Drummers with the tsar

Drummers at the Tsars is a short story by Arno Schmidt , which also gave the title to an anthology. The story first appeared in Die Zeit in 1960 and was reprinted several times.

content

The first-person narrator in the story first sums up his own behavior and investigates the question of why he likes to go for a walk at night. He had already had expert opinions drawn up by psychologists, which, however, came to quite contrary results. Therefore, he opts for a very simple explanation ("the real reason might be that I see so badly and that it is too bright and too hot for me during the day"). From this statement he goes on to describe his observations during the night walks, which often end in truck driver bars. There he observes the character types who, in contrast to the narrator, have “experienced something”, or who are all still in the middle of the experience, and vigorously. He evidently enjoys the strange mood, which on the one hand seems artificial and sterile, on the other hand, due to the "seriousness, men and women with energetic, flesh-draped faces" evidently receive a special vulgar eroticism . In any case, he notices a special broad-shouldered lady who justifies her worth by her descent ("My father was a drummer for the Tsar: everything is nature with me!"), With the sentence that is repeated as an invitation at the end of the story. In this truck driver's bar near the zone border, cola is drunk with Nescafé and while it is overflowing, “ reunification is discussed and the problems of globalization are slapped on the counter with a few numbers”. In a sweet and suggestive way, in dialect and sometimes polemic against the GDR , the narrator tells a smuggling story that ultimately gives the narrator of the smuggling story the affection of the “Valkyrie”.

shape

For this story , Schmidt used forms of prose with which he wanted to realistically depict processes of consciousness . The reflections of the first-person narrator, which make up the text over long stretches, are reminiscent of inner monologues and in this story Schmidt combines bar jargon with “linguistic archeology” In depicting everyday language, he takes no account of orthography and syntax . The storyline and the monologues of the first-person narrator are not presented in a continuum, but in short and shortest prose fragments. What happens or is thought between these fragments must be reconstructed by the reader in this highly elliptical narrative style. With this form, Schmidt wanted to show how human perception and memory are highly fragmented. The narrator is an expression of the " musical existence" of man. The perceptions are often stepping stones for the narrator's reflections and certain thoughts and emotions are subliminally present, but must be tapped by the reader himself from the thought fragments. In this sense, the phrase in the title is a placeholder for a whole range of unspoken thoughts and appears as a bracket for the text in the last sentence.

reception

The story is described by fans of Arno Schmidt as accessible and amusing and is perceived as an expression of the thirst for life (“I haven't experienced anything myself.”) In its time-relatedness, the story is a testimony to post-war Germany in the Federal Republic of Germany. Snappy, but at the same time distant, it depicts current events and is at the same time a commentary on them. Only in the last few years have translations into English and French been made.

expenditure

• Drummers at the Tsar's , authoritarian. First edition, Stahlberg, Karlsruhe 1966
• Trommler beim Zaren , S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985, 365 pages. ISBN 3-10-070619-6 ; ISBN 978-3-10-070619-5

The short story can also be found in the anthology Aus der Inselstrasse (English: "Tales from Island Street").

Translations :

• Histoires / Arno Schmidt; traduction de l'allemand et postface par Claude Riehl. Editions Tristram 2015. ISBN 978-2-36719-039-6

Web links

• Imprint in time
• Edition with foreword from Shortstoryproject.com

Individual evidence

1. ^ Die Zeit , 34, August 19, 1960.
2. ↑ Hartwig Suhrbier : On the prose theory by Arno Schmidt . Special delivery Bargfelder Bote , Edition Text and Criticism, Munich 1980.
3. ↑ Nora Bossong: Foreword to the edition at Shortstoryproject.com.
4. ^ "Schmidt, Arno" . In Munzinger Online / Personen - Internationales Biographisches Archiv, retrieved from Bücherhallen Hamburg on January 9, 2018.
5. ↑ "So that one thing is clear: 'I haven't experienced anything myself.' At least that's what the narrator claims in Arno Schmidt's story 'Drummers at the Tsar' in the very first sentence. Somebody is that, you could almost think, everyone, just a little bit more biting in his observations, in his language, who likes to go for a walk, does not reach the distant world - but maybe experiences it because, 'what does New York mean? Big city is big city; I've been to Hanover often enough. ' And it quickly becomes clear: This man likes to leave the experience to others. He hears it from them. With him we enter a truck driver's bar near the border of the zone, where people drink coke with Nescafé and while they are pouring over they are discussing reunification and the problems of globalization are slapped on the counter with a few numbers. Here the provincial stands against the everywhere, against the world of the 'supervised gentlemen'. Where can you see more from? Schmidt reports from the full of the West German post-war Germany - gruff, sullen, always sarcastic and wonderfully funny and that it should not be suppressed: tasty and suggestive. Pub jargon is combined with a language archeology that goes all out. This gave Schmidt the reputation of being one of the most cumbersome among German-speaking authors. A lot of this is more due to our panic fear of punctuation. If you just followed her, you could hear people come to life when they spoke. The tenderness of Schmidt's language urges to slip-step directness and in its weirdness fends off any absorption. ”Nora Bossong: Foreword to the edition at Shortstoryproject.com.