Mapping Ransmayr : Kartierungsversuche zum Werk von Christoph Ransmayr

Introduction:Stargazing, Worldmaking and Worldmapping. The humanand inhuman, the poetical and geographical dimensions of Christoph Ransmayr'swork Stargazing and worldmapping:the human and inhuman dimensionsofChristoph Ransmayr'swork Stargazing in Dublin with O'Casey When the drunken, dreaming hero of Seán O'Casey's(almost) hundred year old play Juno and the Paycock lifts his head from the grinding poverty that earths his existence to gaze into the free-floating openness abovehim, he utters one of the great questions of Irish literature: "what is the stars, what is the stars?" (O'Casey 1980, 23). It is, of itself, asparkling question, twinkling brightly with all the fun and the tragedy, the irony and provocation that its context can muster. "What is the stars?" indeed: aquestion for religion,for science, for poets and dreamersand philosophers. It is not, however, an atural or proper question for the disenfranchised characters of the play, for those who are relentlessly bound and groundedbyearthy, earthly demands.The poor are disenfranchised then not just materially and politically, but disenfranchised because the big existential questions are deemed not theirs to proclaim. For them, the stars are out of bounds. And out of bounds then too, are the wonderment that stars bestow, the impossible knowledge they dangle and the horizons they stretch.T obepoor is to have lost sight of the stars, to haveone'seyes fixed firmly to the binding, grounding earth. To ask about the stars, therefore,isnoinnocentquestion, no mere twinkle question; it is aq uestion about all the dimensions of apprehension that bind heaven and earth to one another. These are the dimensions of the human condition in its material, physical, social, psychological and philosophical need. In these human and inhuman dimensions, in between heaven and earth, between dreaming and drudgery, all cartographers and all star-gazers ply their trades. And as they gaze, they don'tjust map theirenvironment, near and far, they also forge the instruments of our apprehension -our theological, philosophical, astrological, geological, and, aboveall, our poetic narratives. In theIrish context, O'Casey'squestionhas becomeaproxyfor theproblem of literature'sroleinnationalhistory,which forcenturies wasdominated by the struggle fori ndependencef romB ritish rule.H is play recreatesafamiliar landscape: thec olonialp ower structurea nd theg eneralisedp overty of vast swathesofthe Irishpopulation shapeanenvironment in which thegap between material life andthe life of themindseems great.For O'Casey the "what is the stars?" question, plantedinthe povertyofi nner-cityDublinisambivalent. On theone hand,itisaquestionasked by thosewho have abdicated theirdomestic responsibilities in favour of alcohol inducedflightinto theimagination -it is literature as away outoflife.Onthe otherhand, it raises andiscounteractedbya furtherq uestion,n amely: what remainst ot hose so materially impoverished except thecapacitytodream? "We areall in thegutter",says Lord Darlington in theOscar Wildeplay Lady Windermere'sFan, "butsomeofusare lookingatthe stars" (Wilde 1966,417). If thestars mark theouter reachesofour horizon,the placew here knowledgep ushesa gainst theg reatu nknown,a nd wheret he imaginationr ushesi nt of illt hatv oid, O'Caseys uggestst hatd reaminga nd storytellingmight come at thehuman cost of real life neglect.Atthe same time, storytellingm ight be thev erym edium of insighti nto thep olitical ands ocial injustices that curtailpeople'sreallives. All of this seems al ong wayf rom Ransmayr'sk indo fw riting, and so it is. Ransmayrcomes to the stars by avery different route, but shares with O'Casey an acute interest in the relationship between reality and the imagination, and more specifically, the role of storytelling in whatwecall reality. Where O'Casey posits a dichotomy between dreaming and living that is complicated by the fact that the dichotomy itself is offered in literary form, Ransmayr'sw ork is forthright in its defence of art. Here, the real and the imagined are woventogether in such away that they are fundamentally inseparable from the outset.Itisthat inseparability that constitutes the fabric of his narrativea nd is at hematic focus of so many works. It is also athematic focus in essays by Hermann Dorowin, Jill Thielsen and Anna-Lena Eick in this volume. The entwinement of the real and the imagined is also present in Ransmayr's account of his interest in the stars in Bericht am Feuer. Gespräche, E-Mails und Telefonate zum Werk vonChristoph Ransmayr,where the dimensions of human existence -its externalborders and its internal means of orientation -are bound up ab initiowith our relationship to the stars. When the schoolboy Ransmayris given apresent of Nietzsche'scollected works, one sentence jumps out at him: "Solange du die Sterne noch empfindest als ein 'Über dir',fehlt dir der Blick des Erkennenden". 1 This develops into the insight that understanding our position 1 Bericht am Feuer. Gespräche, E-Mails und Telefonate zum Werk vonChristoph Ransmayr,ed. Die Beiträgerinnen und Beiträger des Bandes betrachten das Werk von Christoph Ransmayr als poetische Kartographie. Ransmayr vermisst die Welt in Zeit und Raum und kartiert damit gleichsam die Rolle der Sprache und des Erzählens als das den Menschen mit seiner Umwelt und seiner Vergangenheit Verbindende. Die Aufsätze folgen vielfältigen methodischen Ansätzen – manche narratologischen, andere komparatistischen, wieder andere literaturhistorischen. Gemeinsam ist ihnen die Deutung von Ransmayrs Werk als Exploration – als Erkundung der Welt des Physischen, der Welt des Erzählens und der Welt der Literaturgeschichte, in deren Mitte stets Ransmayrs Subjekt als Bezeugender und Reisender steht. This collection of essays conceives of Christoph Ransmayr's work as an exercise in poetic cartography. Ransmayr maps the world in time and space, and in so doing, he maps the role of language and storytelling in connecting us to our environment and our past. The methodological approaches of these essays are diverse – some are narratological, some comparativist, some literary historical. They all share an interest in the exploration of Ransmayr's work as an exploration of time and space – the time and space of the physical world, of the world of storytelling and of the world of literary history, of which they themselves form a part. At the centre of all this stands Ransmayr's human subject as witness and traveller. Christoph Ransmayr ist ein Reisender. Orte sind in seinem Werk nicht Hintergrund, sondern Akteure. Zusammen bilden sie die Landschaft und Zeitschaft einer einzigartigen poetischen Welt