Albert Vigoleis Thelen (1903–1989)

Zu Lebzeiten hatte Thelen mit seinem Buch zunächst gar nicht so viel Erfolg. Bei der Gruppe 47 wurde er von oben herab behandelt.
Doch das Buch ist eine Art Longseller, wird von namhaften Autoren (Siegfried Lenz, Paul Celan, Thomas Mann) empfohlen und hat auch ein sehr interessantes Thema.
„Das Buch schildert den Aufenthalt Thelens und seiner Frau Beatrice während der Jahre 1931–1936 auf Mallorca. Die beiden landen als Bohème-Emigranten und verlassen fünf Jahre später während des spanischen Bürgerkrieges fluchtartig die Insel. In diesen Jahren lebt das Ehepaar in ärmlichen und abenteuerlichen Verhältnissen unter manchmal zwielichtigen Figuren. Es macht die Bekanntschaft mit zahlreichen interessanten Menschen aller Gesellschaftsschichten und übt, um überleben zu können, je nach Gegebenheiten unterschiedliche Berufe aus, unter anderem als Schreiber, Fremdenführer, Sprachlehrer und Hotelmanager. In ihren Erlebnissen spiegelt sich die Zeit des damaligen Mallorca genauso wider wie ihre Bedrohung durch den aufkommenden Nationalsozialismus.“ (Wikipedia)
Ich fand, dass das Buch tatsächlich eine Art Schelmenroman ist. Einerseits dieses in den Tag hinein leben völlig sorglos. Andererseits dann aber im zweiten Teil das dritte Reich, das die Sorgen von außen hereinbringt. Das hat mich schon in Grundzügen an den Simplicissimus Teutsch erinnert.
Leider habe ich ein Hörspiel gehört. Das ist zwar gut bearbeitet, aber hat eben einen völlig anderen Charakter, als ihn wohl Buch und Hörbuch hätten, da es interpretiert ist.… (altro)

With encomia from Paul Celan and Thomas Mann on the dust jacket, we can think The Island of Second Sight is either a great book or they were Thelen's friends. Both are somehow true.

How well did Thelen know all the writers, philosophers, historians, mystics, religious adepts, and others who fill these pages? The book is, after all, described as a novel, so the appearance of actual people, including the author, indicates the work occupies that peculiar space between fiction and fact, or memoir, where unreliability and truth hold sway. It's in this elusive, amorphous area that The Island of Second Sight invites us to wander for many many pages.

It can't be called great, I think, but Thelen's friends can be forgiven for liking it so much, as I liked it too. The passing suggestions of depression and other emotional difficulties the author suffers can be taken to explain the more obsessive sections, which seem far longer and more minutely detailed than seems warranted by the subject matter, and often involve Vigoleis, as the protagonist is known in the work, taking perhaps too much advantage of his auditors credulousness and the magnetism of a foreigner, even in Mallorca with its considerable expat population.

This population grows as Hitler rises to power and World War II approaches, and Vigo is at risk, as are other Germans living outside of their fatherland. The escape of the protagonist and his ethereal wife Beatrice who is constantly present yet largely unseen, from Mallorca provides a good deal of excitement in the latter parts of the book.

In the earlier parts excitement comes from the girlfriend of Beatrice's brother Zwingli, and from the extreme poverty Vigo and Beatrice endure when they're expelled from Zwingli's household by his in every way spectacular girlfriend.

The translation gives us a diction that veers wildly into the colloquial and abusive from the more usual elevated and detailed: I had to look up more words than in anything I've read recently. Donald O. White is reflecting the narratorial zigzags, we must think – a difficult task. Yet it's always a pleasure to read.

The Island of Second Sight is not a book one can read fast, but taking one's time allows the kaleidoscope of Mallorcan, or Mallorquin, as the author likes to say, life without money in the time of fascism, from which we are frequently transported by extended digressions worthy of Tristram Shandy, to appear in all its various dimensions, including the melancholy and pitiful.
… (altro)

After reading Thelen's wonderful Die Insel des zweiten Gesichts

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I was eager to regale myself with some more of his writing. Easier said than done. Using the Florida university library loan system, I did get access to a copy of Glis-Glis, which has the subtitles Eine zoo-gnostische Parabel (A Zoo-Gnostic Parable) and Entstanden als Fingerübung eines Seh-Gestörten (Arisen as Finger Exercise of a Visually Disturbed Person). As is clear already in these titles, Thelen plans to continue his masterful word games in this brief text.

What Thelen offers the reader is a very digressive, ironic parable about a fairy tale which becomes The Book of Books (unmistakably modeled on the Bible), about its Maker (unmistakably modeled on the Christian God), and about the less than happy consequences for mankind, which, by a slippery series of word associations, is called glis-glis, glis esculentus , and a near infinite list of names ending with "mouse", for the essence of the "little animal" (mankind) is Nagen (gnawing). After that, no small number of other rodents come into play. And play it is; I had to laugh.

Stylistically, Thelen indulges in word play of every kind, including one not so often employed in Insel : an aural word play in which not the meaning but the sound of the words is the toy. My impression is that he uses this not only because it gives him pleasure, but also to further deflate above-mentioned objects which are ordinarily taken excruciatingly seriously. He also gives us sentences which constantly negate themselves, which twist back upon themselves and deny, negate, deflate everything said before, leaving little standing in each paragraph-long sentence. And then come a few relatively straight paragraphs, particularly when he is giving a zoologist's precise description of rodents... From a rodent which hibernates seven months of the year to legends of hibernating humans to insomnia and back to rodents. You get the picture - none of it is serious.

This text is a fairly enjoyable jeu d'esprit which offers little to gnaw on.… (altro)