Writers in exile:  The insights of outsiders

"Exile really is a two-faced phenomenon.  It is negative because the writers were forced to leave their culture, but it is positive because they have been exposed to others.  They become accustomed to another kind of life, and it shows in their writing."

Having lived in four countries, Assistant Professor of Modern Languages Johannes Evelein knows how it feels to be an outsider. His experience has fueled his scholarly interest in the writings of German authors who were forced to leave their country by the Nazis. "Virtually the entire German intellectual community was expelled and uprooted during Nazi rule--a human drama of immense proportions," says Evelein. "My research looks into the experiences these writers describe and how those experiences influenced their writing. The very fact that so many German writers found refuge in the United States makes this topic even more appealing, because their being and working here has become part of American intellectual history." 

      While his focus is on exiled German writers, Evelein says that exile is pervasive in many writings, from the ancient Greeks to today's Albanians. The ways in which exile is reflected aesthetically in literature and how exile translates into literary form and content are instrumental in shaping cultural landscapes, he says. In July 1999, Evelein presented his research on exiled European writers at a Loyola College conference in Berlin, Germany. He taught at the University of Heidelberg last fall and is scheduled to present a paper at an international colloquium on exile at Oxford University in May. Evelein is currently writing a book that explores the work of such exiled German writers as Thomas Mann, Peter Weiss, and Anna Seghers. "Exile is generally regarded as something negative because you are uprooted, displaced," Evelein says. "This becomes a familiar motif in their works, the idea that they are no longer a part of their culture."

      In the courses he teaches at Trinity, Evelein not only explores the works of exiled writers but also the complex relationship between Germans and Jews from a literary viewpoint. In his "Germans and Jews in Literary Context" course, Evelein charts the integration of Jewish people into Germany in the 19th century and this movement's impact on the country's literature. He also teaches the cultural, political, and social sentiments conveyed by German writers during and after 1949 in another course, "Narratives of a Divided Nation: East Meets West in German Literature."

    Evelein says that despite the generally negative connotation of exile, there is a positive factor as well. The view of an exiled writer is much more insightful, he says, and indicates that the environment in which a work is created has an impact on that work. "It really is a two-faced phenomenon. It is negative because the writers were forced to leave their culture, but it is positive because they have been exposed to others. They become accustomed to another kind of life, and it shows in their writing." Evelein points to the works of Vladimir Nabokov, who settled with his family in Berlin after fleeing Russia, moved again to France, then to America to escape the Nazis. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, for instance, details a man's search for his brother's identity; Nabokov's novel Lolita presented his fascination with American culture in the form of a 12-year-old.

   Born in the Netherlands, Evelein has been an assistant professor of modern languages at Trinity since 1997. He has studied in the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, and the United States. He received his doctorate in German literature and linguistics from the State University of New York in Albany and his master's degrees in literature from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. "When you talk about 20th-century literature, you often look at protagonists who are profoundly ill at ease with their surroundings," Evelein says. "I believe that by living abroad myself, I have become sensitive to the notion of strangeness, of being different no matter how well-adapted one is. But I am also able to tap into new resources and am open to being exposed to a different environment, which is as challenging as it is rewarding."

-- Andrea Comer