Eine journalistische Recherchereise in die eigene familiäre Vergangenheit - Katja Petrowskajas literarische Reportage Vielleicht Esther(2014)

Abstract

German-speaking author Katja Petrowskaja from Ukraine, has followed her professional path in both journalism and literature, which at first glance seem contradictory in terms of reality and fiction. Petrowskaja's debut work with the title, 『Maybe Esther』 (2014), which contains the short story under the same title, which won the Ingeborg Bachmann Literary Award (2013), also features a combination of journalism and literary writing, like her biography. From this point of view, this thesis tries to analyze the narrative form of 『Maybe Esther』 from the perspective of a genre called 'literary reportage'. To this end, we will look at various features of the literary reportage that, from a distance, can be traced back to Herodotus's 『History』 and, at a close distance, reached its heyday in 1920s. Furthermore, based on this, I try to examine the tension between journalism and literature in the work by interpreting 『Maybe Esther』 from the four aspects of 'factuality, objectivity, subjectivity, and fictionality' of literary reportage. First of all, the first-person narrator of 『Maybe Esther』, who appears as Katja Petrowskaja herself, goes on a research trip to Warsaw, Moscow, Kyiv, and Mauthausen to research the Russian-Polish-Jewish family history. And she also collects materials related to your family through various archives or Internet. At the same time, European history from the second half of the 19th century, which is intertwined with the narrator's family, is inevitably dealt with. The description of this research process and the description of family history and European history are related to the factuality of the work. Next, in dealing with a single case, various viewpoints based on various materials and testimonies are frequently presented in addition to the narrator's viewpoint, which contributes to enhancing the objectivity of the work. In addition to factuality and objectivity close to the characteristics of journalism, 『Maybe Esther』 also has literary features of subjectivity and fictionality. As the adverb "maybe" in the title suggests, the uncertainty of testimonies, memories, or data about family history is one of the most important themes in the work. The author attempts to resolve these uncertainties through subjective narrative methods such as subjunctive or monologue. The characteristic of literary reportage that the narrator's subjective intervention is limitedly allowed is evident in the fact that the author's subjective thoughts and objective facts are clearly distinguished in the work by grammatical and notational methods. Finally, although 『Maybe Esther』 does not deal with fictional characters and stories, it affirms the unintentional fictionality caused by the uncertainty mentioned above in that a little creation makes the story more true.