Es lebe ovid-ein plädoyer für die ars longa Christoph Ransmayrs RomanDie letzte Welt (1988)

Alles begann irgendwann in der Mitte der achtziger Jahre, als Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Erfinder und Herausgeber der »Anderen Bibliothek«, den jungen Schriftsteller Christoph Ransmayr gebeten hatte, die berühmten Metamorphosen von Ovid zu bearbeiten, so daß dieses klassische Werk der Antike wieder belebt wäre. Ransmayr war damals mit seinem Erstling Die Schrecken des Eisens und der Finsternis ein unbekannter Autor, den aber jetzt Die letzte Welt zum Kultautor gemacht hat. Er mußte bald einsehen, daß er mit einer Nachdichtung nicht weiterkam, und so traf er die Entscheidung, einen eigenen Metamorphosenroman zu schreiben, in dem der ehemalige Dichter Ovid selber zu einem, zwar abwesenden, Protagonist gemacht wurde.

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The Method of Artistic Mystification in Ransmayr’s Novel “The Last World”

Respectus Philologicus ◽

10.15388/respectus.2014.25.30.5 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 25 (30) ◽

pp. 74-88

Author(s):

Natalia Kovtun

Keyword(s):

World Literature ◽

Reading Process ◽

The Novel ◽

Main Thesis ◽

Narrative Story ◽

Self Image ◽

Christoph Ransmayr ◽

Primary Meaning ◽

New Interpretation ◽

Letzte Welt

The article proposes a new interpretation of the iconic novel by Austrian writer Christoph Ransmayr,The Last World (Die letzte Welt, 1988), recognized as the best European prose text of the late 1980s. The quest is the basis of the plot of the novel, the interpretation of Ovid’s mystified and mythologized poem, “Metamorphoses.” Various readings of the famous text can be interpreted as methods of externalization, verification of the author’s self-image, or attempts to approximate the truth of the primary meaning revealed in Genesis. The chosen foreshortening of the study reveals the forms of the author’s self-reflections through image-masks (hero—narrator—“commentator”—reader), a narrative story (facts of artistic reality—events of the story—the reading process—“commenting”), mystification of texts (works of world literature—character/narrator books—reader/“interpreter” texts), and a system of commentaries on them. Hero/storytellers, offering different interpretations of the missing poem, implement their own understanding of reality, one that requires further discussion and examination. The process of cognition is the essence of reading; interpretations of prior texts and the creation of new ones disprove the main thesis of postmodernism about the reticence and hermeticity of works of literature. In this novel, Ovid reveals the mystery of elusive time, heaven, and hell. The process of empathy, the narrator’s and reader/listener’s co-creation, bring a closer understanding of the metaphysical foundations of being.

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