Short announcement: The Sektkübel of self-irony are empty, bohemians have buried ir wild life under Swedish roll-out furniture, even last filthy bank on water is from Konzernenalimentiert and coffee is also not as good as all anderenunentwegt Claim. As far as latest news from Berlin. And because of all this or similar, one can already get angry, like I-Narrator in book of author Leander Stein, which bears biting ironic title City of fairies and desires. For this is nothing left of desires, that fairies of once became merely agitated members of “cool caliphate” of today, this becomes clear after just a few lines of this narrow narrative. In it we meet dreamy reveries of Lonely Walker, who runs three days through capital city. Flaneursprosa in mode of missing display. Presentation and reality of Berlin: Last pistol Duel in summer heat.
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The city appears here as a desillusionierungs machine in which people garrulous around houses. The narrator himself often walks with his head bowed down, facing ground, on which he believes his own ailment to be seen: “I look at sidewalk with envy (…) For each stone re is a place and a structure, suitable, close and stop. ” If you have already envied Berlin sidewalks around your existence undSosein, some things must have happened.
SteinkopfsFlaneur has a notoriously clear-MelancholischenEigendünkel. He shares this with Rilke’s Malte Laurids Brigge and figures of Haruki Murakami, which are unbroken in Tokyo itself. He may also have love grief, re is a Hanna, re are a Judith, and with both it does not want to work. He spends his empty time on roofs with Bundeswehr types, moves at a dissident pace through bustle of Gelderwebsgesellschaft and, in doing so, directs his nostalgic approach to a silently departed world, in which between Houses and streets still hung a liberation spell.
The hatred of Flaneur
Stein’s narrative possesses a constantly disappointed search movement after true, after last vibrations of one great promise that this city could have given once. Now, pregnant women are blocking prospect of happiness, and suitcases of tourists drown out ir own romantic destiny melody, which has been getting quieter for a long time.
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The Wanderer’s hatred is denKinderwägen on streets, Bobo parents, burnout Visages, standing reception faces, “delicatessen rubbish”, people who are “somehow also a journalist”, waitresses in cupcake cafes and Americans who Cafésführen. He applies to committed students who are in vain against Irgendwasandemonstrieren and neglected “underclass barn”, he giltRadfahrern and ir “besserwisserischen ringing”, which verpestenmit ir environment “ir exemplary”. It is Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain, World Clock, Biozausel from Kreuzbergund hipsters in Neukölln, stone head narrator and condensed to his personal verbitterungs landscape. And yes, it is certain that sometimes some of it is really bad, and some of it is already lurking and blurring beschriebenworden than of Leander Stein’s. But also much better. But above all a hundred fold.
It Vergehtkaum a day when not someone for a city magazine or for Einedieser professionally scratched youth websites runs through Berlin quarter and returns triumphantly with realization that individuality lately only interchangeable lifestyles and humoured alienation, or OhneIndividualität individuals. As such, Botho Strauss has again and again demonstrated people of late modernity. But already in Eighties.
We are in a very strained genre. Once in a while, stone is quite imaginative fun stuff, but book too often falls into Sentenziöse: “You have to waste time to learn what Siewert is.” Or, “If I stayed here, I would miss longing.” And if it says “(…) Because world will not change, you have to adapt yourself, keep soul with braces above, that you do not lose it, “you would like to know at what height literary strollers your soul.
It is hard to say wher this is “anti-Berlin-book”, as some critics have obviously desired, or not an indirect declaration of love for all unredeemed conjunctive in which a city exists so around. Most of time, stone head Flaneur remains voluntary prisoner of his EigenenLarmoyanz.
Leander Stein: City of Fairies and desires. Hanser Berlin, Berlin 2018, 112 pp., €16.
