The homelessness of the fish
The Homelessness of Pisces brings together 75 episodes by Wilhelm Genazino from 1994.
A 44-year-old single elementary school teacher gives short stories, some of which belong together - documents of “bitter weakness and absolute failure to be happy” - for the best.
content
Action can be recognized at second glance, if the facts are assumed beforehand. The first-person narrator, an anonymous teacher who teaches 33 children in one of the lower classes in German and arithmetic, chats about all sorts of things. The woman has a fortnight for her notes. Then the great vacation will come to an end. From the mosaic of the episodes, spread over 110 pages, the picture of a childless woman from a big city in the Rhine-Main area (she rides the subway and she travels to Erbach ) emerges , who sometimes doubts her mind. What's more, she'd like to go crazy.
The teacher happened to meet Albert on the street. The teacher colleague now has a wife and children. Back when they were still trainee lawyers, Albert once carried them on his hands. The times are over. About marriage - it wasn't meant to be.
The narrator has been in a relationship with 52-year-old Helmuth for twelve years. Marriage is out of the question for the teacher. You live separately. The reader is informed in detail about the practices of sexual intercourse with this pragmatic lawyer in several episodes.
Towards the end of the 1940s : As a 15-year-old, the narrator stands between Dieter and Harald, then both 16-year-old boys. She doesn't want the latter and she doesn't get the former. The memories of the woman, who is slowly aging according to her confession, go back even further; until childhood. In the post-war years, ruins are roamed.
shape
There is talk of unfortunate food fish at several points in the three-part volume. The narrator only goes into the eighth last episode of the homelessness, which gives it the title. In such places it is always about dead fish. When this philosophizing about dead living beings as well as about various objects from the inanimate world accumulates, then the reader, who has to constantly ask "What the heck?" On the way, sometimes has doubts about the worthiness of the passage in question. It doesn't stop with the fish. The osprey, the soggy phone book and the sheep are sometimes described in unexpected phrases - for example, the sheep's “horribly defecated buttocks” come into view. Fortunately, the narrator admits in the penultimate sentence of her narrow text, she only brought up her "secondary occupation" - the articulation of the sensually perceptible during her "indistinct life [s]": It rains on her on a bridge the open mouth. She only speaks in passing of her “main occupation”, teaching.
The opinion, the behavior and the choice of words of the people in their sphere of life play an important role for the narrator. When a woman in a butcher's shop wants to buy 250 grams of “heart sausage”, she can hardly get over the word alone.
interpretation
Despite the possible resentment against the text, which is not concealed under “Form”, Wilhelm Genazino achieved a small feat. The 75 pieces of the mosaic mentioned above - at times apparently scattered irregularly across the time coordinate - give the reader a remarkably rounded picture of the character and life of the protagonist a few days after reading it. We like the teacher who tries on children's gloves with her little hands in the department store because of the relentless openness with which she entrusts oppressive memories that go back to childhood to the paper. There the penny theft from the mother's wallet is admitted, there is defined what betrayal is: When I speak badly about my deceased mother.
Funny insertions cheer up the reader. When the narrator digs into the pillows, the reader will soon know that Helmuth will soon have sexual relations with the teacher in a very specific way.
reception
- Approaches to interpretations can be found in Moser.
- Discussions after the appearance of the text:
- Walter Hinck on September 21, 1994 in the " FAZ ",
- Eva Leipprand on October 5, 1994 in the " Süddeutsche Zeitung ",
- Ursula März on October 5, 1994 in the " Frankfurter Rundschau ",
- Werner Jung on October 7, 1994 in " Freitag ",
- Hubert Winkels on October 7, 1994: " Becoming Aries " in: " Zeit Online ",
- Dorothea Dieckmann on November 18, 1994 in the " Deutsche Allgemeine Sonntagsblatt " and
- Andrea Köhler on November 23, 1994 in the " Neue Zürcher Zeitung ".
Media adaptation
- Stefan Michalzik in the " Offenbach-Post " on Monday, March 20, 2006: " The homelessness of fish " in the ensemble November 9, Frankfurt am Main
- Music-theatrical city ballad in ten pictures in the Gallus Theater with a reference to the radio play of the same name: " The homelessness of the fish ". First broadcast of the radio play: on December 9, 1992 at hr .
literature
Text output
- Used edition
- Wilhelm Genazino: The homelessness of the fish. Carl Hanser, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-446-20868-2
Secondary literature
- Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): TEXT + CRITIC. Journal of Literature. Issue 162. Wilhelm Genazino. April 2004. Richard Boorberg Verlag, Munich, ISBN 3-88377-755-2
- Samuel Moser: Isola Insula. Aspects of individuation with Wilhelm Genazino. P. 36–45 in Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): TEXT + KRITIK. Journal of Literature. Issue 162. Wilhelm Genazino. April 2004. Richard Boorberg Verlag, Munich, ISBN 3-88377-755-2
Web links
- Benedikt Viertelhaus: “ Praised from oblivion. The Büchner Prize Winner Wilhelm Genazino (PDF; 276 kB) ”in Critical Edition I / 2005
Individual evidence
- ↑ Edition used, p. 67, 10th Zvu
- ↑ see for example p. 82
- ↑ Edition used, p. 46, 14th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 96, 5. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 104, 5. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 102, 8. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 95, 13. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 84
- ↑ Edition used, p. 104, 16. Zvo
- ↑ Moser, p. 41 bottom - p. 45 bottom
- ^ Arnold (ed.), P. 103, left column, center
- ^ Arnold (Ed.), P. 99, left column, 5th entry vu