Die Welt 18.09.2007

Crime writer Petros Markaris paints a grim picture of his country after the election victory of Kostas Karamanlis. "Greece is in its worst crisis since the military dictatorship. And the crisis is social, political and environmental crisis. Peculiarly the blame is shared by the citizens, cities, communities, political parties and successive governments alike. They are all involved in the corruption. We are not talking about a close circle with ties to the government; everyone was involved in the fires which devastated great swathes of the country over the summer, almost everyone is out to line their pockets at the expense of society, the state and nature. (...) The theatrical cycle in Antiquity famously consisted of a tetralogy: three tragedies and a satirical drama, or satyr play at the end. In Euboea, the Peloponnese and Attica, we sat there powerlessly and watched three tragedies. Now the elections have rounded off the cycle."


Frankfurter Rundschau 18.09.2007

In an interview with Arno Widmann, Rüdiger Safranski, who has just published a book "Romantik", explains why '68 was a Romantic movement for him. "Right the way through to the RAF. In its internal circulars it referenced Melville's novel to describe its struggle as the fight against the white whale. This method of blending literary images with political events in order to lend profundity to the political was something the poet Novalis described: "When I give the commonplace a higher meaning, the customary a mysterious appearance, the known the dignity of the unknown, the finite the illusion of the infinite, I romanticise it."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 18.09.2007

For art historian Werner Spies, Cardinal Meisner's comment on "degenerated culture" in his service Friday in the Cologne's Cathedral (more here) merely gives voice to latent tendencies: the ignorance of the Catholic Church in face of modern art: "This attack on Gerhard Richter's life's work (the Cathedral now houses a new stained glass window by Richter - ed) only reveals the hypocrisy of the Church, which in the last fifty years was forced to greet practically everything with liberality because behind any criticism of modern art lay the disgrace of that baneful word 'degenerate'. Neither Picasso's variations on the crucifixion scene in Grünewald's Isenheim Altar, nor Dali's 'Corpus Hypercubus' could cause such a stir because they never made it into the sanctuary of the church. What a relief that a work like this has appeared in a place that belongs to and concerns us all, and has finally forced the Church to take a stance."


Die Tageszeitung 18.09.2007

Wiebke Porombka is clearly delighted with the International Literaturefestival Berlin, which came to an end on September 16. The event featured Pulitzer Prizewinners Paul Muldoon and Jorie Graham, French Goncourt prizewinner Jean Rouaud, Nobel Prizewinner Wole Soyinka, Michael Ondaatje, A. L. Kennedy, Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, Chuck Palahniuk and many others: "Festival organiser Ulrich Schreiber is an enthusiast. And what he promised last year he has delivered today. This enthusiasm also spread to his team (comprised of a good sixty female interns, as commentators have not failed to notice)... The moderators, for their part, were not only fantastically prepared, they welcomed their authors as if they had just graduated from Schreiber's hosting school."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 18.09.2007

Hans-Peter Kunisch sums up the International Literaturfestival Berlin, highlighting Benjamin Kunkel's reading in Tegel Penitentiary: "The 40 inmates, all of whom had assembled voluntarily, sometimes found the convoluted text rather 'German.' Nonetheless they clearly appreciated the fact that two such nice young men had come all the way to see them, promised a subscription to n+1 and would no doubt talk about their reading in a German prison for a long time to come."