Leipzig Book Fair – bribery and satisfaction

As Karl Marx already mocked so aptly, “history does not repeat itself unless as a farce,” is also the reverse punch line. To read in Ilja Trojanov’s satire “The Book of Power”. In this literary prose adaptation of the Greater Poem of the Bulgarian author Stojan Mikhailowski “Book for the Bulgarian people” in 1897, the farce does not follow as a repetition of history, but the present follows the almost prophetic satire, so that you are trying to add: “Similarities are purely accidental.” The reader will be able to decide themselves. What is it about?

In 15 day and night lessons, the venir, i.e. the head of government in the Ottoman Caliphate, reveals his nephew, which he succeeds, with oriental words, the secret of power or, according to the subtitle of the book, “how to get it and (never) let go”. The satirical instruction is tough. It not only fans the human badness, perhaps also essential in the Muslim world as a deadly sin, but also demands more casual sins despite its ugliness. The vesir not only praises murder and homicide, bribery and satisfaction of vanity, he comes to authoritarian tricks that all seem to be known to you. Everyone experiences them in their surroundings in one or one of the many variants.

Trojanow falls on a brilliant trick in his remake. He divides his book into two different sides: on the right is the original condition of power maintenance on the right (note the color!). On the left is a suitable text by people in red letters such as a dialogical interruption of the venir’s flow flow who have something to say. For example, the vesir has confessed: “In the past thirty years I have poured poison into the mouth of the public with determined persistence, a mixture of lies, defamation and assumptions”. In addition, Jonathan Swift stands with the Sentenz: »The falsehood flies and the truth is behind; So if the people are aware of deception, it is already too late. “And Hannah Ahrendt:” Nobody has ever expected the political virtues. “

The terrorism of power, in blue letters on the right sides, follow in the virtual dialogue, some apologists, like the crown lawyer of Nazis Carl Schmitt: “It is confident who decides on the state of emergency.” Others in red letters on the left sides, such as Konstantin Wecker with his song “man needs one to kick”. Heinrich Heine stands on a left, red side with his poem from the “Sugar Ps for everyone”. Or Erasmus von Rotterdam with the clear word: “Power without goodness is pure tyranny”. Or just as clear the “red, left” Immanuel Kant: “Two things meet the mind with ever new admiration and awe, the more often and persistent thinking deals with it: the perfect heaven above me and the moral law in me.”

So the book reads entertaining on white paper in Bleu-Blanc-Rouge, as a satire on the present. An illuminating epilogue of Ilija Trojanow pays the poet of the template, his Bulgarian compatriot Stojan Mikhailowski and the “evident” topicality of his Großpoem an appropriate literature history and time -political reverence.

Ilija Trojanow: The Book of Power. How to get it and (never) let go.
The other library, 275 pages, in Schuber € 48, hardcover 26 €.