Speak, Memory

_19.00_speak, memory
Literaturhaus | Großer Saal

Ferdinand Céline: North and Congo
Introduction: Hartmut Diekmann
Speaker: Simone Kabst
No one wants to go along with Louis Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) – not with his rage (yes, if only we had strong rage and not only a glimmer) and not with his scorn. No one wants to go as far as earning the praise of “Stürmer” – a newspaper that distributed anti-Semitic pamphlets in the Nazi era. Scorner of all institutions – religion, school, military, League of Nations – destroyer of the bourgeois glamour through the “journey to the end of the night”. Travels in the Congo, Cameroon, Germany. Sentenced to death – then pardoned, then a children’s doctor in Meudon, France. How can one come to grips with Céline? His latest biographer alleges that he received a mark for good conduct in grammar school. Unbelievable!

_21.00_speak, memory
Literaturhaus | Großer Saal

Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
Presented by: Hartmut Diekmann
Reader: Frank Arnold
While Joseph Conrad was working on his novel “Lord Jim”, he got “Heart of Darkness” off his chest in a very short time. His journeys at sea were journeys home to Poland’s hills (but of water), the journey to the Congo was in contrast an upstream one towards a home of engulfing adventure. In his foreword, Urs Widmer describes the course of the narration leading to the stark either/or: “It is a dire choice: between limitless (African) passions which herald death, and a subdued life in the tomb of Europe”. Some readers have been disappointed by what his novels have to say about Africa (Achebe and Conrad’s racism), others have learned more about European racism from him than anywhere else (Hannah Arendt).