“Animations” is a philosophizing narrative essay. It takes us to Switzerland with Goethe, to the Far East with Flaubert and, finally, following the traces of a courtesan named Ruschiuk Hânem, to Venice. Here, Montaigne and Casanova make an appearance, as do the anatomist Andreas Vesalius and, most importantly, having fled from Rome, Pietro Aretino, the writer of famous erotic sonnets that Hettche just recently congenially transposed to German. Serenissima Venice – the “foreign beauty,” the “city without an underworld” on the water – reveals itself as the increasingly opulent setting where Hettche’s stylistically elegant explorations, full of startling connotations, unfold – and in which, last but not least, a contessa plays a special role. An author in search of the origins of his words. And of our shared imagery of love. It was in Venice, according to one of book’s theses, that the ways the body is viewed in art, literature and medicine first became intertwined in a modern way. Only to continue to develop to the present into a pornographic and anatomic exhibition of the body, before finally – and this is one of the book’s most startling points – breaking in today’s modern media. “Animations” spans from Titian to the space probe Pioneer 10. In 30 chapters, Thomas Hettche, who caused a stir with his internet anthology NULL this year, searches for an answer to the question of what literature will be in the future.
