- Coffee with
“Confidence is work.”
In times of green fatigue, multiple crises, German angst, and a generally gloomy mood, confidence seems more important than ever – and so rare. But where can we find it?
Barbara Beiertz
Why get up in the morning?
Today we are launching a small series of coffee talks in search of answers to this question. Where do authors and artists find their courage, their belief in the success of their work? Why do people commit themselves every day to climate protection, organic farming, a better environment – despite all the adversity? Why does someone decide for a specific field of study knowing that they can’t earn a lot of money with it? Where does the belief in the idea for a start-up come from? Why get up in the morning?
And what does all this have to do with Mount Hagen? We want to make a difference. We want to inspire people beyond our organic Fair trade coffee cups. To new perspectives, thoughts, ideas, and the hope that each individual can make a difference after all. What if it works?
Our first “Coffee with…” took place at the river Elbe – in keeping with Katharina Hagena’s new book “River Lines”. The wind and weather almost crashed our plans, but we found shelter in a small, cozy office and thanks to to-go cups, we were able to dive into the topic of confidence while enjoying a steaming coffee.
“I'm one thing at a time.”
Barbara Beiertz: Katharina, I did a bit more research on you shortly before our interview and I’m really impressed by everything you do and have done: You studied English and German in Marburg, London, and Freiburg. You did your doctorate on James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. You wrote one of the most successful novel debuts, “The Taste of Apple Seeds”, which was also made into a movie. Several other books. Novels, essays, scientific texts.
You are patron of the Clinic-Clowns Hamburg. You’re in the Pen Club Berlin and Germany. And you invented the “Ulysses” flipbooks with Stefanie Clemen. You have two children, do Pilates several times a week and it feels like you run along the Elbe for two hours every day. This year you published a new, very successful book: “River Lines”. And above that you’re also on book tours all the time. How do you manage all that?
Katharina Hagena: It sounds like I’m doing it all at once, but that’s not true. I’m not good at multitasking at all. I can really only do one thing at a time and have to stop chewing gum before I cross the road.
I also don’t feel like I am doing much. Others do much more. I rather think that I live a privileged life, that I can go for a stroll along the Elbe every day whenever I feel like it. Other colleagues still have to write newspaper articles so that they can finance their work on the novels. That all sounds like a lot, but I’m also quite old. (Great laughter. Katharina is just 57 years old. Editor’s note)
B: What most people are interested in when they have the chance to speak with an author: How do the ideas for your books come about? And how do you know it’s going to be a good story?
K: The story always comes relatively late. I think of certain topics that I am currently dealing with. Every book is a search for truth, without the hope of answers. But maybe that leads to some better questions and then I try to approach the topics through those questions. And that is how I start gathering all the information.
And the second thing is: I need the setting. I can’t just randomly say, oh yes, I’ll set it somewhere in this town or that holiday resort. I always have to know exactly what it looks like there, what it smells like, at what time of day and at what time of night something or someone is running around, growing, singing, chirping. That is very important. And I can then place the characters in my setting and develop the plot from there.
B: Are you afraid of the blank page?
K: Of course. Fear of the blank page is my middle name. But the good thing is: I write on the computer, so it’s not so white, but has a pleasant gray tint. It’s more the beginning that I find difficult. Because you set the tone, the sound of the novel, in the first few pages. Once that’s in place, you can’t change it. That’s something I have to be very careful with.
But my research always takes an insanely long time, so I end up restless and impatient to finally start writing. The first few pages often go really smoothly, as if I’ve already heard the sound.
It’s important to me that I don’t start too early, that I wait long enough until I really know that the pressure is so high that I won’t stop after a short time. That is a joyful expectation and restlessness. And when this increases to such an extent that the people around me say “Sit down now and do it! You’re unbearable!”, then it’s the right time.
B: What was the reason for researching “River Lines”? The gardener Else Hoffa?
K: Yes, especially the gardener – and the Roman garden, which I found beautiful old photos of at the heritage office, where you can see what it used to look like. I did a lot of research on the gardener. I had to go to the Warburg archive in London, rummage through letters and try to extract individual sentences about Else Hoffa from the mini-Sütterlin script. Sometimes it took me hours to find out that it said: “Hoffi is fine.”
But sometimes there were also great finds that I was really proud of and that I could then base the plot of the novel on. I was here in the state archives and had the compensation files of Else Hoffa given to me. I’m sure no one has ever looked at them. As a half-Jew, she filed a lawsuit against the city and the German Reich in order to apply for a compensation pension. And I found out a lot – also about her entire life. That was very exciting. It was also time-consuming, but absolutely enriching.
B: Where did the idea come from?
K: I really wanted to set a book in the Roman Garden in Hamburg, at least partially. Because I often pass it on my daily walks along the Elbe. I find the place almost magical with its natural theater. You can’t say for sure whether it’s not actually an UFO landing site. And I think the place is relatively quiet, a little too unspectacular to be a huge tourist magnet. And that’s why there are sometimes just a few empty bottles up there from parties the night before. But I think that’s actually quite nice. Otherwise, it’s pretty quiet there. I then started researching the garden and quickly came across Else Hoffa.
The full sound.
B: Our theme is confidence. It arose from the perception of tiredness and exhaustion around me. From green fatigue, a lot of frustration from so many crises – there’s always something going on in the world that you can no longer comprehend. Margrit, one of your main characters and a very likeable old lady, is 102 years old. Do you think it’s desirable to live to be that old? Is that your vision?
K: I think Margrit is an almost utopian figure. Because at her advanced age, with her incredible life experience, she still has so much love and interest in the people around her. But she is aware that her future is practically exhausted and that she is looking back on a very, very long past. That she basically only consists of stories and history and that she hardly has to look to the future.
Your theme – confidence – means that you look to the future, that you look forward to something. And although Margrit hardly ever looks ahead, she is still one of the most confident characters in this novel, perhaps for that very reason. Perhaps being old and confident is sometimes easier than being young and confident.
B: And where do you get your confidence from?
K: Kant even spoke of a duty to be confident. Confidence is something that is already in us, but it is something active. For me, confidence is really not the same as optimism. Confidence is more differentiated: That you actively try to come to terms with the circumstances that exist in some way – without throwing in the towel. But that has nothing to do with this infantile “everything is fine” positivism, which gets on my nerves beyond belief.
B: Taking things as they are, working with them, making the best of them and developing them further is the most difficult thing of all. How do you know that your text is “right”, that it’s good? Gut feeling?
K: It’s not just a gut feeling. I believe that there are very objective criteria as to whether a sentence is successful or not. Whether an image “sits” or whether there is a punch line.
It’s a bit like a sound: When you play tennis and you hit the ball in exactly the right spot on the racket, it makes such a satisfying, rich sound. Or when you sing and you know you’ve hit the notes in just the right way, your diaphragm is involved, your voice is vibrating and nothing is stuck, then you know that immediately. It’s more than just a feeling. It’s a knowledge of your body. And knowledge of the sound you can produce with it and the feeling that it is healthy and right.
It’s the same with writing in the end. It has something to do with sound. Also with your body, with your breath. Yes, there is definitely something physical about it, like in tennis or singing.
B: And when the “sound” feels right: Do you then draw your motivation from it to continue writing or to tackle the next project?
K: It’s not so much the joy of my own ability as a sense of suffering when you start a new book. Because there are topics that you try to find out more about. Or that you try to approach by writing and feeling and thinking. Writing is a mixture of everything, of feeling and thinking. All sensory organs are involved if you want to approach topics or things in this way.
In a way, a story is always a bit like a mirror with which you can try to look the truth in the eye. Like that Greek hero, I think it was Perseus, who could only defeat Medusa by looking in the mirror while he was slaying her. If he had looked at her directly, he would have turned to stone.
That’s how writing works for me, that’s how the story works for me. Only through the mirror of a narrative, only through the mirror of a story, can I look the monstrosities of existence in the eye without petrifying. But every now and then I still have to petrify. (She grins.)
Curiosity. Discipline. And writing against death.
B: And what do your children say when you immerse yourself in writing like this?
K: Oh, it’s not that bad. It’s all not very romantic. When I disappear, I also reappear. When my children were still living at home, my time was determined by others: When they were at school, I wrote. When they came home, I cooked, went to the sandbox or did what I had to do.
However, it’s always nice to have time at a stretch when I start writing. In the past, my husband had to take the children and disappear with them for a week or two so that I could get rolling. And once a text has got rolling, it can continue to roll along quite well – even if my time is structured by external circumstances. That works.
But you do need a bit of discipline. You can’t think, I’ll wait until the muse comes, but before that I’ll go shopping or something. The muse has to know where to find you. That means you have to be sitting at your desk. It’s not like you’re at the store and drop your bags and say: “Ah, inspiration (preferably in the form of a white dove) has fluttered onto me! And now I’ll just go home and write page after page after page.” You also have to sit there and turn on the computer and just get started. You can still go back afterwards and see if it’s any good.
B: So it’s just work, discipline, and a good bit of routine?
K: Yes, not glamorous at all. Unfortunately. And it also has something to do with pressure.
B: Are you putting yourself under pressure or where does it come from?
K: Well, I think it comes naturally, like psychological stress, but also like a thirst for knowledge. That’s also a form of pressure. It’s a curiosity, a necessity. I don’t think I can write a book because I think: “Oh good, I’ve got time today, I’ll write a book.” At least that’s how it is for me. I need an inner necessity as to why I’m doing this. Yes, it’s work and it’s agonizing and painful. But I also don’t want to read books that aren’t necessary. And I don’t want to write anything that isn’t necessary. My time is too precious for that – so is the readers’ time.
B: What “necessity” was that for “River Lines”?
K: Several things. Among other things, I wanted to write something about age and something about love.
B: Is it a romance novel?
K: Perhaps not, but it is fueled by love. Love in many different facets. Of course, it’s also a novel about memory and death. But I always have the feeling that we are writing against death anyway and that this is also a motivator for all artists. Simply the awareness of transience and that you then write another book – yes, that’s confidence again. Or plant another apple tree. Or tell another story. “Come on, one more…”, like in “1001 Nights”: Come on, one more story, one more story. Tomorrow death awaits. Come on, one more. And one more.
B: It’s a dream come true when you manage to tell books or stories in such a way that people are captivated by them and want to know how it ends. Do you always know the ending when you start writing your stories?
K: Yes, I know how my stories end. I’m never surprised by the end. I know my ending, but I don’t know exactly how to get there. It’s a bit like this: You see the Wittenbergen lighthouse back there, but you have to find the way. Well, okay, it’s just straight ahead from here. So let’s say: The television tower in Hamburg. And then you have to find your way there by writing – and a lot still happens while you’re writing. But apart from the ending, I don’t even have a very rough structure beforehand. Sometimes the structure is changed again while I’m writing or flooded by the narrative flow. I’m open to that. It’s not a steel frame. But there is a framework that I can use as a guide and on which I can ultimately hang my pictures.
Unlike music or sculpture, language is extremely linear. I can only put one word after another, one letter after another. But our reality is simultaneous and everything happens at once. I can hear and smell and taste and see – all at the same time. I can’t do that with language. I say: “hear and see and taste.” But I’ve already used up time. It’s no longer simultaneous.
For me, I add a third dimension to this linearity by designing pictures. And I have to hang them up somewhere. It’s like a web of images that I try to create. For example, if a character in a novel ends up buried in a gravel pit, then I already have sand on the first page. Then I can hang up these images of sand and burial and memories and everything that is linked in this net. That’s how I’m trying to cheat the two-dimensionality of language.
B: Do your characters come to life when you write?
K: Some authors really live with their characters, who live an almost independent life. I rather have the feeling that I’m perhaps working like an actress who puts herself in the shoes of these characters so that she starts to think like them. But then I don’t have the feeling of “Oops!”, but rather of “Yeah, right!”.
“There is one more story…”
B: We have just talked about confidence and motivation, which arise from curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. And dealing with things as they are in order to make the best of them. Can you imagine not having become a writer?
K: Yes, actually I did. I was already on a different path: I had started my habilitation thesis and could have become a literary scientist. Either way, I would have dedicated my life to literature. Opening up literature is also a creative process, for example, suddenly breaking open a brittle, closed poem and letting it shine. That is exhilarating. I loved being a literature lecturer.
But when I was little, I definitely wanted to be a writer, I wrote poetry from a very early age. And at 18, I actually had the feeling that I was already a writer (she laughs). My fortunately lost fantasy novel, which I wrote when I was 16, was also a clear indication to me that I had actually been a writer for a long time. Then I studied literature and was somehow shocked by the fact that everything already exists and that other people actually have feelings too, not just me. Shocking.
But later – in my real life outside university – several things came together that suddenly made me say: There is one more story that I would like to read, but it is not for sale. So, I have to write it myself. That became the novel “The Taste of Apple Seeds”.
But I sometimes think about whether that wasn’t ultimately a coincidence. There are the stories by J. K. Rowling about how she sent her manuscript to – let’s say – 110 publishers and they all said no. And only the 111th finally published it. I don’t know if I could have done that. If five good publishers had told me, “Nope, you don’t have it in you”, I don’t know if I would have had the strength to say, “Yes, I do, I know better and I’ve got it.” So, what would have happened if maybe the 6th had said yes, but I had given up after the 5th?
But these are things of fate that you don’t have much influence over. Perhaps that also has something to do with confidence. Confidence is the certainty that something will happen. I also don’t believe that you necessarily have to make the best of everything. It’s more that you try to somehow manage or continue to work with the things you have. And perhaps not just to hope, but also to believe that there is a way to get out of something in one piece. I think confidence is also work.
"I had to try it once. Once."
B: The story you are telling is encouraging in itself, gives you confidence…
K: I can only encourage people to really do things. Dreams are important and you should always have them. But you can also dare to ask yourself: “What would happen if I tried to make this dream a reality? Do I feel comfortable dreaming or am I missing something? Would I perhaps like to have more than just this dream?”
B: What if it works after all…?
K: Exactly. I didn’t tell anyone about it back then when I was writing the first book. If you have small children in Germany, nobody asks you what you’re doing anyway. So, I didn’t have to keep it a secret. But I thought, if it doesn’t work out, then I’ll do something else. That’s not such a bad thing. But I had to try it once. Once.
B: My very last question, which I ask all my coffee drinkers here: What’s the best mistake you’ve ever made?
K: I really have to think about that now. I think the best mistake – or the best defeat I ever had – was that I didn’t pass the entrance test for the Henri Nannen School.
B: Otherwise you would have become a journalist.
K: Yes, and I would have been such a bad journalist because I don’t like calling strangers at all. But 90 percent of being a journalist consists of calling strangers. I could never have done it. It’s much easier to make something up.
B: How good – for all of us.
