Critical Edition of Doderers Dämonen on CD-ROM

The surprisingly comprehensive reaction to Heimito von Doderer`s 100th birthday in 1996 has once more drawn attention to one of the most important Austrian authors and to the relevance of his narration. His most significant novel "The Demons" (1956) is without doubt the most interesting and with regard to its involved history of origin the most urgent subject of a renewed study of this author. Its interconnection with Doderer`s political vagaries and its exceptional bulk (1.350 pages) explain the backward state of research as well as the need for a critical edition of the text, in the process of which the research will be brought up to a new level. The material bulk and the interconnection of the novel with the author`s diaries, notebooks and compositional sketches clearly show the limits of conventional editorial projects within the framework of printed publications. Giving an impression of Doderer`s method of working demands an extremely high degree of material reproduction and user-friendliness, not limited to the presentation of lists of variants or textual synopses, but setting individual standards for the parallel presentation of widely different materials. As an authorised printed version of the novel already exists, the foundation of a historical-critical edition of Heimito von Doderer`s complete works will be laid by an edition of The Demons on CD-ROM, which will include a commented version as well as a presentation of earlier versions and parallel passages in relation to the text. The scientific validity of this undertaking is guaranteed by presenting the text(s) in an optimal medium for research and practical reference purposes observing the principles of textual immediacy and completeness of material, by providing possibilities for interconnected commentaries and highly comfortable search and research options within the text. This digital edition of The Demons will be the foundation of future printed editions of the text as well as serving towards the expansion of the project to include the complete oeuvre and its opening towards the new media (Internet etc.).

This edition of Heimito von Doderer`s novel "Die Dämonen" according to the historical-critical method was aimed at fulfilling four central tasks: Firstly to establish a valid version of the text of "Die Dämonen", secondly to give a detailed description of its genesis, thirdly to provide critical annotations and comments to the text and its development and fourthly to present the outcome of the project in an easy to handle, clear and interlinked representation of text(s), annotations, commentaries and material(s) on CD-ROM. The aim was a CD-ROM edition that allowed a quick and comfortable access to a bundled or graded presentation of information about the text of the novel. The projects central intention could be summarized as follows: researchers on "Die Dämonen" should be enabled access the specific findings contained in a historical-critical edition without having first to overcome the presentational complexities traditionally created by its editors. The project resulted in a great number of new findings about the text, already existing insights could be deepened and a variety of questions relating to the text and its genesis could be answered. So much so that it is almost impossible to select the most important findings and to present them in due brevity and isolated from the overall context. In spite of this difficulties three of them are mentioned here: Relation of "Die Dämonen der Ostmark" to "Die Dämonen": The author in several stages of revision of "Die Dämonen der Ostmark" cut about 206 of approximately 555 pages of text material (calculated on the length of an average printed page of "Die Dämonen"), that is about 37% of the bulk of the text and about 89 newly written pages were integrated into the existing text. A systematic examination of the shortened passages showed that these cuts and revisions were - contrary to common belief - not alone due to Doderer`s new conception of his novel. Changes made to the text due to Doderer`s wish to free it from anti-Semitic remarks deliberately written into it in the early and middle 30ies - a view prevalent among literary researchers - proved to be less numerous than until now assumed. It could be shown that most of Doderer`s revisions were due to stylistic reasons in a wide sense of the word. Genesis of the novel: An analysis of the genesis of Doderer`s novel "Die Dämonen" showed further that his theoretical concepts of the novel and novel writing were far less important for the actual development of his text than expected. On the other hand remote and out-of-the-way sources like the urban legend about polyps living in sewers contained in a newspaper article from 1953 proved to be highly influential. Whole passages and large parts of the novel`s content could be shown to derive specifically from this newspaper article. Complexity of material: It was expected from the outset that to establish a history of the genesis and the development of "Die Dämonen" stretching over three decades should prove to be difficult, - due to Doderer`s political errors, his far reaching text revisions, and his repeated and often yearlong interruptions of work on this novel. But it turned out to be far more complex and complicated than imagined. This complexity resulted from the many different multi-layered aspects of Doderer`s text production as well as from the amount of commentaries, thoughts and reflections accompanying the genesis of his novel contained in numerous diaries, sketch- and notebooks. To detect these contexts and establish an order within this highly complex bulk of material, and at the same time give a clear survey of the genesis of "Die Dämonen" proved to be a task impossible to finish within the time allotted to this project. A continuation of this project seems - on the strength of the findings from it and with a view to a future historical-critical edition of all HvDs works - to be indicated.