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Tijl
Tijl Uilenspiegel, legendarisch entertainer en provocateur, staat er alleen voor wanneer zijn vader in conflict komt met de Kerk en door de fanatieke jezuïeten Tesimond en Kircher ter dood veroordeeld wordt. De jonge Tijl, rebels, tegendraads en met een groot gevoel voor rechtvaardigheid, verlaat zijn geboortedorp, vergezeld door bakkersdochter Nele. Op hun reizen door Europa jut Tijl mensen hilarisch op en wordt hij de nar van de naar Den Haag gevluchte koning Frederik van Bohemen. Samen met diens vrouw Liz trekt Tijl ten strijde.
352 pages, Paperback
First published October 11, 2017
1050 people are currently reading
19705 people want to read
About the author
Daniel Kehlmann
83books1,220followersDaniel Kehlmann is a German-Austrian author.
His novel Measuring the World (German: Die Vermessung der Welt) was translated into more than forty languages. Awards his work has received include the Candide Prize, the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Heimito von Doderer Literature Award, the Kleist Prize, the WELT Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. Kehlmann divides his time between Vienna and Berlin.
His novel Measuring the World (German: Die Vermessung der Welt) was translated into more than forty languages. Awards his work has received include the Candide Prize, the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Heimito von Doderer Literature Award, the Kleist Prize, the WELT Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. Kehlmann divides his time between Vienna and Berlin.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,583 reviews
August 2, 2023
Ignorance, prejudices, superstitions, obscurantism: all the shades of darkness� Even if there is nothing supernatural in Tyll the novel has a tangible Gothic aura and it is glumly satirical.
Artistes are freer than monarchs but they pay for their freedom dearly�
Balance is crucial. If there is no balance, there is war� If there is no balance, there is death�
It’s progress � all to the better, all for the best�
“If you want to eat, perform. That’s how it is now. That’s how it will be until you kick the bucket. You belong to the traveling people, no one protects you, and when it rains, you have no roof. No home. No friends but others like you, who will not like you very much, because food is scarce. That is the price you pay to be free. Not to have to listen to anyone’s rules. The only rules are that you run when you have to run, and that when you’re hungry, you perform.�
Artistes are freer than monarchs but they pay for their freedom dearly�
…Tyll Ulenspiegel on the rope took another leap, striking his feet together in the air. He jumped so high that he had to spread his arms when he landed to find his balance � only very briefly, but it was enough to remind us that even he had weight and couldn’t fly.
Balance is crucial. If there is no balance, there is war� If there is no balance, there is death�
“These are better days. In the past you were all burned to death. That takes time, it’s not pleasant. But hanging is nothing. It happens quickly. You climb onto the scaffold and before you know it, you’re standing before the Creator. You’re incinerated afterward, but by then you’re dead, it doesn’t bother you at all, you’ll see.�
It’s progress � all to the better, all for the best�
April 2, 2020
Now on the International Booker Prize Shortlist!
Daniel Kehlmann's translated non-linear novel is a skilfully woven blend of folklore, fantasy and European historical fiction where the medieval legend of folklore, Tyll, the spirit of rebellion, mocking, a confidence trickster and jester is transplanted three centuries later into the 17th century, travelling through the episodically portrayed horrors and devastation of the Thirty Years War, the Holy Roman Empire, and the court of Friedrich, the Winter King and Elizabeth Stuart. Pieces of the tightrope walking, performing Tyll Ulenspielgel's personal history emerge, the change in him after the forest inhabited by the cold woman and other beings, the hanging of his father, Claus, denounced as a witch, and him running away with his 'sister' Nele. Kehlmann's Tyll is not the same Tyll from medieval folklore, he is a reflection of the macabre and cruel times he now inhabits, a time of strange beliefs for which people kill and are killed, torture is widespread, and all the repercussions that inevitably follow war.
The gaunt faced Tyll is a travelling performer, arriving in villages with his pied jerkin, battered hood, and calfskin cloak, staging plays of dragons, witches, evil kings, comedies and more, he is accompanied by Nele and Origenes, a talking donkey. He is a incredibly exuberant force of nature, overwhelmingly irresistible, charming, rude, mocking, issuing nonsensical commands that, as if in a trance, people follow, such as throwing their shoes high into the air. Madness, fights and mayhem ensues, he issues invitations, with people understanding that the rules that apply to them have no agency when it comes to Tyll, he represents a freedom from the chains that bind them, he can do anything that takes his fancy. Tyll's adventures and travels are depicted with verve and vibrancy, through the war, whilst encountering a wide array of characters, including real life historical figures of the time.
Kehlmann's venerates the art of the story in his own stellar, philosophical and thought provoking, historical fantasy novel. There is a charm, intelligence, humour and playfulness in the narrative amidst the terrors of war, the intrigues and plots, with the captivating imagery that cannot fail to snag the interest of the reader. Highly recommended to those who enjoy historical fiction but really for anyone looking for great fiction with the added bonus of an insightful look at aspects of European history and folklore through innovative and imaginative eyes. Many thanks to Quercus for an ARC.
Daniel Kehlmann's translated non-linear novel is a skilfully woven blend of folklore, fantasy and European historical fiction where the medieval legend of folklore, Tyll, the spirit of rebellion, mocking, a confidence trickster and jester is transplanted three centuries later into the 17th century, travelling through the episodically portrayed horrors and devastation of the Thirty Years War, the Holy Roman Empire, and the court of Friedrich, the Winter King and Elizabeth Stuart. Pieces of the tightrope walking, performing Tyll Ulenspielgel's personal history emerge, the change in him after the forest inhabited by the cold woman and other beings, the hanging of his father, Claus, denounced as a witch, and him running away with his 'sister' Nele. Kehlmann's Tyll is not the same Tyll from medieval folklore, he is a reflection of the macabre and cruel times he now inhabits, a time of strange beliefs for which people kill and are killed, torture is widespread, and all the repercussions that inevitably follow war.
The gaunt faced Tyll is a travelling performer, arriving in villages with his pied jerkin, battered hood, and calfskin cloak, staging plays of dragons, witches, evil kings, comedies and more, he is accompanied by Nele and Origenes, a talking donkey. He is a incredibly exuberant force of nature, overwhelmingly irresistible, charming, rude, mocking, issuing nonsensical commands that, as if in a trance, people follow, such as throwing their shoes high into the air. Madness, fights and mayhem ensues, he issues invitations, with people understanding that the rules that apply to them have no agency when it comes to Tyll, he represents a freedom from the chains that bind them, he can do anything that takes his fancy. Tyll's adventures and travels are depicted with verve and vibrancy, through the war, whilst encountering a wide array of characters, including real life historical figures of the time.
Kehlmann's venerates the art of the story in his own stellar, philosophical and thought provoking, historical fantasy novel. There is a charm, intelligence, humour and playfulness in the narrative amidst the terrors of war, the intrigues and plots, with the captivating imagery that cannot fail to snag the interest of the reader. Highly recommended to those who enjoy historical fiction but really for anyone looking for great fiction with the added bonus of an insightful look at aspects of European history and folklore through innovative and imaginative eyes. Many thanks to Quercus for an ARC.
April 2, 2020
Now shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020
I find it extremely difficult to review this book for many reasons but mainly because I had a hard time deciding how to rate it. I went from 3 stars to 5 only to get back again. I settled to 4 because in the end I appreciate what the author did with this novel.
Before I read Tyll I was not familiar with the apparently famous author. I was introduced to him by Jonathan, my GR friend, and I have to thank him.
Tyll is a picaresque novel about the famous jester Tyll Ulenspiegel who was transmuted in the Thirty year Old War. The structure of the novel is not linear and is written from different point of views, all actors in the terrible events of those times. The format was both one the best features of the book but also managed to confuse and interrupt the flow of the reading experience. Tyll was central to some chapters (or I should call them stories) and only tangent to others. He was a sort of binder, the person that held the book together, like an extreme high rope act. Only in the end I could see how all the episodes fitted together brilliantly. I was especially impressed that each event was presented by two or more people in a slightly different version which suggests the alteration of history by treacherous memory and self-interest. Tyll, with his dark humor and tragic figure acts like a mirror for the other characters and we are given a true picture the War, any war. It is cruel, absurd, bloody, a tragedy for normal people, a game for the powerful although they can also become victims.
I also enjoyed the “supernatural� aspects of the novel, the little people, the spells, the dragons. It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t a fantasy novel but that people in that time thought that nonsense real and people made careers or died because of it.
Thank you Netgalley and Quercus Books for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review
I find it extremely difficult to review this book for many reasons but mainly because I had a hard time deciding how to rate it. I went from 3 stars to 5 only to get back again. I settled to 4 because in the end I appreciate what the author did with this novel.
Before I read Tyll I was not familiar with the apparently famous author. I was introduced to him by Jonathan, my GR friend, and I have to thank him.
Tyll is a picaresque novel about the famous jester Tyll Ulenspiegel who was transmuted in the Thirty year Old War. The structure of the novel is not linear and is written from different point of views, all actors in the terrible events of those times. The format was both one the best features of the book but also managed to confuse and interrupt the flow of the reading experience. Tyll was central to some chapters (or I should call them stories) and only tangent to others. He was a sort of binder, the person that held the book together, like an extreme high rope act. Only in the end I could see how all the episodes fitted together brilliantly. I was especially impressed that each event was presented by two or more people in a slightly different version which suggests the alteration of history by treacherous memory and self-interest. Tyll, with his dark humor and tragic figure acts like a mirror for the other characters and we are given a true picture the War, any war. It is cruel, absurd, bloody, a tragedy for normal people, a game for the powerful although they can also become victims.
I also enjoyed the “supernatural� aspects of the novel, the little people, the spells, the dragons. It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t a fantasy novel but that people in that time thought that nonsense real and people made careers or died because of it.
Thank you Netgalley and Quercus Books for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review
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September 25, 2024
Here's what author Daniel Kehlmann said when he was two-thirds through writing Tyll: “When Trump won, I was so shocked and worried that for a while I couldn’t write anymore. But then I thought of Tyll’s resilience and his way of making fun of anything. It was revelatory because I’d never had any experience of my own character helping me to finish something or to cope.�
Tyll Ulenspiegel to the rescue, both for a sensitive young novelist in the 21st century and war-torn, ravaged Central Europe during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).
Tyll Ulenspiegel, energetic jester, circus performer, magician, ventriloquist, vagabond, hero of folk tales is given a flesh-and-blood boyhood and manhood in Daniel Kehlmann's striking novel written in eight loosely interconnected chapters.
The novel's opening short paragraph: "The war had not yet come to us. We lived in fear and hope and tried not to draw God's wrath down upon our securely walled town, with its hundred and five houses and the cemetery, where our ancestors waited for the Day of Resurrection."
So few words but words that capture much of the brutality and suffocation of the times. "The war had not yet come to us." An undeniable sense of foreboding - the narrator admits it isn't a question of IF the war will come to his town but only a matter of WHEN. Meanwhile, all the townspeople live in the grip of fear believing soldiers arriving to murder, pillage, rape and burn their town to the ground is evidence of God's wrath. In other words, death and destruction will be a consequence of their town's guilt and sin.
But then it happens: one sunny Sunday morning in spring, a wagon rolls into town. There's a old, leather-faced woman, a beautiful young lass with dark hair and freckles - and a man everyone recognized although they haven't seen him before. Voices cry out, "Tyll is here!" "Tyll has come!" "Look, it's Tyll!"
Statue of Tyll in the German town of Mölln
With lightning speed, the coach transforms into a stage. All the town's men, women and children quickly gather as the old woman sings and Tyll and the dark haired beauty begin performing on either side of the stage - Tyll leaping, dancing, twirling a sword as he battles dragons, witches, evil kings in his journey toward his beloved, the soles of Tyll's feet seeming hardly to touch the ground. The play lasts deep into the afternoon and concludes in Romeo and Juliet fashion with both Tyll and the dark haired beauty committing suicide.
The townsfolk are treated to more: after the tragedy, there's the comedy. The old woman beats a drum as Tyll and his freckled lass spring up and begin dancing. "The two of them threw their arms up, their movements were in such harmony that they seemed to be not two people but mirror images of each other. We could dance fairly well, we celebrated often, but none of us could dance like them; watching them, you felt as if a human body had no weight and life were not sad and hard."
Following the dancing, the townsfolk behold more, much, much more. Tyll sings ballads first of the deadly strife of politics, religion and war and then switches to a heartfelt song of love then finally music most sacred. The entertainment shifts again and again until Tyll is standing on a rope high above the stage, shouting down to everyone below. What follows is a stroke of Daniel Kehlmann storytelling perfection. And then, as suddenly and as magically as Tyll and his wagon first appeared, the wagon with Tyll and the others are gone.
Lightness, nimbleness, freedom - so deftly embodied and expressed by Tyll the performer becomes a constant light presence humming and skipping in the background for each ensuing scene chock-full and weighed down by joylessness and suffering in their many harrowing forms.
Oh, yes, so much darkness. We have two inquisitors hunting out those like Tyll's father Claus who not only is a Christian but ponders cosmic mysteries, chants spells and draws painted pentagrams on his door. Ah, a heretic in the grip of the devil! Or so claims the Church. Poor Claus is tortured unmercifully before being taken away to be hanged.
Another commonplace scene further along in the novel: "Now they were in the interior of the camp, among the soldiers. . . . Everything would have been normal if you hadn't seen so many sick men: sick men in the mud, sick men on sacks of straw, sick men on the wagons - not merely wounded men, but men with sores, men with bumps on their faces, men with watering eyes and drooling mouths. Not a few lay there motionless and bent; you couldn't have said whether they were dead or dying."
Even the nobility, eminent personages such as Elizabeth the Winter Queen (exiled daughter of King James of England) do not escape hunger and squalor. The author's episodes focusing on Queen Elizabeth and her weak King husband traveling though harsh, forbidding terrain underscore how the four horsemen of the apocalypse representing pestilence, war, famine and death ride in triumph throughout Europe's Thirty Years' War. And the four horsemen spare none.
None, that is, except jester Tyll. For when Queen Elizabeth offers Tyll the opportunity to return to England with her so he can enjoy daily soup, thick blankets, warm slippers until he dies in a soft bed, Tyll replies he knows what's even better - no dying.
Daniel Kehlmann's novel is a book to be relished. I urge you to pick up a copy and share in the triumph of lightness and art over the forces of stupidity, cruelty and barbarism no matter what point in history.
German/Austrian novelist Daniel Kehlmann, born 1975
March 14, 2025
The novel follows the legendary jester Tyll Ulenspeigel during the chaos of the Thirty Years' War. This long conflict, known as the European War on German Soil, ran from 1618 to 1648, driven by religious tensions between Protestants and Catholics and power struggles among German states and the Holy Roman Empire. The war caused immense suffering for civilians, and Tyll vividly shows these hardships, capturing the devastating impact of war on ordinary folks.
Tyll is a wandering jester, both humorous and tough. Born in a 17th-century German village, he flees home after his father, a miller and amateur alchemist, is executed by the Church. Alongside Nele, the baker's daughter, Tyll starts a life on the road.
They perform as jesters to get by, meeting various characters, both great and humble. For instance, they encounter Frederick, the King of Bohemia, and his queen Elizabeth (the Winter King and Queen), who had to flee their kingdom because of the war. They also cross paths with Athanasius, a wise scholar; Paul, a quirky doctor; Tesimond, a fervent Jesuit priest; Diemand, a somber executioner; and Pilmin, a moody fellow jester.
By having Tyll interact with such a mix of characters, Kehlmann portrays the brutality of the Thirty Years' War while poking fun at the pretentious "upper class."
The novel's success in German literature comes from its unique blend of historical accuracy and fiction. Using Tyll’s jester persona, Kehlmann infuses the story with dark humor, offering comic relief amidst the war's tragic events. His writing style masterfully "tightrope walks" between different elements, much like Tyll. This is seen in 3 main fusions:
First, fact and fiction: Kehlmann blends historical facts with literary invention. Though the war settings are accurate, the fictional characters' timelines are set 300 years later. Real and unreal: character names mix real and fictional, adding ambiguity.
Second, tragedy and comedy: the novel blends heavy depictions of war's brutality with light-hearted, humorous moments. Despite the grim backdrop, the novel often maintains a light and upbeat tone, achieving a balanced artistic effect.
Third, narrative and recollection: this fusion allows for both the plot to unfold chronologically and historical facts to be shared through flashbacks.
Through these fusions, Kehlmann creates a rich and complex narrative that’s historically grounded yet imaginative.
I think this is one of Kehlmann’s best works, and its linguistic qualities are impressive. The rich imagery and delicate descriptions portray the war’s hardships and human complexities poetically, helping us readers feel the passage of time and the weight of history. The dialogue showcases the blend of different cultures and social classes through character interactions, resonating well with Asian readers like me.
Truly a work worth appreciating.
4.8 / 5 stars.
Tyll is a wandering jester, both humorous and tough. Born in a 17th-century German village, he flees home after his father, a miller and amateur alchemist, is executed by the Church. Alongside Nele, the baker's daughter, Tyll starts a life on the road.
They perform as jesters to get by, meeting various characters, both great and humble. For instance, they encounter Frederick, the King of Bohemia, and his queen Elizabeth (the Winter King and Queen), who had to flee their kingdom because of the war. They also cross paths with Athanasius, a wise scholar; Paul, a quirky doctor; Tesimond, a fervent Jesuit priest; Diemand, a somber executioner; and Pilmin, a moody fellow jester.
By having Tyll interact with such a mix of characters, Kehlmann portrays the brutality of the Thirty Years' War while poking fun at the pretentious "upper class."
The novel's success in German literature comes from its unique blend of historical accuracy and fiction. Using Tyll’s jester persona, Kehlmann infuses the story with dark humor, offering comic relief amidst the war's tragic events. His writing style masterfully "tightrope walks" between different elements, much like Tyll. This is seen in 3 main fusions:
First, fact and fiction: Kehlmann blends historical facts with literary invention. Though the war settings are accurate, the fictional characters' timelines are set 300 years later. Real and unreal: character names mix real and fictional, adding ambiguity.
Second, tragedy and comedy: the novel blends heavy depictions of war's brutality with light-hearted, humorous moments. Despite the grim backdrop, the novel often maintains a light and upbeat tone, achieving a balanced artistic effect.
Third, narrative and recollection: this fusion allows for both the plot to unfold chronologically and historical facts to be shared through flashbacks.
Through these fusions, Kehlmann creates a rich and complex narrative that’s historically grounded yet imaginative.
I think this is one of Kehlmann’s best works, and its linguistic qualities are impressive. The rich imagery and delicate descriptions portray the war’s hardships and human complexities poetically, helping us readers feel the passage of time and the weight of history. The dialogue showcases the blend of different cultures and social classes through character interactions, resonating well with Asian readers like me.
Truly a work worth appreciating.
4.8 / 5 stars.
January 24, 2020
Ever since I saw the German edition of this novel and guessed what it may depict, I have wanted to read the magical story of Tyll Ulenspiegel.
The main reason why this book has been on my radar and I have been waiting for the translation is that I have been interested in the Thirty Years' War ever since I watched a splendid documentary on it and visited some places which still remember that cruel period. The War is shown in soldiers, landscape, cruelty and its nonsense, as any war, and although only some episodes are included in the story, in my opinion, the Author could not have done a better job reflecting on that period. Elizabeth's reflections on her life, on accepting the crown of Bohemia and on fighting for the title for her son during the congress in Westphalia, give the background behind the events which started the conflict and difficulty ending it. I found 'The Fat Count' and 'The Winter Queen' parts fascinating.
Tyll and his 'sister' Nele wonder the lands, escape, dance and support each other during their journeys without a destination. I admit that Tyll as a character was difficult for me to fully understand as there may be some references that I missed, however, I found him and the folklore he represents absolutely engrossing. Reading about Tyll was for me like wondering in the forest.
This is not a novel that will appeal to every reader. There is no actual linear plot, the characters, some of whom imaginary, some of whom real, tell their stories, always subjective and, in consequence,not always reliable.
I feel I should congratulate the translator who did a terrific job. While reading 'Tyll' I had the impression it was not translated, but written in English.
'Tyll' was a superb read for me ...
*A big thank-you toDaniel Kehlmann, Quercus books and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
The main reason why this book has been on my radar and I have been waiting for the translation is that I have been interested in the Thirty Years' War ever since I watched a splendid documentary on it and visited some places which still remember that cruel period. The War is shown in soldiers, landscape, cruelty and its nonsense, as any war, and although only some episodes are included in the story, in my opinion, the Author could not have done a better job reflecting on that period. Elizabeth's reflections on her life, on accepting the crown of Bohemia and on fighting for the title for her son during the congress in Westphalia, give the background behind the events which started the conflict and difficulty ending it. I found 'The Fat Count' and 'The Winter Queen' parts fascinating.
Tyll and his 'sister' Nele wonder the lands, escape, dance and support each other during their journeys without a destination. I admit that Tyll as a character was difficult for me to fully understand as there may be some references that I missed, however, I found him and the folklore he represents absolutely engrossing. Reading about Tyll was for me like wondering in the forest.
This is not a novel that will appeal to every reader. There is no actual linear plot, the characters, some of whom imaginary, some of whom real, tell their stories, always subjective and, in consequence,not always reliable.
I feel I should congratulate the translator who did a terrific job. While reading 'Tyll' I had the impression it was not translated, but written in English.
'Tyll' was a superb read for me ...
*A big thank-you toDaniel Kehlmann, Quercus books and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
February 19, 2020
I don't like historical novels, so how did I find myself loving this? And I mean LOVING this! Not just the watered down, everyday kind of "loving this coffee or loving that shop". I mean I LOVED it!
First of all, I probably had the most privileged introduction to it that one can possibly get. On a late November Tuesday, I travelled from Northern to Southern Stockholm (which geographically speaking is not a vast journey, but can turn into an adventure nevertheless!) in the pitch darkness of a post-rainy winter day turning abruptly to night while showing off a strangely Baroque full moon over the dreary 1960s buildings. The quixotic public transportation odyssey (yes, I am aware there are two literary references in this itinerary already, and to top it off, I chose them deliberately and carefully, before embarking on this REALLY over the top explanation!) led me to Årsta, where I had never been before, and to a gathering of wizards and dragons... no, that is not true, but it felt a bit like it. It led me to a gathering of cultural majesties, specialising in literature and history. To be more specific: it led me to a book talk between Peter Englund and Daniel Kehlmann. And what a talk that was. The mighty wizard of history meeting the word magician for a discussion of Kehlmann's historical novel set in the 17th century.
It turned out they disliked the kind of historical novel I dislike too - the kind that is sort of a masquerade ball showing off antiquated language and pretty dresses and horseback riding. So sitting there listening to them discussing what a historical novel can and can't do, I felt I might just like this one, for the awareness the author showed, and for the sense of humour with which he overstepped the boundaries of "possible" and moved into the realm of "impossible, but I did that anyway".
The novel is about the most famous German prankster, Till Eulenspiegel, or Tyll Ulenspiegel as he is called in the novel, and at the same time, it is about fragments of impressions of that chaos that became Germany over the course of 30 years of war at a time in history when people believed in the strangest things and killed each other for believing other strange things.
It is also a novel reflecting on German language and literature (or the lack thereof in comparison to other cultures of the time), and it is a love declaration to storytelling and the power of imagination to make things become real on paper that can't be real otherwise. If there is one thing I begrudge Daniel Kehlmann, it is his unwarranted killing off of the very last dragon in Northern Europe. I am so upset about that to be honest, I actually consider writing him back into life. Revenge literature? That would of course be a futuristic dystopian novel, another genre I have mixed feelings about.
Maybe this novel only worked so well for me because I was under the spell of Englund and Kehlmann, but who cares? A spell is a spell is a spell, and they are both useful and effective if they work. And if not, they are just a few wasted words - and humanity has got loads of words left, even when all other resources are scarce!
No need to be greedy. And I realise I started with "first of all" and then never moved on to "second", so there will have to be a sequel to this review at some point anyway, otherwise I would have made a stylistic mistake. And that's not acceptable.
First of all, I probably had the most privileged introduction to it that one can possibly get. On a late November Tuesday, I travelled from Northern to Southern Stockholm (which geographically speaking is not a vast journey, but can turn into an adventure nevertheless!) in the pitch darkness of a post-rainy winter day turning abruptly to night while showing off a strangely Baroque full moon over the dreary 1960s buildings. The quixotic public transportation odyssey (yes, I am aware there are two literary references in this itinerary already, and to top it off, I chose them deliberately and carefully, before embarking on this REALLY over the top explanation!) led me to Årsta, where I had never been before, and to a gathering of wizards and dragons... no, that is not true, but it felt a bit like it. It led me to a gathering of cultural majesties, specialising in literature and history. To be more specific: it led me to a book talk between Peter Englund and Daniel Kehlmann. And what a talk that was. The mighty wizard of history meeting the word magician for a discussion of Kehlmann's historical novel set in the 17th century.
It turned out they disliked the kind of historical novel I dislike too - the kind that is sort of a masquerade ball showing off antiquated language and pretty dresses and horseback riding. So sitting there listening to them discussing what a historical novel can and can't do, I felt I might just like this one, for the awareness the author showed, and for the sense of humour with which he overstepped the boundaries of "possible" and moved into the realm of "impossible, but I did that anyway".
The novel is about the most famous German prankster, Till Eulenspiegel, or Tyll Ulenspiegel as he is called in the novel, and at the same time, it is about fragments of impressions of that chaos that became Germany over the course of 30 years of war at a time in history when people believed in the strangest things and killed each other for believing other strange things.
It is also a novel reflecting on German language and literature (or the lack thereof in comparison to other cultures of the time), and it is a love declaration to storytelling and the power of imagination to make things become real on paper that can't be real otherwise. If there is one thing I begrudge Daniel Kehlmann, it is his unwarranted killing off of the very last dragon in Northern Europe. I am so upset about that to be honest, I actually consider writing him back into life. Revenge literature? That would of course be a futuristic dystopian novel, another genre I have mixed feelings about.
Maybe this novel only worked so well for me because I was under the spell of Englund and Kehlmann, but who cares? A spell is a spell is a spell, and they are both useful and effective if they work. And if not, they are just a few wasted words - and humanity has got loads of words left, even when all other resources are scarce!
No need to be greedy. And I realise I started with "first of all" and then never moved on to "second", so there will have to be a sequel to this review at some point anyway, otherwise I would have made a stylistic mistake. And that's not acceptable.
October 13, 2023
Now Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020
The most widely translated author writing in German today writes a book circling around the most famous German trickster: Every child around here grows up with the classic tales of Tyll Ulenspiegel (also: Till Eulenspiegel) which go back to Middle Low German folklore. But while the "original" Tyll was supposedly born around 1300 and travelled the Holy Roman Empire as a vagrant and provocateur, Kehlmann transports his Tyll into the time of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). As the author explains, the choice of Tyll as the central character is more of a literary device: Kehlmann wanted to portray the society of the Early Modern Period, when people where caught in a time of constant change, turmoil and violence. The society back then was very static, there was basically no social mobility, and one of the few groups who could travel and experience different classes where vagrants. So why not employ the most famous, archetypical vagrant of all?, Kehlmann thought.
So Kehlmann's Tyll is born around 1600 and plays tricks in the Holy Roman Empire of the 17th century. His father is a miller, but also a magician and an explorer, which is pretty dangerous considering the power of the church at the time. When is family gets in trouble for it, Tyll flees with Nele, the baker's daughter, and they become vagrants and entertainers. While traveling the Empire, they meet people of different classes and means, among them the exiled rulers of Bohemia, Elizabeth and Friedrich, whose mistakes sparked this great war, soldiers, other vagrants, the melancholic executioner Tilman, fanatical Jesuits, and Paul Fleming, whose (back-then) bizarre plan is to write poems in German (he really existed and did write those poems).
Full disclosure: I have never particularly liked Kehlmann, I usually find his writing a little contrived and tame, and I also have no particular interest in the Thirty Years' War. How the hell did Kehlmann manage to turn this into such an addictive, smart and beautiful book? His writing is so evocative, the scenes are so vivid, the characters so interesting, the narrative flows so naturally - what happened? I demand a witchtrial for Kehlmann!
In the novel, Tyll is sometimes a catalyst but mostly a mirror of the times, and as such he is cleverly employed. While in the classic children's stories about him, his job is to expose people's greed and stupidity, Kehlmann does not use him as a means to impose any moral message: In his book, he can be a prankster who is just as cruel as the times he lives in, and what he exposes his how Kehlmann re-imagines the Thirty Years' War and its repercussions for the people living at the time.
In case you would like to hear Kehlmann himself talk about his book, I recommend - it's in German, but even if you don't speak the language, watch it for the extravagant interview cinematography! :-)
The most widely translated author writing in German today writes a book circling around the most famous German trickster: Every child around here grows up with the classic tales of Tyll Ulenspiegel (also: Till Eulenspiegel) which go back to Middle Low German folklore. But while the "original" Tyll was supposedly born around 1300 and travelled the Holy Roman Empire as a vagrant and provocateur, Kehlmann transports his Tyll into the time of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). As the author explains, the choice of Tyll as the central character is more of a literary device: Kehlmann wanted to portray the society of the Early Modern Period, when people where caught in a time of constant change, turmoil and violence. The society back then was very static, there was basically no social mobility, and one of the few groups who could travel and experience different classes where vagrants. So why not employ the most famous, archetypical vagrant of all?, Kehlmann thought.
So Kehlmann's Tyll is born around 1600 and plays tricks in the Holy Roman Empire of the 17th century. His father is a miller, but also a magician and an explorer, which is pretty dangerous considering the power of the church at the time. When is family gets in trouble for it, Tyll flees with Nele, the baker's daughter, and they become vagrants and entertainers. While traveling the Empire, they meet people of different classes and means, among them the exiled rulers of Bohemia, Elizabeth and Friedrich, whose mistakes sparked this great war, soldiers, other vagrants, the melancholic executioner Tilman, fanatical Jesuits, and Paul Fleming, whose (back-then) bizarre plan is to write poems in German (he really existed and did write those poems).
Full disclosure: I have never particularly liked Kehlmann, I usually find his writing a little contrived and tame, and I also have no particular interest in the Thirty Years' War. How the hell did Kehlmann manage to turn this into such an addictive, smart and beautiful book? His writing is so evocative, the scenes are so vivid, the characters so interesting, the narrative flows so naturally - what happened? I demand a witchtrial for Kehlmann!
In the novel, Tyll is sometimes a catalyst but mostly a mirror of the times, and as such he is cleverly employed. While in the classic children's stories about him, his job is to expose people's greed and stupidity, Kehlmann does not use him as a means to impose any moral message: In his book, he can be a prankster who is just as cruel as the times he lives in, and what he exposes his how Kehlmann re-imagines the Thirty Years' War and its repercussions for the people living at the time.
In case you would like to hear Kehlmann himself talk about his book, I recommend - it's in German, but even if you don't speak the language, watch it for the extravagant interview cinematography! :-)
March 5, 2020
Tyll
is the story of Tyll Ulenspiegel, a wanderer/prankster/jester, and his peripatetic adventures across what we now call Europe, during the Thirty Years� War.
This is an exuberant and unusual piece of historical fiction, an omnium-gatherum of legendary figures, real historical personages and events, mysticism, scholarship, high diplomacy & the carving up of realms, and the dismal daily grind of the peasantry.
With a Pulp Fiction-style jumbled timeline and a winking irreverence, Tyll wears its deeply researched historicity lightly, keeping the reader constantly off balance and feeling like anything might happen. There are some magical elements but this isn’t a full-blown fantasy novel. It’s more like history as seen through the world view of the people who lived it, people who truly did believe in witchcraft, spells and superstitions. It’s always a little ambiguous whether the strange happenings are ‘real� or just the fancies of the characters� 17th century minds.
There’s so much to take in here. Through the folkloric Tyll (transported by Kehlmann from his original medieval time zone), we gain access to the lives of villagers, farmers and soldiers, see the cruel devastation wrought by the war, spend time with exiled Bohemian royals and renegade polymath Athanasius Kircher, attend witch trials and inhabit haunted forests, and more.
In novels with multiple perspectives there is always a risk that one will outshine and here it is Tyll himself. The sections with Tyll � whether as a sweet little boy or as the adult, slightly sinister jokester in motley � are so alive with energy that the few parts where he’s offstage seem flatter by comparison. But that’s a small criticism of an otherwise delightful read. 4.5 stars.
This is an exuberant and unusual piece of historical fiction, an omnium-gatherum of legendary figures, real historical personages and events, mysticism, scholarship, high diplomacy & the carving up of realms, and the dismal daily grind of the peasantry.
With a Pulp Fiction-style jumbled timeline and a winking irreverence, Tyll wears its deeply researched historicity lightly, keeping the reader constantly off balance and feeling like anything might happen. There are some magical elements but this isn’t a full-blown fantasy novel. It’s more like history as seen through the world view of the people who lived it, people who truly did believe in witchcraft, spells and superstitions. It’s always a little ambiguous whether the strange happenings are ‘real� or just the fancies of the characters� 17th century minds.
There’s so much to take in here. Through the folkloric Tyll (transported by Kehlmann from his original medieval time zone), we gain access to the lives of villagers, farmers and soldiers, see the cruel devastation wrought by the war, spend time with exiled Bohemian royals and renegade polymath Athanasius Kircher, attend witch trials and inhabit haunted forests, and more.
In novels with multiple perspectives there is always a risk that one will outshine and here it is Tyll himself. The sections with Tyll � whether as a sweet little boy or as the adult, slightly sinister jokester in motley � are so alive with energy that the few parts where he’s offstage seem flatter by comparison. But that’s a small criticism of an otherwise delightful read. 4.5 stars.
March 12, 2020
Tyll is so entertaining that I struggled at first to understand just how deep it is. I'm not sure what it says about contemporary literature, or about me, that I needed to consciously banish my cynical mistrust of any book that is so delightful to read.
As I read the novel I thought of Falstaff, Shakespeare's comic-yet-deep repeating character. The character who most reminded me of Falstaff is played by a donkey, a character who appears in many scenes, sometimes for comic value and sometimes for something else entirely.
And now that I've brought it up, I realize that I could write several paragraphs just about the donkey in this novel--how funny the donkey is in a given scene, and then how horrifically the donkey's fate plays out in another scene. Sometimes this donkey has a name, and its name is Origenes. And like so much in Tyll, Kehlmann invites me to think of the donkey's name as just a name, and to read on, or alternatively, to ponder what shimmering potentials are added to my reading if I take time to realize "Origenes" is also the name of an itinerant third-century Christian ascetic whose life and fate were caught up in religious disputes not unlike those raging in this novel.
The donkey's story is threaded throughout this broken, nonlinear novel, and always brings with it some new wonder or terror or sadness or revelation, even though it's a minor character, like Falstaff. And the thing is, it's not just the donkey. Every character in the novel is a kind of itinerant bit player, and every one of them--the miller Claus, the Winter King, the expert in dragonology, the little girl named Martha, Tyll himself--has a marvelous and mysterious story to tell, when it's their time on stage. Kehlmann made them all real for me, sometimes in just a few sentences.
References to Shakespeare plays appear throughout this novel with both historical and thematic resonances. A recurring side-theme is how literature was changing in this period of history that we now call "early-modern." The play Macbeth makes its way into a scene as a way to reference James I's rise to power, and Macbeth's last soliloquy is a good description of how this novel unfurls as you read it:
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
So here we are. Apparently my second stab at coming to grips with Tyll here on ŷ is going to consist of a little bit of Shakespeare, a little bit of donkey.
Okay. I should also add that I found a lot of Lutheran-like philosophy playing out in profound ways--over and over again the character Tyll projects a belief that suffering and uncertainty is worth enduring for the hope of living through it, and that evil is worth fighting, for the hope of the good to come. This philosophy is most starkly portrayed in the late chapter "In the Shaft."
Well, I'm just gob-smacked by this novel. Read it.
As I read the novel I thought of Falstaff, Shakespeare's comic-yet-deep repeating character. The character who most reminded me of Falstaff is played by a donkey, a character who appears in many scenes, sometimes for comic value and sometimes for something else entirely.
And now that I've brought it up, I realize that I could write several paragraphs just about the donkey in this novel--how funny the donkey is in a given scene, and then how horrifically the donkey's fate plays out in another scene. Sometimes this donkey has a name, and its name is Origenes. And like so much in Tyll, Kehlmann invites me to think of the donkey's name as just a name, and to read on, or alternatively, to ponder what shimmering potentials are added to my reading if I take time to realize "Origenes" is also the name of an itinerant third-century Christian ascetic whose life and fate were caught up in religious disputes not unlike those raging in this novel.
The donkey's story is threaded throughout this broken, nonlinear novel, and always brings with it some new wonder or terror or sadness or revelation, even though it's a minor character, like Falstaff. And the thing is, it's not just the donkey. Every character in the novel is a kind of itinerant bit player, and every one of them--the miller Claus, the Winter King, the expert in dragonology, the little girl named Martha, Tyll himself--has a marvelous and mysterious story to tell, when it's their time on stage. Kehlmann made them all real for me, sometimes in just a few sentences.
References to Shakespeare plays appear throughout this novel with both historical and thematic resonances. A recurring side-theme is how literature was changing in this period of history that we now call "early-modern." The play Macbeth makes its way into a scene as a way to reference James I's rise to power, and Macbeth's last soliloquy is a good description of how this novel unfurls as you read it:
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
So here we are. Apparently my second stab at coming to grips with Tyll here on ŷ is going to consist of a little bit of Shakespeare, a little bit of donkey.
Okay. I should also add that I found a lot of Lutheran-like philosophy playing out in profound ways--over and over again the character Tyll projects a belief that suffering and uncertainty is worth enduring for the hope of living through it, and that evil is worth fighting, for the hope of the good to come. This philosophy is most starkly portrayed in the late chapter "In the Shaft."
Well, I'm just gob-smacked by this novel. Read it.
December 21, 2020
من هو "تيل"؟
لا يمكننا حقًا أن نقول، ليس مهرجًا، وليس لاعب خفة، وليس أبرع من مشى على حبل في تاريخ البشرية، وليس رفيق الملوك ومُشعل الصراعات وأفضل من يتفادى طلقة رصاص، إنه كل هذا.
تبدأ الرواية بمشهد لا يمكن وصفه سوى بالعبثية؛ يصل تيل ورفاقه في كارافان صغير، هناك نلة، رفيقة تيل، وهناك امرأة عجوز، وهناك حمار يتكلّم، ووسط أهل القر��ة الذين لم يروا من قبل كل هذه المعجزات في مكان واحد، يبدأ تيل وأصدقاؤه العرض المثير.
يمشي على الحبل، ويطلب من أهل القرية أن يخلعوا أحذيتهم ويلقوها فوق رؤوسهم، وهو ما يفعلونه، فقط لنجد أن القرية التي تنام على بحر من الصراعات المكبوتة، تتخلى عن إنسانيتها وتحضّرها للحظات قليلة تكون كافية كي ينتقم كل منهم من الآخر.
تجمع الرواية مجموعة من أغرب الشخصيات التي قابلتها في رواية؛ لدينا "تيل"، وهو كافٍ ليمنح الرواية هالة من الغرابة، لكننا نقرأ أيضًا عن قسيسين يبحثان عن دماء التنين، وفي أثناء رحلة البحث يكشفان السحرة والمهرطقين. لدينا ملك وملكة بلا مملكة، يتنقلان بحثًا عن أمل في العودة إلى الحياة الارستقراطية التي لطالما خبروها. لدينا كاتب يبحث عن الحروب بشغف شديد، لا لشيء إلا لتكتمل تجربته الإنسانية، فكما نعرف، لا يكون الإنسان إنسانًا إلا إذا شاهد حربًا واحدة على الأقل. لدينا حمار يتحدث، ولا نعرف حقًا إن كان يتحدّث أم أن رفيقه الأقرب "تيل" هو من يتحدث مكانه.
الرابط الوحيد بين كل هؤلاء هو "تيل"، المهرج المجنون والعابث.
الرواية عبارة عن مجموعة من المشاهد تشبه فهرسًا مفصلًا؛ يبدأ الكاتب الحديث عن شخصية معينة، ثم نرى كيف قابلت "تيل" وما علاقتها به، وكيف ترك "تيل" أثره بها.
الترجمة عظيمة وسلسلة، والمترجم يمتلك حصيلة لغوية وتركيبية مكّنته من تجسيد روح الرواية دون أن نفقد شيئًا من جمالها.
وأخيرًا: وصلت الراوية إلى القائمة القصيرة لجائزة بوكر الدولية لعام 2020.
شكرًا دار ممدوح عدوان على الاختيار المميز، وشكرًا د. نبيل الحفار على الترجمة البارعة.
مراجعة مرئية للرواية:
لا يمكننا حقًا أن نقول، ليس مهرجًا، وليس لاعب خفة، وليس أبرع من مشى على حبل في تاريخ البشرية، وليس رفيق الملوك ومُشعل الصراعات وأفضل من يتفادى طلقة رصاص، إنه كل هذا.
تبدأ الرواية بمشهد لا يمكن وصفه سوى بالعبثية؛ يصل تيل ورفاقه في كارافان صغير، هناك نلة، رفيقة تيل، وهناك امرأة عجوز، وهناك حمار يتكلّم، ووسط أهل القر��ة الذين لم يروا من قبل كل هذه المعجزات في مكان واحد، يبدأ تيل وأصدقاؤه العرض المثير.
يمشي على الحبل، ويطلب من أهل القرية أن يخلعوا أحذيتهم ويلقوها فوق رؤوسهم، وهو ما يفعلونه، فقط لنجد أن القرية التي تنام على بحر من الصراعات المكبوتة، تتخلى عن إنسانيتها وتحضّرها للحظات قليلة تكون كافية كي ينتقم كل منهم من الآخر.
تجمع الرواية مجموعة من أغرب الشخصيات التي قابلتها في رواية؛ لدينا "تيل"، وهو كافٍ ليمنح الرواية هالة من الغرابة، لكننا نقرأ أيضًا عن قسيسين يبحثان عن دماء التنين، وفي أثناء رحلة البحث يكشفان السحرة والمهرطقين. لدينا ملك وملكة بلا مملكة، يتنقلان بحثًا عن أمل في العودة إلى الحياة الارستقراطية التي لطالما خبروها. لدينا كاتب يبحث عن الحروب بشغف شديد، لا لشيء إلا لتكتمل تجربته الإنسانية، فكما نعرف، لا يكون الإنسان إنسانًا إلا إذا شاهد حربًا واحدة على الأقل. لدينا حمار يتحدث، ولا نعرف حقًا إن كان يتحدّث أم أن رفيقه الأقرب "تيل" هو من يتحدث مكانه.
الرابط الوحيد بين كل هؤلاء هو "تيل"، المهرج المجنون والعابث.
الرواية عبارة عن مجموعة من المشاهد تشبه فهرسًا مفصلًا؛ يبدأ الكاتب الحديث عن شخصية معينة، ثم نرى كيف قابلت "تيل" وما علاقتها به، وكيف ترك "تيل" أثره بها.
الترجمة عظيمة وسلسلة، والمترجم يمتلك حصيلة لغوية وتركيبية مكّنته من تجسيد روح الرواية دون أن نفقد شيئًا من جمالها.
وأخيرًا: وصلت الراوية إلى القائمة القصيرة لجائزة بوكر الدولية لعام 2020.
شكرًا دار ممدوح عدوان على الاختيار المميز، وشكرًا د. نبيل الحفار على الترجمة البارعة.
مراجعة مرئية للرواية:
April 4, 2020
What an original idea - to write a book of historical fiction (tales set in the early 17th century, detailing life in Europe during the Thirty Years' War) using a fictional, mystical character as 'host', or circus ringleader.
Even though my knowledge of the Thirty Years' War was pretty much non-existent prior to my reading Tyll (which is shameful, truly, considering it's "one of the most destructive conflicts in human history" -- just take a quick look at ), this novel was accessible and entertaining. Do I think I might have gotten more from the reading had I not been so painfully unaware of the historical background? Yes. Probably. I've learned more during the reading, and afterwards, though.
My knowledge of the legendary character of Tyll Ulenspiegel previous to reading was also non-existent. Tyll is a folk hero, a vagrant, a fool, a jester, a trickster, a street performer. Sometimes mocking, sometimes wise, sometimes dangerous, always we can trust Tyll to see the truth, and tell it.
The structure of this novel is artful. It's comprised of 7 chapters, or stories, which are not linear. Some are much longer than others. Some feature Tyll as a main character, while he is in the background in others. Some tell the same story but from a different point of view, highlighting the unreliability of history depending on who is telling it. I did find that certain chapters were stronger than others, which had the effect of lessening the overall cohesiveness. And the further back Tyll stood, the less engaged I felt as a result. Come back, Tyll, you roguish tightrope walker, you! Come back, and bring that talking donkey of yours, too!
There's so much to enjoy here, in addition to the historical telling. The author is playful and philosophical. Magical, too. I loved the deep questions asked, particularly one that confounded Tyll's father: "You have a heap of grain. You take one grain away, and it is still a heap. You take another, then another, and the heap is still a heap. At what point, as you continue, does it cease being a heap?" The intellectuals at the time, with their flawed logic and confidence in their own conclusions, are also very amusing. One word: dragonology.
While it is playful, there is darkness and death everywhere. War. Jesuit scholars on a witch hunt. A plague afoot (something that feels all too real for those reading in social isolation today).
It's also Shakespearian, and the love of the theatre is felt in every page. The comedy, the tragedy, the performance, the timelessness, the audience. Kehlmann, take a bow, I can't help but applaud as the curtain drops.
Even though my knowledge of the Thirty Years' War was pretty much non-existent prior to my reading Tyll (which is shameful, truly, considering it's "one of the most destructive conflicts in human history" -- just take a quick look at ), this novel was accessible and entertaining. Do I think I might have gotten more from the reading had I not been so painfully unaware of the historical background? Yes. Probably. I've learned more during the reading, and afterwards, though.
My knowledge of the legendary character of Tyll Ulenspiegel previous to reading was also non-existent. Tyll is a folk hero, a vagrant, a fool, a jester, a trickster, a street performer. Sometimes mocking, sometimes wise, sometimes dangerous, always we can trust Tyll to see the truth, and tell it.
The structure of this novel is artful. It's comprised of 7 chapters, or stories, which are not linear. Some are much longer than others. Some feature Tyll as a main character, while he is in the background in others. Some tell the same story but from a different point of view, highlighting the unreliability of history depending on who is telling it. I did find that certain chapters were stronger than others, which had the effect of lessening the overall cohesiveness. And the further back Tyll stood, the less engaged I felt as a result. Come back, Tyll, you roguish tightrope walker, you! Come back, and bring that talking donkey of yours, too!
There's so much to enjoy here, in addition to the historical telling. The author is playful and philosophical. Magical, too. I loved the deep questions asked, particularly one that confounded Tyll's father: "You have a heap of grain. You take one grain away, and it is still a heap. You take another, then another, and the heap is still a heap. At what point, as you continue, does it cease being a heap?" The intellectuals at the time, with their flawed logic and confidence in their own conclusions, are also very amusing. One word: dragonology.
While it is playful, there is darkness and death everywhere. War. Jesuit scholars on a witch hunt. A plague afoot (something that feels all too real for those reading in social isolation today).
It's also Shakespearian, and the love of the theatre is felt in every page. The comedy, the tragedy, the performance, the timelessness, the audience. Kehlmann, take a bow, I can't help but applaud as the curtain drops.
June 9, 2020
Shortlisted for the Booker International Prize 2020
Shortlisted for the Booker International Prize 2020
Note that this review was originally written in March, after my first reading. My book group is now part of a Reading Agency project which has allocated us this book, and I have been skim-reading and making notes to refresh my memory for our discussion.
My only previous experience of Kehlmann was , which I read too long ago to remember clearly. This one is a very different sort of historical novel. It mixes the picaresque and the fantastic with unsparing descriptions of the harshness of 17th century life, and the savage effects of the Thirty Years War on Germany. It also mixes fact and fiction in a way that can be hard to disentangle
The book is episodic, with the episodes linked by the legendary trickster Tyll Ulenspiegel, an entertainer, juggler and tightrope walker. The episodes are not arranged chronologically - the first is a vivid account of the appearance of his travelling band in a poor village, but the next describes his childhood, and the process that led to his father's execution for witchcraft. Later we see him as the fool of the exiled King of Bohemia Friedrich, the "Winter King" and his queen Liz, daughter of the British king James I (and VI).
There is plenty of unreliable narration, and plenty of period detail, and some of the more eccentric beliefs of the period are very entertaining. Definitely worth reading, and I might have given it 5 stars had it been a little less disjointed and uneven.
The book is in 8 chapters, which are of very different lengths - varying from 16 pages to 110 in the UK hardback edition. Taking these in order (note that this summarises large parts of the plot, so I will use spoiler tags:
Shortlisted for the Booker International Prize 2020
Note that this review was originally written in March, after my first reading. My book group is now part of a Reading Agency project which has allocated us this book, and I have been skim-reading and making notes to refresh my memory for our discussion.
My only previous experience of Kehlmann was , which I read too long ago to remember clearly. This one is a very different sort of historical novel. It mixes the picaresque and the fantastic with unsparing descriptions of the harshness of 17th century life, and the savage effects of the Thirty Years War on Germany. It also mixes fact and fiction in a way that can be hard to disentangle
The book is episodic, with the episodes linked by the legendary trickster Tyll Ulenspiegel, an entertainer, juggler and tightrope walker. The episodes are not arranged chronologically - the first is a vivid account of the appearance of his travelling band in a poor village, but the next describes his childhood, and the process that led to his father's execution for witchcraft. Later we see him as the fool of the exiled King of Bohemia Friedrich, the "Winter King" and his queen Liz, daughter of the British king James I (and VI).
There is plenty of unreliable narration, and plenty of period detail, and some of the more eccentric beliefs of the period are very entertaining. Definitely worth reading, and I might have given it 5 stars had it been a little less disjointed and uneven.
The book is in 8 chapters, which are of very different lengths - varying from 16 pages to 110 in the UK hardback edition. Taking these in order (note that this summarises large parts of the plot, so I will use spoiler tags:
Read
April 25, 2020Tyll Ulenspiegel, prankster of German folklore, appears in a series of scenes, back and forth in time through the Thirty Years War. But what is this: a novel or linked short stories? Why is the book presented as if it's about him, when he doesn't appear on that many of its pages? What is he in this version? Man or supernatural or both; travelling entertainer rising for a while to court jester; trickster anti-hero; symbol of the hidden agents of historical causation - the butterflies flapping their wings, the whisper in the ear of a powerful man - and/or of occult forces most no longer believe in, but which suffused the 17th century worldview?
This is a strange book to review - it's hard to pin down like its protagonist, fragmentary yet still a conventional piece of historical fiction, thematic far more than linear, although certain thumbnail details are more compelling than its broad sweep. But it stimulates discussion: a Tyll thread currently has nearly twice as many posts as those in the same group for any other book on the International Booker longlist.
Aside from a couple of reviews months before Tyll was longlisted, the first substantial content I heard about the book was an with Daniel Kehlmann about his research. (He also covered similar ground on BBC Radio 3's .) If you have a background in early modern history, it may drive you up the wall, the amount of outdated material he has latched on to. There are old chestnuts such as 'no-one drank water, everybody was drunk all the time' and 'parents didn't really love their children because of high child mortality'. But I broadly agree when he says that much of what contemporary people mean when they call something "medieval" actually dates from the early modern period, when witch trials and religious persecution intensified. And when I read Tyll, I found some of my other criticism had been premature: in the interviews he seemed to think ordinary people meekly believed what they were told as far as religion was concerned. "Has he not heard of famous counterexamples like the Italian miller Menocchio in Carlo Ginzburg's ?" I ranted. But he evidently had, because Tyll's father, Claus Ulenspiegel, is a modified version of Menocchio, a miller to boot.
The whole book is a postmodern patchwork of real people - often partially repurposed in roles they didn't quite play in historical reality - plus a few fictional characters from other literature. If it weren't for Katia's review, most of us on GR reading this Booker list would have had no idea that Kehlmann's Tyll, plus the presence of his companion Nele, is indebted to , by Charles de Coster, which lets Ulenspiegel, same spelling, loose in the 16th-17th century Dutch Wars of Independence - a war central to the history and psyche of his country, as the Thirty Years War was and is to Germany. (Some background on the latter ; the extent of dislocation and mortality was similar to the Black Death in some areas.) Some of the uses of real figures made sense, even if their chapters/stories were mediocre. 'Kings in Winter', the first episode featuring Elizabeth Stuart - daughter of James I/VI, wife of the German count and Winter King of Bohemia who helped spark the Thirty Years War, and Tyll's quondam employer - was embarrassingly run-of-the-mill historical fiction, with a low-level contemporary feel to its narrative, and too many heavy-handed Shakespeare allusions; it never felt like something that belonged on a Booker shortlist. However, on a personal level I loved Elizabeth's final chapter 'Westphalia', in which the now impoverished and reclusive ageing royal finds, rather like the proverbial riding a bike, that she has the nerve to try, and hopefully the knack, to play politics better than she did in her heyday. I also found the "fat count" of 'Zusmarshausen' very likeable, a minor nobleman commissioned to retrieve Tyll from a monastery for the Kaiser, and eventual memoirist. (He seems to be fictional, but bears the rather gothic surname of a real German noble family which included a famous late medieval poet, von Wolkenstein.) I am not sure likeability is enough for the book to deserve all the praise it's had so far, but I did enjoy these chapters. (I have no quarrel with the portrayal of Adam Olearius and Paul Fleming, and found it interesting, though wonder if Kehlmann laid it on too thick with Fleming's predictions for the future of the German language.)
Meanwhile, the repurposing of Athanasius Kircher as a witch-hunter irked me, and, as with some of the points on history of everyday life and Գٲé, seemed to signal the shallowness of Kehlmann's research. I'm prepared to be corrected by someone who did a thesis or similar on Kircher, but nothing I've been able to find about him shows a particular interest in witch-trials. More to the point, men of the Renaissance with an interest in occultism usually steered clear of this sideline. It's the sort of trend you only notice through studying the era at length. It was not a case of "keep your enemies closer". It evidently wasn't a good idea to be in proximity to people who enforced orthodoxy with such fervent dogmatism, when you might be flouting it yourself and the stakes were so high. Kehlmann probably intended a psychological projection situation, whereby Kircher, whose interests were unorthodox, and Tesimond, who'd escaped being tortured and executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot, are visiting on humbler folk the fate they each dread. But it feels wrong and off-key on a historical level because men like Kircher didn't, as a rule, do this kind of thing.
That scenario would sit better in a fantasy novel, a fictional world where it made sense for norms to be different, than in one set in a very-slightly-modified historical reality. Likewise on the subject of parents not being attached to their children - on which Kehlmann seems to have read the likes of Philippe Ariès and Lawrence Stone, who produced landmark works of social history in the 1960s-70s, but are now widely considered wrong on this particular point. (However, I suspect there was probably more variation than there is now, and that it was not so taboo to think badly of one's children.) Kehlman infodumps in the chapter about young Tyll and his parents; the narrative would have flowed just fine without this, especially as the emotions could be explicable without commentary as firstly, fathers being less attached to children - not uncommon within living memory - or not being as interested in them until they can play and interact, and secondly a woman worn down by repeated miscarriages in a culture that, in any case, didn't have such high expectations that a pregnancy would work out well. I can see some attraction in writing popular historical fiction based on old or stereotyped ideas about the past; as a teenager I was thrilled by the atmosphere of infamously inaccurate non-fiction like William Manchester's A World Lit Only By Fire, but it would inevitably seem trashy to an informed readership. And this sort of thing raises potentially interesting questions about the borders between realistic fiction and fantasy fiction, but a) Kehlmann's interviews put such emphasis on research that they make inaccuracies stand out as actual errors, by implying that everything is meant to be realistic except for the supernatural elements; b) I just found the inaccuracies annoying.
My knowledge of German literature is perfunctory, and I regretted not having had time to read The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus before Tyll to compare their respective treatments of the Thirty Years War, and to see just how playful Kehlmann was being when Tyll makes more-or-less overt references to Grimmelshausen's book. But with both The Tin Drum and Berlin Alexanderplatz in my GR currently reading, it was hard not to see parallels between Tyll and these two twentieth century classics in each of which a roguish man traverses his home territory, sowing chaos around him. Especially with The Tin Drum: progenitor of magic realism; a grotesque scene involving an equine head; a protagonist living in grubby, sometimes violent historical reality, but with powers to break and carve glass with his voice, like an X-Man lampoon. If the modern superhero is a legacy of the Second World War allies, why not put an ambiguous one in the Thirty Years War? A US blurb for Tyll contains the phrase "a beguiling artist's decision never to die" - put like that, it parallels Oskar Matzerath's decision to stop growing aged three, simple as that, mind over matter and the laws of biology and perhaps a satire on Nietzche's Übermensch and the Nazi love of it. Kehlmann's Tyll seems a little less of a satire on it - he is usually on the margins, scrawny and lower-class, but he is a great survivor and influencer and has in more ways overcome reality and normal human frailties; I sometimes imagined the younger Tyll as Peter Pan.
The ambiguity of Tyll's personality is artfully drawn. Kehlmann wanted to show a world pervaded by supernatural explanations, in contrast to a rational, scientific present in which more is knowable: a dark world at the dawn of the scientific revolution. In many of Tyll's scenes he has constructed mysteries of a sort found in old chronicles, which leave the 20th-21st century reader puzzling over what actually happened, without a definite conclusion possible. The delicacy of this is one of the great triumphs of the book.
A case in point is the episode in which the boy Tyll is stranded overnight in a wood with a donkey and cart. It echoes numerous fairytales, a shamanic/young male initiation rite, and A Midsummer Night's Dream (in which a man of the artisan class is, effectively, ordained as a symbol of comedy). What happened? What is Tyll's state of mind? Was it voluntary? Was he possessed, temporarily or permanently? (Weeks or months later, Kircher watches the boy perform acrobatics, and seems to see something demonic in him.) As I see it, Tyll is a brilliantly talented person who also has a cruel, mischievous streak - but that's not all he is, it's not like the two-dimensional contemporary idea of a psychopath; there are real people who can be like that sometimes but also honest and helpful at others, as he is. And during that night in the wood, a combination of hunger and the power of stories about the place - one could plausibly throw in some mushrooms too - create an altered state of mind which brings out a side of him he wasn't fully familiar with before. He could also be seen in a slightly supernatural way, like one of those Greek heroes who was the child or grandchild of a god. There's something uncanny in him, but it's not all of him.
In a set of Great Courses lectures on the Western Canon, which I finished recently, it was said that Goethe's Faust (unlike earlier Fausts) was redeemed rather than punished because of the shift to a rationalist, individualistic society. Overreaching was now not to be damned, but increasingly valued, as scientists strove to know what was previously unknown or the province of religion, and artists like the Romantics for extreme feelings and atmosphere. One could argue that Claus Ulenspiegel's working class occultism was punished like the medieval and early modern Faust, whilst his son, dancing on the edge of the old world of superstition and the new one of the scientific revolution, makes it to a point where he can survive. Towards the end of some of the characters' lives in the 1680s, "the last dragon of the north" (perhaps Kehlmann slyly alludes to as of the south - of Europe), symbol of a watershed in the decline of magic.
Debate about the book has returned several times to its topicality, or, conversely, whether it has aged badly in the three years since it was published in German. I don't think it has to be a direct analogue for Donald Trump, as some have argued (e.g. because Kehlmann said somewhere that he had writer's block for a while after Trump was elected) - the idea of what happens if a trickster is in charge - and there are more differences between them than similarities. A trickster is clever and nearly always knows what he's doing. Though Tyll does show the trickster in his traditional role and place in society, as if *something* was in its right place even in the carnage and chaos of the Thirty Years War.
Now, during the coronavirus pandemic, some of what Kehlmann said about the contrast between the 17th century and the present sounds a little less true, but substantial differences remain. We know infectious disease is caused by viruses and other pathogens; that is accepted by the vast majority, and is a basic idea that won't disappear in a hurry. For the time being, a lot of people in Western European countries (he universalised too much about freedom from pain and fear globally) are still freer of fear and have a better economic safety net than their ancestors did, and than most who live in poorer countries. Anyway, I think the book can stand apart sufficiently from his interviews in this respect: it doesn't say hubristically how great life is (or was at the time he wrote it, expecting it to continue for the foreseeable future). It is about a time and place when it very much wasn't, and that is resonant just now, as Jeet Thayil, one of this year's International Booker judges, observed in the shortlist announcement video. And the point Kehlmann made about the social and political upheaval caused by new media - the printing press then, and social media now - undoubtedly still stands.
I don't think Tyll is the best written book on the shortlist, yet I would like it to win. It's the only one from the list I much wanted to read at a time like this; history is what I want to put things into perspective and what I think a lot of people need. And if you classify dystopias as either authoritarian or chaotic, Tyll, leaning towards the latter, provides some contrast. (Besides, my preferred winner from the longlist, The Eighth Life, wasn't even shortlisted.)
(Read & reviewed April 2020)
This is a strange book to review - it's hard to pin down like its protagonist, fragmentary yet still a conventional piece of historical fiction, thematic far more than linear, although certain thumbnail details are more compelling than its broad sweep. But it stimulates discussion: a Tyll thread currently has nearly twice as many posts as those in the same group for any other book on the International Booker longlist.
Aside from a couple of reviews months before Tyll was longlisted, the first substantial content I heard about the book was an with Daniel Kehlmann about his research. (He also covered similar ground on BBC Radio 3's .) If you have a background in early modern history, it may drive you up the wall, the amount of outdated material he has latched on to. There are old chestnuts such as 'no-one drank water, everybody was drunk all the time' and 'parents didn't really love their children because of high child mortality'. But I broadly agree when he says that much of what contemporary people mean when they call something "medieval" actually dates from the early modern period, when witch trials and religious persecution intensified. And when I read Tyll, I found some of my other criticism had been premature: in the interviews he seemed to think ordinary people meekly believed what they were told as far as religion was concerned. "Has he not heard of famous counterexamples like the Italian miller Menocchio in Carlo Ginzburg's ?" I ranted. But he evidently had, because Tyll's father, Claus Ulenspiegel, is a modified version of Menocchio, a miller to boot.
The whole book is a postmodern patchwork of real people - often partially repurposed in roles they didn't quite play in historical reality - plus a few fictional characters from other literature. If it weren't for Katia's review, most of us on GR reading this Booker list would have had no idea that Kehlmann's Tyll, plus the presence of his companion Nele, is indebted to , by Charles de Coster, which lets Ulenspiegel, same spelling, loose in the 16th-17th century Dutch Wars of Independence - a war central to the history and psyche of his country, as the Thirty Years War was and is to Germany. (Some background on the latter ; the extent of dislocation and mortality was similar to the Black Death in some areas.) Some of the uses of real figures made sense, even if their chapters/stories were mediocre. 'Kings in Winter', the first episode featuring Elizabeth Stuart - daughter of James I/VI, wife of the German count and Winter King of Bohemia who helped spark the Thirty Years War, and Tyll's quondam employer - was embarrassingly run-of-the-mill historical fiction, with a low-level contemporary feel to its narrative, and too many heavy-handed Shakespeare allusions; it never felt like something that belonged on a Booker shortlist. However, on a personal level I loved Elizabeth's final chapter 'Westphalia', in which the now impoverished and reclusive ageing royal finds, rather like the proverbial riding a bike, that she has the nerve to try, and hopefully the knack, to play politics better than she did in her heyday. I also found the "fat count" of 'Zusmarshausen' very likeable, a minor nobleman commissioned to retrieve Tyll from a monastery for the Kaiser, and eventual memoirist. (He seems to be fictional, but bears the rather gothic surname of a real German noble family which included a famous late medieval poet, von Wolkenstein.) I am not sure likeability is enough for the book to deserve all the praise it's had so far, but I did enjoy these chapters. (I have no quarrel with the portrayal of Adam Olearius and Paul Fleming, and found it interesting, though wonder if Kehlmann laid it on too thick with Fleming's predictions for the future of the German language.)
Meanwhile, the repurposing of Athanasius Kircher as a witch-hunter irked me, and, as with some of the points on history of everyday life and Գٲé, seemed to signal the shallowness of Kehlmann's research. I'm prepared to be corrected by someone who did a thesis or similar on Kircher, but nothing I've been able to find about him shows a particular interest in witch-trials. More to the point, men of the Renaissance with an interest in occultism usually steered clear of this sideline. It's the sort of trend you only notice through studying the era at length. It was not a case of "keep your enemies closer". It evidently wasn't a good idea to be in proximity to people who enforced orthodoxy with such fervent dogmatism, when you might be flouting it yourself and the stakes were so high. Kehlmann probably intended a psychological projection situation, whereby Kircher, whose interests were unorthodox, and Tesimond, who'd escaped being tortured and executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot, are visiting on humbler folk the fate they each dread. But it feels wrong and off-key on a historical level because men like Kircher didn't, as a rule, do this kind of thing.
That scenario would sit better in a fantasy novel, a fictional world where it made sense for norms to be different, than in one set in a very-slightly-modified historical reality. Likewise on the subject of parents not being attached to their children - on which Kehlmann seems to have read the likes of Philippe Ariès and Lawrence Stone, who produced landmark works of social history in the 1960s-70s, but are now widely considered wrong on this particular point. (However, I suspect there was probably more variation than there is now, and that it was not so taboo to think badly of one's children.) Kehlman infodumps in the chapter about young Tyll and his parents; the narrative would have flowed just fine without this, especially as the emotions could be explicable without commentary as firstly, fathers being less attached to children - not uncommon within living memory - or not being as interested in them until they can play and interact, and secondly a woman worn down by repeated miscarriages in a culture that, in any case, didn't have such high expectations that a pregnancy would work out well. I can see some attraction in writing popular historical fiction based on old or stereotyped ideas about the past; as a teenager I was thrilled by the atmosphere of infamously inaccurate non-fiction like William Manchester's A World Lit Only By Fire, but it would inevitably seem trashy to an informed readership. And this sort of thing raises potentially interesting questions about the borders between realistic fiction and fantasy fiction, but a) Kehlmann's interviews put such emphasis on research that they make inaccuracies stand out as actual errors, by implying that everything is meant to be realistic except for the supernatural elements; b) I just found the inaccuracies annoying.
My knowledge of German literature is perfunctory, and I regretted not having had time to read The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus before Tyll to compare their respective treatments of the Thirty Years War, and to see just how playful Kehlmann was being when Tyll makes more-or-less overt references to Grimmelshausen's book. But with both The Tin Drum and Berlin Alexanderplatz in my GR currently reading, it was hard not to see parallels between Tyll and these two twentieth century classics in each of which a roguish man traverses his home territory, sowing chaos around him. Especially with The Tin Drum: progenitor of magic realism; a grotesque scene involving an equine head; a protagonist living in grubby, sometimes violent historical reality, but with powers to break and carve glass with his voice, like an X-Man lampoon. If the modern superhero is a legacy of the Second World War allies, why not put an ambiguous one in the Thirty Years War? A US blurb for Tyll contains the phrase "a beguiling artist's decision never to die" - put like that, it parallels Oskar Matzerath's decision to stop growing aged three, simple as that, mind over matter and the laws of biology and perhaps a satire on Nietzche's Übermensch and the Nazi love of it. Kehlmann's Tyll seems a little less of a satire on it - he is usually on the margins, scrawny and lower-class, but he is a great survivor and influencer and has in more ways overcome reality and normal human frailties; I sometimes imagined the younger Tyll as Peter Pan.
The ambiguity of Tyll's personality is artfully drawn. Kehlmann wanted to show a world pervaded by supernatural explanations, in contrast to a rational, scientific present in which more is knowable: a dark world at the dawn of the scientific revolution. In many of Tyll's scenes he has constructed mysteries of a sort found in old chronicles, which leave the 20th-21st century reader puzzling over what actually happened, without a definite conclusion possible. The delicacy of this is one of the great triumphs of the book.
A case in point is the episode in which the boy Tyll is stranded overnight in a wood with a donkey and cart. It echoes numerous fairytales, a shamanic/young male initiation rite, and A Midsummer Night's Dream (in which a man of the artisan class is, effectively, ordained as a symbol of comedy). What happened? What is Tyll's state of mind? Was it voluntary? Was he possessed, temporarily or permanently? (Weeks or months later, Kircher watches the boy perform acrobatics, and seems to see something demonic in him.) As I see it, Tyll is a brilliantly talented person who also has a cruel, mischievous streak - but that's not all he is, it's not like the two-dimensional contemporary idea of a psychopath; there are real people who can be like that sometimes but also honest and helpful at others, as he is. And during that night in the wood, a combination of hunger and the power of stories about the place - one could plausibly throw in some mushrooms too - create an altered state of mind which brings out a side of him he wasn't fully familiar with before. He could also be seen in a slightly supernatural way, like one of those Greek heroes who was the child or grandchild of a god. There's something uncanny in him, but it's not all of him.
In a set of Great Courses lectures on the Western Canon, which I finished recently, it was said that Goethe's Faust (unlike earlier Fausts) was redeemed rather than punished because of the shift to a rationalist, individualistic society. Overreaching was now not to be damned, but increasingly valued, as scientists strove to know what was previously unknown or the province of religion, and artists like the Romantics for extreme feelings and atmosphere. One could argue that Claus Ulenspiegel's working class occultism was punished like the medieval and early modern Faust, whilst his son, dancing on the edge of the old world of superstition and the new one of the scientific revolution, makes it to a point where he can survive. Towards the end of some of the characters' lives in the 1680s, "the last dragon of the north" (perhaps Kehlmann slyly alludes to as of the south - of Europe), symbol of a watershed in the decline of magic.
Debate about the book has returned several times to its topicality, or, conversely, whether it has aged badly in the three years since it was published in German. I don't think it has to be a direct analogue for Donald Trump, as some have argued (e.g. because Kehlmann said somewhere that he had writer's block for a while after Trump was elected) - the idea of what happens if a trickster is in charge - and there are more differences between them than similarities. A trickster is clever and nearly always knows what he's doing. Though Tyll does show the trickster in his traditional role and place in society, as if *something* was in its right place even in the carnage and chaos of the Thirty Years War.
Now, during the coronavirus pandemic, some of what Kehlmann said about the contrast between the 17th century and the present sounds a little less true, but substantial differences remain. We know infectious disease is caused by viruses and other pathogens; that is accepted by the vast majority, and is a basic idea that won't disappear in a hurry. For the time being, a lot of people in Western European countries (he universalised too much about freedom from pain and fear globally) are still freer of fear and have a better economic safety net than their ancestors did, and than most who live in poorer countries. Anyway, I think the book can stand apart sufficiently from his interviews in this respect: it doesn't say hubristically how great life is (or was at the time he wrote it, expecting it to continue for the foreseeable future). It is about a time and place when it very much wasn't, and that is resonant just now, as Jeet Thayil, one of this year's International Booker judges, observed in the shortlist announcement video. And the point Kehlmann made about the social and political upheaval caused by new media - the printing press then, and social media now - undoubtedly still stands.
I don't think Tyll is the best written book on the shortlist, yet I would like it to win. It's the only one from the list I much wanted to read at a time like this; history is what I want to put things into perspective and what I think a lot of people need. And if you classify dystopias as either authoritarian or chaotic, Tyll, leaning towards the latter, provides some contrast. (Besides, my preferred winner from the longlist, The Eighth Life, wasn't even shortlisted.)
(Read & reviewed April 2020)
July 24, 2022
Historische Romane zählen nicht gerade zu meinem Lieblingsgenre. Literarisch wertvolle Bücher sind mir dabei oft zu überladen mit all den aufwendigen Rechercheergebnissen der Autoren und verlieren dabei an Originalität. Weniger anspruchsvolle Bücher nehmen die historische Kulisse nur als Aufhänger für einen anderen Genreroman. Bei Tyll ist das alles irgendwie anders. Ein historischer Roman, der keineswegs Wert auf einen vollständigen Wahrheitsgehalt legt. Kehlmann verknüpft Phantasie (oder sogar Fantasy) mit realen Begebenheit und das so spielerisch, witzig und selbstverständlich, dass ich das Buch nahezu verschlungen habe.
Es beginnt schon damit, dass er die eigentlich fiktive Gestalt des Till Eulenspiegels einfach mal ein paar hundert Jahre später seine Späße treiben lässt. Diesmal in einem vom Dreißigjährigen Krieg heruntergekommenen Deutschland mit seinen zersplitterten Herzogtümern und Königreichen. Der Roman verfolgt keine durchgängige Handlung, sondern besteht vielmehr aus Episoden, die aus den Blickwinkeln verschiedener Leute erzählt werden. Zu Beginn mit Kindheit und Jugendzeit des Müllersohns Tyll Uhlenspiegel noch chronologisch fortschreitend, springen die Episoden im Folgen dann zeitlich durcheinander. Dabei steht Tyll gar nicht immer Blickpunkt, sondern es kommen auch z.B das kurpfälzische Fürstenpaar Friedrich V. mit seiner englischen Gattin Elisabeth (die Enkelin der Maria Stuart), aber auch geschichtlich weniger bedeutsame Personen wie ein weiterer Gaukler, ein Henker, ein Arzt (der deutsche Gedichte schreiben will), eine Bäckerstochter sowie ein schlafender Drache und ein sprechender Esel (soviel zur Fantasy) in den Fokus. Kehlmann gelingt es dabei, einen grobe Abriss aller wichtigen Themen des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts unterzubringen, von Hunger, Armut, Pest über Politik, Kunst, Wissenschaft und vieles mehr. Ein Roman, der nicht den Anspruch hat, Geschichte zu lehren, sondern zu unterhalten und das Interesse an ein dunkles Kapitel unseres Landes zu wecken. Ein großartiges Buch, das meiner Ansicht nach zurecht auf der Shortlist des International Booker Prize steht.
Es beginnt schon damit, dass er die eigentlich fiktive Gestalt des Till Eulenspiegels einfach mal ein paar hundert Jahre später seine Späße treiben lässt. Diesmal in einem vom Dreißigjährigen Krieg heruntergekommenen Deutschland mit seinen zersplitterten Herzogtümern und Königreichen. Der Roman verfolgt keine durchgängige Handlung, sondern besteht vielmehr aus Episoden, die aus den Blickwinkeln verschiedener Leute erzählt werden. Zu Beginn mit Kindheit und Jugendzeit des Müllersohns Tyll Uhlenspiegel noch chronologisch fortschreitend, springen die Episoden im Folgen dann zeitlich durcheinander. Dabei steht Tyll gar nicht immer Blickpunkt, sondern es kommen auch z.B das kurpfälzische Fürstenpaar Friedrich V. mit seiner englischen Gattin Elisabeth (die Enkelin der Maria Stuart), aber auch geschichtlich weniger bedeutsame Personen wie ein weiterer Gaukler, ein Henker, ein Arzt (der deutsche Gedichte schreiben will), eine Bäckerstochter sowie ein schlafender Drache und ein sprechender Esel (soviel zur Fantasy) in den Fokus. Kehlmann gelingt es dabei, einen grobe Abriss aller wichtigen Themen des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts unterzubringen, von Hunger, Armut, Pest über Politik, Kunst, Wissenschaft und vieles mehr. Ein Roman, der nicht den Anspruch hat, Geschichte zu lehren, sondern zu unterhalten und das Interesse an ein dunkles Kapitel unseres Landes zu wecken. Ein großartiges Buch, das meiner Ansicht nach zurecht auf der Shortlist des International Booker Prize steht.
November 23, 2020
الرواية مزيج بين الفانتازيا والتاريخ والسحر والدجل والشعوذة وحرب الثلاثين عامًا في أوروبا.
اقتباسات
“��� تُعامَل في بلدك على نحوٍ سيّئٍ أفضل من أن تُعامل على نحوٍ سيّئٍ في الغربة�.
“لي� هناك سوى لحظات قليلة في الحياة، يكون فيها كلا الخيارين ممكنًا، سواء كان هذا الطريق أم ذاك. لحظات قليلة يستطيع الأنسان فيها أن يحسم قراره�.
“النا� عامةً يريدون أن يسمعوا عن الإعدامات، في كلّ مكانٍ، وفي كلّ وقتٍ. الإعدامات تهمُّ الجميع، وما من أحدٍ لا يبالي بها�.
“سب� وجود مهرّج في البلاط هو عدم السّماح بنوم العقل من كثرة التبجيل�.
December 26, 2017
Der Autor macht in seinem Roman Till Eulenspiegel kurzerhand 300 Jahre jünger
und bugsiert ihn in die Wirrungen des 30 jährigen Krieges des 17. Jahrhunderts.
Sprachgewaltig, düster, lustig, so gut wie perfekt - eigentlich fünf Sterne wert, unbedingt lesen!
und bugsiert ihn in die Wirrungen des 30 jährigen Krieges des 17. Jahrhunderts.
Sprachgewaltig, düster, lustig, so gut wie perfekt - eigentlich fünf Sterne wert, unbedingt lesen!
March 11, 2020
I’ve decided to read this book after finishing . This was also nominated for this year Booker International.
Maybe unusually, but I knew about Tyll Ulenspiegelsince my school days. Bizarrely, the legends about him were included in our school’s program of foreign literature. We’ve studied an extract from . Though it is fair to say i do not remember much from those days. This novel was written in a1867novelby the Belgian authorCharles De Coster.De Coster took the hero of the German folklore tales, gave him the girlfriend Nelle and a sidekick friend and transferred him into the reality of the late 16th century’s Germany and Flanders. He kept his trickster spirit, made him a witness of the war and added his role as freedom fighter against the Spanish oppression in the 80 years war in Flanders and the Netherlands. It seems, Kehlerman has done the same trick, but placed his hero in Germany a few decades later. I’ve fetched De Coster’s book just now and it seems very good. It is a fragmentary picaresque tale with the elements of contemporary philosophy, a murder mystery and the supernatural. For whatever reason, it was very popular in the Soviet Union. There is a beautiful Soviet movie (1976) modelled on this novel and the paintings by Bruegel the Elder. Here is the short beginning sequence: . There is also an opera based upon this book.
So all in all, I was very much intrigued to pick up “Tyll�. And, it seems, Kehlman has borrowed quite a few things from De Coster. He gave Tyll a friend Nelle. Tyll’s father was prosecuted by the Inquisition in both books. Tyll is buried alive in both books as well. The idea of Tyll thinking about immortality and the meaning of the time seems to be present in both books as well. The historical period and the context of two novels are closely comparable as well. Without fully reading De Coster’s book, I am not sure how I feel about the similarities between the two stories. Generally, I am not a big fun of the secondary retelling. But it seems, Kehlmann has changed quite a lot for his book to stand on its own.
For me the strongest and original side of this novel was its atmosphere, its lyrical prose. And of course Tyll. He does not come across as a trickster, more like a person caught up in his own time and desperately trying to escape by constantly hopelessly moving. “He tells himself often, life simply leads you somewhere or other - if you weren’t here, you would be elsewhere, and everything would be just as strange.�. There is a lot charm and melancholy in him as a character. And when he is present on the page, the novel comes alive. But the magic is disappearing when he is not there though.
It might be just me, but I thought purely historical elements of the book were not its strongest. Kehlmann is trying to be accurate with the history. And it is probably good. But I’ve just read a book of the proper narrative history of the same events. So I knew where he was going with his characters - real historical figures. And his story just dragged for me a bit. There was no particular subtlety in suing historical information. It seemed some stuff was incorporated just to show his research. For example, “Pour Dieu et pour elle� was a motto of Prince of Braunschweig when he was going into the battles. “Elle� there was devoted to Elizabeth, the wife of Friedrich, the Winter King who allegedly was the main culprit of starting the war. It is mentioned in the novel without a good reason of being there as far I am concerned. Elizabeth and Friedrich are in the cast of Kehlmann’s main characters. He uses the tool of telling the story from inside of their heads. And while Friedrich part was not too bad, it did not always work for Elizabeth. I could not imagine flesh and blood women who has lost everything thinking like she did in the novel. Maybe with the exception of this phrase:
“She squinted into the snowstorm. It had grown cold. Here I sit, she thought, Queen of Bohemia, Electress of the Palatinate, daughter of the King of England, niece of the King of Denmark, grandniece of the Virgin Queen of Scots, and can’t afford firewood.�
The novel was much stronger while appealing to the universal timeless themes, I thought. For example, about our choices in life: “There are only a few moments when two things are possible, one path as much as another. Only a few moments when you can decide.� Or about the war: “The war didn’t seem to him something manmade, but like wind and rain, like sea, like the high cliffs of Sicily that he had seen as a child.�
I enjoyed quite a bit his prose. There were a few amazing scenes. In one of them, Tyll has made people throwing their shoes into the air. The another was the scene of a battle from a civilian point of view. It reminded me the scene from with Pierre Bezukhov grasping for meaning of it all.
Reading this novel reminded me of . They both possess a strong main character trying to live their life through hard times. But while Tyll here thrives for illusive immortality, Laurus there was using his supernatural gifts to heal.
There is a lot to like and a lot to question in this novel. Overall I would not recommend to read the real history before plunging into this book as i did. But even though I found a lot to think about and enjoy.
3.5 rounded up
Maybe unusually, but I knew about Tyll Ulenspiegelsince my school days. Bizarrely, the legends about him were included in our school’s program of foreign literature. We’ve studied an extract from . Though it is fair to say i do not remember much from those days. This novel was written in a1867novelby the Belgian authorCharles De Coster.De Coster took the hero of the German folklore tales, gave him the girlfriend Nelle and a sidekick friend and transferred him into the reality of the late 16th century’s Germany and Flanders. He kept his trickster spirit, made him a witness of the war and added his role as freedom fighter against the Spanish oppression in the 80 years war in Flanders and the Netherlands. It seems, Kehlerman has done the same trick, but placed his hero in Germany a few decades later. I’ve fetched De Coster’s book just now and it seems very good. It is a fragmentary picaresque tale with the elements of contemporary philosophy, a murder mystery and the supernatural. For whatever reason, it was very popular in the Soviet Union. There is a beautiful Soviet movie (1976) modelled on this novel and the paintings by Bruegel the Elder. Here is the short beginning sequence: . There is also an opera based upon this book.
So all in all, I was very much intrigued to pick up “Tyll�. And, it seems, Kehlman has borrowed quite a few things from De Coster. He gave Tyll a friend Nelle. Tyll’s father was prosecuted by the Inquisition in both books. Tyll is buried alive in both books as well. The idea of Tyll thinking about immortality and the meaning of the time seems to be present in both books as well. The historical period and the context of two novels are closely comparable as well. Without fully reading De Coster’s book, I am not sure how I feel about the similarities between the two stories. Generally, I am not a big fun of the secondary retelling. But it seems, Kehlmann has changed quite a lot for his book to stand on its own.
For me the strongest and original side of this novel was its atmosphere, its lyrical prose. And of course Tyll. He does not come across as a trickster, more like a person caught up in his own time and desperately trying to escape by constantly hopelessly moving. “He tells himself often, life simply leads you somewhere or other - if you weren’t here, you would be elsewhere, and everything would be just as strange.�. There is a lot charm and melancholy in him as a character. And when he is present on the page, the novel comes alive. But the magic is disappearing when he is not there though.
It might be just me, but I thought purely historical elements of the book were not its strongest. Kehlmann is trying to be accurate with the history. And it is probably good. But I’ve just read a book of the proper narrative history of the same events. So I knew where he was going with his characters - real historical figures. And his story just dragged for me a bit. There was no particular subtlety in suing historical information. It seemed some stuff was incorporated just to show his research. For example, “Pour Dieu et pour elle� was a motto of Prince of Braunschweig when he was going into the battles. “Elle� there was devoted to Elizabeth, the wife of Friedrich, the Winter King who allegedly was the main culprit of starting the war. It is mentioned in the novel without a good reason of being there as far I am concerned. Elizabeth and Friedrich are in the cast of Kehlmann’s main characters. He uses the tool of telling the story from inside of their heads. And while Friedrich part was not too bad, it did not always work for Elizabeth. I could not imagine flesh and blood women who has lost everything thinking like she did in the novel. Maybe with the exception of this phrase:
“She squinted into the snowstorm. It had grown cold. Here I sit, she thought, Queen of Bohemia, Electress of the Palatinate, daughter of the King of England, niece of the King of Denmark, grandniece of the Virgin Queen of Scots, and can’t afford firewood.�
The novel was much stronger while appealing to the universal timeless themes, I thought. For example, about our choices in life: “There are only a few moments when two things are possible, one path as much as another. Only a few moments when you can decide.� Or about the war: “The war didn’t seem to him something manmade, but like wind and rain, like sea, like the high cliffs of Sicily that he had seen as a child.�
I enjoyed quite a bit his prose. There were a few amazing scenes. In one of them, Tyll has made people throwing their shoes into the air. The another was the scene of a battle from a civilian point of view. It reminded me the scene from with Pierre Bezukhov grasping for meaning of it all.
Reading this novel reminded me of . They both possess a strong main character trying to live their life through hard times. But while Tyll here thrives for illusive immortality, Laurus there was using his supernatural gifts to heal.
There is a lot to like and a lot to question in this novel. Overall I would not recommend to read the real history before plunging into this book as i did. But even though I found a lot to think about and enjoy.
3.5 rounded up
June 17, 2022
Când ficțiunea istorică întâlnește realismul magic.
Daniel Kehlmann este un povestitor talentat și sensibil, care împletește cu măiestrie destinele multor personalități istorice într-o carte fermecătoare, pe alocuri presărată de un umor macabru.
O perioadă istorică îndepărtată, plină de episoade picarești, de șmecheri și șarlatani, de magie, cronici și cărți antice. Toate cu rolul de a accentua farmecul romanului.
Acțiunea este plasată pe fundalul Războiului de 30 de Ani care a devastat Europa în secolul al XVII-lea.
Figuri istorice importante în roman: Gustav Adolf, regele Suediei, Elisabeta și Frederic al V-lea al Boemiei, Elisabeta fiind fiica regelui Angliei, Iacob I Stuart.
Autorul reușește să redea atât o poveste captivantă dar și să aducă un omagiu emoționant artei în fața brutalității umeori fără sens, a istoriei.
Daniel Kehlmann este un povestitor talentat și sensibil, care împletește cu măiestrie destinele multor personalități istorice într-o carte fermecătoare, pe alocuri presărată de un umor macabru.
O perioadă istorică îndepărtată, plină de episoade picarești, de șmecheri și șarlatani, de magie, cronici și cărți antice. Toate cu rolul de a accentua farmecul romanului.
Acțiunea este plasată pe fundalul Războiului de 30 de Ani care a devastat Europa în secolul al XVII-lea.
Figuri istorice importante în roman: Gustav Adolf, regele Suediei, Elisabeta și Frederic al V-lea al Boemiei, Elisabeta fiind fiica regelui Angliei, Iacob I Stuart.
Autorul reușește să redea atât o poveste captivantă dar și să aducă un omagiu emoționant artei în fața brutalității umeori fără sens, a istoriei.
July 2, 2019
Till is back!
Daniel Kehlmann resurrected the jester and imposter from his grave and placed him right in the middle of the Thirty Years War, some 350 years after his burial. Now he spells his name Tyll, but that’s not important. His basic character hasn’t changed much. He is still juggling with balls and still walking the tightrope, looking at people from above, having no respect for anyone, except for himself, basically. And perhaps for Nele, his “sister� (as they want us to believe), the two of them fled their abysmal home village and roam the war torn land. They learn to act and play and dance, and one of their mentors, a dubious and rather dark character named Primin, sums up their lives like this:
Along the way Tyll meets a whole lot of people from all walks of life: A scholar who wants to know the war, some fanatical Jesuits, a somewhat melancholic executioner, a poet who wants to write his poems in German (an incredible idea), a doctor, the Winter King and Queen, mercenaries and marauders, and, last but not least, a talking donkey.
The individual chapters of the book are essentially self-contained and in no chronological order. This may be confusing at first, but in the end a picture emerges. In a way, the war was the same. No one understands much of anything, and everyone keeps on smashing and stabbing each other. Here, I think, Kehlmann has performed his own tightrope act. He succeeds wonderfully in combining the funny passages with the horrors of war without making the former too silly or the latter too pathetic. Well done! There’s only one small problem I have with this book: it’s too short. I would have liked to know more about Tyll. But who knows, maybe in 350 years or so, when the next war comes, he’ll reappear, juggling and dancing, and holding the mirror up to us again.
This work is licensed under a .
Daniel Kehlmann resurrected the jester and imposter from his grave and placed him right in the middle of the Thirty Years War, some 350 years after his burial. Now he spells his name Tyll, but that’s not important. His basic character hasn’t changed much. He is still juggling with balls and still walking the tightrope, looking at people from above, having no respect for anyone, except for himself, basically. And perhaps for Nele, his “sister� (as they want us to believe), the two of them fled their abysmal home village and roam the war torn land. They learn to act and play and dance, and one of their mentors, a dubious and rather dark character named Primin, sums up their lives like this:
If you want to eat, play. That’s how it is now. That’s how it stays until you die. You belong to the travelling people, no one protects you, and when it rains, you have no roof, no home. No friends except others like you who won’t like you very much because food is scarce. In exchange you are free. Must obey no one. You only have to run away fast enough when things get rough.And when you’re hungry, you have to play.
Along the way Tyll meets a whole lot of people from all walks of life: A scholar who wants to know the war, some fanatical Jesuits, a somewhat melancholic executioner, a poet who wants to write his poems in German (an incredible idea), a doctor, the Winter King and Queen, mercenaries and marauders, and, last but not least, a talking donkey.
The individual chapters of the book are essentially self-contained and in no chronological order. This may be confusing at first, but in the end a picture emerges. In a way, the war was the same. No one understands much of anything, and everyone keeps on smashing and stabbing each other. Here, I think, Kehlmann has performed his own tightrope act. He succeeds wonderfully in combining the funny passages with the horrors of war without making the former too silly or the latter too pathetic. Well done! There’s only one small problem I have with this book: it’s too short. I would have liked to know more about Tyll. But who knows, maybe in 350 years or so, when the next war comes, he’ll reappear, juggling and dancing, and holding the mirror up to us again.
This work is licensed under a .
June 8, 2020
I was delighted with a group of ŷ friends to be selected by the Reading Agency to read this book as part of their shadowing of the International Booker Shortlist. We will meet in June as a group to discuss the book.
Overall this in my view by far the most enjoyable on the shortlist, but not without its flaws.
It reminded me a lot of Neal Stephenson's wonderful Baroque Trilogy - a lot more focused and tightly written than Stephenson, but lacking Stephenson's sheer imagination and hugely deficient compared to Stephenson's ability to synthesise historic ideas and the way in which they birthed our current world in areas like money, politics, IT.
See here for a great write up of that trilogy which also refers to the Winter Queen (and her seminal role there).
REPEATED THEMES EXPLORED
Alternative Accounts of the same issue
- Elizabeth and Frederick's first night together (including the petals)
- Wolkenstein's account of his own travels - the real version and the told version (contrasted at length through the whole chapter of his trip to the Battle of Zusmarshausen)
- Elizabeth and Frederick on why he took the throne (this is one with genuine historical resonance)
- Nele and Tyll on who killed the Pirmin (or - a third alternative - was this assisted suicide)
- Through torture Tyll’s father changes his own account and convinces himself he is guilty
- Equivocation (the Porter scene in Macbeth inspired by Tesimond)
Grandchildren and Great-Grandchildren: and the stories you tell them
- Martha knows she will tell her grandchildren about Tyll (but she never has them)
- Nela precisely does not tell her grandchildren about knowing and travelling with Tyll
- Wolkenstein tells Elizabeth he will in future tell his grandchildren that he met the Winter Queen
- Wolkenstein does not say the same to (or of) Tyll - although they meet
- Wolkenstein when writing his account 50 years later falsely dramatizes his story to include a child-eating wolf as he is influenced by now having grandchildren
Alternative lives (including involving marriage to a different person)
- Martha wanting to stay in the village, be married and so not fleeing with Tyll - but this future never happening as a result of her choice (after the village is raided)
- Claus contemplating the alternatives of being hung or attempting a magical escape, fleeing and starting anew - and deciding it's a lot simpler to be hung
- Tyll not wanting to be a farmhand and so fleeing his village
- Nele not wanting to marry a Steger son and so fleeing with Tyll
- Tyll and Nele abandoning Gottfried for Pirmin
- Nele not marrying Tyll
- Nele choosing to take the offer of marriage and leave Tyll
- Elizabeth remembering how during the Gunpowder Plot, she fled London (fearing her father dead) to get away from conspirators searching for her to put her on the throne as a puppet Catholic ruler (something she found quite attractive!)
- Elizabeth thinking of her father's plans for her to marry Gustav Adolf (who later humiliates Frederick)
- Elizabeth imagining her older son becoming King at the request of the Parliamentary Party (in fact we know he ends up falling out with the family after - to his and their shock - Elizaebth's brother is executed)
- The Thumbling marrying princess in the story told by Nele as queried by Tyll
- And of course the whole book is a deliberate reworking of Charles de Coster’s ‘The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak� and of Thyl’s relationship there with Nele.
See
Shakespeare Plays
- Midsummer Night's Dream (the donkey head scene)
- Romeo and Juliet (part of Tyll's play in the first chapter and what causes Elizabeth to take Tyll as her fool)
- Macbeth (her father's remarks to Shakespeare on the untested unity of England and Scotland and his fear of witches; Shakespeare's later presentation of the pray - one Elizabeth thought the best she had seen but one she had never seen again, the direct link of Tesimond to the play via the Porter/equivocator scene - )
- The Tempest (Elizabeth reflects she would never show the same mercy to Wallerstein as Propsero did to his enemies). And of course in the play she watches Shakespeare himself plays the part.
- Hamlet (Elizabeth proud of the way she offers comfort to Shakespeare on the death of Hamnet - a lovely link to a Women's Prize shortlisted book)
Development of German Art
Elizabeth has scathing views on German literature, plays and poetry - partly written tongue in cheek by the author and partly a genuine exploration of its infancy at the time of this book compared to the way in which English art was developing.
Martin Opitz - Elizabeth tries him and finds him unreadable, she later discusses with Wolkenstein and both laugh at the idea of reading him. Wolkenstein sets out his aim to write his life story in German, later we find he does and relies (to describe a battle scene he no longer knows how to describe on an account by another author - Grimmelshausen (see below) - who in turn took his description of a battle he had actually witnessed from a book by an English author who had never seen a battle - translated by, as it happens, Opitz).
Note from Peter Wilson's "Europe's Tragedy" (see below) I discovered that the inspiration for Grimmelshausen was Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia" - written in 1590 but the 1630s or so German language version of which was edited, indeed, by Opitz.
Paul Fleming - he inspires Wolkenstein (although noted as now dead) - earlier we see him meeting Tyll (and Nele) as part of the dragon chase: before which he discusses his poetry (and writing of it with German) with (a rather baffled at his langague choice) Kircher and Olearius (who reflects that whereas Fleming's poems will soon cease, Kircher's writing will be read for ever)
The book refers to Grimmelshausen’s “The Adventures of Simplicus Simplicussimus� - seen by the Romantics as the first authentic German novel, used by them for their reinterpretation of the conflict (source for both: Europe’s Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Year’s War� by Peter Wilson� and itself a kind of story of a rogue living through the Thirty Year’s War (so similar in concept to “Tyll�. See also above.
Music - Kircher's role in music is rather downplayed (and only really covered in the context of his - in modern terms) bizarre dragon quest: but his Musurgia Universalis (which is mentioned in the book) was actually what lead to his indirect immortality as it inspired Bach, Beethoven and Handel.
Links to other books
Adam Olearius is described as (and historically was) a mathematician and a geographer. Is this a nod to “Measuring the World� which of course was about two characters: a Geographer and a Mathematician.
Missing children
- Price Rupert: As an English reader its disappointing that one of the most fascinating characters of the Civil War/Inter-regnum/Restoration years is not (as far as I can tell) mentioned in the book at all. I kept hoping to spot him but unlike his two older brothers he does not make it. And this character is relevant to the story - Frederick's naming of his son (born just after the fateful decision to accept the Bohemian Crown which dominates the book) after the only emperor of the Palatine dynasty, was as a crucial sign of his dynastic ambition.
- Sophie of Hannover: And perhaps even more disappointing to see no mention of Rupert's sister - her name still fundamental to our entire Hereditary system via the Act of Succession.
WEAKNESSES
- Historical research appears sketchy/superficial - based on rather clichéd and out of date understanding (infant mortality meant low parent-child attachment, people were drunk much of the time). This is not the same as saying that the book is historically inaccurate - the very act of taking Tyll from previous centuries (and the concentration on unreliable narration of historical events as set out above) make it clear that historical veracity is not the author's aim (in fact quite the opposite). However the author has in interviews made it clear that he was trying to convey thematical aspects of 17th Century mid-Europe as a key part of the novel - and this is where I find the book a little disappointing.
- (In complete contrast to Stephenson) his ability to draw lessons for today's world seems faulty. When he originally conceived the book it was to contrast with a world where disease was feared and science mistrusted (in contrast to the modern world) - the contrast seems a little lower now. Also he is on record as saying that when Trump was elected part way through writing Tyll he was shocked: however I think he had failed to see that (a) in a democracy, voters are always prone to voting jester-style populists into power, especially when all parties had converged on a type socially liberal, economically free-market politics run by identikit professional politicians and (b) that in a world where 24/7 news and social media means anyone can play the role of the fool puncturing pretension - that the only politicians likely to succeed are those whose persona makes them effectively impervious to satire/accusations of hypocrisy (and who in fact turn those attacks into an insult to their followers).
Similarly I think he has failed to see how irrationality in people and leaders has reappeared in our world (no longer dragons causing plague but 5G towers, a "King" who proclaims that the plague will simply miraculously disappear). Of course the reader can draw these parallels for themselves but in interviews the author makes it clear he is exploring a world very different to our own. And even if you accepted that - it is an extremely Western-European centric view.
Overall this in my view by far the most enjoyable on the shortlist, but not without its flaws.
It reminded me a lot of Neal Stephenson's wonderful Baroque Trilogy - a lot more focused and tightly written than Stephenson, but lacking Stephenson's sheer imagination and hugely deficient compared to Stephenson's ability to synthesise historic ideas and the way in which they birthed our current world in areas like money, politics, IT.
See here for a great write up of that trilogy which also refers to the Winter Queen (and her seminal role there).
REPEATED THEMES EXPLORED
Alternative Accounts of the same issue
- Elizabeth and Frederick's first night together (including the petals)
- Wolkenstein's account of his own travels - the real version and the told version (contrasted at length through the whole chapter of his trip to the Battle of Zusmarshausen)
- Elizabeth and Frederick on why he took the throne (this is one with genuine historical resonance)
- Nele and Tyll on who killed the Pirmin (or - a third alternative - was this assisted suicide)
- Through torture Tyll’s father changes his own account and convinces himself he is guilty
- Equivocation (the Porter scene in Macbeth inspired by Tesimond)
Grandchildren and Great-Grandchildren: and the stories you tell them
- Martha knows she will tell her grandchildren about Tyll (but she never has them)
- Nela precisely does not tell her grandchildren about knowing and travelling with Tyll
- Wolkenstein tells Elizabeth he will in future tell his grandchildren that he met the Winter Queen
- Wolkenstein does not say the same to (or of) Tyll - although they meet
- Wolkenstein when writing his account 50 years later falsely dramatizes his story to include a child-eating wolf as he is influenced by now having grandchildren
Alternative lives (including involving marriage to a different person)
- Martha wanting to stay in the village, be married and so not fleeing with Tyll - but this future never happening as a result of her choice (after the village is raided)
- Claus contemplating the alternatives of being hung or attempting a magical escape, fleeing and starting anew - and deciding it's a lot simpler to be hung
- Tyll not wanting to be a farmhand and so fleeing his village
- Nele not wanting to marry a Steger son and so fleeing with Tyll
- Tyll and Nele abandoning Gottfried for Pirmin
- Nele not marrying Tyll
- Nele choosing to take the offer of marriage and leave Tyll
- Elizabeth remembering how during the Gunpowder Plot, she fled London (fearing her father dead) to get away from conspirators searching for her to put her on the throne as a puppet Catholic ruler (something she found quite attractive!)
- Elizabeth thinking of her father's plans for her to marry Gustav Adolf (who later humiliates Frederick)
- Elizabeth imagining her older son becoming King at the request of the Parliamentary Party (in fact we know he ends up falling out with the family after - to his and their shock - Elizaebth's brother is executed)
- The Thumbling marrying princess in the story told by Nele as queried by Tyll
- And of course the whole book is a deliberate reworking of Charles de Coster’s ‘The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak� and of Thyl’s relationship there with Nele.
See
Shakespeare Plays
- Midsummer Night's Dream (the donkey head scene)
- Romeo and Juliet (part of Tyll's play in the first chapter and what causes Elizabeth to take Tyll as her fool)
- Macbeth (her father's remarks to Shakespeare on the untested unity of England and Scotland and his fear of witches; Shakespeare's later presentation of the pray - one Elizabeth thought the best she had seen but one she had never seen again, the direct link of Tesimond to the play via the Porter/equivocator scene - )
- The Tempest (Elizabeth reflects she would never show the same mercy to Wallerstein as Propsero did to his enemies). And of course in the play she watches Shakespeare himself plays the part.
- Hamlet (Elizabeth proud of the way she offers comfort to Shakespeare on the death of Hamnet - a lovely link to a Women's Prize shortlisted book)
Development of German Art
Elizabeth has scathing views on German literature, plays and poetry - partly written tongue in cheek by the author and partly a genuine exploration of its infancy at the time of this book compared to the way in which English art was developing.
Martin Opitz - Elizabeth tries him and finds him unreadable, she later discusses with Wolkenstein and both laugh at the idea of reading him. Wolkenstein sets out his aim to write his life story in German, later we find he does and relies (to describe a battle scene he no longer knows how to describe on an account by another author - Grimmelshausen (see below) - who in turn took his description of a battle he had actually witnessed from a book by an English author who had never seen a battle - translated by, as it happens, Opitz).
Note from Peter Wilson's "Europe's Tragedy" (see below) I discovered that the inspiration for Grimmelshausen was Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia" - written in 1590 but the 1630s or so German language version of which was edited, indeed, by Opitz.
Paul Fleming - he inspires Wolkenstein (although noted as now dead) - earlier we see him meeting Tyll (and Nele) as part of the dragon chase: before which he discusses his poetry (and writing of it with German) with (a rather baffled at his langague choice) Kircher and Olearius (who reflects that whereas Fleming's poems will soon cease, Kircher's writing will be read for ever)
The book refers to Grimmelshausen’s “The Adventures of Simplicus Simplicussimus� - seen by the Romantics as the first authentic German novel, used by them for their reinterpretation of the conflict (source for both: Europe’s Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Year’s War� by Peter Wilson� and itself a kind of story of a rogue living through the Thirty Year’s War (so similar in concept to “Tyll�. See also above.
Music - Kircher's role in music is rather downplayed (and only really covered in the context of his - in modern terms) bizarre dragon quest: but his Musurgia Universalis (which is mentioned in the book) was actually what lead to his indirect immortality as it inspired Bach, Beethoven and Handel.
Links to other books
Adam Olearius is described as (and historically was) a mathematician and a geographer. Is this a nod to “Measuring the World� which of course was about two characters: a Geographer and a Mathematician.
Missing children
- Price Rupert: As an English reader its disappointing that one of the most fascinating characters of the Civil War/Inter-regnum/Restoration years is not (as far as I can tell) mentioned in the book at all. I kept hoping to spot him but unlike his two older brothers he does not make it. And this character is relevant to the story - Frederick's naming of his son (born just after the fateful decision to accept the Bohemian Crown which dominates the book) after the only emperor of the Palatine dynasty, was as a crucial sign of his dynastic ambition.
- Sophie of Hannover: And perhaps even more disappointing to see no mention of Rupert's sister - her name still fundamental to our entire Hereditary system via the Act of Succession.
WEAKNESSES
- Historical research appears sketchy/superficial - based on rather clichéd and out of date understanding (infant mortality meant low parent-child attachment, people were drunk much of the time). This is not the same as saying that the book is historically inaccurate - the very act of taking Tyll from previous centuries (and the concentration on unreliable narration of historical events as set out above) make it clear that historical veracity is not the author's aim (in fact quite the opposite). However the author has in interviews made it clear that he was trying to convey thematical aspects of 17th Century mid-Europe as a key part of the novel - and this is where I find the book a little disappointing.
- (In complete contrast to Stephenson) his ability to draw lessons for today's world seems faulty. When he originally conceived the book it was to contrast with a world where disease was feared and science mistrusted (in contrast to the modern world) - the contrast seems a little lower now. Also he is on record as saying that when Trump was elected part way through writing Tyll he was shocked: however I think he had failed to see that (a) in a democracy, voters are always prone to voting jester-style populists into power, especially when all parties had converged on a type socially liberal, economically free-market politics run by identikit professional politicians and (b) that in a world where 24/7 news and social media means anyone can play the role of the fool puncturing pretension - that the only politicians likely to succeed are those whose persona makes them effectively impervious to satire/accusations of hypocrisy (and who in fact turn those attacks into an insult to their followers).
Similarly I think he has failed to see how irrationality in people and leaders has reappeared in our world (no longer dragons causing plague but 5G towers, a "King" who proclaims that the plague will simply miraculously disappear). Of course the reader can draw these parallels for themselves but in interviews the author makes it clear he is exploring a world very different to our own. And even if you accepted that - it is an extremely Western-European centric view.
June 22, 2022
Recunosc că am intrat greu în atmosfera poveștii și asta nu datorită scriiturii ci faptului că m-am apucat să citesc imediat ce-am terminat romanul lui Krasznahorkai, cel cu baronul. Mare greșeală. Sunt cărți ale căror lectură te năucește-ntr-o asemenea măsură încât trebuie să dai timp sedimentării emoțiilor înainte de a-ncepe o altă poveste. Odată depășit acest impediment, am descoperit un regal de literatură postmodernă de mare clasă în care un personaj din folclorul medieval german Till Eulenspiegel (bufonul cu bufniță și oglindă) transcende în epoca Renașterii târzii, în plin război confesional numit ulterior Războiul de 30 de ani.
O pleiadă de personaje istorice, remarcabile portretele lui Liz ,Elizabeth Stuart , regina de-o iarnă a Boemiei, ale lui Athanasius Kircher (surprins în 2 ipostaze, cea de secretar al temutului iezuit Oswald Tesimod și mai apoi în cea de polihistor, Master of a Hundred Arts), alături de altele fictive ( Claus, tatăl lui Tyll, mi-a plăcut mult) gravitează în jurul peregrinării saltimbancului nemuritor Ulenspiegel.
Perspectiva asupra istoriei , a subiectivismului percepției și-a unghiului de reflexie în oglinda lui Tyll este superb ilustrată prin numărul petalelor pe care le percepe Liz, respectiv Frederic, în urma aceluiași incident sau cum este percepută moartea lui Pirmin.
Narațiunea este concentrată în jurul celor 4 cavaleri ai apocalipsei : molima, războiul, foametea și moartea și este o frescă veridică a evului mediu târziu, a disputelor religioase și-a absurdității războiului, a libertății și precarității artistului dar și a nemuririi Artei.
Nu în ultimul rând aș aminti similitudinile cu romanul, foarte bun de altfel, Dianei Adamek Dulcea poveste a tristului elefant.
O pleiadă de personaje istorice, remarcabile portretele lui Liz ,Elizabeth Stuart , regina de-o iarnă a Boemiei, ale lui Athanasius Kircher (surprins în 2 ipostaze, cea de secretar al temutului iezuit Oswald Tesimod și mai apoi în cea de polihistor, Master of a Hundred Arts), alături de altele fictive ( Claus, tatăl lui Tyll, mi-a plăcut mult) gravitează în jurul peregrinării saltimbancului nemuritor Ulenspiegel.
Perspectiva asupra istoriei , a subiectivismului percepției și-a unghiului de reflexie în oglinda lui Tyll este superb ilustrată prin numărul petalelor pe care le percepe Liz, respectiv Frederic, în urma aceluiași incident sau cum este percepută moartea lui Pirmin.
Narațiunea este concentrată în jurul celor 4 cavaleri ai apocalipsei : molima, războiul, foametea și moartea și este o frescă veridică a evului mediu târziu, a disputelor religioase și-a absurdității războiului, a libertății și precarității artistului dar și a nemuririi Artei.
Nu în ultimul rând aș aminti similitudinile cu romanul, foarte bun de altfel, Dianei Adamek Dulcea poveste a tristului elefant.
April 4, 2020
Ein wahrer Pageturner. Ein historischer Roman mit vielen realen Persönlichkeiten und Ereignissen, die aber oft recht frei arrangiert werden. Die größte Freiheit erlaubt sich Kehlmann mit der Titelfigur, die eigentlich ins 14. Jahrhundert gehört und nicht in den Dreißigjährigen Krieg. Und überhaupt erweisen sich die verschiedenen Erzähler und Berichterstatter im Buch oft als höchst unzuverlässig. Doch lässt man sich gern auf das Spiel ein, das Kehlmann mit dem Leser spielt.
Während das Denken der Figuren stark von ihrer Zeit geprägt ist, insbesondere vom Aberglauben (wunderbar die Passagen über Drachen), ist die Sprache erleichternd modern. Auch das sorgt für einen leichten Lesefluss.
Neben dem schillernden Tyll ist es Elizabeth Stuart, die Enkelin Mary Stuarts und nun Frau des „Winterkönigs� Friedrich, die mir besondere Freude machte. Als Engländerin schaut sie auf das Deutsche mit wenig Gefallen. Insbesondere Theater und Sprache erscheinen ihr ungemein grob. Immer wieder träumt sie vom englischen Theater, werden Stücke erwähnt oder assoziiert, die an Shakespeare erinnern (die konkreten Titel werden nie genannt) und sieht sie sich selbst als Schauspielerin auf der Bühne der Welt. (Die englische Übersetzung wurde gerade für den International Booker Prize nominiert; da wird man neugierig, wie die englischen Kritiker auf diese Anspielungen reagieren.)
Im Gegensatz dazu sehen wir aber auch erste Anfänge einer deutschsprachigen Literatur, denn in Deutschland wurde bislang meist auf Latein geschrieben. Paul Fleming und Oswald von Wolkenstein (ja, letzterer passt mal wieder nicht in die Zeit) treten als handelnde Personen auf.
Und viele weitere interessante Zeitgenossen sind in die Handlung eingeflochten. Am Schillerndsten sicher Athanasius Kircher, der hier gelegentlich etwas trottelig rüberkommt, an dem sich aber gut zeigen lässt, wie nah sich Wissenschaft und Aberglaube damals standen.
Während das Denken der Figuren stark von ihrer Zeit geprägt ist, insbesondere vom Aberglauben (wunderbar die Passagen über Drachen), ist die Sprache erleichternd modern. Auch das sorgt für einen leichten Lesefluss.
Neben dem schillernden Tyll ist es Elizabeth Stuart, die Enkelin Mary Stuarts und nun Frau des „Winterkönigs� Friedrich, die mir besondere Freude machte. Als Engländerin schaut sie auf das Deutsche mit wenig Gefallen. Insbesondere Theater und Sprache erscheinen ihr ungemein grob. Immer wieder träumt sie vom englischen Theater, werden Stücke erwähnt oder assoziiert, die an Shakespeare erinnern (die konkreten Titel werden nie genannt) und sieht sie sich selbst als Schauspielerin auf der Bühne der Welt. (Die englische Übersetzung wurde gerade für den International Booker Prize nominiert; da wird man neugierig, wie die englischen Kritiker auf diese Anspielungen reagieren.)
Im Gegensatz dazu sehen wir aber auch erste Anfänge einer deutschsprachigen Literatur, denn in Deutschland wurde bislang meist auf Latein geschrieben. Paul Fleming und Oswald von Wolkenstein (ja, letzterer passt mal wieder nicht in die Zeit) treten als handelnde Personen auf.
Und viele weitere interessante Zeitgenossen sind in die Handlung eingeflochten. Am Schillerndsten sicher Athanasius Kircher, der hier gelegentlich etwas trottelig rüberkommt, an dem sich aber gut zeigen lässt, wie nah sich Wissenschaft und Aberglaube damals standen.
October 24, 2021
“I’m leaving now. This is what I’ve always done. When things get tight, I leave. I’m not going to die here. I’m not going to die today. I’m not going to die!�
Funny, smart, heart-breaking and magical. Loved novel's tone, story and characters. This book consists of connected vignettes of the time and place I knew nothing about but was fascinated with. Kings in winter chapter in particular was incredible.
April 8, 2021
This is a mostly historical novel that takes place during the . It contains scattered vignettes describing life at that time. The events as presented in this book are not given in chronological order. These descriptions are probably fairly accurate accounts of what it's like to live through endless war, however the book does not provide an overview of military movements and tactics.
Therefore any reader of this book with limited knowledge of the Thirty Years� War will come away knowing not much about history other than it was a bad time to be alive. However, the people who lived through similar events at the time probably didn't know much about history either. So the readers clueless about history may experience the truth between the lines of this story better than the historian.
But I think most readers will want to do what I did and read up on the historical characters who show up in the story. The following are some characters and events with Wikipedia links that I found helpful.
—Orphaned early in the book when his father is executed for witchcraft, he continues to show up in subsequent scenes as a trickster character playing with the credulity of people. This is a fictional character whose name is drawn from German folklore. The link is to a description of how the name has been used in German literature.
—The link is to a short segment from Wikipedia about an increase in witch executions during the Thirty Years� War. (as if there wasn’t already enough misery)
—A Jesuit wanted in England for being part of the Gunpowder Plot. According this this story he was involved with finding and prosecuting witches on the Continent after fleeing England.
—A Jesuit scholar who shows up early in the book as a young helper of Oswald Tesimond’s and toward the end of the book as an elder renowned European scholar searching for dragon’s blood. He’s made to look like a fool in this story which may not be a fair description of the historical character.
—The Emperor’s corpulent envoy whose background and role is detailed in the book, but as best as I can tell is a completely fictitious character. It’s suggested that he’s a descendant of the famous medieval poet .
—One of the last battles of the war which is described fairly early in the book. The point made by the book is that writers who wrote about the battle had no idea what happened, including those who had been present at the scene.
—Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, played a role in both the beginning and the ending of the Thirty Years' War. She and her husband show up several time's in the book's story.
—He together with wife Elizabeth Stuart were King and Queen of Bohemia for one year until the armies of and the defeated the Bohemian army at the .
—Leader of the Swedish forces that turned the tide of the war in favor of the Protestants. His army was funded with French and Dutch money and according to this book made up of mostly non-Swedes.
—A German scholar who shows up in this book toward the end of the book. According to this book he marries Tyll’s “sister� and lives happily thereafter. Not sure how factual that part is, but it’s a good way to end a war.
Therefore any reader of this book with limited knowledge of the Thirty Years� War will come away knowing not much about history other than it was a bad time to be alive. However, the people who lived through similar events at the time probably didn't know much about history either. So the readers clueless about history may experience the truth between the lines of this story better than the historian.
But I think most readers will want to do what I did and read up on the historical characters who show up in the story. The following are some characters and events with Wikipedia links that I found helpful.
—Orphaned early in the book when his father is executed for witchcraft, he continues to show up in subsequent scenes as a trickster character playing with the credulity of people. This is a fictional character whose name is drawn from German folklore. The link is to a description of how the name has been used in German literature.
—The link is to a short segment from Wikipedia about an increase in witch executions during the Thirty Years� War. (as if there wasn’t already enough misery)
—A Jesuit wanted in England for being part of the Gunpowder Plot. According this this story he was involved with finding and prosecuting witches on the Continent after fleeing England.
—A Jesuit scholar who shows up early in the book as a young helper of Oswald Tesimond’s and toward the end of the book as an elder renowned European scholar searching for dragon’s blood. He’s made to look like a fool in this story which may not be a fair description of the historical character.
—The Emperor’s corpulent envoy whose background and role is detailed in the book, but as best as I can tell is a completely fictitious character. It’s suggested that he’s a descendant of the famous medieval poet .
—One of the last battles of the war which is described fairly early in the book. The point made by the book is that writers who wrote about the battle had no idea what happened, including those who had been present at the scene.
—Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, played a role in both the beginning and the ending of the Thirty Years' War. She and her husband show up several time's in the book's story.
—He together with wife Elizabeth Stuart were King and Queen of Bohemia for one year until the armies of and the defeated the Bohemian army at the .
—Leader of the Swedish forces that turned the tide of the war in favor of the Protestants. His army was funded with French and Dutch money and according to this book made up of mostly non-Swedes.
—A German scholar who shows up in this book toward the end of the book. According to this book he marries Tyll’s “sister� and lives happily thereafter. Not sure how factual that part is, but it’s a good way to end a war.
November 11, 2020
Why give a 350-page novel the title of a character, when that character appears only to a limited extent in your story? Looking at the reviews of many readers, I’m not the first one to raise that question. Tyll Eulenspiegel is a well-known mythical figure in the Low Countries and Germany; the character figures as a big jester in many folk legends going back to the 14th century. By the Belgian writer Charles De Coster (1827-1879) he was situated in the rebellion of the Netherlands against the Spanish king Philip II, in the second half of the 16th century. So when you start reading Kehlmann's book, you expect the author to build on this. But the first surprise is that Kehlmann places Eulenspiegel in the midst of the Thirty Years' War, the endless succession of battles, sieges and devastations that plagued the patchwork of German countries in the first half of the 17th century. I think perhaps Bertold Brecht in his ‘Mutter Courage� was the last one to have depicted that period so vividly; so, engaging in this dramatic episode of history is certainly the first merit of this novel.
But what about Tyll? Kehlmann has built up his story episodically: he jumps back and forth through time, and constantly changes his narrative perspective. Tyll certainly is the connecting element in all this, and the longest chapter, about his youth, is downright shocking and endearing. But after that the character seems to slip away from us and sometimes only shows up sideways. His performance is always enough to highlight a shifting aspect: at first he is a pure tease, a trickster who confounds others, but gradually he evolves into a benevolent demon who punctures human delusions. The way in which he lectures the great Catholic scholar Kircher, with his magic-based aura of scientificity, is a strong piece of writing.
As said, it is one of the few times that Eulenspiegel really comes to the fore in this book. It is as if Kehlmann mainly wanted to emphasize the shadowy character of the Tyll character, and he certainly succeeded in this. The only disadvantage is of course that the character does not really 'carry' the novel, or at least not to the extent that readers could expect. And that probably explains some of the disappointment I notice in the reviews. All in all, the book is a smooth and interesting read, and that's something for sure, but it's not one that remains stuck in your head for a long time. (rating 2.5 stars)
But what about Tyll? Kehlmann has built up his story episodically: he jumps back and forth through time, and constantly changes his narrative perspective. Tyll certainly is the connecting element in all this, and the longest chapter, about his youth, is downright shocking and endearing. But after that the character seems to slip away from us and sometimes only shows up sideways. His performance is always enough to highlight a shifting aspect: at first he is a pure tease, a trickster who confounds others, but gradually he evolves into a benevolent demon who punctures human delusions. The way in which he lectures the great Catholic scholar Kircher, with his magic-based aura of scientificity, is a strong piece of writing.
As said, it is one of the few times that Eulenspiegel really comes to the fore in this book. It is as if Kehlmann mainly wanted to emphasize the shadowy character of the Tyll character, and he certainly succeeded in this. The only disadvantage is of course that the character does not really 'carry' the novel, or at least not to the extent that readers could expect. And that probably explains some of the disappointment I notice in the reviews. All in all, the book is a smooth and interesting read, and that's something for sure, but it's not one that remains stuck in your head for a long time. (rating 2.5 stars)
May 1, 2020
In der Anfangszeit des Dreißigjährigen Krieges wächst der junge Tyll Ulenspiegel als Sohn eines Müllers auf. Er übt das Laufen auf dem Seil und das Jonglieren, denn er will etwas Besonderes können. Als der Vater der Hexerei beschuldigt und zum Tode verurteilt wird, flüchtet das Kind Tyll mit der Bäckerstochter Nele und schließt sich einem fahrenden Spielmann an. Er soll ein berühmter Schausteller werden und sein Leben wird parallel zum Dreißigjährigen Krieg verlaufen.
Ich muss gestehen, dass ich schon etwas skeptisch war, ob man eine mittelalterliche Sagengestalt einfach ins 17. Jahrhundert verfrachten kann. Was soll ich sagen � es funktioniert nicht nur, es ist auch noch eine blendende Idee. Während wir Tyll durch seine verschiedenen Lebensphasen begleiten, spielt sich das Drama des Dreißigjährigen Krieges um ihn herum ab und entsteht ein buntes Panorama dieser Zeit. Im Verlauf des Romans gerät Tyll in den Dienst der „Winterkönigin� Elizabeth Stuart, der Tochter von James VI. von Schottland (bzw. James I. von England) und Enkelin von Maria Stuart, die mit ihrem Mann Friedrich V. von der Pfalz für kurze Zeit den böhmischen Thron innehatte, was wiederum einer der Auslöser des Dreißigjährigen Krieges war. Elizabeth wird nun über weite Strecken zur eigentlichen Hauptperson des Romans, Kehlmann zeichnet sie als intelligente, faszinierende Persönlichkeit, ihrem Ehemann hoffnungslos überlegen und Anhängerin des von Shakespeare geprägten englischen Theaters (Kehlmann lässt den Barden auch kurz auftreten). Das macht Lust auf weitere Lektüre, die sich mit dieser historischen Persönlichkeit befasst.
Auch stilistisch weiß Kehlmann zu überzeugen, das Buch liest sich mit seiner gefälligen Sprache flott und angenehm. Mein Wissen über den Dreißigjährigen Krieg ist eher spärlich, so habe ich einiges bei der Lektüre gelernt. Sehr interessant fand ich auch das Auftreten des Gelehrten Athanasius Kircher, der glaubte, die ägyptischen Hieroglyphen entziffert zu haben. Auch über ihn möchte ich nun gern mehr erfahren.
Daniel Kehlmanns historischer Roman ist rundum gelungen, er macht Spaß auf hohem Niveau und steht zu Recht auf der Shortlist für den Booker International Prize steht.
Ich muss gestehen, dass ich schon etwas skeptisch war, ob man eine mittelalterliche Sagengestalt einfach ins 17. Jahrhundert verfrachten kann. Was soll ich sagen � es funktioniert nicht nur, es ist auch noch eine blendende Idee. Während wir Tyll durch seine verschiedenen Lebensphasen begleiten, spielt sich das Drama des Dreißigjährigen Krieges um ihn herum ab und entsteht ein buntes Panorama dieser Zeit. Im Verlauf des Romans gerät Tyll in den Dienst der „Winterkönigin� Elizabeth Stuart, der Tochter von James VI. von Schottland (bzw. James I. von England) und Enkelin von Maria Stuart, die mit ihrem Mann Friedrich V. von der Pfalz für kurze Zeit den böhmischen Thron innehatte, was wiederum einer der Auslöser des Dreißigjährigen Krieges war. Elizabeth wird nun über weite Strecken zur eigentlichen Hauptperson des Romans, Kehlmann zeichnet sie als intelligente, faszinierende Persönlichkeit, ihrem Ehemann hoffnungslos überlegen und Anhängerin des von Shakespeare geprägten englischen Theaters (Kehlmann lässt den Barden auch kurz auftreten). Das macht Lust auf weitere Lektüre, die sich mit dieser historischen Persönlichkeit befasst.
Auch stilistisch weiß Kehlmann zu überzeugen, das Buch liest sich mit seiner gefälligen Sprache flott und angenehm. Mein Wissen über den Dreißigjährigen Krieg ist eher spärlich, so habe ich einiges bei der Lektüre gelernt. Sehr interessant fand ich auch das Auftreten des Gelehrten Athanasius Kircher, der glaubte, die ägyptischen Hieroglyphen entziffert zu haben. Auch über ihn möchte ich nun gern mehr erfahren.
Daniel Kehlmanns historischer Roman ist rundum gelungen, er macht Spaß auf hohem Niveau und steht zu Recht auf der Shortlist für den Booker International Prize steht.
April 25, 2021
Here is a story about the Thirty Years� War AND the legendary medieval trickster Tyll Ulenspiegel. According to German legends he played pranks and naughty tricks on tradespeople and innkeepers. He is said to have died of the plague in 1350. In this novel, he has not died; his goal in life, he tells us, is to live, to live on and on forever and to live life to the fullest, and so now, during the Thirty Years� War that took place from 1618-1648, he is still living, pulling his jokes, telling stories, juggling, and walking, dancing on tightropes. His presence in this story makes the tale told, exhilarating, exciting and also funny. He adds a magical touch. Fantasy is as much a part of this tale as is history, if not more!
Fantasy and history are blended. Think dragons and witches and witchcraft trials. Hangings and burnings. Think hunger and plague and the more grisly elements of war—looting, rape, decapitated bodies, spurting blood, dripping wounds. Chaos, insecurity and fear. The world was a scary place in the 1600s. In the forests there were believed to really be malevolent spirits and ghosts and little people. Nations and people were fighting. People were sick and dying. That world then, the prevalent mindset then, is vividly drawn. The reader is swallowed up, engulfed in it. A shiver runs down your spine when you compare their fears and ours today. Common to both lies a fear of the unknown and insecurity about what lies ahead. One senses life to be vulnerable, chaotic and scary.
Alongside the chaos and fear, there is humor. This provides necessary relief. The lines provide humor. We are given two renown scholars of the day discussing the existence of dragons. Their reasoning is so twisted, convoluted and illogical, it is hysterical! The magic and the fantasy become a means by which the author comments upon beliefs of the day, of human reasoning and behavior.
Suck on these:
“Animals are smarter than people, which is why they keep quiet.�
“They are only images. They can’t hurt me. They can’t touch me!� one figure tries desperately to convince himself.
A central theme, returned to again and again, is that what appears real is often not real. What one thinks is true is false. Reality cannot be pinned down. All of life is a blend of fact and fiction. For this very reason, the history presented in the tale must also be questioned. I felt I had to check elsewhere to know for sure which of the historical facts presented were true and which were not. I felt the need to check the validity of that which I was told. I do not see this book as the best way to learn about the Thirty Years� War.
To add to the confusion, the story, particularly in the latter half, hops around in time. We are told of so-and-so being dead and then that same person is alive again.
No dates are given. Historical facts about the war are not clearly presented. I see the war as the background to a story built around the Tyll Ulenspiegel legend. .
Jonathan Keeble narrates the audiobook marvelously. What is delivered is a performance, a superb performance. Dramatization is not usually my cup of tea, but this I adored. 5 stars for the narration. Every word spoken is clear. The speed is perfect. You will without a doubt laugh when the donkey starts talking. I swear, it is so funny. Keeble captures very well the humor in the author’s words. The narration could not have been better.
I do not regret reading this. It pulled me in. It is alternately exciting and funny. The atmosphere, the feel of the times, the latter 1600s, swirled around me as I listened. It is this that I have enjoyed. Reading the story has motivated me to seek out facts about the Thirty Years� War. The basic outline of the war, as it is told in the novel, is true.
Fantasy and history are blended. Think dragons and witches and witchcraft trials. Hangings and burnings. Think hunger and plague and the more grisly elements of war—looting, rape, decapitated bodies, spurting blood, dripping wounds. Chaos, insecurity and fear. The world was a scary place in the 1600s. In the forests there were believed to really be malevolent spirits and ghosts and little people. Nations and people were fighting. People were sick and dying. That world then, the prevalent mindset then, is vividly drawn. The reader is swallowed up, engulfed in it. A shiver runs down your spine when you compare their fears and ours today. Common to both lies a fear of the unknown and insecurity about what lies ahead. One senses life to be vulnerable, chaotic and scary.
Alongside the chaos and fear, there is humor. This provides necessary relief. The lines provide humor. We are given two renown scholars of the day discussing the existence of dragons. Their reasoning is so twisted, convoluted and illogical, it is hysterical! The magic and the fantasy become a means by which the author comments upon beliefs of the day, of human reasoning and behavior.
Suck on these:
“Animals are smarter than people, which is why they keep quiet.�
“They are only images. They can’t hurt me. They can’t touch me!� one figure tries desperately to convince himself.
A central theme, returned to again and again, is that what appears real is often not real. What one thinks is true is false. Reality cannot be pinned down. All of life is a blend of fact and fiction. For this very reason, the history presented in the tale must also be questioned. I felt I had to check elsewhere to know for sure which of the historical facts presented were true and which were not. I felt the need to check the validity of that which I was told. I do not see this book as the best way to learn about the Thirty Years� War.
To add to the confusion, the story, particularly in the latter half, hops around in time. We are told of so-and-so being dead and then that same person is alive again.
No dates are given. Historical facts about the war are not clearly presented. I see the war as the background to a story built around the Tyll Ulenspiegel legend. .
Jonathan Keeble narrates the audiobook marvelously. What is delivered is a performance, a superb performance. Dramatization is not usually my cup of tea, but this I adored. 5 stars for the narration. Every word spoken is clear. The speed is perfect. You will without a doubt laugh when the donkey starts talking. I swear, it is so funny. Keeble captures very well the humor in the author’s words. The narration could not have been better.
I do not regret reading this. It pulled me in. It is alternately exciting and funny. The atmosphere, the feel of the times, the latter 1600s, swirled around me as I listened. It is this that I have enjoyed. Reading the story has motivated me to seek out facts about the Thirty Years� War. The basic outline of the war, as it is told in the novel, is true.
November 10, 2020
This is the third piece of fiction I have read by Kehlmann the first being ‘Fame� (published 2009) and the second being ‘Measuring the World� (2008).
I really did not like this novel (342 pp). 1.5 stars. 🙁
I think there should have been a disclaimer to this novel: Warning: If you have no idea of what the Thirty Years� War was about, you may not like this book. Or may not appreciate it, to put it another way. Because I had no clue as to what this war was about (I did not know the context in which this novel was set) and had never heard of the characters who were major players in the war: Frederick V [the "Winter King”], Albrecht von Wallenstein, and Gustavus Adolphus, to name a few. These characters were in this book � I do believe I would have appreciated this book more had I been better acquainted with these characters and with this war and what were the countries that were involved and how religion played a role in it. To slog through 342 pages without this knowledge and not being helped at all by the way the book was constructed…it was not at all an enjoyable reading experience for me.
I did a DNF of a book within 7 days of this book and I think I have a rule in my head to not have more than one DNF book in one week, and that is why I read the book to its conclusion.
Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan and Valeria Luiselli very much liked the book.
So anyhoo, if you are going to read this book and have no idea of what The Thirty Year’s War was about and what countries were involved, etc. at least google it. 🧐
Reviews:
�
� (This reviewer disagrees with my assessment about needing to know about this war…he says, “it demonstrates that it’s possible to read Tyll with pleasure while knowing next to nothing about the history.�
�
I really did not like this novel (342 pp). 1.5 stars. 🙁
I think there should have been a disclaimer to this novel: Warning: If you have no idea of what the Thirty Years� War was about, you may not like this book. Or may not appreciate it, to put it another way. Because I had no clue as to what this war was about (I did not know the context in which this novel was set) and had never heard of the characters who were major players in the war: Frederick V [the "Winter King”], Albrecht von Wallenstein, and Gustavus Adolphus, to name a few. These characters were in this book � I do believe I would have appreciated this book more had I been better acquainted with these characters and with this war and what were the countries that were involved and how religion played a role in it. To slog through 342 pages without this knowledge and not being helped at all by the way the book was constructed…it was not at all an enjoyable reading experience for me.
I did a DNF of a book within 7 days of this book and I think I have a rule in my head to not have more than one DNF book in one week, and that is why I read the book to its conclusion.
Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan and Valeria Luiselli very much liked the book.
So anyhoo, if you are going to read this book and have no idea of what The Thirty Year’s War was about and what countries were involved, etc. at least google it. 🧐
Reviews:
�
� (This reviewer disagrees with my assessment about needing to know about this war…he says, “it demonstrates that it’s possible to read Tyll with pleasure while knowing next to nothing about the history.�
�
March 20, 2020
5 STARS for a totally unique book!!
In this book, Daniel Kellmann masterfully weaves folklore, fantasy and historical fiction together.
I knew absolutely nothing of the Thirty Years War that took place in Central Europe from 1618-1648. As typical of most wars it occurred in the name of religion-Catholicism vs Protestantism. 8 million people died because of the war through battles and famine.
Tyll is our conduit through this war. We meet him as a child who loves to entertain. This was a time of Jesuits searching out witches and warlocks and their torturing of innocent people. Tyll leaves his village soon after and becomes an entertainer. Through his ramblings, we are taken into high courts, onto battlefields, into mines and we meet many of the significant players in this war.
What an impressive feat this book was. The writing was sensational ( superb translator); the story well conceived and totally brilliant.
“Doom might well lurk, the dramatist replied, that was the nature of doom, yet the hand of a mighty ruler held it off, as the mantle of the air held off the heavy cloud and dissolved it into gentle rain.�
This is the first book from a subscription from Heywood Hill that I received. (Gift) What a tremendous perfect book to have received!!
In this book, Daniel Kellmann masterfully weaves folklore, fantasy and historical fiction together.
I knew absolutely nothing of the Thirty Years War that took place in Central Europe from 1618-1648. As typical of most wars it occurred in the name of religion-Catholicism vs Protestantism. 8 million people died because of the war through battles and famine.
Tyll is our conduit through this war. We meet him as a child who loves to entertain. This was a time of Jesuits searching out witches and warlocks and their torturing of innocent people. Tyll leaves his village soon after and becomes an entertainer. Through his ramblings, we are taken into high courts, onto battlefields, into mines and we meet many of the significant players in this war.
What an impressive feat this book was. The writing was sensational ( superb translator); the story well conceived and totally brilliant.
“Doom might well lurk, the dramatist replied, that was the nature of doom, yet the hand of a mighty ruler held it off, as the mantle of the air held off the heavy cloud and dissolved it into gentle rain.�
This is the first book from a subscription from Heywood Hill that I received. (Gift) What a tremendous perfect book to have received!!
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