Arno Schmidt

Arno Schmidt (January 18, 1914 in Hamburg - June 3, 1979 in Celle) was a German author and translator.

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Schmidt was a strict individualist, almost a solipsist. Disaffected by

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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 cannot be too powerful to be attacked if it behooves humanity.

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His writing style is characterized by a unique and witty style of adapting coloquial language, which won him many 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 Zettels 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.

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Schmidt also accomplished a willful translation of Edgar Allan Poe's works himself (1966-73, together with Hans Wollschl?ger).

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In the 1960s he authored a series of plays for German broadcast stations presenting forgotten or little known and - in his opinion - vastly underrated authors, as e.g. Johann Gottfried Schnabel, Karl Philipp Moritz, Leopold Schefer, Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow et al. These "plays" are basically talks about literature with two or three participants plus voices for quotations (Schmidt lent his voice for his translations of Finnegan's Wake quoted in Der Triton mit dem Sonnenschirm ). 11 of these so called "Radio-Essays" were republished on 12 audio CDs in the year 2003.

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January 18: January 18 is the 18th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 347 days remaining (348 in leap years)...

1914: 1914 is a common year starting on Thursday. (see link for calendar)...

Hamburg: :This article is about the city in Germany. For other articles named Hamburg, see Hamburg (disambiguation)....

Arno Schmidt related Images and Photos (experimental)

About Schmidt (DVD)	Mike Schmidt	Jason Schmidt - Studio Portrait	Mike Schmidt 1989 Action
Arno palaces reflected in the river	Maristany and Arno Vinos	Figures Beside the Arno Near Florence	View of the Arno from the Ponte Vecchio Florence
Ponte Vecchio and Arno River Florence Tuscany Italy	Fireworks over the River Arno	Dante Alighieri Italian Writer Meeting His Beloved Beatrice Portinari on the Lung'Arno Florence