Juan Goytisolo

Juan Goytisolo (2008)

Juan Goytisolo [ xu̯an gɔi̯tiˈsɔlɔ ] (born January 5, 1931 as Juan Goytisolo Gay in Barcelona ; † June 4, 2017 in Marrakech ) was a Spanish journalist and writer .

Life

Juan Goytisolo was born in Barcelona in 1931 to a wealthy family. The poet José Agustín (1928–1999) and the writer Luis Goytisolo (* 1935) are his brothers. Seven years after Juan was born, his mother Julia Gay died in a bomb attack by the Italian Aviazione Legionaria in March 1938 . This attacked cities on the east coast of Spain from the island of Mallorca in the course of the Spanish civil war , which at the time had been going on for two years. During the Franco regime , Goytisolo spent a large part of his life from 1956 in self-chosen exile in France, where he met representatives of the Nouveau Roman and the Tel quel group and distanced himself from the family's upper class milieu.

Juan Goytisolo attended a Jesuit high school from 1939 and studied law from 1948 to 1953, but without completing the course. During this time he turned away from the Catholic faith and wrote his first novel that same year, which, however, remained unpublished. By 1956 Goytisolo made several trips to Paris before starting his military service. A year later he moved to Paris to work as a copy editor at the Gallimard publishing house , where he campaigned for the spread of Spanish literature in France. From 1961 to 1964 he traveled a lot, for example to North Africa, Cuba and the Middle East. Between 1969 and 1975 he taught literature at the University of California, Boston and New York. As early as 1963, Juan Goytisolo was one of the most successful writers and an active newspaper writer abroad, which was shortly followed by his work as a freelance writer.

Juan Goytisolo made a name for himself with his novels not only as a man of letters, but also as a critical, committed spirit, often took a stand on political issues in the form of essays and reports. His books were banned in Spain from 1963 until Franco's death in 1975. Goytisolo sharply criticized the traditional image of Spain. The author lived in Marrakech , right on the Djemaa el Fna , a marketplace that has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List . Goytisolo was instrumental in this decision. He also lived in France and Spain. During the Balkan conflict he supported the fight for survival of the Bosnian Muslims from Sarajevo.

In 2011 the Spanish state acquired from Goytisolo the notes and manuscripts on his works from 1980 onwards, which are kept in the General Administrative Archives in Alcalá de Henares .

In 2014 Goytisolo was awarded one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the Spanish-speaking world, the Cervantes Prize. Juan Goytisolo died in Marrakech in June 2017 at the age of 86 as a result of a stroke.

plant

His first novels were Juegos de manos (1954) and Duelo en el paraíso (1955), which show trends in social realism of the 1950s. The subsequent novels, El circo (1957), Fiestas (1958) and La resaca (1958), a trilogy, reflect anti-bourgeois ideas, which are also reflected in his texts Problemas de la novela (1959) and Campos de Níjar (1960).

Goytisolo's main work is a trilogy of novels influenced by Américo Castros ( Spain: Vision and Reality , 1948/1953) image of history , consisting of the novels Señas de identidad (German identity mark , Suhrkamp 1978, ISBN 3-518-02942-8 ), Reivindicación del Conde don Julián (German reclaim of Conde don Julián , Suhrkamp 1976, ISBN 3-518-02941-X ) and Juan sin Tierra (German Johann ohne Land , Suhrkamp 1981, ISBN 3-518-02943-6 ). Señas de identidad from 1966 is one of the most famous and important works of Spanish literature. The trilogy is pervaded by religious conflicts, as Goytisolo found them especially in the works of José Maria Blanco White . As a result of his reading of Blanco White, the work Obra inglesa de Blanco White , which is still explosive today, was created in the early 1970s .

Other works by Goytisolo are El problema del Sahara (1979), Crónicas sarracinas (1981), Estambul otomano (1989) and the Roman Makbara (1979), which demonstrate Goytisolo's interest in the Maghreb and Arab culture. Like a trait of his own identity, the writer combined irony and humor, qualities that appear in the novel Paisaje después de la batalla (1982) and in the autobiography Coto vedado (1985). He also wrote Las virtudes del pájaro solitario (1988), La cuarentena (1991) and Las semanas del jardín (1988). His newspaper articles were summarized in Disidencias (1977) and Contracorrientes (1986). Goytisolo wrote an autobiography in two volumes, which were translated into German by Eugen Helmlé in 1994 and 1995 under the titles Jagdverbot and The Moulting of the Snake . Especially in the molting snake his long-standing partnership and marriage with the French writer is of Goytisolo Monique Lange (1926-1996), whom he had met by Gallimard in 1956, and his late accepted homosexuality theme that strong for him of the discovery Arab cultural area was connected.

Goytisole's travel and essay volumes include the notes from Sarajevo from 1992 to 1993, which were published in German in 1993 by Suhrkamp-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main ( ISBN 3-518-11899-4 ).

engagement

His novel Makbara , published in 1980, has the Arabic word for cemetery in the title. On the one hand, the title of the novel is a bow to Jean Genet , who was buried in the Spanish cemetery in Larache, Morocco , and with whom he was friends. With Genet he also shared the bond with the Arab world and like him he saw himself as a critical mediator between the Western and the Arab-speaking world. Goytisolo pointed out that “since the tentative beginnings of our Spanish language (...) the Muslim has always been the mirror in which we find ourselves reflected in a certain way, an external image of ourselves that questions and worries us. "

According to his wishes, Goytisolo was also buried in the cemetery in Larache, on Genet's side, with a view of the sea.

Works in German

• Mourning in paradise. Novel . Translated by Gerda von Uslar . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1958
• The cardsharps. Novel . Translated by Gerda von Uslar, afterword by ME Coindreau. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1958 (also German book community 1956)
• The feast of the others. Novel . Translated by Gerda von Uslar. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1960
• Summer in Torremolinos. Novel . Translated by Gerda von Uslar. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1963; NA: Wagenbach, Berlin 2002
• Flotsam. Novel . Translated by Ana Maria Brock. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1965
• Spanish examination of conscience . Translated by Susanne Felkau. Langewiesche-Brandt, Ebenhausen 1966
• Spain and the Spaniards . Translated by Fritz Vogelgsang . Bucher, Lucerne and Frankfurt am Main 1969
• Reclaim of the Conde don Julián. Novel . Translated by Joachim A. Frank, epilogue by Carlos Fuentes . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1976
• Spain . Texts: Juan Goytisolo and Fritz René Allemann , photos: Peter Christopher. Bucher, Lucerne and Frankfurt am Main 1978
• Identity mark . Novel . Translated by Joachim A. Frank. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1978
• Johann without a country. Novel . Translated by Joachim A. Frank, afterword by Karsten Garscha. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981
• Dissidents. Essays . Translated by Joachim A. Frank. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1984
• Landscapes after the battle. Novel . Translated by Gisbert Haefs . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1990
• Quarantine. Essay . Translated by Thomas Brovot . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993
• Notes from Sarajevo . Translated by Maralde Meyer-Minnemann. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993
• Hunting ban. Spanish youth. Autobiography . Translated by Eugen Helmlé . Hanser, Munich and Vienna 1994
• An Algerian diary . Translated by Thomas Brovot. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1994
• Neither war nor peace. Palestine and Israel today . Translated by Thomas Brovot. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1995
• Angel and pariah. Novel . Translated by Thomas Brovot. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1995
• The molt of the snake. A life in exile. Autobiography . Translated by Eugen Helmlé. Hanser, Munich and Vienna 1995
• Landscapes of War: Chechnya . Translated by Thomas Brovot. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996
• Gaudí in Cappadocia. Turkish encounters . Translated by Eugen Helmlé. Hanser, Munich and Vienna 1996
• The Marx saga. Novel . Translated by Thomas Brovot. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996
• The Sarajevo Manuscript. Novel . Translated by Thomas Brovot. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1999
• Kibla - Travel to the world of Islam . Translated by Thomas Brovot and Christian Hansen. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2000
• La Chanca . Translated by Einar Schlereth. Jenior (Andalusia series), Kassel 2001
• Glass borders. Objections and suggestions. Essays . Translated by Thomas Brovot and Christian Hansen. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004
• The blind rider. Novel . Translated by Thomas Brovot. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2006
• Journey to the bird of Simurgh. Novel . Translated by Thomas Brovot. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2012

Awards (selection)

• 1993: Nelly Sachs Prize
• 2004: Juan Rulfo Literature Prize
• 2008: Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas
• 2014: Cervantes Prize

literature

• Rainer Vollath : World of Origin and Heterotopias. Deconstruction and construction of literary spaces in the work of Juan Goytisolos (European University Writings Series 24: Iberoromanic Languages ​​and Literatures), Volume 62, Frankfurt / Main, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Vienna 2001, ISBN 978-3-631-37453-5
• The eternal Nobel Prize candidate. in: Die Welt Kompakt , January 6, 2011, p. 10
• Salih Alexander Wolter: Learn Turkish with Juan Goytisolo. In: Ders .: Read the sailor's constellation. Gay life - gay literature. Giessen 2020: Psychosozial-Verlag. Pp. 53-62. ISBN 978-3-8379-3012-2

Footnotes

1. ↑ Juan Goytisolo, who won Spain's Cervantes prize, dies at 86 ( Memento of the original from June 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Caught between consumption and terror. City mirror Bochum / Wattenscheid, June 6, 2017, accessed on June 6, 2017 . 
3. ↑ In its third, the final version, it was published in 1982 by Seix Barral in Barcelona ( ISBN 84-322-0465-X ).
4. ↑ Reinhart Wustlich: Tell about those who sit between the chairs. Frankfurter Rundschau, June 6, 2017, accessed on June 6, 2017 . 
5. ↑ buried writer Juan Goytisolo in Morocco , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, June 6th 2017. Retrieved on June 6, 2017
6. ↑ Juan Goytisolo es enterrado en el 'cementerio español' de Larache , 20minutos.es, June 5, 2017, accessed on June 7, 2017 (Spanish)

Web links

• Literature by and about Juan Goytisolo in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin
• Literature by and about Juan Goytisolo in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Juan Goytisolo  in the German Digital Library
• Literature by and about Juan Goytisolo in the catalog of the library of the Instituto Cervantes in Germany
• Juan Goytisolo in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• A gay "anti-orientalist". The Spanish author Juan Goytisolo turns 80 - for his 80th birthday: life dates, literary and social classification
• Caught between consumption and terror. On the death of the writer Juan Goytisolo. In title culture magazine