[ book tip by Translated Tips ] Karin Harrasser about the german edition of "Chronik der Gefühle" - it has not been translated into any other language
Alexander Kluge reduces the most important question of the 20th century - about how an individual can retain or gain the ability to act on his or her own despite or even through the cultural forces of order - to an impressively simple formula: 'what connects individual voluntary acts?' (chapter 7, volume 1). The two volumes of the Chronik der Gefühle [Chronicle of Feelings] contain hundreds of often extremely absurd and strange stories that are arranged in the first volume by theme and in the second by 'folders'. And they revolve without exception around the aforementioned theme. Kluge has perfected the aesthetic strategy of 'suspended judgment' and moves with instinctive sureness along the boundary between documentation and fiction. He recounts the life stories of historical personalities with the same concentrated restraint as he does episodes from the Crimean War, tales of peculiar deaths, spy stories and conversations with cooks. Moreover, these volumes are an effective antidote against conspiracy theories, for they suggest that everything is actually connected somehow, and yet no controlling power holds things together. It is all a web of intentions and purposes, coincidences and motivations, combined with the laws of nature. These volumes both document and diagnose the times, and are a calm appeal for individual will and time, no matter how anachronistic this might sound at the beginning of the 21st century.

[ book info ] Kluge, Alexander: Chronik der Gefühle. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 2000 .