These very serious jokes

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These very serious jokes. Poetics Lectures is an essay by the German-Austrian author Daniel Kehlmann and served as a template for two lectures that Kehlmann gave at the invitation of the Seminar for German Philology and the Literary Center in November 2006 at the Georg-August University in Göttingen . Kehlmann comments on poetological topics and his own work in the form of an interview he wrote himself . The essay was first printed in 2007 in the Göttinger Sudelblätter series by Wallstein Verlag . In 2010 it appeared in the anthology Lob: Über Literatur .

Book title

The title of the book is a frequently quoted dictum by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . On March 17, 1832 he wrote a letter to Wilhelm von Humboldt in which he said the following about the second part of Faust :

“Without question, it would give me infinite pleasure to dedicate these very serious jokes to my valued, gratefully recognized, widely distributed friends, even during their lifetime, to share them and to hear their replies. But the day is really so absurd and confused that I convince myself that my honest, long-pursued efforts for this strange building would be badly rewarded and driven to the beach, lying there like a wreck in ruins and initially being showered by the dune rubble of the hours. "

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

content

In order to satisfy the supposed academic journalistic curiosity about a well-known writer , Kehlmann invents an interviewer and in this way provides information himself. The first part deals with general poetological questions. First of all, writers should not be in power because, being pragmatists and opportunists with a tendency to extreme views, they could do great harm to society. Then Kehlmann investigates the question of whether writing is a craft. In his view, no amount of technical expertise can save the author from writing bad or insignificant texts. Rather, personal experience shows that an author is always at the beginning of every new work. Precise research is essential for the historical novel . In addition, the action must be accompanied by descriptions of gestures and guided by an inner necessity. In terms of content, Kehlmann differentiates between realism of North American origin and South American realism enriched with a magical element . Kehlmann is particularly fascinated by this type of literature that transcends reality and defines the style for him. However, with this attitude he encounters unexpected resistance:

“Well, my novels have always been about playing with reality, breaking reality. [...] and it was one of my most depressing experiences as a writer that something like this is simply not understood in Germany. "

- Daniel Kehlmann

The second part of the text deals with the novel Measuring the World . The author asks himself how the divergence between the literary characters in the novel and the historical figures Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauß can be justified. In his opinion, in the writing process the real characters are transformed into creatures of the writer, who now has to reinvent their life for the sake of the plot. The material for this is the historical background, from which one should not stray too far.

Press reviews

“You have to be grateful to the author and publisher for this, because“ These very serious jokes ”is not only one of the cleverest, but also, according to the title, actually one of the most cheerful books that has been written about literature recently. As a reader, you not only have your intellectual pleasure in it, you are also well entertained thanks to the wonderful humor with which Kehlmann treats his topic. You can really read these pages in a short time - and the volume will be closed, delighted and enriched. "

- Darmstadt echo

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.uni-protocol.de/nachrichten/id/126997/
  2. ↑ Quoted from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Complete Works, Volume 44, p. 28
  3. ↑ Quoted from the first edition from 2007 on p. 16
  4. ↑ Quoted from wallstein-verlag.de

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