A Primeira Guerra no romance picaresco de Hans Herbert Grimm Schlump

Abstract

Schlump (1928) narrates the adventures of a soldier during the First World War. Despite its massive divulgation, Schlump had a poor reception at its time. In the year 1933, the work was forbidden and burned by the Nazis. After decades of oblivion, in 2008, the literary reviewer Volker Weidermann published a book about the Book Burning, which started a process of recuperation of the work, giving it a new chance, as it was published for the second time in the 100th anniversary of the First World War. The reception to Schlump was very positive and showed a clear desire of the critics to compensate for what happened during the Nazi regime. A careful lecture of the book, however, reveals an attitude that tends to being more frivolous than pacifist, and a narrative that is unable to deliver the critical look that was promised by its recent positive reviews, as it will be presented in this article.