9/11 in European Literature: Negotiating Identities Against the Attacks and What Followed

383 Pages·2017·3.138 MB·English

by  Svenja Frank (eds.)

EDITED BY SVENJA FRANK
9/11 in European Literature
Svenja Frank
Editor
9/11 in European
Literature
Negotiating Identities Against the Attacks
and What Followed
Editor
Svenja Frank
Promotionsprogramm
Textwissenschaften
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Göttingen, Germany
ISBN 978-3-319-64208-6 ISBN 978-3-319-64209-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-64209-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017949457
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
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C
ontents
Introduction: 9/11 in European Literature 1
Svenja Frank
Part I September 11 Seen Through European Media
and Semiotic Theory
9/11: The Interpretation of Disaster as Disaster
of Interpretation—An American Catastrophe Reflected
in American and European Discourses 37
Rolf G. Renner
The Wind of the Hudson. Gerhard Richter’s September
(2005) and the European Perception of Catastrophe 61
Ulrich Kinzel
‘Burning from the Inside Out’: Let the Great
World Spin (2009) 83
Eoin Flannery
v
vi CONTENTS
Part II Literary Translations of September 11 into
Europe’s National Contexts
Seeing Is Disbelieving: The Contested Visibility of 9/11
in France 105
Jean-Philippe Mathy
Cultural and Historical Memory in English and German
Discursive Responses to 9/11 131
Sandra Singer
The Post-9/11 World in Three Polish Responses: Zagajewski,
Skolimowski, Tochman 159
Ewa Kowal
The Islamic World as Other in Oriana Fallaci’s “Trilogy” 181
Charles Burdett
Part III Negotiating European Identity After September 11
Through the Double Other of the US and Islam
National Identity and Literary Culture After 9/11:
Pro- and Anti-Americanism in Frédéric Beigbeder’s
Windows on the World (2003) and Thomas Hettche’s
Woraus wir gemacht sind (2006) 207
Birte Christ
The Mimicry of Dialogue: Thomas Lehr’s September.
Fata Morgana (2010) 253
Svenja Frank
Europe and Its Discontents: Intra-European Violence
in Dutch Literature After 9/11 283
Maria Boletsi
CONTENTS vii
Tourist/Terrorist: Narrating Uncertainty in Early European
Literature on Guantánamo 323
Philipp Hubmann
Appendix: Extract from Giovanna Capucci’s
Twin Towers: poesie, with translations by Gillian Ania 357
References 381
Index 383
A e
bout the ditor
Svenja Frank is a member of the Ph.D. programme “Text Studies” at
Göttingen University, Germany, and works on the reflection of liter-
ary criticism in fictional texts. After completing her studies in European
Culture, English and German Literature, she has taught Modern and
Contemporary German literature at Freiburg University, the University
of Latvia and Oxford University. Among her research interests are
German and comparative contemporary literature, intermediality and lit-
erary theory.
ix
L f
ist of igures
Introduction: 9/11 in European Literature
Fig. 1 Paolo Sorrentino: La grande bellezza 2
Fig. 2 Richard Drew: The Falling Man 3
9/11: The Interpretation of Disaster as Disaster
of Interpretation—An American Catastrophe Reflected
in American and European Discourses
Fig. 1 Thomas Hoepker: Young People on the Brooklyn
Waterfront on Sept. 11 50
The Wind of the Hudson. Gerhard Richter’s September (2005)
and the European Perception of Catastrophe
Fig. 1 Gerhard Richter: September 74
Fig. 2 Gerhard Richter: 25. Febr. 01 76
xi
Introduction: 9/11 in European Literature
Svenja Frank
Loud music, people dancing, performance art interludes: Rome’s
high society is celebrating the city, life, and, above all, itself. In Paolo
Sorrentino’s film, La grande bellezza (2013) [The Great Beauty], the
viewer follows the ageing writer Jep Gambardella to the parties of Italy’s
jet set who, just like the film, subordinates everything to sensual pleas-
ure. This portrayal of Rome’s decadent beauty, in many ways a cinematic
homage to Fellini, turns the ‘eternal city’ into one eternal party.
For a few seconds during one of these debauched feasts, amidst the
hustle and bustle of the partying people, a work of art in the host’s
house catches the viewer’s gaze, containing a reference to 9/11, a refer-
ence that because of its clever subtlety and the fleetingness of the shot
has not yet yielded any commentary. In comic-like abstraction, the paint-
ing shows a figure in a pose identical to The Falling Man in the picture
of the same title by US photographer Richard Drew, falling, however,
not in front of the World Trade Center’s North Tower in New York, but
in front of the Colosseum in Rome (Figs. 1 and 2).
Using the analogy of the Roman Empire and the US superpower,
with the locus of panem et circenses as the very symbol of decadence,
S. Frank (*)
Promotionsprogramm “Textwissenschaften”, Georg-August-Universität
Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
© The Author(s) 2017 1
S. Frank (ed.), 9/11 in European Literature,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-64209-3_1