The parable of the disturbed crystal

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The parable of the disturbed crystal is the work of the writer Werner Helwig . It contains the biographical-autobiographical memories of his friend, the writer and playwright Hans Henny Jahnn .

History and content

A “complicated friendship” lasted 40 years between Werner Helwig and Hans Henny Jahnn, who was 10 years his senior. As early as 1931, Helwig wrote for the first time in the Hamburger Illustrierte about the "poet and organ builder" Jahnn. Numerous other publications (reviews, essays and appreciations) about him followed.

In the parable of the disturbed crystal , Helwig tells about their friendship in the form of a "novel-like biography" and creates a very personal picture of Jahnn, using collage-like prose and verse form, inserting memories of earlier conversations, as well as excerpts from letters, work comments and quotations. Helwig reports on his visits to Bornholm , Jahnn's long-term residence, writes u. a. about the collaboration in the creation of the Jahnn drama New Lübecker Totentanz as well as about their often difficult relationships. Both had “made things difficult for each other. In their friendship, both were critical of the work and the person of the other, constantly anxious to secure trust and clarify their relationship. "Helwig's text was written some time after Jahnn's death, not all at once, but at a distance in 1963, 1964 and 1965.

Analysis and reception

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung saw Helwig book, whether intended by the author or not, a replica of the three years previously published book Essay on the puberty of Hubert Fichte , shows up in the Jahnn, very clearly under the name Pozzi. While Helwig represents the “bourgeois-fashionable” side of Jahnn, the side turned away from his friend Helwig in Fichte should be added: “You always have only two different views of the life of a writer. Helwig found the symbol of the disturbed crystal for this. ”There is more of Helwig's biography in the book than of Jahnn's.

"Helwig's memories are set loosely," noted his fellow writer Karl Krolow in a Swiss newspaper and said that this is exactly what makes it so attractive. The compact would have challenged other dimensions from the start. And he continued, "[Helwig's] game of fantasy and reality, as it seems to get mixed up, is nevertheless serious enough and strangely thorough in the sense of making the bottom and bottom of a particular existence visible"; he called the book a "fable of life" and called it a "poetic biography". Die Welt wrote that Helwig had fallen for Jahnn and that he was still too busy "separating himself from him and his world for him to be able to draw an objective picture of his friend."

While Jochen Meyer commented on the book from a purely literary point of view and found it “unsystematic” and “one-sided in terms of interpretation”, but “on the way to the key novel”, Paul Hübner said in a review that the book had its status as “testimony” to literary literature Scene of the century, for Helwig's position and importance as well as for Jahnn research.

output

Quote

“What Helwig did was a literary conception that flourished, so to speak, that became a composition of words and memories, not just any colorful palette, but rather the scale of a sensitivity to feel a life in its phenomena. What we have before us is the performance of a perhaps wandering, but certainly wonderfully reminiscent of sensitivity . "

- Karl Krolow

literature

  • Richard Anders : Werner Helwig. The parable of the disturbed crystal. In: Frankfurter Hefte . No. 3. Frankfurt am Main, 1977, ISSN  0015-9999 .
  • Paul Huebner: High contrast picture of a modern Job. In: Rheinische Post. October 25, 1977.
  • Ernst Johann: The honorable Hans Henny Jahnn. Helwig's book of friendship. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. August 6, 1977.
  • Karl Krolow: The fable of a life: Hans Henny Jahnn. In: Berner Tagblatt. 3rd September 1977.
  • Charles Linsmayer : Circling around love and death. Werner Helwig writes about his friend Hans Henny Jahnn. In: The world. 2nd July 1977.
  • Charles Linsmayer: Shoots in the radiation of a star. Werner Helwig's writings on the Jahnn case. In: New Rundschau . No. 88. 1977.
  • Erik Martin : Werner Helwig and Hans Henny Jahnn. In: Special edition Werner Helwig. Special edition of the annual shell pile . No. 26 A. Second, expanded edition. Viersen 1991 ISSN  0085-3593 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas Freeman: Hans Henny Jahnn. A biography. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1986, p. 281, ISBN 3-455-08608-X
  2. ^ Jochen Meyer: Directory of the writings by and about Hans Henny Jahnn. Luchterhand, Neuwied 1967, p. 86
  3. ↑ Jochen Meyer lists 17 Helwig texts in his Jahnn bibliography up to 1967 alone. B. in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and in Merkur
  4. ↑ Bernd Goldmann: Afterword. ( Parabola edition, page 121)
  5. ↑ Bernd Goldmann: Afterword. ( Parabola edition, page 124)
  6. ^ Ernst Johann: The honorable Hans Henny Jahnn. Helwig's book of friendship. In: FAZ from August 6, 1977
  7. ^ Karl Krolow: The fable of a life: Hans Henny Jahnn. In: Berner Tagblatt of September 3, 1977
  8. ↑ Charles Linsmayer: Circle around love and death. Werner Helwig writes about his friend Hans Henny Jahnn. In: Die Welt of July 2, 1977
  9. ↑ Jochen Meyer: Addendum 1970 - 1979 to the Hans Henny Jahnn bibliography. In: Text + Criticism . Munich 1980, issue 2/3 "Hans Henny Jahnn", 3rd edition, p. 156, ISBN 3-921402-78-6
  10. ^ Paul Huebner: High contrast picture of a modern Job. In: Rheinische Post from October 25, 1977
  11. ↑ Quoted from: The fable of a life: Hans Henny Jahnn. In: Berner Tagblatt of September 3, 1977

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