Careers – The Grace of Audience Abuse

In the literary regions that are gradually drying out, only a few plants still bloom. The “Palmbaum” stands out pleasingly from the half-yearly magazines – some of them trying to be cosmopolitan, some of them experimentally playful. This “Literary Journal from Thuringia” has been edited and designed by Jens-Fietje Dwars for more than 20 years, is published by quartus-Verlag in Bucha near Jena, and is supported by the state. It is designed to be very essayistic, but always has an extensive poetry section, as well as prose and reviews.

Each issue has a main topic. The current one is dedicated to the vertical starts of young authors and the current circumstances of success. 225 years ago, Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” attracted undivided attention, an epistolary novel that thrilled or frustrated. For the art historian Verena Paul-Zinserling, Werther is a self-centered whiner, incapable of respecting a woman’s will to live. He becomes a burden to her, yes, he even makes her responsible for her own death. Jens F. Dwars counters this and considers the background, including Goethe’s unhappy love for Charlotte Buff during his time in Wetzlar. He learned from her fiancé Kestner that a friend from college had shot himself and that Kestner had lent him the pistol. Goethe “subjectivizes the case of the other, he charges the factual with an eruption of feelings that motivated him…”

Klaus Bellin begins his discussion of Thomas Mann’s “Buddenbrooks” with a letter from the publisher Samuel Fischer, saying that the debutant (“Little Mr. Friedemann”) could perhaps also write a novel – “not that long”. Thomas Mann, 22 years old, initially doubted whether he should dare to do this, but now he felt an impetus and suddenly set about researching the history of the Buddenbrooks. CVs, habits, sayings, grain prices, civic meetings… the notes fill a thousand pages. Thanks to these thorough studies, the ability to compose and a good dose of irony, we have a bestseller that has stood the test of time. Bellin emphasizes the strict way of working, but does not dare to generalize or compare the writing styles of other authors, even of the present. Thomas Mann did not proceed differently when working on the “Magic Mountain”. But the “Magic Mountain” would probably not be printed by any publisher today, in the frenzy of “autofictional” navel-gazing.

Hans-Dieter Schütt formulates it in a particularly crystalline way in everyday journalistic practice: “Handke uses poetry against the thorough rationalization of the brain …” Anyone who appreciates his deeply felt perceptions of nature and everyday life, his “exercises of observation”, as Schütt calls it, all ” “Time and Space Transient” will make you look pale, will ask yourself: How could this author cause such a stir with the spectacular piece “Insulting the Audience” in 1966? Yes, Peter Handke was surfing the wave of new pop music from the Beatles and Rolling Stones. It was about volume and criticism, including the “descriptive impotence” of West German literature, which he had previously accused the luminaries of Group 47 at a conference in Princeton. During the piece, Handke only shouted the insults at the audience that they themselves used. At first glance, Handke’s furious start as a playwright seems to exude little in the way of grace, writes Schütt, but “pride (no: high courage) and grace, that’s Handke.” These five pages about “Grace of the Antisocial” alone are worth buying the magazine.

Romina Nikolič follows how media hype glorifies a debut using the example of the novel “Axolotl Roadkill” (2010) by the then 17-year-old Helene Hegemann, who then found herself exposed to accusations of plagiarism as an undoubtedly talented young author. Achim Wunsch shows how meaningful literature came about beyond the market using Gerhard Wolf’s underground edition “Außer der Reihe” from Aufbau-Verlag in the final phase of the GDR.

Jens F. Dwars looks at two exhibitions from a distance – one about Goethe’s years in Jena in the botanical garden there and the redesign of the Nietzsche House in Naumburg. In Jena people concentrate too much on Goethe’s scientific studies and ignore his poetry, his practical work as a minister and the ideological “metamorphoses”. In this light, however, a modern memorial would have to bring the classic to life, demands Dwars.

“Palmbaum”, issue 2/2024, quartus-Verlag, 204 pages, br., 12 €.