Tra “Heimfahrt” e “Zeitreise”: la temporalità nel racconto d’esilio “Der Ausflug der toten Mädchen” di Anna Seghers

Abstract

This article deals with the time dimensions of the short story Der Ausflug der toten Mädchen by Anna Seghers, a masterpiece of exile literature. According to the state-of-the-art, this text is not only a mere account of the destinies of the participants to the journey, but the literary elaboration of the writer’s personal story as well, and it is characterized by a surrealistic patina. Linguistic analysis shows that this is also due to a specific use of the time connectives and verb tenses, in particular the so-called future past and epic preterit.

Keywords

• Epic Preterit
• Exile Literature
• Future Past
• German Time Connectives
• German Verb Tenses