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| Wilhelm
Kuehs
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| There
should be no national literature anymore
The idea of national community originated at the beginning of the
19th century. Following the ideas of the French Revolution in 1878,
in Germany and also in Austria groups were established to prolong
national identity. This means that individuals created their self-images
no longer depending on the ruling house of the empire but depending
on the language they spoke and the culture of their people - whatever
that means. So for example German-speaking people of the former
Austrian k. u. k. Monarchy tried to get connected with Germany,
which is known as the "Großdeutsche Lösung" (great German solution).
Similar aims were pursued by Hungarian people, the Czechs and Slovaks,
and also in Bosnia. Finally these movements ended by splitting up
the monarchy and starting World War I, which was only a test for
the last days of humanity. A trial of history which cumulated in
World War II, the Holocaust and the atomic disaster in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
It?s no wonder that the idea of national identity is connected to
war and destruction. You have only to think about the philosophical
background. A nationalist sees himself as something special. His
nation is better than any other. His people are stronger, wiser
than any other. His culture is the best you can get. As the last
consequence, this leads to the idea that all others are not human
beings.
A special case of this position is anti-Semitism for racial reasons.
It was started in the 19th century by men like Houston Steward Chamberlain,
who was the nephew of Richard Wagner and the austrian philosopher
Otto Weininger. In their books Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts
(The Basics Of 19th Century) and Rasse und Geschlecht (Race And
Gender) they tried to prove that Jews as a race were not human beings.
These ideas were welcomed by the German establishment, which started
to create itself as the Arian race.
That this was not only a intellectual game we can see in the large
number of Progroms, which took place in Germany and Austria since
1800. Journalist Hartwig von Hundt-Radkowsky asked in 1819 for all
Jewish women to be taken into brothels and all the men be castrated.
They should be put into coal mines or sold as slaves. The so called
Hepp-Hepp Bewegung (Hepp-Hepp Movement) was the beginning of the
anti-Jewish Progroms of the 19th century in which thousands of people
were murdered.
From this example we can see that the idea of nationality has two
sides. On one hand we have in this case the German race. The nationalists
thought about themselves as the chosen people, not chosen by God
as the Jews but chosen by history, which is connected with Hegel?s
spirit of history. But this is not the place to explain that connection.
On the other hand you have all the other people. From the point
of view of a nationalist they have no right to life under the same
conditions as the chosen race. The others have to serve the chosen
race or have to be destroyed.
It is always the same pattern, the same structure. If you construct
a good thing you always construct the bad thing too. And if you
believe in the good thing, you have to annihilate the bad one. This
mechanism is a trap. It?s like Catholicism. If you believe in God
you also have to believe in the devil. And as the last consequence
you have to believe that the devil rules the world. Because if God
rules the world than why is there so much evil things all around,
if God is love?
The Catholics and the nationalist are in the same situation. They
are waiting for someone to come free them. For the Catholics it
was Jesus Christ. For the German nationalists it was Adolf Hitler.
Both of them failed. But that?s not really a problem. The New Jerusalem
is just ahead and so is the Fourth Empire. Okay, I give in, there
is a difference between Catholics and German nationalists. Catholicism
is a central cultural phenomena. German nationalism is not. But
it is the same story. It?s also the same story in Serbia or Ethiopia
and so on.
Jean Francois Lyotard called it meta-narrations. I call it a history
of salvation, but I mean a history of non-salvation.
The first one of these histories of salvation was the Judeo-Christian
religion. Other examples are communism, fascism, humanism and capitalism.
They are all dependent of the same structure. History is seen as
a linear process. Mankind develops from a distant beginning, which
was pleasant or not, through a large number of adventures to a better,
luckier state. Lyotard: ?Narration is the form of this [traditional]
knowledge par excellence, in more than one way.?
At first this popular narration tells what we know as positive or
negative Bildung [original German], this means the successes or
failures, which crown the adventures of the hero, and these successes
of failures either gave legitimation to institutions (function of
myths) or represent positive or negative models of integration (legends,
fairy tails). On one hand this narration allows to define the criteria
of competence of the society in which they are told, and on the
other hand to asses the achievements, realised or potential.
The basic idea of this narration is, that the entire world can be
explained without any contradiction. The hero of history has the
strength and the power to bring the history of the world to a happy
end. For Jews and Catholics the narration begins when Adam and Eve
were banned from Paradise. Because in Paradise there is no time,
there is no history. The Fall of Man was the beginning of the adventures
of mankind. The aim of history is Harmmagedon, after which history
will come to an end and a New Jerusalem will be established. So
the history of salvation.
The Bible is one of the first narrations of salvation. It is eschatological.
The counterpart to this form of narration is Ovid?s Metamorphoses.
Ovid also tells a story from the beginning of world, from the golden
age to its second coming. But there are no conditions for man to
be saved. History will go on no matter what. The Metamorphoses is
not a history of salvation, it is not a holy text. There is no religious
cult, no eschatological dimension. The aim of the adventures of
Hercules is not the recreation of the golden age. Odysseus struggled
with the gods, but he didn?t give a damn about the golden age.
The narration of the Bible is totally different. Every word has
an eschatological meaning. Everything is constructed with an aim
in mind. The aim is salvation of mankind. But, and this seems very
important to me, the individual is responsible for his salvation.
It depends on what he does or not. I don?t stress the theological
paradox, that the Church says everything depends on you and at the
same time maintains that everything relies on God?s mercy. In everyday
practice this paradox doesn?t play any role. One who is a sinner
and doesn?t do any penance will be put into hell. The opinion of
Origines, who says God?s compassion is so great that all sins will
be forgiven at the end of days, has not gained acceptance. This
origin doesn?t fit into the traditional structure of western history
of saviour. Because if everyone is good, how can we differentiate
the bad?
A history of saviour produce automatically a history of non-saviour.
If there are the good ones, there are also the bad ones. The good
ones on their own mean nothing. The two poles depend on each other
in a dialectical way.
This is the reason why a history of saviour has to turn into a history
of non-saviour. For a Jew, the narration of the Nazis is a history
of non-saviour. For a communist the narration of capitalism is a
history of non-saviour. And so is the narration of nationalism a
history of non-saviour to everybody who is not a member of the particular
nation. For everyone who fulfils the rules of the narration - alleluia
- it is a history of saviour. For everyone else it is not. And so
I wonder why there are so few happy people in this world. It may
depend on the circumstance that the construction of history as a
way to the golden age or to paradise doesn?t really work. You never
get paradise, you always get hell. This is a source of terror.
So you may ask: what has this to do with national literature? The
connection is hidden in the term national. If you define literature
as a product of a nation than you agree with the idea of nation
- and you have to face the consequences (see above).
I am not an Austrian writer. I am a writer. I was born in Austria.
Okay, but what does that mean? I write German. These are circumstances
which say nothing about my state of mind and my feelings about affiliation
to a literary tradition.
I am also a literary scientist and so I know the problem of literary
identity very well. Let us look at some examples. This congress
took place in Croatia, on the island of Krk. Some kilometres from
here, in Opatija, Ödon van Horváth was born. He also lived in Hungary,
in Austria, Czechoslovaki and later in France (But not for long.
He was killed by a fallen branch on a stormy afternoon.) What national
literature did he depend upon? He wrote in German, so we say he
is an Austrian writer. But is this true? What about Elias Canetti?
He was born in Bulgaria, lived in England, Germany and Austria.
In 1938 he went into exile to London. Later on he lived in London
and Zurich. It may sound quite absurd, but we call him an Austrian
writer. The same thing with Kafka an Celan. And think about Eugene
Ionesco. Everybody would say he was a writer from France, but he
was born in Romania, and his first work was written in Romanian
language. And now at last a riddle: To which nation does Ivo Andriæ
belong?
From this point of view there is no national literature in Europe.
And there is also another thing to say. I was raised in a small
town in Carinthia, in the south of Austria. My first literary influences
were the myths and fairy tales my grandfather told me and what I
saw on TV. So I was raised between stories about witches and dwarves
and spaceship Enterprise and Mickey Mouse and Superman. When I look
back, I see that it is no wonder that I am a horror- and fantasy-writer.
But later on I gained influences from all around the world. I was
deeply impressed by the authors of the beat-generation and I love
J.R.R.Tolkien?s Lord Of The Rings (I think it is one of the most
important books of the 20th century). My heroes are the Rolling
Stones and Bob Dylan, but I never loose my connection to Austrian
writers like Christine Lavant, Peter Handke and Christoph Ransmayr
(who lives in Ireland). Philosophically I was influenced by Buddhism,
the Radical Constructivism, Postmodernism and the semiotic of Umberto
Eco and the Russian cultural semiotic of Yuri Lotman. I read everything
I can get. Some examples from the last months: Albert Camus, Ingeborg
Bachman, Milorad Paviæ, Milan Kundera, Paul Auster, Michael Köhlmaier,
Richard Brautigan, The Mahabaratha, Horkheimer, Foucault, Salman
Rushdie, Dschuang Dschi and certainly the new book by Stephen King.
I?m not writing out of the consciousness that I?m an Austrian. I?m
writing out of the consciousness that I?m a human being. And no
matter where you are, from which country you came, I bet you write
exactly about the same things that I write about. These things are
love, death, your struggle with the world, about fun and hatred.
Maybe you write about politics, maybe you write crime stories or
horror tales like I do. No matter what. But we all do the same thing.
We try to express our perception of the world. And literature is
a special way of perception.
As far as I can see, literature should not be connected to any history
of saviour nor to meta-narration. Because this leads to hell, to
the history of non-saviour. And we should not be the slaves of any
ideology. We should face the destruction and face the happiness,
both in a very cool state of mind.
We should no longer tell the story of the holy gral or the story
of saviour. If we believed in saviour there wouldn?t be any. I try
to get out of the good and bad game. There is neither nor. But this
is hard to except. As Hemingway said: All you have to do is have
a good look at what?s really going on, and then write it down.
Then maybe we can do what we are here for: entertain our readers,
show them some pieces from heaven. I say it again. First and foremost
I try to entertain my readers. Why should anyone buy my books if
they are boring?
Second, I try to show a way out of the god and bad game. If someone
only wants a good and thrilling story, I hope he will be satisfied
with my books. If someone wants a philosophical background which
deals with the really important questions of our life, he may find
some thoughts which may give him a little kick. If I reach this
aim, I am very satisfied with myself.
Now you may ask: where do you feel at home? My answer: Nowhere.
This world is not my home, I?m just a passin thru, as Tom Waits
said on his latest album. Someone said all writers are Jewish, they
are always in diaspora. I don?t think so. Because if you are in
diaspora there is the possibility to come home. But there is no
home.
I?m always on the run, and try to have fun.
Fly Away.
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