The trip to Komakuku

The trip to Komakuku are the memories of the Austrian writer Franz Karl Ginzkey , which first appeared in 1923. The focus is on his years in the old Austrian army .

The episodes and chapters are partly humorous, partly serious. They are selected in such a way that they exemplify certain insights that the poet acquired in the course of his life. Each of the stories can stand on its own, which makes them well suited for separate printing, such as in reading books, and which contributed greatly to Ginzkey's popularity in the post- WWII period.

content

Ginzkey describes his life from childhood up to the years of the First World War , i.e. his first 50 years, in the form of short, often anecdotal experiences. Most of them are given in chronological order, but one cannot speak of an autobiography that is narrated throughout . Rather, the author highlights individual episodes from his life that are significant for him or seem worth telling.

It all starts with the adult Ginzkey's visit to his father's house in Northern Bohemia. This is followed by several chapters from Ginzkey's childhood in Pola , including The Journey to Komakuku . This is to be understood as a children's game by Ginzkey, in which he went on imaginary journeys to the land of Komakuku, which he had invented, swinging on a barn door.

“And yet, what was it that I did later, for the years to come and for all the rest of my existence? I drove on the gate of life, always to dreamland, up and down, up and down. I wrote poems and stories and had them printed over and over, over and over. And in doing so, I have all but neglected the nourishing, truly profitable values of life. So what was my life but the trip to Komakuku? "

The boy never really felt at home in the southern city with its predominantly Italian population, had to endure many fights and lived an often withdrawn existence with his father in his room, where he indulged in the world of books.

Further episodes lead to Ginzkeys school days and the years as a naval junior high school student and infantry cadet in Fiume and Trieste . Without any inner enthusiasm, he completed his training in a dutiful manner, and in the midst of the hustle and bustle of his classmates he managed to find time for secret first poems. Sometimes he even got himself locked up for various minor offenses in which he could write poetry undisturbed.

The world of the Austro-Hungarian Army, which was the focus of this training period, is presented in a special way in the following episodes. It is the time of Ginzkeys, when he served as a young lieutenant, first in Salzburg , then again in the coastal region, before he was transferred to the Military Geography Institute in Vienna . Ginzkey describes the army and its often strange relatives with a little wistful sympathy. The humanity of the soldiers and officers is always the focus. At the end of the book, Ginzkey reports on some "originals" he had met and on the writers Peter Rosegger and Rainer Maria Rilke , whom he was able to get to know personally.

expenditure

The trip to Komakuku stories from strange youth . Rikola-Verlag, Vienna 1923.
Harp and trumpet. Vol. 1 The Journey to Komakuku Vol. 2 The Strange Soldier . L. Staackmann , Leipzig 1926.
Trip to Komakuku . Introduzione e note di Ervino Pocar . Paravia, Torino 1935.
Time and people of my youth . Wiener Verlagsgesellschaft, Vienna 1942.
The trip to Komakuku. Life memories . Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1953.
Selected works in four volumes. Vol. 4 novels . Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1960.

literature

Jeffrey B. Berlin , Jorun B. Johns, Richard H. Lawson: Turn-of-the-century Vienna and its legacy . Edition Atelier, Vienna 1993, p. 482ff.
Klaus Johann: Limit and stop. To German-language boarding school literature . Winter, 2003, ISBN 3-8253-1599-1 , pp. 239ff.
Peter Pabisch : Patent solution or bone of contention? Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-03-910621-9 , p. 253.
Otto J. Horak: Andreas Figl. Trauner, Linz 2005, ISBN 978-3-85487-779-0 , p. 39ff.