Representations of fear and anxiety as an element of cultural criticism in Thomas Hettche’s novel "Pfaueninsel" (2014)
Abstract
This article deals with Thomas Hettche’s novel Pfaueninsel, which can be categorised as historiographic metafiction, i.e. a new manifestation of the historical novel. The fictional biography of Marie Strakon, a dwarf in the service of the King of Prussia in the 19th century, is intertwined in the novel with the biography of a place: Peacock Island near Berlin, which is being transformed into an English landscape park, a Garden of Eden and a surrogate colony embodying Prussia’s superpower ambitions. In the article, Hettche’s novel is interpreted in terms of the motifs of fear and anxiety in the sense of Karl Jaspers (adopted from Søren Kierkegaard) and their function in the text. The source of these emotions for the characters is both human beings who deviate from the aesthetic and biological norm, as well as the space of Peacock Island itself. For people of the Enlightenment, this place at the dawn of the modernisation era becomes a Freudian uncanny. It arouses anxiety of the return of the repressed: of the archaic, pre-rational image of the world, the relics of which have been preserved on the island in spite of all modernising efforts. In turn, the “foreign” elements of nature and landscape (palm trees, oriental buildings) cause the characters to anxiety the coming era of modernity, historical and civilisational breakthroughs. Hettche shows the strategies for escaping this anxiety and the modernisation paradox still relevant today: all attempts to alleviate existential anxiety – rationalisation measures, advances in science and technology, the subjugation of nature to humans – only lead to new sources of anxiety.
Keywords:
Thomas Hettche, historiographic metafiction, historical novel, anxiety, fearReferences
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