（Buddhism in Brecht and Thomas Mann）

演讲人：海因里希·迪特灵（Heinrich Detering）

 

 

Heinrich Detering, literary scholar, critic and poet, is professor of New German and Comparative Literature at Göttingen University in Germany. He is regarded as one of the most well-known literary scholars in Germany.  He studied German Literature, Theology, Philosophy in Göttingen and Heidelberg, holds PhD at University of Göttingen.  Professor Detering has published numerous articles and books, including scholarly studies on German, Scandinavian, and American Literature and literary theory (12 monographs and 12 edited or co-edited collections of articles), critical editions of German and Scandinavian literary works from the 18^th through the 20^th century, literary translations and poetry.  His is author of most recently The Antichrist and the Crucified. Nietzsche’s Last Texts (Göttingen 2010), On the Reception of Buddhism in German Philosophy and Literature. An Intercultural Dialogue (Bangkok 2009), Bertolt Brecht und Laotse (Göttingen 2008), Bob Dylan (Stuttgart 2007, 3rd ed. 2009). His other recent scholarly books include Jews, Women, and Men of Letters: Thomas Mann (Frankfurt 2005).  Professor Detering received numerous awards and was visiting professors and senior fellow at the University of California/Irvine, Washington University, St. Louis (USA), Aarhus University (Dänemark), Bergen University (Norway), Trondheim University (Norway), Rome (Italy), Indian Institute of Science, Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. In 2009 he was awarded by the Leibniz Prize (highest ranking German prize for research achievements).

 

In this lecture Professor Detering would like to talk about two major figures in modern German and world literature, focusing on quite a special problem that has not often been discussed and that they both have in common. It is the attraction of a Buddhism which in some ways was fashionable in intellectual Germany around 1900. What Professor Detering in this lecture would like to show is that both young Thomas Mann and young Bertolt Brecht for a certain period have expressed a strong attraction towards Buddhism – or at least towards what was supposed to be Buddhism in the shape of German translations and traditions – and that they both later refrained from it, partly for artistic, partly for political reasons.