Hardly any other genre seems to be as popular as that of biographical prose. Beethoven or Hölderlin, year after year there are suitable anniversaries to tell about the eventful life of a grand master. Touching or frivolous anecdotes about celebrities are well received by the public, and the authors often benefit from the popularity of the portrayed idols.
With a world-famous writer and icon of the women’s movement, success should come naturally. Or not. W
If the literary concept does not work, the linguistic means are not adequate, the difference between the model and the image becomes an aesthetic abyss.
The Berlin writer Michael Kumpfmüller had already ventured into a myth in 2011 with the novel “The Glory of Life”, Franz Kafka and his last year with his lover Dora Diamant. The interplay between distant tone and fictitious empathy, between research and correction of the common Kafka image was convincing.
The drama takes place in March 1941
In „Ach, Virginia“ (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2020. 236 pages, 22 €.) Kumpfmüller now tells the last ten days of Virginia Woolf. Much can be read about their lives, only less is known about the immediate period before the tragic suicide, because Woolf no longer confided in the diary and wrote only a few letters.
Kumpfmüller portrays a woman in a major writing and meaning crisis. She suffered from depression, felt haunted by voices and at times could no longer distinguish between delusion and reality. The biographer lets his sad heroine look back on life and work.
The thoughts always revolve around those men who were their “curse”. Characterized by sexual assault in adolescence, she has always been attracted to women, but she marries a writer she doesn’t love.
Kumpfmüller vividly describes Woolf’s insensitivity and spitefulness towards the husband. This endures everything bravely and looks after her to the last.
The drama takes place in March 1941, German bombers fly over the cottage in southern England, and the danger of an invasion by the Nazis causes Woolf’s mental state to deteriorate further. The personal narrative voice tries to combine these threatening external circumstances with the protagonist’s already broken inner life.
There are some very believable moments, especially when Woolf is raving about her husband.
Why was this book written?
But it is becoming increasingly unclear whether Kumpfmüller wants to empathize with an unstable character or want to write about himself. This contradiction is often expressed by a slight shift in the narrative perspective in a single sentence: “She can’t think of anything new to write about, so she won’t write anymore, because basically you always write about yourself, even if you do writes about a thunderstorm in a garden. “
Apart from the fact that it is doubtful to slip such simple ideas into an author who has by no means written only about herself, it is striking that in the causal sentence the personal “she” becomes an impersonal “one”, behind which the protagonist Woolf is less likely than the writer Kumpfmüller is.
The question soon arises as to why this book was written in the first place. “Oh, Virginia” doesn’t work as a depression novel any more than it does as a drama of a writer’s marriage. In both cases there is a lack of depth and originality. If it were not for the famous author of “Mrs Dalloway”, the everyday everyday life described would quickly turn into a narrative zero statement: “It is not for the first time that you notice that Leonard makes unpleasant noises while eating.” Who cares?
There are formulations to make you feel ashamed
To be ashamed of others are formulations that should describe interpersonal relationships. About the writer Vita Sackville-West, with whom Woolf had a long love relationship and who is the role model for the title character in her novel “Orlando”, says at one point: “Vita was the miracle and pain of her life, the promise that has not been fulfilled “, because Vita” loved women, all sorts of women before and after her, she sipped women like oysters. ”
How did Kumpfmüller come up with such weird, hackneyed comparisons? If he came across any of these in Virginia Woolf’s diaries or letters, it would be fair to mark those references. If it is Kumpfmüller’s inventions, the doubts of this project become apparent. What is the meaning of such striking visual language, which basically remains incomprehensible: is it about the speed, the sheer amount of oyster consumption or the noise when sipping? In short: what does the author want to tell us?
In fact, it is quoted from Virginia’s farewell letter to Vita. Although Woolf thinks he can hear voices and can no longer think clearly, the lines are emotional, beautiful and precise. In a few words, she creates a closeness to Vita that Kumpfmüller can only simulate in literature. But with additional phrases such as “times honest” or “yes, yes, well” he gambles away his credibility as a narrator. Virginia Woolf actually says here that she would “love” pulling people out to the bone. This novel is literally a work of art, and unfortunately a particularly bad one.
–
