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ABSTRACT
Daniel Kehlmann's best selling novel Measuring the World has been widely discussed as an example of the recent surge in German travel writing and as a historical novel. This article suggests understanding the book as an exploration of the poetics of fiction writing in opposition to the ‘naïve realism’ (Kehlmann) that dominated German literature after 1945. Through a densely woven web of literary references, from Goethe to South America's magic realism, from Walter Benjamin to E. L. Doctorow and Jonathan Franzen, the novel reaches out to literary traditions far beyond the common framework of German postwar writing. Ultimately, it should be perceived as a narrative that explores or measures the world of literature.
Notes
1. My translation of Kehlmann's original, which reads: “Literatur ist eine der ernstesten Angelegenheiten der Welt, aber sie ist doch immer auch ein Spiel; gerade die Klassische Moderne begreift das Schreiben als ein gleichsam musikalisches Verknüpfen von Motiven, Bildern, Wiederholungen und Bezügen. Je dichter das so entstehende Netz, insbesondere im Roman, desto gelungener das Werk.”
2. The English translation of Kehlmann's novel was released one year later in the United States. The author will be referred to in the following as DK, his novel as MW. References and quotes come from the English edition of the novel.
3. “Kehlmann recounts the lives of the two main protagonists as Plutarch narrated the biographies of great Greeks and Romans, as bioi paralleloi. The lines cross, although they were running for a long time strictly without touching each other.” My translation.
4. I want to express my gratitude to Dr. Axel Wittmann, Secretary of the Gauß Society in Göttingen, for this information and many other helpful hints.
5. This edition was available along with many others long before Humboldt was rediscovered through Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Humboldt-Projekt in 2004.
6. From November 2006 to February 2007 Daniel Kehlmann was writer in residence at the Deutsches Haus at NYU in New York City. During this time he took part in the course “Meet the Author” and provided many insights into his writing during his discussions with the students. I also had the pleasure of numerous conversations with the author, for which I want to express my appreciation and gratitude.
7. My translation.
8. Uwe Wittstock lists some of the most obvious inventions in Kehlmann's novel, discussing them under the aspect of authenticity and reality vs. aesthetic necessity of the literary composition (118–19).
9. Nickel provides an excellent discussion of the relationship between literary fiction and historical facts (“Beerholms Vorstellung” 160–63).
10. I wish to thank Dr. Axel Wittmann, Secretary of the Gauß Society in Göttingen, for this information.
11. Among others, Kehlmann has written on Salinger, Vonnegut, Updike, Tom Wolfe, Raymond Carver, and Harold Bloom.