Realtà e utopie insulari nella Exilliteratur

Abstract

In the Exilliteratur, the rich production of texts in German language written by authors fled from Nazi Germany, the image of the island is recurrent. Real and imaginary islands represent places of distance and isolation but also utopian visions of freedom and of a possible peaceful existence, close to nature. In connexion with similar motifs, such as navigation by sea, shipwreck and myths, like that of Odysseus, the island feeds the dialectic between closure and opening, staying and movement. Here are analysed three types of islands imagined by exiled german writers: the bridge-island in the autobiographical novel Die Ölgärten brennen by Alexander Sacher-Masoch, the island projection of the fantasy in the lyric of Rose Ausländer and the island as a typical place of storytelling in the novel Hotel Baalbek by Fred Wander.