Great Fugue
Rights sold to:
UK & ANZ (Smokestack Books)
Great Fugue / Große Fuge
»What did you do in 2020?« The year when the world is »moved, all of a sudden, to stand still«. When the streets are »humanless«, the city is quietened and »the logic of salvation« is: »Not in front of an audience, not this season.« While »climate change« and »global turmoil« keep raging on elsewhere: In the Anthropocene the Mekong can no longer find its delta, fires eat into the dry forest, there is a...
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»What did you do in 2020?« The year when the world is »moved, all of a sudden, to stand still«. When the streets are »humanless«, the city is quietened and »the logic of salvation« is: »Not in front of an audience, not this season.« While »climate change« and »global turmoil« keep raging on elsewhere: In the Anthropocene the Mekong can no longer find its delta, fires eat into the dry forest, there is a »war of landscapes«. And amongst it all there is us – the oh so modern but still perishable humans, the »humanity of catastrophe«, capable of anything, good and bad, always human.
Volker Braun’s new poems survey a world, a changing daily routine. Always political, always social humans appear in this state of in between. And are ultimately unable – despite all progress – to conquer nature. But there is a certain comfort in the eternal becoming and perishing yet.
»Great Fugue might indicate a musical attempt reminiscent of Beethoven’s late work of the same name [...] Or the title might denote a time fugue into which we, the readers, could be drawn even without a pandemic and pause. Both possibilities, like the whole volume, are delightfully enigmatic.« Jan Wiele, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»His words, finding each other to form sentences, are bulwarks against the time. A time, however, from which this poetry itself is made – but as its intimate counterpart. Volker Braun: dialectician in poetry as well.« Gunnar Decker, neues deutschland
»Volker Braun creates contexts and uncertainty in the reader at the same time. A combination that delivers home truths and de-provincialises.« Roland Gutsch, Nordkurier
»Volker Braun proves himself to be a masterful composer of polyphonic texts once more.« Thomas Gärtner, Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten
»In Great Fugue Volker Braun succeeds in creating magnificent poetic notions of a European ›Occident‹.« Michael Braun, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
»His words, finding each other to form sentences, are bulwarks against the time. A time, however, from which this poetry itself is made – but as its intimate counterpart. Volker Braun: dialectician in poetry as well.« Gunnar Decker, neues deutschland
»Volker Braun creates contexts and uncertainty in the reader at the same time. A combination that delivers home truths and de-provincialises.« Roland Gutsch, Nordkurier
»Volker Braun proves himself to be a masterful composer of polyphonic texts once more.« Thomas Gärtner, Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten
»In Great Fugue Volker Braun succeeds in creating magnificent poetic notions of a European ›Occident‹.« Michael Braun, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
»Great Fugue might indicate a musical attempt reminiscent of Beethoven’s late work of the same name [...] Or the title might denote a time fugue into which we, the readers, could be drawn even without a pandemic and pause. Both possibilities, like the whole volume, are delightfully enigmatic.« Jan Wiele, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»His words, finding each other to form sentences, are bulwarks against the time. A time, however, from which...
»His words, finding each other to form sentences, are bulwarks against the time. A time, however, from which...
Read more
2021, 53 pages
Persons
Volker Braun
Author
Born in Dresden in 1939, when he was younger, Braun worked as a printer and in an open pit mine. Subsequently, he studied philosophy in Leipzig and worked at the Berliner Ensemble until 1990. Volker Braun lives in Berlin.
Volker Braun
Author
Born in Dresden in 1939, when he was younger, Braun worked as a printer and in an open pit mine. Subsequently, he studied philosophy in Leipzig...
© Roger Melis
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2024
Volker BraunYear of Publication: 2024
An Ongoing Attempt to Live With Violent Forces
»Earlier, you could have left the world behind, just up sticks and go, but now there’s no otherworld left, we live in the everywhere.« With a sharp eye for what holds the world together and with his famous linguistic virtuosity, in this new work of prose, Volker Braun tackles the big questions that extend all the way into the future. What are the qualities of the »everywhere« in which we live?...
Year of Publication: 2019
Volker BraunYear of Publication: 2019
Relocating the Secret Point
Relocating the Secret Point gathers underground texts and speeches. The collection opens with a satire of expatriation written in January 1977 and is followed by the radical pamphlet Büchner’s Letters; it contains essays on Shakespeare and Rimbaud, Goethe and Kafka: poetry and politics, and points to a shift in the work that will grow into a radical change.
Year of Publication: 2019
Volker BraunYear of Publication: 2019
Coup
Considering contemporary conditions, what possibilities does a writer have of effecting change? On intimate terms with all literary traditions, Volker Braun makes use of tried and tested prose forms to come closer to an answer: aphorisms, pieces of dialogue, quotes. In his workshop dreams, puzzling fragments, and stubborn truths all come to light.
This series of coup-like attacks...
Year of Publication: 2015
Volker BraunYear of Publication: 2015
The Novel of Hinze and Kunze
»This is the novel of Hinze and Kunze. Who are Hinze and Kunze? As the saying goes and as socialism dictates, they are supposed to be equals; which makes it all the more striking that they are not. Kunze is a functionary, Hinze is his driver. Kunze says where to go: and Hinze drives off.«
First published in 1985 after years of wrangling with the East German authorities,...
First published in 1985 after years of wrangling with the East German authorities,...
Year of Publication: 2014
Volker BraunYear of Publication: 2014
Working Days 2
The first volume of Volker Braun’s working journal ended on the last day of the year 1989. The second encompasses the period between 1990 and 2008. The reader accompanies Braun through the years following the German reunification, becoming witness to the author’s intellectual and aesthetic creative process.
These were decisive years: Volker Braun redefines himself in the reunified Germany....
These were decisive years: Volker Braun redefines himself in the reunified Germany....
Year of Publication: 2009
Volker BraunYear of Publication: 2009
Work Book I
Volker Braun has been keeping a journal of his work since January 1977. The first volume, comprised of both brief and longer entries, reveals more than an illuminating insight into the workshop of the author. The notes from his day-to-day life also show how Volker Braun views himself, his work, his contemporaries and the political situation in Eastern and Western Germany.
Sometimes...
Sometimes...
Year of Publication: 2009
Volker BraunYear of Publication: 2009
Patchwork
Anyone looking for emergency solutions for real problems is doing patchwork. But is there anything else to do for someone who has had his living taken from him, who can either not work at all or on...
Rights sold to:
Arabic world rights (Kalima), France (Métailié)
Year of Publication: 2000
Volker BraunYear of Publication: 2000
What's Really Wanted
Giorgio Badini, son of a Tuscan mason, now professor emeritus and owner of a country estate, is enjoying retirement with his wife. But the two pensioners suddenly find their house occupied by a...
Rights sold to:
Greece (Enastron)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: France (Inventaire)
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