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Schmidt, Bottom's Dream [Zettels Traum].

Schmidt, Arno.

Bottom’s Dream [Zettels Traum]. Translated by John E. Woods.

Dublin, Dalkey Archive, 2016. Folio. 1495 pages. Original Hardcover (Publisher’s cloth). Excellent condition. Typesetting and Translation by John E. Woods.

“I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was,” says Bottom. “I have had a dream, and I wrote a Big Book about it,” Arno Schmidt might have said. Schmidt’s rare vision is a journey into many literary worlds. First and foremost it is about Edgar Allan Poe, or perhaps it is language itself that plays that lead role; and it is certainly about sex in its many Freudian disguises, but about love as well, whether fragile and unfulfilled or crude and wedded. As befits a dream upon a heath populated by elemental spirits, the shapes and figures are protean, its protagonists suddenly transformed into trees, horses, and demigods. In a single day, from one midsummer dawn to a fiery second, Dan and Franzisca, Wilma and Paul explore the labyrinths of literary creation and of their own dreams and desires.
Since its publication in 1970 Zettel’s Traum/Bottom’s Dream has been regarded as Arno Schimdt’s magnum opus, as the definitive work of a titan of postwar German literature. Readers are now invited to explore its verbally provocative landscape in an English translation by John E. Woods. (Publisher’s Info)

Bottom’s Dream (German: Zettel’s Traum or ZETTEL’S TRAUM as the author wrote the title) is a novel published in 1970 by West German author Arno Schmidt. Schmidt began writing the novel in December 1963 while he and Hans Wollschläger began to translate the works of Edgar Allan Poe into German. The novel was inspired by James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake, particularly Schmidt’s use of columns (his “SpaltenTechnik”), which Schmidt claimed was borrowed from the Wake.

The gargantuan novel was published in folio format with 1,334 pages. The story is told mostly in three shifting columns, presenting the text in the form of notes, collages, and typewritten pages. The 2016 English translation by John E. Woods has 1,496 pages and weighs over 13 pounds (5.9 kg). (Wikipedia)

 

Schmidt, Bottom’s Dream [Zettels Traum].
Schmidt, Bottom’s Dream [Zettels Traum].
Schmidt, Bottom’s Dream [Zettels Traum].
Schmidt, Bottom’s Dream [Zettels Traum].