Current Issue

Issue 5 — November 2024

Be it Kafka’s squirming protagonist or Novalis’s blue flower found once upon a dream; the heights of Romanticism in Caspar David Friedrich’s sublime landscapes or that of Expressionism in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s vivacious strokes—we can recognize and resonate with images and motifs embedded in German philosophy, literature and art with a sense of familiarity and ease. These ideas are ever present and ever-branching, unfurling beyond the boundaries of its country and language of inception. From Nietzsche, Goethe, and Marx to Hesse, Sebald and Grass—the works of German writers have inspired generations of thinkers in the Indian subcontinent. This cross-cultural pollination gave way to carving a rich intellectual landscape, where ideas intersected and evolved. The inaugural print issue of Littera Magazine focuses on the vital contribution of German literature and culture by featuring a wide array of primarily South Asian voices. Kaiser Haq, a poet and prominent literary critic based in Dhaka, writes about Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. Rife with anecdotal accounts of Haq’s travels and his addas with literary figures of the 1960s Dhaka, the essay captures the author’s delight in reading and rereading Mann’s “Modernist Fairytale.” Sinjan Saadat, a writer and musician based in Dhaka, draws from the zeitgeist of this anxious age, examining the nature of optimizing our being and non-being in our hyper-techno, image-driven world. His essay explores the ideas of German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han and the art of Feierabend—the German term for “clocking out,” the hour when work ends and guilt-free leisure begins. Sayani Sarkar, a Calcutta-based writer, through a breakdown of the concept of Wundergestalt (a miracle form), explores the essential unity of literature and aesthetics with science. She focuses ons the ideas of Wolfgang von Goethe, while also bringing Hermann Hesse and the controversial Alexander von Humboldt into the discussion. For our section on “Conversations”, our editor Mursalin Mosaddeque talks with Naveen Kishore who is the publisher of Seagull Books, a renowned publishing house and bookstore based in Kolkata, India. He has been instrumental in introducing alternative German voices to South Asia and the anglophone world at large. Additionally, our issue includes excerpts from the love letters between two great literary figures in German-language literature Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann. Compiled and annotated by Bertrand Badiou, Hans Holler, Andrea Stoll and Barbara Wiedemann and published by Suhrkamp as Herzzeit: Der Briefwechsel (2008), these letters have been translated into English by Wieland Hoban for Seagull Books. Another excerpt we are pleased to reprint is the introductory essay to Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters Around A Garden (2024) by Will Stone, also published by Seagull Books. Ashique Mostafa, an experimental filmmaker and Aninda Rahman, a visual artist and rhetoric designer based in Dhaka, both meditate in his own ways, on the recurring specter of Karl Marx in this land. While sometimes this spirit is embodied by the equally mythic political figure, Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani in Mostafa's essay; Rahman explores the culture of the proletariat through an exploration of their aesthetic devices, namely rickshaw art in Dhaka. Rahman, keeping this vision in mind, has also assembled and curated an exhibition called The Commons. As accompanying pieces to our essays, we are delighted to include a collection of original artworks by Bangladeshi artists Aninda Rahman, Ashique Mostafa, Md Hasibul Hasan, Sarah Islam, Shehzad Chowdhury, and Tanzim Iniat. Finally, we are grateful to Goethe-Institut Bangladesh, whose support has enabled us to publish this print issue, design and assemble the exhibition, and host a public lecture, bringing all these multifaceted ideas vividly to life.