Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: When Kara Ben Nemsi, the first-person narrator of Karl May's Oriental Cycle, plays his »›most fetch-ing‹ waltzes« for a rich Damascus merchant, the harem women are supposedly barely able to hold themselves together.The erotic power of the music unfolds in the hands of the pianist.But over the course of the Damascus chapter, confronted twice with the disfiguring replication of his own behaviour -with the ironic mimicry referred to by Bhabha -the narrator is not able to reiterate the seduction in the repeat performance of the concert.The symptom of this masculinity crisis is Kara Ben Nemsi's ostentatious transformation from an alleged seducer to a chaste proselytiser.Thus, he becomes an »ascetic priest« as referred to by Nietzsche.
Author: Stefan Börnchen
Institution: University of Luxembourg
Language: German
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4290989386