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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Manfred Jurgensen, a multiple-award-winning writer, editor, literary critic and translator, was born on the border between Denmark and Germany in 1940, a 'midnight child'. He has always been sensitive to boundaries and what's beyond the borders, emotionally and physically.
He has chosen to reveal his life history - to a very large extent dominated by World War II and its aftermath - in a highly original form. The protagonist and his lifetime experiences are wrapped within a semi-fictional presentation through which he philosophises about the nature of 'coincidence' as a life-force. Set in Switzerland, this imaginative narrative begins just after the author suffers a nervous breakdown while delivering a doctoral seminar at the University of Basle.
In a luxurious sanatorium for mentally disturbed patients called Humanitas, he is asked to write about his life experiences, including his own awareness of the Nazi era and what it meant to be one of 'Hitler's children'; he is regularly interviewed by a Board of distinguished psychiatrists based on these accounts. An involuntary prisoner, he longs to achieve his freedom and be reunited with his wife. ' (Source: Publisher's website)
He has chosen to reveal his life history - to a very large extent dominated by World War II and its aftermath - in a highly original form. The protagonist and his lifetime experiences are wrapped within a semi-fictional presentation through which he philosophises about the nature of 'coincidence' as a life-force. Set in Switzerland, this imaginative narrative begins just after the author suffers a nervous breakdown while delivering a doctoral seminar at the University of Basle.
In a luxurious sanatorium for mentally disturbed patients called Humanitas, he is asked to write about his life experiences, including his own awareness of the Nazi era and what it meant to be one of 'Hitler's children'; he is regularly interviewed by a Board of distinguished psychiatrists based on these accounts. An involuntary prisoner, he longs to achieve his freedom and be reunited with his wife. ' (Source: Publisher's website)
Notes
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This memoir has a semi-fictional presentation.
-
Dedication: In memoriam Max Frisch (1911-91)
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Epigraph:
Everything can be told,
but not the true story of one's life.
-Max Frisch
Artists sometimes sense they must
revise their work where they love
-Rainer Maria Rilke
Our doubt is our passion and
our passion is our task.
The rest is the madness of art.
-Henry James
Why do we tell stories
so brazenly about ourselves?
I am preparing
myself for some arcanum
in my own story.
-Vincent Buckley
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Epigraph:
I am a Book
I am not the one who's crazy!
-Philip Roth, My Life as a Man
A Harvard professor kept badgering
Dylan Thomas about the meaning of symbols.
'Mr Thomas, on like three you say...'
Thomas finally exploded:
'Don't you appreciate that to me
it's not a symbol, it's real?'
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Large print.
Works about this Work
-
WriteTurn
2011
single work
review
— Appears in: Brisbane News , 2 - 8 March no. 823 2011; (p. 23)
— Review of Five Weeks at Humanitas 2010 single work autobiography
-
WriteTurn
2011
single work
review
— Appears in: Brisbane News , 2 - 8 March no. 823 2011; (p. 23)
— Review of Five Weeks at Humanitas 2010 single work autobiography
Last amended 27 Feb 2020 11:30:00
Subjects:
-
Flensburg,
cGermany,cWestern Europe, Europe,
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