Big solo for Anton

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Big Solo for Anton is a fantastic novel by Herbert Rosendorfer published in 1976 . It is about the spontaneous disappearance of mankind and tells the story of the only survivor Anton L. (hence the title).

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Anton L., until then a tax officer with some bizarre habits, wakes up one morning as the only surviving person after the disappearance of mankind. During the night he noticed a glow of light, "a pale, yellowish glow like on a snowy night". He notes that all other people seem to have dematerialized themselves in a mysterious way. Her clothes are empty shells where they disappeared. A horror creeps over him: "The soul gives up one adult district after the other, transforms itself back, in the end only defends the core of the being that was there when one was still a child."

After a few upsurges of such panic, he adapts to the new situation relatively quickly and begins to make use of the legacies of the disappeared people. He first moved into a large hotel and then into a small castle within the former sovereign residence. The course of the narrative is repeatedly interrupted by episodes from Anton L's earlier life, triggered mostly by reminiscences of Anton L when he encounters places from his earlier life on excursions in the deserted city.

On one of these corridors, when Anton L. was getting candles from the former court wax-drawing shop, he found a letter addressed only with the initial "L." There is a monument to an elector in front of the wax factory. The content of the letter is: “Dear Ludwig, I am not mistaken this time: what we are looking for is there. Maybe I'll be ready tomorrow. Give me the Ankle quickly, no later than 10:30 am. Greetings from your C. “He wonders what an Ankle is. Anton L's curiosity is aroused, which will ultimately lead him on the trail of a book, not just any book, but the book itself. The motto of the novel, “The end of the world is a book”, a quote from Stéphane Mallarmé , is to be taken literally. The addressee of the letter, as it turns out to be a man named Soliman Ludwig, was the center of a circle of learned explorers of certain occult areas of antiquity. In Ludwig's apartment, Anton L. found several bundles of correspondence, some of which stretched over many years. From this it becomes clear that the group around Ludwig initially had the goal of “taking stock of the secret libraries available all over the world”, from which the search for a very specific object, namely the aforementioned book of books, also known as the “sum of sums” arises . He finds the decisive clue in Ludwig's last letter. He writes:

“Every living being tends, no: urges to create corresponding living beings around itself or to re-stamp existing structures according to its own image. The matrix is ​​the secret of life. [...] I therefore have justified reason to suspect that the world, our world, the earth and its unit of creation also have the tendency and urge for the matrix. The result was it - the book. "

According to Ludwig's theory, such an image of the world exists in book form and through the efforts of a "dynasty of not very high-ranking Assassin -Emirs who wrote the work over the course of about 200 years in a castle on the northern slope of the Persian Elburs Mountains ."

Anton L. now concludes that it must be up to him as the last person to realize the ultimate goal of the story by reading the book. Of course, he doesn't know where it is. The original announcement about the attack brings him further. He read it wrong. There was not an advertisement, but an identity card, in this case an identity card for the rarities department of the State Library, where the copies of a work in the British Museum ordered by a friend of Ludwig are ready to be picked up and Anton L. will find them.

Monument to Elector Max Joseph in front of the Munich Residence

Attached to the work is a report on the journey of a Prince Philipp Moritz, Duke von B *** and son of an elector to Venice, where he fell in love and died of a broken heart. The prince's court master receives a box from the prince's adored and in it “a wonderful book with blank pages”. The book then came into the possession of the prince's family along with the prince's estate and could therefore, as Anton L. suspected, still be in the city and especially in the residence. In the residence library, Anton L. looks for the book in vain. For some time now, Anton L. has been talking to the Elector Monument. Anton L. does not find this particularly unusual and considers it a completely normal consequence of his loneliness, after all, the circumnavigator Chichester talked to water holes at the time without being crazy. Following a suggestion by the Elector and the historical steleological consideration that he, as the intended reader of the book, should be able to find it within reach, he searches the little castle in which he has lived for a while. There he finds the book on a wall shelf behind the paneling.

Anton L. begins by carefully reading the text, which is only visible in sunlight. The book, which consists of three parts of 12 chapters each, is profound but easy to grasp. “The sum of the sums was sometimes called the book itself in the first chapters. Later it dealt with other, deeper things. ”As the reading progresses, Anton L. begins to understand the world as a whole and each page is now“ a sea of ​​knowledge into which he immersed ”. In addition, Anton L. hardly noticed at first, some changes take place in and around him: he hardly has to eat and drink any more, and other physical needs as well, and he gains power over nature. When the sun is about to set, but he does not want to interrupt his reading, he orders the sun to stand still: "The sun gave way, became a soft glass ball and bent into Anton L's now sun-like eyes" submissive angel called Sonja. "The last sentence of the third part, the last sentence of the thirty-sixth chapter, the last sentence of the book read: You are God."

Anton L., who is now God, or whose deity he has become aware of, decides to rematerialize humanity. Jacob the rabbit - Anton L. speaks not only with monuments to the elector, but also with rabbits - persuades him to first create a few patterns of the new humanity. These all turn out to be grotesque freaks.

“Can God dissolve himself?” Asked Anton L.
“I don't think so,” said the hare.
“I really don't believe it either,” said Anton L. “God cannot say: I'm dissolving. What if God says:

I dissolve - ""

The novel doesn't quite end here. There follows a short epilogue in which the world goes on, without humanity and without Anton L. The Elector's monument has overturned and broken: “The head was rolled even further. He looked up into a bright, clear autumn sky, through which a train of starlings flew south. "

The renaturalization of the human environment takes up a lot of space in the book. At first Anton L. noticed only light vegetation on the streets, little by little the animals and the rest of the nature returned to the city. The protagonist's culture is also becoming more and more "natural", at first he eats canned food, then he hunts animals, which he even eats raw at the end.

expenditure

Translations are available in the following languages:

  • English: Grand solo for Anton. Translated by Mike Mitchell. Dedalus, Cambridgeshire 2006, ISBN 1-903517-45-1 .
  • French: Grand solo pour Anton. Translated by Jean-Claude Capele. Fayard, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-213-59293-4 .
  • Polish: Wielkie solo Antona L. Translated by Ryszard Turczyn. Czytelnik, Warsaw 1989.
  • Russian: Большое соло для Антона. Латунное сердечко, или У правды короткие ноги (Bolshoye solo dlja Antona. Latunnoje serdetschko, ili U prawdy korotkije nogi). Translated by O. Droždin and Je. Kolesov. Labirynt, Kiev 1996, ISBN 5-7101-0092-7 (collective edition of Great Solo for Anton and The Brass Heart or The Short Legs of Truth ).

literature

  • Engelbert Jorißen: From the end of mankind and the library of Babel. Herbert Rosendorfer: Great solo for Anton. In: ド イ ツ 文學 研究 (1995), No. 40, pp. 61–99, PDF .
  • Gina Kaiser: “Every end is also a new beginning”: Arno Schmidt's “Black Mirror”, Marlen Haushofer's “Die Wand”, Herbert Rosendorfer's “Great Solo for Anton” and a concept of the post-apocalyptic Robinsonad in the 20th century. Dissertation Ludwig Maximilians University Munich 2012. University library of the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich 2012.
  • Françoise Sopha: The novel world of the poet Herbert Rosendorfer. Stuttgart theses on German studies No. 75. Akademischer Verlag Heinz, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-88099-079-4 .
  • Bruno Weder: Herbert Rosendorfer: His narrative work. Nymphenburger, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-485-03080-5 .
Reviews
  • Klaus U. Ebmeyer: Herbert Rosendorfers Solo for Anton. One man alone. Apocalyptic fun. In: Christ und Welt , April 9, 1976.
  • Horst Hartmann: Herbert Rosendorfer: Great solo for Anton. In: Die Tat , December 3, 1976.
  • Hans Christian Kosler: Out of time. "Big solo for Anton". In: Frankfurter Rundschau , April 24, 1976,

Web links

Individual evidence

All quotations from the novel refer to the first edition.

  1. ↑ Big solo for Anton. P. 9.
  2. ↑ Big solo for Anton. P. 86.
  3. ↑ Big solo for Anton. P. 114.
  4. ↑ In the original: “Au fond,… Je monde est fait pour aboutir à un beau livre”. From: Reponses a des Enquetes. Sur L'Evolution Litteraire. In: Proses Diverses, Oeuvres Completes, Texts Etabli et Annote par Henri Mondor et G. Jean-Aubry. Gallimard, Paris 1945, p. 872.
  5. ↑ Big solo for Anton. P. 180.
  6. ↑ Big solo for Anton. P. 184.
  7. ↑ Big solo for Anton. P. 185.
  8. ↑ This obviously refers to Philipp Moritz von Bayern , who died at the age of 20 on March 12, 1719 (in accordance with the date of death mentioned in the novel) in Rome of measles. In the novel, the prince is “the great-uncle of the bronze elector, who stood in front of the residence and turned his back on the court waxing workshop in which Soliman Ludwig had worked.” (P. 241) Philipp Moritz von Bayern, on the other hand, was the husband's uncle ( Clemens Franz de Paula von Bayern ) a daughter ( Maria Anna von Pfalz-Sulzbach ) of a grandfather ( Joseph Karl von Pfalz-Sulzbach ) of Maximilian IV. Joseph , Elector of Bavaria and later as Maximilian I. Joseph first King of Bavaria, whose monument is on the named Max-Joseph-Platz in front of the residence . So, strictly speaking, the prince was not a great-uncle. The identification is not entirely clear, however, because elsewhere it says: “How then!” Said the elector, “when I was born, he was eight years dead, by the way almost exactly to the day. But the story was rumored. ”” (P. 277). Apparently this relates to Maximilian III. Joseph , also Elector of Bavaria and nephew of Philipp Moritz, was born on March 28, 1727. With him, the Bavarian line of the Wittelsbach family died out.
  9. ↑ Big solo for Anton. P. 261.
  10. ↑ Big solo for Anton. P. 325.
  11. ↑ Big solo for Anton. P. 328.
  12. ↑ Big solo for Anton. P. 327. Cf. also: Johann Wolfgang Goethe : "If the eye weren't like the sun, the sun could never see it." From: Zahme Xenien III. In: Berlin edition. Poetic works: poems and singing games. Part 1: Poems. Structure, Berlin 1964, p. 666.
  13. ↑ Big solo for Anton. P. 336.
  14. ↑ Big solo for Anton. P. 337.