Climatic apocalypse in Roman Ehrlich's "Malé"

Abstract

The highly relevant topic of current environmental disasters and the climatic apocalypse is considered within modern German-language ecocriticism with a particular focus on the phenomenon of "catastrophe without event" (Eva Horn) and the connection between apocalypse and utopia. In this respect, fictional depictions of environmental disasters appear important, enabling the rethinking of emergencies caused by said disasters and provoking a confrontation with specific reality. The objective of the study is to outline contemporary environmental crisis experience summarized on the example of shared reality of Malé in the eponymous novel of 2020 by the contemporary German novelist Roman Ehrlich. The study aims to fulfill the following tasks: representation of the ecological world view of a contemporary German author Roman Ehrlich; identification of the literary semantics of ecological apocalypse; analysis of Malé as a novel with enshrined ecocritical ideas. The research is based on the principles of culturological literary studies combined with ecocriticism. The novelty of research lies in the use of ecocriticism principles in the analysis of the novel by the German writer to demonstrate the active role of human beings in organization and disorganization of the world as well as the helplessness in the face of mighty nature, the vast spaces which stop being living spaces, losing this quality to forces which evade monitoring, control and use. Thus, the topic of the novel is the contemporary world in decline which, for the German writer, is embodied in one of the most attractive resorts on the planet - the Maldives. Mass tourism, environmental pollution (of the ocean in particular), manipulation of ethical and moral norms, and global warming have resulted in exact and rapid negative changes that threaten the islands' existence. It has been established that Roman Ehrlich shows our daily life as a simulated state of security. While witnessing the looming disaster, islanders get immersed in limitless free entertainment, boredom and fundamental statelessness. The author avoids patronizing notes. The characters' helplessness in the face of the apocalypse is reflected in the novel via the inability to formulate an explanatory narrative position regarding the catastrophe. The author follows the idea of essential loss of convincing narrative on social achievements or losses. Roman Ehrlich employs distinctly distant language when describing the disaster and uses artistic potential to play it out. Analysis of the novel stimulates conversation about the modern ecological crisis and the response of modern people to it, who, on the one hand, contributed significantly to the current critical state and, on the other hand, are its direct embodiment.