INFERNAL MATTER(S) AND THE POWER OF THE WORD IN FERIDUN ZAIMOGLU'S EVANGELIO

Abstract

Feridun Zaimoglu's ‘Luther-Roman’ Evangelio (2017) concerns Martin Luther's incarceration in the Wartburg (1521–2), evoking his struggles with Satan, his translation of the New Testament into German, and the spiritual and political volatility of his world. Reception of the novel was mixed, some readers delighting in the archaic idiom that echoes Luther's own Early New High German, others disappointed by the absence of a recognisable engagement with Luther's theology. This essay locates the novel in the context of two important features of Zaimoglu's work: his fascination with the transformative potential of religious belief and the well-known virtuosity of his literary language. Drawing on the materialist philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari it adopts a non-representational approach to the novel's immersive narrative, viewing the forces unleashed by Luther's heresy in terms of the Deleuzian war machine, rendering reality unstable before the Reformation takes its historically documented course. This is achieved in a poetic language that evokes the demotic idiom of Luther's own translation. The novel may not represent Luther's theology, but it enacts the power of the word so central to his translation project.