Wolf, Christa
Entry updated 16 January 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1929-2011) German author, most of whose creative life was spent in East Germany, where her career was difficult but ultimately – though perhaps not until her last decade – recognized in moat-defensive reunited Germany as triumphant. "Selbstversuch" ["Self-Experiment"] (February 1973 Sinn und Form), filmed for Television as Selbstversuch (1990) directed by Peter Bird, is a radical exercise in Transgender SF, a Feminist grappling with the complexities involved, with an invocation of Cyborg rhetoric (see subsequent work by Donna J Haraway; see also Women SF Writers).
Most of Wolf's novels are nonfantastic, and very few make any significant use of familiar sf patterns; but an austere interaction of narrative strategies identified with Fantastika in general can be detected in a novel like Kein Ort. Nirgends (1979; trans Jan van Huerck as No Place on Earth 1982), which confabulates a meeting between Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) and Karoline von Günderrode (1780-1806), both of whom committed Suicide in real life. Kassandra: Vier Vorlesungen eine Erzählung (coll 1983; trans Jan van Huerck as Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays 1988) recounts and at times deeply modifies the familiar narrative of the Fall of Troy through the eyes of a person whose invariably accurate predictions (see Precognition) are never believed. As usual with Wolf, there is an abiding doubleness – a recurrent echoing of the fate of dwelling in and half-advocating the goals of Communist East Germany – that gives the tale, and her work as a whole, its sometimes unremitting ardor; a Feminist presentation of the loss of matriarchy also enriches the text. Similar strategies are apparent in Medea: Stimmen ["Medea: Voices"] (1996; trans John Cullen as Medea: A Modern Retelling 1998). [JC]
Christa Wolf
born Landsberg an der Warthe, Brandenburg, Germany [now Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland], 18 March 1929
died Berlin: 1 December 2011
works (highly selected)
- Kein Ort. Nirgends (Darmstadt, Germany: Herrmann Luchterhand, 1979) [hb/]
- No Place on Earth (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1982) [trans by Jan van Huerck of the above: hb/]
- Kassandra: Vier Vorlesungen eine Erzählung (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1983) [coll: hb/]
- Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1988) [coll: trans by Jan van Huerck of the above: hb/]
- Medea: Stimmen ["Medea: Voices"] (Darmstadt, Germany: Herrmann Luchterhand, 1996) [hb/]
- Medea: A Modern Retelling (New York: Doubleday/Nan A Talese, 1998) [trans by John Cullen of the above: hb/]
links
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