Review: Daniel Kehlmann's Tyll

This was a perfect book to read during a pandemic.  In Tyll, Daniel Kehlmann transports the mythical 15th century figure Till Eulenspiegel to the Thirty Years War and takes us on a magical picaresque romp through central Europe where we encounter a talking donkey, dragons, demons as well as terrible wartime devastation and - the black plague pandemic that killed off entire villages.  This past year, before the coronavirus outbreak, I had been reading the sonnets of Andreas Gryphius ( 1616 – 16 July 1664), who also experienced the devastation of war and plague of the time.  Gryphius' great theme is death - the death he witnessed all around him as well as well his own mortality.  Kehlmann's Tyll, on the other hand,manages to thwart death at every turn - he is a survivor.  Trapped in a collapsed mine shaft without air  - facing certain death - Tyll laughs:

„Und ich sterbe auch nicht morgen und an keinem andren Tag. Ich will nicht! Ich mach’s nicht, hörst du? […] Ich mach’s nicht, ich geh jetzt, mir gefällt es hier nicht mehr. […] Ich geh jetzt. So hab ich’s immer gehalten. Wenn es eng wird, gehe ich. Ich sterbe hier nicht. Ich sterbe nicht heute. Ich sterbe nicht!“

And somehow he does survive.  And then, at the end of the novel, when Elizabeth Stuart - the "Winter Queen" - offers him refuge, food and board, so that he can "die in a soft bed",  Tyll responds:

(Tyll)"Willst mir Gnadenbrot geben, kleine Liz? Eine tägliche Suppe und eine dicke Decke und warme Pantoffeln, bis ich friedlich sterbe?"

(Liz) "So schlecht ist das nicht."

(Tyll) "Aber weiβt du, was besser ist? Noch besser als friedlich sterben?"

(Liz)"Sag es mir"

(Tyll)"Nicht sterben, kleine Liz. Das ist viel besser."

Kehlmann jumps around - like Tyll's handsprings - in time and perspective, he juggles the narrative - like Tyll juggles his balls (and knives).  Tyll vanishes through long stretches of the novel only to magically reappear.  I'll mostly likely need to reread Tyll after studying up on the history of Frederick V of the Palatinate and his English bride Elizabeth Stuart, since half the novel follows their marriage and Liz's attempt to retain some vestige of royal privilege after the death of her husband. 

As a native English speaker, Liz also has a dim view of the German language; it would be incomprehensible to her that German could be used for the stage - which she misses dearly - much less for poetry.  In one of the chapters, three renown scholars are speaking Latin with each others.  One of them (Kircher) asks "Magister Fleming" (who can only be the poet Paul Fleming) why he writes poetry in the German language. Fleming responds:

"Ich weiβ, das klingt wunderlich ... Aber es lässt sich machen! Unsere Sprache wird gerade erst geboren. [...] Jetzt mag das Deutsche noch ungelenk sein, ein kochendes Gebrãu, ein Geschöpf im Weden, aber eines Tages ist es erwachsen." 

Unfortunately, Kehlmann makes no reference to Andreas Gryphias, whose Baroque sonnets from that era are more than "mature" (erwachsen). In any case, with Tyll Kehlmann has made is own fantastic contribution to German language fiction.