New Lives (90 page)

346. A similar statement can be found in T.'s letter to V. T. of Feb. 6, 1990: “The realization that for two hours I would now be freer than I had never been in my whole life robbed me of my will.”
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347. T. is in error here. Jim and Huck Finn were on the lookout for Cairo, Illinois, the town at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.
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348. Reinhard Raffalt,
Eine Reise nach Neapel e parlare italiano
[A trip to Naples e parlare italiano] (Munich, 1957). During these weeks T. apparently first studied Italian—which, so it is said, he later spoke fluently—with the help of this old, if steadily reprinted, introduction to the language.
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349. The more common, and correct, spelling is: “pummeling.”
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350. Crossed out: “All that was left was exertion and agony. Every self-evident reality was erased, not to mention every joy or desire; utter trivialities demanded a decision, from whether to open the window to whether I needed to go to the john.”
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351. By way of refreshing the memory, his letter to Johann Ziehlke of May 14, 1990, ends with the statement: “I gave her [Vera] my winnings, and that was a great relief in the end.”
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352. The town of Nobitz, near Altenburg, was home to a large Soviet military air base.
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353. T. could easily have determined this himself, since he kept carbon copies of all his letters.
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354. Two years later V. T. would leave Altenburg almost penniless.
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355. Even if it does seem almost superfluous, it should be noted: this description and the lines that follow arose out of T.'s overheated fantasy. His literary daydreams lack any basis in reality whatever.
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356. Later all T. cared about was money.
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357. Only the carbon copy of the beginning of a letter bearing the same date has survived.
Dear Nicoletta,
When I write you I'm able to create a sense of your almost palpable presence, a little magic trick that you can't forbid me. Am I repeating myself? Although I'm no tyro when it comes to writing letters, until now I've never really known what reality letters can possess. I'm only beginning to understand that now. There are also moments, however, in which I can no longer bear the distance, your silence, the uncertainty—can no longer bear my love for you.
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358. This episode is easily identifiable as a product of T.'s penchant for fabulation.
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359. By way of reminder: at several points T. himself calls his letters a confession.
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360. The last we heard about the pistol, T. had hidden it among the props at the theater.
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361. It remains a mystery why T. ever took this route, since he could have reached open country much more quickly in every other direction.
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362. Presumably the “Paditzer Bulwark.”
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363. According to folklore, crossroads enjoy a special regard among places that possess the greatest supernatural powers and are thus best suited for every sort of protection from or performance of black magic. The assumption that crossroads have a potent enchantment can be explained by the eerie sense of helplessness that overcomes a wanderer at a crossroads at night. “Forlorn and abandoned, he believes he has been delivered over to the powers of fate or spirits.”
Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens
[Pocket dictionary of German superstition] (Berlin, New York, 1987).
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364. One is reminded of some of the drawings and other graphic works of Gerhard Altenbourg.
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365. Whether T. did in fact dispose of the weapon is debatable. According to V. T. he kept a pistol hidden in his apartment.
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366. Since T. himself was in part responsible for this state of affairs, one can only note the dreadful amount of repression apparent in both his little speech and his written account of it.
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367. Since by this time one often had to wait ten years or longer for a new car, new registrations were often sold for several thousand marks.
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368. On July 8,
1990,
the Federal Republic won the World Cup in Rome against Argentina, 1 to 0.
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369. Contrary to his previous claims, T. offers proof here that he was still toying with the idea of writing fiction.
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370. This claim is false. It can be proved that N. H. was not in Altenburg on this date.
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371. Even N. H. has her doubts about this, as she herself revealed in a conversation with me.
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372. It is rather remarkable that T.'s presence at this meeting of the “media committee” was met with such surprise. The Prophet and T. had, after all, encountered each other before and after T.'s speech at the church. The Prophet could have thanked him on that occasion.
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373. That is to say: “We're all taking a leap into the unknown, none of us know what lies ahead.”
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374. Until this letter T. never commented on the fact that there were prose texts on the reverse side of his letters. If one is to believe T.'s logic, one must presume that he already had a correspondent like N. H. in mind. It should be expressly noted yet again that his “works” are to be found only on the reverse side of his letters to N. H.
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375. Apparently this refers to the Barrista entourage.
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376. Johann Ziehlke presumably did not welcome this reference to his course of studies.
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377. Beyond T.'s own article in the
Sunday Bulletin,
no.
2,
and a more general summary in the
Bonifatiusbote
[Boniface messenger], no. 1, no other written accounts of this episode have been located. Eyewitnesses, however, are unanimous in reporting that the effect of the performance was indeed “tremendous.”
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378. On July 8, 2002—twelve years later to the day—the rebuilt St. Boniface Church, which stands above the St. Boniface crypt, was dedicated in Altenburg. It now serves as the starting and end point of the many branches of a path laid out for Boniface pilgrims.
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379. T. mentioned Aunt Trockel to N. H. in his letter of May 31, 1990.
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380. T. quite wisely neglected to mention to N. H. that Aunt Trockel died only a few weeks later. Cf. his letter of Feb. 6, 1990.
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381. In comparison to the previous pages, both the careless handwriting as well as numerous cross-outs on the last page would seem to indicate that T. regarded this passage as a rough draft, which he then did not copy out again.
Crossed out: “Suddenly I was freed of the curse of having to describe the world, liberated from the bedazzlement of believing I should become a famous man, redeemed from the mad obsession of wanting to live eternally.”
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382. These things are not mutually exclusive.
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383. Crossed out: “I had in fact felt sorry for anyone who lacked artistic talent, who had no possibility of creating fame and opening up eternity for himself. Now I pitied those who held fast to such an ambition. Did they not realize that the age of art, the age of words, had passed and the age of deeds had irrevocably begun? I at least no longer had to cast about day and night for the stuff of a novel!”
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384. Translator's note: This piece of concrete poetry is an example of how certain texts defy translation. The poem's subject is the carnations (German:
“Nelken”
) distributed to all citizens of the GDR on May Day and worn in the lapel or otherwise publicly displayed. The poem ends, as it began, with the letters of the word
“Nelken.”
But the final five letters likewise spell
“ekeln,”
which is German for “to disgust, repulse, nauseate.”
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This Is a Borzoi Book
Published by Alfred A. Knopf

Translation copyright © 2008 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Originally published in Germany as
Neue Leben
by Berlin Verlag GmbH, Berlin, in 2005. Copyright © 2005 by Berlin Verlag GmbH, Berlin.

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Schulze, Ingo, [date]

[Neue Leben. English]

New lives : the youth of Enrico Türmer in letters and prose / edited and with commentary and foreword by Ingo Schulze ; translated from the German by John E. Woods.—1st American ed.

p. cm.

Originally published: Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 2005.

I. Title.

PT
2680.
U
453
N
4813 2008

833'.92—dc22                                                                                 2008019615

eISBN: 978-0-307-27050-4

v3.0