Aleph (Jan 2024)
Die wiedergefundene Zeit: Transhistorizität und Anachronie in Florian Illiesʼ1913. Was ich unbedingt noch erzählen wollte
Abstract
Florian Illies’ story “1913. Was ich unbedingt noch erzählen wollte”, which was published in 2018, depicts striking events shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, but also the disillusions of the intellectual bourgeoisie in the context of European modernity as well. One of the characteristics of the text is its anachronistic-heterotopic construction of time, which is based on both a transmedial and multi-perspectival principle of narrativity. In this regard, Illies refers to Marcel Proust’s famous work“ In Search of Lost Time” in a recurrent manner, which appeals to the reader in order to rediscover this pre-war period in its context. Therefore, Illies’ historicity can be regarded as an intersubjective, transmedial textual mode. The aim of this article is to focus on the kaleidoscopic, multidimensional and rhizome-like mode of representation of History in the text. It depicts a cyclicality and symbolism of the changing seasons that illustrate the contradictory effect of the contemporaneousness of the uncontemporary. Therefore, the question may be asked whether the author’s historiography can be considered as the impetus of an epochal, textual and medial demarcation.
