Harald Weinrich

On Borrowed Time

The Art and Economy of Living with Deadlines

Translated by Steven Rendall
256 pages,  6 x 9  © 2008

Cloth $32.00

ISBN: 9780226886015   Published October 2008

• Synopsis
• Table of Contents
• Bio

1. LIFE IS SHORT ART IS LONG

Medical Aphorisms and the Movement of Time • Hippocrates, Aristotle, Theophrastus
Philosophical Remarks on the Brevity of Life • Seneca
Domestic Economy and Time Management • Leon Battisti Alberti
Teaching Time Management • Chesterfield, Rilke

2 THE MIDPOINT OF LIFE

Midway on Life's Journey • Dante, Petrarch, Hölderlin
Rejuvenation in Rome – through Rome • Goethe
The Physician's Art of Prolonging Life • Hufeland
A Long Life with Faust • Goethe
New Art and Another Life • Vittorio Alfieri, Schiller
Magic and Style in Life-Time • Balzac
Every Day is a Sonnet • Oscar Wilde
Untimely Death or Venerable Old Age • Chatterton, Keats, Benn, Thomas Mann
Revocable and Irrevocable Time • Ingeborg Bachmann

3. LIMITED TIME IN THIS WORLD AND IN THE NEXT

Yet a Little While • Jesus, St. Paul
In Purgatory, Time Is Precious • Dante
More Time for a New World • Benjamin Franklin
A Purgatory in this World • Max Weber
Revolutionary Historical Times, in Rapid Fire • Heine, Marx

4. SHORT AND SHORTEST TIMES

Two Gods of Time: Chronos and Kairos • Mythology, Classics
Stars and Hours • Schiller, Wallenstein; Stefan Zweig
Between Austerlitz and Waterloo •  Émile Zola

5. THE ECONOMY OF LIMITED TIME

Three-Day Friendship: Hospitality • Homer, Knigge
Classicism as Economy of Time • From Plutarch to André Gide
Living Faster, Talking Less • Jean Paul, Madame de Staël

6. THE DRAMA OF TIME IN SHORT SUPPLY

Epic Is Long, Drama Is Short • Aristotle
How Long Is Twenty-Four Hours? • Corneille
Time out of Joint • Shakespeare, Hamlet
Saladin Learns to Take His Time • Lessing, Nathan the Wise
Time and the Oeuvre • Proust

7. FINITUDE, INFINITY

Curiosity–Thirst for Knowledge–Science • from Aristotle to Leibniz
A Nothingness of Time in Exchange for Eternity • Pascal, Emily Dickinson
Too Little Time, Too Much World • Blumenberg
Anthropological Experiences of Shortage • Odo Marquard

8. LIVING WITH DEADLINES

Clocks, Calendars, Appointment Calendars • Clockmakers, Calendarmakers
Deadlines in Everyday Life • Tutti, con moto
Deadlines in Law, with a Brief Glance at "Abortion Limits" • Civil Law, Criminal Law, Labor Law
"...but for the Present, not Yet" • Heidegger, Marquard

9. SHORT STORIES ABOUT SHORT DEADLINES

Saved from Death at the Last Minute • Thousand and One Nights; Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice
A Ballad about Friendship and Deadlines • Schiller, "Die Bürgschaft"
A Devil's Pact with Deadlines • Chamisso
The Traps and Labors of Deadlines • Flaubert, Maupassant
Deadlines of Honor, Prussian Style • Theodore Fontaine
Deadlines for Honor in Imperial Austria • Arthur Schnitzler
A Short Time to Be Humane • García Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Fifteen Minutes' Delay for Death • Blaise Cendrars
Everyman's Last Reprieve • Hugo von Hofmannsthal
A Short Epilogue in the Emergency Room • Tabucchi
A Race Around the World • Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days
Short Time, Comic Style • Camoletti, Boeing-Boeing
A Twenty-Minute Deadline: Lola Runs • Tom Twyker, Lola Rennt

10 EPILOGUE ON THE SENSE OF TIME

Notes
Index

Subjects

• Classical Studies
• History: History of Ideas
• Language and Linguistics: General Language and Linguistics
• Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory
• Philosophy: General Philosophy

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