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River without Banks #2.1
Die Niederschrift des Gustav Anias Horn I
756pages. in8. Broché.
784 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1998
2 people are currently reading
12 people want to read
About the author
Hans Henny Jahnn
56 books49 followersHans Henny Jahnn (17 December 1894, Stellingen – 29 November 1959, Hamburg) was a German playwright, novelist, and organ-builder.
As a playwright, he wrote: Pastor Ephraim Magnus (1917), which The Cambridge Guide to Theatre describes as a nihilistic, Expressionist play "stuffed with perversities and sado-masochistic motifs"; Coronation of Richard III (1922; "equally lurid"); and a version of Medea (1926). Later works include the novel Perrudja, an unfinished trilogy of novels River without Banks (Fluss ohne Ufer), the drama Thomas Chatterton (1955; staged by Gustaf Gründgens in 1956),[1] and the novella The Night of Lead. Erwin Piscator staged Jahnn's The Dusty Rainbow (Der staubige Regenbogen) in 1961.
Jahnn was also a music publisher, focusing on 17th-century organ music. He was a contemporary of organ-builder Rudolf von Beckerath.
As a playwright, he wrote: Pastor Ephraim Magnus (1917), which The Cambridge Guide to Theatre describes as a nihilistic, Expressionist play "stuffed with perversities and sado-masochistic motifs"; Coronation of Richard III (1922; "equally lurid"); and a version of Medea (1926). Later works include the novel Perrudja, an unfinished trilogy of novels River without Banks (Fluss ohne Ufer), the drama Thomas Chatterton (1955; staged by Gustaf Gründgens in 1956),[1] and the novella The Night of Lead. Erwin Piscator staged Jahnn's The Dusty Rainbow (Der staubige Regenbogen) in 1961.
Jahnn was also a music publisher, focusing on 17th-century organ music. He was a contemporary of organ-builder Rudolf von Beckerath.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 16, 2023
if you‘re longing for a comfort read, „die niederschrift des gustav anias horn …“ is not the way to go – nevertheless it still is one of the greatest accomplishments in german literature (as is part 1 of the trilogy, „das holzschiff“; for a review on part 3, see my review on the volume called „epilog“).
in any case, part 2 is quite different from part 1: it's not that frantic & certainly no raging river; it's multilayered like a composition, it’s more spacious, free flowing, meandering, sometimes even the equivalent of what one would consider open sea. all in all, in terms of poetics, it does something fundamentally different than part 1. there's no omniscient narrator, so this time everything that happens is portrayed & remembered by gustav, decades after what has happened on the sinking ship, the „lais“. however, what has happened in the past is steadily pushing into the present & gustav's mind.
„die niederschrift …“ spans across roughly 1500 pages, & i'm not 100% sure it couldn't have been edited down slightly on some parts, but still, this is one of the biggest monuments of (modern) german literature.
the prose is nothing but gorgeous, kinda baroque & honestly not quite what you would expect from a modern day novel. the text itself is always shifting, fluctuating – as is its meaning –, always playing with your expectations. it's deep & dark, sometimes darker than i wished for. this is not a novel of hopeful prospects. it's about death, decay, the unfathomable nature of the world.
throughout its 1500 pages, many themes are recurrent:
– living outside of social norms (polygamy, homosexual- & bisexual relationships, etc.) & living on the periphery of civilization (freely chosen solitude vs. dreadful loneliness, etc.)
– nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence, meaning history repeating itself with slight variations (finite mass – infinite time)
– the concept of time (including philosophical thoughts about it, whether to think of it as a linear stream or maybe more accurately of a vast, open sea)
– human's ability to remember events & people from the past; fading memory
– death & decay in opposition to biblical resurrection
– the impossibility of a christian god & a world as the bible is propagating it
– the supremacy of animals over humans
– music, composition & art in general (drawing, architecture, etc.)
if you are able to read german, you can get a lot of details from wikipedia, otherwise, maybe machine-translate the article. but you‘d still do yourself a big favor if you‘d someday read this masterfully composed german piece of art, preferably on beautiful spring or summer days, as the darkness & portrayed bleakness of the novel can weigh quite heavy on one's shoulders – i know what i'm speaking of.
sadly, after 70+ years, there's still no english translation of this & the conclusory part of the trilogy („epilog“) in sight. part 1, however, is translated fully into english, so maybe take it from there.
in any case, part 2 is quite different from part 1: it's not that frantic & certainly no raging river; it's multilayered like a composition, it’s more spacious, free flowing, meandering, sometimes even the equivalent of what one would consider open sea. all in all, in terms of poetics, it does something fundamentally different than part 1. there's no omniscient narrator, so this time everything that happens is portrayed & remembered by gustav, decades after what has happened on the sinking ship, the „lais“. however, what has happened in the past is steadily pushing into the present & gustav's mind.
„die niederschrift …“ spans across roughly 1500 pages, & i'm not 100% sure it couldn't have been edited down slightly on some parts, but still, this is one of the biggest monuments of (modern) german literature.
the prose is nothing but gorgeous, kinda baroque & honestly not quite what you would expect from a modern day novel. the text itself is always shifting, fluctuating – as is its meaning –, always playing with your expectations. it's deep & dark, sometimes darker than i wished for. this is not a novel of hopeful prospects. it's about death, decay, the unfathomable nature of the world.
throughout its 1500 pages, many themes are recurrent:
– living outside of social norms (polygamy, homosexual- & bisexual relationships, etc.) & living on the periphery of civilization (freely chosen solitude vs. dreadful loneliness, etc.)
– nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence, meaning history repeating itself with slight variations (finite mass – infinite time)
– the concept of time (including philosophical thoughts about it, whether to think of it as a linear stream or maybe more accurately of a vast, open sea)
– human's ability to remember events & people from the past; fading memory
– death & decay in opposition to biblical resurrection
– the impossibility of a christian god & a world as the bible is propagating it
– the supremacy of animals over humans
– music, composition & art in general (drawing, architecture, etc.)
if you are able to read german, you can get a lot of details from wikipedia, otherwise, maybe machine-translate the article. but you‘d still do yourself a big favor if you‘d someday read this masterfully composed german piece of art, preferably on beautiful spring or summer days, as the darkness & portrayed bleakness of the novel can weigh quite heavy on one's shoulders – i know what i'm speaking of.
sadly, after 70+ years, there's still no english translation of this & the conclusory part of the trilogy („epilog“) in sight. part 1, however, is translated fully into english, so maybe take it from there.
Displaying 1 of 1 review