„Další stanice – Hören wir auf zu übertreiben“ von Peter Waterhouse: Mehrsprachigkeit als Friedensprojekt

Peter Waterhouse’s Works present a very particular kind of multilingualism. The author brings always the German language in contact with other ones, or rather he postulates the poetic proximity between German and other languages that he takes into consideration each time, a proximity that is realised through ‘phonetic translations’. In the essay „Další stanice – Hören wir auf zu übertreiben“ (2022) („Další stanice – Let’s stop overstate“) the language addressed is Czech, as the essay is a first glimpse of Waterhouse’s new novel, which focuses on his grandparents, whose origins are rooted in Opava/Troppau in Moravia. In “Další stanice” (“Furthest Station”) a train journey becomes the trigger for reflections on borders, languages, trespassing. The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek, both in Czech and in its German translations, is the guidebook for this trip. In the Essay, Waterhouse continues the autofiction of reconstruction of his family memory, that he began in the novel (Krieg und Welt) (War and World) (2006) and develops its central topic further: showing that the human being is by nature a pluri- or transcultural mix, without national, political or linguistic belonging. Multilingualism – in this contrastive vision of poetry – manifests itself as a project for peace, because dissolving linguistic borders means at the same time dissolving political ones.