Voraussetzungen is an odd kind of book - it's presented as a set of lectures on the background to Kassandra, but it's difficult to imagine how Wolf could have fitted that amount of material into four lectures (Kassandra itself was the fifth lecture). Presumably it was either cut for oral presentation or expanded for publication. The general effect is something like the "Making of..." documentary that you find on the second DVD.

Lectures 1 & 2 are "What I did on my holidays", a travelogue of Wolf's trip to Greece in 1980 (she must have been just about the only person in the DDR who could take a holiday abroad without any great difficulty), in the course of which she shows us how she became interested in the figure of Cassandra - reading Aeschylus while waiting for a delayed flight - and started to learn about pre-Hellenic matriarchal cultures, which she contrasts with the role of women as she observed it in modern Greece.

Lecture 3 continues the story after her return to rural Mecklenburg, in a diary style rather reminiscent of her later novel [Störfall] - thoughts about international news and what she sees on TV are interspersed with a record of her reading of background material relevant to Cassandra and her (possible) historical situation: archaeology, anthropology, sociology, etc. The international news is all about the Reagan-era arms race and the near-certainty that Europe would be overwhelmed by a nuclear war between the USA and USSR within the next three or four years. It's rather alarming to realise how quickly we managed to forget how close we thought we were to destruction then... When Cassandra talks about living in a besieged city-state that refuses to accept that it's doomed, I imagined her as talking about the DDR, but from what Wolf says here, it seems that Troy is actually standing for Europe as a whole. But of course, either way, the threat comes from patriarchy.

Lecture 4 is the shortest and also probably the most interesting, as - in the form of a letter to a fellow-writer, this time - Wolf brings in some rather unexpected literary evidence to illustrate her growing awareness of how women have been short-changed by western society over the last 3500 years. Exhibit A is a rather lovely poem by Ingeborg Bachmann, "Erklär mir, Liebe" (https://www.lyrikline.org/de/gedichte/erklaer-mir-liebe-268#.WuuFrS-B3UI); Exhibit B is Faust II, and so on... Wolf doesn't bother to draw an explicit parallel between Bachmann and Cassandra, presumably because she realises it would be rather facile, but we get the point. And her analysis of the poems is very much to the point. Just by the way, in between dissing Goethe and Schiller, she drops in the rather remarkable statement that her research into women in the ancient world has been the most exciting intellectual epiphany she has had since she first read Marx!

An odd book, certainly, and some of the ground it covers is over-familiar, but more fun to read than you might expect. But it will probably add a few books to your reading list... ( )

In 1983, Christa Wolf published the novel Kassandra, which is often described as her most important novel. Publication of Kassandra, was preceded by a lecture series about the creation process and her ideas about the novel during the Summer term at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. These lectures are collected and published in the volume: Voraussetzungen einer Erzählung: Kassandra.

Since 1959, Fisher Verlag, later Suhrkamp, has organized the lecture series, known as the Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen. With an interruption between 1968 and 1979, each term, namely twice per year, during the Winter term and the Summer term, a literary author is invited as a guest lecturer. Christa Wolf presented a series of lectures as guest lecturer at the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main during the Summer term of 1982. This was still quite remarkable at that time, because Christa Wolf was a prominent author from the German Democratic Republic (DDR).

Voraussetzungen einer Erzählung: Kassandra is a collection of four essays that were read as lectures. The first two lectures describe how Christa Wolf discovered her theme. As she had missed her flight to Greece, for a holiday, she started reading the The Oresteia by Aeschylus. They are the hum-drum report of her travel to Greece, a recording of her thoughts on the reading of The Oresteia interspersed by many, noisy interruptions around her, as observed during her travel. The third lecture is written as a diary recording the interaction between her life and the conception of the novel. In it, the author explores ideas about the role of women in society and literature, particularly the figure of Cassandra. The fourth lecture is a letter, in which she investigates the historical reality of Medea, and the history of writing by female authors. The novel Kassandra is announced as the fifth lecture, but published in a separate volume.

Presumably, the lectures or essays in this volume, were read in several sessions; or, the text of the lectures must have been condensed and re-written for publication. It seems the first two lectures are too long and boring, while they present the reader with very little, or relevant material. The final two lectures are quite difficult and very dense. They require knowledge of The Oresteia, Greek history and Greek mythology.

Voraussetzungen einer Erzählung: Kassandra can be read separately from the novel. In that case, it could serve as an introduction exploring the mythical figure of Cassandra. The lectures offer a feminist interpretation of the Trojan War, from a Marxist perpective. The lectures are also interesting to readers interested in mythology. ( )

Fascinerend reisverslag van reis door Griekenland en later door literatuur over de figuur van Kassandra, de dochter van Priamos, priesteres die door niemand wordt geloofd. Christa Wolf wordt steeds meer geboeid door deze figuur en ze laat de lezer daarvan getuige zijn en eveneens geboeid worden.

Es war ein spektakuläres Ereignis, als Christa Wolf 1982 an der Frankfurter Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-Universität ihre Poetik-Vorlesungen hielt. Sie entwirft ein dichtes Gewebe aus literarischem Text und poetologischer Reflexion. Im Anschluß an die Poetik-Vorlesungen veröffentlicht Christa Wolf ihren Welterfolg Kassandra.
Quelle: Amazon.de ( )