Ulysses (radio play)

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Ulysses is the title of a radio play version of the novel of the same name by Irish writer James Joyce from 1922. Klaus Buhlert directed the production of Südwestrundfunk (2012) . With a running time of more than 22 hours, Ulysses is the longest radio play by SWR to date and one of the most elaborate radio play productions by ARD . It was broadcast for the first time to celebrate Bloomsday from 8 a.m. on the morning of June 16, 2012 until 6 a.m. the following day on SWR2 and for several hours on Deutschlandfunk . On the same day it was published as an audio book on 23 audio CDs by Hörverlag . Numerous well-known actors from German theater and film took part in the production.

The novel by James Joyce

James Joyce about 1904

Ulysses (English and Latin for Odysseus ) is considered the most important work by James Joyce, trend-setting for the modern novel and was "stylized into a ' novel of the century'" - as Joyce expert Fritz Senn put it in the text accompanying the audio book. In Ulysses, Joyce describes in 18 stylistically extremely different episodes a day - June 16, 1904 - in the life of Leopold Bloom , Jewish advertising agent for a Dublin newspaper, and of the young writer and assistant teacher Stephen Dedalus . Based on Homer's wanderings of Odysseus , he describes the daily journeys of his protagonists through Dublin. Although the chapters have no headings in the original text, they were later associated with characters from the Odyssey and named. Joyce not only describes the external events, but also in detail the thoughts of his protagonists with all their associations, scraps of memory and ideas in the form of the inner monologue . This style element, the so-called "stream of consciousness" ( stream of consciousness ) was in Ulysses for the first time central design element of a literary work. The complete work was first published in English in 1922 and in German in 1927. In 1975 Hans Wollschläger translated the novel into German again in a version that was highly praised by critics. This version, published by Suhrkamp Verlag , served as the basis for the radio play adaptation.

Previous edits and licensing restrictions before 2012

A complete and textual transfer of Ulysses to other media is inevitably difficult due to the form, structure, scope and style of the novel. For example, Sönke Krüger judged the British film adaptation by Joseph Strick from 1967 that it “failed because it could not be filmed” . As early as 1982 the Irish radio RTÉ had produced a successful radio play version or reading of the novel in English, excerpts of which were also broadcast on the German radio program. However, further inquiries about adaptations and adaptations of the material failed due to international licensing law and the sometimes restrictive literary estate administration of the sole James Joyce heir Stephen James Joyce. Only after the 70th anniversary of the author's death on January 13, 2011 did the protection period for his work expire on December 31, 2011, and the way to a large-scale project of this size was cleared after Suhrkamp Verlag, as the owner of the rights to the translation, had given its consent .

Radio play version

Each of the 18 chapters of Ulysses is held in its own literary form. This ranges from the “simple” narrative in the first chapter to the exclusive (male) inner monologue to the catechism ( personal and impersonal ) or the (female) inner monologue of Leopold Bloom's unfaithful wife Molly in the last chapter , in which her thoughts are timeless and interlocking from one man to another without a period or comma in eight long sentences. The novel with its many parodies and language games proves to be almost ideal for a radio play version. "One hundred and fifty pages of the novel have already been written by Joyce as a kind of radio play: the Circe chapter , a phantasmagoric dream play in the brothel district , drama text with absurdly detailed stage directions." The adaptation makes numerous passages much more understandable for the reader or listener. "Voices, music, theme work : These funds attracts Director Buhlert threads through the labyrinth , access also opens into the hermetic games, including the sirens - Chapter , an operatic composed text full of onomatopoeia and song, literature as Arie ." In the radio version cuts were performed. These are abbreviations “that develop from the logic of the text and take into account the irreversible linearity of the acoustic. The reduction factor fluctuates depending on the chapter in order to translate literary complexity into an acoustically tangible reality. In the case of the chapters Skylla and Charybdis as well as The Cattle of the Sun God , this seemed to us only possible through a radical condensation, ” writes Manfred Hess, the chief dramaturge at the radio play of the SWR .

Contributors

reception

The reactions from the media and critics were consistently positive.

The FAZ critic Sandra Cone wrote: "In two and a half years of hard work and with the help of the most famous actors of the country, including Manfred Zapatka, Dietmar Bär, Corinna Harfouch, Thomas Thieme, Birgit Minichmayr, Anna Thalbach, Josef Bierbichler and Ernst Stötzner, has the Sender presented the first radio play adaptation of the canonical work. […] After 22 hours of listening experience, it can be said: The director Klaus Buhlert, who also edited the text and composed the music, succeeded in creating an acoustic masterpiece that impresses with much more than just monumental size. This art form, inherent in radio, actually succeeds in bringing the book, which is sometimes difficult to grasp, with all its seething inner world to life through staging. You may not have to read the 'Ulysses', but you should definitely hear it. "

Stefan Fischer wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung : "What he was broadcasting was smarter, more exciting, more modern than many things that would otherwise be broadcast on cultural radio during the day." At the same time, he pointed out that this audio version had reached far more people in one fell swoop. "Than have read the novel in the past ten years".

Like Sandra Kegel, Christian Berndt also emphasized the relatively easy comprehension and humor of the radio play version for the listener. Berndt wrote: "The 'Ulysses' radio play has not become academic - Buhlert, who also composed the music, sets the text spoken by a top-class ensemble of actors - including Manfred Zapatka, Milan Peschel and Josef Bierbichler - not only with steamy text Sensuality, but also with partly coarse [m], partly rascal [m] humor. "

Christian Thomas specifically praised the performance of the speakers : “In the radio play production of SWR and Deutschlandfunk, this city novel turns out to be a grandiose condensation of voices. As the narrator, Corinna Harfouch is the puller of an omniscient cunning and intrigue, Jürgen Holtz personifies as the omniscient narrator annoyed impatience. Anna Thalbach is a fairy godmother, they all give what is written on around a thousand pages, and that is the whole secret of this grandiose production, the illusion of spontaneous orality. "

Awards

CD edition

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Booklet for CD publication.
  2. ↑ Dirk Manthey, Jörg Altendorf, Willy Loderhose (eds.): The large film lexicon. All top films from A-Z . Second edition, revised and expanded new edition. Publishing group Milchstraße, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-89324-126-4 .
  3. ↑ Ulysses. 3 mp3 CDs. English. RTÉ Radio Drama Production . www.rte.ie/radio1 with www.lannan.org.
  4. ^ A b c Wolfgang Schneider: "Ulysses" radio play: A sensual experience . In: dradio.de. June 15, 2012, Retrieved December 28, 2012.
  5. ↑ Sandra Kegel: Who's Afraid of James Joyce? . In: FAZ.NET of June 15, 2012, accessed December 28, 2012.
  6. ↑ Media favorites 2012 - Klaus Buhlert. The man has made a full day word radio ... . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of December 31, 2012, accessed March 10, 2013
  7. ↑ Christian Berndt: "The texts of this book are like a rollercoaster ride" . In: dradio.de. June 16, 2012, accessed December 28, 2012.
  8. ↑ Christian Thomas: In the wake of the voices . In: berliner-zeitung.de. June 16, 2012, accessed December 28, 2012.
  9. ↑ Winner of the German Audio Book Prize 2013 , accessed on June 29, 2013