Peer Hultberg
Peer Hultberg ( born November 8, 1935 in Vangede, Gentofte Municipality, Denmark, † December 20, 2007 in Hamburg) was a Danish writer, Slavic and psychoanalyst.
Life
Born in Vangede north of Copenhagen, grew Peer Hultberg in Horsens and from 1947 to 1953 in Viborg, where his father was a judge. He studied Romance languages , music and Slavic ( with Czech as the main language ) at the University of Copenhagen and at the University of London. In 1967 he received his doctorate with a thesis on the style of the Polish Waclaw Berent author.
From 1963 to 1968 he taught Polish literature in London from 1968 to 1973 as professor in Copenhagen. At times he lived in Skopje, Warsaw. From 1973, he was, among other things, the CG Jung Institute in Zurich, trained as a psychoanalyst; then he opened a practice in Frankfurt. 1984 could be Hultberg down as a writer and analyst in Hamburg.
He lived for over twenty years together in a community of artists living and with the Swiss painter, photographer and conceptual artist Alfred Wäspi who illustrated several of his books. Hultberg died in December 2007 from cancer.
Work
Peer Hultbergs literary work is attributable to European modernism. His breakthrough came in 1985 with the voluminous novel " Requiem", which contains 537 chapters and in the original edition had a circumference of 611 pages. Each of these short chapter is assigned a new voice, a person with individual points of pain or misfortune. The various biographies in this case have no immediately apparent relation to the other chapters and individuals.
This principle varied Hultberg in 1992 in his so-called " novel in a hundred texts " called " The City and the World". The book is composed of short portraits of a hundred fictional people who have lived in the 20th century in the Jutland town of Viborg. An authorial narrator distances reported and untouched by their CVs, which gradually getting stronger bond together. With a keen sense of life -critical situations turning points of biographies are described, ending almost all tragic. In this sense, the book's title, which alludes to the traditional blessing Urbi et Orbi of the Pope, deeply ironic to be understood as. The individual, often archetypal contoured figures come with their characteristics generated by each respective short and color the narrative speech, which in turn establishes itself as the "voice " that lifts, falls silent again quickly and end up in the choir of Viborgschen song hardly perceived as a separate statement will. The fragmentary text elements condense into a tissue, which ultimately can only lend the readers structure and context. The Danish literary history Litteraturens Veje noticed that Hultberg makes a mockery of his characters and their failure.
" Preludes ", which appeared in 1989, is a non-traditional biographical narrative about the childhood years of the Polish composer and pianist Frederic Chopin. The novel consists of a plethora of small sections in which the feelings and thoughts of the nascent artist are played back with impressionist art. This structure reflects not least the oeuvre of Chopin, who also mostly small, unfinished compositions - Preludes, improvisations, waltzes, etc. - created.
After a break of 15 years in which Hultberg wrote mostly several dramas and radio plays, appeared in the fall of 2007 another major prose work, the novel " One night, " about the decline of a family. The manuscript was already incurred the mid-seventies, but was rejected by the Danish publisher Hultbergs. The German translation of the book, which was very well received ( " a stunning, large, moving book " ) was published six months before the Danish original, which was established in early 2008 under the title Vredens nat ( Night of wrath ) delivered.
Hultberg translated from German, English, French and Polish, among other works of Witold Gombrowicz.
In an obituary, the Copenhagen daily Politiken praised him as a " great writer with roots in continental Europe." The Neue Zürcher Zeitung described him as "one of the most original voices of Scandinavian literature."
Works
- Mytologisk landskab med Daphne forvandling, 1966
- Desmond! , 1968
- Requiem ( Requiem ), 1985
- Slagne veje ( gauges ), 1988
- Præludier ( Preludes ), 1989
- Byen og Verden ( The City and the World ), 1992
- Vredens nat ( one night ), 2008
- Selvbiografi ( autobiography ), 2009
- Brev (Letters ), 2009