“Who was the Lion?” Sibylle Lewitscharoff’s "Blumenberg"

The eponymous protagonist of Sibylle Lewitscharoff’s novel "Blumenberg" (2011) pays a tribute to Hans Blumenberg, one of the recent thinkers who have most appealed to non-specialists—not least because of his immense erudition. The book "Lions", to which the novel openly refers (5), is crucial to understanding how Lewitscharoff approaches Blumenberg’s life and thought in her book. In fact, although the author claims in her acknowledgments that “any attempts to find correct Blumenberg quotations will be in vain” (219), she nevertheless reveals herself well acquainted with fundamental aspects of his theories such as the notion of fictionality, the metaphor of the cave and the thesis of the legitimacy of the New Age. Echoes of his phrases and formulations, partial quotations of sentences from his works, can be easily discerned between the lines. During the feline’s visit to Blumenberg, the sphere of the wonderful and miraculous breaks into the philosopher’s somewhat limited and ordered scholarly existence, becoming a source of irritation.