Frame and Preparation
und als der prinz mit dem kutscher tanzte, waren sie so schön, daß der ganze hof in ohnmacht fiel. ein utopischer film.
Conceptual Frames and Background
- Gay post-1945 literature
- Homosexuality in West Berlin
- Formal experimentation
- Polyamory
- Love
- Communism/socialism & homosexuality
Introduction
Published posthumously, this story takes place in 1980s West Berlin and has an experimental form featuring no capitalization, erratic punctuation and orthography, unusual sentence structure, unorthodox grammar.
Preparation
- Since the story takes place in the 1980s in West Berlin, an overview of the gay liberation movement and the gay community will help contextualize the events and characters.
- The author’s texts are imbued with his communist convictions, it may be useful to briefly outline “official” Communist/Socialist attitudes toward homosexuality, i.e. as bourgeois decadence.
Text and Discussion
Below is a short sample of the first few pages.
- What are the various portrayals of gay men that we receive in the novel? How do each of the characters define themselves and others? How do they see themselves in a wider gay and social world?
- How does the novel conceptualize love and romantic relationships? Is it between two people, or more? What are its constitutive elements and boundaries?
- What does friendship mean in this novel?
- Who is the narrator in the novel? What is his/its relationship to the characters?
- How does the narrator and/or the characters connect sexuality and love with politics?