Events
SEMINAR SERIES 2009-2010
Convenors:
David McNair and Martin Liebscher (London)
A series of seminars centred on novels that delve into the psyche of man at the extremes of experience in places and times where the borders of fact, fiction and fantasy become uncertain.
Removed from an Austrian – centric world to the ends of the earth, human pretensions to power and influence are questioned in the texts’ revelations of how man seeks to shape his own surroundings in a hostile universe.
The seminars will also explore the tension between the post-modern restlessness of writers and the very rootedness of their writing, dealing with particular Austrian themes in a diversity of places from the Amazon jungle and the Arctic to Provence and the Isle of Man, and of times from the Enlightenment and the Habsburg Empire to World War II and a post-apocalyptic Europe, challenging thinking about what is to be held important in our present.
The Seminar will meet on Wednesdays, from 4 to 6 p.m. in Room ST 275 in Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU (Stewart House wing, access via 32 Russell Square)
Texts are available in English translation, and discussion will be in English
7 October 2009
Daniel Kehlmann: Measuring the World
[Die Vermessung der Welt, 2005]
The contrasting approaches, personalities and experiences of two brilliant and eccentric young scientists setting out to measure the world at the end of the eighteenth century: Alexander von Humboldt swashbuckling his way across oceans and jungles, lowering himself into volcanoes and scaling what was believed to be the highest mountain, and the stay-at-home Carl Friedrich Gauss using the power of thought to battle through exotic mathematical fields to the landmark realisation that space is curved.
25 November 2009
Christoph Ransmayr: The Terrors of Ice and Darkness
[Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis, 1984]
The reconstruction of two journeys: the Austro-Hungarian Arctic expedition of 1873 and, a century later, its emulation by a young Italian who likes to discover actual events that emulate his stories. Described an 'elaborate meditation on the metaphysics of exploration' (TLS) in which the writer creates a place where the borders of fact, fiction and fantasy become as blurred as the Arctic itself.
20 January 2010
Thomas Glavinic: Night Work
[Die Arbeit der Nacht, 2006]
An ordinary man wakes up on a seemingly ordinary day to find that he is the last man alive. His response and attempts to unravel the mystery of what has happened reveals the fragility of the individual and the uncertain borders between waking and dreaming.
10 March 2010
Stefan Zweig: The Royal Game
[Schachnovelle, 1942]
On a cruise ship bound for Buenos Aires, an encounter takes place between the reigning world chess champion and an unknown passenger whose dark and damaged past emerges as the game unfolds.
21 April 2010 - POSTPONED TO 16 JUNE
Norbert Gstrein: The English Years
[Die englischen Jahre, 1999]
This novel pieces together the story of a literary icon, Hirschfelder, who fled Vienna shortly before the outbreak of World War II and lived in London with the family of a judge. In 1940 he was classified as an 'undesirable alien' and sent to camp with other internees on the Isle of Man. There his life would be changed forever.
16 June 2010
Norbert Gstrein: The English Years
[Die englischen Jahre, 2009]
This novel pieces together the story of a literary icon, Hirschfelder, who fled Vienna shortly before the outbreak of World War II and lived in London with the family of a judge. In 1940 he was classified as an 'undesirable alien' and sent to camp with other internees on the Isle of Man. There his life would be changed forever.
ALL WELCOME