Marcel Reich-Ranicki

peevish

Wikipedia article "Marcel Reich-Ranicki".

マルツェル・ライヒ＝ラニツキ（Marcel Reich-Ranicki, 1920年6月2日 ヴウォツワヴェク）はポーランド出身のドイツの文芸評論家。マルセル・ライヒ＝ラニツキ、ラニツキーとも表記される。グルッペ47(Gruppe 47)の一人。ユダヤ系。ドイチェ・ツァイト、フランクフルター・アルゲマイネなどで論評する。

[編集] 著作

• "Deutsche Literatur in Ost und West"（東西ドイツの文学）(1983年)
• 「とばりを降ろせ、愛の夜よ　20世紀ドイツ文学7人のパイオニア」（丘沢静也／訳、岩波書店、2004年7月）
• 「わがユダヤ・ドイツ・ポーランド　マルセル・ライヒ＝ラニツキ自伝」（西川賢一／訳、柏書房、2002年3月）
• 「褐色の空の下で」（岡田浩平／編、郁文堂、1994年4月）

Literature | 10.05.2008

Chancellor Merkel Pays Tribute to Germany's "Literary Pope"

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: No longer fighting about who'll get the word: Angela Merkel and Marcel Reich-Ranicki

Chancellor Angela Merkel paid a tribute to Germany's best known and most feared literary critic who in many ways personified the restoration of cultural values in the country after World War II.

"The time is ripe to honor an icon," said Merkel in her speech praising the extraordinary career of Marcel Reich-Ranicki.

The German news magazine Stern awarded a lifetime achievement award to the 87-year-old literary critic at its annual gala event held for some 1,200 prominent guests at the Hamburg Schauspielhaus theatre on Friday.

"Reich-Ranicki's oeuvre is not simply the sum of all the powerfully eloquent eulogies and damning reviews in his 50-year career," Merkel said. "[He] inhabits culture and wants everybody else to participate in his passion."

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: As a young man, Reich-Ranicki spent three years in the Warsaw ghetto

For many Germans, Reich-Ranicki -- the son of a Polish Jew and grandson of a German rabbi, who spent three years in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II and later served as a volunteer in the Polish army -- symbolizes the way in which Germany managed to rebuild itself as a pluralist society after the horrors of the Nazi period.

He has also been seen as a beacon of high culture in a globalized society increasingly preoccupied with commercial success and mass-produced entertainment.

"My wife and I survived thanks to literature, poetry and music," the critic said in response to Merkel's speech.

After a brief stunt in the Polish Communist Party following the end of the war, Reich-Ranicki returned to Germany in 1958 to pursue what would be a stellar career and to become, in the words of a colleague, "Germany's most read, most feared, most observed, and therefore most hated literary critic."

Who would have thought?

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: At the age of 87, Reich-Ranicki is still an engaging public speaker

Visibly moved by the chancellor's speech, the critic -- who is often jokingly referred to as Germany's "literary pope" -- told an anecdote about how he once had dinner with young politician Angela Merkel in Bonn.

"She didn't let me get a word in edgewise," he said. "And that requires some skill."

In his long and prolific career, Reich-Ranicki has also become a media star, in part thanks to the popular, high-brow television show "Literary Quartet," in which 4 literary critics discussed and fought about the merits of contemporary literature.

His popularity and success, however, came to him as a bit of surprise.

"I never expected that I would one day become a literary critic in Germany," he said. "And I believe, Mrs. Merkel also never expected to become chancellor."

Merkel, who is a physicist by training, grew up in the former East Germany.

A bad-tempered star

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: When he didn't like a book, he made sure everybody heard that

Numerous talents, such as the poet Ulla Hahn, were either discovered or promoted by Reich-Ranicki over the years in which he has reigned as the supreme authority on German literary affairs. But many an established writer, too, has experienced the wrath of a peevish critic.

In 1995, Reich-Ranicki published his devastating account of Günter Grass' novel "Das weite Feld" (The wide field) describing the writing of the future Nobel prize winner as "illegible" and his novel as "worthless prose from the beginning to the end."

The public controversy over the role of the critic and the absolutist manner in which Reich-Ranicki is known to pronounce his judgments was further stirred up by the publication of Martin Walser's novel "Tod eines Kritkers" (The Death of a Critic) in 2002, a vaguely disguised pamphlet against the towering figure of German literary criticism which ends with his death.

"I am no judge, I am more of a public prosecutor or a defense lawyer," Reich-Ranicki said. "[I am also] the attorney for the authors that I am anxious to defend, and occasionally the prosecutor, but -- I must put it pompously -- on behalf of literature."

A man of 20th century

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Reich-Ranicki doesn't seem to have warmed up to the 21st century

In many ways, however, Reich-Ranicki remains a man of the past century.

When asked in a recent interview for his thoughts about the proliferation of lay criticism on the Internet and numerous reader reviews which appear on various commercial Web portals and online booksellers such as Amazon, he responded: "My dear, don't get mad at me, but I have no idea what you're talking about."

Germany's "literary pope" claims that he has never visited the Web site dedicated to his work (reich-ranicki.com) and that he never uses the Internet.

"When I need something from the Internet, I ask my secretary to get it for me," he said.

DW staff (tt)

In another photo, taken in December 1992 at the Poetry Center of the
92nd Street Y, where I introduced Grass at a reading from "The Call of
the Toad" — he read in German, and I followed with the English
translation — we are similarly dressed and appear to be the exact same
size. And there's one more photo, from Behlendorf — Grass's wife, Ute,
took the picture. My wife, Janet, and my youngest son, Everett, are
with us, and Günter is with his ever-present pipe and his dog; there's
a cow in the background. It was October 1995 — not long after the
famous cover photograph on Der Spiegel of that senile tyrant but
celebrated critic, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, ripping apart Grass's novel
"Ein Weites Feld." (Some journalists in Germany resented the marketing
of Grass's "Too Far Afield" as a political novel about German
"reunification" — as it was still called at the time.)