The travel encounter

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The journey encounter is a story by Anna Seghers from 1972, which appeared in the collection Weird Encounters . According to Klaus Schuhmann , the collection also served to “emancipate the fantastic”. The author investigates the question of cultural and political relevance in Socialist Realism at the time : "How is today's reality really, that is, true, represented in literary terms?"

Anna Seghers is said to have called the narrow text a little literary history.

Preliminary remarks

fiction

A few years after the First World War, ETA Hoffmann , Gogol and Kafka discussed their works in a café in Prague . Hoffmann (1776–1822) wanted to meet Gogol (1809–1852) who was traveling through in this baroque restaurant. It works. Before that, however, he spoke to Kafka (1883–1924), who happened to be writing there.

For example, when Hoffmann praises a work by Gogol, it is better to think of “Seghers' figure of Hoffmann” instead of “Hoffmann”. Hoffmann's pen friendship with Gogol is a Seghersian fantasy.

While Hoffmann could not know the works of the two younger ones, Gogol knew Hoffmann's work well. Kafka knew a lot about Gogol. A reference in Kafka's estate to his knowledge of Hoffmann's work has not yet been discovered.

Biographical

Hans Richter thinks that Anna Seghers placed less emphasis on biographical precision, but a number of details, at least about Kafka, are correct: he was employed by the General Accident Insurance Fund until 1922 . The institution retired him early due to illness . He started with the castle in 1922.

Kafka in Prague

"Residents" of three empires - Prussia , Russia and Austria-Hungary - meet. Since the story takes place on the soil of the collapsed Austro-Hungarian Empire, more precisely on the territory of Czechoslovakia , it is obvious that Anna Seghers actually deals with Kafka in Prague in the text. Kafka illustrates the Prague hungry winter of 1916/1917 with the story of the "damned reality", of the battle at the coal merchant's for a bucket of coal. With Masaryk, the 1920s brought good and not so good for the Czechs. Kafka is no longer allowed to sit and write in Prague. He has to go to the sanatorium.

The author is said to be close to Kafka. This view of some literary scholars can be traced back to Grubetsch - Seghers' first publication. However, statements by the writer about Kafka have only been documented for the years 1949, 1963 and from 1965 onwards. Despite all the closeness to Kafka, Anna Seghers distanced herself in her text from the lack of perspective in Kafka's late work. She has Hoffmann say: "You have to see a light point shine."

content

Kafka's Castle , The Trial , in particular The Bucket Rider and The Metamorphosis as well as America , Hoffmann's Knight Gluck , Meister Floh , Des Cousin's Corner Window and The Elixirs of the Devil as well as Gogol's Coat , The Dead Souls , The Nose and The Auditor . Although the three characters quote from several of those works, Anna Seghers also put her own worldview - that of the first 1970s in the GDR - into the mouths of the three gentlemen . Winnen speaks of the three "reasoning carriers". For example, Kafka thinks a central Seghersian thought: "Dreams are undoubtedly part of reality."

Thanks to her fictional narrative power, Anna Seghers takes the figure of Hoffmann as the mediating authority. Hoffmann travels from Dresden , which is not overly distant , and in Prague approaches Kafka, who is unwaveringly writing, and explains some of Gogol's sayings to the later-born writer. Hoffmann is at the wrong address with Kafka. As a Prague citizen, Kafka speaks the Slavic language Czech .

shape

The conversation between the three writers splintered the already meager fable due to the multitude of the most diverse trains of thought expressed about fundamental poetological questions.

In addition to the narrator's comment, three figure-related formal elements recur in the text: the quotation of one's own works, the verbatim inner monologues by Hoffmann and Kafka, and the three possible dialogue pairs.

Topics that are close to Anna Seghers' heart are repeated: Kafka's dogged literary work in spite of a life-threatening illness, the fairytale in prose or the writer's responsibility for his publications. On the latter topic, Gogol proclaims pathetically: “Everyone is to blame for what he writes. On Judgment Day , everyone must answer for it. ”Kafka - very strict with himself - wants to have the manuscripts of unpublished texts burned after his death.

reception

Reception before 1989

In the west the slavery prevailed and in the east praise.

west

In particular, the standard language of the characters from three cultures and time periods was criticized.

east

  • Kurt Batt : Praise the imagination . " Sense and Form ". 1973, No. 6, pp. 1293-1300.
  • Heinz Neugebauer highlights passages from the conversations about the necessity of art that are worth considering: Gogol's fear of the Russian Church on the one hand and his "rising above suffering and agony" through art on the other, Kafka and Gogol's letter against the "gap between rich and poor", Gogol's design of the relation between reality and dream, Hoffmann's never flagging confrontation with the Prussian bureaucratic apparatus and the problematic handling of the sublime.
  • Klaus Hermsdorf : Beginnings of Kafka reception in socialist German literature. " Weimar Contributions ". 1978, No. 9, pp. 45-69.
  • Sigrid Bock: Anna Seghers reads Kafka . "Weimar Contributions". 1984, No. 6, pp. 900-915.
  • Radio play with Ezard Haußmann , Wolfgang Dehler , Udo Schenk and others, directed by Fritz Göhler , Rundfunk der DDR , 1985.

Reception after 1989

  • Eva Kaufmann : Changes in Anna Seghers' later prose. In: Paolo Chiarini, Ursula Heukenkamp : Change of perspective . "Studi di Filologia Tedesca", Vol. 12, pp. 41-54. Rome 1990.
  • Annette Horn: Traveling in the fourth dimension. Anna Seghers' subversion of objective time in the story "Die Reiseegegnung". Acta Germanica 21 (1992), pp. 121-143
  • Martin Straub: "Of course, everyone is to blame for what he writes." Anna Seghers´ story "Die Reiseegegnung" (1993)
  • Brandes: Anna Seghers wanted to escape mundane everyday pressures with anti-realistic representations; thus address the reader and adhere to that utopia according to which art can reconcile people.
  • Schrade: Hoffmann appears almost as a figure of light in the art dialogue. He fought his bouquets with the German bureaucracy to the bitter end, while Gogol and Kafka finally gave up.
  • Hilzinger: Franz Fühmann went to school with Anna Seghers as a Saiäns Fiktschen author.
  • Winnen writes on the above-mentioned topic of argumentation : "His work, not the person Gogol , is the admiration of the other two - and the author Anna Seghers." Hoffmann argues more convincingly than his two colleagues.

literature

Text output

  • The travel encounter . P. 107–148 in: Anna Seghers: Odd Encounters. (also contains: sagas of the unearthly . The meeting point ). 149 pages. Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 1972 (2nd edition 1974), without ISBN
  • The travel encounter . Pp. 113–152 in: Anna Seghers: strange encounters. (also contains: sagas of the unearthly . The meeting point ). Luchterhand, Darmstadt and Neuwied 1973
  • The travel encounter . P. 497-529 in: Anna Seghers: Erzählungen 1963-1977 . ( The strength of the weak (Agathe Schweigert. The Führer. The Prophet. The reed. Bye. The duel. Susi. Tuomas presents the Sorsa peninsula. The homecoming of the lost people) The real blue . Crossing . Strange encounters ( legends of the unearthly . The meeting point, the travel encounter) Stone Age, reencounter ) Volume XII. Collected works in individual editions. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1981 (2nd edition), 663 pages, without ISBN
  • The travel encounter . Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1992, 38 pages. One-time edition ISBN 3-352-00438-2

Secondary literature

  • Heinz Neugebauer: Anna Seghers. Life and work. With illustrations (research assistant: Irmgard Neugebauer, editorial deadline September 20, 1977). 238 pages. Series “Writers of the Present” (Ed. Kurt Böttcher). People and Knowledge, Berlin 1980, without ISBN
  • Ute Brandes: Anna Seghers . Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1992. Volume 117 of the series “Heads of the 20th Century”, ISBN 3-7678-0803-X
  • Andreas Schrade: Anna Seghers . Metzler, Stuttgart 1993 (Metzler Collection, Vol. 275 (Authors)), ISBN 3-476-10275-0
  • Sonja Hilzinger: Anna Seghers. With 12 illustrations. Series of Literature Studies. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, RUB 17623, ISBN 3-15-017623-9
  • Angelika Winnen: Anna Seghers: The travel encounter. P. 32–96 in: Angelika Winnen: Kafka reception in the literature of the GDR. Productive readings from Anna Seghers, Klaus Schlesinger , Gert Neumann and Wolfgang Hilbig . Literary Studies series, vol. 527. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006. ISBN 3-8260-2969-0 , 317 pages

Remarks

  1. ↑ Both the year 1922 and the beginning of 1924 are conceivable (Winnen, p. 46, footnote 111).
  2. ↑ We are also talking about the Brothers Grimm , Gogol's role model, Pushkin, and Hoffmann's preoccupation with music and the visual arts ( Jacques Callot ).
  3. ↑ Kafka never wrote in cafés (Winnen, p. 55, 5. Zvo).
  4. ↑ Edition used.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 107 and Winnen, p. 46, 11. Zvo
  2. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 160, 2. Zvo
  3. ↑ Winnen, p. 53, 3. Zvo
  4. ↑ Werner Neubert in New German Literature 1973, Issue 10, pp. 30–34, cited in Winnen, p. 47, 3rd Zvo and p. 301, 4th entry
  5. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 160, 4. Zvo
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 111, 1. Zvo
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 110, 8. Zvo
  8. ↑ Winnen, p. 55, 1st Zvu
  9. ↑ Hans Richter: The Kafka of the Seghers . "Sense and Form". 1983, No. 6, pp. 1171-1179
  10. ↑ Winnen, p. 55, 1. Zvo
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 111, 9. Zvo
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 112, 10. Zvo and p. 124, 13. Zvu
  13. ↑ Winnen, p. 34, 9. Zvo (footnote 63: reference to Friedrich Albrecht, Frank Wagner, Sigrid Bock and Klaus Hermsdorf )
  14. ↑ Winnen, p. 43, 9. Zvo to p. 46, 9. Zvo
  15. ↑ Winnen, p. 79, 18. Zvu, p. 95, 4. Zvo and p. 128 middle
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 142, 8. Zvo
  17. ↑ Winnen, p. 52 above
  18. ↑ Edition used, p. 110, 8. Zvo (see also Winnen, p. 53, 23. Zvo)
  19. ↑ Winnen, p. 55, 19. Zvo
  20. ↑ Edition used, p. 136, 7th Zvu, p. 140 above and 142, 2nd Zvu
  21. ↑ Edition used, p. 118, 13. Zvo
  22. ↑ Edition used, p. 119, 13. Zvo
  23. ↑ Winnen, p. 47 below
  24. ↑ Winnen, p. 52 below
  25. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 203, 2nd Zvubis p. 207, 5th Zvu
  26. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 204, 4th Zvu
  27. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 206, 6. Zvo
  28. ^ Neugebauer, p. 205, 1. Zvo
  29. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 205, 16. Zvu
  30. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 206, 1. Zvo
  31. ↑ quoted in Hilzinger, p. 219 below
  32. ↑ quoted in Hilzinger, p. 223, 5th entry vu
  33. ↑ Brandes, pp. 87 and 88
  34. ^ Schrade, pp. 147 and 160
  35. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 160, 11. Zvu
  36. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 160
  37. ↑ Winnen, pp. 58 and 61