Novel
Niembsch oder Der Stillstand
Not translated into English
Peter Härtling · 1964
Synopsis
Nikolaus Niembsch, the Austrian poet known by the name of Lenau, returns from America. Caught between memory and the need to live again what he has already lived, he travels from Hungary to Vienna, Stuttgart and Baden-Baden, torn between a married woman whom he loves and a young girl to whom he becomes engaged. He sees himself as Don Juan and seeks in the renewed embrace a way out of time, while everything, in him and around him, tends towards standstill.
Context
The book was published in 1964 by Goverts, in Stuttgart, with the subtitle “a suite”: its eight parts bear the names of movements, from the prelude to the sarabande. The character is inspired by the poet Nikolaus Lenau, born Niembsch, but the facts and figures are freely transposed, and the book presents itself as an existential reading rather than a biography. It has been seen as one of the first postmodern works in German. Bernard Lortholary's translation was published by Seuil in 1966 and reissued in 1985.
Who it is for
A short novel of about two hundred pages, written in the third person very close to the poet's consciousness, in separate parts.
Prizes and reception
German Critics' Prize in 1964; in France, Best Foreign Book prize in 1966 for the translation.
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