Láska, smrt a vzkříšení - tři novely, P.Roth

The book, published under the title Love, Death and Resurrection, contains three short stories by the German writer Patrick Roth (born 1953), who is known in our country for the first edition of the novel Corpus Christi (1998) and later for the publication of the voluminous volume Sunrise. The Book of Joseph (2018). From Roth's extensive work, Volvox Globator has now decided to publish three short stories, My Journey to Chaplin, The Stranger and Magdalene at the Grave, whose overall theme is the question of resurrection, rebirth in the sense of rediscovering the meaning of life. Roth has long been concerned with the topic of modern understanding of the ideas of the Bible in the present.

My Journey to Chaplin (Suhrkamp 2013) is an autobiographical short story from 1997, written in the tradition of the artist's novel and capturing the fascination with Chaplin and his films from his youth to his artistic adolescence. The artist's journey to genius took place on New Year's Day 1976, and the author recalls it with the intention of summarizing the effects of the meeting with Chaplin on his psyche, artistic career, and entire life.

In the novella The Strange Rider, which originally formed the fifth part of Roth's Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics, delivered at the J. W. Goethe University in 2002, the author describes a celebratory reconstruction of the encounter that went down in history as Pickett's Charge, which took place at the end of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. The celebratory reenactment, organized on the anniversary of the famous battle, ultimately degenerated into a bloody massacre and resulted in the death of one of the participants, a young recruit who, after many years of conflict, tried to reconcile the Confederate and Union sides and was trampled to death in the scuffle by the enraged celebrants.

In the novella Magdalene at the Tomb, Roth tells the story of young film students who are to rehearse a well-known passage from the Gospel of St. John (20:1–18), in which Mary Magdalene sets out for the rock tomb. The author describes Mary's encounter with Jesus at the empty tomb and the moment when the woman recognizes the Risen One again. This moment is a symbol of the rebirth of man and his faith in God.

Patrick Roth was born in 1953 in Freiburg, grew up in Karlsruhe, and after graduating from high school went to study at the Alliance Française in Paris. After a year of studying English and Romance studies in Karlsruhe, he received a scholarship to Los Angeles, where he continued his studies at the film department. He has remained in the USA, working there since 1975 as a screenwriter, director, film journalist and writer. Suhrkamp published the Christ novella Riverside (1991), the soul speech Johnny Shines (1993) and Corpus Christi (1996, Czech 1998). He surprisingly deviated from the biblical theme in his memoir My Journey to Chaplin (1997). He is also the author of short prose, the plays The Watchers (1990), The Clairvoyants (1992), Kelly (1993), the screenplays for the films Boxer (1978) and The Killers (1981), and a number of radio plays and film interviews. In 1992, he received the prestigious literary prize of the Austrian town of Rauris for his novel Riverside.