Arno Schmidt

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Arno Schmidt (January 18, 1914 in Hamburg - June 3, 1979 in Celle) was a German author and translator. Schmidt was a strict individualist, almost a solipsist. Disaffected by his experience of the Third Reich he had an extremely pessimistic world view. In Schwarze Spiegel he describes his utopia as an empty world after an anthropogenic apocalypse. Although he was a strict atheist according to him the world was created by a monster Leviathan whose predatory nature was passed on to humans. Still, he thought this monster could not be too powerful to be attacked, if it behooved humanity. His writing style is characterized by a unique and witty style of adapting coloquial language, which won him a few fervent admirers. Moreover, he developed a willful orthography by which he thought to reveal the true meaning of words and their connections amongst each other. One of the most cited examples is the use of 'Roh=Mann=Tick' instead of 'Romantik' (revealing romaticism as the craze of unsubtle men). The atoms of words holding the nuclei of original meaning he called Etyme (etyms). His theory of etyms is developed in his magnum opus Zettel's Traum, in which an elderly writer comments Poe's works in a thought stream, while discussing a Poe translation with a couple of translators and flirting with their teenage daughter. Schmidt also accomplished a willful translation of Edgar Allan Poe's works himself (1966-73, together with Hans Wollschläger). As none of his works sold more than a few t

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Zettel's Traum (Gekürzt)

Verschobene Kontinente

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Gnadenlos Fröhlich

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Keine Zeit

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Kühe in Halbtrauer (Ungekürzt)

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KAFF auch Mare Crisium (Ungekürzt)

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Keine Zeit (Live)

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Arno Schmidt - Lesungen, Interviews 11

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Halt's Maul und mach was - Ein Konzert für Arno Schmidt

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Verschobene Kontinente (Ungekürzt)

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Arno Schmidt Liest 3

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Nobodaddy's Kinder

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