Tagebuch des Grolls. A Diary of Pique 1983-1984 E-Book

Carl Djerassi

• Herausgeber: Haymon Verlag
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 113

Beschreibung

Am 8. Mai 1983 wird Carl Djerassi von der Liebe seines Lebens, Diane Middlebrook, verlassen. Der Naturwissenschaftler und "Vater der Pille" macht sich an ein für ihn neuartiges Experiment: Gekränkt und unglücklich nimmt er Rache in Form einer "poetischen Vulkaneruption". Er beginnt, Gedichte zu schreiben, die in jeder Hinsicht offen sind - zum einen, weil sie einen höchst persönlichen und intimen Einblick in die Gefühlswelt Djerassis erlauben, zum anderen, weil sie formal frei gestaltet sind. Dieser Gedichtband ist das lyrische Tagebuch eines Mannes, der voll Zorn und Selbstmitleid, aber auch mit schonungsloser Ehrlichkeit das Ende seiner Beziehung betrauert, bis Diane 1984 zu ihm zurückkehrt und ihn wenig später heiratet. Erst mehrere Jahre nach ihrem Tod 2007 hat sich Djerassi abermals mit diesen Gedichten beschäftigt und sie überarbeitet. Das Zusammenspiel seiner beiden Lebenssprachen eröffnet neue Blickwinkel auf den Wissenschaftler, den Kunstkenner und vor allem auf den Menschen Carl Djerassi. On May 8th 1983, Carl Djerassi was left by the love of his life, the biographer Diane Middlebrook. The scientist, sometimes called the "Father of the Pill", embarks on a totally new experiment: Wounded and despondent, he takes revenge in the form of a "poetic volcanic eruption." He starts writing brutally open poems in free verse which allow a deeply personal and intimate insight into Djerassi's emotional world. This German-English poetry volume is the lyrical diary of a man, full of anger and self-pity, who grieves with unsparing honesty about the end of a relationship, until unexpectedly Diane Middlebrook returns to him in 1984 and becomes his wife. Only some years after her death in 2007 did Djerassi return again to these poems to revise and partly rewrite them. The bilingual interplay between his mother tongue and his adopted literary language provides a new perspective on the scientist, the art connoisseur and especially the persona of Carl Djerassi.

Leseprobe

Titel

Carl Djerassi

Tagebuch des Grolls

A Diary of Pique 

1983–1984

Aus dem Amerikanischen von | Translation from the American by Sabine Hübner

Hinweis

Cover picture | Titelbild: Paul Klee, Versunkenheit. Lithograph, hand-colored | Lithografie, handkoloriert.Albertina Wien, promised gift Carl Djerassi Art Trust II

If I were to paint an entirely true self-portrait, one would see a strange shell. And sitting inside – this would have to be made clear to all – am I, like the Kernel inside a nut. One might also call this work Allegory of Incrustation.

Wenn ich ein ganz wahres Selbstporträt malen sollte, so sähe man eine merkwürdige Schale. Und drinnen – müsste man jedem klar machen – sitze ich, wie der Kern in einer Nuss. Allegorie der Überkrustung könnte man dieses Werk auch nennen.

Paul Klee, 1905

Zitat

Description is revelation. It is not

The thing described, nor false facsimile.

Beschreibung bedeutet Enthüllung. Nicht

das Beschriebene oder ein verfälschtes Faksimile.

Wallace Stevens, Description without Place

Pride is the recognition of one’s own worth.

Vanity its pleasure.

Stolz ist das Bewusstsein des eigenen Wertes,

Eitelkeit ist die Freude daran.

Fritz Mauthner, Wörterbuch der Philosophie

Preamble

In 1990, after over forty years of workaholic immersion in chemical research, I published my first autobiography,Steroids made it possible, as part of a series of autobiographies commissioned by theAmerican Chemical Societyto present through the eyes of leading chemists some of the major advances in organic chemistry during the second half of the twentieth century. These were actually “pure” autobiographies, virtually free of automythology, since they focused on only one critical readership sophisticated chemists and were burdened, in fact overburdened, by precise citations from the chemical literature, thus precluding most forms of fact-massaging. But two years later, aged 69, I published a “true” autobiography, true in the sense that my psychic filter, unburdened by literature citations, could and did operate in full force. And why did I, who through most of my earlier years had been hesitant to disclose many details of my personal life, suddenly start to undress in public? The instigator was my third wife1, whom I married in 1985 and henceforth called “la ultima” in the sense that she was not only my last wife but also the great love of my life. An authentic American WASC (white Anglo-Saxon Catholic), born in Idaho, she wanted to know how a Jewish, albeit totally non-religious, refugee from Nazi Vienna had turned into a seemingly assimilated American, speaking virtually impeccable though still accented English. Who really was her new and third husband?

Her prompting caused me to embark on a series of short memoirs, dealing in a non-chronological manner with specific events in my life, which to my delight were quickly accepted by some high-quality American literary magazines. Having composed nearly a dozen such memoirs and in the process having become infected by the benign virus of authorial pride in actually reading them in print, I realized that they represented islands in my personal sea. All that remained was to create another dozen and connect these islands by bridges to complete the only type of autobiography I was willing to offer to a general readership, since the remaining gaps would never be disclosed by me. The result was