Items related to Bottom's Dream
Synopsis
I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was, says Bottom. I have had a dream, and I wrote a Big Book about it, Arno Schmidt might have said. Schmidt s rare vision is a journey into many literary worlds. First and foremost it is about Edgar Allan Poe, or perhaps it is language itself that plays that lead role; and it is certainly about sex in its many Freudian disguises, but about love as well, whether fragile and unfulfilled or crude and wedded. As befits a dream upon a heath populated by elemental spirits, the shapes and figures are protean, its protagonists suddenly transformed into trees, horses, and demigods. In a single day, from one midsummer dawn to a fiery second, Dan and Franzisca, Wilma and Paul explore the labyrinths of literary creation and of their own dreams and desires.
Since its publication in 1970 "Zettel s Traum/Bottom s Dream" has been regarded as Arno Schimdt s magnum opus, as the definitive work of a titan of postwar German literature. Readers are now invited to explore its verbally provocative landscape in an English translation by John E. Woods."
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Review
"A truly witty and innovative writer."
"Arno Schmidt . . . was an enormously talent in the fictional line of cruel comedy that runs from Rabelais through Swift and Joyce or to say it straight out: a major European novelist.""
"Reading Arno Schmidt can be addictive."
"A giant of postwar German literature."
"Arno Schmidt . . . was an enormously talent in the fictional line of cruel comedy that runs from Rabelais through Swift and Joyce or to say it straight out: a major European novelist." -"New York Review of Books"
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"A giant of postwar German literature." -"New York Times"
"Arno Schmidt . . . was an enormously important talent in the fictional line of cruel comedy that runs from Rabelais through Swift and Joyce or to say it straight out: a major European novelist." -"New York Review of Books""
"Reading Arno Schmidt can be addictive."-"Times Literary Supplement"
"A truly witty and innovative writer." -"Chicago Tribune"
"(A) treasure house of post-Joycean language-games, the projection of a complex and crotchety personality, a unique blend of fiction, conversation pieces and literary criticism, humorous and obsessed, intellectually adventurous and stuffily provincial, polyglot and archetypically German" -S. S. Prawer, "Times Literary Supplement"
About the Author
Arno Schmidt (1914 1979) was born in the working-class suburb of Hamburg-Hamm, Germany. Drafted into the army in 1940, he served in the artillery at a flak base in Norway until the end of the war. After being held as a prisoner of war for eight months, he worked briefly as an interpreter for the British military police. His first book, "Leviathan", was published in 1949. In 1958 Schmidt moved to the village of Bargfeld near Celle. Over the next twenty years, until his death, he wrote some of the landmarks of postwar German literature, many of which are available in translation from Dalkey Archive Press.
Arno Schmidt was born in 1914, in the working-class suburb of Hamburg-Hamm, Germany. Drafted into the army in 1940, he served in the artillery at a flak base in Norway until the end of the war. After being held as a prisoner of war for eight months, he worked briefly as an interpreter for the British military police. His home in Lauban and, more importantly for him, his library had been lost in the war, and he and his wife were officially classified as Displaced Persons. In 1946 they found refuge in a one-room apartment in Cordingen in Lower Saxony. In 1958 Schmidt moved to the village of Bargfeld near Celle. Over the next 20 years, until his death in 1979, he wrote some of the landmarks of postwar German literature.
John E. Woods won both the 1981 American Book Award and PEN award for his translation of Schmidt's "Evening Edged in Gold" and has published a new translation of Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks".
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