KAFF also Mare Crisium

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Double page from the facsimile of the first edition

KAFF also Mare Crisium is anovel by Arno Schmidt published in 1960 . The work is formally the link between Schmidt's earlier narrative work and his later work.

content

The novel, suggests as the title, on two levels of action, which are differentiated in print from each other, but are intertwined in many ways, and in two times: once in October 1959 in the "backwater" Giffendorf in the Lueneburg Heath , for another 1980 on the moon.

On the first level of action, shortly after the " Sputnik shock " of 1957, Karl Richter, a 46-year-old stock accountant and autodidact , and his thirty-year-old friend, the pattern artist Hertha Theunert, visit his widowed sixty-year-old, sprightly and pagan, cosmopolitan aunt Heete in Giffendorf in a BMW Isetta , a fictional hamlet in Lower Saxony. The couple goes for a walk, eats and drinks, attends a school theater performance , has sexual intercourse, sleeps and dreams, takes a trip to Hankensbüttel , talks to Aunt Heete about politics, literature and sexuality and finally drives back to the Nordhorn at home .

Meanwhile, the imaginative, know-it-all and heart-sick Karl - a character typical of Schmidt's narrative, who bears the author's traits - tells his inhibited friend, traumatized by her experiences of being expelled from Lower Silesia, a dystopian story in parts that will take place in the near future of the 1980s Moon plays and the second plot of the book makes up: After the earth became uninhabitable in a nuclear war , only a few thousand US American and Soviet scientists (mostly men) live there in two settlements in the Mare Crisium . On the one hand, you are technically well equipped; B. paper. Moreover, the Cold War is stubbornly carried on.

Two epics are faded into the action on the moon - parodies with which the opponents want to impress each other mentally: The Americans use the " Nibelungenlied " to describe the heroic death of NATO troops during the conquest of West Berlin by the Russians (outbreak of Third World War ); the Russians use Johann Gottfried Herder's verse epic Cid for a hero song about their triumphal march against the Germans from Stalingrad to Berlin.

At the end of the novel, Aunt Heete offers the two of them to move in with her. One could live together on the proceeds of the fields that she wants to sell as building land, so that both no longer have to work in the factory and Karl can devote himself to his literary ambitions. As a condition she names marriage and subsequent childlessness of Karl and Hertha. Both react thoughtfully but indecisively. The end of the novel remains open.

Prose peculiarities

The extremely realistic events on both levels are told from the perspective of a person (Karl Richter or his double, the American slate maker [because of the lack of paper] and librarian Charles Hampden). At the same time, the novel, which is often comical and desperate, approaches a stream of consciousness .

As in earlier works, Schmidt divides the plot into small pieces of around five to ten lines, each of which is introduced with sentences / impressions in italics. For the first time in this work, he resolutely no longer adheres to the standard spelling , but often reproduces language in an onomatopoeic , noticeable, for example, in the Lower Silesian dialect of Hertha or the Low German accent of Aunt Heete:

(And Hertha High - And begierich!): "OchtanndteDu: Hatt '' he amall which geschriebm?. - »Ass Young '- at 17, 18? -: yes. "Said Tanndte Heete comfortably:" Oh, if I were to look - I might be able to do a few more from Finnish - "; and, more and more maliciously & tenderly: "Kummahärda how cute it looks when a man from Secksunnvirrzich gets so red."

Schmidt invents word structures like “Roh-Mann-Tick” for romance , “Begreepniß” for funeral or “equal sex & firz me” for equal 46 . Inspired by Klopstock's Grammatical Conversations (1794) and James Joyce's Finnegans Wake , he spellings that mock all orthography, on the one hand on the weird insubordination of the protagonist Karl Richter, on the other hand on historical inconsistencies and the resulting inconsistencies in our spelling, from which Schmidt makes witty capital .

Whole batteries of typographic characters are also used to express facial expressions, pauses and gestures of the people.

:! - /:! ! - /:! ! ! - (Karl wants to wake Hertha.)

The book contains a “ foreword ” (“ signed D. Martin Ochs ” from the “ Individual Protection Office ”) in which Schmidt alludes ironically to the charge of blasphemy against him. Anyone who tries to "construct" insults, blasphemies or the like into the book will be expelled from the country; and:

Anyone who should sniff for “action” and “deeper meaning”, or even try to see a “work of art” in it, will be shot.

The word “Kaff” can also mean “chaff” in northern German dialect.

Audio book

In 2004 an audio book version was published in ten CDs, spoken by Jan Philipp Reemtsma .

literature

Text output

  • Kaff also Mare Crisium , Stahlberg, Karlsruhe 1960 (first edition; reprint: S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1984)
  • Kaff also Mare Crisium , Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt a. M., 1970 (several editions, new edition 1994)
  • Kaff also Mare Crisium , in: Arno Schmidt, Bargfelder Ausgabe, Werkgruppe I, Vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, pp. [7] –277
  • Kaff also Mare Crisium , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 2004

Secondary literature

  • Rainer Baasner: »Silberschlack«. On the significance of the scientific-historical reference field in ›Kaff‹ . In: Bargfelder Bote Lfg. 101-103, (March 1986), pp. 34-40.
  • Gregor Eisenhauer: The revenge of Yorix: Arno Schmidt's poetics of learned wit and humorous jurisdiction . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1992, ISBN 3-484-18122-2
  • Roswitha M. Jauk: Longer mind game and dystopia. The moon fiction in Arno Schmidt's novel ›Kaff also Mare Crisium‹ . Erlangen, Jena, Palm & Enke 2000
  • Thomas Lautwein : Muthu Emausai - Karl Richter's dream in “Kaff” and its sources. In: Bargfelder Bote , Lfg. 156–157 (August 1991), pp. 3–16.
  • Carsten Scholz: »I no longer read anything written.« Orality was literary in Arno Schmidt's ›Kaff also Mare Crisium‹ . Bielefeld, Aisthesis 1997.

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Robert Weninger: KAFF also Mare Crisium . In: Imma Klemm (Ed.): Deutscher Romanführer. Alfred Kröner, Stuttgart 1991, p. 420.
  2. ^ Arno Schmidt: Kaff also Mare Crisium. In: same: Bargfelder Edition, group of works I, vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, p. 99
  3. ^ Arno Schmidt: Kaff also Mare Crisium. In: same: Bargfelder edition, group of works I, vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, p. 115.
  4. ^ Arno Schmidt: Kaff also Mare Crisium. In: same: Bargfelder Edition, group of works I, vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, p. 46.
  5. ^ Arno Schmidt: Kaff also Mare Crisium. In: same: Bargfelder edition, group of works I, vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, 99.
  6. ^ Arno Schmidt: Kaff also Mare Crisium. In: the same: Bargfelder Edition, group of works I, vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, p. 271.
  7. ^ Arno Schmidt: Kaff also Mare Crisium. In: same: Bargfelder Edition, group of works I, vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, p. 9.