(no subject)
So, I turned 21.
That was good. Had a nice birthday, too. I got some neat loot, including underwear, Drakensang and books.
I am here to talk about the books. I could instead talk about how since I last updated this, I started learning French, working out and generally had some amazing experiences, but instead, I'm going to rant about German literature for a while, because I have just finished the best German novel I have ever read.
So, the best German novel I ever read isn't as much of a compliment as you might think. I have, up to now, always been of the opinion that German, unlike English, is a clumsy language unsuited for narrative prose, it's highly artificial origins preventing any dialogue that is not wooden, any description that is not dry. Just watch any German TV show, or read a crime story, and you will know.
Even the best of German prose suffers from this to a degree, and the best of it is the best quite simply because it ceases to be prose, and instead becomes poetry that is not in verses, but regular sentences. Hermann Hesse is probably the most striking example, absolutely unable to stop being a poet even when he is trying to write a novel. The structures and trappings of the novel may all be there, but it doesn't feel like one, it isn't one. It is poetry, broken out of it's mold and poured onto a blank slate, then artistically spread with the brush of a seasoned calligraph.
This doesn't mean that there isn't great German prose, it can be a language of bonmots and apercus and wonderful aphorisms as well. German is wonderfully suited for scathing satire - listening to the likes of Hildebrandt, Schramm and nowadays Priol is a profound pleasure and intense experience, both educational and entertaining. But as soon as you try to tell a story longer than a few pages, you run into problems: No matter how well you choose your words, no matter how witty you are, written German is a different language from spoken German, one is dry, old, artificial and needlessly complicated, the other more of a guttural pidgin, a necessity for fluid communication between the common populace, but boorish and unpleasant to the refined ear, let alone eye. Both are unsuited for scripted dialogue, and anything resembling a full-out description will test the boundaries of the reader's patience - those are probably the second-greatest bane of the German novelist.
I propose that everything I dislike about long narrative prose in German is epitomised by Fontane's Effi Briest, especially it's beginning: Everyone keeps telling you it's a great book, but then again, everyone you know who had to read it - and it's a ubiquitous requirement, regardless of where you go to school - found it horrible to read, tiring, devoid of plot or even the most basic of authorcraft. People hate it with a passion usually reserved for math exams.
It begins with two and a half pages of pure description, detailing with great effort the exact measurements of the garden of the Briest mansion.It is the ultimate example of how a novel should not begin
In short, if you learn German, it is not to read Fontane, or Mann. It isn't even to read Grass, or the infinitely more approachable works of Enzensberger and Walser. No, only in poetry does the German language shed it's clumsiness and it's original purpose shines through. Suddenly, all the complicated, half-organised, half-chaotic grammar makes perfect sense, giving it just the right amount of flexibility to break language apart into poetic form and still retain the original sense, or force it to make some where none should have been.
There is a sublime power to the words of Schiller, who is, by all rights, the German Shakespeare, that simply cannot quite be found anywhere else. He is universally regarded to be the second greatest German poet and playwright.
Heine takes up Hölderlin's magical, beautiful imagery and emboldens it, breathes fiery life into it - raw, unbridled eroticism and horror. Hands down, Heine's love poetry is the Best.
Neither German nor English has an adequate word to quite describe the style of Goethe. Maybe it could be characterised as a playful brilliance, an easy, superior clarity. Schiller's mind broke into the lofty heights of the sublime with a combination of genius and tenacity, and a strong rational affect, the taste of pure applied intellect. Goethe doesn't have that. Goethe just has always been at home in the skies, and doesn't feel the need to reach for the stars - they float to his hand by their own will, without effort. The previous statement about Heine notwithstanding, the probably most intense erotic poem I ever read was one of Goethe's Roman Elegies, where he holds the woman of his passion in his arms and quietly, without realising it, taps the rhythm and metre of a poem on her sleeping body's back as he can't help but turn his feelings into verse.
So German might be a lyrical heavy-hitter, but it lacks the flowing, neverending stream of witty banter, the concept of the pun or even the simple ability to sound cool without becoming a parody of itself that make English such a great language for narrative prose. The English novel quite simply blows the German one out of the water, with the same certainity that the pure power in the ballads of Weimar Classicism cannot be replicated or matched in English. That was a fact. Up to now.
Walter Moers is actually widely known as a cartoonist, doing famous children's cartoons and some not suited for children as well. Also, he apparently writes books. Awesome books. Or rather, he "translates" them from the Zamonian, specifically the massive work of Hildegunst von Mythenmetz, a wandering wyrm, all of which are authors in Zamonia. The concept of a fantasy world so absurdly original that it always scratches, but never quite crosses the border of self-parody isn't new, but well-executed enough to bear distinct resemblance to the Discworld, except not. Moers' world is one of it's own right and making, more like a fairy tale, and I mean the original Grimm ones too - darker, more visceral, bloody and at times freaking scary, but then again, also hilariously strange.
Emperor Slendro Pelogg the Ordered had such a horrible taste in court music that he was killed by a riot of musicians stabbing him down with tuning forks.
Under the city of Buchhaim, the city of books, there are catacombs full of things best forgotten, only inhabited by monsters and frequented by heavily armed mercenaries fighting veritable wars over the most sought after and rare books. By necessity, all of them are cannibals.
Witches always stand between birches.
Moers' mastery of the German language is amazing, but even more amazing is the way he manages to blend it into something larger, more imposing: Where the descriptions fail, he openly acknowledges that, and draws instead. It's a pretty crude style, far from his best, but it befits the things portrayed, and the simple illustrations never take too much of the freedom away, they leave you room for and stimulate your imagination instead of confining it. Dialogue is stylised, refined through the literary agent and Moers' own "translation" of Mythmason's speech, including footnotes and anecdata. All in all, a pretty clever device to break through the inevitable pathos written German dialogue always degenerates into.
Somewhere along the line, Moers finds himself at a loss for words, and instead simply invents new ones - not just the making up of fancy names and places, but actual words, most of which you would not be at all surprised to find in the Duden, the golden standard of German dictionaries. A lot of these "invented" words are even real, or have been at some point, having been skillfully pulled out of their obscurity and applied at fitting points.
In a book about books and worlds of them under the world complete with bizarre book-centric creatures and a shadowy overlord type of entity guarding them, a theme similar to (and in places almost suspiciously reminding of) Hohlbein's Das Buch, but infinitely more adult, more sophisticated, more evolved in it's execution, one of the most amazing thing is the visual use of language: Circular language that forms actual circles, a black page with one white sentence on it as the protagonist falls unconscious, a plethora of different fonts and sizes in a cave full of desperate, trapped echoes that will repeat their dying screams for eternity, visualising the madness that takes ahold of both protagonist and reader.
Perhaps most strikingly, the double page that just says, in a miniscule font, over and over again, YOU HAVE JUST BEEN POISONED.
I haven't been amazed and entertained like this in a long time. It has reminded me of why and how much exactly I love books, and love reading. The City of Dreaming Books has unearthed my pleasure in reading, because as Moers even notes in his book, all people who have to read a lot on a professional basis eventually become bitter and somewhat fed up about it, and it loses it's joy.
Before I read this book again, or any of the other books Moers has written about Zamonia - I know not how many, or if there is a sequel, but at this point, I am dying to find out - I will let this rediscovery guide me back to my favourites. I think I am going to take a volume of Schiller and just read through it and enjoy the language, the sound, the feel. I am not even going to pay attention to the contents, resist the philosopher's urge to dissect and analyse. I am just going to read, and enjoy it.
So, saying it was a satisfying read would be quite an understatement. And now I have to sleep.
That was good. Had a nice birthday, too. I got some neat loot, including underwear, Drakensang and books.
I am here to talk about the books. I could instead talk about how since I last updated this, I started learning French, working out and generally had some amazing experiences, but instead, I'm going to rant about German literature for a while, because I have just finished the best German novel I have ever read.
So, the best German novel I ever read isn't as much of a compliment as you might think. I have, up to now, always been of the opinion that German, unlike English, is a clumsy language unsuited for narrative prose, it's highly artificial origins preventing any dialogue that is not wooden, any description that is not dry. Just watch any German TV show, or read a crime story, and you will know.
Even the best of German prose suffers from this to a degree, and the best of it is the best quite simply because it ceases to be prose, and instead becomes poetry that is not in verses, but regular sentences. Hermann Hesse is probably the most striking example, absolutely unable to stop being a poet even when he is trying to write a novel. The structures and trappings of the novel may all be there, but it doesn't feel like one, it isn't one. It is poetry, broken out of it's mold and poured onto a blank slate, then artistically spread with the brush of a seasoned calligraph.
This doesn't mean that there isn't great German prose, it can be a language of bonmots and apercus and wonderful aphorisms as well. German is wonderfully suited for scathing satire - listening to the likes of Hildebrandt, Schramm and nowadays Priol is a profound pleasure and intense experience, both educational and entertaining. But as soon as you try to tell a story longer than a few pages, you run into problems: No matter how well you choose your words, no matter how witty you are, written German is a different language from spoken German, one is dry, old, artificial and needlessly complicated, the other more of a guttural pidgin, a necessity for fluid communication between the common populace, but boorish and unpleasant to the refined ear, let alone eye. Both are unsuited for scripted dialogue, and anything resembling a full-out description will test the boundaries of the reader's patience - those are probably the second-greatest bane of the German novelist.
I propose that everything I dislike about long narrative prose in German is epitomised by Fontane's Effi Briest, especially it's beginning: Everyone keeps telling you it's a great book, but then again, everyone you know who had to read it - and it's a ubiquitous requirement, regardless of where you go to school - found it horrible to read, tiring, devoid of plot or even the most basic of authorcraft. People hate it with a passion usually reserved for math exams.
It begins with two and a half pages of pure description, detailing with great effort the exact measurements of the garden of the Briest mansion.It is the ultimate example of how a novel should not begin
In short, if you learn German, it is not to read Fontane, or Mann. It isn't even to read Grass, or the infinitely more approachable works of Enzensberger and Walser. No, only in poetry does the German language shed it's clumsiness and it's original purpose shines through. Suddenly, all the complicated, half-organised, half-chaotic grammar makes perfect sense, giving it just the right amount of flexibility to break language apart into poetic form and still retain the original sense, or force it to make some where none should have been.
There is a sublime power to the words of Schiller, who is, by all rights, the German Shakespeare, that simply cannot quite be found anywhere else. He is universally regarded to be the second greatest German poet and playwright.
Heine takes up Hölderlin's magical, beautiful imagery and emboldens it, breathes fiery life into it - raw, unbridled eroticism and horror. Hands down, Heine's love poetry is the Best.
Neither German nor English has an adequate word to quite describe the style of Goethe. Maybe it could be characterised as a playful brilliance, an easy, superior clarity. Schiller's mind broke into the lofty heights of the sublime with a combination of genius and tenacity, and a strong rational affect, the taste of pure applied intellect. Goethe doesn't have that. Goethe just has always been at home in the skies, and doesn't feel the need to reach for the stars - they float to his hand by their own will, without effort. The previous statement about Heine notwithstanding, the probably most intense erotic poem I ever read was one of Goethe's Roman Elegies, where he holds the woman of his passion in his arms and quietly, without realising it, taps the rhythm and metre of a poem on her sleeping body's back as he can't help but turn his feelings into verse.
So German might be a lyrical heavy-hitter, but it lacks the flowing, neverending stream of witty banter, the concept of the pun or even the simple ability to sound cool without becoming a parody of itself that make English such a great language for narrative prose. The English novel quite simply blows the German one out of the water, with the same certainity that the pure power in the ballads of Weimar Classicism cannot be replicated or matched in English. That was a fact. Up to now.
Walter Moers is actually widely known as a cartoonist, doing famous children's cartoons and some not suited for children as well. Also, he apparently writes books. Awesome books. Or rather, he "translates" them from the Zamonian, specifically the massive work of Hildegunst von Mythenmetz, a wandering wyrm, all of which are authors in Zamonia. The concept of a fantasy world so absurdly original that it always scratches, but never quite crosses the border of self-parody isn't new, but well-executed enough to bear distinct resemblance to the Discworld, except not. Moers' world is one of it's own right and making, more like a fairy tale, and I mean the original Grimm ones too - darker, more visceral, bloody and at times freaking scary, but then again, also hilariously strange.
Emperor Slendro Pelogg the Ordered had such a horrible taste in court music that he was killed by a riot of musicians stabbing him down with tuning forks.
Under the city of Buchhaim, the city of books, there are catacombs full of things best forgotten, only inhabited by monsters and frequented by heavily armed mercenaries fighting veritable wars over the most sought after and rare books. By necessity, all of them are cannibals.
Witches always stand between birches.
Moers' mastery of the German language is amazing, but even more amazing is the way he manages to blend it into something larger, more imposing: Where the descriptions fail, he openly acknowledges that, and draws instead. It's a pretty crude style, far from his best, but it befits the things portrayed, and the simple illustrations never take too much of the freedom away, they leave you room for and stimulate your imagination instead of confining it. Dialogue is stylised, refined through the literary agent and Moers' own "translation" of Mythmason's speech, including footnotes and anecdata. All in all, a pretty clever device to break through the inevitable pathos written German dialogue always degenerates into.
Somewhere along the line, Moers finds himself at a loss for words, and instead simply invents new ones - not just the making up of fancy names and places, but actual words, most of which you would not be at all surprised to find in the Duden, the golden standard of German dictionaries. A lot of these "invented" words are even real, or have been at some point, having been skillfully pulled out of their obscurity and applied at fitting points.
In a book about books and worlds of them under the world complete with bizarre book-centric creatures and a shadowy overlord type of entity guarding them, a theme similar to (and in places almost suspiciously reminding of) Hohlbein's Das Buch, but infinitely more adult, more sophisticated, more evolved in it's execution, one of the most amazing thing is the visual use of language: Circular language that forms actual circles, a black page with one white sentence on it as the protagonist falls unconscious, a plethora of different fonts and sizes in a cave full of desperate, trapped echoes that will repeat their dying screams for eternity, visualising the madness that takes ahold of both protagonist and reader.
Perhaps most strikingly, the double page that just says, in a miniscule font, over and over again, YOU HAVE JUST BEEN POISONED.
I haven't been amazed and entertained like this in a long time. It has reminded me of why and how much exactly I love books, and love reading. The City of Dreaming Books has unearthed my pleasure in reading, because as Moers even notes in his book, all people who have to read a lot on a professional basis eventually become bitter and somewhat fed up about it, and it loses it's joy.
Before I read this book again, or any of the other books Moers has written about Zamonia - I know not how many, or if there is a sequel, but at this point, I am dying to find out - I will let this rediscovery guide me back to my favourites. I think I am going to take a volume of Schiller and just read through it and enjoy the language, the sound, the feel. I am not even going to pay attention to the contents, resist the philosopher's urge to dissect and analyse. I am just going to read, and enjoy it.
So, saying it was a satisfying read would be quite an understatement. And now I have to sleep.