Lebenslinien

„The lines of life are different/ like paths are and the borders of mountains,“ wrote the older Hölderlin. The new volume Lebenslinien by Karl Corino takes up these verses to pull, on the occasion of his 75th birthday, from his lyrical oeuvre up until now, printed and not printed, although foremost from the volumes Tür-Stürze, In Bebons Tal. Neue Bilder aus Bebenhausen, Vademecum. Balladen über die Jugend in einer kleinen Stadt and Falltüren des Himmels. Eine kleine Vogelkunde.

Karl Corino, as the name suggests the scion of an Italian family that emigrated to Germany 400 years ago for religious reasons and came to settle in Franconia, o en compares his life as a “man of learning,” as a journalist and biographer, to the existence of those “before him,” the farmers and craftsmen around the Hesselberg, the Franks’ geological inlier, but also looks to literary colleagues like Christian Wagner and Robert Musil (or Droste-Hülshoff). A focus on the GDR shouldn’t be left out, especially since Corino anchored the show Transit. Kultur in der DDR on Hessisscher Rundfunk for almost 20 years.

Corino’s imagery is strongly shaped by the agrarian world in which he grew up, and by the garden landscapes of Tübingen, his “Elysium,” where he has been living with his wife Elisabeth Albertsen since 2003: a locus amoenus, from which his thoughts begin their journey back to ancient times or into the abysses of the ‘dark genetics’ of the times of Stalin.

Further Information

Author Karl Corino

Reading Sample