The last world

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Ovid is banished from Rome. Painting by William Turner , 1838

The Last World is a novel by Christoph Ransmayr that was published in 1988.

content

Cotta, an admirer of Ovid , travels to Tomi (now Constanța ) on the Black Sea to investigate rumors that Ovid died there in exile.

He comes across a city populated with the characters from Ovid's Metamorphoses and finds traces of the poet, but not himself. Cotta spends some time in the iron city of Tomi and experiences how a two-year winter ends and slowly through spring nature recovers Tomi. Cotta begins a relationship with the disfigured Echo , who tells him about the stories of Ovid, who supposedly read stories in dying fires. These stories end - with one exception - with the transformation of the protagonists into stones, which is why Cotta decides to collect Naso's stories and reproduce them in the Book of Stones after Ovid's work had been burned by himself before his journey.

As the story progresses, Cotta's life changes in bizarre ways. He is threatened with loss of self. Finally he sets off for the nearby Tomi mountains. At this point the story ends.

Flashbacks in the course of the novel tell how Ovid's life and his literary publications led to his exile from Rome through a chain of events: Even his first works, which criticize Rome's strictly ordered apparatus of power, draw the heads of state's attention to him. Despite his literary success among the population, he was banished after he gave a daring speech at the opening of a stadium that showed a lack of respect for the emperor.

Chapter 1

Cotta's search for Naso or the Metamorphoses begins. He arrives by ship in Tomi after a seventeen day journey. There he wants to investigate the rumor that Naso is dead. Cotta gets to know the villagers. Then he goes to Trachila, where Naso is said to have had a house. Once there, he is between ruins. Only one house is still intact. He enters and searches it. After a while he finds a disturbed man sitting under the stairs - at first he thinks it is Naso, but then he realizes that it is only his servant Pythagoras, who is mentally confused and talking confused things to himself . Cotta tells Pythagoras about Nasos last day in Rome.

Chapter 2

Along with Cotta, Cyparis, the midget, is the central figure of the second chapter. Every year in August he visits Tomi to report on his travels. His old covered wagon is always with him, accompanied by a deer, to demonstrate his play of light. The residents of the city are described in detail.

Chapter 3

While searching for the book Metamorphoses, Cotta meets Naso's servant Pythagoras, who leads Cotta into Naso's garden. There are stones with a fragmented message from Naso. Cotta then remembers Naso's exile from Rome by the Emperor Augustus, due to his disrespect for the Emperor and the free interpretation of his texts.

Chapter 4

Cotta finds the house of Nasos, spends the night there and flees back to Tomi in a feverish state. On the way he thinks he sees Naso, but it's Battus.

Chapter 5

Spring is coming. Cotta meets Echo in the Seilerhaus and notices her illness. Over time, he discovers her true beauty and falls in love with her. Cotta asks her about Naso's escape.

Chapter 6

The changes in the city of Tomi become apparent during the spring. Cotta and Echo get closer and he learns many secrets about the city of Tomi and its inhabitants from her. It's about Naso's rebellion against the emperor and his banishment, as well as the effects on Roman society.

Chapter 7

The narrator tells of Naso's exile and how it came about that Cotta made the way to Tomi to find out the truth about Naso. Cotta receives more detailed information about the metamorphoses from Echo's help. The basis of their entertainment are the stories of Nasos, which Echo Cotta entrusts. After a strong storm, which is very reminiscent of one of the stories, Echo has disappeared.

Chapter 8

Naso's servant Pythagoras comes to the city to replenish his supplies, but does not remember Cotta and his visit. He then accompanies the servant to Trachila and learns that the weaver Arachne Nasos is recording stories in her carpets with depictions of the sky and birds. A visit to Arachne gave Cotta the idea that the metamorphoses were a story of nature.

Chapter 9

August brings a hot summer and a lot of bugs with it. When the Argo shows up, the residents buy many of the goods they brought with them. Fama finally receives her episcope. The residents are fascinated, Battus in particular is obsessed with the object. One night Battus turns to stone in front of the episcope.

Chapter 10

Thies and Tereus try in vain to reverse the transformation of the petrified Battus. After unsuccessful attempts, Fama angrily locks herself up in her shop and only leaves it after eight days in which she decorates Battus. For the time being, the petrified is a sensation, but gradually the residents get used to it. Cotta is now, after a long time that he spent in the house of the rope maker and where strange dreams haunted him, on the way to Trachila to find Naso.

Chapter 11

Cotta is on the way to Trachila in the mountains. The exhausting path brings him to his limits. Due to a detour he meets the submerged city of Limyra and stays overnight. The next day he set out again resolutely towards Trachila and reached his destination.

Chapter 12

Cotta visits the ruined city of Trachila again. There he sees Naso and Pythagoras. When it turns out to be an imagination, he thinks he's crazy and goes into despair. He wanders through the rubble of the city for two days and then returns to Tomi.

Chapter 13

The mountain dwellers flee into the city from stone avalanches. While Tomi continues to grow wild, Cotta takes over the ropemaker's house and arranges the found scraps of cloth with Naso's stories. He also spends a lot of time in Fama's shop, which tells him the individual stories of the residents.

Chapter 14

The city of Tomi completes the metamorphosis into the jungle. The sister of Procne, believed dead, returns, whose tongue was torn out by the butcher Tereus, which is why she fell silent.

Chapter 15

When Tereus returns to the village at night, he finds his son Itys dead. For Tereus it is clear that the murderer can only be his wife. He decides to seek them out to kill them. When he finds them, Tereus, Procne and the other inhabitants of Tomi turn into birds.

interpretation

The mixing of the time levels of antiquity (exact time span: 8 to 17 AD) and the present is striking. For example, the dwarf Cyparis shows films and Ovid sends his wife Cyane a photo of the city of Tomi.

In addition to the chronology , the author also depicts the geography unrealistic. For example, Tomi / Constanța lies on a flat coast, which is in stark contrast to the steep coast described with the mountains behind. Even Rome is in its geographical features a contrast to the historic capital of the Roman Empire .

Characters

The characters of the last world are of mythological or historical origin and are partly taken from Ovid's works.

  • Alcyone , character in a drama performed by Cyparissus
  • Arachne , deaf-mute weaver from Tomi
  • Augustus , Emperor of Rome
  • Battus , epileptic son of the shopkeeper Fama
  • Ceyx , character in a drama performed by Cyparissus
  • Cotta , main character who goes to Tomi in search of Ovid
  • Cyane , wife of the exiled Ovid
  • Cyparissus (orig. Cyparis), dwarf wandering projectionist
  • Echo , confidante Cottas, disfigured by a wandering scaly spot
  • Fama , Tomi's shopkeeper and Battus's mother
  • Itys , son of the butcher Tereus and his wife Procne
  • Lykaon , Tomi's rope maker, rents a room to Cotta
  • Naso , Cognomen Ovid, with whom the poet is described in the novel
  • Procne , sickly wife of Tereus the butcher
  • Proserpina , fiancee of Tomi's gravedigger, Thies
  • Pythagoras , confused servant Nasos
  • Tereus , brutal butcher Tomis and husband Procnes
  • Thies ( Dis Pater ) , ointment mixer and gravedigger, who was moved from Germany to Tomi during the war

review

The Last World was one of the most successful literary works in 1988 . The novel was initially praised by newspapers such as Spiegel , taz or Zeit .

Some attributed the success of the novel solely to the skillful marketing of the work by Greno Verlag and the support of Hans Magnus Enzensberger . The last world first appeared in the series Die Andere Bibliothek published by Enzensberger .

Political explosiveness

An incident in Romania proves that the novel is politically explosive: the authorities there did not want to allow The Last World in an anthology , because "it refers too clearly to Romanian conditions and the role of the great conducator ( Nicolae Ceaușescu )." Ransmayr himself said: "At that time I felt an almost childlike satisfaction that at least one person affected, the censor, understood a passage of the Last World correctly."

literature

expenditure

  • First edition: The Last World. Novel. With an Ovidian repertoire. Numerical drawings by Anita Albus . In: The other library, edited by Hans-Magnus Enzensberger. Greno, Nördlingen 1988, ISBN 3-89190-244-1 .
  • Paperback edition: Fisch Tb 1690. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-596-29538-6 .
  • Hardcover: Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-10-062939-5 .
  • Audiobook: Christoph Ransmayr reads Christoph Ransmayr: The Last World. Unabridged author reading. ORF . Director: Harald Krewer. Argon, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86610-431-0 . 8 CDs with booklet.

Secondary literature

  • Oldenbourg Interpretations No. 59, The Last World , Munich 1992, ISBN 3-486-88658-4 .
  • Martin Kiel: Nexus. Postmodern myths. Picture puzzles between play and knowledge. With a comment on Christoph Ransmayr's “The Last World”. Frankfurt 1996, ISBN 3-631-30055-7 .
  • Uwe Wittstock (Ed.): The invention of the world - On the work of Christoph Ransmayr. Fischer tb, 2004.
  • Thomas Neukirchen: "Out of supervision": Nasos self-evacuation and metamorphosis. Comments on the (free) death of the author in Christoph Ransmayr's novel 'The Last World'. In: Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 52 (2002) (FS Conrad Wiedemann), pp. 191–209.