Daniel Kehlmann Research Articles

Encounter between literature and science: Galileo’s impact on Milton

The relationship between literature and science finds its roots in the Renaissance, with the widely acknowledged literary quality of works such as Galileo’s, extending to novels of today such as Ian McEwan’s Solar, Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder and Daniel Kehlmann’s Vermessung der Welt. Here, I will focus on the influence that one of the greatest scientists of all times had on John Milton, when writing his Paradise Lost. Albert Einstein, in his Foreword to Galileo’s Dialogo sopra i massimi sistemi del mondo ( Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems) writes about its author that: His unusual literary gift enables him to address the educated men of his age in such clear and impressive language as to overcome the anthropocentric and mythical thinking of his contemporaries and to lead them back to an objective and casual attitude towards the cosmos, an attitude which had been lost to humanity with the decline of Greek culture. ( Galilei, 2001 : xxiii)

SUBVERTING THE INSTITUTIONALIZED READING TOUR: RAFIK SCHAMI AND DANIEL KEHLMANN

Germany is more prolific than any other country in the world in promoting its authors through book tours. Given the demands placed upon Germany’s authors through the institutionally organized reading circuit, contemporary authors sometimes turn their experiences of these tours into themes in their own works. This essay primarily examines two novels in which the institution of the ‘Lesereise’ is a significant focus: Rafik Schami’s ‘Sieben Doppelgänger’ (1999) and Daniel Kehlmann’s ‘Ruhm’ (2009). Both texts treat the difficulties and irritations to which authors are subject when they engage in such tours. While Schami’s novel uses the motif of the Double to explore Germans’ (mis)perception of cultural alterity and to underscore why the author took a hiatus from the reading circuit late in the 1990s, Kehlmann’s ‘Ruhm’, in which the institutionalized reading tour constitutes only one, albeit significant, thread, broadly examines issues of celebrity and identity in our highly technological age.

PRIZE GERMANS? CHANGING NOTIONS OF GERMANNESS AND THE ROLE OF THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Germany has an unusually large number of literary prize foundations in international comparison. The historical and socio-political reasons for such a widespread ritual appropriation of ‘award-winning’ authors can tell us a great deal about changing notions of German cultural identity. This paper argues that whereas the long-running named literary prizes (such as the Büchner and Kleist prizes) place their laureates in a retrospective tradition that is firmly tied to national and regional cultural politics, a new breed of prizes — spearheaded by the German Book Prize — has emerged since the beginning of the twenty-first century that deliberately seeks to propel authors beyond the confines of the German literary field. These prizes proactively ‘celebrify’ the author with the explicit intention of bringing to market a self-consciously contemporary, more diverse image of Germanness. Pursuing a literary career in such a context is both a challenge and an opportunity, as the specific case of Daniel Kehlmann shows.

Postmodern Reflections in the Work “Ruhm” by Daniel Kehlmann

Postmodernism, which making a principle ambiguousness and uncertainty instead of rationality and functionality of modernism and skeptical any statement, has brought many innovations to literature.Postmodernism is trying to utter the elements which cannot be displayed when applied to literature, it benefits from intertextuality, so it doesn’t ignore before, makes references and also reminiscent of the Works. However, this understanding eliminates all the existent spaces, times and concepts of personality and revealed new spaces, times and self-described personalities determined by each author. On that score, postmodernism, which nourishes from subjectivity, isn’t clearly identified. This concept defined as postmodernism, which approaches skeptic to be defined, is uncertain, formed as uncertainty and clear to all kinds of variability. So in this study its reflections in literature will be discussed. Consequently, a review will be on what one need to have to examine postmodern literary Works, with examples of this work (Fame). DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n8p326

Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century (review)

Reviewed by: Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century Carol Anne Costabile-Heming Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Lyn Marven and Stuart Taberner. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011. Pp. vii + 273. Cloth $75.00. 978-1571134219. As scholars and readers of contemporary German literature are acutely aware, a large new crop of writers and engaging texts appears yearly, yet relatively little scholarly literature has been dedicated to this emerging generation. This volume fills that gap, presenting an in-depth analysis of recently emerging authors, whose notoriety ranges from German Book Prize winner Julia Franck and bestselling author Daniel Kehlmann to writers who are less widely known outside of Germany. In her introduction to the volume, Lyn Marven explains that these “emerging writers” are those who have experienced “a rise to prominence” (2) in the last decade. Contributors to the volume examine both well-known texts such as Kehlmann’s Die Vermessung der Welt (2005) and newer works by authors such as Yadé Kara and Sven Regener, whose first novels received wide acclaim. The editors’ goal is to introduce these lesser-known authors and works to an international audience. And though many of the texts discussed have been translated into English, the volume also includes two translations: a chapter from Clemens Meyer’s Als wir träumten (Katy Derbyshire) and Vladimir Vertlib’s Das besondere Gedächtnis der Rosa Masur (Jamie Lee Searle). Each of the individual chapters focuses solely on one text by one author, with the overall goal of introducing new readers to that author. The texts are discussed within the context of the author’s writing as a whole, and are also presented within wider literary and theoretical trends. Presented in chronological order, the chapters provide a neat snapshot of a decade’s worth of literary productivity in Germany. Several common themes emerge, including immigration, integration, multiculturalism, and transnational societies. These themes are embodied in both the characters in the texts and the lives of their authors, many of whom hail from countries and cultures other than Germany. The individual chapters are thoroughly researched and well argued. Stuart [End Page 721] Taberner’s chapter on Vladimir Vertlib’s Das besondere Gedächtnis der Rosa Masur presents a nuanced reading of the perceptions of Jewishness today within the context of broader discussions of integration and transnationalism. Writers such as Terézia Mora number among a growing cadre of authors from Eastern and Central Europe writing in German, who, as Anke S. Biendarra argues, add to the complexity of transnational contexts in contemporary German literature. Biendarra writes of “postnational literature” (48) as a response to the fluidity of borders and cultures. Emily Jeremiah examines Germanness and globalization in Sibylle Berg’s Die Fahrt, concluding that the novel demonstrates that “the global and the national are intertwined” (135), thus arguing for the “glocal.” She posits that literature can serve to blur national and cultural differences, and also simultaneously portray the global as something closer to home. In her chapter on Kehlmann’s Die Vermessung der Welt, Rebecca Braun reads the novel within the context of celebrity. She attributes the novel’s success to the fact that it appeals to both intellectuals and “nonprofessional” readers (86), precisely because it engages with celebrity as both social and literary phenomenon. In the introduction, Marven acknowledges that the volume “hopes . . . to win new readers for some of the most exciting and innovative voices in German-language literature in the twenty-first century” (15). This volume succeeds in achieving this goal. I recommend it for graduate students and scholars interested in twenty-first-century literature, and it should be at the top of the acquisitions list for research libraries. [End Page 722] Carol Anne Costabile-Heming University of North Texas Copyright © 2012 The German Studies Association

Measuring the World Anew

This sober exchange between the two title characters marks the beginning of Austrian Leopold Maurer’s new graphic novel, Miller & Pynchon . The two characters are measuring the world, like the characters in another recent Germanic work, Daniel Kehlmann’s wonderful novel Measuring the World (2005, English translation 2006), a story of the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and the explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Through a fictionalized account of their travails in the early nineteenth century, Kehlmann’s bestseller tells the story of how during the Enlightenment scientific rationality conquered the world and changed it forever.

Lines and Crimes of Demarcation: Mathematizing Nature in Heidegger, Pynchon, and Kehlmann

In his bestselling novel from 2005, Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring the World), Daniel Kehlmann brings together the explorer Alexander von Humboldt and the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss in an effort to show that the scientific progress preached by the Enlightenment is a double-edged sword. Hence the double entendre of the title: Humboldt's and Gauss's “surveying” (Vermessung) enterprises typify human “arrogance” (Vermessenheit) toward nature. The ideas presented in Kehlmann's book were no doubt influenced by Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon (1997), a metafictional history in which the Mason and Dixon survey is represented as a rationalist endeavor that transforms the primitive American landscape into an organized grid of human control. Both authors are critiquing, from a postmodern vantage, eighteenth-century instrumental reason, which manifests itself in the urge to measure, chart, and demarcate the world. At various points in his narrative, Pynchon sums up this basic anthropocentric view as mathesis, a term that recalls the early modern scientific project of mathesis universalis or the attempt to “mathematize” nature. According to Heidegger, mathesis, which sums up our modern technological attitude toward the world, developed as a result of Galilean geometry, Newtonian science, and Cartesian philosophy, all of which conceptualize reality according to purely speculative mathematical laws. This article brings Heidegger, Pynchon, and Kehlmann into dialogue with one another in an effort to show how they each critique, in remarkably similar fashion, the conceptual as well as physical lines of demarcation that mathesis inflicts upon the world.

Penthouse F. Los Angeles by Richard Kalich

HHHH short listfor thePrixGoncourt and hasbeenawardedthePrixRenaudot . Apocalypse Bébéis the storyof twowomenwho arehiredto find Valentine, theteenagedaughter of a novelist, who has disappeared. LucieToledo,an insecurewoman offorty, whois afraidtoordertea ina baras itmaycreate an impression of weakness,is in striking contrast tohercompanion, a forthright , powerfulfigureknownas theHyena,a lesbianwho whistles at girlson thestreet, deals drugs, andiswilling touseviolence toget information. Valentine, thebébé ofthetitle, isthevictim ofa father whoignores her, as hetries toimprove hisliteraryreputation (evenwriting anonymous ,glowing reviews ofhiswork ontheInternet), andofa mother of North African origin wholeft when shewas a baby.Valentine is often drunk,on drugs,and extremely sexuallypromiscuous. She sleeps withall the membersof a rock band,who humiliate herbut still refuse to givehera pass fortheir concerts.Aftermeetinga young terrorist, shebecomes easypreyfor anextreme left-wing group. Despentes'sstoryis fast-moving , marked bywitty dialoguefilled withslang.She writesalternating chapters inthevoiceofLucie,who neverquite understands what is happening. Other chapters aretold from theperspective oftheHyena, Valentine, herfather, hermother, and her stepmother. The varying pointsofview skillfully createan ambiguous atmosphere. WhenValentinegoes to Barcelonato find her mother, we see the mother's explanation (sheisafraid totellher richhusbandaboutherdaughter), thenValentine's (whorealizesthat hermother has no interest inher), thentheHyena's,whoseesthefull tragedy ofthemother's coldness. Despentesportrays contemporary French society withirony. Literature has becomean "industry." There isnocommunication between ethnic groups. Valentine's mother's bourgeoisacquaintances can only talktoherabouttajines (claypots), while"on theleftit'sworse,they worrythatwe are forgetting our roots."Men are violent;women areinterested onlyinappearances. Valentine's mother dislikesBarcelonabecause "youcan'tgeta good manicure." Hergrandmother relies on Botox.Her father and his wife need sadomasochistictechniques to keep theirsex lifegoing.The onlypraiseworthy sex is lesbian, since"heterosexuality is as natural as electric fences toenclosecattle." Valentine'sfinal act, insertinga bombintohervaginabefore attending a literary ceremony at thebastionofFrench culture - the Palais Royal - leads to censorship, the disappearanceof the Hyena, Lucie's escape fromFrance,and, ironically, risingsales of Valentine 'sfather's books. AdeleKing Paris RichardKalich.Penthouse F.Los Angeles . Green Integer. 2010. 220 pages. $20. ISBN 978-1-55713-413-4 The protagonist ofthisnovel,one "RichardKalich,"is a manofletters whose interestin literature has waned.Twenty-five yearsago, he triedto writea novel,entitled Transfiguration of theCommonplace, but foundhimself unequal to the task.Sincethat time, hehaslivedin an increasingly vegetative state,a staterelieved onlywhena boyand a girl,fictional characters in that aborted novel,moveintohisapartment . Sucha deliciously metaleptic moment cannotlast,of course.A double suicidepunctuates it,and "Kalich"standsaccusedofhaving pushedtheyoungcoupleto their deaths,eitherliterally or figuratively . Thetextis structured as an interrogation, a topos so broadly exploitedin contemporary literature , from KafkatoVolodine,that itis now ripeforparody.Readers willquickly recognize, too,a meditationon the relationsof fiction and reality, whereinthe boundaries separating those regimes are deliberately and consistently blurred.Has fiction come to life here,or has lifecome to fiction? Indeed,do thosequestionsmake anysenseat all,in a worldwhere thosetwo ways of being are so closely reciprocal? Whereas "Richard Kalich,"the author ofPenthouse F,is cannyand wily, "Richard Kalich"thecharacter is farmorenaïve,and thatironic tension is thesourceofa gooddeal of funhere.The former playsthe latter ina metafictional gamewhose stakeis thenovelitself. Itis a game wherein"everything is stillvery muchopentointerpretation," a hall ofmirrors inwhich we readers constantly confront carnivalized images ofourown readerly inferences, as ifeachinterpretive pathwe might be tempted toblazehad beenvery largely anticipated andturned back uponitself. Ghosts hauntthisbook from first page tolast:Dostoevsky, Mallarmé,Kafka,Mann, Camus, Pessoa,Gombrowicz - and,oh yes, mostperniciously of all, "Kalich." Forheisa manwhotortures himself bothwiththenovelsthathe has written and withthosethathe has not.Letus forgive himevenifhe willnotforgive himself, recognizing as we do theone truth ofthistale thatseemstobe beyonddoubt:"It was all in hishead likeeverything elseabouthim." Warren Motte University ofColorado Daniel Kehlmann. Fame: A Novel in Nine Episodes. Carol Brown Janeway, tr. New York. Pantheon. 2010. 175 pages. $24. isbn 978-0-307-37871-2 The successfulGerman-Austrian author DanielKehlmann, whose Measuring theWorld (2005;see WLT, Jan. 2008,63) was translated intosome forty languages withsalesfigures of 62 1WorldLiterature Today ...

Fame: A Novel in Nine Episodes by Daniel Kehlmann, Carol Brown Janeway

Fame: A Novel in Nine Episodes by Daniel Kehlmann, Carol Brown Janeway

Skewering the Enlightenment: Alexander von Humboldt and Immanuel Kant as fictional characters

Recent German fiction has given an imaginative nuance to the general postmodern critique of the Enlightenment by parodying some of its leading adherents. This essay analyzes two of these works: Daniel Kehlmann's Die Vermessung der Welt, a fictional biography of the intertwined lives of the explorer Alexander von Humboldt and the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauß, and Klaas Huizing's novel Das Ding an sich, a fantastic tale which takes a real-life episode from the life of the philosopher Johann Georg Hamann and gives it a grotesque twist in order to parody the man who first defined the Enlightenment in Germany, Immanuel Kant. For purposes of contrast, the author examines another work of Humboldt fiction that tends to valorize the Enlightenment and Humboldt's place in this movement: Christoph Hein's short story “Die russischen Briefe des Jägers Johann Seifert.” The author stresses both Kant's influence on Humboldt and the antithetical trajectory of their lives at the conclusion.

Die Vermessung der Welt by Daniel Kehlmann and Measuring the World (translated by Carol Brown Janeway)

Die Vermessung der Welt by Daniel Kehlmann and Measuring the World (translated by Carol Brown Janeway)

Art, Science, and the New World in Daniel Kehlmann’s Die Vermessung der Welt and César Aira’s Un episodio en la vida del pintor viajero

This article interprets recent historical novels by Daniel Kehlmann and Cesar Aira that represent Latin American space as intimately connected with art and fiction. Kehlmann’s Die Vermessung der Welt explores New World topographies to argue that scientific and artistic approaches to the understanding of the environment are similar, while Aira’s Un episodio en la vida del pintor viajero represents Latin America as a creative territory that violently resists scientific European incursions. Both novels remove Latin American landscapes from their sociopolitical contexts and conflate them with the artificiality of fiction. This perception represents a perspective on Latin America from outside its borders: the fantasized landscape serves to exoticize the region.

Who Measures the World? Alexander von Humboldt's Chimborazo Climb in the Literary Imagination

Looking at three imagined depictions of Humboldt's Chimborazo climb—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's drawing “Höhen der alten und neuen Welt bildlich verglichen” (1807), Rainer Simon's DEFA film Die Besteigung des Chimborazo (1989), and Daniel Kehlmann's bestseller Die Vermessung der Welt (2005)—my essay compares these fictional representations with Humboldt's own narratives to examine the imaginative and ideological bent of each interpretation. While Goethe depicts Humboldt reconnoitering a new world that is a mirror image of the old, Simon portrays him as a passionate educator and revolutionary. This image clashes with Kehlmann's representation of an emotionless Prussian who merely measures the world with tedious determination. Kehlmann's novel formulates, structures, and gives closure to an event that Humboldt intentionally left open to the imagination. While Humboldt gave only cryptic descriptions of the climb, it is Kehlmann who “measures the world” in the sense that his text provides an accessible narrative of the Chimborazo climb.

Paradigms and Poetics in Daniel Kehlmann's Measuring the World

ABSTRACT Daniel Kehlmann's best selling novel Measuring the World has been widely discussed as an example of the recent surge in German travel writing and as a historical novel. This article suggests understanding the book as an exploration of the poetics of fiction writing in opposition to the ‘naïve realism’ (Kehlmann) that dominated German literature after 1945. Through a densely woven web of literary references, from Goethe to South America's magic realism, from Walter Benjamin to E. L. Doctorow and Jonathan Franzen, the novel reaches out to literary traditions far beyond the common framework of German postwar writing. Ultimately, it should be perceived as a narrative that explores or measures the world of literature.

The World We Have Lost

Among the recently published historical novels and “little books” on topics in the history of science, Daniel Kehlmann’s Measuring the World (trans. 2006) offers an opportunity to reflect critically on the relationship between narrative structure and historical evidence.