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Bodies and Shadows
book
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1969
7 people want to read
About the author
Peter Weiss
201 books111 followersPeter Ulrich Weiss was a German writer, painter, and artist of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his play Marat/Sade and his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance.
Weiss' first art exhibition took place in 1936. His first produced play was Der Turm in 1950. In 1952 he joined the Swedish Experimental Film Studio, where he made films for several years. During this period, he also taught painting at Stockholm's People's University, and illustrated a Swedish edition of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. Until the early 1960s, Weiss also wrote prose. His work consists of short and intense novels with Kafkaesque details and feelings, often with autobiographical background. One of the most known films made by Peter Weiss is an experimental one, The Mirage (1959) and the second one - it is very seldom mentioned - is a film Weiss directed in Paris 1960 together with Barbro Boman, titled Play Girls or The Flamboyant Sex (Schwedische Mädchen in Paris or Verlockung in German). Among the short films by Weiss, The Studio of Doctor Faust (1956) shows the extremely strong link of Weiss to a German cultural background.
Weiss' best-known work is the play Marat/Sade (1963), first performed in West Berlin in 1964, which brought him widespread international attention. The following year, legendary director Peter Brook staged a famous production in New York City. It studies the power in society through two extreme and extremely different historical persons, Jean-Paul Marat, a brutal hero of the French Revolution, and the Marquis de Sade, for whom sadism was named. In Marat/Sade, Weiss uses a technique which, to quote from the play itself, speaks of the play within a play within itself: "Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits great propositions and their opposites, see how they work, and let them fight it out." The play is considered a classic, and is still performed, although less regularly.
Weiss was honored with the Charles Veillon Award, 1963; the Lessing Prize, 1965; the Heinrich Mann Prize, 1966; the Carl Albert Anderson Prize, 1967; the Thomas Dehler Prize, 1978; the Cologne Literature Prize, 1981; the Bremen Literature Prize, 1982; the De Nios Prize, 1982; the Swedish Theatre Critics Prize, 1982; and the Georg Büchner Prize, 1982.
A translation of Weiss' L'instruction (Die Ermittlung) was performed at London's Young Vic theater by a Rwandan company in November 2007. The production presented a dramatic contrast between the play's view on the Holocaust and the Rwandan actors' own experience with their nation's genocide.
http://literaturkritik.de/public/reze...
http://literaturkritik.de/public/reze...
Weiss' first art exhibition took place in 1936. His first produced play was Der Turm in 1950. In 1952 he joined the Swedish Experimental Film Studio, where he made films for several years. During this period, he also taught painting at Stockholm's People's University, and illustrated a Swedish edition of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. Until the early 1960s, Weiss also wrote prose. His work consists of short and intense novels with Kafkaesque details and feelings, often with autobiographical background. One of the most known films made by Peter Weiss is an experimental one, The Mirage (1959) and the second one - it is very seldom mentioned - is a film Weiss directed in Paris 1960 together with Barbro Boman, titled Play Girls or The Flamboyant Sex (Schwedische Mädchen in Paris or Verlockung in German). Among the short films by Weiss, The Studio of Doctor Faust (1956) shows the extremely strong link of Weiss to a German cultural background.
Weiss' best-known work is the play Marat/Sade (1963), first performed in West Berlin in 1964, which brought him widespread international attention. The following year, legendary director Peter Brook staged a famous production in New York City. It studies the power in society through two extreme and extremely different historical persons, Jean-Paul Marat, a brutal hero of the French Revolution, and the Marquis de Sade, for whom sadism was named. In Marat/Sade, Weiss uses a technique which, to quote from the play itself, speaks of the play within a play within itself: "Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits great propositions and their opposites, see how they work, and let them fight it out." The play is considered a classic, and is still performed, although less regularly.
Weiss was honored with the Charles Veillon Award, 1963; the Lessing Prize, 1965; the Heinrich Mann Prize, 1966; the Carl Albert Anderson Prize, 1967; the Thomas Dehler Prize, 1978; the Cologne Literature Prize, 1981; the Bremen Literature Prize, 1982; the De Nios Prize, 1982; the Swedish Theatre Critics Prize, 1982; and the Georg Büchner Prize, 1982.
A translation of Weiss' L'instruction (Die Ermittlung) was performed at London's Young Vic theater by a Rwandan company in November 2007. The production presented a dramatic contrast between the play's view on the Holocaust and the Rwandan actors' own experience with their nation's genocide.
http://literaturkritik.de/public/reze...
http://literaturkritik.de/public/reze...
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 17, 2011
Early prose works by Weiss: The Shadow of the Coachman's Body (Der Schatten des Körpers des Kutschers) and Conversation of the Three Wayfarers (Das Gesprach der drei Gehenden).
The first is presented as the writings of a young man staying at a rural boarding house with a strange assortment of individuals as he practices his ability to perceive and describe details. He focuses so myopically on the details, he seems to miss the motivations or personal significance of what he sees, including that of the final humorous scene.
The second micro-novel is ostensibly the tales of three wayfarers, but the reader soon loses any sense of a three-way conversation. The salient mood is that of a homeless fugitive who hides in the cubbyholes of his old neighborhood and watches as the symbols of his happier childhood and early fantasies fall into disrepair and are eventually replaced with ones he doesn't understand, or which he can't be part of. This book was added to my reading list after rereading Weiss's Marat/Sade.
The first is presented as the writings of a young man staying at a rural boarding house with a strange assortment of individuals as he practices his ability to perceive and describe details. He focuses so myopically on the details, he seems to miss the motivations or personal significance of what he sees, including that of the final humorous scene.
The second micro-novel is ostensibly the tales of three wayfarers, but the reader soon loses any sense of a three-way conversation. The salient mood is that of a homeless fugitive who hides in the cubbyholes of his old neighborhood and watches as the symbols of his happier childhood and early fantasies fall into disrepair and are eventually replaced with ones he doesn't understand, or which he can't be part of. This book was added to my reading list after rereading Weiss's Marat/Sade.
May 21, 2025
The writing here is something between Kafka and Stig Dagerman in its fantastic elements.
The most oedipal and paternal parts, even, are reminiscent of Alexander Trocchi.
It is no wonder why David Foster Wallace mentioned Peter Weiss in passing in one of his first and famous footnotes in Infinite Jest.
The most oedipal and paternal parts, even, are reminiscent of Alexander Trocchi.
It is no wonder why David Foster Wallace mentioned Peter Weiss in passing in one of his first and famous footnotes in Infinite Jest.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews