The plague in literature – love and other contagions

The plague in literature – love and other contagion nThe scholar story “Corona” does not bring us closer to six works of world literature, in which it is not only, but also to infectious diseases. Guido Kalberer0 KommentareDie Novella “death in Venice” by Thomas Mann, portrays Die a gentle. Houses on the Rio della Sensa, with the Casa Tintoretto (with plaque).Photo: Keystone

Matteo is in quarantine. He has a bad flu. Or is it the Coronavirus? His thoughts are scared to death. The consolation of the view through the window on the city, in the “strange silence” thing was a return, and his library, the open worlds gives. As a book dealer he has a lot of books, and this give him in the lonely time of the arrest an “existential force”. While his niece Carla and a neighbor doing his daily errands, has Matteo with a “chronology of literature on the disease”.

Martin Meyer has written a story with the unambiguous title of “Corona”. The former arts editor of the NZZ peeped out again and again, ironically, blinking, behind the protagonist: “He was slender and of medium Size, still handsome in spite of his seventy years.” The existential power of his narrative is less in the literary design than in the scholar analysis. Because Matteo’s passage through the European history of it comes to meetings with six works of world literature. While the well-read author this brings closer, remains Matteo in particular, the role of the Bearer of the messages.

From the Bible to Venice

introducing The six read values books, the “Matteo Meyer” are well-known: the Holy Scripture with their ten biblical Plagues, “Il Decamerone” by Giovanni Boccaccio, “The black spider” by Jeremias Gotthelf, “death in Venice” by Thomas Mann , “to discover The plague” by Albert Camus and for many it is probably still – “A Journal of the Plague Year” by Daniel Defoe. Even if the critics have pointed out in recent weeks repeatedly on these works, it creates Meyer, however, new references in the individual works and between them. “Corona” is less narrative as an explanation.

What remains to Corona? The insight that we should use the little time that remains to us, that’s right. The reading is undoubtedly one of The new book, one discovers that Kafka is one of the favorite writers of Matteo and Proust wrote most of their time in quarantine, invites you to a literary and historic walk.

Martin Meyer: Corona. Narrative. Kein & Aber, Zurich In 2020. 205 p., 30 Fr. Comment please Login to comment