Der Leser. Das Erzählen. Frankfurter Poetik- Vorlesungen.

by Peter Bichsel

Peter Bichsels fünf Vorlesungen aus dem Jahr 1982 sind eigentlich keine Vorlesungen, sondern Geschichten von Vorlesungen. Sie sind wohltuend unprätentiös und stets äußerst subtil - wie seine Geschichten. Gleichzeitig scheinen sie nur aus Abschweifungen zu bestehen, aus kleinen Geschichten, sehr amüsant und zugleich doch ernsthafte Geschichten über Literatur und über Leser. Vor allem über Leser, die Peter Bichsel liebt, egal, was sie lesen.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Peter Bichsel was a popular Swiss writer and journalist representing modern German literature. He was a member of the Gruppe Olten.
Bichsel was born in 1935 in Lucerne, Switzerland, the son of manual labourers. Shortly after he was born, the Bichsels moved to Olten, also in Switzerland. After finishing school, he became an elementary school teacher, a job he held until 1968. From 1974 to 1981 he was the personal advisor and speech writer of Willy Ritschard, a member of the Swiss Federal Council. Between 1972 and 1989 he made his mark as a "writer in residence" and a guest lecturer at American universities. Bichsel lived on the outskirts of Solothurn for several decades.
He started publishing short lyric works in newspapers. In 1960, he got his first success in prose as a private printer. In the winter of 1963–1964, he took part in a writing course in prose taught by Walter Höllerer.
One of his first and best-known works is And Really Frau Blum Would Very Much Like to Meet the Milkman. Published only in a modest edition in 1964, the book was quickly sold out. The reason was an enthusiastic review by Marcel Reich-Ranicki. Just as successful, Children's Stories, intended for adults, is written in the form of droll tales for children. Both books were translated from German by the English poet Michael Hamburger. A theme of Bichsel's works for younger readers is the stubborn desire of children to take words literally and wreak havoc on the world of communicated ideas. In the early 1970s and 1980s, Bichsel's journalistic work pushed his literary work mainly into the background. Only Der Busant (1985) and Warten in Baden-Baden appeared again with the Bichsel style that was so familiar to German readers. Peter Bichsel gave up being a professional teacher early in his lifetime, later he continued to teach his readers that the drudgery and banality of life are of our own making. He used often a simple sentence structure 'subject-predicate-object' and was a passionate observer of Switzerland.
In 1981, he was a member of the jury at the 31st Berlin International Film Festival.
Peter Bichsel's estate is archived in the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern.

Reviews

[Selim Karlıtekin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bichsel'in edebiyat üzerine konuşması da edebiyatı kadar muzip ve beyinde lavaboaç etkisi yapıyor. Çevirinin ciddi bir tashihe ihtiyacı var.

[Ingeborg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and very clever.
Our limited time on Earth makes us tell stories, we tell them to escape our mortality, but they have nothing or very little to do with the truth, however you want to define it - because our language is so limited. Literature is not life, it can never be a simple recounting of life, which means we can live without it. But literature, stories, give us something extra - an added value to life.
Bichsel has a witty mind and is very original.
I like his thought that literature can spring from our unwilingness to talk about the mundane, about the everyday stuff life is made of, and I will remember his wonderful sentence "stories are a way of calming the world".

[Lukas · Rating 5 out of 5]

viel liebenswertes und wahres

[Atila Demirkasımoğlu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Güzel bir çalışma. Nitelikli. Her bölümü çok iyi olmasa da üç bölüm mükemmel. Genel olarak başarılı. Güzel de anlatmış. Edebiyatla ilgilenenlerin dikkate alması gereken pek çok düşünce var. Hoş bir kitap.

[Tanol Türkoğlu · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Bir hikaye her zaman hikaye hakkında bir hikayedir"