Essays and speeches by Daniel Kehlmann published as a book

The title quote comes from the last Wallenstein monologue from Schiller's drama, which Kehlmann includes excerpts in the first printed text, namely in his Marbach Schiller speech given two years ago: “I think of taking a long sleep / Because these last days were torture big, / Make sure they don't wake me up too early.” Kehlmann analyzes this sentence extensively and adds dryly: “Wallenstein will not live to see the morning.”

A few sentences further, the author is with Tom Stoppard and Alfred Döblin, quotes from a CIA report and recalls a moment from his own successful novel “Measuring the World” when he lets Alexander von Humboldt see a sea monster – and he immediately decides to do so , preferring not to have seen it: “Enlightenment always means ignoring, always means repressing, not out of blindness, but out of a conscious decision.”

It is this ability to move nimbly from the hundredth to the thousandth, to take readers along in these leaps of thought and to surprise them again and again, which forms the common thread of these texts, which were created for a wide variety of reasons. In 2017 he thinks about Donald Trump's inauguration (and can now state in a footnote that “not much in this text has proven to be wrong”), but he much prefers to focus on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Ludwig Börne and Karl Kraus or the “Terminator” films.

He rarely becomes combative. But then with astonishing success. When he accepted the Anton Wildgans Literature Prize from the Austrian Industry on May 15, 2019, he used his acceptance speech to launch a frontal attack against the “young chancellor,” who endured everything from his right-wing coalition partner to stay in power, and addressed it directly to Sebastian Kurz: “Don’t you want to end the farce?” “Since the so-called Ibiza video was made public on May 17th and the coalition between “When the ÖVP and FPÖ broke up, my attempt at a public objection in the heart of the Austrian People's Party immediately became obsolete in the most pleasing way,” read the footnote that has now been added.

The author, who celebrates his 50th birthday on January 13th, has already received many awards, and in his acceptance speeches he always shows himself to be worthy of them. But he is also in demand as an opening speaker and laudator. And so, of course, the eulogy that Daniel Kehlmann gave on October 22, 2023 in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt for the Peace Prize winner Salman Rushdie is also printed, and in which, after an entertaining tour de force through the life and work of the author, he called “Salman a veritable Rushdie fictional character.” called.

Kehlmann's essays and speeches are absolutely worth reading. “Make sure they don’t wake me up too early” is more suitable as a wake-up read than as a bedtime read. And the next person who is given the task of giving a eulogy for Kehlmann should dress very warmly…

(By Wolfgang Huber-Lang/APA)

(SERVICE – Daniel Kehlmann: “Make sure they don’t wake me up too early. Essays and speeches”, Rowohlt, 304 pages, 25.70 euros)

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