Night is day

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Nacht ist der Tag is a novel by Peter Stamm , published in 2013 by S. Fischer Verlag , a graceful variation on a bitter topic that is about realizing new plans in the midst of the melancholy of affluence: Are we capable of everything to turn upside down?

action

Gillian and Matthias are married. Matthias becomes jealous because Gillian keeps appointments with the artist Hubert, who paints her and photographs her naked, and the relationship wavers. Shortly afterwards, Matthias dies in a car accident and Gillian is no longer able to pursue her job as a TV presenter due to serious injuries. She changes her place of residence. A few years later, Gillian found the opportunity to bring Hubert close as an artist and an affair with him ensued, the sexual content of which she longed for. She also likes to have his son Lukas around. Then Hubert disappears in the direction of his former wife, whose reason for separation now seems to have resulted in a separation. Gillian looks around for new opportunities.

Interpretative approaches

The incidents and characters are not spectacular and yet the book doesn’t leave you in peace until you have read it to the end. Because Stamm does not deny that our inner states of emergency, which he describes without arrogance, are ordinary. In Gillian's life, her face was in a state of emergency for months as a result of the accident and was in the hands of a surgeon several times. Gillian reflects on the other external states of emergency as things that she has lost in a different life, it seems to her: her beautiful television job, freedom from financial worries, her husband Matthias. “Everything is still there, only I am gone, says Gillian. She is the woman who has to lose face in order to find herself, ”says Salli Sallmann in her review for Kulturradio rbb .

construction

Proportion of the three parts by page number

The work consists of three parts. The first makes up half of the circumference and bears the motto "Night is the day that deprives me of your image / and day the night that sees itself in a dream" by William Shakespeare . The second part is preceded by a motto by Alberto Giacometti : “I will never be able to put all the power that is in a head into a portrait. The very fact of living requires such a will and such energy ... ”The third part bears a motto from Ernst Bloch :“ The ultimate will is to be truly present. So that the lived moment belongs to us and we belong to it. "

expenditure

Reviews (selection)

literature

  • Cornelia Pechota: Incarnation with Peter Stamm and Annie Ernaux in “Night is the day” and “Memory of a girl”. Peter Lang, Bern 2020

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sebastian Hammelehle, Story of a New Beginning: The Balance During Nude , spiegel.de , August 28, 2013
  2. ↑ Adam Soboczynski, novel Night is the day . Life without leave , zeit.de , October 26, 2013
  3. ↑ Felicitas von Lovenberg, Peter Stamm: Night is the day. Everything is still there, only I am gone , faz.net , July 19, 2013
  4. ^ Salli Sallmann, book. Peter Stamm: "Night is the day" ( memento of the original from April 13, 2014 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. , kulturradio.de , November 7, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kulturradio.de