed him by without a trace. Health problems are increasingly bothering him, he has lost many childhood friends and fame and success go back years. While taking a walk, the poet suffered a circulatory breakdown, which is how he met the young Doctor Krakauer. He would like to make friends with the personable man, but Krakauer is the private doctor of a baroness who he has to look after almost around the clock. H's contact with the doctor is limited to a few fleeting conversations and short notes until he leaves. A conversation about Hofmannsthal's novella The Letters of the Returned One, requested by both , does not materialize. What ultimately remains at the end of his stay in Fusch are only memories of past, glamorous times as well as the feeling of loneliness and the fear of not having enough time for all his plans and of failing.
Aesthetic Analysis
In this character study, Walter Kappacher gives an insight into the old age of the famous poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Since not much happens on the external level, the book is characterized above all by slowness and silence. Just like the plot, the title also corresponds to the author's realistic and detailed writing. The Fly Palace, for example, is a terrace-like winter garden in H's Hotel, in which the writer is bothered by flies one afternoon, thinking to himself. Physical ailments and the buzzing of the flies hamper the poet's work. The sound of insects thus becomes a metaphor for the difficulties of old age. The novel contains numerous allusions to the Salzburg Festival, which Hofmannsthal co-founded, as well as his plays and their development processes. This applies, for example, to the dramas The Tower , The Difficult and Timon the Orator . Despite the precise and well-researched information, the work does not correspond to any artist's biography insofar as both the figure of Doctor Krakauer and the letters to him and other people are fictional.
reception
The sensitive and subtle novel was not only reviewed very positively by critics, but also contributed significantly to Kappacher's 2009 Georg Büchner Prize . Hans-Jürgen Schings from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung z. B. writes in his detailed book review: "This is a book about Hofmannsthal that couldn't be finer, more cautious, more discreet and yet more sadly."
expenditure
- The fly palace . St. Pölten, Salzburg: Residenz Verlag 2009. ISBN 978-3-7017-1510-7
- The fly palace . Munich: dtv 2010.
Web links
- Book review in: Der Standard
- Selected reviews perlentaucher.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Peter Mohr: The quiet days of Bad Fusch , website of the review forum for literature and cultural studies, accessed on April 30, 2010.
- ^ Paul Ingendaay, laudation on the awarding of the Büchner Prize German Academy for Language and Poetry, 2009
- ↑ Epiphany and Magic, that's over Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 12, 2009, accessed on September 19, 2019