Navid Kermani | |
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| Born | (1967-11-27)27 November 1967 (age 58) |
| Occupation | Novelist, essayist |
Navid Kermani (German:[naˈviːdkɛʁˈmaːni];Persian:نوید کرمانی;[næˈviːdkeɾmɒːˈniː]; born 27 November 1967) is a German writer andorientalist.[1] He is the author of several novels as well as books and essays onIslam, the Middle East and Christian-Muslim dialogue.[2][3] He has won numerous prizes for his literary and academic work, including thePeace Prize of the German Publishers' Association on 18 June 2015.[4]
Navid Kermani was born the fourth son of Iranian parents inSiegen,West Germany. He began his writing career at age 15 as a local reporter for theWestfälische Rundschau.[5] As a student he published in German national newspapers; from 1996 to 2000 he was a regular contributor to the cultural section ofFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
He regularly publishes articles,literary reviews andtravelogues, especially inSüddeutsche Zeitung,Die Zeit,Neue Zürcher Zeitung andDer Spiegel.
In the preface of his bookBetween Quran and Kafka: West-Eastern Affinities he acknowledges that he is anOrientalist and his world view has been shaped by his childhood interactions living in German society.[6]
Kermani majored in Middle Eastern languages and literatures, with minors in philosophy and theater studies, at the universities ofCologne,Cairo, andBonn. During his semester breaks, he worked as an assistant director and later as a dramaturge at the municipal theaters Schauspiel Frankfurt and Theater an der Ruhr. Kermani wrote his master's thesis in 1993 at the University of Bonn (supervisors: Stefan Wild and Monika Gronke) on the persecuted Egyptian Koranic scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid, whom he later met in Cairo and who had a formative impact on Kermani's approach to religious studies.[7]With the support of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes [German National Academic Foundation], Kermani wrote a dissertation entitledGott ist schön (God is Beautiful)[8], again under the supervision of ArabistStefan Wild and Iranian studies scholar Monika Gronke. Kermani received his doctorate in Middle Eastern languages and literatures at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn in 1998. In 2006, he completed his postdoctoral dissertation entitledThe Terror of God – Attar, Job, and the Metaphysical Revolt. From 2000 to 2003, Kermani held a long-term fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Studies Berlin), where he headed the Modernity and Islam working group. He initiated several international research projects, including the project Jewish and Islamic Hermeneutics as Cultural Criticism. This gave rise to a proposal for a Jewish-Islamic Academy in Berlin.[9][10][11]. In 2002, Kermani had his debut as an independent author with the bookDie von Neil Young Getöteten [Those Killed by Neil Young]. In 2003, Kermani left the Wissenschaftskolleg to return to Cologne, where he has since been living as a freelance writer. He resides in the Eigelstein district, not far from Ebertplatz[12]. The original idea for the Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World), which opened in Cologne on October 27, 2012, was conceived in 2007 by Kermani, together with Bernd M. Scherer, director of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) in Berlin.[13]
At the age of fifteen while still in high school, Kermani began to work as a freelancer for the local editorial office of the regional daily newspaper Westfälische Rundschau.[14] During his university studies, he wrote for national German newspapers, working as a regular contributor to the arts and culture section of thedaily newspaperFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from 1996 to 2000. Since 2006, Kermani has been co-hosting the Literarischer Salon [Literary Salon] in Cologne's Stadtgarten with fellow writer Guy Helminger.[15] Kermani spent 2008 as aVilla Massimo Fellow in Rome.[16] Beginning in 2012, he co-directed the “Herzzentrum” [“Heart Center”] at Hamburg's Thalia Theater together with dramaturgeCarl Hegemann.[17][18] Kermani's literary work thematizes the human experience of extremes in everyday life, music, art, sexuality, and in the face of death. His novels and essayistic books straddle the boundaries between autobiography and fiction, while his academic writings focus on the aesthetics of the Koran and Islamic mysticism.[19] Kermani is also well known as ajournalist who reports from crisis areas around the world. In September 2014, he reported from Iraq for the news magazine Der Spiegel[20][21][22][23] In October 2015, he traveled in the direction of the refugees to meet them on their route in the opposite direction, from Budapest to Turkey.[24] Many of his reports, which he wrote primarily for the newspaperFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the news magazine Der Spiegel, and the weekly newspaperDie Zeit, were also published in expanded versions as books, becoming bestsellers. In cooperation with the Avicenna relief organization founded by his father DjavadKermani, Kermani initiated fundraising campaigns for aid projects inAceh (Indonesia),Lesbos,Madagascar, andTigray after returning from his reporting trips.[25][26] Kermani's books have been translated into numerous languages. In his public statements and speeches, Kermani regularly comments on issues of society, politics, and religion. Jan Werner Müller described him in theNew York Review of Books as one of Germany's most thought-provoking intellectual voices. From 2009 to 2012, Kermani was a senior fellow at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (KWI)Institute for Advanced Humanities Study in Essen.[27] Furthermore, in 2009 he was appointed a Corresponding Member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften [Academy of Sciences] in Hamburg. In the summer semester of 2010, Kermani served as guest lecturer in poetics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, where he gave the Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen [Frankfurt Poetics Lectures], which were later published as a book entitledÜber den Zufall. Jean Paul, Hölderlin und der Roman, den ich schreibe [On Contingency: Jean Paul, Hölderlin, and the Novel I Am Writing].[28] In the winter semester of 2011/12, Kermani delivered the Göttingen Poetics Lecture series,[29] and in 2014, the Mainz Poetics Lecture series.[30] In the summer semester of 2013, he was a visiting professor for Islamic intellectual history atGoethe University Frankfurt. In the spring of 2014, he taught German literature as Max Kade Visiting Professor atDartmouth College in New Hampshire. From 2017 to 2020, Kermani taught creative writing as a visiting professor at theAcademy of Media Arts Cologne.[31] On October 22, 2023, Kermani read texts onBeethoven's Ninth Symphony at theBerlin Philharmonic during a concert by theGerman Symphony Orchestra Berlin underRobin Ticciati.[32]
Gustav Seibt of the newspaperSüddeutsche Zeitung highlights Kermani’s demonstrated ability to converseeffortlessly with the positions of Herder, Goethe, Rückert, and the Orientalism of German Classicism, and to comment just as competently on Lessing, Kleist, Hölderlin, and Kafka as on the aesthetics of the Koran and Islamic mysticism.[33] Kermani's book on Canadian rock musicianNeil Young,Das Buch der von Neil Young Getöteten [The Book of Those Killed by Neil Young, 2002], has been reviewed numerous times, having been a great success with critics and audiences alike.[34][35] At the end of 2023, publishing houseSuhrkamp released this book in its tenth edition.[36] The Neil Young book has been adapted for the stage several times, including at theThalia Theater in Hamburg.[37] In addition, a radio station was named for the book. Since 2010, this radio station has been presenting music online that Neil Young would like or that people who also like Neil Young would like.[38] In November 2005, Kermani stagedHosea at theSchauspiel Köln theater, a play based on biblical texts and on works byFriedrich Hebbel.[39][40] Kermani’s bookDer Schrecken Gottes – Attar, Hiob und die metaphysische Revolte (The Terror of God – Attar, Job, and the Metaphysical Revolt) published in 2005, was described by Uwe Justus Wenzel of the Swiss newspaperNeue Zürcher Zeitung ashealthily disturbing and by Karl-Josef Kuschel of theFrankfurter Rundschau as “literally boundary-breaking.”[41] The Austrian public radio station Ö1 Kulturmagazin drew parallels to Kermani's earlier works, noting that its comparative religious metaphysics were also influenced by the question of theodicy.[42] Kermani received theJoseph Breitbach Prize in 2014 for his bookDein Name [Your Name].[43] and theThomas Mann Prize in 2024 for his novelDas Alphabet bis S [The Alphabet up to S], which in form and content is a sequel toDein Name.[44] Advocating for the ideological neutrality of the state[45] Kermani nevertheless criticizesreligious illiteracy associated with thecomplete suppression of religion, which he says leads to afundamental spiritual impoverishment of society.[46] Identifying religious tolerance and freedom of religion as important European values, Kermani emphatically calls for the consideration of the beliefs and worldviews of others in the spirit of the Enlightenment.[47][48] No human being can uncover the ultimate mysteries such as why something exists rather than nothing. According to Kermani, that is why religion came into being in the first place: in it, humans find ways of dealing with what they cannot explain. Religion, then,does not run contrary to the Enlightenment; rather, religion gives expression to what transcends human reason. Kermani notes that precisely to ignore the limits of human reason is what actually constitutes a more anti-Enlightenment stance.[49]
Translated from German into English by Friederike von Schwerin-High (Professor of German studies atPomona College since 2005; PhD fromUMass Amherst incomparative literature; research interests:narrative theory,translation studies, andeighteenth-century literature).[50]
Klaus von Stosch, a comparative theologian from Bonn who has held the Chair of Systematic Theology at theUniversity of Bonn[51] since the 2021/2022 winter semester, has been familiar with Kermani's religious studies work since its inception[52] and classifies it as follows:
Even though Kermani does not consider himself a theologian, his texts on Islam and religious studies clearly go beyond a purely descriptive approach. In many places, the texts are a plea for a new take on the Koran and on Islamic tradition, but also for a more comprehensive view of other religions. Emphasizing the mystical, experiential dimension of religions, his texts tend to approach religion on an aesthetic level. However, his writings do not only address the union of human beings with God, which is paramount tomysticism, and to the associated notions of love and happiness. He is also concerned with the glory and terror of God, in other words, with all aspects of God’sinexpressible mystery. From a theological point of view, Kermani attaches importance to the unity of God and the unity of all being in a decidedly classical sense. Everything comes from the One and returns to it—like the breath of human beings. However, this means that human beings must also reconcile everything with God and His reality and cannot keep the abysses and cracks of reality separate from the mystery of God. It is thisstruggle with the ambiguity of God and reality that informs Kermani's work. A plea against reducing God to a legitimation for political strategies or human wishful thinking gives shape to his theological concern.Kermani's first Islamic studies text, his master's thesis, appeared in 1996. In it, he developed the first foundations of his thinking by way of an investigation into the Egyptian reform theologian Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid. Demonstrating not only Abu Zaid's reformist approach to revelatory thinking, Kermani also analyzes in detail why Abu Zaid came into conflict with the political and religious authorities in Egypt: not because of theological innovations, but because Abu Zaiddepicts how elites have seized upon tradition in order to seek a monopoly on the interpretation of the Koran and in order to manipulate its message in accordance with their interests.
In his dissertation Gott ist schön (God is Beautiful), which focuses on reception aesthetics and philology, Kermani shows how prominently Islamic tradition perceives the aesthetic dimension of the Koran. The Koran is described as a beguiling, captivating work of art, its beauty capturing people's hearts with an irresistible appeal. The beauty and clarity of the Koran is thus proof of its divine inspiration. According to this conception, God communicates in the Koran in an aesthetically mediated way in hopes to be understood accordingly by those whom the Koran addresses. If God seeks understanding recognition rather than blind obedience, he must encounter receptive people in an aesthetic way. For—at least according to Navid Kermani's thesis informed by his analytical view of Islamic tradition—religious recognition in Islam is conveyed aesthetically as the thrilling, goose bump-inducing hearing of a language described as beautiful, i.e. as an experience of beauty. Kermani is therefore concerned with appreciating the power of aesthetics on a religious level. He views this mystical insight as being entirely in line with the more recent Western aesthetics since Hegel. In almost all philosophical theories of art in the modern tradition, aesthetic experience is about truth. Indeed, contrary to Kant, aesthetic experience need not be about enjoyment or disinterested pleasure. It may simply be about discovering the truth, whatever the cost. As exciting and promising as Kermani's attempt to ground the belief in revelation in aesthesis and to understand the knowledge of God as a perception of the heart may be, this approach raises the question of how to deal with the sensory experiences of pain and the absence of God in the world. The abysses of suffering in our world —especially with this kind of aesthetic approach to the belief in revelation — compel us to ask how experiences of suffering and salvation, of horror and the beauty of God can be reconciled.
It is precisely this question that Kermani addresses in his postdoctoral thesis, Der Schrecken Gottes: Attar, Hiob und die metaphysische Revolte (The Terror ofGod: Attar, Job and the Metaphysical Revolt). In thisbook, Kermani takes up the basic idea of practical-authentic theodicy, which consists in demanding God's justice against the injustice of the world, that is, in Kantian terms, postulating the reality of God and thus God’s authentic self-justification without attributing to God the wish to achieve this doctrinally Himself. This postulate necessarily includes protest against suffering, which is expressed in quarreling with God and accusing God. Even though wrestling with God is largely frowned upon in Islamic orthodoxy, as it is in Christian orthodoxy, the Islamic mystical literature cited by Kermani, as well as the Book of Job, reveal ways of wrestling with God that are nourished by devotion to God and can accompany the indispensable, postulative discourse on God. For Kermani, the most significant testimony to this wrestling is The Book of Suffering by the Persian mystical poet Attar (1145–1221), a text that shows how in the Islamic tradition it is possible to argue and quarrel with God. From the perspective of the fools whom Attarreferences, God appears both as the persecutor and tormentor of humankind and yet also as its last hope. On the one hand, God remains responsible as the creator of the world and is thus also the ultimate cause of suffering—at least in the sense that his creation of the world made suffering possible in the first place. On the other hand, there are situations in which no finite power can save or help human beings. For by definition, only God is the reality that can save us even in death—if he exists. But how can I ask for help from the very one who made my misery possible in the first place? Kermani sees no way to rationally justify this question. Rather, he describes those voices that do not want to abandon God even in misery. The fools he cites do not simply lament the terror of God. Instead, they remind God of the promises he once made in creation. They insist on God's faithfulness, which God describes and promises in His self-revelation. The fools are therefore not blind to reality. On the contrary, they consider all the questions about the reality of a loving God that every human being experiences on a daily basis. Their adherence to God does not dull their senses or take away the horror of suffering. But it enables them to face the abysses and terror of reality without, however, giving up hope. Belief in God thus operates as an imposition that can drive one to madness. At the same time, however, it appears as the last possibilityfor putting up with the world in its ambiguity without losing one's own humanity.While Kermani's scholarly theses deal with Islamic tradition, he has since repeatedly turned his attention to Christianity. Particularly prominent and noteworthy in this regard is his Wonder Beyond Belief: OnChristianity, published in German in 2015 and in English in 2018. The book approaches Christianity in an aesthetic way—through thoughtful reflections on images by various Christian artists, especially from the Italian Baroque period. These self-contained, deeply researched art-historical essays open up exciting perspectives on central characteristics of Christianity and have met with great resonance. In a highly original approach to the cross, Kermani's characteristic linking of beauty and the terror of God can be found once again. Attracted by the aesthetic power of artist and sculptor Karl Schlamminger’s cross sculpture, but also by the beauty and grace with which the cross is carried in Botticelli's depictions, Kermani is moved by the aesthetic power of the cross. However, he also recognizes the cross as a believer's approach to suffering itself—for example, when he compares the thieves on the cross to mercenaries who crucify agitators in Syria or Iraq today. Indeed, Kermaniassociates the cross with human victims throughout history, citing Jesus's lamenting accusation on the cross. He insists on not separating Jesus from ourselvesand on discovering our own suffering in Jesus’ssuffering.Two somewhat longer chapters in the book deviate slightly from the rest of the text because they do not contain any image analysis but instead focus on individual persons. Particularly noteworthy is the last part of the second chapter, which movingly describes the life story and the mission of Father Paolo Dall'Oglio, who for Kermani embodies everything he admires about Christianity: a form of unconditional love for one's neighbor that, especially in monks and nuns, goes beyond what a person can achieve without God. Kermani vividly describes the great love for Islam that characterizes Father Paolo and the Mar Musa monastery Paolo founded in Syria, which Kermani characterizes as a place of coexistence between religions. For Father Paolo, his conversion to Islam was not an act of benevolence but rather one that enriched his own life and faith; he is a monk, a disciple of Jesus, who is in love with Islam – as Kermani puts it.
Kermani clearly sees this as a model for interfaith dialogue and Christian-Muslim rapprochement. By kidnapping the priest Father Paolo, who loves Islam like no other, the Islamic State has attempted to force Christians to fear Islam as an enemy. Kermani counters this attempt at intimidation with a declaration of his own love for Christianity, responding to Father Paolo and demonstrating how love can be used to counter violence. Kermani also repeatedly explains in his book how he has learned from Christianity—for example, in terms of remembering the suffering and death of others. This aspect of the book has become known to a wider public through Kermani’s repeated tributes to Father Paolo and his order, for example in Kermani’shighly acclaimed German Publishers Association Peace Prize speech.
In 2022, Kermani published his most successful religion-related book to date, with the programmatic title: Everyone, Wherever You Are, Come One Step Closer. It is written as an address to Kermani's daughter. Responding to her questions about God and religion, the book offers an excellent introduction to faith for young people. While Kermani mainly focuses on Islam and explains many of the specifics of this religion, his mystical approach to religion offers a great deal of relatable content for people of all faiths. The book’s detailed analysis of modern physics as a form of contemporary adaptation of traditional beliefs is striking, and the book succeeds in offering a complex and thoroughly thought-out understanding of religion in a humorous and accessible style.
In 2009, the German state ofHesse decided to award its 45,000euroHessian Cultural Prize in July 2009 jointly to aJew, aMuslim, aCatholic and aLutheran to honour those involved in interfaith dialogue. There was controversy over Kermani's nomination as one of the three winners because of an essay in which Kermani wrote about his feelings about seeing a painting of the crucifixion by the seventeenth-century Italian painterGuido Reni. The issue was ultimately resolved, and CardinalKarl Lehmann,Peter Steinacker [de], Kermani, andSalomon Korn jointly received the prize on 26 November 2009.[67][68] Kermani donated his share of the award to a Christian priest.[69]
Kermani holds German and Iranian citizenship. He has two children with the Islam scholarKatajun Amirpur, from whom he was divorced in 2020.[70] He lives inCologne.
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