literature
Before sinking: Eugen Ruge’s “Pompeii”
With “Pompeii” Eugen Ruge presents a novel that also poses questions to the present. photo
© Jens Kalaene/dpa
In his current novel, the award-winning author Eugen Ruge tells of dropouts, capitalists and false prophets. The setting is ancient Pompeii. But actually he means us.
Everything seems to have been said and written about Pompeii. The spectacular natural catastrophe from the year 79 AD is better documented than almost any other historical event and has therefore also become grateful material for novels and films such as the monumental epic “The Last Days of Pompeii”. At first glance it seems surprising that Eugen Ruge of all people is now turning to this distant past.
So far, his books have mainly revolved around his own family history, the SED regime and Stalinism (“In Times of Fading Light”, “Metropol”). But “Pompeii” also has something to do with his family history.
In a recent radio interview, the author revealed that his grandmother Charlotte once aroused his interest in the subject as a child by telling stories about the volcanic eruption. He was fascinated by this exaggeratedly embellished doom scenario. But writing fiction about a well-known catastrophe can be tricky. According to Ruge, a first attempt turned out to be a kind of costume film.
The incredible story of rising star Josse
In the second attempt now available, however, the novel has become a parable with very clear parallels to the crisis-ridden present, especially to the impending climate catastrophe and the carelessness with which it is still met. At the heart of the novel is the question: did the inhabitants of Pompeii suspect anything of the impending disaster – and if so, why did they behave so passively?
It tells the unbelievable story of the climber Josse, who develops from an uneducated immigrant butcher’s son into a brilliant manipulator and seducer of the people, creates wealth and power with his hopeless opportunism, but lets people run into ruin.
An omniscient narrator leads through the action. Right at the beginning he announces a spectacular story of disclosure: “This is the true account of the downfall of Pompeii and its inhabitants.” However, it is not a heroic epic, “but a dirty, sour, even possibly petty report on a dirty, sour and petty chapter of the city’s history”.
Disturbing omens in Pompeii
17 years after an earthquake in which Pompeii suffered serious damage, there are again worrying signs: animals are being killed by poisonous gases, there is a sulphurous smell in the air at times, inexplicable cracks are showing in the masonry. But many citizens do not believe in a volcanic eruption, they do not even believe in the existence of volcanoes.
But there is also the group of concerned citizens. They join together in the Vulkanverein to found a new settlement, the “window of the sea”, at a safe distance from Vesuvius. Thanks to his rhetoric, Josse, actually Jowna, rises from being the descendant of desperately poor Pannonian immigrants to the leader of the association and skilfully disregarding the rival philosophical dropout groups.
A question of seduction
Richer citizens will soon also be attracted to the new building project. This in turn worries Livia, the very rich wife of the mayor Fabius Rufus. As the most important building contractor in Pompeii, she fears for her livelihood. There is only one way out for them: if Josse was able to persuade the Pompeians to abandon their city because of obscure rumours, he can persuade them to stay. It’s all just a matter of seduction.
Ruge artfully combines historical facts with fiction to create a coherent whole. Some people, such as the researcher Pliny, who is not exactly drawn flatteringly in the novel, actually existed. But most of the characters are fictional. They are timeless like the separatist Maras or modern neoliberal like the capitalist Livia.
Ruge incorporates a lot of knowledge about Roman antiquity, yet his novel is entertaining, satirical and light-footed, with a wink about the eternal human tendency to be willingly duped.
Eugen Ruge: Pompeji or the five speeches of Jovna, dtv, Munich, 368 pages, 25.00 euros, ISBN 978-3-423-28332-8