Girl's Calligraphy Exercise / Mädchenschönschriftaufgabe.

In his notebook, the author and journalist Dietmar Dath captures ten personal moments of art and moments of life. They are about relationships between people, their ways of dealing with one another, communication, friendship, love, art, and criticism. The protagonists include a weasel, Dath’s daughter, his father, and his friend Mareike. In the end, the thoughts of a weasel, who is living in the author’s fridge, crystallize into a true recognition: “Not finishing flourishes in art. It is a kind of succeeding. Failure does not come into it. That is because art is there to invent goals, but not to reach them. An exhibition opening is celebrated and talked about. But its end is passed over in silence.”Author and translator Dietmar Dath (*1970) is Editor at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; he lives in Frankfurt/Main, Freiburg, and Leipzig.