Jakob Hein

Jakob Hein: Hypochonder leben länger und andere gute Nachrichten aus meiner psychiatrischen Praxis 2020

Rezension  und Leseprobe (bei Perlentaucher)

Hein vergleicht die Erfahrung der Menschheit mit der Corona-Pandemie mit der Pubertät. 
Die Erwachsenen haben sich als selbstbestimmt erlebt und erfahren nun, dass das Virus sie zur Anpassung an die veränderte Situation zwingt. Nicht die Regierungen mit ihrer Gesetzgebung, sondern das Virus zwingt die Regeln des Umgangs auf. 
Dieser Gedanke erinnert mich daran, dass Freud von den drei Kränkungen der Menschheit spricht:
1. Kopernikus: Nicht die Erde, sondern die Sonne bildet den Mittelüunkt des Systems.
2. Darwin: Der Mensch ist nicht durch einen neuen Schöpfungsakt von den Tieren unterschieden, sondern ist wie die anderen Tierarten aus einem kontinuierlichen Entwicklungsprozess hervorgegangen.
3. Freud: Der Mensch handelt nicht nach seinen bewussten Entscheidungen, sondern wird weitgehend von unterbewussten Vorgängen gesteuert.

Luv- und Leeseite des Lebens (Moby Dick)

Windzugewandte und windabgewandte Seite, Luv und Lee, der sichere Hafen und die lockende unbegrenzte See mit ihren Versprechungen und ihren Gefahren.

Am Anfang der Walfangfahrt reflektiert Melville in "Moby Dick" über diese Gegensätze.
Wenn wir den Hauptstrang der Handlung des Romans kennen, hat die Lesereise durch diesen Roman damit ihren eigenen Reiz. Was erfahren wir bei dem Kampf zwischen dem Kapitän Ahab und dem weißen Wal, was bei dem Kampf des einen Starken, des Kapitäns, mt seiner Mannschaft?

Aufbruch und Heimkehr, Beginn des Lebens in der Kindheit mit all den Hoffnungen, Versprechungen und Gefahren. Das nahende Ende im Alter. Ein Sich-Zurückziehen von den Überforderungen, die aktives Leben mit sich bringt, in die Reflexion.
Beides verspricht der Roman.

"The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe! [...]

But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!"

"Der Hafen bietet Hilfe Beistand leisten; der Hafen ist mitleidig; im Hafen gibt es Sicherheit, Komfort, einen Herd, Abendessen, warme Decken, Freunde, alles, was für unsere Gebrechlichkeit gut ist. Aber in einem Sturm ist der Hafen, das Land die größte Gefährdung für das Schiff, es muss Annäherungen vermeiden, eine kleine Berührung mit dem Land, auch wenn es nur den Kiel streift, bedeutete größte Gefahr. Mit aller Macht muss das Schiff sich von der Küste fernhalten und gegen genau die Winde ankämpfen, die es gern nach Hause führen würden. Es muss das tobende Meer fern vom Land anstreben, weil Rettung nur darin liegt, die  Gefahr aufzusuchen, den einzigen Freund, den bittersten Feind! [...]


Aber wie in der Weite des Meers allein die höchste Wahrheit zu finden ist, fern von der Küste, im Meer unergründlich wie Gott - so ist es besser, in dieser dräuenden Unendlichkeit umzukommen, als unrühmlich auf das Land geworfen zu werden, selbst wenn das Sicherheit böte! Denn wer wollte, dem Wurme gleich an Land zu kriechen, sich wünschen? Die Schrecken des Schrecklichen! Sind all ihre Qualen so sinnlos? Fass Mut, fass Mut, oh Bulkington*! Beweis deine Standhaftigkeit, Halbgott! Direkt aus den tosenden,  todbringenden Fluten des Ozeans steigst du auf zur Göttlichkeit! "

*Nach Bulkington, einem Mannschaftsmitglied des Walfängers Pequod, ist der Bulkington-Pass, ein Gebirgspass an Oskar-II.-Küste des Grahamlands auf der Antarktischen Halbinsel in Westantarktika benannt. 

Christa Wolf

Christa Wolf (Wikipedia)

Christa Wolf und Christa T. (G. Gauss)

https://www.fr.de/kultur/christa-wolfs-triumph-11659646.html

Artikel mit Bezug auf Christa Wolf in diesem Blog:
https://fontanefan3.blogspot.com/search/label/Christa%20Wolf

Sind Sie des Teufels? (Rezension zu "Man steht sehr bequem zwischen allen Fronten" - die Briefe von Christa Wolf )

Briefwechsel mit Sarah Kirsch
Sarah Kirsch, Christa Wolf: „Wir haben uns wirklich an allerhand gewöhnt“. Der Briefwechsel. Herausgegeben von Sabine Wolf unter Mitarbeit von Heiner Wolf. Suhrkamp, Berlin 2019, 

Links zu Einzeltiteln

"Sie bestärkt Erich Loest, ermutigt Lutz Rathenow, fragt Uwe Kolbe im P.S. eines Briefes fürsorglich: „Und wovon lebst du?“ "(Briefe) 
Zu Uwe Kolbe:
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/uwe-kolbes-roman-die-luege-die-lachnummer-wahrheit/9508308-all.html

Herman Melville: Moby Dick - In der Kapelle

"Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors' wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. [...] these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the following, but I do not pretend to quote:

 SACRED  TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT,         

Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard           

Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia,                 

November 1st, 1836.                          

THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS SISTER.      

           

            

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY,            

NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY,  AND SAMUEL GLEIG,                  Forming one of the boats' crews  OF THE SHIP ELIZA              

Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, 

                  On the Off-shore Ground in the  PACIFIC, December 31st, 1839.                     THIS MARBLE  Is here placed by their surviving  SHIPMATES. 

       SACRED  TO THE MEMORY OF The late CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY,           Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan,                        August 3d, 1833.                           

THIS TABLET  Is erected to his Memory BY HIS WIDOW. 

Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated myself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage was the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance; because he was the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh. Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say—here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! [...]
how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings. But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope. It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems—aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance.  

(Herman Melville: Moby Dick, Kap. 7 )

Herman Melville: Moby Dick - New Bedford

"Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live Yankees have often scared the natives. But New Bedford beats all Water Street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors; but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare. [...]
Still New Bedford is a queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador. [...]
In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples— long avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms."
(Herman Melville: Moby Dick)

Herman Melville: Moby Dick (3) - mehr von Queequeg

"[...] Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that the street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots on; I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat, and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He complied, and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time in the morning any Christian would have washed his face; but Queequeg, to my amazement, contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his chest, arms, and hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up a piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table, dipped it into water and commenced lathering his face. I was watching to see where he kept his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed corner, slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall, begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks. Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers's best cutlery with a vengeance. Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation when I came to know of what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly sharp the long straight edges are always kept. The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out of the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his harpoon like a marshal's baton. [...]"

Herman Melville: Moby Dick (2)

"There was no hair on his head—none to speak of at least— nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner. Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this headpeddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him. [...]

It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too—perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to mine—heavens! look at that tomahawk! But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly the color of a three days' old Congo baby. [...]

I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought [...]

First he takes about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched [...]

Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me. Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning. "Who-e debel you?"—he at last said—"you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e." And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark. "Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I. "Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!" "Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him. "Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again, "Queequeg here wouldn't harm a hair of your head." "Stop your grinning," shouted I, "and why didn't you tell me that that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?" "I thought ye know'd it;—didn't I tell ye, he was a peddlin' heads around town?—but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here—you sabbee me, I sabbee—you this man sleepe you—you sabbee?" "Me sabbee plenty"—grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and sitting up in bed. "You gettee in," he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, [...]"