2010: Juri Andruchowytsch, “Das geopoetische Lexikon: Eine intime Städtekunde Einführung und Gespräch: Sylvia Sasse”/”Reading and Conversation with Sylvia Sasse”
Juri Andruchowytsch, “Das geopoetische Lexikon: Eine intime Städtekunde Einführung und Gespräch: Sylvia Sasse”/”Reading and Conversation with Sylvia Sasse”
Berlin Mosse Lecture
https://mosselectures.wisc.edu/berlin/
Thursday, 4 February, 19:00 CET
Audimax of Humboldt University
Unter den Linden 6
1. Stock
10117 Berlin
GERMANY
Sponsored by:
The Mosse Foundation
Global Mosse Lecture Series
Gerda Henkel Stiftung
Stiftung Preußische Seehandlung
Humboldt University
Humboldt University Institut für deutsche Literatur
Public Affairs Program of the Embassy of the United States
Moderator: Sylvia Sasse (Universität Zürich)
Lecture Description: Ich möchte mehr von dem Buch erzählen, an dem ich gerade schreibe — eine Art »Enzyklopädie meiner Städte«. Dieses Projekt wäre vor allem eine neue Verkörperung meiner langjährigen Geopoetik – einer spezifischen Kreuzung von Literatur und Geographie, meiner persönlichen Version dessen, was Literaturwissenschaftler cognitive mapping nennen.
Die alphabetische Reihenfolge, in der sich die Städte in die Struktur des Buches einfügen werden, erlaubt es, überkommene Hierarchien und Koordinatensysteme aufzubrechen – vor allem die des Raums, denn Detroit wird sich neben Dnipropetrowsk wiederfinden, Izmir neben Kaliningrad, Marburg neben Minsk und Czernowitz neben Chicago. Nicht weniger interessant ist die Möglichkeit, die Zeiten zu vermischen. Und dann vielleicht entsteht daraus eine völlig unerwartete Ganzheit: konzentriert-meditativ, an der Grenze von Roman, Essay, Novelle und Poem, irgendwo in der Mitte zwischen einer fiktiven Autobiographie und einer realen Dokumentation der letzten vier Jahrzehnte dieser Welt.
Lecture Series Description: Organized by the Institute for German Literature, the Mosse-Lectures have since their establishment in 1997 developed into an important forum for scientific exchange and transfer of knowledge, and have attracted numerous renowned international speakers to Berlin. For the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Humboldt University, the Mosse lectures are staging a series of events under the title of ‘A Literary World Map: Poets and their Places’ („Literarischer Atlas: Dichter und ihre Ortschaften“). Guests will include authors from five different countries and cultures, for speeches, readings and talks with German partners.
‘Elsewhere, Perhaps’ is the title of Amos Oz’ 1966 debut novel about the kibbutz in northern Israel in which he lived until 1986, a place ‘more radical than Tel Aviv’. He picks up this thread in his great novel ‘A Tale of Love and Darkness’ (2003): a localized fiction, which discovers a universe of storytelling within a small and enclosed environment. Christoph Markschies, President of the Humboldt University, will welcome the Israeli author and host the event. Kiran Nagarkar, one of the most relevant and controversial authors on the Indian subcontinent, has lived for a longer period of time (and continues to do so) as a guest of the DAAD and the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. He will speak about the culture and literature of his hometown of Bombay (Mumbai) and will have a discussion with the German writer Ulrike Draesner. Istanbul is the environment of the novels of the 2006 Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk: at the border to western culture (and crossing that border), accompanied by Andreas Huyssen, literary scholar and art critic at the Columbia University in New York. ‘A language that I don’t understand tells me something’, writes Yoko Tawada from Japan, who most loves the harbor towns among the large cities, and who understands literature as creative translations into different languages, as described in her book, ‘Überseezungen’ (2002). (Reading and discussion with Sigrid Weigel). Juri Andruchowytsch from Franyk/the Ukraine, whose novels and essays have been translated into German, has in his new book project ‘Encyclopedia of my Cities’ developed a form of geo-poetics a mixture of literature and geography (Reading and discussion with Sylvia Sasse, University of Zurich).
