Words of Memory
Notes de la rédaction
The “Words of Memory” section invites us to reflect on the most painful aspects of history, on memory, but also on witnessing, through selected quotations from famous writers and thinkers, some of them lesser known, others not. It proposes to clear a path for thought that goes against the grain of received ideas, as far from easy optimism as from demobilising pessimism.
Texte intégral
“… Wie lange steht der Jüngling – Dieter, ein Deserteur — auf der Klippe, über dem Meer? – Das Wasser, das geleuchtet hat, erbleicht, und der Wind wird kälter. Ein Tag ist zu Ende, die Sonne will Abschied nehmen, sie sendet ihr Abschieds-licht. Es ist golden und rot, wie das Licht der Frühe – : nicht nur letzter Gruß eines scheidenden Tages, sondern auch das Versprechen des kommenden. Die Wolken am Horizont – eben noch rosig, purpurn und violett – werden fahl. Auf dem Felsen aber, wo der Jüngling steht, liegt Glanz – : ein letztes Licht, oder ein erstes? Man unterscheidet es kaum. Auch der Knabe weiß es noch nicht — oder nicht mehr: Diese brechenden Strahlen, die, zärtlich und streng zugleich, seine Stirn berühren – : meint ihre Botschaft Anfang oder Ende? Sind sie das glühende Vergehen einer Herrlichkeit, die sich verbraucht hat und zur Ruhe will? Oder bringen sie den harten Segen der Morgenröte, Gnade und Befehl des neuen Tages?”
Quote from: https://imwerden.de/pdf/mann_klaus_der_vulkan_1981__ocr.pdf
1These are the last lines of The Volcano, one of Klaus Mann’s finest novels, alongside Mephisto and The Turning Point. The book ends in January 1939. Dieter, the young deserter, had hesitated for years to share the fate of his friends who had left Germany in 1933. Finally, however, he decided to cross the Alps. Now the young man stands on a cliff above the Mediterranean sea, alone, while in his homeland, in the heart of Europe, the abyss of total war and genocide is opening up.
2In The Volcano Klaus Mann tells the story of the geographical, intellectual and psychological wanderings of a group of young Germans who spent the 1930s in Exil. Klaus Mann was the right person to write about the drama of emigration. Immediately after Hitler came to power, the hypersensitive young writer left Germany and traveled to France, the Netherlands and the United States to become one of the leading voices of the ‘other’ Germany. In personal letters to the novelist, Stefan Zweig and Klaus’ father Thomas Mann praised The Volcano. Like their young heir, the older writers, who also went into Exil, understood that the old Europe had disappeared forever and that soon the magic mountains of European culture would start to erupt and spew their deadly fire.
3“The demand of the moment is dehumanization, and hardening of the heart”, Klaus Mann wrote in The Volcano.
4Was there any redemption to be found on the eve of catastrophe? Interestingly, in a philosophical move not unlike that of his contemporaries Walter Benjamin and Simone Weil, in his novel Klaus Mann started to explore the realm of the mystical. One of the German migrants whose fate is described in the book, a young German who travels to Spain to fight with the republicans, carries in his rucksack not only Das Kapital but also Goethe’s Faust. And like in Faust, angels make a marked appearance in The Volcano. One angel, who self-identifies as the “angel of the neurosis of uprootedness”, shares the fate of the emigrants. Aware of the horrors that the immediate future holds, the angel shows one of them, cautiously, in all uncertainty and fragility, the possibilities of a new day.
Table des illustrations
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| Titre | Klaus Mann |
| Crédits | © All right reserved |
| URL | http://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/docannexe/image/12810/img-1.jpg |
| Fichier | image/jpeg, 377k |
Pour citer cet article
Référence papier
Maarten Van Alstein, « Words of Memory », Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire, 138 | 2024, 34-35.
Référence électronique
Maarten Van Alstein, « Words of Memory », Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire [En ligne], 138 | 2024, mis en ligne le 15 avril 2025, consulté le 13 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/12810 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/11x5p
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