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Laddar... The Living are Few, the Dead Manyav Hans Henny Jahnn
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The inter-war literary scene in Europe was ripe with Gothic Romanticism and modernist literary Expressionism a la Doblin and Joyce. Hans Henny Jahnn created a 'crazed marriage' between these two in his personal cries of existential horror and guilt. Jahnn had both a repulsion and a fascination for mortality, which was reinforced by his unconventional sexuality and by his philosophy that celebrated all aspects of life and death. The Living are Few, the Dead Many features a selection of Jahnn's works, including The Night of Lead, which is his most renowned work in Germany. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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![]() GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)833.912Literature German and related languages German fiction Modern period (1900-) 1900-1990 1900-1945BetygMedelbetyg:![]()
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Neither of these first two stories engaged me in a deep way. 'Kebad Kenya' is a convoluted death hymn that left me feeling cold. Not at all similar, 'Sassanid King' is a manic slice of ancient Middle Eastern historical fiction that also failed to capture my interest. (I should probably reread both of them.) With 'A Master Selects his Servant', however, my interest began to grow. Here, Jahnn's Gothic leanings rise to the surface in a riveting fashion. Having recently read Coleman Dowell's collected short fiction, my occasional taste for the Gothic had been whetted, so this story continued a welcome stimulation of that appetite. The first person narration lent a welcome intimacy, as well. Jahnn's process of characterization felt complete here for the first time in the collection, the first two stories perhaps having suffered by their excision from larger texts, which allowed me to at last sink deeper into his world. This descent continued with the final piece, the novella titled 'The Night of Lead', which is his best known work.
Death permeates all of Jahnn's writing here. He employs grotesque description, yet in a matter-of-fact manner. Some of the existential wanderings in fiction of Kafka, Beckett, and Blanchot felt relevant for comparison, at least in tangential terms. In 'The Night of Lead' Jahnn uses the concept of an 'other' to explore the inner darkness of the self and the gulf that can expand and shrink between the individual and society. However, there is the lingering sense that Jahnn kept his private concerns quite close to himself in his fiction, leaving the reader to largely poke around in the dark. His obfuscation of meaning in his texts, then, serves to stop short the potential for any universal truths seeping out around the blurry edges. There are no easy answers here, and sometimes even the questions are murky at best.
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