Georges Perec

Georges Perec (born March 7, 1936 in Paris , † March 3, 1982 in Ivry-sur-Seine ) was a French writer and filmmaker . He was a member of the Oulipo group and is counted among the most important representatives of French literature after the Second World War .

Life

Georges Perec was born in the XIX. Arrondissement , a Parisian working-class district, was born as the only son of Icek and Cyrla (Szulewicz) Peretz. His parents, Jews of Polish origin , emigrated to France in the 1920s. At the beginning of the Second World War, Perec's father joined the French army; In 1940 he fell. Perec's childhood was shaped by the German occupation after the armistice . Perec's mother - she was abducted in 1943 - was probably killed in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . Perec was taken in in 1942 by his uncle and aunt, who adopted him in 1945.

In 1949, Georges Perec began psychotherapy with Françoise Dolto . Thanks to his philosophy teacher Jean Duvignaud , he was able to publish articles and reports in prestigious literary journals such as the Nouvelle Revue française and Les Lettres Nouvelles while he was studying history and sociology .

From 1958 to 1959 Perec did his military service in Pau with the paratroopers . After his release he married Paulette Petras. The couple lived together for a year (1960–1961) in Sfax ( Tunisia ), where Paulette worked as a teacher. From 1961, Perec was employed as archivist in the neurophysiological laboratory at the Saint-Antoine hospital - a poorly paid position which he retained until 1978. He also worked for the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) . It remains to be seen whether the daily handling of records and changed data sets had any effect on Perec's spelling; there is no doubt, however, that he was influenced by the group Oulipo ("Workshop for Potential Literature"), which Raymond Queneau had brought into being and to which he belonged from 1967. It is a group of authors who submit their works to formal constraints, such as not using certain letters (see lipogram ).

In 1965 his first work Les choses (Eng. The Things ) received the prestigious Prix ​​Renaudot . Perec worked on a number of radio plays with the musician Philippe Drogoz in the late 1960s . He later started making films. His first film, based on his novel Un Homme qui there , won the Prix ​​Jean Vigo in 1974 . W ou le souvenir d'enfance (Eng. W or Childhood Memory) published in 1975 is considered a masterpiece of the (auto) biographical novel. The author portrays his childhood and life in the National Socialist concentration and extermination camps and reflects this with “cruel counter-images of a fictional Olympics in a distant archipelago, a world of manic and murderous winning and losing, the brutal utopia an orderly world ”. Based on the description of life in a Paris apartment building, he unfolds a broad panorama of stories in his novel La Vie mode d'emploi (English: Instructions for Life ) , published in 1978 . This work, dedicated to Raymond Queneau, won the Prix ​​Médicis and is considered to be Perec's major work. The financial success of this novel allowed him to devote himself entirely to writing.

Perec taught at the University of Queensland in Australia in 1981 . There he began his last, unfinished work 53 Jours (Ger. 53 days ). After returning from Australia, his health deteriorated. A few days before his 46th birthday, Georges Perec died of lung cancer in 1982 . Perec's estate is now kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in the “L'Arsenal” section.

plant

In La Disparition (German translation by Anton Voyls Fortgang ), Perec omitted the letter E, which is the most common vowel in French (and German as well) . This oulipotic restriction was retained in the German translation of Anton Voyl's Fortgang by Eugen Helmlé (however, the typesetter of the Rowohlt licensed edition made a mistake on the first page). In the novel Les Revenentes , Perec reversed this principle and used the letter E as the only vowel; which the title already shows, because it should actually be called Revenantes . Perec also wrote a palindrome in the form of a letter to EDNA D'NILU with more than 1,300 words. This letter can be read completely backwards from the address to the signature. In Life's Instructions for Use , Perec jumps systematically from apartment to apartment or from room to room like a horse figure on a chessboard, opening up a huge panorama of stories and encounters. The focus is on the story of a man who paints watercolors , has them broken down into puzzles by a puzzle maker and then reassembled. The idea of ​​the puzzle is also programmatically for the construction principle of the novel. Perec's works are also peppered with puns and lists. In a Kunstkabinett descriptions are fictitious painting real painter as extracts inserting an auction catalog. The question of intertextuality in literature is also of great importance to Perec. In Die Winterreise is about a book from the 19th century, quote from all the major authors in world literature, without naming its source.

“I vaguely feel that the books I have written get their meaning from an all-inclusive picture that I make of literature, but I have the feeling that I will probably never be able to grasp this picture exactly, that it For me, something that stands beyond writing is a 'Why I write', to which I can only answer in writing, incessantly postponing the moment when this picture would become visible because I stop writing, similar to a puzzle that is completed once and for all. "

“So my ambition as a writer is [...] to realize a writing project in which I never write the same book twice, or better, in which I write the same book every time, but each time in a different light appear. "

bibliography

• Les Choses. Une histoire des années soixante. Julliard, Paris 1965.
  • German: The things. A story of the sixties. Translated from the French by Eugen Helmlé . Stahlberg, Karlsruhe 1966; Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1984; diaphanes , Zurich-Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-03734-649-5 .
  • German: The things. A story from the sixties. Translated from the French by Henryk Keisch . Verlag Volk und Welt , Berlin 1967.
• Quel petit vélo à guidon chromé au fond de la cour? Denoël, Paris 1966.
  • English: What kind of little moped with chrome handlebars is there in the barracks yard? Translated from the French by Henryk Keisch. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1967.
  • English: What kind of little moped with a chrome handlebar is there in the yard? Translated by Eugen Helmlé. Manholt, Bremen 1988; diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-03734-231-2 .
• Un homme qui there. Denoël, Paris 1967.
  • German: A man who sleeps . Translated by Eugen Helmlé. Manholt, Bremen 1988; diaphanes, Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-03734-241-1 .
• La disparition. Denoël, Paris 1969.
  • German: Anton Voyls Fortgang . Translated by Eugen Helmlé. 2001-Verlag , Frankfurt 1986; diaphanes, Zurich 2013, ISBN 978-3-03734-322-7 .
• Petit traité invitant à la découverte de l'art subtil du go. In collaboration with Pierre Lusson and Jacques Roubaud . Christian Bourgois, Paris 1969.
• Les Revenentes. Julliard, Paris 1972.
  • German: dee weedergenger. Translated from the French by Peter Ronge. Helmut Lang, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-931325-35-0 .
• The machine. In collaboration with Eugen Helmlé. Reclam, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-15-009352-X .
• Oulipo. Créations, re-créations, récréations. In collaboration with Raymond Queneau, Paul Fournel and the members of the Oulipo. Gallimard, Paris 1972.
• La boutique obscure. 124 rêves. Denoël, Paris 1973.
  • English: The dark chamber. 124 dreams. Translated by Jürgen Ritte . diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-03734-895-6 .
• Espèces d'espaces. Galilée, Paris 1974.
  • German: dreams of spaces. Translated by Eugen Helmlé. Manholt, Bremen 1990; diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-03734-326-5 .
• Ulcerations. Bibliothèque oulipienne, Paris 1974.
• W ou le souvenir d'enfance. Denoël, Paris 1975.
  • German: W or Die Kindheitserinnerung. From the French by Thorgerd Schücker. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1978.
  • German: W or Die Kindheitserinnerung. Translated from the French by Eugen Helmlé. Frankfurt 1982; diaphanes, Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-03734-225-1 .
• Tentative d'epuisement d'un Lieu parisien. Christian Bourgois, Paris 1975.
  • German: Trying to capture a place in Paris. Translated from the French by Tobias Scheffel . Libelle, Konstanz 2010, ISBN 978-3-905707-44-1 .
• Alphabet. Cent soixante-seize onzains hétérogrammatiques. Illustrations by Dado . Galilée, Paris 1976.
• Je me souviens . Hachette, Paris 1978.
• La Vie mode d'emploi. Hachette, Paris 1978.
  • German: Life Instructions for Use . Translated from the French by Eugen Helmlé. Edition with puzzle in a slipcase. Two thousand and one , Frankfurt 1982, ISBN 3-86150-911-3 .
  • New edition in German (without puzzle): diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-03580-044-9 .
• Les mots croisés. Mazarine , Paris 1979.
• Un cabinet d'amateur. Histoire d'un tableau. Balland, Paris 1979.
  • German: Ein Kunstkabinett. Story of a painting . Translated from the French by Eugen Helmlé. Hanser, Munich 1989; diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-03734-893-2 .
• La Clôture et autres poèmes. Hachette, Paris 1980.
  • German: Okular ist narrow, or Fortunas Kiel. Bilingual edition. Transferred from Oskar Pastior. Edition Plasma, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-926867-17-5 .
• Récits d'Ellis Island. Histoires d'errance et d'espoir. In collaboration with Robert Bober . Éditions du Sorbier, Paris 1980.
  • English: Stories from Ellis Island or How to Make Americans. Translated by Eugen Helmlé. Wagenbach, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-8031-3592-3 .
  • German: Ellis Island. Translated by Eugen Helmlé. diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-03734-628-0 .
• Théâtre I . Includes the pieces L'augmentation and La poche Parmentier. Hachette, Paris 1981.
  • German: The raise. The potato chamber. Two pieces. Translated from the French by Eugen Helmlé. Publishing house of the authors , Frankfurt 1990, ISBN 3-88661-112-4 .

Posthumously

• Penser / Classer. Hachette, Paris 1985; Seuil, Paris 1997.
  • German: In a network of crossed lines. Translated from the French by Eugen Helmlé. Manholt, Bremen 1996.
  • German: Thinking / Ordering. Translated from the French by Eugen Helmlé. diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-03734-740-9 .
• 53 Jours. Seuil, Paris 1989.
  • German: 53 days. Eds. Harry Mathews and Jacques Roubaud. Translated from the French by Eugen Helmlé. Hanser, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-446-15985-1 .
• L'infra-ordinaire. Seuil, Paris 1989.
  • German: Why are there no cigarettes at the greengrocer? Translated by Eugen Helmlé. Manholt, Bremen 1991; diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-03734-881-9 .
• Je suis né. Seuil, Paris 1990.
  • German: Born 1936. Translated from the French by Eugen Helmlé. Manholt, Bremen 1993; diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-03734-535-1 .
• Roussel and Venice: draft for a melancholy geography. With Harry Mathews. Translated by Hanns Grössel . Edition Plasma, Berlin 1991; zero sharp, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-945421-07-9 .
• Cantatrix Sopranica L. Seuil, Paris 1991.
  • German: De iaculatione tomatonis (in cantatricem). Practical experiments to demonstrate the Tomatotopic organizational pattern in sopranos (Cantatrix sopranica L.) Bilingual edition. Translated from the French by Gerald Pilzere. Faude, Konstanz 1987, ISBN 3-922305-26-1 .
• Le Voyage d'hiver. Seuil, Paris 1993 (French new edition; first published in a limited collection of novellas Saisons , Hachette 1979, 1000 copies).
  • German: The winter journey. Translated from the French by Eugen Helmlé. Edition Plasma, Berlin 1990; diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-03580-125-5 .
• 81 fiches cuisine à l'usage des debutants. Seuil, Paris 2003.
  • English: 81 kitchen notes for beginners in the culinary arts. Translated from the French by Peter Ronge. Helmut Lang, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-931325-36-7 .
• L'art et la manière d'aborder son chef de service pour lui demander une augmentation. Hachette Littératures, Paris 2008.
  • German: About the art of approaching your boss and asking for a raise . Translated by Tobias Scheffel. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-608-93706-0 .
• Le Condottière. Éditions du Seuil, 2012.
  • German: The Condottiere. Translated from the French by Jürgen Ritte. Hanser, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-446-24442-9 .
• Table arrangements. Essays from 1973 to 1982. With an essay by Sabine Mainberger . Translated by Eugen Helmlé. Ritter Verlag, Klagenfurt 2014, ISBN 978-3-85415-502-7 .
• L'Attentat de Sarajevo. Éditions du Seuil, 2016.
  • English: The assassination attempt in Sarajevo. Translated from the French by Jürgen Ritte. diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-03734-944-1 .

Radio plays

• The machine , with Eugen Helmlé , SR / WDR 1968.
• Growths (after L'augmentation ), SR / WDR 1970.
• Tagstimmen , together with Eugen Helmlé and Philippe Drogoz . SR, 1971.
• The mechanism of the nervous system in the head (according to Fonctionnement du système nerveux dans la tête) , WDR 1972.
• Concert piece for speaker and orchestra, with Eugen Helmlé and Philippe Drogoz, SR 1974.
• The potato kettle (after La poche Parmentier ), SR 1987.
• Life - Instructions for use (based on La vie - Mode d'emploi ), DRS 1990.
• The devil in the library (based on Le diable dans la bibliothèque ), SR 1991.
• Perec / grinations , SR / RB 2000.
• The things (after Les Choses ), HR 2004
• Does Karadings pinch the war? (based on Quel petit vélo à guidon chromé au fond de la cour? ), DLR 2006.

Movies

• Un homme qui there (German: A man who sleeps , screenplay), 1973.
• Les lieux d'une fugue (director, screenplay with Bernard Zitzermann), 1975.
• Le retour à la bien-aimée (English: return to the beloved , screenplay with Jean-François Adam, Jean-Claude Carrière and Benoît Jacquot), 1979.
• Série noire (dialogues), 1979.
• Récits d'Ellis Island (screenplay, made for TV by Robert Bober ), 1980.

literature

• David Bellos : Georges Perec. A Life in Words . David R. Godine, Boston 1993, ISBN 1-86046-074-7 .
• Arch 39. Georges Perec. The artist as a puzzle player. Hanser, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-446-99086-0 .
• Susanne Düwell: Fiction from the real. Strategies of autobiographical narration in the context of the Shoah . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2004, ISBN 3-89528-437-8 (GP: W ou le souvenir d'enfance ; also about: Raymond Federman ; Danilo Kis Basta, pepeo ; Hanna Krall : Sublokatorka ; Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt : Die Absonderung ).
• Judith Heckel & Olaf Kistenmacher: In the labyrinth of words (... one of the most important representatives of French post-war literature), in "Dschungel." Supplement to jungle world 37/38, September 13, 2012, pp. 8–11 (with 2 illustrations)
• Article by Eugen Helmlé and Eric Beaumatin in: Critical Lexicon of Foreign Language Contemporary Literature KLfG, Edition text + kritik , Munich (ongoing).
• Judith Kasper: Languages ​​of Forgetting: Proust , Perec and Barthes between loss and memory . Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7705-3817-X .
• Clara Lévy: Ecritures de l'identité. Écrivains juifs après la shoah. PUF, Paris 1998 ISBN 2-13-049686-5 (also about Albert Memmi , Romain Gary , Edmond Jabès and Albert Cohen ) pp. 144-159 (French).
• Bernard Magné: Tentative d'inventaire pas trop approximatif des écrits de Georges Perec. PU du Mirail, Toulouse 1993.
• Harry Mathews : The Orchard. Memories of Georges Perec. Edition Plasma, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-926867-14-0 , diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-03580-048-7 .
• Timo Obergöker: Écritures du non-lieu. Topographies d'une impossible quête identitaire: Romain Gary , Patrick Modiano et Georges Perec. Lang, Frankfurt 2004, ISBN 3-631-52613-X (French; description on the publisher's website).
• Renate Overbeck: Perec. Life instruction manual . Exemplary series literature and philosophy, 13. Sonnenberg, Annweiler 2002, ISBN 978-3-933264-22-0 .
• Muriel Philibert: Kafka et Perec. Clôture et lignes de fuite. École normal supérieure ENS de Fontenay-St. Cloud 1993, 2nd edition 1995 Series: Cahiers de Fontenay: Hors collection ISSN  0395-8418 .
• Jürgen Ritte : The language game of modernity. A study of the literary aesthetics of Georges Perecs . Janus, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-922977-41-3 .
• Jürgen Ritte: Portrait of the artist as a puzzle player. About Georges Perec. In: " Writing book (magazine) for literature." Issue 26, 1985 (p. 97 ff).
• Ralph Schock (Ed.): "Cher Georges" - "Cher Eugen". The correspondence between Eugen Helmlé and Georges Perec 1966-1982 . Book + CD (reading Perec / Helmlé at Funkhaus Halberg, SR on June 24, 1969; 60 minutes). CONTE Verlag, St.Ingbert 2015, ISBN 978-3-95602-033-9 .
• Paul Schwartz: Georges Perec: Traces of his Passage. 1988, ISBN 978-0-917786-60-0 .
• Ariane Steiner: Georges Perec and Germany. The puzzle about the void. Königshausen & Neumann , Würzburg 2001, ISBN 3-8260-2008-1 (in google books online).

Web links

• Literature by and about Georges Perec in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Georges Perec  in the German Digital Library
• Georges Perec in Internet Movie Database (English)
• Full text of the letter Edna d'nilu (French). Retrieved January 29, 2012.
• comprehensive literature overview (sec.) with some web links. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
• extensive literature on Les Choses and occasionally on other works by Perec, by the same author as the previous link (French). Retrieved January 29, 2012.
• Georges Perec: Je me souviens , (texte intégral) . Retrieved June 4, 2017.
• Laëtitia Desanti: You ready-made au design. Les postures de Nathalie Sarraute et de Georges Perec par rapport à l'objet romanesque. Diss. Phil., McGill University, Montreal 2010 (French, with English abstract). Retrieved January 29, 2012
• Cahiers Georges Perec , Association GP online publication, since 1984 (first issues also in print). In Frz. - Scientific considerations, congresses etc. on P.
• Gundel Mattenklott: About some games in "Life Instructions for Use," from the magazine "Aesthetic Education" No. 11, Vol. 1, 2009, pp. 1–13 ISSN  1868-5099

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bayerischer Rundfunk: Georges Perec: "The assassination attempt of Sarajewo" - Popeye in the Balkans - book market. Retrieved May 6, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Jacques Leenhardt, epilogue Les Choses , paperback edition, Paris 1981.
3. ↑ Walter van Rossum: The smile of words (Die Zeit, 1996). Retrieved January 29, 2012.
4. ↑ http://www.fatrazie.com/palindromes.htm (accessed October 19, 2013)
5. ↑ Le Grand Palindrome de Georges perec. Retrieved October 3, 2018 . 
6. ↑ Perec quoted from: Ibid
7. ↑ Perec according to Eugen Helmlé, marginalia to GP, booklet to the edition "Life Instructions for Use" 2001-Verlag, Frankfurt 2002, p. 22f.
8. ↑ Before and after this issue with puzzle, frequent issues without puzzle in various publishers. The translator's "Marginalien zu GP" booklet in the 1982 and 2002 editions.
9. ↑ As a play La poche Parmentier see above Théâtre I , German.
10. ↑ also published as a book, Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1972; Gollenstein Verlag, Blieskastel 2001.
11. ↑ also published as a record, page A. - On page B: "Are we talking about Charles or The Banquet of the Jellyfish." Radio play by René de Obaldia
12. ↑ 2012: 11 issues, No. 12 announced