Public Adoration of the Aerial Spirits

Peter von Matt is a passionate reader and an analytical thinker, a brilliant writer and an engaging orator – and this volume, a collection of rhetorical masterpieces from the past three years, is both inspiring and stimulating.

Peter von Matt is the author of many critically-acclaimed books on literature which, because they always include aspects of »real« life, have been very successful with readers, too. Von Matt, however, is also a master in the art of speaking about literature. And, as this volume proves, his talks on Hebel and E.T.A. Hoffmann, Elias Canetti, Georges Arthur Goldschmidt and many others harmonise perfectly, blending literary topics with everyday concerns such as eating and drinking, with happy endings and schadenfreude, with real and fictitious places – but first and foremost they are about literature which conjures spirits from the air or settles around us like a spiritual mantle.