Richard Weiner (writer)

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Richard Weiner

Richard Weiner (born November 6, 1884 in Písek , Austria-Hungary , † January 3, 1937 in Prague , Czechoslovakia ) was a Czech journalist and writer. He has a special role in Czech literature. On the one hand, along with the brothers Karel and Josef Čapek, he is considered to be one of the most important representatives of literary cubism . On the other hand, he is often compared to Franz Kafka and Bruno Schulz , although his spelling is much more abstract.

Life

Weiner's parents ran a distillery and confectionery with fifty employees in southern Bohemia . Richard was the oldest of five children, was supposed to take over the family business and initially studied chemistry at the Prague Technical University . After graduating as an engineer in 1906, he studied two more semesters in 1906 and 1907 in Zurich and Aachen . After completing his military service as a one-year volunteer , he took his first job in Pardubice , began an internship in Freising in 1909 and then in a malt factory in Allach .

In 1911, however, Weiner decided to become a freelance journalist and writer and moved to Paris in 1912 . Here he worked as a correspondent for the Samostatnost newspaper . During the first Balkan War in 1912 he was drafted into the military and seconded to Bijeljina near Belgrade . In May 1913 he returned to Paris as a correspondent for the newspaper Lidové noviny and published his first volumes of poetry. When the First World War broke out , he was surprised during a visit to Prague and drafted into the army. He was deployed on the Serbian front , where he suffered a nervous breakdown in January 1915 that made him unfit for service. During the war years he worked as an editor for various Prague newspapers and published three volumes of prose .

In 1919 Weiner was able to return to Paris as a correspondent for Lidové noviny , where he would stay until 1936. It was not until 1927 that he began to write literary again. It was not least the failure of his literary works - he was said to have forgotten Czech as a “Frenchman” - prompted him to quit literary writing entirely in 1933. He was also plagued by stomach cancer , which was diagnosed too late. Weiner died in early 1937 in a sanatorium in the Prague district of Podol. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in his hometown of Písek; his grave was destroyed in a pogrom shortly before the outbreak of World War II.

plant

Two phases are distinguished in Weiner's literary work. His first volumes of poetry, with largely traditional rhymes and meters, were still dominated by pre-war modernism . His short stories , published after his discharge from military service , including one of the first Czech books on the First World War ( Lítice , 1917, “The Furies”), were also still committed to traditional narrative techniques, but already heralded a new poetics that Weiner would use under the Influence developed by Charles Vildrac and Georges Duhamel .

At first, however, Weiner concentrated on his journalistic activities. In the course of his work as a correspondent, he wrote thousands of features on French culture and politics. At the beginning of his second literary creative period, he and his friend Josef Šíma joined a group of French surrealists around Roger Vailland , René Daumal and Roger Gilbert-Lecomte , who called themselves Le Grand Jeu (“The Big Game”) as their own magazine , From which he gradually distanced himself again. Between 1927 and 1933 Weiner published three further volumes of poetry, his Poetik Lazebník ("The Bader", 1929) and prose collections such as Hra doopravdy ("Spiel im Ernst", 1933).

In Weiner's prose the psychological interest outweighs the narrative . The plot therefore only plays a subordinate role in his stories. Rather, his narratives develop into extreme abstraction. A recurring motif is that of the doppelganger, which Weiner also translates compositionally in the form of the double narration. In it the emergence or non-emergence of a narrative itself becomes a narrative. In his philosophical basic attitude Weiner is assigned to existentialism .

Especially Weiner's late works are closed to interpretation in their growing abstraction. So Hra doopravdy consists of two parts that seem to be in no way related, but in which what is initially still accessible to the reader as a dream is increasingly atomized. It was noted repeatedly that a rational understanding of Weiner's last work in particular is not possible, but the inclusion of this prose is very possible. “The reader is, as it were, obliged to a level of abstraction, without which he cannot have this 'understanding'.” Instead, Weiner's optical reference is emphasized, which enables an interpretation of the geometric.

If Weiner's reception was difficult for even benevolent critics, it was not a success at all. Even during his lifetime he was seen as an outsider in Czech literature. After his death he was largely forgotten - apart from a small volume by the founder of Gruppe 42 , Jindřich Chalupecký - and only recognized as an important author in the years before the “ Prague Spring ” and especially after 1989. His seemingly hermetic work has very often been compared with that of Franz Kafka, although mutual interference can be ruled out. So far it has only been translated into German in isolated cases.

Works

  • Netečný divák a jiné prósy. Ms. Borový, V Praze 1917.
  • Rozcestí. Básně. Ms. Borový, V Praze 1918.
  • Třásničky dějinných dnů. Prague 1919.
  • Lítice. 2nd edition, Prague 1928.
  • Mnoho nocí. Básně. Vydal Ot. Štorch-Marien, Prague 1928.
  • and Věra Linhartová: Hra doopravdy. Mladá Fronta, Prague 1967.
  • Lazebník Hra doopravdy. 1st edition. Odeon, Prague 1974.
  • Sluncem svržený sok. 1st edition. Československý spisovatel, Praha 1989, ISBN 8020200924 .
  • Adhesive ARGO, Praha 1993, ISBN 8085794039 .
  • Spisy. (Works). 5 vols., Ed. by Zina Trochová. Torst, Praha 1996ff.

German editions

  • The empty chair and other prose (Prázdná židle a jiné prózy, German - based on the revised edition of 1964 from the Czech, translated by Franz Peter Künzel. 1-4 thousand). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1968.
  • Play seriously. Novel. 1st edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-518-01906-6 .
  • The empty chair. Analysis of a non-written narrative. Friedenauer Presse, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3921592550 .
  • Květoslav Chvatík (Ed.): The Prague Modernism. Stories, poems, manifestos. 1st edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-518-40397-4 .
  • The Bader. A poetics. Friedenauer Presse, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-921592-67-4 .
  • The indifferent viewer. Stories. 1st edition. Reclam, Leipzig 1992, ISBN 337901429X .
  • Crossroads of life. Stories, essays, feature sections, letters. DVA, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-421-05253-7 .
Radio play adaptation

literature

  • Jindřich Chalupecký: Richard Weiner. Aventinum, V Praze 1947.
  • Jindřich Chalupecký: Expresionisté. Richard Weiner, Jakub Deml, Ladislav Klíma, Podivný Hašek. 1st edition. Torst, Praha 1992, ISBN 80-85639-00-9 .
  • Reinhard Ibler: The lonely avant-garde. On the interpretation of Richard Weiner's poetics "Lazebník" (The Bader). In: Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 35 (1995), pp. 245–270.
  • Marie Langerová: Weiner. 1st edition. Host, Brno 2000, ISBN 80-86055-97-3 .
  • Steffi Widera: Richard Weiner. Identity and polarity in the early prose work. Sagner, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-87690-818-3 .
  • Karel Srp: Nepovědomé body. Josef Šíma, Richard Weiner a skupina Le grand jeu. In: Umění. 52, No. 1 2004, pp. 11-36.
  • Filip Charvát: Richard Weiner or The Art of Failure. Interpretations of the narrative; with a comparative study on Franz Kafka. 1st edition. Univ. Jana Evangelisty Purkyně, Ústí nad Labem 2006, ISBN 978-80-7044-766-6 .
  • Dobrava Moldanová: České příběhy. 1st edition. Univ. UE Purkyně, Ústí nad Labem 2007, ISBN 978-80-7044-846-5 .
  • Walter Schamschula: History of Czech Literature. From the founding of the republic to the present. Böhlau, Cologne 2004, pp. 305-310.
  • Lubomír Doležel: Study z české literatury a poetiky. 1st edition. Torst, Brno 2008, ISBN 978-80-7215-337-4 .
  • Josef Hrdlička: Obrazy světa v české literatuře. Study o způsobech celku; Komenský, Mácha, Šlejhar, Weiner. 1st edition. Malvern, Praha 2008, ISBN 978-80-86702-41-4 .
  • Petr Málek: Melancholy moderny. Alegorie, vypravěč, smrt. Dauphin, Praha 2008, ISBN 978-80-7272-167-2 .
  • Zuzana Stolz-Hladka: Medium Language - Considerations and Implementation by Richard Weiner. In: Birgit Krehl (ed.): The 10s in Czech literature. Between symbolism and avant-garde . Munich 2008. pp. 229–242.
  • Peter Zajac: Richard Weiner and the avant-garde. In: Birgit Krehl (Hrsg.): Chapters from poetics - the ten years in Czech literature between symbolism and avant-garde. Contributions to the International Bohemian Symposium at the University of Potsdam. Sagner, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-86688-043-6 , pp. 201-212.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Shamschula: History , p. 310.
personal data
SURNAME Weiner, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 6, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Písek , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 1937
Place of death Prague , Czechoslovakia