Contrary to my pre-announcements, I would now prefer this review but first ...
Leo Singer, the son of relatively wealthy, Jewish exiles returning home in Vienna of the 60s and a peculiar anti-hero of this novel is the epitome of what is for generally - with a well-measured breeze mockery - as the eternal philosophy student and always hesitant, though not untalented would ne'er-do smile.
obsessed with Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and the grandiose vision of a reversal, and thus completion of dialectical thought, the weak-willed Singer failed to receive better opportunities but again and again, even beyond academia to spread my legs. Instead, he suffers as a mama's boy involuntary stable under the harsh rule of an overprotective, yet loveless, pedantic and never-to-please mother. And although Singers spirit remains nevertheless always active and constantly on the solution of theoretical problems and issues pass attempts, both his student years in Vienna, and the later years of his scholarly Oblomov-existence almost without exception in pleasant paralyzing inaction and lethargy, without it ever succeeds, something of real importance to bring to paper. The mentally unstable
Judith Katz, a former fellow student, unrigged literary scholar and also a child of Jewish immigrants developed in this long period of upheaval finally important to prevent Singers caregiver and companion. And although Singers fail modest advances in the end most of his awkward, inexperienced shyness and the fundamental difference between the two characters, their recurring presence for him or as inspirational. Her, his incarnate antithesis against which it is writing to rebel acts now a source of identity and source of all his philosophical, but always only fragmentary work. The beginning of a self-destructive Amour fou among intellectuals, which culminated in the face of his own failure as a literary makers finally in a last, drastic measure Singers ...
Menasse understands like no other contemporary author of the German-language literature on large-scale, detail underdog stories. Also blessed times, fragile world is such a literary genius of his pranks. In Gesture exaggerated never pompous or bombastic, yet always expressive, he sketched with precise spring simple, but not all poetry renouncing words and an unmistakable sense of quiet nuances and the tragic comedy of the two main characters whose long way towards the inevitable, common ruin. These are without doubt to the study of literature common fragile neurotic prototypes of what the novel does, thanks to the credible, plastic, clichés always skillfully circumvent representation, however, no demolition.
Despite the sometimes unbearably grotesque awkwardness of his life incapacitated protagonist succeeds Menasse nevertheless take over again, and again the reader for this. Suffers and fever, for example, with quite arrogant without pathos when bulky Singers knowledge of Hegel's philosophy, despite all efforts, yet never want to add to a large, written down the whole and can not suppress a quiet smile still completely accessible. But
Menasse knows how to unsettle the perfect form. It penetrates deep into the bottomless depths of the human psyche and describes the emerging from those dark corners of such atrocities but sober, reserved and untheatralisch that if there is a such a mellow shudder. One wonders, finally, dismayed as it ever could have happened that cultured people of such education, as Katz and Singer were able to judge in such uncompromising and relentless basis without further portion is taken out. What remains in the end is a alarmed, bitter at all oppressive disbelief that even the halbversöhnliche circuit can not completely neutralize.
Conclusion:
blessed times, fragile world is a radical, profound, and must-read book for lovers of sophisticated literature, a gem of a modern novel, full of countless philosophical bon mots, which currently still has no equal. Never a lengthy, highly respectable, successful work on the genesis of an equally ambitious, but never succeed be work.
self Menasses constant recourse to Hegel's complex world view this is not particularly problematic and should be in the context of the humanities also not very knowledgeable lay open, without reducing the other reading experience considerably.
5 of 5 stars.
Teresa Maienschein