Jirgl, Reinhard

Reinhard Jirgl was born on January 16, 1953 in East Berlin . While studying in high school, he mastered the specialty of an electrician. In 1971-1975 he studied electronics at the Humboldt University of Berlin . After graduating, he worked as an engineer for several years. In 1978, he left his professional career and got a job as a lighting engineer at the Volksbühne Theater in Berlin, where he worked until the fall of the Berlin Wall ^[1] .

Jirgl began to compose prose in his student years. He tried to publish his first finished book, Muta-Papa-Roman ( Mutter Vater Roman ) in 1985, but the manuscript was rejected for "a non-Marxist understanding of history." However, despite the failure, Jirgl continued to write "to the table." By 1990, when the GDR disappeared and the unification of Germany took place, he had six books ready for publication. Mama-Papa-Roman was published in the same year, followed by further publications ^{[1] [2]} .

In 1991, for the novel “Off the Sea” ( Im offenen Meer ), Jirgl received the first literary award - the Anna Zegers Prize. The Alfred Doeblin Prize , awarded two years later for the book Abschied von den Feinden , brought fame to the writer. Jirgl became a regular contributor to the respected Munich publisher Hanzer. Despite the successes achieved, criticism perceived Jirgl's work ambiguously. The novel “Unfinished” ( Die Unvollendete ), released in 2003, was able to win general recognition. It was this work, along with the epic “Silence” ( Die Stille , 2009), that was noted when in 2010 the writer was awarded the Georg Buchner Prize , which secured his reputation as the leading author of a united Germany ^{[2] [3]} .

Thematically, the work of Reinhard Jirgl turned to modern German history (covering the period from the Kaiser empire to the German Democratic Republic and after), and the injuries that a great history inflicts on the minds of a “crowd man” and “a thinking man, who has memory” ^[3] . The keen interest in the human psyche, its dark sides, as well as the socio-philosophical orientation of books, “ardent faith in the saving power of words and thoughts” bring him closer to Hans Henny Jann ^[4] . Jyrgl’s texts are not easy to understand, since he destroys the plot , deliberately complicates the composition , experimenting with the genre and language, and thereby develops the expressionist line in German literature, acting as a kind of heir to Alfred Doeblin ^{[3] [4]} . Jirgl’s language is full of unusual “verbal hybrids”, deviations from traditional spelling, and the sophisticated punctuation system he invented with an abundance of brackets and intonation marks in unusual places further slows down the reading process ^{[3] [5]} .

Very little was translated into Russian. In 2007, Kolonna publications published the novel Dog’s Nights ( Hundsnächte , 1997) in the series “Vessel of Lawlessness”, translated and commented on by Tatyana Baskakova . Two more publications were published in the journal Foreign Literature , fragments of the novel of sections “On the High Seas” and an essay on the fall of the Berlin Wall “Theater on the Streets”.

• Dog Nights (Excerpts from the novel) // Mitin Journal / Transl. with him. Tatyana Baskakova. - Tver: Kolonna publications, 2005. - No. 62 . - S. 75—127 . - ISBN 5-98144-038-4 .
• Dog nights / Per. with him. Tatyana Baskakova. - Tver: Kolonna publications, 2007 .-- 496 p. - (Vasa Iniquitatis). - 1000 copies - ISBN 978-5-98144-103-5 .
• Theater on the streets // Foreign Literature / Transl. with him. Andrey Chistyakov. - M. , 2009. - No. 10 . - S. 203-208 . - ISSN 0130-6545 .
• In the open sea. The novel of sections (Fragments) // Foreign Literature / Transl. with him. Tatyana Baskakova. - M. , 2010. - No. 9 . - S. 7-48 . - ISSN 0130-6545 .

• Reinhard Jirgl in the Journal Hall