The Writer's Dimension. Selected Essays

by Christa Wolf, Grace Paley (Introduction)

The Author's Dimension finally makes Christa Wolf's critical writing available in English. Readers of her fiction will recognize her elegant and demanding prose and the passion with which she continually examines the individual's, in particular the writer's, relationship to his or her society. But this collection also reveals the way in which Wolf approaches her art. Spanning the past three decades, the essays focus primarily on the role of the writer and literature today. Wolf interviews herself on the development of The Quest for Christa T. In a witty and probing essay on reading, she imagines her life without books and removes each layer of literary influence, from Snow White to All Quiet on the Western Front. There are perceptive essays about other writers, including Thomas Mann, Karoline von Gunderrode, Max Frisch, and Ingeborg Bachmann. Finally, the sections "On War and Peace and Politics" and "The End of the German Democratic Republic" demonstrate the ways in which Wolf's political thinking has evolved and cast light on the political situation in East Germany prior to German reunification. With its impassioned celebration of literature, this collection will interest not just those already familiar with Wolf's work but anyone engaged in the acts of writing and reading today.

Genres: Essays

340 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1993

About the author

Novelist, short-story writer, essayist, critic, journalist, and film dramatist Christa Wolf was a citizen of East Germany and a committed socialist, and managed to keep a critical distance from the communist regime. Her best-known novels included “Der geteilte Himmel” (“Divided Heaven,” 1963), addressing the divisions of Germany, and “Kassandra” (“Cassandra,” 1983), which depicted the Trojan War.

She won awards in East Germany and West Germany for her work, including the Thomas Mann Prize in 2010. The jury praised her life’s work for “critically questioning the hopes and errors of her time, and portraying them with deep moral seriousness and narrative power.”

Christa Ihlenfeld was born March 18, 1929, in Landsberg an der Warthe, a part of Germany that is now in Poland. She moved to East Germany in 1945 and joined the Socialist Unity Party in 1949. She studied German literature in Jena and Leipzig and became a publisher and editor.

In 1951, she married Gerhard Wolf, an essayist. They had two children. Christa Wolf died in December 2011.

(Bloomberg News)

Reviews

[Raul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four decades worth of brilliant essays are collected here, starting during the period of the early years of the then newly formed state of GDR and the last essays as it was collapsing and Germany reunified. Most of the essays are Christa Wolf's thoughts on literature and politics and how both are enfolded, and inform each other.

Christa Wolf was a child when the Nazi party came into power in Germany and personally experienced how people, including herself, could be swept up in fascism and fear for the "enemy", and the horrifying measures taken for the enemy's destruction. So after the Second World War, the newly formed socialist GDR worked to permanently crush fascism within its borders, and individuals like Wolf worked to destroy whatever might have remained of fascism so that history wouldn't repeat itself. Wolf has written about this in her fiction and in these essays, and was even accused of being obsessed with the past for examining how people are seduced by authority and the dangers of it. There are also essays on feminism and gender equality, those that condemn war and the existence and manufacture of nuclear weapons, how fascism never really disappeared in Germany, among other subjects.

A few of the quotes I liked from the collection:

"Nothing that we do or leave undone is without its consequences, and one day we cannot help having to confront them."

"What people suppress, they come to fear"

[Rebeca F. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful, profound, thought-provoking, beautifully written, melancholy yet hopeful and deeply committed, this book is a large collection of essays by Wolf, divided into four sections: reader and writer, other authors, politics, and history (the end of the GDR)
It asks all the big questions while denouncing the lack of questions in our modern language and way of thinking and writing and communicating. It reflects on the role of literature in times of crisis. And it invites us to keep fighting for utopias in spite of the failures we've gone through so far.
I loved it and thought it was deeply touching.

[Brie Hiller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I did not read all of her author critiques of other people because I did not know them and it felt non meaningful. I did read the rest of the book. She is so smart and writes in such a deep thinking persons way. And also, she writes about a time and place in history that I knew little about. Not sure how I heard about her, but I was glad to chip away at this collection.