La Torre, l’Atlantide e l’Inferno. Motivi e miti nella recente letteratura tedesco-orientale

This dissertation endeavours to discuss an aspect of the literary practices which have been employed to portray the former GDR since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The study rests on the assumption that some of the recent East-German literature results in mythopoeia and takes it upon itself to outline a tendency amongst those narratives that mainly address the fall of the GDR. In applying the instrument of the mythologeme, the study investigates three typologies of mythical structures that have come to light during research, i.e. the Tower, Atlantis and Hell. Firstly methodological questions are addressed, as to the nature and the function of the myth, to conclude that the mythologeme is a suitable conceptual key to decode myths that are evasive, but are nonetheless substantially represented both in literary heritages and in the present case studies. Each of the three chapters deals with one of the three mythologemes. The Tower-chapter expounds Uwe Tellkamp’s use of the Tower myth – the biblical myth of Babel, but also other related literary topoi – in his epos Der Turm (2008), where the myth of the ambitious architectural project connects to its inevitable demise. The features of the Atlantis mythologeme are sought after in novels that render the GDR as an inexplicably lost continent: Der Zimmerspringbrunnen (1995) and Eins zu Eins (2002) by Jens Sparschuh, Mit der Geschwindigkeit des Sommers (2009) by Julia Schoch and, again, Der Turm by Tellkamp. The imagery of an underground dimension, an inferno-like underworld, are pinpointed in the novels Hundsnächte (1997) by Reinhard Jirgl and Ich hielt meinen Schatten für einen anderen und grüßte (2008) by Kurt Drawert, in which patterns and themes from the classical underworlds and from Dante’s Inferno contribute to identify the mythologeme of Hell.