From the Feuilletons is a weekly overview of what's been happening in the German-language cultural pages and appears every Friday at 3 pm. CET.. Here a key to the German newspapers.
Frankfurter Rundschau 17.10.2009
Contemporary German literature has finally shed it "doubts about language", Ina Hartwig writes approvingly, and it's thriving. "The Germans suddenly seem to have rediscovered their need to tell stories. About the provinces, illness, the flow of commodities, fetishism, cars and cities and, of course, love. The books are getting thicker and thicker. There seems to be a need to make up for lost time. Even West Germany which, like the GDR, ceased to exist with the fall of the Wall, is the subject of literary probing - and not only by the cool brigade, but also by romantics and critics, who are well positioned to describes the new harshnesses. And to describe it them without provoking ideological paroxysms. We might be in the midst of a book industry crisis us but you could not say the same of literature itself."
Frankfurter Rundschau 19.10.2009
The Frankfurt Book Fair has ended as it began: with scandal. Having been invited to speak at the closing ceremony, which was jointly organised by the Book Fair and the Federal Foreign Office, the Chinese environmental activist and dissident Dai Qing was prevented from doing so, as Natalie Soondrum reports. Peter Ripken, the Book Fair's project manager, announced the cancellation just a quarter of an hour before the event was due to begin. "When Qing asked why she was not allowed to talk, Ripken informed her that it was the wish of the Federal Foreign Office, and that he was in complete agreement with the decision. The translator Shi Ming said, 'His argument changed. At one stage he said that he had never been in favour of Dai Qing speaking. Later he said that the Foreign Office did not want her to talk.'"
The Book Fair closed on Sunday and on Monday, it was promptly announced that the 67-year-old Peter Ripken had been fired (more here).
Die Welt 20.10.2009
Van Gogh's "Shoes" may be of "little importance to the history of art", writes Uta Baier, but they have provoked much philosophical musing over the years. The battered old boots are now the subject of a small exhibition in Cologne's Wallraf-Richartz Museum. Heidegger saw the shoes as a negative cast of a peasant woman's life; the art historian Meyer Shapiro saw a self-portrait, and then came Derrida's "Verite en peinture": "Derrida expressed doubt that this was even a pair of shoes at all. And he was right, because these are two left shoes. The observation opens up entirely new interpretations, including the Freudian one, which Derrida contemplates with relish. In this new light, one shoe could be male and the other female. At any rate, Derrida puts paid to the notion of art as a mirror of reality. 'These shoes are an allegory of painting itself.'"
From the Feuilletons
23/10/2009
From the Feuilletons
Frankfurter Rundschau 17.10.2009
Contemporary German literature has finally shed it "doubts about language", Ina Hartwig writes approvingly, and it's thriving. "The Germans suddenly seem to have rediscovered their need to tell stories. About the provinces, illness, the flow of commodities, fetishism, cars and cities and, of course, love. The books are getting thicker and thicker. There seems to be a need to make up for lost time. Even West Germany which, like the GDR, ceased to exist with the fall of the Wall, is the subject of literary probing - and not only by the cool brigade, but also by romantics and critics, who are well positioned to describes the new harshnesses. And to describe it them without provoking ideological paroxysms. We might be in the midst of a book industry crisis us but you could not say the same of literature itself."
Frankfurter Rundschau 19.10.2009
The Frankfurt Book Fair has ended as it began: with scandal. Having been invited to speak at the closing ceremony, which was jointly organised by the Book Fair and the Federal Foreign Office, the Chinese environmental activist and dissident Dai Qing was prevented from doing so, as Natalie Soondrum reports. Peter Ripken, the Book Fair's project manager, announced the cancellation just a quarter of an hour before the event was due to begin. "When Qing asked why she was not allowed to talk, Ripken informed her that it was the wish of the Federal Foreign Office, and that he was in complete agreement with the decision. The translator Shi Ming said, 'His argument changed. At one stage he said that he had never been in favour of Dai Qing speaking. Later he said that the Foreign Office did not want her to talk.'"
The Book Fair closed on Sunday and on Monday, it was promptly announced that the 67-year-old Peter Ripken had been fired (more here).
Die Welt 20.10.2009
Van Gogh's "Shoes" may be of "little importance to the history of art", writes Uta Baier, but they have provoked much philosophical musing over the years. The battered old boots are now the subject of a small exhibition in Cologne's Wallraf-Richartz Museum. Heidegger saw the shoes as a negative cast of a peasant woman's life; the art historian Meyer Shapiro saw a self-portrait, and then came Derrida's "Verite en peinture": "Derrida expressed doubt that this was even a pair of shoes at all. And he was right, because these are two left shoes. The observation opens up entirely new interpretations, including the Freudian one, which Derrida contemplates with relish. In this new light, one shoe could be male and the other female. At any rate, Derrida puts paid to the notion of art as a mirror of reality. 'These shoes are an allegory of painting itself.'"