Time Kept and Lost: On the Complexity of the Thematization of Old Age in Wolfgang Hildesheimer’sMonolog

Abstract

This essay proposes to reassess the importance of Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s radio work Monolog (first broadcast in 1964) in the German writer’s oeuvre by studying its manifold and complex thematization of old age. The protagonist’s self-imposed solitude and yearning for disembodiment are interpreted in the light of theories of aging that are based on both chronometric and “lived” time. This close reading of old age in Monolog duly takes into account the medium for which it was written and is informed by both Hildesheimer’s previous radio art and his evolving world view.