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Author Marinić: "I'm here"
The book fair is a place of discourse.
This year we have to let it take place virtually.
Instead of a conversation at the trade fair stand, intellectuals and writers have agreed to provide information in a SPIEGEL questionnaire.
The first was the author Annie Ernaux, then the political scientist Herfried Münkler and Philippe Lançon, survivors of the terrorist attack, responded to "Charlie Hebdo".
Now the writer Jagoda Marinić follows.
What is your current state of mind?
I am waiting for the real days.
This, I think every day, can't be my life.
But that's an old feeling in me that I understood in a poem by Hilde Domin:
On the other side of the moon
, your real days are wrapped in golden clothes
it says there.
That always accompanies me.
But never as strong as it is now.
And how do you feel about the state of your nation?
My nation - this is something I don't have.
But the country I live in is in a kind of self-tearing mode.
This impression is probably reinforced by the too much time I've been spending on social media and online since March.
What we call social discourse is decomposing.
I have the impression that the topic is changing (corona, racism, climate, ...), but the speed remains consistently high without generating results or leading to a goal.
Sometimes I wish for the afternoons as a teenager in this nation, when the most important thing was whether Goran Ivanisevic wins against Boris Becker.
Corona, climate change, social inequality, digitization - where do you see the greatest threat to a humane society?
Social inequality and with it the almost lost belief in the political possibilities to do something for social justice.
Those who demand humanity should naturally first see people and their place in the value system of a society.
Do you think of the problems in terms of people or what do you put in their place?
Justice should mean giving everyone a dignified place because they are entitled to it.
By birth, not by status or status. The wealth of the few is a question of social justice that has an impact on the climate, digitization, etc. The climate emergency, for example, cannot be countered without asking questions about social justice.
If politics hesitates, then they like to do so with the argument: "But jobs!"
Industrialization has created numerous jobs, but these are idle jobs today.
The hollow positions of this system are inhumane.
You keep it up because you don't dare other ways to ensure people's survival.
In recent years, however, so much wealth has been generated that if one wanted to radically fight social inequality, one could also achieve the climate target of 1.5% with the means of sustainable growth, for example.
The twenties of the last century were sometimes called the golden, then the
roaring twenties.
What adjective can you think of for our decade?
The mirrored age.
The mirroring twenties?
Not a nice adjective, no.
But in these times I see us wandering through a maze of mirrors.
Everything that is supposed to be the "world" for us is mirrored, enlarged, reduced, distorted and represented in multimedia.
Also "the self."
Franz Kafka's trial today would tell about a Josef K. who takes selfies in front of the door, sits between a smartphone and other LED displays, or has to contend with simulated world experiences.
Even less than in Kafka's time can one find answers to life in oneself - or with a guard - because everyone is full of images of world distortions.
Experience is only possible when there is a self that can process it.
I assume that today, in this flood of images, permanent networking, staging, analysis of staging, representation and criticism of representation, there can be no more clarity.
I could have simply answered: who still knows who he is.
Every book fair has a theme, what do you think will be the central theme this autumn?
Proximity.
And with it loneliness.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité - which of the three terms of the French Revolution needs a revival?
What is missing today is the idea of brotherhood.
There are already tendencies to revive that: Fridays for Future do that. Also #MeToo.
However, it comes from women, so I would call it "sisterhood".
If I may tell you an anecdote: A few summers ago a childhood friend was in Croatia with his family.
We arranged to meet for dinner in a fishing village.
My mother was there, and when we were looking for a parking space, which is not easy in these small fishing villages in midsummer, a lady, about my mother's age, waved us over to a private parking lot.
We parked there.
I was standing on the promenade with my German friends when we noticed my mother was missing.
We turned around: she was still standing in the parking lot with this strange woman.
They talked as if they had grown up together, even their body language had something similar.
My friend looked at me: "Standing next to each other like for ages."
We laughed because it was strange, this familiarity of these two mature women who, just because of their place of residence, must have had different life experiences.
Today I see in the familiarity of these two women such a fundamental agreement that one cannot have it much differently on earth than the other, even if she had it a little better.
This banal realization that existential experiences of life will affect us all, no matter what we do or in what we have established ourselves.
We are fixated on the differences today.
We rarely manage to overlook them, hence: more sisterhood.
What problem are you thinking about right now?
I am currently working on my next novel, the first time in eight years, and I would like to tell about Germany, my nation, as you call it, and my parents' generation, among other things.
But: How do you tell about people who are completely insignificant in a historical sense, who do not appear in any history book?
What was the last book that occupied you?
Ta-Nehisi Coates "Between the world and me."
I've been interested in the book for years, due to the tonality in which Coates speaks to his son in this book.
This warmth, despite the politico-analytical text.
And Annie Ernaux´ book "Der Platz"
Is the pandemic conveying any message?
With every experience, people convey a message.
I doubt whether this message will be the message of the pandemic.
I rather assume that nature is indifferent.
People need the stories, the meaning - but nature doesn't.
Man needs it, or if I may say it a little more pathetically: the soul.
Is there a belief that you have remained true to since your youth?
Loyalty.
Series replace novels, podcasts replace newspapers - would you agree?
I suspect that many would like that because it would tell of progress.
Philip Roth said shortly before his death that in about thirty years the novel would take on the social status that poetry has today.
Do you know the editions of poetry?
I hate the idea of such a society.
I can also easily tell you why: The novel is a specific form of the human imagination.
This freedom to hardly need any other material for a work of art than imagination and writing tools.
Few art forms have freedom.
I don't want to go any further now, I like podcasts because they brought a piece of oral tradition back into everyday life, in Germany people almost didn't know how to tell a story anymore, podcasts have recaptured us, so nice, that there is.
But I would much prefer all of this as an extension of the existing offer than as an evolution.
What should the media report more about?
About options for action for citizens.
Shouldn't the media also focus on the question of what should be done in the face of Moria, for example, instead of sending more pictures of children in these miserable camps?
This end in itself of the reports seems out of date to me.
That also explains to me the migration to social media.
How has Corona affected your everyday life?
I'm afraid Corona has ruined many of my displacement efforts.
Repression is a legitimate means of affirmation of life, Corona has brought some fears more into the consciousness: fears about older people who you love, fears about the resilience of the world you step into every day.
Corona probably did what the climate crisis should have done for me, but my displacement engine was running too well.
It's not an easy year. Was there a particularly beautiful, private moment and would you describe it?
In the first few months I hardly had any personal contacts, social distancing, no more going to cafes, restaurants, no domestic trips, all that. In August I decided to travel to the land of my ancestors anyway, as I've been doing since childhood .
People live there who after each summer I don't know whether they will still be there next summer.
At the same time, I could have been a danger for these people this summer, Croatia had far fewer corona infections than Germany in August.
In front of the house of the oldest person I love, I stood around perplexed and dared not get closer than ten feet to my favorite uncle.
I could be one of those people who carry the virus and don't know, infect it, I saw it and had nothing but caution on my mind.
My uncle is quite old now, but he still has eyes like Paul Newman.
With these eyes he focused on me and then came up to me with this incredible will to live in the body, hugging me tightly.
The last thing he wants to fear at his age is to die, he said.
You can do that, he scolded.
He's also pretty good at scoffing.
Do you know a favorite line or a spell that will help you get through these times?
I'm there.
What gives you courage
I am not a brave person.
But life has always made its way.
I now dare to put that into the world as a general truth, also for this time - or to expect it from the world.
Icon: The mirror
