Self-imposed Difference? The Writer as Outsider in Wolfgang Hilbig's Novel Das Provisorium

Abstract

During a writers' symposium on outsiderdom held in Graz in 1981 Ulrich Greiner ruffled the feathers of participating literati and critics alike with his provocative claim, backed by alleged historical evidence, that outsiderdom was a fate the writing fraternity more often than not brought upon itself (16). Despite or conceivably because of the presence of Hans Mayer, a published authority on the subject, Greiner adopted the rather simplistic line that a creative writer deliberately sought the stigma of outsiderdom in the hope of securing the aura of chosen one (16). The myth of otherness, he goes on to argue, had been cultivated by the fashioners of the precious Torquato Tassos and Tonio Krogers of belles-lettres (16). No less facile, it seems, was Greiner's contention that writers were supposed to appear to be in order to qualify for the 7000 or so cultural awards currently available to the fraternity (16). As for the plight of the genuinely suffering artist, Greiner was quick to single out Franz Kafka as a man of letters who had never consciously aspired to the status of outsider, but had had difference foisted upon him by society (18). A similar c ase could be made for Hermann Hesse, who, as Volker Michel insists, did not seek outsiderdom intentionally: Wie unfreiwillig Ausenseitertum war, in er gedrangt wurde, um fur richtig Erkannte zu verwirklichen, zeigen die vielen Versohnungsversuche gegenuber Menschen, die er mit seinem Eigensinn verletzen muste (186). What, then, does this preamble have to do with Wolfgang Hilbig's most recent novel Das Provisorium, das autobiographischste [seiner] Bucher (Hilbig, Des Zufalls schiere Ungestalt)? Das Provisorium took five years to complete, undergoing considerable revision following Hilbig's belated decision to recast the auto-diegetic Ich narrative voice in the third-person singular. This article suggests that the signature tune I wish to be different constitutes a significant aspect of the novel's multilayered problematic. It is further contended that the issue of otherness pertains directly to the dialectic of artist and society, a tension that locates Das Provisorium generically within the evolving and changing tradi tion of the Kunstlerroman since the late eighteenth century. Only a few of the numerous press reviews Das Provisorium attracted on release suggest, albeit in passing, that the novel might well be classified as an artist novel.