"Did He Do It" by Stefan Zweig (first published 1987, in The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig, translated by Anthea Bell)

German Literature VI Annoucement

Links to Participant Posts


German Literature and History on The Reading Life

Stefan Zweig on The Reading Life

This will be the fifth year The Reading Life has participated in German Literature Month.  This event is one  of the reason it is great to be part of the international book blog community.  Last year I was motivated to read world class literary works by writers like Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse as well as lesser know treasures.  I learned a lot from the many very erudite posts by coparticipants and from those by our very generous hosts Caroline of Beauty is a Sleeping Cat and Lizzy of Lizzy's Literary Life.  You will find excellent reading suggestions and planned events on their blog.  To participate all you have to do is to post on any work originally written in German and put your link on the event blog.  

My Readings For German Literature VI November 2016

1.  The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse

2.  Royal Highness by Thomas Mann

3. A Small Circus by Hans Fallada

4.  Rosshalde by Hermann Hesse

5.  "Did He Do It" by. Stefan Zweig

6.  Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig (s cond reading, no post, posted on in Nov 2015)

The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig, translated by the award winning Althea Bell, with twenty one stories and a novella is a magnificent,  beautiful book.  I have been reading and posting on the stories through now three German Litetature Month events.  I do have one complaint.  No where are we provided with first publication information.  I learned from an Amazon reviewer who kindly listed all first publication dates that "Did He Do It" as not published until 1987, forty five years after Zweig died but I have no idea why. Where was this story all those years,  did Zweig feel it was not worthy?  Did a journal editor reject it?  If you know the back story on this work, please leave a comment. (Added note,thanks to Jonsthan I have first publication data, some editions of the collection have this)

"Did He Do It" centers on a dog.  I acknowledge it as a bit smaltzy, maybe that is why a journal editor somewhere long ago declined to publish the work.  The story is set in rural England.  It is depicted as a beautiful calm care free place.  Biographical readers of Zweig might see his longing for a civilized place to live.  A married couple is getting to know their new neighbors.  The man has a good job in London.  They first get to know the wife who seems to have a sadness about her.  Then they meet her husband.  He is a person of great enthusiasm for everything.  His wife is great, his job wonderful.  He seems to wear his wife out with his exuberance. There only lacuna is their childlessness.  The couple next door d

Decide they need a dog, a band their friend's dog just gave birth to a litter of Bulldogs. .  The man falls in love with the dog who becomes the ultimate spoiled brat, dominating the household.  The build up of the household power of the dog is very well done.  Then the dog's life takes a huge down turn when the husband forgets all about his when his wife becomes pregnant.  When the baby is born he is completely shocked when he is actually relegated to a yard dog.  I pretty much saw the ending coming as will you.  It was still exciting and scary.

"Did He Do It" was fun to read.  

Please share your favorite Zweig works with us. 

Mel ü

The Piano Teacher by Elfrirde Jelinek (1983)

German Literature VI Annoucement

Links to Participant Posts


German Literature and History on The Reading Life

This will be the fifth year The Reading Life has participated in German Literature Month.  This event is one  of the reason it is great to be part of the international book blog community.  Last year I was motivated to read world class literary works by writers like Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse as well as lesser know treasures.  I learned a lot from the many very erudite posts by coparticipants and from those by our very generous hosts Caroline of Beauty is a Sleeping Cat and Lizzy of Lizzy's Literary Life.  You will find excellent reading suggestions and planned events on their blog.  To participate all you have to do is to post on any work originally written in German and put your link on the event blog.   

After just a few days there are alrrady lots of interesting and insightful,posts for the event.  It is a great source of new reading ideas.

The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek is  at times shocking in it depiction of sexual sadism and masocism between a seemingly refined female piano teacher and her younger student. It is an a acute depiction of the impact of repression on a middle aged female piano teacher in contemporary Vienna.

The plot follows the development of a sadomaschoistic relationship of Erika Kohut, a piano teacher, and her younger male pupil.  The affair produces terrible results for both. 

Erika lives with her very dominating mother.  In the opening episode the two get in a terrible fight because Erika bought herself a new dress even though her mother thinks they should save their money for a new apartment.  The fight is so bad Erika tears out some of her mother's hair.

Erika likes to carry large musical instruments on the city train so she can hurt people by bumping the insturments into them.  She likes to go to sexual shows to see sadistic sex acts.   Childhood memories are skillfully woven into the story.  

Gradually a young male engineering student comes to watch Erika in a performance, becomes hsr student and develops an infatuation for her.  Erika, partially in revolt against her mother, begins a sexual relationship, of sorts, with her student.  She always dictates what he is to do to her.  The sexual scenes are long, detailed, violent and the man is there to preform, to be near tortured by Erika's abuse of his genitals.  Eventually the man cannot bear being totally dominated and used.  His reaction is itself the reversal of the sexual master slave dialect played out in The Piano Teacher. He is 17, she 38, matching closely the age differences of Erika to,her mother and the mother  to her father.

I found the novel very interesting.  The trip we take through the sexual underworld of modern Vienna has mythic overlays of all sorts.  The sex scenes are very well done.  The story's plot also depicts the reverse of the often treated female rape fantasy in which only an act of violent rebellion can potentially free both male and female from the fantasy structure.

For sure I would read more by Jelinek.

Bio Data- Extracted from Nobel Prize Official Webpage.  

Recipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature, Elfriede Jelinek is an Austrian poet, playwright, and novelist. Born to a Catholic-Viennese mother and a Jewish-Czech father in Mürzzuschlag, Styria, Jelinek grew up in Vienna and lost many members of her family to the Holocaust.

Jelinek studied music intensively from an early age. She graduated from the Vienna Conservatory and studied theater and art history at the University of Vienna. In a 2004 interview Jelinek explained, “My training in music and composition then led me to a kind of musical language process in which, for example, the sound of the words I play with has to expose their true meaning against their will[,] so to speak.”

She published her first collection of poetry, Lisas Schatten (1967), at the age of 21. Discussing the influence of writer H.C. Atrmann, founder of the Vienna Group, on her work, Jelinek said that “if you want to say something, you have to let the language itself say it, because language is usually more meaningful than the mere content that one wishes to convey.” Jelinek’s poetry is at once syntactically demanding and brightly image-driven. Her stark, frequently violent images are richly complicated by their jostling, fragile, and lyrical interactions.

Her writing interrogates the relationship between sexual power and social structure, and marks her as a controversial figure in her homeland. She was a member of the Communist Party from 1974 to 1991, and she voiced her opposition to the far-right Freedom Party. On awarding Jelinek the Nobel Prize, the committee praised “her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power.”

Jelinek has also been awarded the Heinrich Böll Prize, the Büchner Prize, and the Kessing Prize for Criticism. She has translated work by Goethe and Botho Strauss, and her 1988 novel, The Piano Teacher, was made into a feature film in 2001.

Mel ü

Rosshalde. By Hermann Hesse (1914)

My Posts on Hermann Hesse

German Literature VI Annoucement

Links to Participant Posts


German Literature and History on The Reading Life

This will be the fifth year The Reading Life has participated in German Literature Month.  This event is one  of the reason it is great to be part of the international book blog community.  Last year I was motivated to read world class literary works by writers like Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse as well as lesser know treasures.  I learned a lot from the many very erudite posts by coparticipants and from those by our very generous hosts Caroline of Beauty is a Sleeping Cat and Lizzy of Lizzy's Literary Life.  You will find excellent reading suggestions and planned events on their blog.  To participate all you have to do is to post on any work originally written in German and put your link on the event blog.  

My Readings For German Literature VI November 2016

1.  The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse

2.  Royal Highness by Thomas Mann

3. A Small Circus by Hans Fallada

4.  Rosshalde by Hermann Hesse 

Long ago Hermann Hesse was one of the literary heroes of a worldwide wave of revulsion against crass materialistic society, culminating in what was popularity called "Counter Culture".   Those who fancied themselves spiritually enlightened sought wisdom from Indian gurus, secret eastern cults, mind alerting drugs and such.  Hermann Hesse's novels Stephenwolf and Shidhartra were required reading.  There is about a forty or so hiatus in my reading of Hesse but I have returned to his work.  I reread the two just mentioned works in 2014.I discovered a number of other works by Hesse have  been translated into English in the last forty years. Last year for German Literature V I read Gertrude.  I found this work a bit disappointing in that part of the ethos of the work seems to be only a conventionally beautiful woman could be interesting.  This is not the thought pattern of an "enlightened" person.  I also now saw the prevalence of "Orientalizing" in Hesse.  But I still like him!  I read his short novel Journey to the East and enjoyed it but you can see the craving for a guru,great leader figure and in the context of post WW I Germany this is a bit disconcerting.  

Rosshalde centers on a famous and wealthy artist.  He lives with his wife and son in an estate named Rosshalde.  He and his wife have long ago lost their love for each other, they are bonded by their love of their only child, a son.   The husband stays normally in a guest house.  He knows his creativity is slowing being eaten away by his stilled life style but he cannot bring himself to leave his son and go to India as he wishes with all his heart.  A good friend comes to visit and transforming events occur.  As you read on, you will probably see what is coming to send him to India.

Rosshalde should be read after you have read his famous works.  I acquired it on sale as an E book for $0.99, a fair price.

Mel ü