Pynchon and Jean Paul?

[Werner Presber]

Biography

Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, was born on 21st March 1763 as the son 
of a poor village schoolmaster and organist, who later became the 
pastor at Joditz near Hof , and in 1776 at Schwarzenbach . Jean Paul 
left his birthplace of Wunsiedel in Bavaria in 1779 in order to attend 
the grammar school at Hof , where he lived with his grandparents. 
Between the years of 1781 and 1784 he studied theology and philosophy 
at Leipzig, but he was forced to give up his studies when his efforts 
to finance his education privately failed. In 1790 however he founded 
an elementary school in Schwarzenbach , where he taught until 1794. 
After this date his writing had brought him enough success to earn a 
living from it. From 1798 to 1800 he lived in Weimar, where he met 
Goethe, Schiller and Herder. Herder greatly appreciated Richter’s work, 
but he was not well received by Goethe and Schiller who found were 
sickened by his distasteful style of writing. In 1801 he married 
Caroline Meyer, and they settled in Bayreuth in 1804 where he was able 
to write full time. In 1821 Richter lost his only son; a youth with 
huge potential. He never quite recovered from the shock, and died on 
the 14th November 1825.

He began his career in writing with letters, however because they were 
satirical in tone, they were not received with great favour, even later 
on in his life. His book Die unsichtbare Loge published in 1793 
comprised of all his most famous qualities, and was well accepted by 
the critics. After the book’s success he released Hesperus (1795), 
Biographische Belustigungen unter der Gehirnschale einer Riesin (1796) 
Leben des Quintus Fixlein (1796), Blumen -Frucht - und Dornenstilcke 
,oder Ehestand , Ted und Hochzeit des Armenadvokaten Siebenkäs 
(1796—97), Der Jubelsenior (1797), and Das Kampaner Tal (1797).
 
Style and Influence

Richter’s Romantic style is evident through both his love of nature and 
his poetic expression of religion. He was however a humorist writer, 
and therein lay many of his grotesque qualities. His humour is mingled 
with all his thoughts, and to some extent determines the form in which 
he embodies his most serious reflections. This humour originates from 
the perception of the absurdity between ordinary facts and ideal laws. 
In his works, Richter depicts the world as both wakefulness and 
dreamlike, rational and absurd, disjointed and whole, and lyric and 
grotesque. He had a considerable influence on E.T.A Hoffmann , whose 
areas of expertise were the fantastic and the grotesque.

In his theoretical work Vorschule der Ästhetik ,he writes about a 
darker and terribly grotesque style of humour, which is painful, and 
recognises evil. He scathes the earthly, finite world through humour, 
and calls this technique ‘ die vernichtende Idee des Humors ':

Einen solchen Fürstenbund zweier seltsamen Seelen gab es nicht oft ... 
dieselbe Lachlust in der schönen Irrenanstalt der Erde (Siebenk äs p.38)

This style of writing and his satanic sense of black humour place him 
securely in the tradition of grotesque.

Richter was unable to resist the temptation of including strange 
notions which occurred to him in his works. His 1796 novel Siebenkas 
tells the story of a sensitive husband who ends his unhappy marriage by 
feigning death and burial. In many of his works, this work in 
particular there exists an intrinsic duality: For this novel Richter 
developed the concept of the doppelganger , which in his own words is 
defined as: “so heissen sie Leute die sie selbst sehen ”.

Droben guckt nämlich herunter - und wir sehen alle in der Kirche 
hinauf- Siebenkäsens Geist, wie der Pöbel sagt, d.h. sein Körper, wie 
er sagen sollte (Siebenkäs p.38)

A doppelganger is ashadow of oneself that accompanies every human, and 
can be defined as:

a ghostly counterpart of a living person
an alter ego
a living person who has the same name or who closely resembles another 
living person
 
The idea of having an alter ego, living or 'ghostly', is a particularly 
grotesque concept also explored by Robert Louis Stevenson.

see: Des Luftschiffers Giannozzo Seebuch

http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/jeanpaul/titan/titka231.htm

text via:
http://tinyurl.com/ugv5m
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