Arno Schmidt – Vorläufiges zu Zettels Traum 2LP Box
Impressive 2x LP Box from 1977 with original recordings of German author Arno Schmidt, made in 1969. Embossed linen-covered wooden frame box, a linen cover booklet, and nine foldout facsimile pages of Schmidt’s infamous “Zettels Traum” manuscript. Quite a crazy edition for this price. mint / unplayed “Arno Schmidt (1914-1979) was a German author and translator, considered to be one of the most important postwar German writers. His writing ranges from (seemingly) straightforward stories to writing that assails the reader with a literary and linguistic density of the highest degree. To make his most famous work, Zettels Traum, Schmidt wrote 130,000 note cards (Zettel). The text is written in three columns on each page. Each column has a different theme. In addition, Schmidt used physical constructs in the novel that had to be added by hand.” This recordings are based on Arno Schmidt’s opus magnus ‘Zettel’s Traum’, “in which an elderly writer comments on Edgar Allan Poe’s works in a stream of consciousness, while discussing a Poe translation with a couple of translators and flirting with their teenage daughter. Schmidt also accomplished a translation of Edgar Allan Poe’s works himself (1966–73). Some critics even dismissed Zettel’s Traum as non-art, or sheer nonsense, and Schmidt himself as a “psychopath.” but Schmidt’s reputation as esoteric, and that of his work as non-art, has faded and he is now seen as an important, if highly eccentric, German writer of the 20th century”. Die Kassette enthält zwei Langspielplatten, 1 Textheft und neun Faksimileseiten aus “Zettels Taum”. Die Innenseite dieser leinenbezogenen Holzkassette ziert ein Faksimile einer Zeichnung Schmidts. Zu hören ist ein Gespräch Arno Schmidts mit dem NDR über Entstehung, Aufbau und Absicht seines Typoskriptbuches; außerdem eine Montage aus einer Originalaufnahme des NDR und einer Privataufzeichnung von Alice Schmidt – aufgenommen am 20. März 1969 in Bargfeld.