Match letters
“Matchstick letters” is the German translation of the column title La Bustina di Minerva , under which Umberto Eco's short texts have appeared on the last page of the Roman news magazine L'Espresso since March 1985 , weekly until March 1998, then every 14 days. The translation is almost literal, because bustina di Minerva is the name of the flat matchbooks from the Minerva company in Italy , and you can make notes on the inside flap.
In his very first bustina , Umberto Eco defined the size of this flap as the format of his future column texts :
"When the inside of the flap happens to be free of advertisements, thoughtful men tend to jot down vague ideas on it, phone numbers of women they might one day love, titles of books they want to buy or avoid."
The subject of these notes can be anything:
“Thoughts about the last unread book, about the intuition that goes through your head when you suddenly have to brake on the motorway to avoid colliding with a truck, about being and nothing, about the famous step-steps of Fred Astaire ... "
Expenses (selection)
Over the years, hundreds of such "match letters" have emerged, some of which can be thematically and linguistically transferred, also in German, always selected, translated and edited by Burkhart Kroeber :
- A first selection was published under the title "Streichholzbriefe" from April 1986 to April 1987 and from September 1987 to March 1988 in the Hamburg weekly newspaper Die Zeit , a second, much smaller (10 texts) from June to August 1996 in the Zeit magazine .
- A small selection (14 texts) of the first series was published by Hanser in 1990 under the title Streichholzbriefe ( ISBN 3-446-15930-4 ).
- In 1992 Eco included a selection from the first seven years, mainly texts that can be characterized as satires on the manners and customs of our everyday life, in his volume Il secondo Diario Minimo (German How to travel with a salmon and other useful advice , Hanser , Munich 1993, ISBN 3-446-17325-0 ).
- In 2000, a selection from the texts of the nineties in La Bustina di Minerva followed (German in selection: Derrick or the passion for mediocrity. Matchbooks 1990-2000 , Hanser 2000, ISBN 3-446-19906-3 ).
- 2002 a paperback edition at dtv with texts from various earlier Hanser volumes: Collected Matchstick Letters , ISBN 3-423-12970-0 .
- In 2006 at Hanser, a selection compiled by his translator and not by the author himself from the texts since 2000: Shots with receipt. New matchbooks , ISBN 3-446-20761-9 .
- In the same year Umberto Eco has another selection, this time mainly of the political texts since the beginning of the new millennium, in his volume of essays A passo di gambero. Guerre calde e populismo mediatico taken over (German In the crab ahead. Hot wars and medialer populism , Hanser 2007, ISBN 978-3-446-20837-7 ).
- A selection of the match letters from 2001 to 2016 was published in Pape Satàn Aleppe. Cronache di una società liquida , 2016 ( Eng . Pape Satàn. Chronicles of a Liquid Society or The Art of Understanding the World , translated by Burkhart Kroeber, Munich: Hanser, 2017).
reception
The Austrian author and critic Franz Schuh wrote:
“I think Eco's match letters are a wonderful genre: they entertain and teach at the same time; In their brevity and variety of topics, they stimulate the mind, they are the ideal exercise for more difficult intellectual tasks than they are themselves. "
literature
- Aloys Behler: Look up at Eco - “The match letters” from 1985 are more up-to-date than today's newspaper . In: Die Zeit , No. 34/2001; Review of Derrick or The Passion for Mediocrity .
- Carl Wilhelm Macke: Shots with a receipt . In: Title magazine; review