Wewelsfleth has not often been mentioned in literature, but a lot of literature has already been written there: in the Alfred-Döblin-Haus, which has only been called that since Günter Grass gave it to the state of Berlin in 1985 after using it himself as a place of work they could set up a residence there for literary scholarship holders.

And then in 1997 one of them typed the sentence "I'm not sure" into her computer.

Andrew Plathaus

Responsible editor for literature and literary life.

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That was Judith Herman.

Hardly anyone knew her at the time, because "Summer House, Later", the collection of stories that was to make her famous, was only published the following year.

Today she is a star of German literature, and her most recent novel "Daheim" was a bestseller and has won numerous awards.

Nevertheless, "I'm not sure" would have made a good headline for her Frankfurt poetry lecture, at the end of which she remembered this sentence.

Is that why he was there?

And did Judith Hermann remember him today because he shook her at the time or because she found him in an old file while preparing?

One could not hope for information on such questions during the three excellently attended evenings on the campus of the Goethe University.

They were also under a different motto: "We would have said anything to each other".

Note:

Subjunctive II, Irrealis.

You are sure about the uncertain.

The subtitle was “Of Silence and Concealment in Writing”.

But did something then have to be kept secret when speaking?

Oh yes, because what was said had been written down more than a year ago, before the original dates of Judith Hermann's poetry lecture fell victim to the pandemic.

Hermann explained this at the start of the series (FAZ from May 5), and she asked for understanding that she didn't want to start writing all over again.

So she read everything afterwards as it had been there for a year, from the first to the last minute of the three evenings, and obviously didn't change an iota.

A turning point may have taken place a year ago or – less serious – a writers’ association, of which Judith Hermann is a member, tried to dismantle itself on the weekend before the final lecture – the poetry lecturer did not contest it.

That also says something about their understanding of writing.

Something good?

At least Hermann's attitude is consistent.

"In the first year of the pandemic, I moved from the city to the country," so began the last stage of the poetry lecture, in a tone reminiscent of Büchner's "Lenz", and the protagonist's alternation between loneliness and encounter was similar to that of the Alsatian episode of the protagonist Hermann'sche life behind the dike on the North Sea, with which she caught up with what she was supposed to write in "At home".

This novel was originally going to be called Trap, but for the writer, isolation was liberating, and meeting a shopkeeper named Marten opened up the world to her, even though she didn't want to hang out with anyone else.

"I'm writing about the stories I didn't write"

But of course it's more complicated.

When she told Marten that he wouldn't appear in "Daheim", he said to her: "I'm relieved." Did she now burden him with the mention in the poetry lecture?

Will he complain?

One could not help but get the impression that this poetry lecture is itself a story.

But no more than that, because Judith Hermann developed poetry at best in practice, not in theory.

In the long history of the Frankfurt poetry lectures we have heard very different things.

And would love to hear it again.

Incidentally, it was no longer streamed.

The aura of presence, including that of the audience, was there again.

And that followed with bated breath, because a story naturally requires dramaturgy, and Hermann is a master at that.

The way she repeatedly summed up dreams – not analytically, but phenomenologically – had much more to offer than just a mere collection of material.

And then these sentences that flashed from memory like sickles: "I'm not sure." Or one from Marten: "I cut the sloes." And then the very last of the poetry lecture: "I'm sure that I have a story I'm going to write in which this sentence will be written." With that she left us, we will remember.