Roman gleicht einer nicht ganz so sanften Umarmung, Es ist nicht mein Buch gewesen, obwohl vielerlei kluge Gedanken wie poetische Bilder durchaus darin zu finden waren, die ich ganz gern in mich einsog oder gar unterstrich.
Insgesamt jedoch nervte mich das Geplänkel zwischen Lydia und dem IchErzähler, was mit dem achttägigen Auftritt Karlchens unerträglich wurde.
Es war eher die Nebenhandlung um Ada, die mich zum Weiterlesen ermunterte und mich gleichzeitig nicht wirklich überzeugte, Für mich ist dieser Roman einfach nicht rund, Hier und da hat er seine guten Momente und vielversprechende Ansätze, die sich leider in irgendeinem nervigen Palaver wieder verlieren.
“But in, two years before members of the Hitler Youth hurled his books onto a bonfire, and four years before overdosing on sleeping pills, Tucholsky wrote a love story as light as a summer breeze.
Not much happens in CASTLE GRIPSHOLM, which New York Books has just reissued in a sympathetic translation by Michael Hofmann, though there is enough witty banter, fresh air and sex to propel the story along.
The lingering power of this deceptively slight novel comes from the shiver of foreboding that courses through it, ”
review by Corinna de FonsecaWollheim
sitelink nytimes. combo
Plus some interesting language stuff having to do with a dialect of German,
Sounds like my kind of beach read, . . Die Sprache Tucholsky's ist ganz wunderbar und sollte man kennen, Leider ist das Buch hoffnungslos sexistisch insbesondere gegen Ende ist mir ein Satz ganz besonders bitter aufgestossen, daher die schlechte Bewertung.
I doubt that I'll manage to write a proper full review, so let's me try to sum it up really quickly: such a wonderwonderwonderfull book! So much love, so much friendship "Freundschaft, das ist wie Heimat.
" "Friendship, this is like home, ", such wonderful characters, such a perfect, light language I guess it makes this book not translatable, sadly, such an incredibly light, happy tone.
Light, but not shallow. Oh, not shallow at all, And some incredible surprises for a book written in the, Bazı şeyler vardır hani, apansız karşımıza çıkınca “tanıdık ve sevilen” haliyle yüzümüzü gülümseten, işte onlar gibi yazılmış bir kitap! Sokakta yürürken burnumuzu dolduran sevdiğimiz yemeğin kokusundan, ilk yazın bizi kucaklayan tatlı sıcaklığından,bembeyaz uzanan karın sessizliğinden , renginin güzelliği yetmezmiş gibi kokladığınızda sizi yormayan bir çiçeğin mis gibi kokusundan, kulağımıza çalınan sesin uzaktaki tatlı ezgisinden bahsediyorum.
Yazarın hayatını okuyunca hissettiklerim, aynı yolun yolcusu olduğumuz hissi,
Şatonun yakınındaki bir meşenin gölgesinde uyuyormuş Kurt Tucholsky, uyusun huzur içinde uyusun, A short, fast paced, allegorical fable that describes how a harmless and laid back summer holiday beside a medieval castle turns out awry with a full on encounter with power and oppression seeking to engulf the innocent lives of little children in mental torture and abuse the novella becomes an eternal parable of abusive authority and terror that swept through turnofthe century Europe and is a haunting allegory of the horrors of despotic authority.
Ennek a könyvnek az a szerencséje, hogy az öregapjának szólított, Tucholsky egy fiktív levélváltással indít kiadója, a legendás Rowohlt és saját maga között, amiben az öreg Ernst arra kéri szerzőjét, hogy legyen szíves valami könnyű nyári szösszenetet összedobni, mert azt veszik a népek.
Aztán úgy fest, ez a párbeszéd nem is fiktív, mert mintha Tucholsky valóban olyan könnyű nyári szösszenetet dobna össze, amilyet venni szoktak a népek: kedélyes atmoszféraregényt egy svédországi nyaralásról, romantikával, meg minden.
Amolyan ujjgyakorlat egy kiváló képességű írótól kicsit eklektikus, és helyenként meglepően buja.
Aztán némi testidegen anyagként beúszik a képbe egy kislány, akit ki kell menteni gonosz felvigyázónője karmai közül, és itt mintha kicsit a giccsbe hajlanának a dolgok.
Ugyanakkor mégis azt mondom, kell ez a kislány, mert, nélküle aztán tényleg, de tényleg nulla felé konvergálna az, amit parasztosan cselekménynek szoktunk nevezni.
ez a szál szolgáltatja a mélyebb tanulságot is, nevezetesen: hogy ha az ember rosszat lát maga körül, akkor nem maradhat passzív, még akkor sem, ha úgymond semmi köze az egészhez”.
A gondok aztán megoldódnak, a nyár véget ér, hőseink pedig belehajóznak a lemenő napba Ami nyálas egy dolog, de most speciel jól esett.
A másik szerencséje, hogy Engel Tevan István illusztrálta, Megkapóan. Amiről nekem megint eszembe jut, mennyire hiányoznak a minőségi kísérőképek a mai szépirodalomból.
Meg az is, hogy nem először tapasztalom: ami az írott szövegbe a kor cenzori hozzáállása folytán nem fér bele, az egy illusztrációban simán elcsúszik.
Vajon miért És itt most egész konkrétan a női nemi szőrzetre gondolok, Mármint célzok. Vagy mi.
A könyv cselekménye aévekben játszódik, valamikor Hitler hatalomra jutása után, de még az Anschluss előtt.
Ettől függetlenül magáról a nevezetes degeneráltról meg az egész rezsimjéről csak egyetlen esetben történik említés: a Svédországba tartó kompon utalnak rá a szomszéd asztalnál ülők.
Ugyanakkor nem tűnik nagy bátorságnak kijelenteni, hogy Adrianiné, a rábízott gyerekeket embertelen presszúra alatt tartó szörnyeteg tulajdonképpen a fasiszta állam analógiája, akinek a helyére oda kell képzelni a náci tisztségviselőket esetleg magát a szánalmas főnyomoroncot, a neveltek helyére pedig a megalázottan kussoló néptömegeket.
Schloß Gripsholm got in early in my effort to catch up with German literature due to being highly lauded as well as being short.
It's one of two notable novellas by Tucholsky who mostly got his reputation as a leftwing critical journalist in the Weimar Republic.
Tucholsky himself is the firstperson narrator, He spends a few weeks on castle Gripsholm in Sweden with his 'princess' Lydia, Sequentially, a friend of his and Billie, a friend of hers, visit, It's a book about relationships and attraction, It's obviously a 'male' book as only one of the two visits ends in a threesome, Guess, which one. Tucholsky is inspired here by his own experiences from a real life retreat a few years earlier with his relation.
As far as this part of the story is concerned, it's a leisurely read, Tucholsky gives witty insights into men and women, German language at its best and certain to lose in any translation: "Wir lagen auf der Wiese und baumelten mit der Seele.
". It's an inspiration when looking for the lightness of being,
Alas, there's more to life and there's a dark side to Schloß Gripsholm, Across the lake, a German governess operates a children's home with rigor, The way she treats her wards is totalitarian, Especially one small girl is singled out as target for her wrath, Luckily, Tucholsky and Lydia come across her and succeed in freeing her, Across the lake seen from Sweden the lake is the Baltic Sea and the other side is Germany where the Nazis just were beginning their regime.
Tucholsky as a Jew was one of the singled out, In that regard, Gripsholm is important as a very early warning by one of the concerned, It was Tucholsky's last novella, A few years later, he committed suicide as quite a few other writers did who were forced out of Germany.
Real life didn't have the happy end,
Three, a good book when it comes to language and content but the egocentrism damped my enthusiasm as I probably wouldn't have gotten along with Tucholsky in real life.
Kurt Tucholsky was a major figure in the artistic life of the Weimar Republic, He collaborated on a book with John Heartfield, Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles, was a contributor to various literary magazines, and wrote in many different genres.
Castle Gripsholm is a fascinating novel, about a lighthearted vacation in Sweden, taken by two close friends and lovers.
The great translator, Michael Hofmann, has rendered a very readable, entertaining book into English, The plot is rather slight, but becomes more serious as the couple encounters an unpleasant woman who is running a boarding school in this Swedish area.
They feel she has mistreated a young girl in her charge, and they attempt to contact her parents,
It all ends well, and the couple returns to Germany, nonetheless saddened by having to return, The reader can only speculate on the real chaos in Weimar at the time,
I couldn't help but think of Joseph Roth and other German writers as I read this book.
Beklediğimin baya bir üzerinde çıktı, Edebi değeri yüksek bir polisiye olarak değerlendirilebilir, sitelink mytwostotinki. com/p
This is the perfect summer book and that I read it in November makes my longing for the next summer even stronger.
It refutes all prejudices that literature written by German authors has to be serious, heavy, distant, humorless, difficult, and boring.
The narrator who can very easily be taken for the author is off for his summer holidays.
He is an author publishing for Rowohlt, then and now one of the best addresses for writers in Germany and an invented correspondence with Rowohlt who is asking his author to write a light summer story gets the story started.
Our author is traveling by train with his girlfriend called the Princess from Berlin to Sweden, But they have of course a stop in Copenhagen, The following quote gives a good idea of the playful tone of the book:
" We looked at everything: the Tivoli Gardens, the beautiful town hall and the Thorwaldsen Museum, where everything looked as though it was made of plaster.
“Lydia!” I called, “Lydia! I almost forgot, We absolutely have to visit the Polysandrion!”
“The what”
“The Polysandrion! You've got to see it.
Come along. ” It was a long walk, because the little museum was right outside the city,
“What is it” asked the Princess,
“You'll see,” I said, “It's where a couple of Balts built a house for themselves, One of them, Polysander von Kuckers zu Tiesenhausen, imagines he can paint, But he can't. ”
“And we're going all this way just to see that”
“No, not exactly, He can't paint, but he does and he always paints the same thing, his adolescent fantasies: young boys and butterflies.
”
“What's that supposed to mean” asked the Princess,
“Ask him, he'll be there, And if he isn't, then his friend will tell the whole story, Because it has to be told, It's wonderful. ”
“Is it at least improper”
“Would I be taking you if it were, my ravenhaired beauty”
There stood the little villa it was unattractive, and it didn't fit in here at all, either you might have expected to find it somewhere in the south, in Tuscany or somewhere.
We went inside.
The Princess' eyes grew round as saucers, and I beheld the Polysandrion for the second time,
Here a dream had become reality may God protect us from the like! The good Polysander had covered about forty Square kilometers of expensive canvas with paint.
There were the youths, standing and reclining, floating and dancing, It was always the same picture, always the same young men, Pale pink, blue and yellow the youths in the foreground, the perspective at the back,
“Those butterflies!” exclaimed Lydia, and took my hand,
“Shh!” I said, “Not so loud! The cleaning woman is following us round, She'll report everything back to the artist, and we don't want to hurt him, ” But really, those butterflies. They fluttered in the painted air, they had landed on the plump shoulders of the young men, and if until now we had thought that butterflies liked to settle on flowers, this was shown not to be the case.
These butterflies much preferred to perch on the young men's bottoms, It was all highly lyrical,
“Now I ask you ” said the Princess,
“Be quiet!” I said, “His friend!”
The painter's friend appeared, quite an old, pleasantlooking man, He was very respectably dressed, but he had the air of despising the standard grey clothes of our grey century.
And his suit got its own back by making him look like an emeritus ephebe, He murmured an introduction, and began explaining, In front of us was the picture of a young man who stood very upright with sword and butterfly, his right hand raised in salute.
In the most beautiful, lilting Baltic tones, with all the r's rolled, the friend said, “What you have beforre you is an entirrely spirritualized verrsion of militarrism.
” I turned away quite appalled, We saw dancing lads, in sailorsuits with floppy collars, and over their heads hung a little lamp with tassels the kind you have in corridors.
It was a sort of furnished version of the Elysian Fields, A whole Paradise had blossomed here, little bits of which so many of the painter's bosom friends carried around in their souls.
Whether it was through being unjustly persecuted, or whatever it was, when they dreamed, they dreamed in soft sky blue, the pinkest shade of blue, so to speak.
And they indulged in an awful lot of it, On one wall was a photograph of the artist in his Italian phase, dressed only in sandals and a Zulutype spear.
So paunches were all the rage in Capri,
“It takes your breath away!” said the Princess, once we were outside, “They aren't all like that are they”
“No, you shouldn't blame the species for that, That house is just a plush sofa stuck in thes they're not all like that by any means.
That man could just as well have peopled his chocolatebox paintings with little elves and gnomes But imagine what a whole museum would be like, full of those fantasies come true exquisite!”
“But it's so anaemic!” said the Princess.
“Well, it takes all sorts! Let's drink a schnaps to that!” So we did, "
After a few days in Stockholm, the two rent a room in Castle Gripsholm, an old residence near Lake Mälaren today housing the National Portrait Gallery of Sweden.
Sweden with its friendly and polite inhabitants seems just the right place for the two stressed Berliners to enjoy nature, swimming, reading and bantering with each other.
The stories the princess is telling about her boss, an obese soap trader and honorary consul are really funny and so are
many remarks of the narrator.
For a few days, Karlchen, an old friend of the author and a true original, joins them, He and the princess like to communicate in Low German Plattdeutsch, a language also the author likes even more than High German.
After he leaves, the two lovebirds meet Billie, a Swedish girl they both like immediately and who spends the remaining days of the holiday with them and a threesome night too.
But even Sweden is not paradise, Near the Castle is a boarding school for girls mainly from Germany where a Mrs Adriani is governing with a mixture of strict rules that are ruthlessly enforced, daily verbal and physical abuse, and the absolute absence of empathy and understanding for the children.
Mrs Adriani loves only one thing: her absolute power over the frightened children, Especially Ada, a child that the author, the princess and Billie remark on one of their walks, is the favorite victim of this sadistic dictator.
How the small team plots to get Ada out of the hands of this cruel woman is exciting and as a reader I hoped very much for a happy end.
The book was published in, a time of crisis, In Germany the Nazis were on the rise, unemployment and misery too, The story of Mrs Adriani shows one thing: the thirst for power is very strong in many individuals but when you show resistance, their system can collapse.
In a boarding school in Sweden and anywhere else,
Kurt Tucholsky was one of the leading journalists of the Weimar Republic and one of the main contributors of the famous journal Weltbühne, a fighter for democracy, civil rights and press freedom, and against militarism but he was also a poet and a prose writer, whose witty, light and ironic style was unrivaled in German literature.
He diedin his Swedish exile if it was suicide or an accidental overdose of medicine is still not clear and is buried near Castle Gripsholm.
If you are looking for the perfect summer story, I strongly recommend you this book, .
Capture Schloß Gripsholm Published By Kurt Tucholsky Shown As Script
Kurt Tucholsky