Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 “Schwimme mit mir hinüber zu den Hütten unserer Nachbarn”: Colonial Islands in Sophie von La Roche's Erscheinungen am See Oneida (1798) and Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie (1788)
- 2 “Hier oder nirgends ist Amerika!”: America and the Idea of Autonomy in Sophie Mereau's “Elise” (1800)
- 3 A “Swiss Amazon” in the New World: Images of America in the Lebensbeschreibung of Regula Engel (1821)
- 4 Amalia Schoppe's Die Auswanderer nach Brasilien oder die Hütte am Gigitonhonha (1828)
- 5 Inscribed in the Body: Ida Pfeiffer's Reise in die neue Welt (1856)
- 6 Mathilde Franziska Anneke's Anti-Slavery Novella Uhland in Texas (1866)
- 7 “Ich bin ein Pioneer”: Sidonie Grünwald-Zerkowitz's Die Lieder der Mormonin (1887) and the Erotic Exploration of Exotic America
- 8 Seductive and Destructive: Argentina in Gabriele Reuter's Kolonistenvolk (1889)
- 9 Inventing America: German Racism and Colonial Dreams in Sophie Wörishöffer's Im Goldlande Kalifornien (1891)
- 10 Aus vergangenen Tagen: Eine Erzählung aus der Sklavenzeit (1906): Clara Berens's German American “Race Melodrama” in Its American Literary Contexts
- 11 “Der verfluchte Yankee!” Gabriele Reuter's Episode Hopkins (1889) and Der Amerikaner (1907)
- 12 Reframing the Poetics of the Aztec Empire: Gertrud Kolmar's “Die Aztekin” (1920)
- 13 Synthesis, Gender, and Race in Alice Salomon's Kultur im Werden (1924)
- 14 Land of Fantasy, Land of Fiction: Klara May's Mit Karl May durch Amerika (1931)
- 15 An Ideological Framing of Annemarie Schwarzenbach's Racialized Gaze: Writing and Shooting for the USA-Reportagen (1936–38)
- 16 “Fighting against Manitou”: German Identity and Ilse Schreiber' Canada Novels Die Schwestern aus Memel (1936) and Die Flucht in aradies (1939)
- 17 Mexico as a Model for How to Live in the Times of History: Anna Seghers's Crisanta (1951)
- 18 East Germany's Imaginary Indians: Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich's Harka Cycle (1951–63) and Its DEFA Adaptation Die Söhne der Großen Bärin (1966)
- 19 Finding Identity through Traveling the New World: Angela Krauß's Die Überfliegerin (1995) and Milliarden neuer Sterne (1999)
- 20 Discovery or Invention: Newfoundland in Gabrielle Alioth's Die Erfindung von Liebe und Tod (2003)
- 21 Tzveta Sofronieva's “Über das Glück nach der Lektüre von Schopenhauer, in Kalifornien” (2007)
- 22 “Amerika ist alles und das Gegenteil von allem. Amerika ist anders.” Milena Moser's Travel Guide to San Francisco (2008)
- Bibliography: The New World in German-Language Literature by Women
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
21 - Tzveta Sofronieva's “Über das Glück nach der Lektüre von Schopenhauer, in Kalifornien” (2007)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 “Schwimme mit mir hinüber zu den Hütten unserer Nachbarn”: Colonial Islands in Sophie von La Roche's Erscheinungen am See Oneida (1798) and Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie (1788)
- 2 “Hier oder nirgends ist Amerika!”: America and the Idea of Autonomy in Sophie Mereau's “Elise” (1800)
- 3 A “Swiss Amazon” in the New World: Images of America in the Lebensbeschreibung of Regula Engel (1821)
- 4 Amalia Schoppe's Die Auswanderer nach Brasilien oder die Hütte am Gigitonhonha (1828)
- 5 Inscribed in the Body: Ida Pfeiffer's Reise in die neue Welt (1856)
- 6 Mathilde Franziska Anneke's Anti-Slavery Novella Uhland in Texas (1866)
- 7 “Ich bin ein Pioneer”: Sidonie Grünwald-Zerkowitz's Die Lieder der Mormonin (1887) and the Erotic Exploration of Exotic America
- 8 Seductive and Destructive: Argentina in Gabriele Reuter's Kolonistenvolk (1889)
- 9 Inventing America: German Racism and Colonial Dreams in Sophie Wörishöffer's Im Goldlande Kalifornien (1891)
- 10 Aus vergangenen Tagen: Eine Erzählung aus der Sklavenzeit (1906): Clara Berens's German American “Race Melodrama” in Its American Literary Contexts
- 11 “Der verfluchte Yankee!” Gabriele Reuter's Episode Hopkins (1889) and Der Amerikaner (1907)
- 12 Reframing the Poetics of the Aztec Empire: Gertrud Kolmar's “Die Aztekin” (1920)
- 13 Synthesis, Gender, and Race in Alice Salomon's Kultur im Werden (1924)
- 14 Land of Fantasy, Land of Fiction: Klara May's Mit Karl May durch Amerika (1931)
- 15 An Ideological Framing of Annemarie Schwarzenbach's Racialized Gaze: Writing and Shooting for the USA-Reportagen (1936–38)
- 16 “Fighting against Manitou”: German Identity and Ilse Schreiber' Canada Novels Die Schwestern aus Memel (1936) and Die Flucht in aradies (1939)
- 17 Mexico as a Model for How to Live in the Times of History: Anna Seghers's Crisanta (1951)
- 18 East Germany's Imaginary Indians: Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich's Harka Cycle (1951–63) and Its DEFA Adaptation Die Söhne der Großen Bärin (1966)
- 19 Finding Identity through Traveling the New World: Angela Krauß's Die Überfliegerin (1995) and Milliarden neuer Sterne (1999)
- 20 Discovery or Invention: Newfoundland in Gabrielle Alioth's Die Erfindung von Liebe und Tod (2003)
- 21 Tzveta Sofronieva's “Über das Glück nach der Lektüre von Schopenhauer, in Kalifornien” (2007)
- 22 “Amerika ist alles und das Gegenteil von allem. Amerika ist anders.” Milena Moser's Travel Guide to San Francisco (2008)
- Bibliography: The New World in German-Language Literature by Women
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
“Über das Glück nach der Lektüre von Schopenhauer, in Kalifornien” is a cycle of six poems by the Bulgarian-German poet Tzveta Sofronieva written in 2005 and first published in 2007 in the German literary journal Akzente. The cycle, prompted by the poet's reading of Schopenhauer—perhaps the ultimate representative of European pessimism—during an extended stay in California, attempts to define happiness amid the surroundings of the New World, reflecting on the extent to which happiness can exist independently of place and on the cultural and linguistic parameters of the concept of Glück. The first and last poems in the cycle, which consider, respectively, motherhood and language(s) as nomadic sources of happiness, act as a frame for an exploration of loci of happiness in the New World. The cycle always has an eye to the presence of the Old/old in the New/new and investigates the kinds of happiness afforded by America in all its complexity: the awesome natural beauty of Yosemite, the mode of life on a Navaho Indian reservation, the excesses of Hollywood, and—referencing Lion Feuchtwanger's story “Venedig (Texas)” (1946)—the traces of the Italian Venezia in Los Angeles's Venice Beach.
The physical circumstances surrounding the cycle's creation and subsequent publication are not insignificant. Sofronieva, born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1963 and resident in Berlin since 1992, took her first serious steps to becoming a German exophonic poet—that is to say, a poet who is not a native speaker of German, but who adopts it as a literary language—in the United States during a 2005 residency at the Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades.
- Type
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- Information
- Sophie Discovers AmerikaGerman-Speaking Women Write the New World, pp. 261 - 274Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014