Tyll (novel)

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Tyll is a novel by Daniel Kehlmann that was published by Rowohlt Verlag in 2017 . The time of the Thirty Years' War is told in eight chapters, the order of which in the book does not follow the chronology of the narrative . The figure of Tyll Ulenspiegel in particular is looked at with varying distances, although it is not a biography of his life. With the choice of the protagonist , Kehlmann essentially refers to the literary reception of Till Eulenspiegel as a subject of world literature. Following this character tradition, Kehlmann's Tyll Ulenspiegel also plays the role of a court jester who mocks the rulers.

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Tyll, son of the miller Claus Ulenspiegel, grew up in a village in southern Germany in the 17th century . The miller perceives his son as weak and unstable and is amazed at the boy's survival - when so many children did not survive the first winter. Even as a child, Tyll practiced juggling, balancing on a rope, and can hardly be called upon to work. Claus, who owns several books and is interested in the broader connections between faith and the creation of the world, plays a special role in village life - on the one hand in demand for his healing arts, on the other hand despised as an eccentric. His interest in magic will lead church scholars and Jesuits Athanasius Kircher and Oswald Tesimond to try him for heresy .

After Tyll had to watch his father being sentenced to death, he left his village before the execution - accompanied by Nele, the daughter of a baker who was about the same age. He extended his jugglers Arts and later at the service of the "Winter King" Frederick V set. In his wake he visits the Swedish King Gustav Adolf in the field camp. The fool also mocks Friedrich V, but at the hour of his death he stands close to him and will also inform his wife Liz about it. He moves on as a juggler and meets Athanasius Kircher again in Holstein, whom he now mocks with a talking donkey. Kircher came to Holstein with Adam Olearius to catch a kite. Nele, who is still part of Tyll's jugglers troop, decides to marry Olearius.

Tyll moves on again. This time alone and only with a rope and his juggling balls in his luggage. He reaches Brno , where he mocks the Swedish city commander. As a punishment for all his ridicule, he is forced to serve in the army and works as a miner in Brno. Here it is buried and comes back alive in a miraculous - unspecified - way. In the meantime, the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III has sent Martin von Wolkenstein to Andechs Monastery to find Tyll in order to put him in the service of his court.

Tyll is involved in the battle of Zusmarshausen , the last major field battle of the Thirty Years War. He also survived this encounter with the danger of death. At the end of the novel as well as the narrated time , Tyll meets again in Osnabrück with the "Winter Queen" who is there on the occasion of the negotiations for the Peace of Westphalia , who is now completely impoverished and has lost her social position. Tyll praised her for striving to survive any situation.

interpretation

The fact that Kehlmann's main character refers to the historically unproven figure of Till Eulenspiegel can be regarded as recognized in literary studies. Erik Schilling assigns it to the group of picaresque novels and interprets Tyll as a fictional narrative of a constructed 'historical reality'. Historically documented personalities step into the action as characters in a novel, which blurs historical reality and fictional reality of the novel. The novel itself demonstrates the effects produced in this way as an example, when Paul Fleming , for example, “listens to the subject of his poetry” and “does not owe the content to“ the author's imagination ”.

Joachim Rickes understands the game with the indistinguishability of truth and fiction through reference to historically documented people and events as "uncertainty poetics".

References to Till Eulenspiegel

Some passages from the novel can be related to certain histories that Hermann Bote published in 1510 under the title “A short-term reading by Dil Ulenspiegel born from the land of Brunßwick, how he made his life complete” .

  • The chapter on Shoes : The 4th History tells how Eulenspiegel talked about two hundred pairs of shoes off the boys' feet and made young and old quarrel about it.
  • Tyll teaches a donkey to read: The 29th history tells how Eulenspiegel in Erfurt taught a donkey to read an old psalter.

Awards

The English translation by Ross Benjamin made it onto the longlist of the International Booker Prize in 2020 .

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jens Jessen: The Eternal Juggler. DIE ZEIT, October 13, 2018, accessed on September 30, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Eulenspiegel. In: Elisabeth Frenzel: Substances of world literature. Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-520-30009-5 , pp. 199-202.
  3. ↑ Günther Ortmann: IV. The not yet and no longer of love . In: Not yet / Not anymore . Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2015, ISBN 978-3-8452-7736-3 , p. 51-70 , doi : 10.5771 / 9783845277363-51 .
  4. ↑ Erik Schilling: Daniel Kehlmann, Tyll . Novel. In: Arbitrium . tape 36 , no. 3 , November 27, 2018, ISSN  1865-8849 , p. 401-404 , doi : 10.1515 / arb 2018 to 0058 ( degruyter.com [accessed on October 1, 2019]).
  5. ↑ Joachim Rickes: The donkey is not the donkey. On Daniel Kehlmann's uncertainty poetics in ›Tyll‹ . In: Sprachkunst. Contributions to literary studies . tape 1 , 2019, ISSN  0038-8483 , p. 73–86 , doi : 10.1553 / spk49_1s73 ( oeaw.ac.at [accessed October 1, 2019]).
  6. ↑ Erik Schilling: Daniel Kehlmann, Tyll . Novel. In: Arbitrium . tape 36 , no. 3 , November 27, 2018, ISSN  1865-8849 , p. 401-404 , doi : 10.1515 / arb 2018 to 0058 ( degruyter.com [accessed on October 1, 2019]).
  7. ↑ Erik Schilling: Daniel Kehlmann, Tyll. Novel. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2017 . In: Arbitrium . tape 36 , no. 3 , November 27, 2018, ISSN  1865-8849 , p. 401-404 , doi : 10.1515 / arb 2018 to 0058 ( degruyter.com [accessed on October 1, 2019]).
  8. ↑ Joachim Rickes: The donkey is not the donkey. On Daniel Kehlmann's uncertainty poetics in ›Tyll‹. In: Sprachkunst. Contributions to literary studies . tape 1 , 2019, ISSN  0038-8483 , p. 73–86 , doi : 10.1553 / spk49_1s73 ( oeaw.ac.at [accessed October 1, 2019]).
  9. ↑ Hermann Bote: An entertaining reading by Dyl Eulenspiegel: born from the country of Braunschweig. How he made his life. Sixty of his stories. Ed .: Wolfgang Lindow. Philipp Reclam, Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-15-001687-8 .
  10. ↑ The XVIII. Chapter. Some appearances in the clouds; and how to find / what its cause is; as well as some / who pretend / that they deal with people from the air. In: A history of the newly found Völcker called Sevarambes (1689) . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York, ISBN 978-3-11-093402-1 .
  11. ↑ Chapter 30 of the book: Till Eulenspiegel by Hermann Bote | Gutenberg project. Retrieved October 1, 2019 .
  12. ↑ 2020 International Booker Prize Longlist Announced at thebookerprizes.com, February 27, 2020 (accessed March 4, 2020).