Guest of the ilb 2002
Peter Kurzeck was born in 1943
in Bohemia and grew up as a refugee child in a village near
Giessen. Early in his life he began writing and published texts
in local newspapers and journals. He broke off his apprenticeship
in a grocer’s shop repeatedly to travel to Vienna, Paris or Trieste.
At the age of 28 he became head of personnel at a large
department of the US-army. He gave up this job in order to live
as a freelance writer and moved in 1977 to Frankfurt am Main. He
has received numerous grants and awards for his novels and stories,
among these prizes are the 'Alfred Döblin Prize' in 1991, the
'Grosser Literaturpreis der Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste' in
1999, and the Prize of Germany's Literature Houses in 2004. In 2001
Peter Kurzeck was Writer in Residency of Bergen-Enkheim.
"At quite an early age I gave in to the irresistible urge not to forget
anything." This is how Peter Kurzeck describes his approach to
writing: "....because everything that we cannot remember may be
lost forever. If we know nothing of yesterday, yesterday never
was, neither was Bohemia, and neither were we." From book to book
he has held less and less to the present moment but rather to that
remembered material which is already several years old or even decades:
the time in the village, the many journeys, drops of water of the River
Main or "Frankfurt in my books and Frankfurt in my life". He
naturally does not leave out the immediate moment, but allows it to be
absorbed into the literary imagination.
Peter Kurzeck’s first novel, 'Der Nussbaum gegenüber vom Laden, in dem
du dein Brot kaufst' (1979), is characterised by a feeling of loss of
homeland, by break-outs, flight and repetition. In the 'eternal
time of the present', stories from the last twenty years intertwine.
In 'Kein Frühling' (1979), the author attempts to describe the
immediate post-war years in the village of Stauffenburg in Oberhessen,
where Kurzeck grew up. It is a dialogue with the fictitious
shadow of the narrator. The latter is told recollections and
living conditions in the village which is bathed in a melancholy light.
It is drizzling and lumps of mud stick to one’s shoes.
Hopes melt like snow in the rain, but spring, which could bring new
hopes is reluctant to come. Here,
too, narrating means holding on to time, freezing daily events.
There are no dramatic love relationships or thrilling criminal cases in
Kurzeck’s universe, only measured eternity or what one thinks that is.
'Keiner stirbt' (1990), too, is set in the fifties. It tells the
story of Crohn, a stranded business man and his four passengers on
their way from Giessen to the bright lights of the city of Frankfurt am
Main and back again. At the end it is also clear: "Immortality is
life in a memory which itself dies – we live from one forgotten thing
to the other."
In his book, 'Übers Eis' (1997), part one of a novel trilogy, the text,
for the first time, is held together by an "I"-narrator who is present
throughout. In a kind of self-interrogation in brief, almost
staccato-like sentences, the narrator describes how he leaves his
family. 'Als Gast' (2003) and 'Ein Kirschkern im März'
(2004) make this autobiographical and poetic chronology of the year
1984 complete. His latest novel is "Oktober und wer wir selbst sind" (2007).
Peter Kurzeck lives in Frankfurt am Main and in the town of Uzès, South of France.
© international literature festival berlin
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