Alexander Kluge Knihy

Jde o životopisy, zčásti vymyšlené, zčásti nevymyšlené; dohromady tvoří truchlivou historii.

Jedinečná "grandiózní asambláž", jíž byl sestaven z vojenského dokumentárního materiálu nevšední obraz bitvy u Stalingradu a zániku Paulusovy šesté armády, je "umělecké dílo složené z mnoha neuměleckých součástí". Za oficiálními zprávami z fronty následují upravující direktivy pro tisk, německé směrnice pro válku v zimě, kázání vojenských kněží a montáž faktů a údajů i hledisek, čerpaných od přímých svědků boje a od Hitlerovy generality,jejíž členové jsou zároveň autorovou popisnou metodou výstižně portrétováni. Z německého originálu "Schlachtbeschreibung" a s přihlédnutím k vydání "Der Untergang der Sechsten Armee" přeložil Karel Richter. Doslov napsal Ludvík Kundera. První vydání.

A major collection that brings together 166 stories by the German master that deal with love.

A book about bitter fates--both already known and yet to unfold--and the many kinds of organized machinery built to destroy people. Alexander Kluge's work has long grappled with the Third Reich and its aftermath, and the extermination of the Jews forms its gravitational center. Kluge is forever reminding us to keep our present catastrophes in perspective--"calibrated"--against this historical monstrosity. Kluge's newest work is a book about bitter fates, both already known and yet to unfold. Above all, it is about the many kinds of organized machinery built to destroy people. These forty-eight stories of justice and injustice are dedicated to the memory of Fritz Bauer, a determined fighter for justice and district attorney of Hesse during the Auschwitz Trials. "The moment they come into existence, monstrous crimes have a unique ability," Bauer once said, "to ensure their own repetition." Kluge takes heed, and in these pages reminds us of the importance of keeping our powers of observation and memory razor sharp.

A highly engaging exploration of existential questions, written in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic. The Book of Commentary / Unquiet Garden of the Soul confronts the reader with questions of existential meaning, questions rendered all the more potent by the backdrop of the Coronavirus pandemic: How fragile are we as human beings? How fragile are our societies? What is a "self," an "I," a "community"? How are we to orient ourselves? And what, if any, role does commentary play? In a fashion that will be familiar to longtime admirers of Alexander Kluge, the book stretches both back in time to the medieval glossators of Bologna and forward into interstellar space with imagined travel to the moon Europa. Kluge's characteristic brief, vignette-like prose passages are interspersed with images from his own film work and QR codes, forming a highly engaging, thoroughly contemporary read.

An epochal archaeology of the labor power that has been cultivated in the human body over the last two thousand years. If Marx's opus Capital provided the foundational account of the forces of production in all of their objective, machine formats, what happens when the concepts of political economy are applied not to dead labor, but to its living counterpart, the human subject? The result is Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt's History and Obstinacy, a groundbreaking archaeology of the labor power that has been cultivated in the human body over the last two thousand years. Supplementing classical political economy with the insights of fields ranging from psychoanalysis and phenomenology to evolutionary anthropology and systems theory, History and Obstinacy reaches down into the deepest strata of unconscious thought, genetic memory, and cellular life to examine the complex ecology of expropriation and resistance. First published in German 1981, and never before translated into English, this epochal collaboration between Kluge and Negt has now been edited, expanded, and updated by the authors in response to global developments of the last decade to create an entirely new analysis of "the capitalism within us."

An intellectually stimulating yet accessible collection of short vignettes on Russia and Germany by Alexander Kluge. Not just in light of a contested pipeline during the war in Ukraine but also after centuries of both exchange and rejection, Russia and Germany were and are as far away from each other as they are intrinsically linked. The geopolitical present seems critical, the signs pointing towards conflict and polarity. In this hot climate, German author Alexander Kluge makes Russia the exclusive subject of his latest book, offering multiple perspectives: from that of the historical German patriots of the Napoleonic Wars of Liberation to the narrative point of view of Franz Kafka and Heiner Müller; from messianic yearning and utopian expectations of the twentieth century to the full-blown or near-miss catastrophes in the atomic age. Composed in Kluge's characteristic short-prose vignette style, interspersed with numerous images and often humorous asides, Russia Container is yet another brilliant and thought-provoking work from one of Europe's most prolific and deeply intellectual literary genius. The volume includes a preface specially written to engage with the current events in Ukraine, making Kluge's narratives even more timely and topical.

Translated from the original German into English.

In a world full of devils, the giant ape Kong defends what he loves the most. But who and what is this undomesticated animal? Might it reside within us? As we tread confidently, is this where the earth opens up beneath us?   In Kong’s Finest Hour, Alexander Kluge explores anew the accessible spaces where Kong dwells within us and in our million-year-old past. The more than two hundred stories contained in this volume form a chronicle of connections that together survey these spaces using diverse perspectives. These include stories about the folds of Kong’s nose, the voice of the author’s mother, the poet Heinrich von Kleist and Jack the Ripper, the indestructability of the political, and the supercontinent Pangaea that once unified the earth. Dissolving theory into storytelling has been Kluge’s lifelong pursuit, and this magnificent collection tells stories of people as well of things.   First in a series of Kluge’s Chronicles forthcoming from Seagull Books, Kong’s Finest Hour will delight those familiar with his writing as well as introduce readers to the brilliance of one of Germany’s greatest living writers.  

In his literary texts, regardless of their length, Alexander Kluge says what needs to be said in the most succinct way possible. He notes his texts down on plain A4 pads in order to dictate them afterward. In this notebook, he outlines, in the space of a few lines, the emotional state of a woman named Gesine, who is unhappily in love with a man who has long since lost interest in her, if he was ever interested at all. She can't get away from him. She suffers and is consoled by her best friend--the first-person narrator. Kluge's syntactical austerity in the description of emotional entanglements, the objective, distanced style of a more or less documentary character, gives rise to a precise consolidation of complex subject matter. Thus, out of only one portrayed instance, an entire life unfolds. -- Publisher's description