Love is a heavenly power
Love is a heavenly power is a book by Jürg Federspiel . It was first published in 1985 by Suhrkamp Verlag .
content
Love is a Heavenly Power is a collection of twelve short stories called fables that end with a pointe in italics . The stories are preceded by the sentence dedicated to St. Susanna and the three edifying confessors in Basel's Klingental .
God's Brothers Grimm
The story of God's Brothers Grimm is a parody of the story of creation : God wants to rest in the universe and has founded Traum GmbH for this purpose . When violence and blasphemy broke out on earth , the angels discovered the fairy tale The Wayward Child . They now hope that this fairy tale will intimidate people and thus ensure discipline.
Why i love
The narrator refers to Erwin Federspiel's story How it goes in the Congo . The narrator's grandparents go on a boat trip in the Congo at a young age . There is also a monkey on board that becomes aggressive as soon as it hears human laughter. When the grandmother laughs, the monkey fights, which can only be stopped by a called steward.
What you can learn on a yacht
It is said that a yacht vacation is nowhere near as pleasant as outsiders imagine. When the yacht owners spontaneously jump into the sea at a party, they realize that they have forgotten to attach the ropes to the yacht so that they can climb back into the yacht.
A detour to Bologna
Robert Kramer, an early retiree, is hit on the head by a person on the street. He claims that it must have been an Italian, has intense sexual intercourse with his wife for the first time since the wedding, learns Italian and eventually emigrates to Italy. In Italy he married a local woman and called himself Roberto from then on .
Nailed it
A retired ranger has retired to his home and one day is murdered by his wife driving a nail in his head. Since the widow did not look after the grave, it was opened after a few years. There the now rusty nail is discovered in the skull of the corpse and the widow is arrested for murder.
Jan Landon's orchard
Jan Landon is convicted of rape and goes to prison. When he is released, he leads a sexually abstinent life and works in an orchard. One day he gets drunk with the pastor, who confesses to him that every village abuses his children. After the pastor had slept off his intoxication the next day, he was appalled by the slander Jan Landon said about the villagers. Landon is arrested again and dies in prison of a poisoned apricot.
The happy psychiatrist
The psychiatrist Dr. Elch treats the masochist woman donkey. He beats her up, demands double the fee from her and gets rich quickly. One day, Esel confesses to the psychiatrist that she has fallen in love with him and that he can move in with her. Since the doctor has contracted tendinitis, he can no longer hit his wife. In Elch's books she discovers that masochism and sadism are interchangeable, whereupon she beats Elch and demands money from him until he goes into debt and the marriage is divorced. Elch is now hired in a hotel and takes advantage of the guests. When this makes him rich, he has his mother executed by a killer. He confesses this act to a psychiatrist and dies there as a happy man.
Epitaph to a Japanese
The narrator meets the Japanese Toshimo Kobayashi in Nice. He photographs many objects, such as the bouillabaisse bowls. He photographs these in great detail. It later turns out that Kobayashi is a professional photographer and also captured his suicide by Seppuku in pictures.
A fable for the children of leftists and managers
A manager stops in front of a shoemaker's workshop and asks him to punch three holes in his belt, saying that he will pay any price for it. The manager turns into a fairy and asks him the next time to make 77 shoes within a week that she will pay any price for them. The shoemaker works diligently and dies of exhaustion after the 68th shoe.
A new youth movement and its end
The boy Louis has ugly parents and, at the age of sixteen, blames them for his failure with the opposite sex. When he turns seventeen, his parents have their faces operated on. Criticizing his parents, Louis begins to be proud of his ugliness and later marries a woman from the Philippines.
The last kangaroo
In 1999 the Australian Schultz brought the last kangaroo from Australia to New York. At that time, mankind had already exterminated all animals, except for dogs, and from then on people ate algae and human flesh. Schultz declared the last kangaroo to be god and from then on allowed people to eat dog meat. When the dogs were also exterminated, Schultz releases the kangaroo and shoots himself.
Love is a heavenly power
In 1992, extraterrestrials landed on earth and subjugated it. The majority of the people are now illiterate, which horrifies the extraterrestrials that they leave this planet again.
literature
expenditure
- Jürg Federspiel: Love is a heavenly power . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1985 (first edition)