Lexical-Encyclopedic Literature – a Conversation with Wolfgang Hegewald and Aleksandar Gatalica
Abstract
The present article is based on written interviews with the writers Wolfgang Hegewald (Dresden, 1952) and Aleksandar Gatalica (Belgrade, 1964), both of whom present prose which is significantly shaped by the episodic, fragmentary and encyclopaedic character of their works Lexikon des Lebens (2017) and Veliki rat (The Great War, 2012). The following questions are in the foreground: Has the “open form” existed right from the start? Have coherency tools that compensate for the largely dissolved fable been used deliberately? Does the discrepancy between the title and the realized (fragmented) form highlight scepticism about certain ideological systems, similar to the case in postmodern literature? Does encyclopaedic writing suggest a non-linear reading (not progressing from left to right)? Does such literature react to time relationships that dominate contemporary, and structured life (keyword: time window)?
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