PETER WEISS
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parallel with each other. I began to paint and write at one and the
same time. I still have manuscripts of things I wrote when I was six–
teen or seventeen, very early lyrical novellas, lyrical prose pieces. In
Sweden I always painted and wrote alternately. Only in the last
few
years has writing begun to dominate entirely.
ROLOFF:
Which painters and writers impressed you particularly during
your early years?
WEISS:
Breughel made the first great impression on me, was my first
great master, and then from Breughel I went on to the surrealists.
At twenty I was very much influenced by people like Max Ernst and
Dali. At sixteen I admired Hermann Hesse very much. I became
acquainted with Kafka's work only at the beginning of the war,
actually not while I was in Prague but afterwards.
ROLOFF :
Yet earlier than most Germans.
WEISS:
Yes, of course. I began to read Kafka seriously in 1940 and by
the end of the war I was pretty well over my Kafka period. Then it
was Henry Miller's
tum.
ROLOFF:
Which is quite a jump.
WEISS:
Yes. A contrast.
ROLOFF:
Has the impression that Miller made on you lasted?
WEISS:
Oh yes. Especially his first books. The Tropic books more than
the others. Those I can read again and again and I reread them every
year and stilI find them wonderful.
ROLOFF:
And 'what in Miller's work appeals to you most of all?
WEISS:
The drastic realism, this complete control he has of being able
to describe himself in
all
situations and the capacity of not being
afraid of anything at all.
ROLOFF:
It doesn't put you off then when, as in
The Colossus of
Maroussi,
fabulous lyrical descriptions of nature alternate with lyrical
outbursts of ideas, which are just as fabulous but, I
think,
entirely
inappropriate, this complete unself-consciousness?
WEISS:
Yes, this complete belief he has in himself and this belief
in
the
stream of his own intuition is what I find wonderful in Miller, even
when it misses the mark completely. I like that just as much.
As
far
as I am concerned he is one of those very few writers who writes
exactly the way he feels and wants to. Miller made such a positive
impression on me because he presented such a wonderful contrast to
the Kafkaesque world, a wonderful contrast to this entire twisted,
guilt-laden, doomed and damned bourgeoisie.
ROLOFF:
Yes. And your relationship- by which I don't mean your per–
sonal relationship-to other writers writing in German at present:
