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The Interim
“Comic and terrifying and profound.” ―Rachel Kushner, The Guardian (Best Books of 2021) C. is a wretched grump, an anguished patron of bars, brothels, and train stations. He is also an acclaimed East German writer. Dogged by writer’s block, remorse, and national guilt in the years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, he leaves the monochromatic existence of the GDR for the neon excess of the West. There at least the novelty of his origins grant him easy money and minor celebrity, if also a deflating sense of complacency. With his visa expired and several relationships hanging in the balance, C. travels back and forth, mentally and physically, between two Germanys, contemplating diverging visions of the world and what they mean for people like alienated and aimless witnesses to history. This monumental novel from one of the greatest chroniclers of postwar Germany, masterfully translated by Isabel Fargo Cole, interrogates with bitter wit and singular brilliance the detritus of twentieth-century addiction, consumerism, God, pay-per-view pornography, selfishness, statelessness, and above all else, the writer’s place in a “century of lies.”
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
24 people are currently reading
762 people want to read
About the author
Wolfgang Hilbig
36 books50 followersWolfgang Hilbig was born on 31 August 1941 in the small town of Meuselwitz in Saxony, Germany, about 40 kilometers south of Leipzig. Hilbig’s childhood in Meuselwitz, a target for Allied bombings during World War II and later the site for a thriving brown coal industry (much to the detriment of the environment) during the East German era, has had an influence on much of the writer’s work. Hilbig grew up with his mother and her parents in Meuselwitz, never having known his father, who was reported missing in 1942 during the Battle of Stalingrad.
At first Hilbig favoured poetry, but his works
remained unpublished in the GDR. He received attention from the West however, as a result of his poems in the Anthology 'Cries For Help From The Other Side' (1978). His first volume of poetry, Absence (1979) was published by S. Fischer Verlag in Frankfurt am Main. For this, Hilbig was fined.
At the end of the 1970s, Hilbig gave up his day job and began to work exclusively as a writer. With the support of Franz Fühmann, a few of his poems were printed in a GDR newspaper for the first time. His prose anthology, Unterm Neomond (1982) was published by S. Fischer, followed by Stimme Stimme (1983), a prose and poetry anthology published by Reclam in Leipzig
In 1985 Hilbig gained a visa for West Germany valid until 1990. During this time he published not only further poetry and prose, but also his first novel, Eine Uebertragung (1989), which was received well by literary critics.
Even after reunification, the main themes of his work remained the dual-existence of working and writing in the GDR and the search for individuality. His further works include: his second novel, Ich (1993); his collections of short stories, such as Die Arbeit an den Oefen (1994) and Die Kunde von den Bäumen (1996); and his third novel Das Provisorium (2000). Autobiographical themes are often prevalent.
Awards
1983 Hanau Brothers-Grimm-Prize
1989 Ingeborg Bachmann Prize
1993 Brandenburg Literature Prize
1997 Fontane Prize (the Berlin Academy of Arts)
2002 Georg Büchner Prize
At first Hilbig favoured poetry, but his works
remained unpublished in the GDR. He received attention from the West however, as a result of his poems in the Anthology 'Cries For Help From The Other Side' (1978). His first volume of poetry, Absence (1979) was published by S. Fischer Verlag in Frankfurt am Main. For this, Hilbig was fined.
At the end of the 1970s, Hilbig gave up his day job and began to work exclusively as a writer. With the support of Franz Fühmann, a few of his poems were printed in a GDR newspaper for the first time. His prose anthology, Unterm Neomond (1982) was published by S. Fischer, followed by Stimme Stimme (1983), a prose and poetry anthology published by Reclam in Leipzig
In 1985 Hilbig gained a visa for West Germany valid until 1990. During this time he published not only further poetry and prose, but also his first novel, Eine Uebertragung (1989), which was received well by literary critics.
Even after reunification, the main themes of his work remained the dual-existence of working and writing in the GDR and the search for individuality. His further works include: his second novel, Ich (1993); his collections of short stories, such as Die Arbeit an den Oefen (1994) and Die Kunde von den Bäumen (1996); and his third novel Das Provisorium (2000). Autobiographical themes are often prevalent.
Awards
1983 Hanau Brothers-Grimm-Prize
1989 Ingeborg Bachmann Prize
1993 Brandenburg Literature Prize
1997 Fontane Prize (the Berlin Academy of Arts)
2002 Georg Büchner Prize
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
August 4, 2024
Little by little reality slipped away from him...he stood apart, reality refused to accept him, he was unable to relate reality to himself...he didn't know how to explain it. Reality lay behind a wall, he was constantly hauling a wall around in front of him. And since that wall wasn't made of concrete, but was a mere feeling, a consciousness, or a mere feeling beneath a consciousness ...since that wall itself was unreal...it seemed all the less possible to dismantle it. He couldn't abolish the wall; if he wanted to change the state he was in, all he could do was abolish himself...
The Interim (2021) is the latest brilliant translation by Isabel Fargo Cole of Wolfgang Hilbig's (1941-2007) fiction (see below for a bibliography), this taken from the novel Das Provisorium (2000).
The Interim is narrated by C., a writer (whose biography has some commonality with the author's own). He was brought up in East Germany by his mother, his father missing at Stalingrad, and is now in his late 40s. Until around 40 he worked in industrial factories, in machine-rooms and as a stoker in a boiler-room, writing in his spare time, later becoming a full-time author. At the time the novel is set, C. has travelled to West Germany, on a one-year artistic visa, which he has now overstayed. Meanwhile in the wider world, the Communist system is beginning to crumble.
C.'s life is in a temporary, provisional, interim state, caught between two countries and two political states, in neither of which he feels at home (and indeed in neither of which is he now technically legal), and between two women, neither of whom he is prepared to commit to. His vocation as a writer, after years as a manual worker, also feels interim, and he takes refuge from permanence in his alcoholism. And the East German state where his life was formed itself feels increasingly interim, a temporary solution to the horrors of the 20th century, "a century of lies."
And the story C. of the last few years is a fragmented and non-linear one, place and time each rather blurring, effectively in literary terms, into one continuum. This is a less intensely concentrated book than his novellas, but still highly worthwhile. 4.5 stars.
It was the smell of shabby old dark-green trains that have already pulled out of the station. The smell of their rust-red iron chassis, their smell of old grease and bitter dust. Train cars stranded a long time between stations, on out-of-the-way, forgotten lines, in steppes, in forests, on old, strange-smelling tracks; cars that have taken on the smell of the old gravel spread between the ties, black and gray, oil-smeared and sand-crusted, and the smell of old waterproofed wooden ties, with the desert swathes of gravel between them, old black granite with its salt taste, with its smell of welding flames. Granite that the old cars, brought back at last from oblivion, carried back to the stations, so that the stations smell of desert, of gravel... of coal, of earth, of the filth of the ramps and platforms across which life's animal and human flesh has been shunted and loaded. Of endless routes of gravel, crossing the lands and finally petering out in the sea. And so the trains passing over the gravel carry the smell of the sea into the stations. The iodine taste of the sea, the salt smell of the sea, the smell of pure limestone, of chalk, of iodine, the wild smell of storms, the bitter smell of the doldrums, the stale smell of a lead sky. The blue granite smell of the sea and the smell of old steam locomotives that have pulled the long trains full of gravel to the ports. And the smell of the great freight ships full of gravel that have sunk at sea...
And the stations smell of so many things to grieve for. But there is no grieving for the sea at the stations, nor for the sky that pours down the iodine smell of the sea at the stations, nor for the sun that quenches the bitter wet salt of the sea at the stations...
Wolfgang Hilbig's fiction, with translations, where shown, by Isabel Fargo Cole
Unterm Neomond (1982), stories
Der Brief (1985), 3 stories
Die Weiber (1987), novella, translated as The Females (2018)
my review
Eine Übertragung (1989), his first novel
Alte Abdeckerei (1991), novella, translated as Old Rendering Plant (2017)
my review
Die Kunde von den Bäumen (1992), novella, translated as The Tidings of the Trees (2018)
my review
»Ich« (1993), novel, translated as I (2015)
my review
Grünes grünes Grab (1993), stories
Die Arbeit an den Öfen (1994), stories
Das Provisorium (2000), novel, translated as The Interim (2021)
my review
Der Schlaf der Gerechten (2003), stories, translated as The Sleep of the Righteous (2015)
my review
The Interim (2021) is the latest brilliant translation by Isabel Fargo Cole of Wolfgang Hilbig's (1941-2007) fiction (see below for a bibliography), this taken from the novel Das Provisorium (2000).
The Interim is narrated by C., a writer (whose biography has some commonality with the author's own). He was brought up in East Germany by his mother, his father missing at Stalingrad, and is now in his late 40s. Until around 40 he worked in industrial factories, in machine-rooms and as a stoker in a boiler-room, writing in his spare time, later becoming a full-time author. At the time the novel is set, C. has travelled to West Germany, on a one-year artistic visa, which he has now overstayed. Meanwhile in the wider world, the Communist system is beginning to crumble.
C.'s life is in a temporary, provisional, interim state, caught between two countries and two political states, in neither of which he feels at home (and indeed in neither of which is he now technically legal), and between two women, neither of whom he is prepared to commit to. His vocation as a writer, after years as a manual worker, also feels interim, and he takes refuge from permanence in his alcoholism. And the East German state where his life was formed itself feels increasingly interim, a temporary solution to the horrors of the 20th century, "a century of lies."
And the story C. of the last few years is a fragmented and non-linear one, place and time each rather blurring, effectively in literary terms, into one continuum. This is a less intensely concentrated book than his novellas, but still highly worthwhile. 4.5 stars.
It was the smell of shabby old dark-green trains that have already pulled out of the station. The smell of their rust-red iron chassis, their smell of old grease and bitter dust. Train cars stranded a long time between stations, on out-of-the-way, forgotten lines, in steppes, in forests, on old, strange-smelling tracks; cars that have taken on the smell of the old gravel spread between the ties, black and gray, oil-smeared and sand-crusted, and the smell of old waterproofed wooden ties, with the desert swathes of gravel between them, old black granite with its salt taste, with its smell of welding flames. Granite that the old cars, brought back at last from oblivion, carried back to the stations, so that the stations smell of desert, of gravel... of coal, of earth, of the filth of the ramps and platforms across which life's animal and human flesh has been shunted and loaded. Of endless routes of gravel, crossing the lands and finally petering out in the sea. And so the trains passing over the gravel carry the smell of the sea into the stations. The iodine taste of the sea, the salt smell of the sea, the smell of pure limestone, of chalk, of iodine, the wild smell of storms, the bitter smell of the doldrums, the stale smell of a lead sky. The blue granite smell of the sea and the smell of old steam locomotives that have pulled the long trains full of gravel to the ports. And the smell of the great freight ships full of gravel that have sunk at sea...
And the stations smell of so many things to grieve for. But there is no grieving for the sea at the stations, nor for the sky that pours down the iodine smell of the sea at the stations, nor for the sun that quenches the bitter wet salt of the sea at the stations...
Wolfgang Hilbig's fiction, with translations, where shown, by Isabel Fargo Cole
Unterm Neomond (1982), stories
Der Brief (1985), 3 stories
Die Weiber (1987), novella, translated as The Females (2018)
my review
Eine Übertragung (1989), his first novel
Alte Abdeckerei (1991), novella, translated as Old Rendering Plant (2017)
my review
Die Kunde von den Bäumen (1992), novella, translated as The Tidings of the Trees (2018)
my review
»Ich« (1993), novel, translated as I (2015)
my review
Grünes grünes Grab (1993), stories
Die Arbeit an den Öfen (1994), stories
Das Provisorium (2000), novel, translated as The Interim (2021)
my review
Der Schlaf der Gerechten (2003), stories, translated as The Sleep of the Righteous (2015)
my review
abandoned
November 25, 2022DNF at about the halfway mark. I couldn't take any more of the anti-hero (Hilbig stand-in?) and his circuitous hand-wringing over his drinking problem, his impotence, his mother issues, his struggles as a writer, and the problems he has with various women he attempts to juggle throughout his travels to various cities in East and West Germany. I much prefer Hilbig's strange, off-kilter books, chiefly Old Rendering Plant and The Sleep of the Righteous, in which he transmutes his experiences growing up and working in the GDR into blurry, oneiric prose. Here, the veil has been almost fully pulled back to reveal in stark contrast an alcoholic middle-aged man raised in the East, stranger to the West, prone to procrastination and obsessive self-questioning. Nothing particularly interesting there. While there is some commonality in the themes between those other books and The Interim, the prose is quite different in style. (It also probably didn't help that I was reading this on my phone because it was a free ebook from the library.)
November 21, 2021
I was apprehensive about this book, afraid somehow that it would be a 300 page pilgrimage through one man's dark and decaying life, claustrophobic and bleak. And, in a way, it is most of those things except that Hilbig is an exceptional writer and even if he is, as ever, narrating from the edge of his own existence, he has, in this novel, stepped back into third person to examine his protagonist, C., from the distance necessary to be honest—to his character and himself. The result is an engaging narrative tracing loss, displacement, creative struggles and romantic failures washed down with far too much alcohol. There are unpleasant moments, but there is also self conscious humour and, much of the kind of mesmerizing existential questioning that drives the more dreamlike, meandering narratives more typical of his work.
I have read and written about almost all of Hilbig's translated work and I loved this book. But I am not certain if I would recommend it as an introduction to his idiosyncratic writing. I feel somehow that if one has read and enjoyed Tidings of the Trees and Old Rendering Plant and his short story collection, Sleep of the Righteous, The Interim will feel like an opportunity to see the "Hilbig" protagonist and his creator in what might be his most true-to-life work. But, be warned, his C. is an anti-hero unlikely to find redemption.
An extended review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2021/11/21/st...
I have read and written about almost all of Hilbig's translated work and I loved this book. But I am not certain if I would recommend it as an introduction to his idiosyncratic writing. I feel somehow that if one has read and enjoyed Tidings of the Trees and Old Rendering Plant and his short story collection, Sleep of the Righteous, The Interim will feel like an opportunity to see the "Hilbig" protagonist and his creator in what might be his most true-to-life work. But, be warned, his C. is an anti-hero unlikely to find redemption.
An extended review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2021/11/21/st...
July 25, 2025
I was promised a novel about a drunk writer wandering the streets of Germany but instead I got a drunk writer banging on about the nightmare of East and West Germany. Interesting but not quite what I wanted.
C (he doesn't get to have a name but it's clearly based on Wolfgang Hilbig) is living in Nuremberg. He frequents bars, brothels, and train stations. He was of some notable repute as a writer in East Germany, so much so that he was invited to the West to give talks about his books. But here, he seems to have drowned himself in alcohol and melancholy, and become lost in a quagmire of writer's block and self-pity, unable to connect to the many women he knows, specifically a woman named Hedda. Instead, it's a lot of mental wrestling about his life, his place in the word (east or west), and a great deal of reminiscing about past mistakes and events. His visa has expired and yet he doesn't want to leave. But equally he doesn't want to stay. He appears to be sincerely confused about what he's supposed to be and, more acutely, where he's supposed to be. Hence, he is at an interim in his life.
It started okay, and I enjoyed the casual boozing and womanising (always fun), even his penile dysfunction and lamentations therein, plus his moaning about his mother. I especially enjoyed his opinions regarding not only the difference between literature in east and west but more specifically the general lack of integrity present in western literature, and its apparent descent into mediocrity (here we very much agree).
Hear hear! That being said, however, you can hardly conclude that C (or Wolfgang) are especially gifted at offering a superior alternative. Aside from the book repeating itself (east or west... east or west!!!), it also made the mistake (in my opinion) of being third person narrative. Why in the world would you write a novel about a lonely, street wandering loser and barfly with profound (and occasionally trivial) thoughts on literature and politics in third person? This book badly needed a first person narration, it needed to delve into the dark and booze-sodden thoughts of a man breaking apart, lost in an eddying spiral of hatred, regret and comical yet fascinating internal monologue. It seemed so ripe for that. But anyway...
There's some good stuff here but it all feels a little... after the lord mayor's show. Aside from the fact that the book would have benefited from a first person narration, there's also the question of distance from its setting. It was written in 2000 but is dealing with the eighties and you get the distinct impression that whatever Wolfgang is reminiscing about is slightly redundant, out of date, and essentially of minimal interest. Early 90s, fine, but the whole thing came across as a performative recollection of fantasy and personal opinion. Yet weirdly he still seems confused about his place in the world. Ultimately, I wanted more darkness and decay, the poetic madness of an artistic soul battling his demons with a bottle of vodka in his hand, but instead I got something that felt more like a political lecture of a time that, frankly, no longer matters. In that respect, it's certainly bleak. But only in a rather disappointing way.
C (he doesn't get to have a name but it's clearly based on Wolfgang Hilbig) is living in Nuremberg. He frequents bars, brothels, and train stations. He was of some notable repute as a writer in East Germany, so much so that he was invited to the West to give talks about his books. But here, he seems to have drowned himself in alcohol and melancholy, and become lost in a quagmire of writer's block and self-pity, unable to connect to the many women he knows, specifically a woman named Hedda. Instead, it's a lot of mental wrestling about his life, his place in the word (east or west), and a great deal of reminiscing about past mistakes and events. His visa has expired and yet he doesn't want to leave. But equally he doesn't want to stay. He appears to be sincerely confused about what he's supposed to be and, more acutely, where he's supposed to be. Hence, he is at an interim in his life.
It started okay, and I enjoyed the casual boozing and womanising (always fun), even his penile dysfunction and lamentations therein, plus his moaning about his mother. I especially enjoyed his opinions regarding not only the difference between literature in east and west but more specifically the general lack of integrity present in western literature, and its apparent descent into mediocrity (here we very much agree).
But over here literature was going down the drain, he felt that was obvious. Literature that refused to serve the purpose of distraction was punished by being passed over on the market...after all, on that market all stops were pulled to distract the public; the best distraction was what sold best. On an almost weekly basis the culture pages of the newspapers he read to distract himself informed him about the end of literature.
Hear hear! That being said, however, you can hardly conclude that C (or Wolfgang) are especially gifted at offering a superior alternative. Aside from the book repeating itself (east or west... east or west!!!), it also made the mistake (in my opinion) of being third person narrative. Why in the world would you write a novel about a lonely, street wandering loser and barfly with profound (and occasionally trivial) thoughts on literature and politics in third person? This book badly needed a first person narration, it needed to delve into the dark and booze-sodden thoughts of a man breaking apart, lost in an eddying spiral of hatred, regret and comical yet fascinating internal monologue. It seemed so ripe for that. But anyway...
There's some good stuff here but it all feels a little... after the lord mayor's show. Aside from the fact that the book would have benefited from a first person narration, there's also the question of distance from its setting. It was written in 2000 but is dealing with the eighties and you get the distinct impression that whatever Wolfgang is reminiscing about is slightly redundant, out of date, and essentially of minimal interest. Early 90s, fine, but the whole thing came across as a performative recollection of fantasy and personal opinion. Yet weirdly he still seems confused about his place in the world. Ultimately, I wanted more darkness and decay, the poetic madness of an artistic soul battling his demons with a bottle of vodka in his hand, but instead I got something that felt more like a political lecture of a time that, frankly, no longer matters. In that respect, it's certainly bleak. But only in a rather disappointing way.
June 11, 2022
3 bis 4 Sternburger (pro Stunde)
Wie kommt es eigentlich, dass ich an große Werke und große Autoren so oft mit der Erwartung herantrete, ich würde aufpolierte, perfekte Eleganz und Exzellenz finden? Immer wieder beeindruckt mich die Eigenart von Literatur, dass ihre größten Vertreterinnen und Vertreter gerade im Schildern des Scheiterns zu Meistern werden. Ist das nicht paradox und wunderbar?
C., ein mittelalter Mann von schier grenzenloser Heimatlosigkeit und Alkoholabhängigkeit, sitzt in dutzenden Zügen zwischen der BRD und der DDR, immer wieder unterwegs zu einem Ort, an dem er sich weniger fremd fühlt, da er als Ost-Autor inzwischen ein 2-Jahres-Visum erhalten hat, aber im Zonenwechsel keine Heimat finden kann.
Und so begleiten wir den nicht mehr jungen C., der nicht mehr schreiben, nur noch saufen und seine Gegenwart wie gesprochenes Mehl zwischen seinen Zähnen zerreden kann. Irgendwann in den letzten Jahren, wann genau, spielt in dieser fast kapitellosen Auslieferung an den Leser keine Rolle, irgendwann ist ihm alles zum Provisorium geworden. Wir Leser erleben diese unausgesetzte Folge von Verlustängsten, Minderwertigkeitsgefühlen, Selbstanklage und Selbstekel und können nur staunen über die Offenheit dieses Autors. C.s unaufhörliche Besäufnisse haben mich besonders berührt. Da ist einer verloren, hilflos. Da ist einer weder in der DDR noch in der BRD zu Hause. Hier die unfreie Diktatur, dort die hohle Konsumwelt. Und nun droht ihm auch noch das Schreiben abhanden zu kommen.
Natürlich drängt sich – insbesondere beim Blick auf die Wikipedia-Seite von Hilbig – der schwer erträgliche Verdacht auf, dass hier ein Schriftsteller ein Alter Ego von großer Ähnlichkeit erschaffen hat. Ich mag mir nicht vorstellen, welche Qualen Hilbig in seinem Leben ausgestanden hat. Aber zurück zu C.:
Betrunken und betroffen vom Ausmaß der voranschreitenden Selbstzerstörung pendelt C. zwischen zwei Frauen, Hedda im Westen und Mona im Osten, und verliert bald zwischen beiden Frauen und Staaten die Orientierung. Am stärksten fand ich diesen Roman immer dort, wo Hilbigs Sprachbrillanz sich auf Konkretes richtet, sich durch die konkrete Schilderung von Situationen hindurchfrisst wie ein Schleifbohrer, der uns Lesern die Splitter dieses so furchtbar isolierten und getriebenen Lebens zeigt wie eine aufgeplatzte Lippe, ein offenes Knie, eine Wunde, die nicht heilen wird, weil C. sich selbst bis zur Zerfleischung verachtet.
Die Zeitkritik und besonders die Kritik an den Konsumschafen im Westen hat mich gestört. Sie wirkt wie nachträglich in den Text hineinmontiert und recht beliebig und passt mit ihrer moralischen (und schlichten) Anklage schlecht zum Rest. Auch die Länge und Redundanz des Textes hat mich ermüdet. Nach 320 Seiten ohne Dialoge oder Absätze war ich selbst erschöpft. Andererseits schafft es der Roman durch seinen Umfang, vor allem aber durch die wilde Chronologie und die häufigen, leitmotivischen Zugfahrten, einen Eindruck von Verwirrung zu erzeugen, der C.s Erleben nahekommen dürfte. Hin und her, ein Pendel, das von den Zeit-Umständen angestoßen wurde und nun einen unaufhörlichen Transit erlebt.
Hilbigs Stil ist komplex und anspruchsvoll. Wer nicht aufpasst, wird rausgeworfen. Undurchsichtig oder obskur wird die Sprache aber an keiner Stelle. Dabei lassen sich einige Stilwandlungen und sich ändernde Themenschwerpunkte bemerken. Köstlich sind die Stellen um einen dämonischen Jünglingspenis, der im Ehebett mit der eigenen Mutter (Armut der Nachkriegszeit lässt grüßen) verborgen werden muss. Einzelne Passagen in Paris lesen sich wie Celines wortmächtige Tiraden auf die Welt. Am besten gefallen haben mir persönlich die Schilderungen seiner Arbeit als Heizer in einem DDR-Werk am Ende des Buches. Hier trifft die Detailverliebtheit von Hilbigs Prosa auf ein konkretes Handlungsgerüst.
Wie Hilbig aber auf den Gedanken kam, erst auf Seite 280 eine (sehr gute) Kurz-Biografie seines „Helden“ oder „Antihelden“ (Literaturtheorie-Quark, das ist moderne Prosa) C. abzugeben, bleibt Hilbigs Geheimnis.
Das ist sicherlich keine Lektüre für den raschen Wochenendgenuss. Ich mochte die Perspektive, das Harte, das Abstoßende, das bis zum Entsetzensschrei Ehrliche des Textes. Richtig gut fand ich ihn nicht, dafür ist er mir zu lang und redundant, außerdem zu effektvoll und ironiefrei geschrieben. Tatsächlich fehlte mir auch die Übertragung oder allmähliche Überführung auf eine höhere Ebene.
Weiterlesen werde ich Hilbig aber selbstverständlich. Hier ist mir ein ganz Großer begegnet.
P.S.: Ich empfehle das Interview mit Günter Gaus auf YouTube. Auch das muss man auf seine Weise aushalten.
Wie kommt es eigentlich, dass ich an große Werke und große Autoren so oft mit der Erwartung herantrete, ich würde aufpolierte, perfekte Eleganz und Exzellenz finden? Immer wieder beeindruckt mich die Eigenart von Literatur, dass ihre größten Vertreterinnen und Vertreter gerade im Schildern des Scheiterns zu Meistern werden. Ist das nicht paradox und wunderbar?
C., ein mittelalter Mann von schier grenzenloser Heimatlosigkeit und Alkoholabhängigkeit, sitzt in dutzenden Zügen zwischen der BRD und der DDR, immer wieder unterwegs zu einem Ort, an dem er sich weniger fremd fühlt, da er als Ost-Autor inzwischen ein 2-Jahres-Visum erhalten hat, aber im Zonenwechsel keine Heimat finden kann.
Und so begleiten wir den nicht mehr jungen C., der nicht mehr schreiben, nur noch saufen und seine Gegenwart wie gesprochenes Mehl zwischen seinen Zähnen zerreden kann. Irgendwann in den letzten Jahren, wann genau, spielt in dieser fast kapitellosen Auslieferung an den Leser keine Rolle, irgendwann ist ihm alles zum Provisorium geworden. Wir Leser erleben diese unausgesetzte Folge von Verlustängsten, Minderwertigkeitsgefühlen, Selbstanklage und Selbstekel und können nur staunen über die Offenheit dieses Autors. C.s unaufhörliche Besäufnisse haben mich besonders berührt. Da ist einer verloren, hilflos. Da ist einer weder in der DDR noch in der BRD zu Hause. Hier die unfreie Diktatur, dort die hohle Konsumwelt. Und nun droht ihm auch noch das Schreiben abhanden zu kommen.
Natürlich drängt sich – insbesondere beim Blick auf die Wikipedia-Seite von Hilbig – der schwer erträgliche Verdacht auf, dass hier ein Schriftsteller ein Alter Ego von großer Ähnlichkeit erschaffen hat. Ich mag mir nicht vorstellen, welche Qualen Hilbig in seinem Leben ausgestanden hat. Aber zurück zu C.:
Betrunken und betroffen vom Ausmaß der voranschreitenden Selbstzerstörung pendelt C. zwischen zwei Frauen, Hedda im Westen und Mona im Osten, und verliert bald zwischen beiden Frauen und Staaten die Orientierung. Am stärksten fand ich diesen Roman immer dort, wo Hilbigs Sprachbrillanz sich auf Konkretes richtet, sich durch die konkrete Schilderung von Situationen hindurchfrisst wie ein Schleifbohrer, der uns Lesern die Splitter dieses so furchtbar isolierten und getriebenen Lebens zeigt wie eine aufgeplatzte Lippe, ein offenes Knie, eine Wunde, die nicht heilen wird, weil C. sich selbst bis zur Zerfleischung verachtet.
Die Zeitkritik und besonders die Kritik an den Konsumschafen im Westen hat mich gestört. Sie wirkt wie nachträglich in den Text hineinmontiert und recht beliebig und passt mit ihrer moralischen (und schlichten) Anklage schlecht zum Rest. Auch die Länge und Redundanz des Textes hat mich ermüdet. Nach 320 Seiten ohne Dialoge oder Absätze war ich selbst erschöpft. Andererseits schafft es der Roman durch seinen Umfang, vor allem aber durch die wilde Chronologie und die häufigen, leitmotivischen Zugfahrten, einen Eindruck von Verwirrung zu erzeugen, der C.s Erleben nahekommen dürfte. Hin und her, ein Pendel, das von den Zeit-Umständen angestoßen wurde und nun einen unaufhörlichen Transit erlebt.
Hilbigs Stil ist komplex und anspruchsvoll. Wer nicht aufpasst, wird rausgeworfen. Undurchsichtig oder obskur wird die Sprache aber an keiner Stelle. Dabei lassen sich einige Stilwandlungen und sich ändernde Themenschwerpunkte bemerken. Köstlich sind die Stellen um einen dämonischen Jünglingspenis, der im Ehebett mit der eigenen Mutter (Armut der Nachkriegszeit lässt grüßen) verborgen werden muss. Einzelne Passagen in Paris lesen sich wie Celines wortmächtige Tiraden auf die Welt. Am besten gefallen haben mir persönlich die Schilderungen seiner Arbeit als Heizer in einem DDR-Werk am Ende des Buches. Hier trifft die Detailverliebtheit von Hilbigs Prosa auf ein konkretes Handlungsgerüst.
Wie Hilbig aber auf den Gedanken kam, erst auf Seite 280 eine (sehr gute) Kurz-Biografie seines „Helden“ oder „Antihelden“ (Literaturtheorie-Quark, das ist moderne Prosa) C. abzugeben, bleibt Hilbigs Geheimnis.
Das ist sicherlich keine Lektüre für den raschen Wochenendgenuss. Ich mochte die Perspektive, das Harte, das Abstoßende, das bis zum Entsetzensschrei Ehrliche des Textes. Richtig gut fand ich ihn nicht, dafür ist er mir zu lang und redundant, außerdem zu effektvoll und ironiefrei geschrieben. Tatsächlich fehlte mir auch die Übertragung oder allmähliche Überführung auf eine höhere Ebene.
Weiterlesen werde ich Hilbig aber selbstverständlich. Hier ist mir ein ganz Großer begegnet.
P.S.: Ich empfehle das Interview mit Günter Gaus auf YouTube. Auch das muss man auf seine Weise aushalten.
April 30, 2021
will we survive this century? asked the lonely reader in his train compartment. yes, surely we'll survive this one last century.with enough angst, ennui, and lassitude to have wallpapered the berlin wall's entirety, wolfgang hilbig's the interim (das provisorium) is as towering and monumental as the now-fallen fortification. the late author's 2000 novel may well be his best (of the six now available in english, at least).
there was little in the way of replacement; slowly but surely he was reaching an age where he sensed that life consisted chiefly of illusions.the story of c., a successful but now struggling east german writer, the interim finds our oft-inebriated anti-hero shuffling from the gdr to its western counterpart (the novel is set in the late 80s), forth and back and forth ever onward, much as he does with his transborder romantic interests too. fleeing from himself, his responsibilities, his art, and just about anything that would provide a grounding stability, c. inhabits transitory, liminal spaces almost exclusively (especially pubs and depots, both of which offer anonymous escape for modest sums).
the plethora of orientation devices, clocks, information from loudspeakers, electronic departure boards, the perpetual semblance of reliability only anchored in the mind the provisional and fragmentary nature of human existence.rage, despair, anxiety, doubt, insecurity, shame, creative impotence, existential defeat, anguish, bitterness, regret, fear, anger; c.'s paralysis is largely self-induced, though perhaps not a disproportionate response to the era's political, social, and capitalistic excesses. presaging the then-unimaginable, but rapidly approaching horrors that would await in the new millennium, c's milieu is an interregnum of both state and soul. hilbig's portrayal of a broken, ineffectual man awash in an age of dislocation is both vigorous and unyielding. the interim, for all its bleakness and melancholia, gleams brilliant with the incandescence of an all-consuming inferno.
there they stood, those smoking boxes, absorbing every possible reproach against the world. faced with these boxes, filled to bursting with the unthinkable horror of the modern era, reduced to stammering, slapdash block letters, every grievance was rendered cowardly, childish, irrelevant. with those boxes in your home, your complaints sounded as ludicrous as the squeaking of a rat. you had to be ashamed of any discontent, you had to hate yourself if you were still able to feel unhappy, you had to keep it secret in the face of this madness that had made language lose all dignity.
*translated from the german by isabel fargo cole (hilbig's the females, the sleep of the righteous, old rendering plant, and the tidings of the trees; ungar, fühmann, hoffer, kalka; and herself an author)
July 27, 2025
Video review https://youtu.be/oxOfaPrYC64
February 14, 2022
Review in STAT®REC: https://statorec.com/unnatural-histor...
May 14, 2021
Our “hero” takes us on many liquor-fueled Mobius Teacup Rides between East and West Germany, keeping the limbo bench warm on the sidelines of love and lust, looking for someone, something, or some country to blame for his writer’s block, impotence, and irresponsibility. Told in such a comedic, controlled scatter to keep the reader comfortably teetered on a seat’s edge, if sitting’s a thing said reader’s into.
July 12, 2022
C. is an East German writer in 1989; having overstayed his visa in the West, he cannot decide where he belongs and so he is living “in the interim.” He rides on trains to see his girlfriends or his mother or to give readings, and in each city he is simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by the trappings of freedom: his ability to buy books (mostly on the Holocaust or the Gulag, books he will never read) or clothes or to frequent red-light districts where even women’s bodies are part of consumer culture. His liminality pushes him to drink; he is between ideologies, between occupations (is he a writer or a worker?), between God and psychoanalysis. “He was one of the human stopgaps from whom the GDR was assembled, the very precondition for its existence,” Hilbig writes, creating the impression of millions of people suffering in this state of uncertainty and unbelief (243). Hilbig’s writing is beautifully painful in places—he writes that “C.’s inner unrest was so powerful that each glass of alcohol seemed to sizzle in it like a drop of water in a forge” (276). Some of this is hard to read, yet the author so convincingly ties C.’s individual condition to his moment in history, you cannot help but sympathize.
February 13, 2011
Wolfgang Hilbig beschreibt die Situation eines DDR-Schriftstellers, der ein Visum für den Westen erhält. Seine Alkoholsucht nimmt der Schriftsteller C. mit und so handelt Hilbigs Buch meistens von Alkoholexzessen und ihren Folgen (Erbrechen, nochmehr Alkohol) sowie ab und zu ein paar Worte zur Unfähigkeit, Worte auf das Papier zu bringen. C. hangelt sich von Lesereise zu Lesereise, von Frau zu Frau und von Peep-Show zu Peep-Show und kann sich nicht entscheide, ob er nun im Westen bleiben oder doch wieder in die DDR zurückkehren soll. Würden nicht ab und zu ein paar wirklich eindrückliche erzählerische Fähigkeiten aufblitzen, hätte das Buch vor lauter Langeweile maximal einen Stern verdient... .
February 6, 2022
I really wanted to like this book, but try as I might, I could never feel any warmth toward the main character/narrator. The translation seems amazing, and being one myself, it was truly impressive. But personally I never would have made it through the book. But I did read it to the end on principle, I just never really warmed to it.
August 10, 2025
2.5
A terrific, funny opening. Some memorable scenes thereafter. Some of the narrator's musings on life and the society of his time are very good. But the book is perhaps too meandering for my liking. I may have to give it another try some day.
The narrator is a famous and successful East German writer living in West Germany in the days of the Berlin Wall and the division of Germany. He drinks too much, does not write enough, is mismanaging his life. He is unhappy in the West, but does not want to return to the East, though at times he misses it and says he wants to return when he is out of money. He knows he could just hop on a train and return, but he does not, and makes excuses, saying he would be arrested. Maybe he would be. But he frequently makes illogical excuses for his foolish behaviour, so the reader does not know for certain.
One incident follows another in picaresque fashion. Their interest to the reader varies. But this style does help illustrate the main character's aimless, unorganized life.
The book could be considered one long stream-of-consciousness, but in third person, never leaving the characters's head. Even with dialogue exchanges we are in his head hearing the dialogue rather than outside his head listening to the conversation. I believe this fits with the definition of stream-of-consciousness.
The character's motives are unsatisfying, his behaviour and decisions awkward and difficult to believe even for someone who feels lost in society. The drama of his efforts or lack thereof could have been better presented, and the sociey around him depicted more effectively, in a more satisfying dramatic arc than we see here.
A terrific, funny opening. Some memorable scenes thereafter. Some of the narrator's musings on life and the society of his time are very good. But the book is perhaps too meandering for my liking. I may have to give it another try some day.
The narrator is a famous and successful East German writer living in West Germany in the days of the Berlin Wall and the division of Germany. He drinks too much, does not write enough, is mismanaging his life. He is unhappy in the West, but does not want to return to the East, though at times he misses it and says he wants to return when he is out of money. He knows he could just hop on a train and return, but he does not, and makes excuses, saying he would be arrested. Maybe he would be. But he frequently makes illogical excuses for his foolish behaviour, so the reader does not know for certain.
One incident follows another in picaresque fashion. Their interest to the reader varies. But this style does help illustrate the main character's aimless, unorganized life.
The book could be considered one long stream-of-consciousness, but in third person, never leaving the characters's head. Even with dialogue exchanges we are in his head hearing the dialogue rather than outside his head listening to the conversation. I believe this fits with the definition of stream-of-consciousness.
The character's motives are unsatisfying, his behaviour and decisions awkward and difficult to believe even for someone who feels lost in society. The drama of his efforts or lack thereof could have been better presented, and the sociey around him depicted more effectively, in a more satisfying dramatic arc than we see here.
April 14, 2025
Hilbig uses the idea of the “interim” to craft a limbo or purgatory for the writer C, a GDR resident who finally receives a visa to go west. C finds him self consumed with alcohol and fraught with imposter syndrome. He no longer can put pen to paper and spends his time wandering the streets and riding trains back and forth between East and West Germany. The rampant influx of capitalism in the west and the haunting history of the holocaust cripple him. Through Hilbig’s lush prose we get a glimpse of the trauma of these events manifesting in a single man unable to move past his “Interim” state of being. The book is slow and relentless in its dirge but captures a unique time in German history.
September 22, 2024
4 1/2 stars for me. This is surprisingly good given the subject matter and milieu. There's a lot of technical skill going on here with subtle shifts in perspective and timeline without it coming across as flashy or pedantic. Hilbig stays away from obvious observations of capitalism and comparisons of East and West Germany. It helped that I read quite a bit of this on trains, helping me connect with the peripatetic C. and his spiraling wanderings. Finally, the translation is quite good.
I didn't understand how (painfully) autobiographical this was for Hilbig until after finishing the book - this one will stay with me for awhile.
I didn't understand how (painfully) autobiographical this was for Hilbig until after finishing the book - this one will stay with me for awhile.
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August 15, 2025Mostly putting this here to not accidentally try to read it again. I just found out about creating an abandoned shelf. I won't use it for living writers. :)
I got to page 55 and it's just not a good book. It could have been good, I like the subject matter and the character, it's just not well written. Or maybe it's brilliant and not my style. I was hoping for an Jenny Erpenbeck or not even that good, just a voice to pull me in, a tone to pull me in, it's not there. Looks like he's also a poet, so, I had even more hope.
I got to page 55 and it's just not a good book. It could have been good, I like the subject matter and the character, it's just not well written. Or maybe it's brilliant and not my style. I was hoping for an Jenny Erpenbeck or not even that good, just a voice to pull me in, a tone to pull me in, it's not there. Looks like he's also a poet, so, I had even more hope.
April 6, 2022
When C. couldn't write, he drank
into oblivion, except that he procrastinated, traveling East, traveling West, a girlfriend in each direction, who might be waiting, might have given up waiting, money earned from his writing, his awards for writing, running low, his visa running out, and, for most of the novel, C. lives through the past, when it made sense, when, learned largely at the end, he had had complete physical health. But pointless work.
into oblivion, except that he procrastinated, traveling East, traveling West, a girlfriend in each direction, who might be waiting, might have given up waiting, money earned from his writing, his awards for writing, running low, his visa running out, and, for most of the novel, C. lives through the past, when it made sense, when, learned largely at the end, he had had complete physical health. But pointless work.
May 23, 2022
Gotta stop picking up books about alienated men
February 12, 2024
3.5. A bit heavy-handed at times, but still solid.
March 4, 2022
This ribald and lacerating exploration of the psychological and territorial scissions of postwar Europe, read in Isabel Fargo Cole’s marvelously assured translation, seems to me the real deal: a major European novel of wild, idiosyncratic ambition that merits comparison with the works of Bernhard and Sebald. I would follow it wastrel writer protagonist—priapic one moment, impotent the next, a narcissist, a drunk, a philanderer, a failure, a genius, at home neither in the catastrophically failed “actually existing socialism” of the GDR nor in the vapid, sexually licentious consumer society of the FRG—anywhere.
Hilbig is a magisterial commander of both interior and exterior space, expertly marshalling his narrative through multiple excursuses and digressions with the same efficiency as the trains the conduct the protagonist across the border to West Germany and back to the East, taking us through horrific flame-lit industrial landscapes and scenes of domestic squalor and in and out of nightmares and states of inner torment with equal ease. He does it all with an unexpected grace and perfectly tuned sense of fictional pacing: the restless narrative never stalls out in turgid rhetorical excess even during the most lurid passages—it’s always moving, relentlessly moving—and the reader always somehow keeps her bearings even when slightly disoriented by the constant switchbacks from the present to the past. The plot, such as it is, follows the wanderings and tergiversations of an East German writer in the throes of a full-blown artistic and sexual crisis, exacerbated by prodigious drinking, while overstaying his visa to West Germany. As the reader comes to understand, the narrator’s restless transits from East to West as much as his circuitous inner journeys of memory and imagination trace and retrace the contours of a European map set in place by a century of devastating war, partition, displacement, and genocide.
Hilbig is a magisterial commander of both interior and exterior space, expertly marshalling his narrative through multiple excursuses and digressions with the same efficiency as the trains the conduct the protagonist across the border to West Germany and back to the East, taking us through horrific flame-lit industrial landscapes and scenes of domestic squalor and in and out of nightmares and states of inner torment with equal ease. He does it all with an unexpected grace and perfectly tuned sense of fictional pacing: the restless narrative never stalls out in turgid rhetorical excess even during the most lurid passages—it’s always moving, relentlessly moving—and the reader always somehow keeps her bearings even when slightly disoriented by the constant switchbacks from the present to the past. The plot, such as it is, follows the wanderings and tergiversations of an East German writer in the throes of a full-blown artistic and sexual crisis, exacerbated by prodigious drinking, while overstaying his visa to West Germany. As the reader comes to understand, the narrator’s restless transits from East to West as much as his circuitous inner journeys of memory and imagination trace and retrace the contours of a European map set in place by a century of devastating war, partition, displacement, and genocide.
November 20, 2021
A 4-star review based on my suspicion that "The Interim" is an almost too-perfect satire of existentialist literature. The protagonist, a 40-something East German (look it up, kiddies) author we know only as C., wanders aimlessly between capitalism and communism, getting drunk in train stations of cities he doesn't bother to explore. If that description makes you want to punch your smartphone screen, well, I can't blame you a bit. However, I don't think Herr Hilbig believes such chronic anomie is a more enlightened state of being so much as a semi-intentional attempt to avoid dealing with the reality of other human beings. I believe he's inviting the reader to laugh at C., not identify with or pity him. And for that, I got more pleasure out of one endless whiny chapter of "The Interim" than I've gotten out of Sartre's entire oeuvre.
November 23, 2022
The Interim is the story of a writer named C who is caught both mentally and physically between East and West Germany in the years just before the fall the of the Berlin Wall. He’s caught between two women , one in the east and one in the west , he’s also caught between the excesses of the west and the sparsity of the east. Very bleak but good writing throughout
December 13, 2019
Mörk, väsentlig läsning om DDR, och/men som Rebecka Kärde skrev i DN: "Den som är det minsta fascinerad av europeiskt 1900-tal, och som inte störs för lätt av manlig självömkan, bör läsa den genast."
December 14, 2024
Did not enjoy this. It was a slog. But I guess interesting as it was a different perspective than I am used to reading.
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