The investigator: on ‘life’ after death. Charles Lewinsky’s Andersen

Abstract

Devoted to Andersen, a novel by the Swiss-born writer Charles Lewinsky, the article sets out to interpret the book with a special emphasis on its protagonist, a Gestapo officer, whose image experiences a paradoxical reinvention in our time. In his analysis, the author is not limited to interpretation of the novel’s meanings. The article argues that Lewinsky’s novel explores contemporary cultural-philosophical problems: those of humanity in the postmodern situation. On the subject of the ‘banality of evil’ (using Hanna Arendt’s term), the author points out the severe estrangement of the main character’s consciousness, the existence devoid of life, substituted with insensitive functioning. The paper emphasizes that while the human type described in the novel formally conforms to ‘the Enlightenment project’, it demonstrates an egregious lack of moral self-awareness. The author refers to such a description as typical for a ‘hero of our time’ in the 21st c. and, therefore, problematizes the cultural-philosophical discourses invoked by Lewinsky in his book.