The festival Literaturem will take place in Frankfurt am Main in June. It is under motto biography. The aspect of biographical, car fiction, has in recent times experienced in literature a revival that was not possible 20 years ago; Consider writing project of Karl Ove Knausgård or, a number smaller, on bypass cycle of Auer Andreas Maier. The Frankfurter Kultur Dezernentin Ina Hartwig, until a few years ago herself one of most important literary critics of country, formulated difficulties that her own generation, with post-demographics grown up with biographical writing and interpretation approach: “We were immune to great heroic stories.”
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One of most traditional institutions in cultural life of city of Frankfurt is Poetikvorlesung at Goe-Universität. Since Ingeborg Bachmann (about who, by chance, Ina Hartwig recently published a biography) in year 1959 held first Frankfurter Poetikvorlesung, this has become a meeting place of grizzled educational citizens and students. The approach that an author speaks publicly about one’s own writing and, quasi naturally, from moment of performance, puts it in a relationship with her or his biography, so for years, if not decades, has been of has been categorized as untimely. The author is dead, Long live text. A self-contradiction, refore, is a writer celebrating an unscientific ritual in a place of science – namely to put his own work in context of one’s own life.
Then at some point last autumn it became known that Christian crashes in summer semester 2018 would hold Poetikvorlesung. Some thought this was a good joke: probably most elusive of all German-speaking contemporary authors, car fiction as unsuspicious as anyone else; The style and fabric chameleon, which in its literal Unbeschreibbarkeit with terms like “snob”, “dandy” or equal, for simplicity, was “fascist”, should speak publicly about its writing and its aestic foundations? That shy man who has always refused to contact public during his rare public appearances? It was speculated: he certainly won’t come. Or: He comes, introduces himself to almost 1,500 listeners and silently smiling.
A classic sensation
And what happened? Cracks came, wrapped in a cliché, dark green Barbourjacke, and he spoke in a way that surprised all those who were in Audimax of Goe-Uni: Quietly, forcefully, faltering and – apparently – in an openness, as not only he, but also hardly a Writer at all before him at this point she has dared so far. About humiliations he suffered as a twelve-year-old at a Canadian elite boarding school. About abuse he and about 30 or classmates have suffered through chaplain of boarding school, a man named Keith Gleed. About his mor’s suicide attempt (in second lecture). And, in third and final lecture on evening of 22nd corn, about his relationship to religion.
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A classic autobiographical text that crashes repeatedly and explicitly in relation to his novels. Basically, and this is real sensation, re has long been no more classic and conventional Poetikvorlesung than that of Christian cracks. And that is almost anor reason for vigilance. Everything that is too serious, he said in second lecture, is ripe for parody. This also applies to Poetikvorlesung itself.
The way that cracks offered his listeners; The direct connection line of traumatic experience and work of art, is as tempting as deceptive. Also in third lecture, which seemed fragmentary, sentenzenhaft and calculated erratic, came crashing again to speak to ominous chaplain Keith Gleed, to read directly afterwards a long passage from his 2016 published novel The Dead. Previously, however, had spoken about Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette film from year 2006, in which in a camera setting, which shows historically stocked legs, suddenly a pair of Converse sneakers can be seen.
From biographical back to literature
The level of reality in which we find ourselves remains unambiguous even in event of a crash. The first, natural and empathic reaction to actual disclosure of his abuse experience in content and form: Christian crashes behind this narrative. She must and will determine his work and his reception in future, precisely because he himself has so decidedly laid this track.
But is that true? Crashing decided his Poetikvorlesung with a series of poems of 1997 deceased Allen Ginsberg. For his sake, so crashing, and for Maine and California, he lives in USA Today. His lecture was entitled Emigration. It seems that long recitation at end was a signal for leading biographical back into literary; into an area where realities are blurred and re are no clear truths.
Perhaps Christian Crackts was Poetikvorlesung, as paradoxical as it may sound, actually a masterpiece: his self and his work towards supposedly ruthless revelation gives his readers only superficially considered more clarity to him himself But space to remain as a writer free.
