April 21, by Madeleine LaRue. Born in in Meuselwitz, an industrial coal-mining town in eastern Germany, Hilbig grew up in the socialist German Democratic Republic.
After several years of struggle with the authorities, including the Stasi, he was finally permitted to leave for West Germany in Isabel Fargo Cole has lived in Berlin since Our conversation was conducted in person on March 24, , in that city.
And your translation is so beautiful. And because of these fears, the present is somehow cancelled out. Can you comment on that? I think there are a couple of different levels to it. One of them is that, fundamentally, he always calls into question the idea that you can have a precise idea of reality. You might try and try to figure it out, and it might look like one thing, but then suddenly turns into the other thing, and then back again.
They just keep spiraling around and around in the same situation. It may take a couple of readings to see, but it has a sophisticated, complex structure, with different levels of time.
How does he interpret it, what does he bring to it? Hilbig was actually victimized by the Stasi, but he could have been the pursuer, rather than the pursued.
