How on
Wie Weiter is a book by the German writer Angela Krauss that was published in 2006 by Suhrkamp Verlag .
content
The novel-like book Wie weiter by Angela Krauss can initially be described as very poor in action. It is roughly divided into a frame story and an internal story . The framework begins with the protagonist waking up on a Sunday morning in her rented apartment across from a zoo and ends with the waking up of Romans, the protagonist's sleeping companion . In the much larger part of the narrative, the protagonist is followed on a journey of thought, some of which goes far back into her past.
Most important figures
I-narrator
“You who know everything! If not, I'll summarize again: Here I am. The Kaiserspiel on the duvet. Pointed shoes below. The imprint of a thought on the top of the head. So much for myself. "
The reader does not find out more about the first-person narrator in How next . As already kissed away in her previous prose and the high- flyer , the protagonist remains "physically remarkably contourless". Further information can only be found in the context of the narrative. The first-person narrator is a woman, presumably middle-aged, who grew up in the GDR - more precisely in the Erzgebirge region - and who was decisively shaped by the reunification of Germany in the middle of her life. Her most important points of reference are above all her three love people Leo, Toma and Roman, all of whom have different meanings for the narrator, but have never met one another.
Roman is not only one of her lovers, but also her "sleeping companion". Obviously the narrator has been in a steady relationship with him for several years. She also shares the apartment across from a zoo in central Germany (probably in Leipzig) with Kastanorka, a turtle.
Both to the first-person narrator in Wie weiter , as well as in her other prose works, numerous autobiographical parallels to the author Angela Krauss , who was born in Chemnitz in 1950 and has lived in Leipzig since 1981, can be made out. Topics such as the Ore Mountains or the reunification are closely related to the author and appear repeatedly in her works.
Love people
“I never introduced them to each other. What would become of them if they were forced to do something with each other, my dear people? About a circle of friends? I don't expect them to have birthday parties, or stand around in contexts that could make them appear interchangeable, in which I would also be a stranger to them. Everyone once lured their love person out of me who no one else knows, just the two of us. We are two mutually lured out, which is why no third person has to do without anything. I lead a different life with each of my loved ones, one of the many that are still waiting within me. "
Leo - wise advisor from the West
"I had propped my head in my hand, leaned over the table to him, I smiled at him, still freshly surprised that a stranger had moved into a long empty room in my soul within three days."
Leo is an old Jew who fled Vienna to New York after Hitler came to power. The first-person narrator first met him around the turn of the millennium during a visit to America at the World Trade Center: “Leo had stepped from behind me, after a while we turned our faces to each other at the same time. I met the eye that looked over the city and was about to turn back in that direction when he held me tight with the other. "Leo," who lives among blacks, "follows the first-person narrator in a retrospective episode Harlem into a theater. Shortly before, the protagonist's rucksack was stolen while they were in a café, just at the moment when Leo was “hugging” her life. While the first-person narrator doesn't know what to do next and bursts into tears, Leo is already on the phone with various authorities to report the most important documents as stolen. How exactly the intimate relationship arose in this short time remains largely open. Likewise, whether there have been further meetings or whether contact has only been maintained via telephone calls since then. In a certain way, Leo takes on the father figure among love people. He is the only one who the protagonist can put up with nicknames. She can call him at any time and ask for advice. Leo is the first point of contact after the "how next". Leo advises her to "[...] any action, as if you were throwing the dice", which should make her curious again.
Toma - restless nomad from the east
"Toma only laughs when she hears from the west"
Toma is a former Soviet pen friend who is mentioned in The High Flyer. The first meeting took place on a small airfield in the Urals. Similar to Leo, the narrator reports on the first eye contact: “I was met by a look from black Tatar eyes. Mockingly expectant as to whether I am up to the unusual, step by step presentation, this immediate future. ”Unlike Leo, who has a calming effect on the protagonist, Toma is described as restless, almost disturbing. "Nothing would change the situation so much as if Toma stood in the door now." In GDR times - "[...] when the west was still east." - Toma and the narrator visited each other four times while Toma was away only made the journey to the west once. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Toma is the first travel destination “to see what happens next.” The restless impression that Toma makes on the reader is also reflected in spatial terms. She is described as a nomad. “Of my three lovers, she is the one who has moved furthest away from me.” On her way to the east - “against the westward migration currents” - she finally “arrived” in Siberia. Toma, who tends to be “blind carpe diem”, symbolizes wanderlust, the departure into an uncertain future. While Leo takes on a resting pole function, Toma stands for change.
Roman - quiet sleeping companion
“My sweet sleeping companion doesn't know anything. He dreams his way through his night epic, a manly world, he strikes his way through behind shimmering lids. "Roman is the love person who shares apartment and life with the narrator. In the framework story, he lies in bed next to her and dreams of hero battles. Even when he is awake he is described as a silent dreamer who participates more passively in what is happening. Since he's a late riser, the protagonist has two hours to think about it on weekends.
The first meeting of the two takes place in a crowd during a Monday demonstration. The first eye contact is described here as follows: “We changed a look that didn't need a second.” While Roman was initially very actively involved in the protest movement, in the course of the turbulent events he stopped speaking for months and withdrew withdrawn himself. He seems to give the protagonist support in coping with her own disorientation in the course of the upheaval: “Roman had stopped speaking and I got to know him. Everything urged forward, he paused. "
In retrospect, the narrator describes an encounter with another novel in a short episode. At the age of seven she was carried across a river by him. She remembers her rival for him and already speaks of love. It remains to be seen whether the identity of the names is just a coincidence, or whether the name Roman is to be understood as a concept for the ideal lover. So elsewhere in the story the following is said: "[...] and whenever I came across a novel, we exchanged a look, my mother and I." In her review of the story, Verena Auffermann even asked whether the The narrator may even be lying in bed next to a novel that has become flesh based on the generic name.
family
mother
"Attention! My mother warned that it could go on completely wrong! That has gone completely wrong before, and then it always takes half a human life. Just because it went away with some. "
The mother of the protagonist appears in retrospect in the role of a counselor. So she advised the narrator early on to have several lovers in life in order not to overwhelm the individual. She also had a piece of advice for relationships: “Know what a man can give you so that you can get it in affordable doses. Only open clearly outlined sections of your longing to him, give them a concrete form that he can grasp. Keep the true extent of your expectations a secret. It is beyond his possibilities. ”While some of the almost worldly advice is formulated fairly clearly, the meaning of others remains unclear for the narrator and occupies her even years later. The protagonist describes the mother as a realistic, in places somewhat conservative person, for example when she warns her daughter about the changes in the course of the peaceful revolution (see opening quote) or, looking back, is amazed at how quickly societies are aging. Nevertheless, it is emphasized elsewhere that the narrator's mother always gave the narrator the necessary freedom to develop.
grandmother
“And only recently she dreamed that she had walked the route from Alberoda […] and then to Oberschlema in a light blue silk dress and light blue silk-covered shoes, on a night when it had snowed very quietly and all the snowflakes were on her melted, it was so hot in the middle of winter 1914. "
The fun-loving grandmother is reported in two episodes. First of all, the narrator, who remembers her childhood, reports on a dance evening in the Ore Mountains, during which, with glowing cheeks from the last dance, she was already weighing the next options and deciding to move on to the next place. On another occasion, the protagonist describes how the spirited grandmother quickly redecorated the bedroom, which she accidentally burned down shortly before trying to melt the ice in the refrigerator with a candle.
grandfather
"My grandfather never wanted to go far."
Spread across the story, the narrator remembers her grandfather several times. For example, how he stands in the shed and chops wood with one arm, even though the woodshed was already full. He had lost his arm in a motorcycle accident before the war. The protagonist keeps chopping wood before the inner eye in search of how to continue. In addition, the grandfather had the habit of reading five novels from the library every week. A quality that the narrator later acquires herself. The impression is given that the grandfather was the counterpart to the fun-loving grandmother. He seems silent, almost stoic. Looking back, the narrator notices that her grandparents are probably only connected by being alone.
Animals
Kastanorka
"Her heavy legs let me suspect that she is descended from the elephant: in terms of evolution, she is an elephant who wants to live with me and has understood that it has to fit into a small box for that."
Kastanorka is a turtle that only eats ribwort. She is not described as a pet, but as a companion for whom the narrator feels love. As with her lovers, the protagonist reports in detail about her first encounter with Kastanorka, which took place before she met her “first novel”, i.e. before she was seven years old. In doing so, she discovers that she and Kastanorka are of the same age.
Popolo
“One day the cat Popolo disappeared. Not at the end of the night, which would have broken my heart, but at the end of the day, what overwhelmed my mind. I couldn't think any further. "
Popolo is a hangover and lives with the narrator and novel. "He was a deep rust-red color and he could rival Roman for self-forgotten tenderness." After moving into the new apartment, Popolo fought incessantly with tricks to attract the narrator's attention to distract her from the new competition from the zoo animals. One day, however, the hangover disappears and asks the protagonist the question of why: “Did he also want to find out who he was and where he had gotten to, about which his everyday life with a pair of lovers couldn't give him understandable information? Was that why he was looking for a magical act in order to understand? ”After several years Popolo reappears. He is old, wild and wounded. After the tomcat recovers after being well cared for and a festival is celebrated to mark its return, its condition worsens again after a short time. Shortly afterwards the cat dies. In its last days, Popolo is anthropomorphized similarly to Kastanorka. Shortly before his death, he looked "[...] thinking outside, like someone who looks out the window a bit in the afternoon [...]", moving "[...] never purposefully [...]" and "[...] telephoned with Africa. "
Motifs
How on
"How next? I whisper pleadingly into the receiver. "
How next is both the title and the leitmotif of the story. The first-person narrator wakes up in her bed on a Sunday morning and finds herself in a state of limbo, a disorientation from which she does not know how to free herself. First, she seeks help from her loved ones. Roman doesn't want to wake her because he "[...] doesn't know anything [...]". So her first point of contact is Leo, from whom she gets the advice: "Do something, any small action as if you were throwing the dice." At first, his answer does not seem to be enough for her and Toma is only sporadic on her journey further and further east to reach. Then you follow the protagonist on a journey of thought into her own past and repeatedly encounter the question of what to do next from different perspectives. In addition to the uncertainty regarding the personal future of the first-person narrator, and whether "[and] how far" she may have lost, it is also about the physical distance to her loved ones.
The how does not only take on the most diverse semantic functions in the text, but also structures the entire narrative: “As a refrain-like Movens, which is also explored in its etymological and semantic range and diversity, the question of how next scenes, episodes opens up , Conversations, reflections, [...] interweaves it [the text] into a close-meshed texture, gives it rhythm (reinforced by the alliteration), makes it pulsate and shows the narration itself as a creative and responsive execution of what is asked. ”As a novel in the end wakes up, Leo's advice seems to be right, contrary to the narrator's initial doubts: “I let all my fingers slide between his. Something has moved. "
Animals and zoo
“Dragonflies are beautiful when they pause briefly and questioningly in the air. Whatever is bigger worries in this state, everything big alarms. "
Animals, the zoo and their visitors are recurring motifs in Angela Krauss's works. Also in Wie weiter, in which the first-person narrator lives across from a zoo, the zoo is a recurring motif. The protagonist describes, for example, how the zoo visitors “[...] begin to sense why they came. How they stand there without a word, without really listening to the children's questions, in an unforeseen way alone. While your counterpart, by sniffing the grass, [...] is doing something essential. […] I can see it in the zoo visitors: that they are reminded of it and do not know what to do next. ”While the zoo animals, unlike their viewers, awaken the hope of knowing further, the narrator states later in the story that they are following Long observation: “With all their traces of intelligence they also keep their helplessness a secret.” Only “[i] n freedom you would know!” calls the protagonist elsewhere over the window to the zoo. At the same time, she refers to a certain longing for the vastness of Africa, which is referred to on several occasions in the story, not least as Popolo on the phone to Africa shortly before his death or she unequivocally identifies Kastanorka as a relative of the elephants.
The turn
“The latest past is when history suddenly moved on, and I saw it. I did not expect that. I would not have thought that world history was important enough to allow me to experience a change of epoch at close range. Right in the middle of my life. Until then everything had continued as usual. "
Already in Kissed Away, but particularly impressively shown in Die Überfliegerin, in which the upheaval in the life of the protagonist is illustrated by the renovation of the apartment, which is more like a demolition, the turning point and the subsequent disorientation are central Theme in the works of Angela Krauss. How next is far less about the narrator's experiences than about those of her fellow human beings. In doing so, the protagonist seems to deliberately put aside the confrontation with her personal changes. The focus is on changing the old apartment building and its residents. The reader learns of Mrs. Breiner, who briefly did not know what to do when she lost her job; from Ms. Anschmid, who continued to be careful to comply with the weekly house cleaning duties; of the mother's cautious misgivings and of Roman, who had withdrawn from the front row and stopped speaking. As if to take stock, the narrator's excursion into the time of the fall ends with the departure of the neighbors and the last few days of Ms. Anschmid: “First the doctors' families had moved out of the house, then the furrier family, and one day Ms. Anschmid felt weak, as if paralyzed . "
That you
“And only you, who have the foresight, also know this: Every sight lures you into a different life in which the onlookers are easily lost.” In How further, the you appears as an omniscient figure with whom the narrator is in a communicative relationship : “You who know everything! If not, I'll summarize again: Here I am [...] ”.
The narrative begins and ends with the direct invocation of you and runs through it monologically. The omniscient is gradually provided with more and more attributes of perfection. The narrator speaks of him, among other things, as the "hidden", "incomprehensible" and "limitless". You seem to be a divine figure, to whom the narrator appears quite self-confident, consciously positioning herself at the beginning and the end: "Here I am [...]". Elsewhere, the invocations even seem slightly ironic.
The Mikado game
“I start Sundays with a pile of mikado sticks on my bed. What was once a game, the practice of delicacy to maintain balance, today it is an act of evocation. "
“The Kaiserspiel on the duvet […]” serves as the central metaphor in How further and can also be found on the cover of the Suhrkamp issue. It most likely describes the limbo in which the first-person narrator finds himself. Your personal standstill in a constantly changing environment serves as the starting point for the question of how to continue. Leo, meanwhile, is certain that the breakout from the limbo “happens very easily, almost by itself […]”. However, the protagonist should not rely on a solution from outside, because "[if] it stalls, it is you every time".
shape
genus
The prose text How next is difficult to assign to a literary genre. It is reminiscent of diary entries and combines features of different forms of novels, but also has novelistic and sometimes even essayistic features. The author herself deliberately leaves the question of genre open. In almost all of Angela Krauss's prose works, there is no indication of the genre. Only the high-flyer is clearly titled as a story.
construction
The narrative can be roughly classified into a framework plot, the time after the first-person narrator wakes up at the beginning and the novel wakes up at the end, and into an internal plot, the memories and feelings of the protagonist. However, the transition between the framework and the internal plot is fluid and is always dissolved, especially at the beginning of the narrative. A clear division into chapters has not been made, but individual trains of thought are optically separated from each other by capital letters in the print edition. These do not follow any stringent action and could also be exchanged with one another.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 7 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Pottbeckers, Jörg: Why do we look at animals? About the animal voyeurism in Angela Krauss' later prose. In: Gees, Marion u. a. Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann GmbH 104-117
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 24 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 57 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. pp. 99f ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 20 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 100 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 10 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 30 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 20 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 10 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 30 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 32 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 11 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Chiarloni, Anna: Absolute Reality. To Angela Krauss' Die Überfliegerin In: Gees, Marion u. a. Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann GmbH 129-138
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 9 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 32 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 45 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 61 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Review by Verena Auffermann. Southgerman newspaper. Meeting on November 6, 2006 [1]
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 39 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 18 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 55 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 51 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 15 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 105 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 44 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 105 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 114 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 115 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 10 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 9 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 10 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 15 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Malinowski, Bernadette: "pausing questioningly": forms and functions of poetic-literary questioning. In: In: Gees, Marion u. a. Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann GmbH 63-79
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 117 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 8 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Pottbeckers, Jörg: Why do we look at animals? About the animal voyeurism in Angela Krauss' later prose. In: Gees, Marion u. a. Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann GmbH 104-117
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 17 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 91 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 8 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 24f ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 49 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 57 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 7 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 27 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 17 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 82 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Malinowski, Bernadette: "pausing questioningly": forms and functions of poetic-literary questioning . In: In: Gees, Marion u. a. Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann GmbH 63-79
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 23 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 7 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. p. 10 ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Angela Krauss: How to continue (1st edition). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006. pp. 67f ISBN 3-518-41824-6
- ↑ Emmerich, Wolfgang: Angela Krauss' storytelling as the art of mimesis. In: Gees, Marion u. a. Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann GmbH 4-19