The beautiful font
The beautiful script is a novel by the Spanish writer Rafael Chirbes . The original La buena letra appeared in 1992. The German translation by Dagmar Ploetz was published in 1999 by Antje Kunstmann .
Reviews
The book reviews on the occasion of its publication in 1999 reflect the great diversity of the novel.
Silence until death do us part
“The beautiful writing is the life story of a simple woman, the portrait of a family during and after the Spanish civil war, the story of a silent destruction of love, hope and life plans. […] Chirbes tells in a simple language that is based on the constitution of his protagonist. But the story seems very condensed in places and therefore too schematic over long stretches. Changes in the characters are sometimes surprising and can only be reconstructed vaguely from the course of the plot. On the one hand, this is a shame, as there is a lot of potential in the material. On the other hand, this also has its charm: The stories are surrounded by an aura of secrecy, which fits the characters' tactics of repression. Unfortunately, the novel - which would probably be better categorized with the designation story - arouses curiosity about something that it is ultimately unable to achieve. The explosive is hinted at, but is lost in the tabular description of the events. At the end of the reading, one has the impression that the author could now begin to develop the well-designed characters and finally turn the promising synopsis into a novel. "
The self at the center of history
“It's a subject so broad and comprehensive that it could easily have been written into a novel of not unsightly length. But the author wanted it differently, did not seek the epic breadth that a narrator who carefully guides his characters with descriptions and explanations through history brings with it. And at the same time it does not provoke the immediately imposing comparison with those novelists of this and last century who wanted to portray history. Rather, he chose the narrative perspective in such a way that his topic could be summarized on 143 pages that were not exactly printed: The years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, reminiscent of 50 years later, interwoven with the personal story of a nameless (female) self and himself it is a tragedy, which is all about an unhappy love that is only admitted in the face of death between those affected. […] These are some of the main features of the novel, from which another reader will gain different and broader perspectives, such as one that starts with the question of who - men or women - is worse affected by the consequences of the war, or starts with the fact that it is always women who bring ruin, a ruin to which especially men are at the mercy. The fact that the meeting is not and cannot be concluded should not least be understood as a sign of the quality of the work. "
Honeysuckle and memory
“[…] Ana doesn't know why she needs to speak right now. At night the scent of the honeysuckle scratched her memory and with it the old stories forced their way into her head: from childhood in the small town of Bovra in southern Spain, the wedding, the civil war and the misery of the post-war period, his brother-in-law Antonio and his wife Isabel. She tells it to her only son, and she tells it to herself. 'Perhaps only because the memory comes up when speaking, a sick memory with no hope.' [...] 'The beautiful writing' is a novel of hopelessness, told in a language of sparse beauty, an unpathetic, deeply pessimistic piece of literature, at the end of which even death does not promise salvation. [...] "
In your own shadow
“[…] Not life, but death labels and marks the human being as an individual, such philosophizing naturally goes far beyond Ana's horizon. It is clear that the naive narrator of this literarily highly calculated and highly controlled text is designed as a pure fictional figure. Her speech follows an artificial economy, a rhetoric of silence. The problem of the book arises from it, because, strictly speaking, the reader has two books in hand; one written and one unwritten. Because that, the written, is so artificially scarce, it hides so much that it automatically produces its own shadow in which the outline of what is not told, what is not written is depicted. It is quite clear what Rafael Chirbes, whose literature is a reminder of the recent history of Spain, wants to achieve with this rhetoric of silence. This part of history represents, as it were, the historical repressions of the Spanish present-day consciousness. [...] "
Franco, you are too
“[...] Chirbes wrote the great novel about recent Spanish history and the present for Spain and the world with 'The Beautiful Scriptures'. Let us wish that something comparable about the German past and present emerged. [...] "
A book for the city
The novel was a book for the city in 2007 in Cologne and the region.
“The fifth reading festival for the 'Book for the City' is coming to an end. […] And also on the 25,000 copies of the special edition of the novel 'The Beautiful Scriptures' sold to date. This is a record and a sold circulation that the book in the original Spanish did not reach. This is all the more remarkable since the special edition was only requested in Cologne and the region. [...] "
Individual evidence
- ↑ matices.de ( Memento of 20 April 2008 at the Internet Archive ) magazine for Latin America, Spain and Portugal
- ↑ falter.at Falter Verlag Vienna
- ↑ Ursula March: In my own shadow. In: Berliner Zeitung . April 30, 1999, accessed July 10, 2015 .
- ↑ freitag.de The east-west weekly newspaper
literature
- Rafael Chirbes: The beautiful font Roman. Translated from the Spanish by Dagmar Ploetz. Munich: Antje Kunstmann, 1999, ISBN 3-88897-211-6
- The beautiful font as an audio book for the action A book for the city published by the publishing house Antje Kunstmann, Kölner Stadtanzeiger and Literaturhaus Köln, 2007, ISBN 978-3-88897-497-7
- Unabridged special edition 2007. Munich: Antje Kunstmann, ISBN 978-3-88897-495-3
Web links
- Nachtgedanken Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger
- Audio book
- Kunstmann Verlag