Pong redivivus

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Pong redivivus is a short story by Sibylle Lewitscharoff , for which her husband Friedrich Meckseper created fourteen matching objects between 2010 and 2013. Their photographs are shown in the book edition published by Insel Verlag zu Berlin in 2013.

In this ironic story, Pong is resurrected from Sibylle Lewitscharoff's book of the same name, published in Berlin in 1998. This time the shy, single man finds a new friend.

content

The wealthy Mr. Pong is not all about imagination. He put one of his ideas into practice in Berlin at the beginning of May 2009: Completely convinced that he was immortal, i.e. greater than Jesus , the man who fell in love with the moon jumped from his house roof into the satellite, but in the branches of a saving copper beech and then with him broken leg ended up in hospital bed. The invincible had stopped screaming after the false start, because Mr. Pong is tall. So big that a visual artist, if he saw the muscular play of the hopefully soon healthy again, would certainly cut two statues of the hero and put each on its own pedestal. However, the thing about Pong's Leap in the Moon is the first and last Don Quixottery in the aforementioned booklet. Mr. Pong's broken leg hangs plastered in the air throughout the narration. The hero remains tied to the hospital bed. The reader has to be content with Sibylle Lewitscharoff's description of Mr. Pong's thought acrobatics. These "mind hunts" and "storms of ideas" are astonishing: Pong mentally performs cosmetic operations on his two nurses, Erika and Mandy, who are very sympathetic to him, in order to properly proportion the thick and thin ones. He fixes the two of them through a peep window, formed from his fingers à la Monk . According to the will of the author, the reader should on the one hand imagine Pong as the neurotic Monk, but on the other hand not. Pong secretly calls the two friendly sisters by their "thought names". He came up with the latter - a conglomerate of both names - by shifting and interchanging letters. Mandy is suddenly called Maryke.

When a Mr. Eduard von Malincrodt, head of an architect's office, with a broken leg in a hospital bed, is rolled into the single room, Mr. Pong is not at all enthusiastic. But then Pong befriends the quiet Malincrodt. The newcomer is much sicker than Pong. Even when it turns out that Malincrodt's wife and child are likely to stand in the way of friendship, the considerate Pong does not throw the gun in the towel. Because, according to the new Don Quixote , a friend should be allowed such trivialities.

Self-testimony

Sibylle Lewitscharoff calls Pong a "half mad man" in the sick bed. As such, he denied, for example, "the normal ways of birth".

shape

The text is amusing prose, which is also not lacking in social criticism. The omnipresent intellectual low-flying aircraft on ARD and ZDF are scourged. Jesus, an emissary from the Christian Church at the bedside and the bland hospital meal, come off badly. Buzzwords of the 20th / 21st Century are not avoided - for example "rather" in "... that his English was rather brittle". Sometimes the reader comes across poetic expressions - for example "The Mare Humorum ... was a fine sea of ​​smiles made of dust". High-language passages are also enjoyable to read because the publisher intentionally avoided the New German Spelling from 1996 in 2013 . For example, “that” stands for that. Sibylle Lewitscharoff has the courage to use the outdated word. There “confused” stands for angry. The educated citizen is addressed. Paddy Dignam appears. Association is the key. The nonchalant narrator doesn't care about space, time or any social order. For example, the sound “pee” leads straight to a rocket launch in Peenemünde .

The lecture by the Stuttgart author with the carefree southern German dialect - for example "scheps" for crooked or "Bitzeliquid" for mineral water - appears to be relaxed and easy.

Above there was talk of suitable objects from the “pure Pong world”. Sibylle Lewitscharoff sometimes gives textual descriptions of the collages, parchments and other works of her husband. If Pong looks at his soul mirror backed with gold leaf (13:14) at home, he can see what it looks like inside him. In the catcher of adversity (20:19), all sorts of things that are not conducive to support get stuck. An alga grows out of a magnetic needle (61,59). The pyramids are upside down (73,71). The optimist should avoid the proximity of the annoyance generator (93,94) as much as possible. A fall into the "gray-black hell of thought" followed immediately.

reception

literature

First edition

  • Sibylle Lewitscharoff, Friedrich Meckseper: Pong redivivus . Insel Verlag (Insel-Bücherei No. 1383), Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-458-19383-8 , 108 pages (used edition)

Remarks

  1. ↑ For example, the moon observer Pong irritates the conservative neighborhood with a mobile giant telescope (edition used, p. 64).
  2. ↑ With all the congruence, Pong is different from Monk. This shimmers through in several places - for example the side story with Brentano's turn to the non-explicitly named nun Anna Katharina Emmerick (edition used, p. 60).
  3. ↑ The first number in round brackets indicates the page of the edition used on which the term can be found. The second is the page with the corresponding illustration.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sibylle Lewitscharoff, Friedrich Meckseper: Pong redivivus . Insel Verlag (Insel-Bücherei No. 1383), Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-458-19383-8
  2. ↑ redivivus means risen
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 91, 2nd Zvu
  4. ^ Sibylle Lewitscharoff on "Pong redivivus" . (10:52 min) domradio.de, February 13, 2014
  5. ↑ see also edition used, p. 8, 12. Zvu
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 28, 6. Zvo
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 30, 1. Zvu
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 52, 10. Zvo
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 16, 10. Zvu
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 93, 15. Zvo