Abstract
In the opening pages of Judith Schalansky’s book Atlas of Remote Islands (2009, trans. 2010), a memoir and cartography hybrid project, she describes her disappointment in being told as a child by her mother that she could not visit the Galapagos Islands. The determined girl nonetheless “undertook [her] first voyage round the world” by pushing her finger “across the Atlantic to the tip of South America, turning south before the southern polar circle and taking a new direction north to Tierra del Fuego.” She sees her own country “as pink and tiny as [her] smallest fingernail”; she and her mother were residents of the German Democratic Republic, and “East Germans could not travel, only the Olympic team were allowed beyond our borders.”1 Shortly thereafter, German reunification made international travel possible for Schalansky, but the “finger traveling” had already become a favorite pastime for her, “whispering foreign names to [herself] as I conquered distant worlds in [her] parents’ sitting room.”2
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Notes
Judith Schalansky, Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot on and Never Will, trans. Christine Lo (New York: Penguin, 2010), 7–8. This was originally published as Atlas der abgelegenen Inseln. Fünfzig Inseln, auf denen ich nie war und niemals sein werde. (Hamburg: Mare, 2009).
Jaimey Fisher and Barbara Caroline Mennel, “Introduction,” in Jaimey Fisher and Barbara Caroline Mennel, eds., Spatial Turns: Space, Place, and Mobility in German Literary and Visual Culture (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010), 9.
Tom Conley, The Self-Made Map: Cartographic Writing in Early Modern France (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 2.
Jeff Jarvis, Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 27.
Katharina Gerstenberger, “Historical Space: Daniel Kehlmann’s Die Vermessung der Welt,” in Jaimey Fisher and Barbara Caroline Mennel, eds., Spatial Turns: Space, Place, and Mobility in German Literary and Visual Culture (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010), 107–108.
Gunther Nickel, “Vorwort,” in Daniel Kehlmanns “Die Vermessung der Welt”: Materialien, Dokumente, Interpretationen (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2009), 7.
J. B. Harley, “Deconstructing the Map,” Cartographica 26.2 (Summer, 1989): 2.
Bertrand Westphal, “Foreword,” in Robert T. Tally Jr., ed., Geocritical Explorations: Space, Place, and Mapping in Literary and Cultural Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), xiv.
Schneider writes, “It will take us longer to tear down the Wall in our heads than any wrecking company will need for the Wall we can see.” Schneider, The Wall Jumper (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 119. (Original: “Die Mauer im Kopf einzureißen wird länger dauern, als irgendein Abrißunternehmen für die sichtbare Mauer braucht,” Scheinder, Der Mauerspringer, 117.)
Daniel Kehlmann, Measuring the World, trans. Carol Brown Janeway (New York: Pantheon, 2006), 33. Originally published as Die Vermessung der Welt (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2005).
Eugen Ruge, In Times of Fading Light, trans. Anthea Bell (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2013), 101. Originally published as In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts. Reinbek bei (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, 2011). Hereinafter, page references to the English translation are cited parenthetically in the text.
Anke S. Biendarra, Germans Going Global: Contemporary Literature and Cultural Globalization (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 17.
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© 2014 Robert T. Tally Jr.
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Wallen, A.B. (2014). Mapping the Personal in Contemporary German Literature. In: Tally, R.T. (eds) Literary Cartographies. Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137449375_12
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