Papa Hamlet

by Arno Holz, Johannes Schlaf, James J. Conway (Translator)

Fiction. Translated by James J. Conway. Adultery, vulgarity, disordered lives on the brink of collapse: the feverish existence of failed actor Niels Thienwiebel shocked German readers when PAPA HAMLET was first published in 1889. In declaiming the soliloquies of his most famous role, the great Thienwiebel finds delusional refuge from the squalid room he shares with despondent wife Amalie and infant son Fortinbras. But it was the radical style as much as the moral outrage of this novella that so confounded contemporaries. Reflecting their own bohemian Berlin milieu, Arno Holz and Johannes Schlaf showed the dream of the self-authored life turning to nightmare through apathy and self-absorption. Originally credited to a fabricated Norwegian writer, PAPA HAMLET signalled the explosive arrival of Naturalism while also pointing ahead to Modernism; its appropriations, irony and play of identity even foretold Postmodernism. Appearing for the first time in English, it is teamed here with an early incarnation of the same narrative by Schlaf alongside further collaborations with Holz. Together their fearless candour and anarchic ingenuity reveal another side to German Naturalism that is well overdue for rediscovery.

Genres: German Literature

178 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1890

About the author

Arno Holz was a German naturalist poet and dramatist. He is best known for his poetry collection Phantasus (1898).

Reviews

[Bill Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rixdorf earns more gratitude for introducing this remarkable fiction to the English language. A collaboration between Arno Holz and Johannes Schlaf writing together in the guise of a Norwegian, Papa Hamlet is a novella about the downward spiral of a low-rent Shakespearian actor and his family. Farcical, funny, tragic, and amazingly ahead of its time, the prose reminds me of Alfred Döblin in its crazy vigor and its use of disembodied dialogue. Thanks, Rixdorf! Now if someone would only reprint the graphic story the two authors collaborated on a few years later . . ..

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published in 1889 and now translated for the first time into English, Arno Holz and Johannes Schlaf’s Papa Hamlet introduced Naturalism to German literature. Naturalism, with its focus on recounting realistic tales in natural ways (“natural” here meaning “with the self-interruptions, digressions, pauses, mid-stream change of thoughts that attend actual speech”), paved the way for the Modernism that was soon to replace it and Realism as the leading schools of art.

The title novella Papa Hamlet and the stories that accompany it depict the squalor and hopelessness of impoverished tenement living—chronic unemployment, food insecurity, physical abuse of children and wives, mental illness, and alcoholism—with nary a shred of romanticism or hope for better. (These themes would later appear in the works of U.S. immigrant writing of the 1920s, such as Anzia Yezierska's The Bread Givers.) The combination shocked Holz and Schlaf’s contemporaries, and even after over a century, the abuse depicted still appalls with its relevance. (Babies and toddlers die here because of neglect, beatings, illness, and starvation, all depicted as routine to the point of unsurprising to all but only mothers.)

James J. Conway provides an excellent Afterward that places Holz and Schlaf’s oeuvre within its literary and historical context, demonstrating how the authors’ techniques anticipated Modernist and Post-Modernism expression.

[Matze · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vielleicht ist dieses Werk gut um Naturalistische Autoren zu verstehen: selbst beim 'professionellem' Lesen hatte das ganze Stück einen doch eher einen starken Eindruck auf mich als Leser. Zugegeben, das mag daran liegen, dass man mich sehr leicht mit intertextuellen Hinweisen überzeugen kann und dass ich strukturell enigmatische Texte sehr ansprechend finde. Dennoch bietet dieses Werk eine interessante Schuldfrage und womöglich stundenlange Diskussionen über das Konzept des 'verrückten Künstlers'.

Tatsächlich kommt mir ein Teil des Ganzen auch etwas 'dick' aufgetragen vor, obwohl ich da, glaube ich, eher ein großes Problem mit dem Naturalismus an sich habe. Die Art und Weise, wie wir täglich denken, wie wir unsere Realität um uns formen und verstehen, dazu benutzen zu wollen, die Welt in seiner 'Wirklichkeit' darzustellen, scheint mir fast paradox. Meiner Meinung nach ist Naturalismus dann am effektivsten, wenn er sich selbst als schaffender Modus erkennt und so die Grenzen seiner Definition austestet. Das ist hier definitiv nicht der Fall und das ist auch völlig in Ordnung. Durch meine Stellung zum Naturalismus entsteht nun diese Rezension.