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Stilpe: Ein Roman aus der Froschperspektive
Erstdruck 1879. Vollständige Überarbeitung der Erstausgabe.
174 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 30, 2008
9 people want to read
About the author
Otto Julius Bierbaum
310 books7 followersOtto Julius Bierbaum was a German writer.
After studying in Leipzig, he became a journalist and editor for the journals Die freie Bühne, Pan and Die Insel. His literary work was varied. As a poet he used forms like the Minnesang or the folksong and the Anacreontics style.
After studying in Leipzig, he became a journalist and editor for the journals Die freie Bühne, Pan and Die Insel. His literary work was varied. As a poet he used forms like the Minnesang or the folksong and the Anacreontics style.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 13, 2020
A chance find from an author unknown to me until now, whose name came whooshing past on my Twitter timeline.
Bierbaum war journalist/editor, and also a writer of poems, novels, travel journals, and librettos. He died young, at the age of 44, and thus his works became more or less forgotten, which is a shame (provided all of his books are as good as this one).
Set in the second half of the 19th century in Germany (published in 1879), this short novel tells of many things:
• the life story of Willibald Stilpe; from birth, through school and university and then his professional life.
• a roman à clef (most likely) which I don’t know how to unlock.
• a Bildungsroman.
• a portrait of an artist as a young and middle aged man.
• a bohemian drinking bout.
• a damn good book.
I approached this text with somewhat false assumptions. For some reason I thought it was a thoroughly humorous work and good for a lot of laughs. That’s not all wrong either. However, Bierbaum manages to make the humor darker and darker as Stilpe’s life develops. From hilarious at the beginning to downright tragic at the end with stops for irony, sarcasm and even a bit of cynicism. The momentum of the narrative is always maintained at a high level, as is the roguish word wit (usually uttered by Stilpe).
The form is a bit unusual and, I suppose, not very accessible to the readership at the time. For example, quotation marks are entirely missing in speech. There are er’s and hu’s and .... People are laughing “ha ha” and “he he”, and a little Berlin dialect is also spoken. There are little poems and spoonerisms and these are obviously deliberately made so bad that they are good. In general I got the impression that Bierbaum write this book also with other writers/modernists in mind and telling them: Look, good literature can also be so folksy. I might be wrong, though.
Anyway, this first Bierbaum was pleasant read, and it won’t be my last. To be honest, I don’t quite understand the somewhat meager ratings this book has received so far on GR.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Bierbaum war journalist/editor, and also a writer of poems, novels, travel journals, and librettos. He died young, at the age of 44, and thus his works became more or less forgotten, which is a shame (provided all of his books are as good as this one).
Set in the second half of the 19th century in Germany (published in 1879), this short novel tells of many things:
• the life story of Willibald Stilpe; from birth, through school and university and then his professional life.
• a roman à clef (most likely) which I don’t know how to unlock.
• a Bildungsroman.
• a portrait of an artist as a young and middle aged man.
• a bohemian drinking bout.
• a damn good book.
I approached this text with somewhat false assumptions. For some reason I thought it was a thoroughly humorous work and good for a lot of laughs. That’s not all wrong either. However, Bierbaum manages to make the humor darker and darker as Stilpe’s life develops. From hilarious at the beginning to downright tragic at the end with stops for irony, sarcasm and even a bit of cynicism. The momentum of the narrative is always maintained at a high level, as is the roguish word wit (usually uttered by Stilpe).
The form is a bit unusual and, I suppose, not very accessible to the readership at the time. For example, quotation marks are entirely missing in speech. There are er’s and hu’s and .... People are laughing “ha ha” and “he he”, and a little Berlin dialect is also spoken. There are little poems and spoonerisms and these are obviously deliberately made so bad that they are good. In general I got the impression that Bierbaum write this book also with other writers/modernists in mind and telling them: Look, good literature can also be so folksy. I might be wrong, though.
Anyway, this first Bierbaum was pleasant read, and it won’t be my last. To be honest, I don’t quite understand the somewhat meager ratings this book has received so far on GR.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Displaying 1 of 1 review