Becoming Fiction
Reassessing Atheism in Dürrenmatt's «Stoffe»
©2017
Monographs
VI,
288 Pages
Series:
Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature, Volume 131
Summary
Becoming Fiction: Reassessing Atheism in Dürrenmatt’s Stoffe sets forth a clarification of the importance of Friedrich Dürrenmatt, modern Swiss dramatist, essayist, novelist and self-proclaimed atheist (1921–1990), and offers new insights into the ways in which his father’s vocation as a Protestant minister, along with Dürrenmatt’s own decision as a young man to pursue a career in writing rather than religion, shaped his world view and, in particular, made necessary a final, desperate attempt to fictionally recast his own life through revisions and amplifications of many of his earlier works when he created his final prose volume, Stoffe. Dürrenmatt devoted immense energy in his writings to wrestling with his father’s God as a way of seeking self-identity. That perceived loss of his father’s esteem became the motor behind his works. After earlier successes, the icy reception of his most ambitious play, Der Mitmacher, in 1976, left the author in such a frustrated state of disappointment that he reached a point of linguistic breakdown. This book contends that Dürrenmatt’s loss of voice forced the author to a new kind of writing: a ‘re-turn’ home. Becoming Fiction explores the damage caused by Dürrenmatt’s inability to express his most central beliefs through the outdated, deceptive modes of linguistic thought and tradition. Consequently, the book argues, at the point of that breakdown of rigid linguistic and theological concepts, a space was forced open, and the Stoffe reveal a Divine presence.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author(s)/editor(s)
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Chapter 1: Introduction: Searching for Home
- The “schwierigste[r] Moment meines Lebens”
- Rejection of Tradition
- Atemwende
- Heimat
- Expressing the Inexpressible
- Chapter 2
- Mitmacher-Komplex
- Language
- Chapter 3
- God and Religion
- Philosophy and Science
- Chapter 4
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Chapter 2: Stoffe: The Story of a Life
- Stoff
- Fiction versus Nonfiction
- Heimkehr and Wiederholung
- Becoming Self—Becoming Text
- Der Mitmacher
- Loss and Failure
- Atemwende
- A New Writing
- The Chaos of Identity
- Background and (Non)sequential Development of the Stoffe
- Autobiography as “Stoff”—Documented Fragments of a Life
- 1970
- 1974
- Fragments of Identity
- Home—Geografie der Kindheit
- Forgetting
- The Visit “Home”
- Genre
- Das Schreckliche
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Chapter 3: Dürrenmatt and God
- Religion Versus Faith
- Dürrenmatt the Protestant
- Dürrenmatt Biography and Religion
- The Father
- Father or Godfather
- Writing Memory
- Mother
- Leaving Home and the Labyrinth
- Decision—Malen, Studieren or Schreiben
- Labyrinth and Decision
- Philosophy and Decision
- Leap of Faith and Decision
- Crossing Over
- Kierkegaard—The Single Individual
- Hegel and Kierkegaard
- Christian Faith—Infinite Resignation
- Dürrenmatt and Kierkegaard—The Individual
- Indirect Communication
- Philosophy and Metaphysics
- Dialectical Thinking
- Faith and Doubt
- Failure—Schlimmstmögliche Wendung
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Chapter 4: Labyrinth Turmbau. Stoffe I–IX
- 4.1 Der Winterkrieg in Tibet
- Der Winterkrieg in Tibet
- Grotesque Metaphors of Borders
- The Stoffe on the Wall
- The Museum of Self-Awareness
- Plato’s Cave
- Nietzsche and the Self
- Exiting the Cave
- Notes
- Bibliography
- 4.2 Mondfinsternis: Home by Chance
- Returning Home
- The Village as a Grotesque Parody of Home
- Zufallsdramaturgie
- Memoirs of Death
- Son of a Pastor
- Sexuality
- Alcohol and Sexuality
- Religion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- 4.3 Der Rebell
- Early Years
- Subjectivity Above Objectivity
- Failure and the Lonely Individual
- The Lonely Rebel
- Der Rebell
- Mother
- The Mirror and Its Reflection
- Reflection of God
- Unresolved Deception
- The Labyrinth as Mirror
- Note
- Bibliography
- 4.4 Begegnungen
- Passageways through Memories
- Cocooned within Fiction—Primed for a Transformation
- Illness, Death, and God
- Begegnungen
- Death and God
- Death and Imagination
- Death, Destruction, and “Glaubenswirren”
- Encounters with Death by Association
- The Butcher’s Shop and the Autopsy Room: The Uncanny
- Notes
- Bibliography
- 4.5 Querfahrt
- Forgetting and Remembering
- Querfahrt as Labyrinth
- Forgetting the Wallis, Jean Paul Richter, and the Resurrection
- Impossible to Return
- Resurrection from the Dead
- “von Irrweg zu Irrweg”
- Hatred for God
- Durcheinandertal
- Der Turmbau zu Babel
- Grace Rejected
- Inferiority
- The End
- Notes
- Bibliography
- 4.6 Die Brücke
- The Bridge as a Metaphor
- Die Brücke
- Subject Versus Object
- The Split Subject
- Chance and Physics
- Modern Physics
- Truth and Hypothesis
- Physics
- Crossing the Bridge
- Textual Origins and God
- Faith: “Das Mögliche ist Ungeheuer”
- Falling into the Abyss
- Faith and Rationality
- Fear and Failure—A Paradox to Reaching God
- Two Metaphors, One Definition
- Notes
- Bibliography
- 4.7 Das Haus
- Failure, Schlimmstmögliche Wendung, “Hundedreck”
- Philosophy
- Kant’s Philosophy
- Kant and the Limits of Logic
- Kierkegaard and Die Stadt
- Die Stadt as Way to Freedom
- Section Two
- Auto- und Eisenbahnstaaten
- Der Tod des Sokrates
- Section Three
- Das Haus
- When Logic Fails
- Mansarde: A Religious Experience
- Notes
- Bibliography
- 4.8 Vinter
- Breakdown—Language
- Physics and Language
- Language and God
- Religion and God
- Karl Barth, Father, Grace, and God
- Grace
- Vinter: “Ein Hinausrennen ist ein Hineinrennen”
- Trapped and Lonely
- Becoming Stoff
- Via Negativa—Deus Abscondicus
- The Risk of Overcoming
- Notes
- Bibliography
- 4.9 Das Hirn
- Das Hirn
- Das Hirn, the Abyss, Fear
- Turmbau, Language and God
- Conception of Das Hirn
- Author as Creator
- Enter the Divine
- Atemwende
- Philosophical Implications
- Breakdown
- Deus Incomprehensibilis
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Chapter 5: Conclusion
- Labyrinth. Stoffe I–III
- Turmbau: Stoffe IV–IX
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Series index
Dichtung: das kann eine Atemwende bedeuten. Wer weiss, vielleicht legt Dichtung den Weg […] um einer solchen Atemwende willen zurück? Vielleicht gelingt es ihr […] hier, zwischen Fremd und Fremd zu unterscheiden, […] für diesen einmaligen kurzen Augenblick? Vielleicht wird hier, mit dem Ich – mit dem hier und solcherart freigesetzten befremdeten Ich, – vielleicht wird hier noch ein Anderes frei?
—Paul Celan Der Meridian (225)
EIN DRÖHNEN: es ist
die Wahrheit selbst
unter die Menschen
getreten,
mitten ins
Metapherngestöber.
Details
- Pages
- VI, 288
- Publication Year
- 2017
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9781433135262
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781433139192
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9781433139208
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781453919187
- DOI
- 10.3726/978-1-4539-1918-7
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2018 (October)
- Published
- New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, 2017. VI, 288 pp.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
