Riverside. Christ novella

Cover image of the original edition
( Caravaggio , John the Baptist, 1605)

Riverside. Christusnovelle is Patrick Roth's literary debut from 1991 and forms the first part of the Christ Trilogy (1998) together with Johnny Shines or The Resurrection of the Dead (1993) and Corpus Christi (1996 ).

overview

The focus of the novella is the meeting of the leper hermit Diastasimos with Jesus in a cave not far from Bethany a few days before the crucifixion. At the request of his two visitors, second-generation Jesus disciples, the old sage reconstructs the events of his illness and healing from the retrospective, with the declared aim of teaching a “teaching”. In addition to the actual message of Jesus, the problem of its tradition is at the center of the novella, which critically reflects the transition from oral narration to written fixation.

content

Chapter I.

Wadi Kelt, Israel

An anonymous first-person narrator shows the scene of the action, a cave in the Judean Desert in pouring rain in AD 37. Out of the darkness of the cave, an old man dressed in ash-smeared rags steps forward, a ladder behind him pulling here. With her help, he drives a nail into the upper rock wall of the cave to hang a man's robe. A little later, Diastasimos was sitting by the fire at the cave entrance when falling rocks make him jump up. Two young men, the brothers Andreas and Tabeas, appear dripping wet in the cave, but the old man looks stoically into the flames and ignores them. Sullenly, he said that an inner voice had warned him of “scribes” who would come to “write it down”.

Diastasimos explains to his visitors, envoy of Thomas , that the time has come to break his vow of silence. He has only ridicule for the two Jesus followers: although they were trained to hear the voice of their “Lord and Master”, who saw himself as the “voice of God”, they did not understand how “hidden” he was from them - first allusion to the bond of a secret kinship. Diastasimos wants to know whether they came on behalf of Jesus to "heal" him. On the contrary, the youngsters are irritated by wanting to collect testimonies from their “Lord” for others who are to be converted. The old man regards the actions of the followers of Jesus with suspicion; their attempts at healing are "shadowy fluff" and the lessons they draw from Jesus' words are questionable. He is particularly uneasy about the general condemnation of Judas , whom, as he mysteriously explains, he knew personally.

Against the soulless writing of Jesus' words, Diastasimos pleads - as it were in the tradition of Plato's criticism of the scriptures - for allowing words to have an effect so that knowledge can be inscribed. Only what has been experienced in oneself is worth passing on to others. Instead of mere “ink strokes on paper”, what has been read and learned, sermons in “one's own flesh and blood” should take place. He asks the two writers not to tell about others, but to speak from their own experiences or rather to leave immediately. Andreas reacts angrily and throws the old man on the head that God rightly punished him with leprosy.

A debate about the correct conception of God develops, a main theme of the novella. Diastasimos did not experience the God of the Old Testament exclusively as good and just. According to him, God is contradictory per se and has a dark, cruel side - it is not for nothing that he exterminated seven tribes (allusion to Joshua 12: 8). Andrew, on the other hand, insists that God only punishes those who have committed sins. His argument that Diastasimos was beaten with leprosy because of his vanity and self-righteousness is adopted by the latter in the following, in order to reverse it in the best Socratic manner.

In a first turning back, Diastasimos reports on his discovery of being afflicted with leprosy. When cleaning the sickle in the fountain in the morning, he noticed inflamed "spots" on the neck and shoulders in the mirror of the water. Frozen inwardly, he reached for his overcoat to cover the catastrophe from his wife and sons. For days he gave himself up to the agony of examining his conscience, but found nothing that could have justified the fateful illness. It seemed to him like a "bad dream" and at the same time like an image of the harvest endangered by rain. All of this happened shortly before Passover . He went to the temple in Jerusalem (in AD 28) to ask God for grace and purification.

Aqueduct from Roman times near Jericho

The second turning back, which encompasses the events in the temple, is based on the temple revolt handed down by Flavius ​​Josephus in the history of the Jewish war in AD 28. The uprising of the Jews against the Roman occupiers was sparked by the construction of an aqueduct, which Pontius Pilate intended to finance from the Jerusalem temple treasure . Diastasimos experiences the excitement of the crowd in the forecourt of the temple as a force of nature - he is carried away as if by a whipped sea. The human wave throws him at a strange, sinister man whose face is the same fear as his own. When the uprising breaks out, the man turns out to be a Roman soldier in Jewish disguise, hired by Pilate to wreak a bloodbath among the Jews. In the general commotion he fell under the sword of the dark Roman. After he tore his dress with the scourge and noticed the leprosy on his back, he shrank back in horror to hit him, Diastasimos, with doubled force. The descending sword had cut the sacrificial pigeons fluttering out of his hands, but spared his life. Unheard of and unhealed by God, he crept back into the world through the Huldah gate of the temple to go into exile. Diastasimos' audience fell silent, dismayed.

Chapter II

The dispute over the image of God ignites anew. Andreas thinks that God has shown grace to Diastasimos and proclaims the doctrine of the return of the Messiah on the last day , when all conditions are reversed. Diastasimos, on the other hand, insists on the “here and now”: he sees himself as an advocate for the dead of the massacre; like them, God wanted to destroy him who sought his protection. Like Job, he quarrels with God. In the background of the controversy lies the problem of theodicy : How can God be good when he strikes his creature with the evil of disease and lets his innocent people slaughter?

Diastasimos urges his theologizing visitors to act rather than speak wisely. You should "touch" him, create a physical relationship with him, instead of taking refuge in ideals. The boys report that diastasimos is considered incurable in circles of the apostles because of his "unprecedented unbelief"; even Jesus was powerless. It is planned to use his story as a “deterrent example” to show others the “right path” to faith.

The conversation turns to the main thing, the legendary meeting of Diastasimos and Jesus, of which nothing more is known. In addition to John , so Diastasimos, Judas was also present, the hated and outlawed disciple. It was a few days before Passover when Jesus turned off the mountain pass that led him from Jericho into the mountains' hinterland to seek him out, the leper. He was already aware at the time that Jesus, the successful preacher and miracle healer, was targeted by the Romans as a potential instigator of the people.

Rock caves near Jericho

The third turning back begins with the arrival of the three men at Diastasimos' cave a few days before the crucifixion. Diastasimos recreates the scene as if on a stage. Jesus came up to him sweaty and dusty from the ascent from the midst of his two companions Judas and John. He said nothing, just looked him quietly in the eye. It was the intense look under the "black-streaked forehead" that made him, Diastasimos, suddenly feel that his entire life so far had been evasive and lost. In this moment of being looked at he understood “how everything was lost, how it had to disperse, but lost now and caught up, sown and died, scattered and corrupted in order to survive here, that is: brought back to me here by him and to be orderly "

It was like a "break-in" into his body when Jesus grabbed his sick shoulder - as if there was no leprosy, no death. At that moment, his fascination with the man who came to heal him turned into defense, hatred and lament. The old wound of having been forsaken by God is expressed in a desperate outcry: “You are not from HIM, because HE doesn't want me” / “How can I believe him who draws people like that - and for no reason”. Jesus advised him to go to the person who “saw” him, Diastasimos. With him who saw him in his illness, he “shared” that only he could heal him.

Diastasimos does not understand what Jesus is trying to tell him. He now speaks in a parable and tells the story of those who divide who look out of their cave into the dark land at night and see nothing until lightning tears through the darkness, separating heaven and earth. The “dividers” see and yet do not see. But the light has awakened the longing for knowledge in them. Again, Diastasimus does not understand. He asks Jesus why he came to him and he sums up his message in one sentence: “He who shares with you is in you. You share with him. ”He, Jesus, is outside of him and has to fulfill his mission in Jerusalem.

The encounter in the cave ends with forging a plan. They want to prevent Jesus from being imprisoned by the Romans on the way to Jerusalem. Diastasimos suggests that Jesus be disguised as a servant to go after Judas and John. He provides a heavy wooden beam that he originally wanted to use to make a threshold - Jesus was supposed to carry this beam on his back to camouflage himself as a servant. The plan is accepted and the group sets off towards Bethany.

Andreas and Tabeas believe that with this story they have the hoped-for Jesus testimony in their pocket. But the solution of the knot and with it the meaning of the story is still pending. In order to encourage the impatient writers to stay, Diastasimos lures them with information about the events that happened on Jesus' further path. Rumor has it that John later washed Judas' feet in Bethany. How this strange and offensive incident relates to the plan hatched in Diastasimos' cave to overcome the Roman guard is the subject of the second part of his story.

Chapter III

With a word of Jesus handed down by Thomas, Diastasimos opens the continuation of his story: “Let him who seeks not stop looking: as until he finds. And if he finds he will be disturbed. But if disturbed: tauchts in him in amazement. Will rule over all "This quote from the Gospel of Thomas can be read by finding as an indication of Diastasimos' own method of mediation. New awareness arises when old beliefs and entrenched patterns of perception are “confused”. Diastasimos reveals to the two that he was an eyewitness to what happened at the watch fire of the Romans. From his position above the sentry post on the same mountainside, he could closely watch the arrival of the three between the two watch fires below him.

In a fourth and final turning back, Diastasimos reconstructs the embarrassing test that the Roman centurion and his omniscient advisor, a typical Satan figure, undertakes on Jesus. John acts as the group's spokesman and engages the centurion in a theological conversation about faith, sin, and salvation - with the intention of distracting from the existence of the servant in the background. However, the “advisor” has long since recognized his true identity, and so the interrogation turns into a perfidious game, the outcome of which seems to be fixed from the start. When John denied Jesus three times and his camouflage threatens to be blown, the situation turns. The servant staggered and sank under his burden, the valuable beam thundered to the ground. Judas now enters the scene; In a rage, he tears the lead-bullet whip from the belt of the Roman captain and begins to beat the servant furiously to prove that he is not the "master" sought by the Romans. When Judas continues to beat the completely collapsed man senseless, the next turning point occurs. Surprisingly, the Roman captain orders Judas to comply. With a look at Jesus writhing on the ground, the Roman becomes aware of the leprosy on the bloodily beaten body and shrinks back in horror.

At the climax of the events, the narrative levels are intertwined: past and present, inside and outside, acting and observing characters become indistinguishably one. Diastasimos sees himself lying on the ground as once in the temple when the sword of the Roman soldier came upon him. "The one I saw lying there, down there, stained and beaten and writhing up in pain and agony: he wasn't just like me with leprosy, but he was me, Diastasimos." The situation of annihilation has returned, but now follows the one Downfall the 'resurrection'. “Dressed like a lost man” the centurion approaches Jesus, lifts him off the ground and hugs him, while he is embraced in the same way by Jesus. The opposites become one: Diastasimos, the eyewitness above the rock, sees himself embraced by the enemy via Jesus. Now the meaning of Jesus' words opens up: “Show him with whom you shared. Go to him, allow yourself to be healed. ”As a result of the co-experienced union, Diastasismos recognizes himself as cured: In the glow of the guard fire his arms shine“ smooth and pure ”.

Tabeas and Andreas are disturbed; they cannot integrate what they hear into their horizon. Again Diastasimos asks them to touch him, but they are unable to believe that he is cured. The moment has come to miss the "lesson".

Chapter IV

Diastasimos gives Andreas and Tabeas the essence of his story, which he formulates ambiguously in a simile. The “killer” is in ourselves and must be accepted within ourselves. This implies that Jesus is to be found in the enemy, according to the Jesus saying “What you did for one of the least of my brothers, you did it to me” ( Mt 25.40  EU ). With these words Diastasimos retreats into the darkness of the cave from which he stepped in the beginning. Tabeas follows him and finds him sitting at a water trough, where he washes the soot off his face like an actor after the performance. In the light of the torch, the old man's skin shines white and pure. Tabeas touches his back in disbelief.

At the end of the novella, the circles come full. The scene at the water trough in the cave links the end of the story with its beginning, the discovery of the disease at the well in the year 28. The fetching of the robe that Diastasimos asked Andreas for as the last act connects the present in the cave with the lost past of family life and brings about recognition in Andreas: As he leaps up to reach the dress hung high on the rock face, he remembers the ritual of his childhood and instinctively recognizes that Diastasimos is his father, believed to be dead. The reader of the novella finally realizes that the anonymous first-person narrator who speaks at the beginning and at the end of the story is Tabeas: he witnessed the story and wrote down the unheard-of story of his father for posterity.

Design and structure

Novella

Riverside is a classic novel with a strong tendency towards the classic drama of antiquity. A timeless, existential problem is presented on the basis of an individual case against the historical background of the early Christian movement and a solution is found. The highlighted event consists in the loss of faith, in modern terms: in the loss of meaning in life. The outward sign is the fatal illness that fatefully overtakes the hero. The initiator of the healing is Jesus, who appears in Diastasimos' cave - right in the middle of the novella and at the lowest point of the crisis. His message is the actual novelty (Italian: "novella"), told by Riverside , the never-heard or "unheard", which Goethe attributed to the novella as a constitutive feature.

The material is organized according to the type of frame narration , a characteristic narrative form of novelistic prose, which creates an oral narrative situation. Diastasimos acts as a frame and internal narrator who unfolds his story in the form of four flashbacks that span the period from 28 to 33 AD and always flow back into the frame. If one includes the anonymous first-person narrator who appears at the beginning and the end of the novella and who finally reveals himself as tabeas, one would speak of a second framework. The double framing moves the mystery of healing into an objective distance and gives it the dimension of the archetypal timeless.

Another characteristic of the Christ Novella is the poetic condensation, which u. a. becomes visible in the weaving of the text with thing symbols , such as B. the robe that is hung up at the beginning of the plot and worn at the end, the double washing of the sickle, which marks the outbreak of the disease and its overcoming. The metaphor of the harvest is closely linked to the fundamental symbolism of renewal that runs through Riverside as a leitmotif . At the beginning it appears in the image of the ladder, which acts as a plow. The beam that the servant carries on his back as a burden in the pre-configuration of the crucifixion also belongs in this context: it is carved from the same trunk as the ladder and threshold. Like the cross itself, these items represent traditional symbols of change.

drama

Riverside is an example of the close relationship between novella and drama. According to Aristotle's theory of drama, the text is designed according to the principle of the three units : It has a uniform, closed plot that unfolds in the course of a night conversation around the campfire in the cave. The material is arranged in a scenic and dialogical way and the story arc follows the tension build-up of classic drama in an exemplary manner - with typical elements such as exposition , peripetia , anagnorisis and lysis .

The plot is designed according to the principle of analytical drama . The event that caused the conflict lies in the past and is assumed when the action begins. The past events are gradually reconstructed in the course of the action and a solution is found. For the characteristic assembling of the “truth”, the novella, which is also a typical revelatory drama, establishes right at the beginning the image of the “gathering together” of what is scattered, which is put together into a meaningful whole in the repeated narration. As in the Greek tragedy, the uncovering of the past in search of meaning leads to a change in the present: At the end of his story Diastasimos gives himself back to his sons as father.

Language and style

The unusual language of Riverside is similar in rhythm and pitch to the later novel Sunrise - The Book of Joseph . The common characteristic is the antique and biblical style of the speech. The antiquing effect can be seen in the inversion of the parts of the sentence ("And are young, step in, Andreas and Tabeas, crossing the furrows of the ladder wetly", 11), as well as in the use of the reflexive pronouns and auxiliary verbs to the verb in the tendency to parataxe ("And emerges, so done, out of the darkness there, and approaches the embers of the fire. And crouches in front of it and blows into the flame and warms the hands", 10) and in characteristic Phrases that imitate the Gospels (“And behold”).

The language, which sounds strange to today's ears, tunes in to the non-everyday, sacred, about which the novella essentially tells. However, the archaic language is conspicuously mixed with colloquialisms , expressions and idioms like “You're good!”, “Get it out!”, “Hit someone so that the tatters fly”, “miss a lesson”, etc. It is a rhetorical one Means to break the historicizing of language into the contemporary and to understand ancient wisdom as present and up-to-date.

swell

The story of Diastasimo is essentially a variation on the story of the pious man from the land of Uz, told in the Book of Job , whom God one day plunges into misery and subjects him to a severe trial. In the Book of Job, as in Riverside , the fundamental conflict between man and God is expressed in a serious skin condition. The image of a contradicting, dark figure of God in the background is at the center of the conversations in the Diastasimos cave, in which the visitors take on the role of "friends"; they defend God as good and just and assign man sole responsibility for his misery. In addition to the myth of Job, numerous overt and covert images and borrowings from the Gospels have been incorporated into the presentation, including literal quotations from the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas.

Ben-Hur movie poster

The film "The Men Who Stepped on the Tiger's Tail" was an important template for the novel.

In addition to quotes from the Old and New Testaments, there are borrowings from the field of film. The basic conception of rolling up the protagonist's life path against the backdrop of salvation-historical events was borrowed from Ben Hur (1959) - as was the life-changing encounter of a fictional hero with Jesus in the desert. Two films from Akira Kurosawa's early days served as guides for individual episodes. In addition to a scene from the film Judo Saga - The Legend of the Great Judo (1943), which was important for the rain motif that opened the novella, The Men Who Stepped on the Tiger's Tail from 1945 provided the template for the test at the Roman guard post which covers the entire third chapter.

Aspects of Interpretation

Riverside is considered a ricochet in the literary landscape of the 1990s because of the authentic dramatization of early Christian images and content. It is the work that introduced biblical images and materials into contemporary literature and opened them up for the present. "Patrick Roth's journey back to biblical times and lands definitely aims not at historicizing, but shows, against the zeitgeist of the 1990s the renewed relevance of its topics for the present."

In the genre-historical context of the “Christ narrative”, the novella uses the process of “visualization” and “alienation”. The spatial and temporal distance to history is leveled by creating as strong an immediacy as possible: “What is new compared to traditional narration is the way of visualizing, even creating the present. The wonderful encounter with the enslaved healer is not presented in the form of an account of a distant past. It occurs now as a revelation, as an event, a transformation in the presence of the dramatic conversation. ”The opposite process of alienation appears particularly in the area of ​​language, its archaic, parable gesture, which slows down, condenses and reveals the essentials: "Wrapping - this is the motto of [...] Roth's novella, which wraps and disfigures traditional Christian material through language and form - but in the service of identification."

Patrick Roth's characteristic method of rewriting and updating biblical material shows a great similarity to the Jewish narrative tradition of the Midrash - a method of interpretation that draws insights from biblical texts relating to the present. The modern version of this ancient narrative is often found in the context of Holocaust literature - a genre that the rudimentary and Riverside listened: "Patrick Roth's Christ-novellas reveal at least several characteristic traits of the midrashic storytelling tradition, love especially in Their relation to Holocaust literature where biblical images encounter the reality of the camps. Roth's writings can be regarded as almost analogous to the retold and rewritten versions of the scripture and apocryphal legends in Judaism in their basic structure, but also in their intention: In their function as cultural ecology they reinterpret the biblical versions for the contemporary context and comment thus (ironically) on the present to reveal cultural and universal truths in search for a deeper meaning. "

Riverside shows the narrative structure of metadiegetic narration , which is characteristic of Roth's literature in general, with a first-person narrator involved in the event, who himself becomes part of the plot. This constellation includes the act of narration in the presentation - with the effect that what was once experienced becomes present at the moment of being told. By telling his visitors the story of his healing in great detail and with gestures, Diastasimos leads the past into the present: “It is only in this narration that Diastasimos fully understands his understanding at that time, as it has matured in him for a long time leaves. [...] just as the reality of healing only becomes fully real when it becomes effective in his narration. "

In the principle of “narrated narration”, the greatest possible immediacy of the representation is conveyed with the reflection on the representational means; This double movement causes the becoming one with the content to be broken narrative again and again: The closeness turns into distance: "The Christ novella tells in a subtle third-order-observation-arrangement how Andreas and Tabeas want to write (1.) what Diastasimos learned from Jesus (2.), who in turn said of himself that he was the medium, namely the way, the truth and the life (3.), without whom no one could reach the divine Father. […] Patrick Roth manages the feat of bringing together everything that distinguishes religious from pious literature […], namely psychology, media reflection, second-order observation, dogmatics and church-distancing in his dense prose and yet quite differently, namely to write more evocative and poetic presence than Thomas Mann, for example, practices in his religious works. "

The focus of the Christ novella is the individual and his life-changing experience. Diastasimos, who does not have the split in his name by chance (Greek: "the in-himself-divided"), represents the modern individual who has fallen out of the collective belief system and embarks on the inner path of becoming oneself to the end to return to the community as a 'whole' personality. The structural pattern of individuation unfolds on the protagonist , which is triggered by the encounter with a divine. In the experience of something greater than consciousness, the world of the unconscious opens up as the 'completely other'. “The stories of the Christ Trilogy are told in such a way that the timeless, universal dimension of life emerges behind personal fate. The transcending takes place on the narrative level by means of the dream report and the weaving of fictional similes. The self-referential principle of 'history in history' [...] can be found as a recurring procedure to visualize the mythical-archetypal basic layer that connects the life of the individual to the transcendent dimension. "

reception

The literary criticism noted the "uniqueness", the high literary quality and originality of the novella. Der Spiegel recognized the supposedly dusty legend of Christ as a "demanding reading, a treatise on questions of faith full of tricky arguments" in the tradition of a "fabulous" apocryphal Gospel, written in the virtuoso "Bible sound".

The time coined the label of the “biblical thriller”: “The surprising 'solution to the case' is the result of stupid suspense art. However, as it turns out on second reading, it is well prepared with a finely woven network of hints and key stimuli. You see everything and yet see nothing until you as a reader, like the visitors of Diastasimo, fall from all supposedly certain prior knowledge - behind the scenes. "The tension results not only from the complexly woven plot, but also from the" artfully rhythmic prose "And the cinematic narrative:

“Roth maintains the tension on the almost one hundred pages, but not only through the brilliant fakes of finding the truth, assembled according to epistemological and dramaturgical recipes from Plato and Sophocles to Kleist to Poe. He keeps it in every single sentence - through laconic abbreviations, barbed inversions, breakneck hypotaxes, the strangest word connections and new formations. His writing [...] is characterized by daring cuts and counter cuts, trusting in the ability of the perceiver to combine. Conversely, the film experience also resulted in the almost complete waiver of the description of the surroundings: Why do things over pages that could be shown much more effectively in a picture? "

Even the earliest review documents the literary innovations: the artificial language based on the Bible, the complexity of the structure, the independent access to the texts of the Bible. Riverside is a “literary gem”: “A finely spun composition from historically secured material, from both New Testament and non-canonical tradition and exuberant imagination. [...] Prophetic force on the one hand, meticulous discussion and hesitant weighing on the other - "Riverside" is a masterpiece of the art of dialogue, thought out down to the smallest detail, brilliant in diction and dramaturgy. "

The Rheinische Merkur sees the achievement of the novella in particular in the new perspective of Christian images, which are updated with the means of cinematic narration:

“It's just exciting to watch the author learn complex new stories from the Bible's under-developed subplots. [...] It is also difficult to decide what in this literary work is canonical, what is based on apocryphal tradition, what is free invention. But even where the author stays close to the canon, he 'discovers' completely untapped side paths through his very own logic and combinatorics. His prose strikes new sparks from the bedrock of the Christian doctrine of salvation. "

expenditure

• Patrick Roth: Riverside. Christ novella . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1991, ISBN 978-3-518-40382-2 . (Hardback edition)
• Patrick Roth: Riverside. Christ novella . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1994, ISBN 978-3-518-40622-9 . (Red program)
• Patrick Roth: Riverside. Christ novella . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1996, ISBN 978-3-518-39068-9 . (Paperback)
• Patrick Roth: The Christ Trilogy . Riverside. Johnny Shines or The Raising of the Dead. Corpus Christi. Three novels and a CD: Patrick Roth, The LA Reading . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1998, ISBN 978-3-518-06546-4 . (Bound in cassette)
• Patrick Roth: Resurrection. The Christ Trilogy . 3 novels in cassette with audio cassette The LA reading . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 2003, ISBN 978-3-518-39957-6 . (Paperback edition)
• Patrick Roth: Riverside. Christ novella. With a comment by Grete Lübbe-Grothues . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 2005, ISBN 3-518-18862-3 . (Suhrkamp Base Library 62)

literature

• Jochen Hörisch : The redemption of the physique. The poetization of God in the work of Patrick Roth . In: Michaela Kopp-Marx, Georg Langenhorst (Hrsg.): The rediscovery of the Bible with Patrick Roth. From the “Christ Trilogy” to “SUNRISE. The Book of Joseph ” . Wallstein, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8353-1452-8 , pp. 11-22 .
• Michaela Kopp-Marx : "Lost and caught up, sown and died". Patrick Roth's individuation is illustrated by the "Christ Trilogy" . In: Michaela Kopp-Marx, Georg Langenhorst (Hrsg.): The rediscovery of the Bible with Patrick Roth. From the “Christ Trilogy” to “SUNRISE. The Book of Joseph ” . Wallstein, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8353-1452-8 , pp. 69-101 .
• Michaela Kopp-Marx: "Riverside". Over the river. Patrick Roth and the motif of change . In: Erich Garhammer (Ed.): Literature in the river. Bridges between poetry and religion. Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-7917-6021-6 , pp. 71-78 .
• Michaela Kopp-Marx: Soul Dialogues. A commentary track on Patrick Roth's Christ Trilogy . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8260-4864-7 , p. 9-112 .
• Günter Beck: Between New Testament and New World: Representation of Jews in Patrick Roth's Fiction . In: Michaela Kopp-Marx (Ed.): The living myth. The letter from Patrick Roth . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8260-3972-0 , p. 129-146 .
• Gerhard Kaiser: Resurrection. The Christ Trilogy by Patrick Roth. The killer will be the redeemer . A. Francke, Tübingen, Basel 2008, ISBN 978-3-7720-8267-2 , p. 65-92 .
• Paul Konrad Kurz: The unheard of from the archaic cave. Patrick Roth's novella of Christ "Riverside" . In: Georg Langenhorst (ed.): Patrick Roth - narrator between the Bible and Hollywood . LIT, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-8208-X , p. 69-77 .
• Georg Langenhorst : Wrapping in the service of identification - Patrick Roth's literary approaches to Jesus . In: Patrick Roth - narrator between the Bible and Hollywood . LIT, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-8208-X , p. 22-30 .

Web links

• Love among the pious . In: Der Spiegel , 19/1992. Review.
• Michael Merschmeier: A Bible Thriller. Patrick Roth's novella "Riverside" Die Zeit , November 22, 1991.
• Patrick Roth reads from "Riverside" (excerpt)
• Patrick Roth: The Christ Trilogy, LA Reading: Riverside. Johnny Shines. Corpus Christi

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Patrick Roth: The Christ Trilogy. Three novels and a CD. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1998.
2. ↑ Patrick Roth: Riverside. Christ novella. Frankfurt a. M .: Suhrkamp, ​​1991, p. 21.
3. ↑ Patrick Roth: Riverside , p. 49.
4. ↑ Patrick Roth: Riverside , p. 53.
5. ↑ Patrick Roth: Riverside , p. 55.
6. ↑ Patrick Roth: Riverside , p. 68.
7. ↑ See: Michaela Kopp-Marx: Seelen-Dialoge. A commentary track on Patrick Roth's Christ Trilogy. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2012, p. 83f.
8. ↑ Patrick Roth: Riverside. P. 83.
9. ↑ Patrick Roth: Riverside. P. 54.
10. ↑ Theodor Storm describes the novella as the "sister of drama" and "the strictest form of prose poetry". Compare: Benno von Wiese: Novelle. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1982, p. 2.
11. ↑ For sources, genesis and intention of the Kurosawa references see: Patrick Roth: Die Christus Trilogie. Annotated edition. Edited and commented by Michaela Kopp-Marx , Göttingen 2017, pp. 324, 347, 351, 353.
12. ^ Günter Beck: Between New Testament and New World: Representation of Jews in Patrick Roth's Fiction. In: Michaela Kopp-Marx (Ed.): The living myth. The letter from Patrick Roth. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010, p. 129–146, p. 129. Keith Bullivant speaks in the same volume (p. 27f.) Of the “radical paraphrase” of the Holy Scriptures and states: “In the secular world of contemporary Germany, the trilogy The Christ Trilogy achieved a significant reawakening of the questions of faith and redemption. "
13. ↑ Paul Konrad Kurz: Unheard of from the archaic cave. Patrick Roth's novella of Christ "Riverside". In: Georg Langenhorst (ed.): Patrick Roth - narrator between the Bible and Hollywood. Münster: LIT, 2005. pp. 69-77, p. 71.
14. ↑ Georg Langenhorst: Wrapping in the service of identification - Patrick Roth's literary approaches to Jesus. in: Georg Langenhorst (ed.): Patrick Roth - narrator between the Bible and Hollywood. Pp. 22-30, p. 26.
15. ^ Günter Beck: Between New Testament and New World: Representation of Jews in Patrick Roth's Fiction. In: Michaela Kopp-Marx (Ed.): The living myth. Pp. 129-146, p. 136.
16. ^ Gerhard Kaiser: Resurrection. The Christ Trilogy by Patrick Roth. The killer will be the redeemer. Tübingen, Basel: A. Francke, 2008, pp. 65–92, p. 88.
17. ↑ Jochen Hörisch: The redemption of the physique. The poetization of God in the work of Patrick Roth. In: Michaela Kopp-Marx, Georg Langenhorst (Hrsg.): The rediscovery of the Bible with Patrick Roth. From the “Christ Trilogy” to “Sunrise. The Book of Joseph ”. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014, pp. 11–22, pp. 13, 16.
18. ↑ Michaela Kopp-Marx: "Lost and caught up, sown and died." Patrick Roth's individuation is illustrated by the "Christ Trilogy". In: Michaela Kopp-Marx, Georg Langenhorst (Hrsg.): The rediscovery of the Bible with Patrick Roth. Pp. 69-101, p. 101.
19. ↑ "Love among the pious". Der Spiegel, 19/1992, p. 269.
20. ↑ Michael Merschmeier: A Bible Crime. Patrick Roth's novella 'Riverside'. In: Die Zeit , November 22, 1991, p. 77.
21. ↑ Esther Röhr: Hidden Revelation. Patrick Roth's Christ novella 'Riverside'. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , October 9, 1991.
22. ↑ Lutz Hagestedt: Awakening the Dead. In: Rheinischer Merkur , April 23, 1998, p. 21.