"Trugreisen" Mögliche Welten und narrative Unzuverlässigkeit in Hans-Ulrich Treichels der Papst, den ich gekannt habe (2007)

Abstract

"Journeys of deception". Possible worlds and narrative unreliability in Hans-Ulrich Treichel's Der Papst, den ich gekannt habe (2007) This article investigates how possible world elements and focalization interact in Hans-Ulrich Treichel's Der Papst, den ich gekannt habe (2007). André Hille (2007) describes the book as "a kind of strolling through the world and the memories of the main figure". The end of the book reveals that the main character is in a psychiatric institution. The reader therefore poses the question whether the travels are only taking place in the confused mind of the narrator? Are they "journeys of deception"? What is really "true" and what is mere illusion, i.e. "invented" or "fiction"? Samuel Moser (2007) writes in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung that in the end one does not know at all where "madness" and "reality" begin and end in this book. Treichel's book presents a relationship of tension between "reality" and "fiction". Although fictions are "irrealities" or "illusions" they do, in fact, reveal knowledge or insights with regard to the real world - especially with regard to individual ambitions and uncertainties that characterize the journeys of the main character.