Introduction

Summary

entschuldije; aber nich zuviel Teehurie auf einmal; immer hübsch=gemischt

(ZT 243)

Arno Schmidt (1914–1979) is not a well-known figure in literary studies in this country. Although he has been recognized as probably the single most important experimental novelist in German since the Second World War, there is still little criticism on his work. Despite the increase in the amount of published Schmidt research over the past ten years in Germany, his works have never attracted a large readership. The linguistic density and the sophisticated cultural reflections of his texts seem to prohibit his writings from ever becoming popular. But Schmidt has at least finally gained recognition as a “giant of postwar Germany,” whose important role in the period after 1945 was characterized in these words by the Germanist Jeremy Adler:

If Heinrich Böll was the conscience of the nation and Günter Grass put political engagement on the literary agenda, Schmidt was the grand experimenter. He was a writer of arcane but brilliant practice, an uncompromising innovator whose learning, wit and originality place him in the front rank of modern European fiction.

Christoph Hein, a well-known German novelist who received the prestigious Büchner price in 1997, devoted his acceptance speech to Schmidt: “Er ist so einzigartig, daß es in der gesamten deutschen Literatur nicht seinesgleichen gibt und keine Schublade der Literaturkritik und -wissenschaft, in der er mit einem zweiten zu pressen ist. Ein Autor, dessen Werk die Zeitgenossen allesamt zu Schülern macht.”