Lesung: Der Koffer (Romanauszug)
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C2.2 · 21 of 34
Hören: Literarische Lesung
Lesson · 4 rules · about 4 min
Hör eine literarische Episode einmal und folge ihr von den Tatsachen über das Symbol zur Bedeutung: ein gepackter Koffer, der einunddreißig Jahre gewartet hat.
- 1Zuerst das Konkrete: Zahlen, Daten, Gegenstände
- 2Der symbolische Gegenstand: Bild + „solange …“
- 3Der Text deutet sich selbst: nicht …, sondern …
- 4Das Ende spricht in Handlungen
Why this matters
Eine Lesung, einmal gehört: Ein Autor liest eine vollständige Episode aus einem Roman über Anton und einen braunen Lederkoffer, der seit einunddreißig Jahren oben auf dem Schlafzimmerschrank steht, gepackt in einer Nacht im März 1993 und nie ausgepackt. Der Text bewegt sich in drei Schritten, und die Fragen folgen ihnen. Zuerst das Konkrete: Zahlen, Daten, Gegenstände und Handlungen (einunddreißig Jahre, März 1993, zwei Hemden, ein Wörterbuch, die Fotografie seiner Mutter, der Anhänger WIEN – MONTREAL, zwei Umzüge). Dann der symbolische Gegenstand: Der Koffer wird zu einer Wetterfahne, die nach Westen zeigt, und kleine Einzelheiten wie „Er war leichter, als er ihn in Erinnerung hatte“ bereiten die Bedeutung vor. Schließlich deutet sich der Text selbst, zweimal, mit „nicht …, sondern …“, und die Antwort ist immer die sondern-Hälfte, nie das verneinte Nomen. Der letzte Absatz zeigt die Folge in Handlungen, nicht in Worten. Hör zuerst auf die Zahlen, dann auf das Bild, dann auf die Antithese, also den Gegensatz, und bleib bis zur letzten Zeile dabei.
Translation
The suitcase had stood on the wardrobe in the bedroom for thirty-one years, between a hatbox and a carton of Christmas decorations. It was made of brown leather, scuffed at the corners, and from the handle still hung the tag of an airline that had long ceased to exist: VIENNA – MONTREAL, in a handwriting Anton barely recognised as his own. He had packed it in March 1993, in a single night: two shirts, a dictionary, the photograph of his mother. The next morning the letter from the firm had arrived, the promotion, the office on the fourth floor with a view of the canal, and Anton had lifted the suitcase onto the wardrobe – just for a few weeks, as he told himself, until everything had been cleared up. Nothing was cleared up, and nothing needed to be. He married Ruth, the children came, the flat became too small and later too big again. Twice they moved, and twice Anton carried the suitcase down the stairs himself, without opening it, and in the new flat put it right back up on top, where it could be seen from the bed. Ruth asked about it only once. "That's my Canada," he said, and she laughed, because she thought he was joking. On nights when he could not sleep he looked up at the dark outline and had the feeling that the suitcase was looking back. He could not have said what was actually waiting for him inside it. The shirts had long since stopped fitting him, the dictionary was out of date, and he had never once missed the photograph in all those years. The suitcase was no longer a piece of luggage but a weathervane: as long as it stood up there, something in Anton's life still pointed west. When Ruth suggested last autumn that they clear out the wardrobe because their daughter wanted it, Anton climbed the ladder and lifted the suitcase down. It was lighter than he remembered. For a while he stood with it in the hallway like someone waiting for a taxi. Then he sat down on the bottom rung of the ladder and opened the buckles. That afternoon he understood that for thirty-one years he had not been keeping a journey, but the man who could have made it. It was not Canada that had held him fast, but the idea that he could still become someone else at any time. And this other man, he understood, had not been waiting in the suitcase. He had been walking beside him the whole time, up and down the stairs, patient and a little reproachful. Anton unpacked the shirts, put the dictionary on the shelf and the photograph of his mother on the chest of drawers. He carried the empty suitcase down to the cellar. He had cut off the tag beforehand.
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Exercise
Hören: Literarische Lesung · C2.2
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