Kosmas or From the mountains of the north

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Kosmas or Vom Berge des Nordens is ashort novel by Arno Schmidt published in 1955 and set in late antiquity around 540 AD. A leading motive is an alleged suppression of ancient science by victorious Christianity . The world view of the cosmos of Indicopleust is made fun ofas an example.

After planning since 1950, Schmidt began to write it down in 1954. Formally it was part of his series of experiments “ Musivisches Dasein” as part of the series on antiquity. A first mention of the cosmos can be found in the author's youth work, Der Junge Herr Siebold . The subject is taken up again in Atheist? : Indeed! . It is comparable to Libanius mentioned by the same author in Leviathan .

content

A young farmer's son in a Thracian outer province of the Eastern Roman Empire visits the absentee owner of the lands , who surprisingly came with his house state from Constantinople , for a conventional greeting, is welcomed benevolently and meets the very young and bristly daughter of the landlord, as well as her private tutor, a Christian priest. In a geographical dispute he shows himself to be able to cope with this, and the priest correctly guesses that the young man must have contact with a pagan scholar who is still unattended here after the last pagan Platonic Academy in Athens was closed by the Christian emperor hidden with a friend (the hero's father ). Rural scenes and the possible affection of the young people make up the short novel. Warned in good time, the scientist is now fleeing with his father overnight down the Danube into the Persian Empire .

The world view of the cosmos

A sober-thinking young man in an Eastern Roman outer province, committed to the ancient Greek educational ideals, experiences a confrontation with the nowadays seemingly grotesque Christianly motivated teaching of the “mountain of the north”, a compromise between the ancient teaching of the spherical shape of the earth and that of a flat earth. To explain the common celestial phenomena, Kosmas assumes a sugar-hat-shaped giant mountain on the northern edge of Inner Earth - the "mountain of the north". Its height is equal to the length of the inhabited earth. The sun, moon and stars would be led around him by angels, whereby the shadow of the mountain would result in the earth night : In summer, as is well known, the sun rises high; consequently the short and bright nights arise because they cannot remain hidden for long behind the narrow top of the mountain. The closer the winter time approaches, the deeper it sinks behind the foot of the mountain, and consequently the nights become longer. The hypothesis is worked out with every possible acumen, and in this way Kosmas knows how to explain, for example, the eclipses and the shorter shadows of the southern countries. A drawing by the author attached to the book editions shows the cosmos as tabernacle-shaped .

In fact, however, the world view of the cosmos was not very common. The spherical shape of the earth was well known to educated people, for example Nikolaus von Oresme .

literature

expenditure

  • First edition: Agis-Verlag, Krefeld & Baden-Baden 1955. 93 pp.
  • In: Roses & Leeks. Stahlberg, Karlsruhe 1959. pp. 183-279
  • Paperback: Fischer-Taschenbuch 9123, Frankfurt / M. 1997, ISBN 3-596-29123-2
  • Bargfeld edition: Werkgruppe 1, Vol. 1. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-251-80001-9 . Study edition: ISBN 3-251-80005-1

Secondary literature

  • Lothar Meyer (Ed.): In Christian night. A handbook on Arno Schmidt's Kosmas . In: edition text + kritik , 1989, ISBN 3-88377-309-3 . With register for Kosmas and explanations of individual places
  • Olga Fanouraki-Ronneburger, diploma thesis at the Ionian University of Corfu, Greece: Arno Schmidt: Kosmas or Vom Berge des Nordens. A literary translation. (1999)
  • Helge Svenshon: "I don't know the geodetic deities." A mind game about Arno Schmidt and the (ancient) art of surveying. In: Klaus Geus (Ed.): Arno Schmidt und die Antike , Dresden 1999, ISBN 978-3-86276-005-3