About the historical and cultural significance of Sibylle Lewitscharoff ’s work

Abstract

The presented article determines the place of the works of Sibylle Lewitscharoff , the winner of the 2013 Büchner Prize, in the modern German literature. Her literary fame is associated with important and controversial theses on the ways of European social and cultural development. Thus, in the book 36 Righteous People (1994), S. Lewitscharoff transformed the Hebrew legend about special people to whom humanity owes its existence, and gave her own interpretation of it in relation to the history of Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. Her novel Pong (1998) became a satirical projection on a progressive lifestyle. S. Lewitscharoff metaphorically showed the loss of the meanings of existence experienced by her contemporaries. The writer’s cultural skepticism was fully refl ected in the novel Consummatus (2006). The ancient context of refl ections is connected in the work with references to the national history of the twentieth and twenty-fi rst centuries. Thanks to this, the writer managed to expand the extensive metaphor of spiritual uncertainty, the cultural precariousness of modern existence. The playful nature of many of Lewitscharoff ’s texts does not hide the distinct separation of dark and light, divine and diabolical principles of life in them. At the same time, the writer is aware that the Christian doctrine in modern life is most often perceived as a formality, as a set of rituals and myths. Similarly, her public theses on the importance of the spiritual component of human existence often provoke sharp criticism from neoliberal publicists. In this regard, the fact that S.Levitscharoff was awarded the Buchner Prize is a landmark event that shows the importance of the presence of an author with an unambiguous moral position in the modern literary process.

Keywords

• sibylle lewitscharoff
• the modern german literature
• christianity