A REVERSE ENGINEERED REVIEW OF ELON MUSK BY WALTER ISAACSON (2023)

 A REVERSE ENGINEERED REVIEW OF ELON MUSK BY WALTER ISAACSON (2023)

In 1978 or so, when flying from London to Auckland, I had bought at Heathrow Airport a cheap little computer (I think it was an MK14) for my wife’s little brother. He wasn’t terribly interested so I assembled it for him and programmed it for text and some simple games. Coding was done by copying the code from the manual. It seemed a very laborious and boring process with endless lines of command code like GOTO. At the time it seemed to be a strange contradiction to instruct a machine minute step by step by step to do something very simple, like write text - coding the letters of the alphabet when a typewriter could do it with just one click per letter.  What was the point? Obviously I missed the point. My own first computer was the Apple Macintosh. No coding required. Some poor software engineering bugger had done it already. Again, I missed the point and missed the bus altogether.  

Elon Musk was fascinated by coding even as a teenager. I too know someone who loves coding. Good on them (choice of pronouns to be discussed later). Like connecting oceanographic satellite data with maps to show fishermen where the best chances are today for catching the big one. Musk had this idea long ago when he and his brother developed Zip2, i.e. connecting business directory data with maps. A revolutionary idea? Clicking on the business address and a map pops up with the location in question. Before you had to consult a map and locate the address yourself. Very labour intensive! 

 

Walter Isaacson who describes the life of Elon Musk up until April 2023 in some 95 episodes does not really tell us how such an idea can come about, given that this idea launched Musk into the stratosphere of entrepreneurial stardom. Was it random selection? Fate? Karma? Genius? Isaacson goes mainly for the latter, attributing Musk’s stellar success to a complex character make-up that makes Musk a unique human being who is crazy enough to want to change the world (these are, more or less, the famous last words of his book on Elon Musk). Not that Isaacson doesn’t let rip with a few criticisms, like Elon being an unhinged asshole at times but, alas, Musk is a great innovator, so we just have to suck it up. Isaacson who has written biographies of luminaries such as Einstein, da Vinci, Jobs and Kissinger – what a strange collection is this – not that I have read any of them – is obviously well versed in his metier, and one can only assume that he has to say good things about them all, Kissinger included. Having written a biography on Noam Chomsky (2006) myself, I found it hard to give credence to any of his detractors (some more unhinged than others) but studiously trying to avoid being accused of writing a hagiography by keeping a critical stance when justified. Being obviously very sympathetic to Chomsky’s political and linguistic orientation on what I assume to be purely rational grounds, it would be inconceivable to do a nasty hatchet job. Those who do probably shouldn’t be called biographers. There are exceptions, of course, like all those who have written, deservedly, totally negative biographies of Hitler and Co.

 

 I do not know what Isaacson’s political leaning are (he does attach labels like ‘left’ and ‘right’ to the various characters in the book but never to Musk himself when it seems quite evident that Musk is now on the far-right MAGA scale) but I assume that he himself is centre-right, being sympathetic to the anti-woke Musk ideology. Having been given Musk’s approval to shadow him for two years, Isaacson obviously had a great opportunity to get to know his subject in a way few others could have done.

 

Given Elon’s conflicted upbringing, there is the temptation to engage in some layman’s psychoanalysis, and Isaacson falls for it in a big way. Is Elon’s psychological make-up a consequence of his father Errol’s tendency towards a very nasty kind of behaviour towards his own children? Errol being a racist, sexist wannabe MAGA capitalist who in his native South-Africa leads a chaotic life of ups and downs, he has his moments of an engineer’s lucidity and recognises the entrepreneurial potentials of Elon and Kimbal, giving them some $28,000 for their Zip2 venture (their mother Maye gives them $10,000), even though they had escaped from his clutches to California. Errol having two children with his adopted daughter sounds like Woody Allen, raising the heckles of Elon and the rest of his family, and Elon finally cutting off his financial support for his father. Such moral outrage sounds a bit strange when considering Elon’s shenanigans with fathering children, like his sperm-donated twins with Shivon Zilis, one of his top managers. To Elon’s credit, he does like children in general (as guarantors of human consciousness) and his children in particular, even when one of them (Xavier) becomes Jenna and a hardcore communist on top, causing Elon much emotional pain as to choice of pronouns and becoming number one class enemy for his son/daughter/whatever. To repent, Elon even sells some of his luxury estates and moves into a little house in Austin, near his rocket launchpads. Still, as the world’s richest man he is unable to shake off his ability to spread largesse wherever he goes. Using his private jets like a busy urban salesman uses taxis might be considered a contradiction in his aim to end fossil fuels via his electric Tesla cars. 

 

Getting back to how and possibly why it all started via Zip2, the breakthrough came via Mohr Davidow Ventures to invest $3 million. Bill Davidow apparently ‘loved’ the sales pitch by the Musk brothers. That’s all Isaacson tells us. It would have been interesting why he loved it, for this is the single most important stepping stone for the Musk success story. We learn from Davidow’s website that he is an electrical engineer and a venture capitalist who by now sits on every conceivable corporate board in the US – which doesn’t really explain either why he decided to invest in the Musks’ enterprise. As Kimbal explains, interactively linking addresses with maps is commonplace nowadays but in 1996 this was quite amazing. So, maybe Davidow must have thought the same. Or was it just an impulse? A kind of engineer-to-engineer brainwave? To trump up $3 million and $30,000 for a car each for Elon and Kimbal seems ludicrous. Elon promptly bought a 1967 Jaguar E-type. Quite a step up from the $500 car that his dad had bought him together with the $28,000 grant. I suppose venture capitalism is not a new thing – it is the very nature of capitalism – but the intensity of it in Silicon Valley broke all records. You are betting against the odds but when you strike the jackpot that guarantees you 40% or more of the stratospheric company stock, you are laughing all the way to the bank. When after only four years Zip2 was sold for a staggering $307 million, Davidow and his venture company (and partners) certainly laughed all the way, and so did Elon with his share of $22 million (and poor old Kimbal with only $15 million). Elon’s bank account went from $5,000 to $22,005,000. 

 

If I win $22 million in Lotto tomorrow, what would I do? Like Elon, I would buy a nice condo, but would I buy a $1 million McLaren F1 sports car? Just for the hell of it? To show off to my poor friends or is this the way to make new rich friends (like Peter Thiel and discard the old poor ones)? How can you psychoanalyse such a process? Isaacson suggests that Elon would go on to have a conflicted relationship with wealth. What on earth is that supposed to mean? Apparently Elon as a new kind of celebrity was interviewed on CNN and said he wanted to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.  Sounds like that song by Dr Hook … wanna show my picture to my mum!  Elon more likely would want to show his picture to his dad (he did give $300,000 to his dad but gave a million to his mum).

 

Having won Lotto, would I become addicted to winning? Invest my remaining 19 million or so to buy more tickets? There is a saying that only the first million is hard to get but then the millions will multiply like rabbits. Once you are a high roller you are on a roll, so to speak, and you can only lose if you’re a complete idiot (and play Russian Roulette). 

 

“What matters to me is winning … it’s probably rooted in some very disturbing psychoanalytical black hole or neural short circuit” says Elon when justifying his habit to fire people who might stand in his winning ways. Being addicted to winning is indeed a strange obsessive compulsion, as correctly self-diagnosed by Elon. Still, the winning goes on and on, what with Paypal and our friend Peter Thiel – I say this because I reside in New Zealand as a permanent resident while Peter Thiel bought his NZ citizenship and is forever in the local news for wanting to build a survivalist bunker disguised as a lodge in one of New Zealand’s most scenic spots, only to be thwarted by bloody-minded conservationists who get court injunctions on the grounds of such ugly buildings being incompatible with the local environment – and whatever business opportunities come along the way (Space X, Tesla, Boring Company, Neuralink, X.AI). It is quite tedious to read all the ins and outs (intermittent, weird family/lover sagas included), and the whole Twitter/X saga could have been written up as one episode instead of the 10 or so, detailing every sorry aspect of ‘let that sink in’.

 

One may at this juncture identify another enduring trait of Elon Musk, namely that he has a knack for correctly identifying the causes of any problem (mainly of the engineering sort though) but then arriving at the completely wrong solutions to the problem. In terms of wrong engineering solutions that tend to blow things up, like his rockets, the consequences are not that bad if he can learn from his mistakes and remedy them (e.g. too much automation in the Tesla factories is a problem and is eventually fixed by manual labour). In terms of his financial meltdowns, gambling too close to the edge, it is only good fortune (or call it luck) that saves him in last minute deals (e.g. the Twitter saga may yet cost him dearly). In terms of political and economic ideology (human engineering) he has correctly identified many a problem (e.g. the Biden/Harris inflated bureaucracies that back up incompetent corporations with lucrative government contracts, as in the space industry) but then arrives at the totally wrong solution, namely the Trump MAGA machinations that defy any rational solutions other than Musk’s favourite processes of ‘delete, delete, delete’ any regulation that is not immediately supported by the laws of physics. To put it in the starkest terms possible, Hitler and Co. correctly identified the problem that the struggling German capitalism at the time was to some degree managed by a cabal of Jewish entrepreneurs and bankers, but the ‘final solution’ was of course totally insane, namely the ‘deletion’ of the Jewish people in total. The extreme right-wing pronouncements in the USA and elsewhere today are forever echoing chambers of fascism. When Musk in a moment of such insanity shared a tweet that ‘Jews hate white people’ he revealed himself as the wolf in sheep’s clothing, and now that he successfully bankrolled the Trump campaign, he can and probably will influence the Trump administration by ‘deleting’ all and sundry regulations and laws that interfere with solutions that in engineering terms value the bare minimum, the most cost-effective, and to hell with the consequences. The blow-ups due to too much deletion will cause enormous suffering, e.g. as in the proposed mass deportations of illegal immigrants in the US. While Musk is, to his credit, always ready to reconsider and rectify too much deletion, the demons he is supporting will not. They will always go down the road to the final solution.

 

Elon Musk is also correct in identifying the ultimate problem humanity faces: the survival of human consciousness (as he calls it). Human life on earth seems to go down the gurgler, so what is the solution? Colonise Mars. Interplanetary travel for Musk is a reality, not science fiction. His obsession to get his Starships ready for take-off seems a very sad response to what is happening on planet earth, namely, to simply escape by ferrying a few thousand select humanoids to Mars, from where they can look back at the nuclear winter lasting for some 20,000 years. This is insane. Surely Elon Musk can do better than that. He must work on a solution for the survival of the human species on earth. Find a way to stop wars and climate destruction. Stop virtual hitchhiking in the galaxies, take a trip along Route 66 and find the ‘answer to everything’. I don’t mind if he becomes a benevolent two-headed CEO/president/dictator of Earth Ltd., if that’s what it takes. 

 

Of course, Isaacson doesn’t quite see it this way, being satisfied that Elon Musk is ‘crazy’ enough to change the world for the better, even though most of the evidence presented in this hefty volume (and subsequent events since 2023) points to a disaster of sorts. Mechanical and electric/electronic engineering solutions have often been effective in the short term (and Musk is a master of it) but applying AI solutions to questions of ‘free speech’ (e.g. algorithmic moderation on X) are doomed to failure even in the short term. Software engineering is a different kettle of fish, and writing code is more fiction than fact. Elon himself spends endless hours rewriting ‘fucking stupid code’ written by his fucking stupid idiot coders.

 

Which brings me to both lingo and the question of stupidity. Elon’s ‘idiot index’ and ‘algorithm (sic)’ as mantras for correct thinking are already legendary. If the idiot index is high or you do not follow the ‘algorithm’ you’re a fucking idiot to be fired on the spot. Musk excels in what he calls ‘hardcore’ feedback, peppered with the f-word, sounding either like a working-class jock or like an aristocratic asshole. Empathy for him is a woke disease. The effects on polite middle-class jokers can be quite devastating. Sure, from a rational, engineering point of view, it can be frustrating if someone proposes a solution that is evidently wrong, or worse if someone talks patent nonsense, but to pronounce such human behaviour as ‘stupidity/idiocy’ to the face of the presumed idiot, is a very poor solution for the problem. As the famous saying goes, there is no law against stupidity, neither in natural nor human-made laws, although in the latter case, maybe, there should be one. Elon having been denigrated in this way by his father, in demeaning language, Isaacson suggests that Elon’s own choice of language is merely a trait of his upbringing, the son becoming his father, mitigated by the fact that Elon is anything but stupid in terms of engineering. When Elon makes an engineering mistake he will own it, and no doubt call himself a fucking idiot. When Elon makes a big (non-engineering) mistake that he doesn’t own up to (as in his choice of bankrolling Trump to accelerate the climate crisis) he will call his accusers fucking idiots, quickly disseminated on his X account. When even good people (as endorsed in the first place by Musk) quit his employment because they cannot stand the ruthless office politics, like Yoel Roth, Musk comes down on them like a ton of bricks, tweeting that Roth might condone paedophilia amongst other defamatory allegations, to the effect that Roth was viciously harassed, and since his address had been published, he had to sell his home and move to escape such unwarranted persecution. 

 

The human cost of Musk’s ruthless application of his idiot index is incalculable since the victims are the people without a history, falling by the wayside as irrelevant sideshows. Deserved or undeserved, this is not the way to treat human beings. As Leonard Cohen’s song lyric painted a bleak picture with the line ‘… the homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen to determine who will serve and who will eat’, the few winners and many losers live in different worlds, and never the twain shall meet. Isaacson’s attempt to portray the greatest winner of them all is an essential failure in perspective, and I suppose it’s not really his fault that he can only look up and never down. As he says, almost as a badge of bookish honour, Elon didn’t read the draft and probably never will read the finished book, because Elon knows Elon much better than Isaacson ever will, so why waste time to read 95 episodes of his own life when he knows damn well that any episodic drama about his deluded life will only be of interest to himself when he finally reaches Mars. 

 

Spending his billions on Starships and associated enterprises, Elon Musk will go down history as a man who wanted to be an immortal Martian, only to find out that immortality is like planting a seed in the desert of time (a line from Elsbeth Huxley’s The Flame Trees of Thika). Musk’s fellow travellers, well documented in Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk, may, too, ride the wave of contemporary history (check who else got posts in Trump’s administration), only to drift away as coded data, through the dusty, interstellar clouds of the universe.

 

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/04/donald-trump-elon-musk-and-the-threat-to-press-freedom

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/06/elon-musk-israel-trump-gaza-hostage-deal

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/06/elon-musk-rbg-pac-abortion

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/07/campaign-spending-crypto-tech-influence

 

https://www.davidow.com/about/

 

 

 

A VEGAN REVIEW OF THE VEGETARIAN BY HAN KANG

 A VEGAN REVIEW OF THE VEGETARIAN BY HAN KANG

 

‘Life is such a strange thing … p.168’. Having studied psychology and having trained as a psychiatric nurse at some stage, and my partner having been a mental health nurse for many years, I am well versed with ‘madness’ as is mentioned as praiseworthy on the cover by Ian McEwan:

 

                  A novel of sexuality and madness that deserves its great success.

 

In that Han Kang won the Booker Prize for The Vegetarian and now the Nobel Prize for Literature, one has to agree with McEwen, who as a famous author should know a thing or two about it. Which in the first instance brings me to the question of ‘translation’, i.e. in this case the original novel written in Korean and translated into English by Deborah Smith, who in turn has no doubt much experience in such matters but all the same has been criticised in the Los Angeles Times for some failings. My own interest as a linguist and translator (cf. various entries in my blog) compelled me to delve a bit deeper into the quote used as a beginning of this review, i.e. ‘Life is such a strange thing …’. This strikes me as a contradictory statement in English even though ‘thing’ is used in all manner of contexts, not only as an inanimate noun, for example as used by me in reference to McEwen in assuming that the knows ‘a thing or two’ about such things. Metaphors we live by (cf. Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) are notoriously difficult but not impossible to translate, and easy when one can find a suitable alternative metaphor in the target language, the theory being that despite so-called linguistic and cultural differences the universal features of language (à la Chomsky et al.) and culture/humanity, there are many universal metaphors that deal with life’s issues. As I am not familiar with Korean but can attest to German-English translation issues, I would have thought that a more common metaphor in English is simply ‘life is strange/life can be strange’ as in the German equivalent ‘das Leben ist (manchmal) seltsam’, neither of which add ‘thing/Ding’ as Deborah Smith does in this instance. The French ‘c’est la vie’ carries a similar meaning. If such minor translation irritations multiply we arrive at some major problems as alluded to in the critique above.

 

Anyway, just let us sympathise with the proposition that life is indeed ‘strange’ and that the story of ‘the vegetarian’ couldn’t be any stranger (or is it ‘more strange’?). Other metaphors/similes Kang/Smith employ are that life hangs on a thin string/thread that can snap at any moment, somewhat similar to the general idea that the ‘veneer of civilisation is very thin’. The current state of the planet seems to echo in this dystopian family saga, one that falls apart by having a dream, like a nuclear bomb. That a nightmarish, disgusting raw meat dream could turn one into a radical vegetarian the next morning is ‘not impossible but rather unlikely’ (a sort of metaphor invented by Chomsky), especially in the context of a starkly conventional Korean family context. That the two moronic men (as protagonists in the main two – out of three - episodes) emerge to inflict pain and suffering on the vegetarian, is only a likely scenario if we accept the erstwhile premise of the dream.

 

I have voiced this criticism before (in my review of The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki), namely why should fiction double down on the daily reality of the many miseries that life has on offer? Is it a perverse desire on part of the readers to feast on graphic (sic) gore and insanity that compels an author like Kang to meet the market? Is sexual violence, rape and plunder indeed the greatest pleasure of the Genghis Khan in all of us? The graphic (again) depiction of a male sexual fantasy in the second part of The Vegetarian seems strangely (sic) out of focus of a feminist perspective that Kang otherwise embodies – or is there the ambiguity that consensual sex is or at least can be something beautiful and wholesome versus sex as a tool of violence? After all, when the video-man forces himself on the vegetarian, she pushes him away, and – to his presumed credit – he goes off the get himself painted with flowers as this seems to be a condition for the vegetarian to be turned on sexually. This flower business in itself seems equally bizarre: as it is originally the video-man’s fantasy, the vegetarian seems to fall for it via her strange dreams of being a plant/tree, with her arms planted in the earth, doing headstands, and flowers growing out of her ‘crotch’. Is this connected to ‘de-flowering’ a virgin?  The mind boggles as one has to wonder if there is a Korean language equivalent (German, for example, has no such metaphorical equivalent, although there are of course others, as to provide evidence for my assertion that the universality of language covers the universal concerns of human life, e.g. the life-changing event of a woman losing her virginity). 

 

Going back to the third part, the descent into ‘madness’, there seems to be a tendency (as in The Book of Form and Emptiness) to portray psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses – with some exceptions – as emotionally cold practitioners who are pushing the pharmacological medical-biological approach to mental illness, negating any deeper issues brought about societal dysfunction – or at least conform to the realisation that this is beyond their expertise and one that nobody has anyway.  As noted in the beginning, my personal experience with psychiatry, whilst endorsing certain elements of Laing’s anti-psychiatry, as well as Freudian psychoanalysis, the harsh realities of mental breakdowns brought to ED leave little choice but the tranquiliser gun as immediate crisis intervention, and subsequent maintenance with appropriate medicines and a bit of CBT depending on the financial resources the patient and their family have. As in The Vegetarian, the patient is sent to a less expensive institution as her sister cannot afford the one with a better reputation. Now imagine all the mental breakdowns suffered by the precariat that are often below the radar of the already underfunded public health systems, and you come to realise that we did not advance much from the medieval practice of locking up the mentally retarded in the dungeons and hit them with ECT if they misbehave. I imagine that in Korea modern psychiatry is equivalent to the Western models, especially the US, and as such there are countless detractors, of all political and religious persuasions, who push alternatives such as conversion therapies and exorcism. It seems to me that the underlying message by Kang is that societal dysfunction, especially at the level of conventional family life, is to blame for pushing a sensitive female soul over the cliff into the abyss of insanity. Or should I say, male dysfunction, in the shape of a violent patriarchy. As one of the reviewers on the back cover puts it:

 

                  … the desire for another sort of life.

 

A life of female sisterhood compassion, devoid of the necessity for psychiatric wards other than perhaps to treat any remaining members of the patriarchy. After all the only vaguely sympathetic male character in the novel is J who consents to be an actor in the playful segment of the painted body frolics but runs away when the video-man asks him to perform real sex as well. J does not want to be involved in a porn clip. Good on him, given that the sex-violence porn industry in Korea is one of the most lucrative in the world. Psychiatrists are unfortunately ill equipped to bring about societal changes to get to grips with the victims of a dysfunction that masquerades as capitalist normality. Are authors like Kang in a better position? I think they should be or at least could be: describe what a ‘better world’ looks like, where normal, ordinary people can lead a reasonably happy life from beginning to end, just don’t call it Utopia. But, if all you can do like Kang, to reduce to the written word to the unspeakable misery of two sisters, racing in the ambulance that picked them up from the proverbial bottom of the cliff, with In-hye staring ‘fiercely into the trees. As if waiting for an answer. As if protesting against something. The look in her eyes is dark and insistent.’ These are the famous last words in the novel. Is there a glimmer of hope? Why the trees when in an earlier passage trees were denounced as uncomprehending dummies that cared only about trees? Yeong-hye of course wanted to turn into a tree, or at least into something that is rooted to the ground, growing flowers by dint of sunshine and water alone – certainly not by eating meat. But hey, what about the venus flytrap? But then again, I am informed by Wikipedia that Kang was deeply influenced by a Korean modernist poet who asserted that ‘humans should be plants’ as a protest against human violence, a sentiment also expressed by Bertrand Russell when he said that the human species is but a passing nightmare and afterwards peace amongst the natural world will return. It is a sad reality to be repeated over and over again – do we need it repeated in fiction as well?

 

I bought the book by being fascinated by the title, partly because I am myself a vegetarian (undogmatic – I eat meat if there is no other choice) and one of our grandsons, aged 12, suddenly decided to become a quite strict vegan (not because of a dream but because of cruelty to animals and a girl at school he admires for being vegan), with everyone in the extended family freaking out as to how he can survive and grow to be a strong man. Not anyone threatening him but constantly advising him that he needs dietary supplements lest he misses out on vital proteins, vitamins, and a thousand other ingredients which apparently are in natural abundance when following a meat diet. He is doing well, me in his defence forever citing a former NZ world champion distance runner (female) who was a strict vegan. I even thought I might give him this book to read but now that I have read it, I am sorry to say, I would not recommend it because there is nothing in it that gives you sensible advice and encouragement to be vegetarian let alone a vegan. All our grandson would learn is Kang’s explanation of her book in that she ‘wanted to show the extreme core of a dog-eat-dog world‘ (is that a Korean metaphor as well?), and that’s what he knows already, hence his conversion to veganism. 

 

Still, we don’t begrudge her the Nobel Prize in Literature in the hope she will write the great Korean novel that is a blueprint for a better world. 

 

 

Lakoff, G & M. Johnson (1980) Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.

 

https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-korean-translation-20170922-story.html

 

https://www.donga.com/en/List/article/all/20071102/255688/1

 

 

 

A ZEN-LIKE REVIEW OF THE BOOK OF FORM AND EMPTINESS BY RUTH OZEKI (2021)

 A ZEN-LIKE REVIEW OF THE BOOK OF FORM AND EMPTINESS BY RUTH OZEKI (2021)

 

If and when I become an unorthodox Zen Master of the universe, including the world-wide-web and the world herself, I will, as a benevolent secretary of culture in the One World Administration, outlaw all death in fiction, for we have enough of that in real life. Or maybe, should we ban fictional tragedy altogether and regale in Dionysian Bacchanalia instead, at least in fiction ? Not for nothing did Friedrich Nietzsche entitle his treatise on this matter ‘Die Geburt der Tragödie oder Griechentum und Pessimismus’.

 

So, there is death and tragedy in the first chapter of Ozeki’s Book of Form and Emptiness, and it grinds on until in the end there is a happy ending. Benny, the main protagonist exclaims:

 

                  You’re a book, you can fix it! You can make it come out right!

 

So, why bother with the tragedy in the first place? It’s fiction, for heaven’s sake, not fact. We all know the facts of life, as Ozeki describes it in ever more painful detail together with an unorthodox Marxist commentary by the Slovenian Bottleman named Slavoj.

 

Has Slavoj Žižek (never acknowledged as such) escaped to the US and is living underground as a hobo in a wheelchair, recuing damsels in distress and dispensing words of wisdom via the tragic damsel who names herself The Aleph after a Borges story?

 

“It’s the fucking world we live in. It’s capitalism that’s crazy. It’s neoliberalism, and materialism, and our fucked-up consumer culture that’s crazy. It’s the fucking meritocracy that tells you that feeling sad is wrong and it’s your fault if you’re broken, but hey, capitalism can fix you! Just take these miracle pills and go shopping and buy yourself some new shit. It’s the doctors and shrinks and corporate nedicine and Big Pharma, making billions of dollars telling us we’re crazy and then peddling us their so-called cures. That’s fucking crazy …” (p.365)

 

All so true but as the Aotearoa-Marxist author Shannon Walsh puts it: ‘Everything's fucked: But the point is to go beyond that’. Sounds a bit like Nietzsche’s ‘Jenseits von Gut und Böse’? Sounds a bit like Zen?

 

Before we get to the latter, let me just mention a minor irritant in the novel: whenever Slavoj speaks he must speak with this ridiculous speech impediment that is commonly ascribed to Germans when trying to speak English (ve haf ze veys to make you laff), in a somewhat haphazard fashion, e.g.

 

We must learn to luff our garbage! To find poetry in our trash. It is ze only way to luff the whole world.” (p.538)

 

What on earth is the point in that? Should I have cited Nietzsche with Ze birth of ze tragedy or ze Kreeks and pessimism? Since Ozeki seems to very fond of Walter Benjamin, prefacing chapters with quotes from his “Unpacking my Library” why not 

“Unpackinck ze Library”? 

 

Anyway, not to worry, I’m just a bit upset because I’m German too, and zis is my story about Zen – before we get to Zen Ozeki’s way.

 

I think I was in the last years at the Gymnasium Hohenschwangau when I was first introduced to Zen Buddhism, reading Christmas Humphreys’ Zen Buddhism and then Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki‘ Essays on Zen Buddhism (bit of a worry when later discovering his alleged sympathies for fascism), moving on to the Americans like Allan Watts and finally Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I say ‘finally’ because in my life’s journey I became less interested in Zen Buddhism as a sort of religion (following Marx’ dictum that ‘religion is opium for the people’ – also quoted by Ozeki) while maintaining an interest in Zen as minor ingredient in my political and linguistic involvement, following a Zen Master of sorts by the name of Noam Chomsky. A Zen interlude was when in the early 1970s on my travels around the world, I happened to visit the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi Tree in Anuradhapura, a Buddhist num gave me a leaf from the tree and pronounced me a bodhisattva. I carried the leaf with me for many years until I lost it. I interpreted this loss as never having been and never will be a bodhisattva. Many years later in Kyoto I saw the famous Zen Garden – rocks in the sand – and while I am now an enthusiastic gardener myself, I was quite disappointed by this little patch of ‘emptiness’ that is supposed to trigger satori (at least for those who are ready). Zen these days has become a fashion accessory, what with Zen perfume, Zen spas, Zen retreats for celebrities like Leonard Cohen on Mount Baldy – I actually quite like Leonard Cohen and wrote an obituary poem calling him a Zen Master of Music. 

 

In that context one has to mention Ozeki’s tragic protagonist, Annabelle, having a ‘Zen massage’ with a bit of erotic after play. I can see a bestseller entitled ‘Zen and Sex’. In fact, one of my favourite koan is that of a Zen Master being visited in his cave by a prostitute who asks him to marry her so she can escape her sordid profession, and he does. I can picture the happy couple in a slim two-story apartment in Kyoto, he, working in the local supermarket and she being a demure but pretty housewife looking after the kids. They visit the Zen temple on Sundays.

 

So, now that you have learned of my Zen experience and hopefully allow me to pontificate on the subject, let’s return to The Book of Form and Emptiness, a sort of koan in itself. Ozeki being a Buddhist ‘priest’ herself pays homage to ‘Zoketsu Norman Fischer and to the lineage of Zen teachers whose words suffuse these pages’. In the book, Zen as the Deus ex Machina involves a rather quaint story of a young Japanese marketing professional who turns her back on the material world and joins a small Zen-Buddhist temple as a disciple of an aging, dying Zen Master. To save the temple from decay she hits on the idea to write a book on Tidy Magic, the Zen way to declutter your life. As a self-help book it becomes a best seller what with the author travelling the world to promote sales – naturally she ends up at Annabelle’s local Library where she conducts a short ceremony to send off Kenji’s ashes to the heavens. Of course it all starts with the hoarder Annabelle (hoarding as a traumatic response to her husband’s untimely death) coming across Tidy Magic plucking at hersubmerged heartstrings, writing unanswered emails to the author (until in the end she asks her assistant to reply) and slowly but surely rises to the occasion in the end, and declutters her apartment and turns it into a little Zen living quarter for herself and Benny, her son. Zen saves the day.

 

I suppose this is quite a clever deceit in that Ozeki as the Zen author has a character in her Zen book that is a best-selling Zen author. A sort of Russian doll format. I suppose there are various contradictions involved: how can a Zen person write a book for sale for the capitalist publishing market and then stoop so low as to do promotional tours to sell some more? Not that Ozeki is the only one – there is now a whole industry devoted to all things Zen. The Aleph and her tutor Slavoj would have to use some strong language to counter these trends (or shall we call it self-criticism?). 

 

But then again, isn’t Žižek and Co. flogging books as well? Didn’t Marx, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Borges and Co. become famous by way of writing their respective books that sold well (not necessarily in their lifetimes though)? Are books innocent? Surely not. Hitler (yet another Austrian/German) wrote a book too.

 

This is of course another one of Ozeki’s clever devices: having the book speak as a character, sidelining the author as a typist? In the brief beginning chapter entitled ‘In the Beginning’ she/they write(s):

 

A book must start somewhere. One brave letter must volunteer to go first, laying itself on the line in an act of faith, from which a word takes heart and follows, drawing a sentence into its wake. From there a paragraph amasses, and soon a page, and the book is on its way, finding a voice, calling itself into being.

 

As a poetic recipe this is fine. As a linguist I beg to differ (paraphrasing Chomsky): in the beginning is the syntax of a thought, filled in with words to create a meaningful (semantic) sentence. You also can create a meaningless but grammatically correct sentence like the famous Chomsky sentence: ‘Colorless green ideas sleep furiously’ – which almost turned into a Zen koan in its own right, i.e. Zen often dwells on paradox, demonstrating the need to go beyond good and bad, beyond black and white, to overturn the human obsession with dualism. Sure, when language became reduced to a writing system, letters (pictograms, characters) became ever so important, especially when Gutenberg (yet another German) invented the printing press. I always joke that the Bible got it wrong with the beginning sentence ‘In the beginning was the word …’ and even worse by the stupid story of the Tower of Babel where God stopped the enterprise by confusing the builders with creating different languages.

 

Anyway, books, books and more books. In Alexandria I saw the newly built Library, the mother of all libraries, a modernist architectural failure, in my view. Still, quite amazing to stand at the place where over 2,000 years ago the likes of Benny were hiding away from the turmoil outside. Well, Benny’s and Co. library in Ozeki’s book sounds like nothing like a normal library, what with the homeless and alcoholics (Slavoj) hiding away during day and nighttime hours. Where I live in Auckland (NZ), they also still have libraries which I frequent on occasion but here the librarians keep out all non-desirables (or ‘deplorables’ as Hilary called them). Not that the homeless and somewhat degenerate intellectuals (Slavoj) in general are interested in invading temples of civilization where high-brow pretenders walk the aisles. 

 

Still. It makes sense that in The Book of Form and Emptiness the library is a focal point, as an island of calm in the sea of turmoil. The library even has a good librarian – as opposed to the dour school librarians I remember – by the name of Cory who in her first incarnation reads stories for children (Benny as a toddler included) and many years later (when Benny is high school age) saves Benny from going crazy in the library and then saves his mother by visiting her and getting her to start the decluttering enterprise. Cory is of course also present when, at her library, our Zen author of Tidy Magic performs the final act for Kenji’s ashes. Can Zen also save the library? Can libraries survive the digital age? 

 

Just like Annabelle’s analog newspaper monitoring job becomes redundant but continues on a bit as a digital business – but not for long. Same fate for the local community libraries? Of course, some of the more prestigious temples of books (cf. Alexandria) in the USA like the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC will remain as ‘living’ museums. I mention the latter as I took part in an on-line book discussion group organized by the Folger, with a distinct feeling that this is a virtual place to be seen to be believed. There was even a slight discussion of American democracy.

 

Ozeki replays this scenario a bit what with a looming election that descends into a riot when the results come in. Sounds familiar? To be replayed as I write this a week before 5/11. That Benny gets arrested in the fray, and hospitalized again on the psychiatric ward (due to the intervention of his psychiatrist) is an evolving story that is the other centerpiece of the novel.

 

When young Benny starts to hear voices in his head – coming from the outside or wherever – culminating in his stabbing his physics teacher with scissors because the scissors told him so, we are in the territory of psychiatry. Dr Melanie (first name only), his psychiatrist at the ward is first portrayed as the mainstream professional who hasn’t much of a clue apart from the dominant paradigm of Behaviourism in league with Big Pharma. She has never heard of the fact that all sentient beings/things have voices – scissors included – and people like Benny can hear them, or at least some of them, some good some bad. Dr Melanie insists that such voices are the product of a confused if not sick brain that can be subdued by appropriate medication. The other kids on the ward, including the mysterious Aleph, also suffer accordingly. Poor ‘old’ Benny becomes a basket case, shunted in and out of the psychiatric ward, in and out of ‘special’ education programs at school, until he finds a secret message from the Aleph to go to the ‘library’ to meet her and Slavoj and other like-minded outcasts. Benny manages to excuse himself from school by deception and forthwith goes to library instead of school. Some of the extra-curricular adventures involve meeting Slavoj and the Aleph at their ramshackle headquarters in an unused factory building on the fringe of town, where he learns, amongst other things, that everybody hears voices and that this is quite normal and nothing to worry about. Slavoj says that all good poets – like himself – compose poems dictated by voices. Benny also spends a night in the park with a ‘posse’ of bros, one which beats him up by mistake. Then again, a longer sojourn involves the burial of the Aleph’s pet rat, requiring a trip up the mountains. Camping in the open air, Benny develops some horny desires towards the Aleph but is cruelly rejected. “I love you” says the Aleph “but not like this”. So, there you are. Tragic for Benny but good too because the voices from the badlands subside and platonic love invades his adolescent mind, calming his head. In fact, he now begins to follow Slavoj’s lead to write it all down, whatever the voices have to say. His voice. Other voices. It’s all the same. Benny on the way to become an author? If anything, this is cathartic therapy that Dr Melanie should pay attention to, moving away from pills and conversion therapy, to the new (some say ‘old’) age of a psychotherapeutic treatment that encourages the creativity of the human mind. Sounds nice, I know. Having studied 101 psychology myself at university and having a partner who worked as a psychiatric nurse in ED for many years, I also have some reservations. When psychotic patients arrive by ambulance with a police escort there is no time for therapeutic discourse, there is only the needle that injects the sedative. Aotearoa/New Zealand has, however, the famous case of the psychotic patient released from a psychiatric hospital, only to write a best-seller about her experiences and goes on to become one of the most celebrated authors in New Zealand (her name is Janet Frame). But for every Janet Frame there are thousands who never see the light of the day in terms of literary talent. Maybe it was a kindly orientated psychiatrist that expelled Frame from the asylum, recognizing her talent as a writer before she started to write. Maybe in the same vein as Van Gogh’s psychiatrist in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence provided him with a studio to paint and then sent him on his way. They who are recognised (in their lifetime) as worthy of artistic genius are perhaps as lucky as those winning the jackpot in a lottery, the rest of us waiting for the day when everyone is a winner.

 

In any case, during Benny’s unexplained absences from home, Annabell, the mother, is freaking out, not knowing what to do, who to call (she has no friends or relatives), where to go – but all is well, sort of, whenever Benny returns, goes to his tidy bedroom and will not tell his crazy mother what is going on. All Annabelle can do is go to the charity shop and buy some trinkets to add to her ever-growing collection of junk - that is before the Tidy Magic takes a hold. But when the latter does kick in, there comes the next tragic event: she falls down the stairs carrying junk to the dumpster, lands on the back porch and passes out. Benny is out on one of his adventures and doesn’t know about it. Next morning or so, the No-Good son of the next-door ‘good’ landlady (Chinese) finds her covered in a blanket of crows, thinking she has died, and the crows are feasting on her dead body. In a tragi-comedic turn he takes a stick to scare away the crows and Annabelle wakes up, thinking No-Good is trying to kill her. Eventually this is all resolved by the story that the crows, whom she had been feeding for a long time – to the chagrin of No-Good who thought of crows as a pest – so when she collapsed the crows came down and settled on her to protect her from the cold night. Bit of a silly but heartwarming story! Anyway, when Benny returns and finds his mother in hospital, there is not much else that can go wrong, or rather shall we invoke Murphy’s Law ‘what can go wrong will go wrong’.

 

As a parable of middle America going to the dogs, this is all painful stuff, were it not for the glimmers of hope in the shape of working-class people coming to help each other, like Cory the librarian, and even Dr Melanie and a social worker who eventually relent and do not demand anymore that Benny is taken into foster care. Of course, Slavoj, the Aleph and Slavoj’s Slovenian friends come to the rescue too, sprucing up the apartment for Annabelle and Benny. How real is that? In my travels in the USA, I’ve seen glimpses of this happening, like in Chicago when working class people gather in the park to listen to union speakers who seem to be genuine ‘voices’ of the left, preaching solidarity and people power. However, as we all know, the big picture is as depressing as ever, as we speak, with Harris and Trump as a side-show for screwing the working classes (the proletariat or precariat) for all that they are worth for. Proxy wars around the world keep the armaments industries laughing all the way to the bank while the factory workers squeeze a minimum wage from the corporate owners, happy that they have a job at all, producing bombs on the assembly line. 

 

Ozeki and her ilk of good guys wearing Zen robes can see the cosmic joke in all of this MAD madness, and perhaps they are right. What else could it be? The sound of one hand clapping? A case of form and emptiness?

AN ECO-LOGICAL REVIEW OF MIKE JOY (2024) THE FIGHT FOR FRESHWATER. BWB, Wellington, NZ.

 AN ECO-LOGICAL REVIEW OF MIKE JOY (2024) THE FIGHT FOR FRESHWATER. BWB, Wellington, NZ.

 

This is a heartwarming story of good nature getting the better of bad nurture. Mike Joy having grown up in what he calls a ‘conservative’ environment but what to me sounds more like the archetypal New Zealand red-neck scenario of right-wing politics (National Party), petrol heads, boys being catholic boys, men in the garage fixing cars and drinking beer, women in the kitchen baking pies, ignorant farmers abusing animals, corrupt politicians at federal and local levels, corporate greed … and so the list goes on and on. Not that, generally, scientists are any better. What Joy calls ‘agency capture’ is the well-known (in some quarters at least) story of scientists working for the man rather for knowledge dissemination, the proverbial ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’. So, the amazing story is not that a working-class boy has many a working-class adventure to slowly but surely turn into an acclaimed academic, but amazingly NOT turning into an academic asshole (excuse my aristocratic language) that populates academia in New Zealand as much as they do across the globe – at least based on my own experiences in academia in New Zealand and a few other places. Indeed, many an academic that arose from the so-called working classes often becomes more ‘conservative’ than his upper-class peers, just to pay the price of admission to the club. As such one would have expected that Mike Joy follows this well-traversed path to academic glory. That he gets to grips with his real human nature and turns into what conservatives generally call a ‘dissident’, makes his memoir a real page turner, a delight to read. Sadly, he is of course preaching to the converted, as evidenced by a radically divided world where the 99% are subjugated by the 1% - mostly willingly it seems (or at least the slaves being manipulated to vote for their masters). Mike Joy addresses this tragic state of affairs, as we are staring into a cataclysm of environmental degradation on the altar of economic growth mantras, promoting his ‘degrowth’ campaign. Of course, it makes sense, but he knows that making sense in this world today (2024) is mostly a ‘complete and utter waste of time’, the only hope being that he must continue his ‘fight for freshwater’. This conclusion is my only misgiving: this is not a ‘fight’ because you are reverting to the ‘conservative’ nurture scenario where fighting is at the heart of being a tough guy, as opposed to all the sissies who refuse to fight. Passive resistance is the way to go, or to use the only good catholic parable of Jesus turning his cheek to be hit again by the bully. Human nature, as nature in general is all about peaceful co-existence, hence the simple solution is to refuse the alternative (e.g. the weird zoologist Lorenz proclaiming that nature, including human, is innately about the survival of the fittest, the one who is most aggressive). To some degree Mike Joy and his partner are very good examples of such a degrowth lifestyle like fixing up old houses to live in, sailing in an old kauri boat, being vegetarian (!), walking where possible, and communicating the truth against all the odds. Mike Joy’s trajectory to this stage in his life at 64 is as remarkable as ultimately contradictory: like a Chomsky (my other working-class hero) style dissident, his brilliance as a scientist propels him into the narrow bracket of permitted conveyers of doom and gloom, in the full knowledge that his impact will be negligible in the face of an overwhelming majority of genocidal bitches (to use the words of a Leonard Cohen song) who decide who is to live and who is to die. Others will be sidelined, as Mike Joy finds out from Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey who told him the story of Federated Farmers demanding Mike’s sacking. Maharey to his credit stood up for Mike. I can attest to the less lucky ones, like me being associated with the Chomsky side, who as a linguist found the doors always closed when applying for university jobs in NZ – despite my PhD from Auckland University and boasting a considerable number of peer-reviewed articles (and a book about Noam Chomsky), the type that Mike Joy almost religiously cites as the key to academic stardom. Still, after moving to Victoria University and eventually being given redundant notice there as part of the slash and burn, Mike Joy has to rely on the charity of the capitalist Morgan Foundation to keep his research going at the university, and no doubt having to reference the Morgan Foundation in all his subsequent publications. This is testament in itself of the many contradictions his life – and all our lives – is subjected to. His moving account of his father’s death is a classic example: having nearly come to blows with him during the Springbok tour – his father being an ardent supporter – arguing the complete and utter falsehood of it (I was then in the Patu Patu contingent in the Auckland protests), Mike nevertheless acknowledges him as an invaluable source of practical skills transmission that shaped his life to this very day. The sad irony being that while his father had argued for the false separation of sport and politics, Mike now acknowledges that his relationship with his father continued to be positive as long as they did not mix applied engineering with politics. Sad to learn too that when his father was on his death bed in Blenheim hospital, he was the victim of a deteriorating public health system in New Zealand, what with overworked, underpaid and under-skilled nurses making his father’s last hours as uncomfortable as possible. In terms of not mixing engineering (as a symbol of the natural sciences) with politics as a false premise, Mike Joy correctly dismisses the many bizarre technical and commercial attempts to mitigate or even reverse the disastrous consequences of the climate crisis, from carbon capture contraptions to the utterly ridiculous carbon trading scheme. Greenwashing as the latest commercial opportunity to get rich quick may well be the death knell we all know is knocking on the door. The term ‘ecocide’ was used as early as 2002 by my friend Franz Broswimmer in his book entitled ‘Ecocide: A Short History Of The Mass Extinction Of Species’ and he was tragically removed from the academic world in Hawaii (East-West Centre) by an SUV running him over and crippling him for life, getting only minimal care and support from the US health system because he was not a US citizen. As such Mike Joy is not a single voice in the wilderness but of a band of global voices that can be heard every day, although it is not always clear what exactly their intentions are. Take the seemingly correct call by the governments of Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa for the ICC to make ecocide a criminal offence. Having worked and lived in Vanuatu (and having visited Fiji and Samoa) and having gained some knowledge of the political situation of these island nations, I am baffled by the call, not only because it seems perfectly insane that one should have to call out ecocide as a crime when it so obviously is. I am baffled because the governments in question use a post-colonial ruse to extract millions and billions in compensation for what they say was caused by the neighbouring metropolitan/colonialist countries like New Zealand and Australia, which in itself is true enough, but then again the successive post-colonial governments of these island nations have not followed environmentally friendly policies either, like selling off mining and forestry licences to the highest bidders who in turn ravaged the delicate island environments and left it in tatters. The much-vaunted income for the governments was mainly squandered on more environmentally disastrous infrastructural projects and palaces for the movers and shakers who continuously battle each other for the baubles of office (cf. Fiji’s military and political coups). It seems that the colonial powers managed to instil a mindset that guaranteed the elite of the indigenous populations a place in the sun, while all around them the living standards of their subjects went down the drain. This brings me to the painful discussion of that what Mike Joy sees as part of the solution, namely in the positive environmental knowledge and practices of indigenous cultures, i.e. that of Māori in Aotearoa. Obviously it is true that Māori culture harbours knowledge and practices that are environmentally friendly but so does any culture worth its salt. As any good anthropologist will tell you, culture is highly contestable and is fought over like any other organisational system. As such we know that contemporary Māori culture also harbours all manner of ecocidal members of the National Party, ACT and NZ First, whom Mike Joy accuses of dismantling Te Mana o te Wai, as soon as they came to power. When accessing the website of Degrowth Aotearoa (DANZ) there is a lengthy homepage statement entitled ‘Solidarity with Māori’ which is fine in principle, as it seeks to counteract the ACT party’s attempt to redefine and diminish Te Tiriti o Waitangi, but it misses the crucial point that Māori culture and society is not a monolithic entity that can be relied upon as a solution to ecocide and genocide that is currently wrought on this earth. As such, I am hesitant to join Degrowth Aotearoa, as it goes against my anarchic instincts to join any organisation that has more than five members, as any more will lead to hierarchical, representational structures that have plagued our world since year dot. I know that many left-wing activists call for ‘getting organised’ to battle the foes on the other side (who are often much better organised), but as I mentioned before this type of martial discourse is self-defeating (sic) since the ‘enemy’ is the one spoiling for a fight as their insane raison d'être. Since Mike Joy, on his own admission, likes nothing better than to educate people (especially the young ones) then let this be his mantra, not to fight for freshwater but to educate people for the absolute need for freshwater – something he does so very well in his book. 

 

Broswimmer, Franz (2002) Ecocide: A Short History Of The Mass Extinction Of Species. Pluto Press.

 

https://www.degrowth.nz

 

https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/sep/09/pacific-islands-ecocide-crime-icc-proposal

 

 

 

 

 

SEBALD UND REIMANN IN DER ÜBERSETZUNG GEFUNDEN – eine Kurzgeschichte mit Bildern und Links

  

 

SEBALD UND REIMANN IN DER ÜBERSETZUNG GEFUNDEN – eine Kurzgeschichte mit Bildern und Links

 

Ja, sag doch mal, wie bist du auf die Reimann gestoßen? fragte meine Schwägerin, Emily, auf Englisch, um meine Frau, Jane, höflicherweise im Gespräch einzubeziehen, weil sie ja Englischsprachlich ist, obwohl sie auch schon ein bisschen Deutsch sprechen kann. Jane ist ja in Nairobi in Kenia geboren, und wenn ich das als Information auch an liberale Leute weitergebe, die die Jane noch nicht getroffen haben, dann bekomme ich oft betroffene Blicke, die eine leicht rassistische Attitüde hervorrufen – ist sie vielleicht schwarzer Hautfarbe? Ja, antwortete ich Emily, das war reiner Zufall, oder vielleicht auch nicht, weil Jane dieses Buch gefunden hat. Bei ihrer on-line Suche nach Büchern bei der Auckland Library gibt sie immer German als Suchwort ein um deutsche Bücher für mich zu finden. Also gemeint sind deutsche Autoren Bücher auf englischer Übersetzung. Und so hat sie Reimanns ‚Siblings‘ (Geschwister) gefunden und für mich bestellt. Also, das habe ich nun alles auf deutsch gesagt, weil meine Frau außer Hörweite war, und Emily sehr gut Deutsch versteht, obwohl sie Amerikanerin aus Cincinnati ist. Sie lebt mit meinem Bruder, Bernhard, schon seit ewig vielen Jahren in Ingolstadt, hat als junge Frau in München Medizin studiert und so meinen Bruder getroffen und geheiratet, der ebenfalls Medizin studierte. Emilys Vorfahren waren deutsche Auswanderer und somit war ihr Interesse an alles Deutsche erwacht, hat Deutsch an ihrer High-School in Cincinnati gelernt und dann auch am College Deutsch genommen (Biologie als Hauptfach) und hat sich dann als Austauschstudent an der LMU beworben und wurde so fürs Medizinstudium an der LMU angenommen. Der Rest ist Geschichte, wie das englische Sprichwort auf Deutsch heißt. Ich hatte Emily gebeten mir die deutsche Fassung von Brigitte Reimanns ‚Geschwister‘ aus Deutschland mitzubringen. Sie waren nun auf Besuch zu uns in Auckland, Neuseeland wo meine Familie und ich nun schon lange wohnen. Zum ersten Mal war ich in Neuseeland als Tourist, so um 1971, und bin dann später im Jahr 1973 echt nach Neuseeland ausgewandert. Das war alles ganz politisch einmalig, denn für meinen Auswanderungsantrag hatte ich damals keinerlei Qualifikationen – ich hatte mein Psychologiestudium an der LMU in 1970 abgebrochen, um auf Weltreise zu gehen – aber glücklicherweise war damals gerade die neuseeländische Labour Party an der Regierung, unter Norma Kirk, der eine Flottille nach Mururoa in Tahiti geschickt hatte, um gegen die französischen Atomtests zu protestieren. Das Schiff der Greenpeace war auch dabei das später im Jahr 1985 von den Franzosen unter Mitterand in Auckland in die Luft gesprengt wurde und zum Tod vom Fotografen Fernando Pereira führte. 

 

 

 

 

Zu dieser Zeit war ich der APO in München aktiv und protestierte mit einer Gruppe auch gegen die französischen Atomtests. Wir reisten sogar nach Bonn, um dort vor der französischen Botschaft einen Sarg abzustellen. Wir hatten Kontakt mit einigen neuseeländischen Aktivisten, und einer von ihnen, der Friedensaktivist Barry Mitcalfe (1930 – 1986) hatte mir zum Auswanderungsantrag einen Unterstützung Brief geschrieben. Ich hatte auch einen Arbeitsangebot via meinem neuseeländischen Freund John – den ich schon in Bali kennengelernt hatte – um in einem Motorrad Geschäft zu arbeiten. Ich hatte natürlich null Ahnung von den damals in Neuseeland beliebten englischen Motorrädern (John hatte eine Triumph Bonneville) aber das hat niemand von der neuseeländischen Einwanderer Behörde interessiert. Nur gut, dass ich gegen die französischen Atomtests war! 

 

Emily und Bernhard wussten diese Geschichte natürlich, aber jetzt im Jahr 2024 gab es auch andere Geschichten, weil wir uns seit mindestens fünf Jahren nicht mehr gesehen hatten. Das Gedächtnis an die Vergangenheit kommt aber immer wieder vorbei: da mein jüngerer Bruder und ich auf dem Gymnasium Ho’gau (Hohenschwangau) Schüler waren (ich als Heim Schüler, Bernhard als Tages Schüler) ging es eben auch wieder einmal um die ehemaligen Mitschüler, und was die alles so machen – wenn sie überhaupt noch leben. Einer meiner besten Schulfreunde, Paul, kam aus Immenstadt (ich kam aus Rottenbuch, Bernhard aus Steingaden – das kann ich wegen Wortzahl Einschränkung nun nicht erklären). Ich hatte schon lange den Kontakt mit ihm verloren. Paul und seine Freundin Maria hatten uns damals noch in West-Berlin besucht, als dort unsere Tochter Tania geboren wurde – und sie hatten uns eine sehr schon gestrickte Babydecke geschenkt, und diese Decke haben wir immer noch, und zeigten sie Bernhard und Emily, die nicht aus dem Staunen herauskamen. Bernhard sagte, dass er den Paul vor ein paar Jahren mal angerufen hatte – Paul war als berühmter Radiologe schon pensioniert – und er nach mir gefragt hatte. Daraus wurde nichts, aber als Bernhard und Emily wieder zurück nach Ingolstadt kamen, da rief Bernhard den Paul nochmals an und nun Erfolg: Emails worden ausgetauscht und weil Bernhard ihm dann ein Paar Fotos von Neuseeland geschickt hatte und Paul gefragt hatte ob er ein Paar Bilder von ihm zuschicken könne, antwortete Paul mit einem Link zu einer Bayrischen Literatur Organisation, die ein Essay von ihm veröffentlicht hatten, mit einem Autoren Bild von ihm. Das hat mir Bernhard dann weitergeleitet.

 

Aber zurück zuerst zu Brigitte Reimann: ich muss zugeben, dass ich kaum DDR Literatur gelesen habe, außerhalb von Bertolt Brecht, der vielleicht gar nicht dazu zählt obwohl er doch noch in die DDR zurückgekehrt war. Meine Abiturklasse (1969) hatte einen außergewöhnlichen Deutschlehrer – inmitten der vielen ehemaligen Nazis – der eine Abiturreise nach Ost-Berlin organisierte um dort das Brecht Stück ‚Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui‘ anzusehen. Das hat mich und sicherlich auch Paul sehr geprägt. Zur Abiturabgangsfeier verteilten wir in der Nacht zuvor selbstgemachte Plakate die nach Orwells ‚Animal Farm‘ – auch der English Lehrer war eine Ausnahme uns diese Lektüre anzuvertrauen – den berühmten Schweine-Slogan ,all animals are equal but some are more equal‘ umdrehten auf ‚all pigs are equal but some pigs are more equal‘ mit der Übersetzung drunter als ‚alle Lehrer sind gleich aber einige sind gleicher‘ mit Karikaturen die die Lehrer als Schweine zeigten. Der Direktor und seine Lehrer – außer dem Englisch und Deutsch Lehrer – drehten durch, wollten die Polizei rufen, und die angereisten Eltern waren sich uneinig wer der verrücktere war: das Direktorat oder die Schülerschaft? Die Abiturfeier wurde abgesagt und die Eltern bekamen die Abitur Zertifikate ihrer Sprösslinge draußen vor der Tür. Ich habe immer noch die Kopie des ‚Animal Farm‘. Auch eine englischsprachliche Biografie über Berthold Brecht von Frederic Ewen ist in meiner Privatbibliothek gut platziert. Und noch ein anderes prägendes Beispiel aus unserer Schulzeit: unser Geschichtslehrer wollte unbedingt nichts vom Holocaust wissen, so haben wir an das Simon-Wiesenthal-Center geschrieben und um Lehrmaterial gebeten. Sie schickten uns ein Packet, auch mit grausamen Bildern aus den Konzentrationslagern, die wir dann unserem Geschichtslehrer zeigte. Der lief sofort zum Direktor, der uns dann drohte, uns aus der Schule zu werfen. Vielleicht waren beide damals in Sonthofen und haben den Himmler angehimmelt. Zumindest war unser Direktor ein Freund von Heinrich Harrer – der erst 1996 als Obernazi entlarvt wurde – der immer bei uns in der Schule große Reden gehalten hat, vom Bergsteigen natürlich. 

 

Aufgewachsen in Bayern in Familien von Sudetendeutschen habe ich immer die Propaganda von den bösen Russen – im Jahr 2024 ist das vielleicht eine andere Frage: spinnt der Putin noch mehr wie der Biden? -  und noch böseren Kommunisten in der DDR gehört und alles gut geglaubt, bis Orwell und Brecht durch meinen Kopf gelaufen sind – dank einen paar guten Lehrern, und auch dank dem Zeitgeist der 60er Jahre die ich erst in England als Austauschschüler in1968 erlebt habe: die englischen Schüler meines Alters spielten dort die Schallplatten von den Rolling Stones und lasen über Zen Buddhismus. Sofort lies ich mein Haar lang wachsen und später als Student in Münchens Schwabing gings in die Kommunen, Drogen und Krautrock (ein paar Schüler von Bernhards Klasse waren in der berühmten Amon Düül Band) und Sex. Kein Wunder ich wanderte die nächsten zehn Jahre als ‚vergammelter‘ Hippy um die Welt. Kurz nach der Wiedervereinigung war ich auch mal in Potsdam, eingeladen vom Linguistik Institut der Potsdam Universität, weil ich in der Zwischenzeit in Neuseeland ein Experte für Polynesische Sprachen geworden war, und sie wollten ein linguistisches Projekt starten, um die verschiedensten Sprachen der Welt zu vergleichen. Potsdam war noch das echte Ost-Berlin: Schusslöcher in den Häuserwänden, noch vom Zweiten Weltkrieg, klapprige Trabis, traurige Überbleibsel von sozialistischen Parolen und der schlimme Verdacht von den einheimischen Akademikern, dass der kapitalistische Westen nun alles besser weiß – wenn auch die je beste neue deutsche Grammatik von den DDRlern geschrieben wurde (jetzt auch noch in meinem Bücherregal). Man kann also gut sehen, wo meine Sympathien liegen, und damit bin ich auch mit Bernhard und Paul einig. Reimanns ‚Siblings‘ war nun eine Lektüre die mich ziemlich erschüttert hat: die Protagonistin glaubt also ehrlich an den Sozialismus in der DDR und bringt ihren jüngeren Bruder davon ab in den Westen zu gehen – das ist noch bevor der Mauerbau als man ohne weiteres zwischen Ost- und West-Berlin reisen konnte (also wir in den 70ger Jahren in West-Berlin waren, wo unsere Tochter geboren wurde, wohnten wir in Kreuzberg, nicht weit von der Mauer – und noch einen Witz bitte: um das Kindergeld zu bekommen mussten wir heiraten und das taten wir im Bezirk Wedding, hahaha, ‚wedding‘ ist Englisch für Heiratsfeier, und da gibt’s auch noch eine andere lustige ‚wedding‘ Geschichte die Bernhard und Paul gut kennen, die aber hier nicht Platz hat wegen der literarischen Beschränkung). Also wie gesagt, der (ziemlich autobiografische) Roman von Brigitte Reimann, auf Englisch, hat mich sehr beindruckt.

 

Als Linguist kam ich dann auf die Idee dass ich die originale deutsche Fassung lesen sollte um eine These zu beweisen die mich als theoretischer Linguist und praktischer Lexikograph schon lange beschäftigt, nämlich dass im Prinzip alle Sprachen gleich sind, beruhend auf der ‚Universal Grammar (universale Grammatik)‘ wie entwickelt von meinem Freund Noam Chomsky - ich habe ja immerhin ein Buch, auf Englisch, über ihn geschrieben – und dass daher die Übersetzung von einer Sprache in die andere durchaus möglich ist, ohne dass dabei etwas verloren sein kann, so wie mythologisiert in dem dummen Film ‚Lost in Translation‘ und mehr ernst behauptet von Linguisten – die alle gegen den Chomsky sind – dass die Sprachen der Welt so verschieden sein können, dass Übersetzung kaum möglich ist. Angeblich beeinflussen die so verschiedenen Sprachen auch das Denken, und wenn man auch eine Fremdsprache lernt und studiert, so kann man sich nie in das einheimische Denken einfühlen, das auch von unzugänglicher Kultur geprägt ist. So ein Schmarrn, wie die Bayern so schön sagen, regt mich schon immer auf, und so habe ich auch Emily gefragt ob sie mir die deutsche Fassung von Reimanns ‚Siblings‘ aus Ingolstadt mitbringen kann, und das hat sie auch getan. Das habe ich dann fleißig gelesen und festgestellt, ohne Zweifel, dass die Übersetzerin, Lucy Jones, eine sehr gute Arbeit geleistet hat, so gut in der Tat, dass ich sogar erwägt habe, dass die englische Fassung vielleicht sogar besser ist als die deutsche. Übersetzer sind natürlich unsichtbar, und werden nur mit einem Wort erwähnt:

 

 

 

Solche Sachen interessieren nur Leute wie mich. Also habe ich sofort nachgeforscht, wer diese Lucy Jones eigentlich ist. Heutzutage beginnt alles mit Google und habe gleich herausgefunden, dass Lucy Jones eine ziemlich weite on-line Präsenz hat. Also ganz berühmt unter den Übersetzern, zu mindestens die heutzutage in Berlin wohnen. Da haben die englischen Auswanderer sogar ihre eigene Webseite, wo auch Lucy Jones erscheint und über ihre Übersetzung berichtet:

 

https://www.exberliner.com/books/lucy-jones-brigitte-reimann-siblings-translation-ddr-interview-penguin/

 

Und dann hat sie auch ihre eigene Webseite -zusammen mit einer deutschen Übersetzerin- wo wir noch genaueres über ihren Lebenslauf erfahren können (lieber Leser haben sie bitte Geduld, denn das wird alles gleich zur Pointe führen):

 

I grew up in Hertfordshire, England, have a BA in German and Film from the University of East Anglia where W.G. Sebald was my tutor and completed an MA in Applied Linguistics at the University of Surrey in 2008. In the 1990s, I worked as a freelance photographer (people, fashion) in Barcelona and Hamburg before continuing to work in this area and the club scene in Berlin from 1998 onwards.

 

https://transfiction.eu/lucy-jones/education/

 

Auch wenn Sie kein Englisch kennen, so können Sie doch einen besonderen Namen erkennen, nämlich ‚W.G. Sebald‘, ein Name, der mir ehrlicherweise nicht viel sagte, nur dass ich im Guardian schon mal öfters etwas über ihn gelesen hatte, so als berühmter deutschsprachiger Autor, der viele Jahre an der East Anglia Universität Deutsch gelehrt hatte, bis er bei einem Autounfall gestorben war. Also habe ich das kaum registriert, dass Lucy Jones unter W.G. Sebald Deutsch studiert hatte, abgesehen davon, dass man daher annehmen kann, dass ihr Deutsch Kenntnis sehr gut sein muss.

 

Also habe ich mein Essay so konzipiert, dass ich die deutschen und englischen Texte genau vergleichen werde, um zu beweisen, dass Übersetzung prinzipiell möglich ist – im Gegensatz zu den verrückten Linguisten, die das ablehnen, und lächerlich machen – und sogar besser sein kann als das Original. Ich möchte damit niemanden im Detail langweilen, aber Sie können ja bei mir nachfragen, wenn Sie eine Kopie davon lesen wollen, insbesonders wenn Sie zufällig auch ein/e Übersetzer/in sind und noch dazu wissen das W.G. Sebald auch Übersetzung gelehrt hat und dazu noch ein britisches Übersetzungsinstitut (British Centre for Literary Translation) gegründet hat:

 

https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/british-centre-for-literary-translation/#:~:text=The%20British%20Centre%20for%20Literary,the%20support%20of%20literary%20translation.

 

Und nun zum Zufall aller Zufälle (manche nennen es Schicksal, das in den Sternen geschrieben ist): wie schon oben angedeutet, nachdem mein Bruder mit Paul wieder Kontakt aufgenommen hatte und um Bildaustausch fragte, und dann diesen Link bekam, den ich dann aufmachte, und ich konnte es eigentlich kaum glauben:

 

https://www.literaturportal-bayern.de/journal?task=lpbblog.default&id=2882

 

ein Essay mit dem Titel:

 

Il ritorno della memoria, oder: Die Reise zu W. G. Sebalds Grab

 

Hab ich natürlich gleich gelesen – sehr gut geschrieben und sehr interessant! Und da geht mir gleich das Licht auf: W.G. Sebald in Wertach geboren, ganz in der Nähe von Immenstadt, wo Paul herkommt, Sonthofen, die muffige Kleinstadt, die Burg, die Berge der Umgebung, auch nicht so weit entfernt von unserem Ho’gauer Gymnasium, Sebald der anti-Faschist, Sebald der zweisprachige Auswanderer. Hab auch gleich den Paul per email gefragt wie er auf den Sebald gekommen ist und er sagte dass er schon früher auf ihn gestoßen ist und als er vom Sebald Weg erfahren hat – Paul und seine Frau sind große Wanderer – und auch von der Sebald Gesellschaft und deren Literatur Preisausschreiben, da hat er sich hingesetzt und hat dieses Essay geschrieben. Paul fängt unter anderem mit einer lustigen Stink Anekdote an:

 

Einen solchen Edel- und Stinkkäse hatte auch W. G. Sebald eines Tages in seinem Briefkasten vorgefunden, nachdem der englische Postbote beim Einwurf der Sendung gut hörbar den Fluch „bloody foreigners“ ausgestoßen hatte. Sein Schulfreund J. K. hatte ihm den Käs auf seinen Wusch geschickt und Sebald war aufs angenehmste von der heimatlichen Duftnote überrascht worden.

 

Allgäuer Stinkkäse ist doch weltberühmt in Oberbayern, und das ist schon wieder ein galaktischer Zufall: mein Bruder ist doch auf dem Fabrikgelände der Firma Hindelang (der Sebald Weg fängt komischerweise in Bad Hindelang an) in Steingaden aufgewachsen -warum und wieso lasse ich jetzt aus – so dass sogar meine Großmutter und ich, die in Rottenbuch wohnten -warum und wieso lasse ich jetzt aus –, immer gut mit Käse versorgt waren. ‚So'n Käs' hätte sicherlich der Sebald auf gut Bayrisch gesagt. 

 

Hierzu muss ich noch beifügen, dass ich mein Hochdeutsch schon ein bisschen vergessen habe und ich mich in meinem hohen Alter viel besser an das Sudetendeutsch-Bayrische erinnern kann – aufgewachsen bin ich ja bei dem sudetendeutschen Dialekt meiner Großmutter – das bei uns im Dorf damals bei den echten Sudetendeutschen noch echt gesprochen wurde. Es gibt ja sogar Versuche auf Bayrisch zu schreiben – Emily hat mir dazu ‚Bavarian into English‘ von Otto Hietsch geschenkt – aber als Linguist muss ich ja sagen dass echter Dialekt nur gesprochen werden kann – so wie sich die Sprachen ja auch allgemein entwickelt haben – und wenn man versucht es niederzuschreiben, so ,erniedrigt‘ man es ja, obgleich heutzutage das geschriebene Hochdeutsch oft viel ,höher‘ eingeschätzt wird. Immerhin gibt es ja eine gewisse Wiederbelebung der gesprochenen Sprache im Internet bei den Podcasts und auch bei dem Millionen von Videoclips, nur dass wie vieles im Internet alles nur Scheisse ist (,excuse my French‘, wie sie auf Englisch so sagen), so wie die vielen Demagogen gern den Hitler nachahmen, der ja immer große Reden gehalten hat, die viele Deutsche hypnotisiert haben – und ein paar anderen das Gruseln gelernt hat. Auf jeden Fall habe ich wegen meiner allgemeinen Schreibfaulheit diese Geschichte erst aufs alte Tonband aufgenommen, auf gut Bayrisch-Sudetendeutsch natürlich, und weil man so eine Tonbandaufnahme nicht ins Preisausschreiben einreichen kann, habe ich Herrn Professor Dr. (habilitiert) Valentin gebeten das alles ein bisschen ins Niederdeutsche (mit Bayrischen Beigefühl) zu übersetzen, so dass es auch die Preußen in Sonthofen lesen können. Der hat mir nur sein Zitat zugeschickt -vom Jenseits - "Mögen hätt ich schon wollen, aber dürfen hab ich mich nicht getraut" so dass ich die Aufgabe an einen anonymen Übersetzer in Wertach gegeben habe, dessen Version Sie nun lesen, und ich entschuldige mich gleich für seine Unfähigkeit, obwohl das seine beste Arbeit seit Jahren ist.    

 

Also (schreibt der Übersetzer) wir haben Bernhard und Emily nicht gebeten uns ,so’n Käs‘ aus Ingolstadt mitzubringen, weil hier in Neuseeland das ganze Land auf Milchwirtschaft steht, und auch einigermaßen guter Käse gemacht wird. Um sie zu überzeugen sind wir nach Puhoi im Norden von Auckland gefahren, wo Böhmische Auswanderer 1863 ein kleines Dorf gegründet hatten, und natürlich den Einheimischen das Käsemachen gelernt hatten. Deutsche Touristen sehen sich gerne das kleine Museum an, und trinken danach Neuseeländisches Bier im Biergarten. Die Geschichten der Böhmischen Auswanderer klingen fast so wie die in Sebalds ,The Emigrants‘ (translated from the German by Michel Hulse), nämlich die von dem Ambros Adelwarth, dem seine Familie während der Weimar Jahre nach Amerika ausgewandert waren. Jemand müsste mal eine umfassende Geschichte deutscher Auswanderer schreiben. Das Klischee ist das von den fleißigen, tüchtigen Leuten, die ein besseres Leben finden wollen als in ihrer alten Heimat, die aber irgendwie ihre Heimat nie verlassen, indem sie einfach eine ‚neue‘ Heimat aufbauen, sogar oft den Namen nach von ihrer Heimat. So ist in der Neuen Welt dann alles ‚New-, wie New Ulm in Minnesota. Die deutschen Auswanderer nach Amerika sind natürlich Legende, gut und schlecht, so wie Emily auch aus ihrer Einwanderer Geschichte genau weiß: Söhne und Töchter von Deutschen Einwanderern werden berühmt, so wie J. Robert Oppenheimer der jetzt in allen Kinos herumgeistert, und ein gewisser Donald Trump dem seine Vorfahren angeblich aus Kallstadt kommen – so wie auch die Heinz Familie, die zur einer der größten Lebensmittel Konzerne der Welt aufstiegen. Kaum zu glauben! Deutsche Auswanderer in Neuseeland haben weniger solche Eindrücke verlassen, weil Neuseeland erst von weniger als 200 Jahren von Einwanderern übernommen wurde, also ohne Einladung von den einheimischen Maori, was dann weiterhin zu Kriegen zwischen den Maori und den Einwanderern gekommen ist. Diese Geschichte des Kolonialismus in der Neuen Welt ist eng verbunden mit der Geschichte der Migration. Mit Bernhard und Emily sind wir mit unserer Tochter, Tania (in Berlin geboren), und ihrem Partner, Tuwharetoa – der Maori ist – und deren zwei Kinder (die sich auch als Maori identifizieren) nach Tokaanu gefahren wo sein anzestraler Marae ist. Als Verwandte sind wir sehr freundlich empfangen worden, weil wir wahrscheinlich ein Beweis dafür sind, dass Maori und eingewanderte Europäer gut miteinander auskommen können, auch wenn man die Geschichte der anderen Einwanderer nicht verleugnen kann, die die Maori abgemetzelt und ihr Land gestohlen haben. Sebalds Ambros Adelwarth kommt dabei nicht auf die Indianer zu sprechen. Vielleicht im tiefen Unterbewusstsein hat ihn das schon gestört, als er als alter Mann sich in ein Asyl einquartieren ließ. Andererseits könnte es eine allgemeine Auswanderer Krankheit geben, wobei das neue Leben im Endeffekt keinen Anker hat, so wie Sebalds Dr Henry Selwyn. Vielleicht hat das auch etwas damit zu tun das dem Glauben vieler indigenen Menschen widerspricht, nämlich dass das anzestrale Land – die Erde – die Gebeine der einheimischen Menschen wieder zurückfordert. Wenn man in fremden Ländern stirbt, wird man nie zur Ruhe kommen. Was aber wenn man von seinem Land vertrieben wird, so wie meine Großmutter, die nach dem 2. Weltkrieg aus Jauernig in der damaligen Tschechoslowakei vertrieben wurde, obwohl sie sicher keine Schuld daran hatte, dass der ‚sudetendeutsche‘ Faschist Henlein mit Hitler die Annexion vorbereitete? Als sie in Oberbayern ankam und auf einen kleinen Bauernhof in Rottenbuch abgeschoben wurde, da brach eine Welt zusammen. Trotzdem, auf Grund weiterer tragischen persönlichen Geschehen, hat sie mich erzogen und als sie im Jahr 1967 starb, ist meine Welt zusammengebrochen, so dass ich zum ewigen Weltenwandrer wurde, ohne Wurzel – aber vielleicht sinken meine Füße trotzdem langsam in die neuseeländische Erde. Kürzlich las ich die Geschichte von Richard Flanagan, dem australischen Schriftsteller, der aus Tasmanien kommt, und dem seine irischen Vorfahren als Sträflinge nach Tasmanien verfrachten worden waren - ohne je in ihre Heimat zurückzukommen – und unter Britischer Kontrolle fast die ganze einheimische Bevölkerung ausrotteten, wie soll man sich das alles vorstellen als Sohn von Einwanderern, die überhaupt nicht auswandern wollten? Sebalds Auswanderer, im Geist und im Körper sind alle geplagt von einem Heimweh, das sie sich nicht erklären können, vielleicht weil es dazu keine Erklärung geben kann. Emily, hingegen als amerikanische Einwanderin in Deutschland fühlt sich wohl und hat keine Pläne nach Amerika zurückzukehren, auch weil heutzutage man schnell mit dem Flugzeug von München nach Washington in ein paar Stunden fliegen kann, so dass man nicht unbedingt Deutscher ist, sondern Einwohner des ‚global village‘. Neuseeland hingegen liegt immer noch weit entfernt vom globalen Geschehen, so wollen wir nächste Woche von Auckland nach Shanghai fliegen, was mit einem Stopover immer noch 16 Student dauert. Dort wollen wir unseren Sohn, Rangi, und seine Familie besuchen, der an einer Uni Linguistik lehrt. Rangi ist in Auckland geboren, ist hier aufgewachsen, hat seine Doktorarbeit an der University of Auckland gemacht, hat längere Zeit in Taiwan gelebt und gearbeitet, hat eine Taiwanerin geheiratet, sie haben zwei Söhne, und den älteren unterrichtige ich nun regelmassig Deutsch per on-line Konnexion. Leider haben wir unserem Sohn hier in Neuseeland nie Deutsch beigebracht und so muss ich nun als Strafe das beim Großenkel nachholen, der dann dreisprachig sein wird, Englisch, Chinesisch und Deutsch. Obwohl er beteuert, dass er nicht Linguist wie ich und sein Vater werden will, könnte ich mir gut vorstellen, dass er eines Tages in Norwich landet um am British Centre for Literary Translation seinen MA in Literary Translation macht, und dann Sebalds Werke ins Chinesische übersetzt. Er könnte auch überprüfen, ob die chinesische Übersetzung aus dem Englischen meines Chomsky Buches einigermaßen gut ist:

 

 

 

 

Und (schreibt der Übersetzer aus Wertach) natürlich kann er dann mein Chomsky Buch ins Deutsche übersetzen, weil das noch niemand, wie der Valentin, gewagt hat (es gibt aber schon Türkische, Hebräische und Koreanische Übersetzungen). Sprachen sind ja wie die biologische Artenvielfalt – dumme Ökonomen haben zwar berechnet dass es ökonomisch besser wäre wenn wir nur eine Baumart, Pinus Radiata, anpflanzen, weil es viel ökonomischer wäre sie dann einheitlich mit nur einer Roboter-Maschine zu verarbeiten, aber die vernünftigeren Biologen haben darauf hingewiesen dass ein einziger Virus eine Baumart vernichten kann und wir somit überhaupt keine Bäume mehr hatten – und so ist es auch mit Sprachen: die biblische Geschichte ist ja genauso blöde, so ein Schmarrn, hätte sicherlich auch Paul Bereyter auf Französisch gesagt, dass der katholische Gott die verschiedenen Sprachen erfunden um die Menschen zu verwirren und zu bestrafen weil sie einen Turm in den Himmel bauen wollten. Einfältige Menschen sehen die Vielfalt immer als Strafe. Linguistische Vielfalt garantiert unser Überleben, so, wenn auch Englisch einem Virus unterliegt, dann gibt’s immer noch Bayrisch im Allgäu, und ein paar hundert andere Sprachen, mit denen wir uns untereinander unterhalten können, wenn wir mit Paul und Paul B (unbemerkt) den Sebald Weg entlang gehen. 

 

 

  

Vielleicht sollte man alle Straßen und Wege in Deutschland auf Namen der Ausgewanderten umbenennen, obwohl das auch seine Gefahren mitbringen könnte: Sebalds Ausgewanderten sind ja halb echt und halb fiktiv, so wie der fiktive Max Ferber der angeblich auf dem echten Frank Auerbach basiert, der sich aber geweigert hat in der englischen Übersetzung enttarnt zu werden. So lesen wir das jedenfalls bei:

 

Vertigo, where literature and art intersect, with an emphasis on W.G. Sebald and literature with embedded photographs.

 

https://sebald.wordpress.com/category/max-ferber/

 

Ist ja erstaunlich, was die Sebald Industrie alles hervorbringt (z.B. https://www.wgsebald.de/home.html ): und ich hatte gedacht, dass ich ganz originell bin  beim Nachahmen von Sebalds ‚embedded photographs‘ die ich natürlich auch so auf ein bisschen Schwarz-weiß abgefälscht habe, aber trotzdem ungefähr nach APA 7th referenziere, falls sie nicht meine eigenen sind, damit mir niemand Plagiats Vorwürfe machen kann -vielleicht könnte man das beim Sebald machen in Fall vom Ferber - , so wie es ja die Mode ist jetzt in Deutschland bei berühmten Leuten, die sich mit abgeschriebenen Doktorarbeiten verehren. Der deutsche Pass ist wohl der einzige in der Welt in dem man seinen Doktortitel vor seinem Familiennamen setzen kann. Der Herr Dr. Sebald ist wohl die echte Sache. Das hat manchmal schon einen Vorteil: mein Bruder wurde bei einem Flug nach Tokyo als ‚Doktor‘ von seinem Flugticket identifiziert, und weil er auch ein echter Arzt ist hat er gleich einem Passagier sein ,Unbewusstsein‘ diagnostiziert und ihn dazu behandelt, bis er noch am Leben in Tokyo ankam, und dafür bekam er eine echt gute Flasche Champagner. Es wäre mir peinlich, wenn ich als Doktor der Philosophie (PhD) zur Lebensrettung aufgerufen würde, und nur was Allgemeines über Leben und Tod diagnostizieren könnte. Dr. Sebalds halb fiktiver Auswanderer, Dr Henry Selwyn‘ ist auch ein anderes linguistisches Phänoma:  dass sich viele Auswanderer englische Namen annehmen (oder zumindest anglisieren) um nicht im Telefonbuch aufzufallen, oder vielleicht weil die Englischsprachigen immer Schwierigkeiten haben fremde Namen auszusprechen. Zumindest also sollte Deutschland offiziell zu Germany umbenannt werden, was ja viel besser klingt als die ungewisse Etymologie des ‚Deutschen‘ als ‚täuschen‘, und so würden sich die Englischsprachlichen weniger wundern, warum Englisch eine Germanische Sprache sein soll. Sebalds Ferber ist da schon ein bisschen extrem, wenn er sagt, dass er - wohl aus Protest -  kein Wort Deutsch mehr gesprochen hat, seit er Deutschland als Kind verlassen hat, denn Deutsch als Sprache ist ja nicht schuld daran, dass die Nazis Deutschland für immer ruiniert haben. Ich glaube auch kaum an das, was einige Literaturkritiker dem Sebald zugeschoben haben, nämlich dass seine deutsche literarische Sprache der des 19. Jahrhunderts ähnelt, weil er eben angeblich das ‚Neudeutsche‘ der Nachkriegszeit – immer noch von den Nazis infiziert – vermeiden will. Sein Stil, der mich schon ein bisschen an Nietzsche erinnert – die langen Schachtelsätze – ist eigentlich doch unkompliziert, weil man seine manchmal langen Gedankengänge gut nachvollziehen kann. Wie auch mein Freund der Chomsky immer betont, die Sprachkompetenz als ein biologisches Organ ist keiner Ideologie unterworfen, im Gegensatz zu dem was man mit der Sprache alles verrücktes aussagen kann, von Hitler bis wer-weiß wohin, und so ist es ja kein Widerspruch, dass W.G. Sebald und Brigitte Reimann das alles so schön auf Deutsch geschrieben haben und dass Michel Hulse und Lucy Jones das alles so schön ins Englische übersetzt haben. QED.