An Interview with Adolf Muschg

Abstract

Adolf Muschg, a popular writer, teacher and aesthetician, is one of the comparatively few contemporary Swiss writers who has been able to establish himself firmly in Germany. In recent years, he has begun to attract the attention of American critics and Germanists as well. In the interview, Adolf Muschg deals with a wide spectrum of issues. He identifies the authors and works that mean most to him. He traces, for instance, his changing relationship to Goethe, whom he recently rediscovered. In Goethe's works, above all in his scientific studies, Muschg finds issues that are of central importance to the survival of our planet. He detects a kinship between Goethe and the Greens of the seventies and looks back critically on the turbulent sixties. He provides an analysis of the current tensions between the USA and Western Europe, while confirming his keen and very personal involvement with the USA. But at the core of the interview are his extensive comments on the creative processes and the perils inherent in writing fiction. There he deals with the complex relationship between literature and therapy, the therapeutic potential of literature for the writer and the reader. By describing the novelist's difficult journey on the narrow path between self-revelation and indiscretion, he also reflects upon the related issue of literary narcissism. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol8/iss2/6 AN INTERVIEW WITH ADOLF MUSCHG JUDITH RICKER-ABDERHALDEN University of Arkansas One of the Swiss authors to have a major impact on German literature since Friedrich Diirrenmatt and Max Frisch is Adolf Muschg, the author of six novels, four collections of short stories, five dramatic works and countless essays. He is the recipient of several prizes, among them the prestigious Hermann Hesse Prize in 1974 for his novel Albissers Grund. The enthusiastic response to his Frankfurt lecture series in January-February 1980 confirmed Muschg's popularity as a writer, teacher and aesthetician. And yet, in spite of his prestige in Europe, especially in Germany, Adolf Muschg has only very recently begun to attract the attention of American critics and journalists. Although a few of his texts have appeared in English, French, Dutch, Japanese and Polish, the bulk of his work has yet to be translated into English. Nevertheless, Adolf Muschg has made enough of an impact on this side of the Atlantic for his works to be discussed at virtually every major meeting of American Germanists. In countless thematic and stylistic variations, Muschg depicts the anxieties and frustrations of individuals whose greatest sin is not to have lived, or to have lived merely the life of a spectator. Repressed sensuality and sexuality, hypochondria and its origins, loss of identity and purpose, alienation from self and others are but a few of the recurring themes. Phobias, obsessions and depressions abound in the works of this author who is so obviously acquainted with the latest theories in psychology and who has a keen perception of the vulnerability of modern man. Muschg's texts, even those that are satirical, humorous or tragicomical, are characterized above all by great compassion. Muschg does not merely take stock of the psychological and physiological ills he encounters. Almost invariably he attempts to