Herbert Kapfer’s novel “The Planet of Discreet Love” | EUROtoday

Herbert Kapfer is a superb confusion, he packs actuality in a world of properly -known and unknown books, largely the authors have lengthy since been useless, a lot of their works have lengthy since been offered out. But Kapfer traces them, raises them to new life and linked the previous and current in a collage -like cosmos right into a finely spun assemble within the historical past of concepts. His nice publications “1919. Fiction” and “utop” are constructed. And now he has introduced a veritable novel that tells a narrative with motion: “The planet of discreet love”. The creator is personally current, not solely current by a community of literature quotes.

It is in regards to the pupil motion, the community of splendid, private and political ideas and life plans. Kapfer, born in 1954, was nonetheless a pupil on the time, however, he explains in an interview, “I was interested in and touched these life experiments, projects, municipal ideas”. The experiment has all the time lured and stimulated its fascination. As a auditory supervisor till 2017 at Bavarian Radio, he transformed the editorial crew right into a division of “radio play and media art”, transmedia efficiency with Elfriede Jelinek, Ulrike Ottinger or Herta Müller unleashed his ardour for one more aesthetic of notion.

The novel is about 1975 within the Munich municipality “Collective 7”. The mannequin is the Berlin municipality 2, which needed to revolutionize the married lifetime of the bourgeois small household. The focus is on Bea and Kai, each in early twenties, from a properly -off educational finances, he’s a faculty leaving and outlier. Both have their literary function fashions and guiding characters. For Kai it’s the residents’ fright and poetic insurgent Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, for Bea the novel girls’s rights activist Françoise d’Eaubonne along with her eco -feminism on the heart of considering and performing. A distinct combine. In distinction to the targets of the complete collective, the 2 capsle as lovers and go their very own approach. The conventional gender roles are exchanged: Bea is the queen, Kai the Liebess slave who has to undergo her.

Kai is prepared, however has no thought about feminism as a result of he’s too concerned in Brinkmann. So he’s knowledgeable by Bea what it’s all about: “I am considering how we can convey the idea of ecological feminism from all classes in simple language: that we put the majority on this planet and are therefore powerful. That they are men who leave us a looted planet. Broken forests, contaminated rivers, rotten cities, famines, overpopulation, environmental. And only women can be found.

Bad luck for Kai. He is allowed to nibble on Bea’s ear, her feet caress, but his gender must not rise, but is pushed down by her; When involuntary ejaculation occurs, Bea is outraged, “genital sexuality is outdated”. How much irony, perhaps also satire, is in these descriptions remains unclear. Bea thinks it bitterly, the author is probably also or keeps covered, the reader and reader have the free choice. Kapfer masterfully describes Kai’s erotic advances, which is called Sami in the novel when he is submissive and fits into his new role.

Nothing works with this author without the literature. Bea prescribes seven books to her love servant, whom he has to study as a mandatory reading in order to be worthy of her, from Simone de Beauvoir to Kate Millet, Valerie Solanas to Roland Barthes. Sami leans obedient. He rebelled only once, namely when Bea designs a new project: Out of outrage about the sexist film “The History of O.” Like the artist Valie Export, also an icon of Bea, the 1968 Peter Weibel, the later director of the Center for Art Media (ZKM), in the middle of Vienna as a dog on a leash on the street, now walking on the film in the cinema. Now Kai says “no”, his submission solely applies within the closed room of the room, however not in public.

The municipal collective is disorganized, the coordinates are no longer correct, the question is in the room whether one should dissolve. A surprising police attack saves the community: everyone is arrested, brought to the guard, interrogated and released again because nothing suspicious was found in the shared apartment. Bea and Sami go to a business trip eastwards, to Vienna. Kai reads the poems of his idol Brinkmann on the train, Bea deals with Leopold from Sacher-Masoch’s novella “Venus in fur”. In Vienna you want to spend the night with a friend. For Kai/Sami, the servant room, a tiny chamber with bed and table, is reserved, Bea will slip to bed with her friend Lisa. When asked whether Kai could accept this, the mistress Bea replies condescendingly: “He is totally on the go. With analysis orders and lists of out of outfit books that I’m in search of.”

Herbert Kapfer: “The planet of discrete love”. Novel.
Antje Kunstmann Verlag, Munich 2025. 202 p., Br., 22, – €.