'Alte Meister' ('The Old Masters') by Thomas Bernhard (Review)

Although my appointment with Reger in the Museum of Art History in Vienna wasn't until half-past eleven, I was already there at half-past ten in order, as I had desired for a long time now, to observe him undisturbed from the best possible viewpoint, writes Atzbacher.  He was already seated, as always, on his usual bench in the so-called Bordone Room in front of Tintoretto's Portrait of a White-Bearded Man, and the museum attendant Irrsigler, as always, was walking around, both keeping an eye on other visitors and waiting for any sign from Reger, who, for thirty-six years, has spent several hours every second day in front of the Tintoretto, and as I stood there observing Reger, with Irrsigler walking past, again, ignoring me, I saw a large coach pull up outside the museum and a group of tourists get out, bookish people by the looks of them, and I saw them disappear in the direction of the entrance, and looking back to Reger who, as always, was observing the Tintoretto painting, as he waited for me, as I observed him, sitting in the Bordone Room, with Irrsigler somewhere in the background, I saw the bookish-looking people appear again, wandering around in the

manner of tourists with no concept of art, one of them said he was going to look for the bathroom, and he walked off, walked past me, into the Bordone Room, almost bumping into Irrsigler, who stopped to look at the man as he entered the Bordone Room, looking around for something, turning around and then stopping in front of the Portrait of a White-Bearded Man, Reger noticed the man and asked him to sit down on the bench next to him and asked the man where he was from, and the man introduced himself as Tony and said that he was a blogger, a literary blogger, I can't stand bloggers, failed writers who fail to see that they are failed writers, said Reger, literature, well literature I like even less, especially contemporary literature, writers today, especially here, in Austria, are tedious, they are tedious people writing tedious attempts at novels, and the man, this Tony, smiled nervously and said he'd actually just been reading a book by Thomas Bernhard and, and Bernhard is the worst of them all, said Reger, a tedious, repetitive writer, a writer who repeats himself all the time, Bernhard's work is typical of the culture of this wretched country, said Reger from his bench in the Bordone Room, as Irrsigler completed another round of his rooms, as I observed, as the large bus waited outside the museum, a tedious collection of words which are meant to be insightful, but which, in fact, are merely laughable, and Tony, obviously feeling uncomfortable, asked Reger if he preferred art to literature, not at all, I loathe all of these so-called Old Masters, these so-called geniuses, flawed every one of them, this museum is full of paintings, world-famous paintings, but, in truth, this museum is laughable, there isn't one single worthwhile piece in the whole building, in fact, said Reger, this whole tedious country is full of worthless pieces of so-called art, all of which belong on a dung heap, rotting with all of the other manure in the garden, all of it, and, said Reger, pulling on Tony's sleeve to prevent him from leaving, the worst thing is that the people come here and enjoy this manure, they think this is great art, when it's nothing more than laughable, said Reger from his bench in the Bordone Room in front of Tintoretto's Portrait of a White-Bearded Man, but you must like Vienna, said Tony, looking around nervously, it's such a beautiful city, so many beautiful buildings, they might look beautiful, but if you look at them carefully, said Reger, if you really examine them, they are all simply tedious, monstrous blocks of concrete, and the people, the Viennese people, they are simply laughable, awful, awful people, but the people who live outside Vienna are even worse, tedious people incapable of producing a thought of their own, and yet outside Austria things are even worse, in England, for example, at which point Tony ran screaming from the room, observed by Irrsigler, who was completing another of his rounds, and I watched as the rest of the bookish-looking people quickly left the museum, and the large coach drove off a few moments later, and I turned back to the Bordone Room, where Reger was talking to Irrsigler, an Englishman who was talking about that tedious Bernhard, I find people who think they can write about literature laughable, what manure they come up with, how tedious they really are, said Reger, and I decided, writes Atzbacher, that I couldn't be bothered waiting any longer and that Reger had always been a bit of a prick, so I left the museum and went down the pub for a beer instead.  The beer was awful.

'Ich nannte ihn Krawatte' ('I Called Him Necktie') by Milena Michiko Flašar

Hot on the heels of my recent read of Jenny Erpenbeck's Aller Tage Abend (The End of Days) comes another piece of contemporary German-language literature, one which has a couple of similarities to Erpenbeck's novel.  For one thing, it's another book by a woman in translation (which I'm sure will please Biblibio!).  The other one is perhaps more relevant - once again, it's a book which you'll be able to check out in English for yourself very soon...

*****
Milena Michiko Flašar's Ich nannte ihn Krawatte (I Called Him Necktie, out now from New Vessel Press) is the story of Hiro Taguchi, a young Japanese man who has spent the past two years in self-imposed exile inside his bedroom.  He belongs to the group of Japanese society called Hikikomori, people who, unable to cope with the stress of the outside world, decide to stay in their rooms instead.

At the start of the book, Hiro takes his first, faltering steps back into the real world, deciding that a walk in the park might do him good.  As he sits on a bench in the park, watching the rest of the world go by (being very careful not to interact with any of the passers-by), he notices a man on the bench opposite his, another person in no hurry to leave his comfortable seat.  As the days go by, the two men gradually get to know each other, nodding to each other when arriving and leaving, until one day the older man crosses the gravel path dividing them, sitting down next to Hiro and starting a conversation - which is when Hiro realises that the Hikikomori aren't the only ones suffering under the weight of Japanese society...

Ich nannte ihn Krawatte is a wonderful little book which uses an unlikely relationship between two different men to tell the story of modern Japanese society.  The first is a high-school drop-out; the second, a salaryman who has lost his job - the reader is given an insight into the stresses of Japanese daily life through the eyes of the exhausted corporate hero, and a young man who can't bear to enter that world.  As the two get closer and begin to tell stories about their lives, explaining what events brought them to their bench in the open air, Hiro's eyes are opened, and he begins to realise that his desire to hide away from the rest of the world is far from unique.

Right from the start, we're aware that we're looking back on a sad story, with the first page informing the reader that the events Hiro is to relate already belong to the past:

"Ich nannte ihn Krawatte.  Der Name gefiel ihm.  Er brachte ihn zum Lachen.  Rotgraue Streifen an seiner Brust.  So will ich ihn in Erinnerung behalten."
p.7 (Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 2012)

"I called him necktie.  The name pleased him.  It made him laugh.  Red-and-grey stripes across his chest.  That's how I want to remember him" *** (my translation)

The relationship that slowly progresses, then, is one we already know is destined to end, and the stories the two men tell contain many others which have failed to go the distance. 

Many of these stories involve people who are different, a state of affairs which can have consequences in a society which prides itself on being homogeneous.  Whether it's a student who hides his ability in spoken English, or the poet who has no desire to join the rat race, the nail that sticks up, as the Japanese proverb goes, will be hammered down - and that hammering can be just as brutal as the metaphor would suggest.  What evolves from the stories is a picture of a society where the different are stigmatised, and Hiro's withdrawal from the world is partly because he is haunted by his own passivity in the face of injustice.

This leads to a fear of relationships, a reluctance to get to close to anyone who might be able to damage him emotionally at a later date:

"Ich wollte niemandem begegnen.  Jemandem zu begegnen bedeutet, sich zu verwickeln.  Es wird ein unsichtbarer Faden geknüpft." (p.8)

"I didn't want to meet anyone.  Meeting people means getting involved.  An invisible thread is bound." ***

At the height of his issues, even the thought of touching others, or being touched by their hair, for example, brings him out in a cold sweat.  All of which, surprisingly, reminds him of own, rather distant, father...

The longer the story goes on, the more important Hiro's father becomes, as we come to sense that Tetsu, the office drone who has been thrown out of the hive, is the young man's key to understanding his parents.  In fact, he serves as a representative, the human face even, of the vast army of salarymen keeping the country afloat:

"Seine gebügelte Gestalt war die tausender anderer, die tagein und tagaus die Straßen füllen.  Sie strömen aus dem Bauch der stadt und verschwinden in hohen Gebäuden, in deren Fenstern der himmel in einzelne Teile zerbricht." (p.13)

"His washed-out figure was that of thousands of others who, day in and day out, fill the streets.  They stream out of the belly of the city and disappear into high buildings, in whose windows the sky shatters into scattered pieces." ***

The flip-side of this well-oiled machine is the relentless pressure of society, one which decrees that you must do this - or else.  Testsu, who was an unquestioning part of the machine for decades, is now old, used up (he can't even keep up with the corporate drinking culture) and must be removed from the machine like a worn-out part...

Another important theme of the book is the importance of face.  Ironically, while both Hiro and Tetsu are transgressing against cultural norms, they are allowed to remove themselves from society because others are ashamed to confront them for fear of what the neighbours might think:

"Mein Glück ist es, dass man mich bis heute in Ruhe gelassen hat.  Denn es gibt auch solche, die man herausgelockt hat.  Man verspricht ihnen eine Wiedereingliederung.  Genesung auch.  Arbeit.  Erfolg.  Mit diesen dünnen Versprechen auf den Lippen werden sie Schritt für Schritt zurück in die Gesellschaft, jenes große Gemeinsame, geführt.  Man gewöhnt sie daran, ihr gefällig zu sein.  Man harmonisiert sie.  Ich aber habe Glück.  Man rechnet nicht mit mir." (p.44)

"It is my good fortune that I've been left in peace thus far.  For there are those who have been tempted out.  They are promised a reintegration.  Recovery too.  Work.  Success.  With these hollow promises on the lips, they are led, step by step, back into society, this great commonality.  They are conditioned to become compliant to it.  They are harmonised.  I, however, am lucky.  Noone is counting on me." ***

As long as everyone pretends everything is OK, then everything is OK, and this leads to a distinct (damaging) lack of communication.  Tetsu finds himself unable to reveal the truth to his wife, and Hiro hides away from parents and friends, shutting the real reasons for his mental collapse deep inside.  The writer shows that in a society which favours repressing emotions there's a need for people to speak up and let their loved ones know what's going on.

Ich nannte ihn Krawatte is written in a fairly sparse style with a predominance of short sentences, a style I'm tempted to call Japano-Deutsch, and the already short story is divided into more than a hundred brief sections, making it easy to pick up and put down (although I raced through it for the most part).  Flašar's mother is Japanese, and that will probably help with the book's authenticity and reception; many readers can (quite rightly) be suspicious of western authors attempting to write about Asian culture, but this definitely feels right.  The story is also liberally sprinkled with Japanese expressions, explained in a glossary at the end of the book - I wonder if the English version will have quite as many...

...which brings me back to where we started, New Vessel Press' English translation, published as I Called Him Necktie (translated by Sheila Dickie).  The title might sound a little clumsy in English, but it's actually quite apt.  You see, while English speakers would probably just say 'tie', the Japanese word for this item of clothing is, funnily enough, 'necktie' (or a close approximation, anyway!).  The book's out now, and I'd definitely recommend it.  It's a great story and a wonderful depiction of how modern life can sometimes leave people behind - and while it is fairly specific to Japan, the truth is that it makes for uncomfortable reading for the rest of us as well.  In an increasingly capitalist world, those of us who can't keep up with the pace are just as at risk of being left behind as poor Hiro and Tetsu...

'Anatomie einer Nacht' ('Anatomy of a Night') by Anna Kim (Review)

Today's book was the readalong choice back in November for German Literature Month, but (sadly) my German-language paperback copy arrived too late for me to join in.  However, it's been sitting on top of a pile for a while now, catching my eye whenever I walked past, so I thought it was about time I got around to it.  It's an excellent read, if a little grim - and for anyone who wants to read it without having to improve their German, I know where you can source Frisch & Co.'s English-language translation...

*****
Anna Kim's Anatomie einer Nacht (Anatomy of a Night, English version translated by Bradley Schmidt) is set on the east coast of Greenland in the small, fictional town of Amarâq, the story taking place over the course of a few hours on one summer night.  Amarâq is a beautiful place, but its isolation means people often see it as the end of the world, and on this one, fateful, night, several people are about to take this description very literally.

Over the course of 300 pages, the writer introduces a whole cast of characters, moving back and forth between past and present.  They are a sorry bunch, a group of people with little to live for and hard, painful stories in their past, depressed and alone in the small outpost at the end of the world.  What happens next is unsurprising, yet shocking - one by one, the inhabitants start to kill themselves...

Let's be clear about this - Anatomy of a Night can make for grim reading at times.  It seems as if Kim's whole purpose in introducing her characters and their history is to make the suicides even more painful for the reader than they would be anyway, death after death making the reading experience rather uncomfortable.  Once you understand what is happening, you begin to wonder who will be the next to fall victim to the 'epidemic' sweeping the town.

Before reading the book, I was under the impression that the focus was on the one night, an attempt to explain why the townsfolk all chose the same night to end their lives, but this isn't really a question the writer wants to address.  Instead, the novel examines the background, looking back at upbringings and traumatic events which, much later, will explain the events of the night.

One of the potential catalysts is the town itself, a dark, brooding entity which stands out as one of the novel's most prominent characters:

"Es ist, als würde die Natur, als würde die Stadt, eine andere Sprache sprechen und sich über Bilder mitteilen, für die man besondere Augen benötigt."
p.20 (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 2013)

"It's as if nature, as if the town, spoke a different language and shared images which required special eyes to see them."*** (my translation)

Amarâq is a landscape where the land and sky meet, giving the impression of a world with no horizon, and in the eery northern summer nights, a pale darkness appears to blanket the town.  The combination of isolation and ubiquitous silence creates a feeling akin to claustrophobia - even the reader starts to feel trapped at the end of the world.

A large focus of the novel is the character of the Greenlanders and their indigneous beliefs.  Kim, through her creations, discusses the theory of multiple souls, shamans and people who can 'read' dreams, while we also learn of historical events, such as stories of famines, food shortages - and eating people...  In a harsh environment, people tend to live for the present with no thought of the future:

"Ella holt ihren Block heraus und macht eine Notiz, warum, glauben Sie, gibt es so viele Selbstmorde?, fragt sie, die Mentalität, antwortet Peder, es ist in ihrer Natur, die Grönländer leben zu sehr in der Gegenwart, und wenn die beschissen ist dann, er umfasst seinen Hals mit einer Hand, stranguliert sich andeutungsweise." (p.100)

"Ella gets her writing pad out and makes a note, why, do you think, are there so many suicides?, she asks, mentality, answers Peder, it's in their nature, the Greenlanders live too much in the present, and when the present is shitty, then, he puts his hand around his neck, pretending to strangle himself."***

This is a perhaps a partial explanation for the epidemic Amarâq suffers from.

However, Anatomy of a Night is largely the story of the effects of colonialism.  With Denmark taking over the 'colony', the traditional way of life is changed forever.  While the natives' lives may be improved in some ways (they're certainly financially better off and no longer in danger of dying of hunger), the people are largely caught between two worlds.  This is particularly true for those Greenlanders who spend time in Denmark.  In the imperial centre, they are treated like savages and yearn to return to their natural environment.  However, on their return, they find that it's impossible to ever truly return home (a theme Kim actually examines in a non-fiction work in German, Invasionen des Privaten).

The move to dependence on Denmark also contributes to the creation of a welfare state of hopelessness.  With regular dole payments from Copenhagen, Amarâq has become an enclave for generations of welfare recipients, with little work available.  This inevitably leads to alcoholism, casual violence, stupor and vomit, and the Danes struggle to understand how their benevolence has resulted in the destruction of a way of living.  Once again, with no future, it's hard to find reasons to live for the present.

Anatomy of a Night is very confusing at times.  It's full of short, frequently shifting scenes, and the novel contains a vast array of main characters.  In order to follow the story, it's important to keep on top of the connections between the folk of Amarâq (and there are a lot...).  The book is compelling though, and excellently written, with fluid, rolling sentences.

But why does it all happen on this night?  As mentioned at the start of the review, it's a question which is never really answered.  The reasons why the Greenlanders are drawn to suicide, on the other hand, are made very, very clear.  Of course, the real question is how to prevent it, and Kim doesn't provide us with an answer to this one.  With welfare dependence, isolation, cultural attitudes and a genetic predisposition to depression, this is a community perpetually falling apart; there will always be new deaths and sorrow...

"Der Tod, bisher nur fiktiv, eine Erzählung, eine Legende, wird durch diese erste Begegnung monumental und lässt sich nicht mehr aus dem Leben rücken..." (p.69)

"Death, up to this moment merely fictional, a story, a myth, becomes, as a result of this first encounter, monumental and can no longer be separated from life..."***

The first encounter with death plants a seed which grows inside - and that all means that the nights of terror will continue...

'Leonardos Hände' ('Leonardo's Hands') by Alois Hotschnig (Review)

Alois Hotschnig is a writer whose name you may have heard before as his short story collection Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht was published in English by Peirene Press as Maybe This Time a couple of years back.  After enjoying that book, I ordered a further example of his work - and promptly ignored it for the next two years.  Here then, especially for German Literature Month, is a very belated review ;)

*****
Leonardos Hände (Leonardo's Hands) is about Kurt Weyrath, an Innsbruck ambulance driver who stands out a little from his colleagues.  In order to survive their mentally-taxing duties, most of his colleagues develop a sense of detachment towards their 'clients':

"Gleichgültigkeit war ein Berufsinstrument, ohne das ihnen die Arbeit nicht möglich war, und wie die Handschuhe hatte man sie immer dabei."
p.6 (Haymon Taschenbuch, 2008)

"Indifference was a tool of the trade, without which work was impossible, and like gloves, you always had it to hand." (my translation)

However, Kurt, who gave up a white-collar career to join the ambulance service, is much friendlier with the people he transports, developing relationships with the people he sees regularly.

One day, this turns into a regular obsession when he begins to spend all his free time sitting next to the bed of a woman in a coma.  His colleagues are unable to understand why he has become so attached to someone he doesn't know, but that's because they don't know his secret, the one which brought him to the ambulance service in the first place.  You see, he suspects that he's the one who put her there...

Anna Kainz, the woman in the coma, eventually wakes up, and (as you might expect) she is extremely grateful for the attention she received from Kurt, attention which played a large roll in dragging her back into the land of the conscious.  The closer the couple get, and the longer the deception continues, the more difficult it becomes for Kurt to confess his dark secret.  But will she care?  And does she suspect it already?

Leonardos Hände is a gripping story, even if the description above makes it sound like a plot from a soap opera.  Rather than being a story of love triumphing over adversity, it's a dark, complex tale, and the reader can never quite be sure where it's going.  It takes a while before you get past the initial confusion of Kurt's work in the ambulance service, but once you get to the main story of Kurt and Anna, it all starts to get much more interesting.

Kurt is a well-written, nuanced character, a man suffering through a crisis caused by a momentary misjudgement.  In leaving his girlfriend and changing careers, he is punishing himself, attempting to atone for his crime.  Once he finds Anna and a place by her bedside, he actually feels better:

"Dasitzen, stundenlang, ohne ein wort, bloß da zu sein, nebeneinander.
 Ich habe vorher nicht gelebt." (p.79)

"Sitting there, for hours on end, without a word, just being there, next to each other.
 Up until then, I hadn't lived."

Having found Anna, he feels partially absolved - and happy.

Once Anna wakes up though, things start to unravel.  Suddenly Kurt isn't quite so sure that his actions are welcome, and he hesitates before getting involved with the conscious woman he loved when she was comatose.  Matters are complicated by Anna herself as she has a few secrets of her own, a past which has something to do with the crash that put her in the coma.  In many ways, she's using Kurt as much as he's using her...

The second half of the book then is devoted to unravelling the secrets of the mismatched couple, but there's also a lot to like about the first part, in which we are given an insight into the duties of an ambulance driver.  We see the depressing, soul-crushing grind of the job, whether it's picking up terminally-ill patients for dialysis, rushing to accidents in the hope of finding someone still in a condition to be helped or hanging around waiting for news of 'jumpers' in a high-rise part of town.  It's certainly not a job for the faint-hearted...

However, whether you enjoy the book or not may well depend on how you deal with Hotschnig's style.  As with Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht, Leonardos Hände is always slightly off-kilter.  The story jumps around in time, switching from person to person, moving between different situations in the space of a few words.  At times, it's rather a hard book to read and concentrate on, a novel where much is alluded to, but not always explicitly stated.  I suspect that it wouldn't be to everyone's taste.

Did I enjoy it?  Well, yes, although enjoyment seems the wrong word.  It's absorbing and intriguing, and if you think you can endure the oddities I mentioned above, it's definitely worth a try.  And luckily, even if your German's not quite up to scratch, you can give it a go.  There's an English version, translated by Peter Filkin, available from the University of Nebraska Press.

That's not all though - there's more from Hotschnig coming into English next year.  May 2014 sees the translation of Ludwigs Zimmer (Ludwig's Room) appear courtesy of Seagull Books (with Tess Lewis, the translator of the Peirene book, on duty again).  Maybe this time I've shown you a writer you might be able to enjoy in English - now I don't feel so guilty about all those untranslated books I've been reviewing this month :)

'Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter' ('The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick') by Peter Handke (Review)

It's German Literature Month time again, and today I have the pleasure of reviewing a book by a writer I've read for the first time.  We're off to Austria, in a book which has surprisingly little to do with football, but a lot to do with language...

*****
Peter Handke's Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick***) starts off in Vienna.  Josef Bloch, a former professional goalkeeper, thinks he's been fired from his job, so he goes off and checks into a hotel.  Over the next few days, he reads newspapers, watches films, meets people and generally idles his time away.

The dramatic, Kafakaesque first sentence then soon gives way to a strange, uneventful story.  The story stutters along, stumbling over simple sentences, in a bizarre, disjointed manner - until, after hooking up with a woman:

"Sie stand auf und legte sich aufs Bett; er setzte sich dazu.  Ob er heute zur Arbeit gehe? fragte sie.
Plötzlich würgte er sie."
p.22 (Suhrkamp, 1972)

"She stood up and then lay down on the bed; he seated himself next to her.  She asked whether he was going to work today.
Suddenly, he strangled her." (my translation)

Boom.  Out of nothing, the story takes a new, and rather violent, turn - before slowing down again immediately.  Bloch calmly leaves and takes a bus to the country...

The story itself is only 100 pages or so, and in terms of plot, there's not a lot to it.  While you might think it's about a murder, in reality (if such a word is relevant here), it's all about Bloch and his strange relationship with the world.  From the very start, he acts decidedly strangely, and he has an unusual take on reality, seeing each second, each motion, step by step:

"Die Kellnerin nahm das Glas von der Flasche, auf die sie es gestülpt hatte, legte den Bierdeckel auf den Tisch, stellte das Glas auf den Deckel, kippte die Flasche in das Glas, stellte die Flasche auf den Tisch und ging weg.  Es fing schon wieder an!  Bloch wußte nicht mehr, was er tun sollte." (pp.34/5)

"The barmaid took the glass off the bottle over which she had placed it, laid the beer mat on the table, put the glass on the beer mat, tipped the bottle into the glass, put the bottle on the table and went.  It was starting all over again!  Bloch had no idea what to do."

There's an awful lot of this in the book.  Bloch seems overwhelmed by the input of raw data in everyday life, unable to simply filter it out like a 'normal' person...

Bloch also struggles with language and noise and has great difficulty in distinguishing sounds (he's constantly mistaken as to what he thinks he hears).  He seems to be seeing and hearing life through a filter, one which makes it difficult for him to understand precisely what is going on around him.  As is mentioned in the brief introduction at the start of the book, these errors are like a leitmotif, constantly appearing throughout the novel.

Having just killed someone, you can understand that Bloch has a certain sense of paranoia, but there's more to it than that, and everything is wearing him down.  He seems to struggle with the simplest of actions, whether it's greeting someone in the street or choosing the right time to enter a conversation.  Still, he just moves on, even if his interactions seem to end in arguments, conversations and fights.  At times, he seems like an alien who understands the language perfectly but has little cultural background
(and a very shaky grasp on manners...).

Like its central character, this is a very difficult and uncomfortable book to read at times.  Handke is playing with language and the way it affects our experience of the material world, and no word, or sentence, is taken for granted, each utterance weighed carefully before being committed to paper.  It's very tempting on occasion to try to read things into the story which perhaps aren't there.  Is Bloch suffering from some sort of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?  Is he just concussed from one too many kicks to the head?  Surely there's a deeper meaning to the title?

In fact, later on we hear about a goalie and Bloch's views on the game:

"Es ist sehr schwierig von den Stürmern und dem Ball wegzuschauen und dem Tormann zuzuschauen", sagte Bloch.  "Man muß sich vom Ball losreißen, es ist etwas ganz und gar Unnatürliches." (p.117)

"It is very difficult to look away from the attackers and the ball, and look at the goalkeeper", said Bloch.  "You have to tear yourself away from the ball, it's something completely and utterly unnatural."

Yet this is what we've been doing all along.  In a crime novel where the police are elsewhere, in living the story through Bloch the reader is effectively watching the goalie...  Yes, it is decidedly unnatural - and rather uncomfortable too ;)

*****
The English-language version, translated by Michael Roloff, is available from Farrar, Straus & Giroux

'Bozena' by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (Review)

German Literature Month is back with another female writer today, one whose work I've tried (and enjoyed) before.  It's another piece of classic G-Lit, but the bus is taking us further afield for this work - we're off to Slovakia...

*****
Božena was 'Austrian' writer Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's first major success.  It's set in a provincial town in Slovakia (at the time, part of the Austrian Empire), and it's the tale of the fortunes of the family of a wine merchant, Herr Heißenstein.  After his first wife dies, leaving him with a daughter but no son, he remarries in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to provide himself with a male heir.  Instead, he gains another daughter, and when the old man dies, the outlook is bleak for the elder daughter with a nasty step-mother around.  However, the girl does have someone on her side...

That someone is Božena, the housekeeper, an attractive woman who also happens to be rather big and strong (in my head she was a dead ringer for Xena, Warrior Princess...).  Božena is hard-working and fiercely protective of Rosa, and when her poor girl passes away later in the story, the housekeeper also takes care of Rosa's daughter, Röschen.  With wicked step-mothers, gigantic housekeepers and girls named after flowers, the novel has a decided fairy-tale feel to it: but will there be a happy ending?

Despite the title of the book, the main focus (eventually) is on Regula, the younger Heißenstein daughter, and her niece, Röschen.  Once the elder generation is out of the way, the story hinges on the rather plain and dull woman's attempt to have her wealth snare her a desirable husband, all the time attempting to treat her niece as poorly as possible without affecting her public image of a kind, gracious lady.  The problem is that handsome young men are more inclined to chase pretty faces than ugly purses, and Röschen is very attractive indeed...

The novel is set in the middle of the nineteenth century, a time of social unrest and revolutions:

"Die Revolution ging indessen unaufhaltsam ihren Gang.  Pöbelunruhen in Wien, Bürgerkrieg in Ungarn, die Oktobertage, die Abreise der kaiserlichen Familie nach Olmütz, die Desertion der Tschechen aus dem Reichstage..."

"Meanwhile, the revolution went unstoppably on its way.  Popular unrest in Vienna, civil war in Hungary, the October Days, the departure of the Imperial family for Olmütz, the desertion of the Czechs from the parliament..." (my translation)

These events have several serious consequences for the characters of the novel.  For one thing, Rosa's husband is a soldier, and he is to be sent off into these lengthy and dangerous conflicts taking place in Central Europe.  In a wider sense, the unrest affects the social stability of the region, leading to the rise of the merchant classes and the poverty of nobles - a state of affairs which allows Regula to dream of her alliance.

Božena is a big personality and a great creation, even if she disappears a little from the story at times.  Her strength and honesty are crucial to the plot, and even the moment of her greatest disgrace serves to push the story along, showing as it does her unswerving honesty.  Despite her flaws and low standing, she is not a woman to be crossed lightly - even the men fear her for her fiery temper and her powerful presence.

There is also an impressive cast of bit parts to complement the main characters.  The professor who falls in love with the plain Regula, a man who can't help being attracted to the plain, dull head of the household, is great comic value.  Božena also has a (platonic) admirer in Mansuet Weberlein, Herr Heißenstein's right-hand man, and Weberlein is vital in holding things together when the wine merchant disowns his daughter.

As in Das Gemeindekind (The Parrish Child), the first book I tried by this writer, the story betrays constant touches of humour, especially sarcasm.  A nice example of the light tone is shown in the description of Heißenstein's first meeting with Nannette, where she:

"...enteilte mit so gleichmäßigen kleinen Schritten, daß es war, als rolle sie auf unsichtbaren Rädern über den Kies des Weges dahin."

"...hurried away with such even little steps that it was as if she were rolling away across the gravel on invisible wheels."

This eye for detail is constant throughout the book, although Ebner-Eschenbach can be a lot more cutting on occasion.

To be honest, Božena is not nearly as good as Das Gemeindekind though.  It's fairly predictable, and we always know where we're going, with the plot just plodding along at one pace.  The writing rarely stops to reflect on what's happening, and the story is far too plot-driven, leaving reflection and detail aside.  There's also the rather clichéd step-mother trope, which doesn't exactly leave us wondering where the story's heading...

This book was written eleven years before Das Gemeindekind, and I could really see the difference and the development shown in the later work.  While Božena is enjoyable in parts, it's really a fairly slight work, one that only the purists are likely to read.  Still, there's enough in Ebner-Eschenbach's style to have me trying another work at some point - and I'll be looking for a later novel to see if my hunch is right :)

*****
As far as I can see, Božena isn't available in English.  In fact, I'm not sure if there is anything of Ebner-Eschenbach's work readily available in translation...

'Holzfällen' ('Woodcutters') by Thomas Bernhard (Review)

German Literature Month rolls on, and so too does the bus, taking us to the next stop on our literary travels.  Today we're off to Vienna, where we're expected at a dinner party, or rather "an artistic supper".  The hosts, and the guests, are friendly and welcoming - although, there is this one man...

*****
That man, of course, is the barely-concealed alter-ego of Austrian writer Thomas Berhard, and the book is his novel Holzfällen (Woodcutters***).  It's a deceptively rambling novel, a story that unfolds over more than three-hundred pages of circling vitriol from a man who despises the company he finds himself in.

The narrator is seated in a comfortable chair in a dark corner, having been invited by some old acquaintances to attend their:

"...künstlerischen Abdendessen mit dem berühmten Burgschauspieler."
p.39 (Suhrkamp, 2012).

This arty supper, ostensibly in honour of a famous stage actor, happens to coincide with a rather more sombre event, the funeral of a former friend.  Joana, a failed dancer and actress, hung herself in her home in the country, and the narrator (a thinly-veiled Bernhard) and the rest of the Viennese cultural milieu have paid their final respects before moving on to an evening of food and theatre chatter.

As we wait for the guest of honour to arrive, the narrator sits in his chair, scowling upon the other guests as they prattle on in the room across the hall.  Recently returned to Vienna after a long, self-imposed exile in London, he despises the empty-headed, vain, self-serving world of the Viennese literati and sits in judgement on them from his dark throne - and still we wait for the actor to arrive...

Holzfällen is my first view of Bernhard's world, but it was pretty much everything I'd expected it to be from the reviews and comments I'd read.  The thirty pages or so that I read in the first sitting were a confronting, circular mass of sentences, deliberate repetition building into a dizzying wall of words seemingly intended to obscure meaning and prevent progress into the heart of the story.  Slowly though I began to make headway, and once I'd become more accustomed to the style, the story started to make sense.  Again and again, we return to the focal points of the story, the writer sitting in his chair, and the moment when he accepts the invitation from his former acquaintances, thus undoing the work of several decades of exile in a moment.

It's a moment of weakness which he regrets, loathing as he does the cultural side of his former home:

"Diese entsetzliche Stadt Wien, dachte ich, die mich tief in die Verzweiflung und tatsächlich wieder einmal in nichts als in Ausweglosigkeit gestürzt hat..." (p.11)

"This horrendous city Vienna, I thought, which had plunged me deep into despair and, once again, into nothing but hopelessness..." (My translation)

It's a city which attracts would-be artists and writers from the provinces, sucking them in, then chewing them up and spitting them out, broken, damaged.  As he muses:

"Wien ist eine fürchterliche Genievernichtungsmaschine, dachte ich auf dem Ohrensessel, eine entsetzliche Talentezertrümmerungsanstalt." (p.97)

"Vienna is a terrible Genius-destruction machine, I thought in the wing chair, a horrendous talent-destruction installation."

The supper he has come to take part in, with its self-gratulating writers and alcoholic musicians is unlikely to soften him in his views.

The death of Joana, a woman he was once very close to, is the proof we are given of this terrible world.  Drawn to the metropolis at an early age, she becomes a part of the cultural community but never quite manages to make it, and when things go wrong, she is abandoned, only to be patronised and fondly remembered after her death.  The unfortunate, coincidental scheduling of the supper on the day of the funeral seems oddly apt - not even death stops the literary schmoozing...

The central image of the writer sitting and thinking in his 'Ohrensessel' (translated as 'wing chair' in the English version) is one of a tyrant sitting in judgement over the guilty.  From his dark corner, he can see the other guests in the brightly-lit room while they can only see an outline through the clouds of cigarette smoke, a vaguely-suspected image sitting silently and yet with a presence felt from a distance.  He casts down his unheard thunderbolts on the uneasy Viennese, punishing them mentally for their fakeness, their unceasing pursuit of public honours and, above all, for their ceaseless chatter.

However, the longer the novel goes on, the more the reader sees cracks appear in the writer's facade and story.  The truth is that he is as guilty as all the others of using those around and above him to make his way to the top, financially and sexually, and if anyone is to be blamed for abandoning poor Joana, he would be right near the top of the list...

Holzfällen is a novel which takes some getting used to, but once you have caught the circular rhythm, it's a joy to read, a hypnotic style of writing which, while appearing slightly random, is actually incredibly-tightly plotted.  This circular, repetitive motion, the structure of a single, gigantic paragraph, and the constant reminders that a story is being told (we are constantly torn back from a story by "...I thought..." and "...as I sat in the wing chair...") are unmistakably Sebaldian.  Except, of course, that it is actually the other way round - in many ways Sebald is Bernhardian.  Having read a lot about the influence Sebald has had on writing over the past decade or two, it's nice to see who influenced him :)

Of course, the question you probably won't be are all asking is whether the actor actually ever arrives at the supper (and whether the writer ever makes it out of his comfy chair).  I'll let you find that out for yourselves - you can't expect me to tell you everything ;)  Rest assured though, the tone remains the same, and the writer retains his bitter demeanour for the whole of the novel.  And that's something to enjoy...

*****
The English-language version (Woodcutters, translated by David McLintock) is available from Faber and Faber.

'The Radetzky March' by Joseph Roth (Review)

Over the past couple of years, partly owing to the influence of Caroline and Lizzy's German Literature Month, I have been reading a lot more books in the German language (good to know that my university time wasn't completely wasted...).  While some of that reading has been fairly contemporary (e.g. Peter Stamm, Judith Hermann, Birgit Vanderbeke), I haven't been neglecting the classics.

A while back, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, a famous German literary critic, published his Kanon, a list of the most noteworthy works in German-language literature.  I have been working my way (slowly!) through the list of novels, and today's post looks at another of Reich-Ranicki's recommendations - and a very good book it is too...

*****
Joseph Roth's major work Radetzkymarsch (The Radetzky March) is a novel which you will find on any list of best German-language novels, occasionally at the very top of the tree.  It is a family saga spanning three generations, set in the dying days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where the fate and fortunes of the Trotta family are intertwined with those of Emperor Franz Josef I - and of the empire itself...

The story begins in 1859, at the Battle of Solferino, where a quick-thinking soldier dives on the Emperor to save him from being assassinated by an enemy sniper.  The monarch's gratitude expresses itself in the form of riches and promotion to the aristocracy - a fair reward for the son of a Slovenian farmer.  However, the prize turns out to be a double-edged sword - both the brave soldier and his descendants struggle to come to terms with their new station in life.  The new Baron is astounded by the way his life has changed:

"Als hätte man ihm sein eigenes Leben gegen ein fremdes, neues, in einer Werkstatt angfertigtes vertauscht, wiederholte er sich jede Nacht vor dem Einschlafen und jeden Morgen nach dem erwachen seinen neuen Rang und seinen neuen Stand, trat vor den Spiegel und bestätigte sich, daß sein Angesicht das alte war."

"As if his life had been exchanged for a strange, new one, one which had been factory-made, every night before sleeping and every morning after waking up, he repeated his new rank and position in life, walked up to the mirror and checked that his face was still the same old one."***

He passes away, never having quite come to terms with his elevation in life.  However, for his son and grandson, life is to be even more difficult...

Franz, the son, becomes a high-ranking goverment official, having been expressly forbidden by his father to enter the military.  However his son, Carl Joseph, at his father's request, does become a soldier.  Sadly, just like the first baron, the two are unable to enjoy life as privileged gentlemen; a constant feeling of being slightly out-of-place mixed with misfortune in love leads to a lifetime searching for a reason to keep going.

Part of the problem is the absence of female influence in their lives.  Both Franz's mother and wife passed away at an early age, events which have lasting effects on the Trottas.  The father buries himself in work and tradition, following a regime so regimented that the outside world is unable to penetrate or surprise it.  The son wanders around lost, in search of affection, often finding it in the arms of an older woman - a mother figure...

There is one more important male character in the novel though, one who has an enormous influence on events.  Kaiser Franz Joseph himself appears several times, meeting all three generations of the Trottas, and the fate of the Barons seems inextricably linked to those of the Emperor and his realm.  As the Empire totters towards its destruction, decaying gradually over decades before being given the coup de grace by the events of the First World War, so too does the ageing Franz Joseph move gracefully towards the grave.  And let's not forget, the Emperor also lost his wife at an early age...

Roth skilfully uses a visual metaphor to bind the fortunes of the two families further.  The first Baron had his portrait painted by one of his son's friends, a painting which remains in the family, and which his grandson is obsessed with.  As the second Baron ages, he begins to resemble the portrait remarkably - but this is not the only resemblance.  The Kaiser too has his portrait (found all over his empire), leaving the youngest Trotta to be watched over by two formidable old men - it isn't easy being constantly in the eyes of the Kaiser...

"Seine Gnade selbst, die über der Familie der Trottas ruhte, war eine Last aus scheidendem Eis.  Und Carl Joseph fror es unter dem blauen Blick seines Kaisers."

"Even his favour, which rested upon the Trotta family, was a burden of ice.  And Carl Joseph froze beneath the blue gaze of his Emperor."***

As the empire draws closer to its inevitable doom, so too does the family line of the Trottas, men lifted above their station, a historical aberration soon to be smoothed out.  In linking the fate of the family with that of the empire, Roth allows the reader to witness the death throes of what was one of Europe's great powers.  It all makes for a wonderful novel, one worthy of its inclusion in Reich-Ranicki's pantheon of German-language greats.

*****
So, after the success of Hotel Savoy, that's two out of two for Roth - time to look for more of his work :)  As for the Kanon, despite my recent activity, that is just the ninth of the top novels that I've read.  Another eleven to go...

*** All translations are my own, pitiful efforts ;)

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like...

One writer I've been wanting to try for some time is Joseph Roth, author of Radetzkymarsch, one of the most famous novels in the German language.  While I won't be getting to that one this month, I thought I'd get a taste of his work by reading a famous novella, Hotel Savoy, so I was all set to start the bus off on the road to Vienna.  That is, until I discovered that despite being described as an Austrian writer, Roth was actually born in Eastern Europe (present-day Ukraine) - and that his book takes place in Poland...

*****
Hotel Savoy is set in the years after World War One in the Polish town of Łódź.  Gabriel Dan, a returning prisoner of war, arrives in the city on his journey westward.  He is hoping to press onwards to America, but as his rich uncle, Phöbus Höhlaug lives in the city, he decides to stay for a while in the hope of getting the money he needs to emigrate.  While he is waiting, he takes up residence in the Hotel Savoy, an imposing building in the centre of the town, where rich and poor alike are in residence - albeit on different floors.

Right at the start of the book, we see the hotel through Gabriel's eyes, his and our first impression of the town:

"Zum erstenmal nach fünf Jahren stehe ich wieder an den Toren Europas.  Europäischer als alle anderen Gasthöfe des Ostens scheint mir das Hotel Savoy mit seinen sieben Etagen, seinem goldenen Wappen und einem livrierten Portier."

"For the first time in five years, I stand once again before the gates of Europe .  The Hotel Savoy appears more European than any other resting place in the east, with its golden coat of arms and a liveried porter."
(my translation)

Once he enters the hotel though, we see that this grand facade hides a slightly more prosaic existence.  While the bottom floors belong to the wealthy, the poor and displaced are hidden away in the upper floors.  As is claimed in the book:

"In allen Städten der Welt gibt es kleinere oder größere Savoys, und überall in den höchsten Stockwerken wohnen die Santschins und ersticken am Dunst fremder Wäsche."

 "In every city in the world, there are small or large Savoys, and everywhere, on the highest floors, live the Santschins [the name of a poor family] of this world, suffocating in the steam of other people's washing."

Perhaps though, those on the higher floors are, as is occasionally alluded to, closer to God than the luxury-worshipping people down below...

The hotel is more than just a building, of course.  It's a representation, an embodiment, of society, and the book is an allegory for the sorry state the world found itself in after the horrors of the Great War.  Just as in the wider world, the hotel quickly separates the rich from the poor, and those lucky enough to live on the lower floors make sure that they pull together.  For example, whenever a worker from the local factories dies, the doctor makes sure to give the cause of death as heart failure - and not lung failure caused by breathing in tiny fragments of cloth day in, day out at work...

Gabriel intends to move on quickly, but he finds himself strangely in tune with life in the hotel, in part because of the attractions of the cabaret artist, Stasia.  As the days and weeks pass, it appears that he will struggle to ever leave the town - and the hotel.  It's all very reminiscent of a book I spent a lot of time on last year :)

Unlike in Kafka's work though, there is a revolutionary streak running through Hotel Savoy.  When Zwonimir, Gabriel's old friend from his army days, arrives in town, he acts as a catalyst, setting a light to the volatile atmosphere, sending the story towards a dramatic climax.  As the rich housewives see a hypnotist to have their headaches cured (while their husbands cavort with naked dancers in the cellar bar), the poor and hungry are dying in the streets, lying in the dirt.  It doesn't take a genius to see that things aren't going to end well.

Hotel Savoy is an entertaining story, fairly easy to read, but with a serious message underneath.  What makes it even more interesting is that the hotel depicted in the novella is real, located in the central-Polish city of Łódź.  There was a picture on Wikipedia of the hotel after its renovation, with beautiful, gleaming white walls.  However, I decided that the picture above was far more interesting and, what's more, better suited to the story.  While I wouldn't like to live at the Hotel Savoy myself, it is definitely a fun place to while away a few hours ;)

It's All About the Journey, Not the Destination...

Welcome one and all to another German Literature Month!  After the success of last year's inaugural event, Lizzie and Caroline were forced delighted to do it all again in 2012, and I, for one, will be putting a lot of energy into a month of German-language reading and posting :)

Week One is all about plays, poetry and novellas, and I'll be starting off today with a couple of pieces from a master of the short-prose form.  Oh, and for those of you who are eager to know the result of my Stefan Zweig giveaway, the winners will be announced after the reviews :)

Well, what are you waiting for?  The engine's running, and the bus is ready to roll...

*****
Adalbert Stifter was an Austrian writer (born in what is today the Czech Republic...) whose works are staples of the Germanic school curriculum even today.  I had one of his novellas, Brigitta, lying around on my shelves, and I decided to read another, Bergkristall (Mountain Crystal) on my Kindle in order to compare the stories.

Brigitta is the story of a young man who accepts an invitation to stay with a holiday acquaintance on his Hungarian properties.  After a long, leisurely journey through the Hungarian countryside, he arrives at his friend's property and comes to love the relaxed lifestyle.  Nevertheless, he is confused about the nature of his host's attachment to this sedentary life, especially as his friend was a man prone to travelling all over Europe - that is, until he visits a neighbouring estate, owned by a certain Brigitta...

Brigitta is a slow, meandering story which moves along at its own pace.  Stifter treats the reader to lengthy descriptions of the Hungarian countryside, sketching out both the stony, barren wastelands and the lush pastures and orchards of the Major's estates.  Amazingly, the majority of the tale is the frame of the real narrative, in which we hear the tale of the title character and her unfortunate love.  Brigitta is actually said to be unattractive (unusual for literature!), but her pride will not allow her partner to take her for granted:

"Ich weiß, daß ich häßlich bin, darum würde ich eine höhere Liebe fordern, als das schönste Mädchen dieser Erde."

"I know that I'm ugly, and that's why I would demand a higher love than the most beautiful girl in the world."

As mentioned above, the story is slow to unfold, but Stifter eventually gets there with a culmination of events which resolves everything nicely :)

*****
Bergkristall is a later work, but the style is very similar to that of the earlier novella.  It is set in an isolated village on Christmas Eve, where two children, outsiders because their mother was born in a neighbouring village, take a wrong turn in a snowstorm, taking them up the local mountain for what is to prove to be a very long night...

Again, the story progresses in a relaxed fashion - Stifter won't be hurried into lifting the pace of his story, even when it appears that there aren't enough pages left to even start one.  Most writers would probably get their heroes onto the mountain in the first few pages of a forty-five-page novella - by that point in Bergkristall, the children's parents haven't even met yet...

Once again, the writer excels at portraying the beauty of nature, describing the ice on the mountain, showing us huge caves and ice fields:

"In der ganzen Höhlung aber war es blau, so blau, wie gar nichts in der Welt ist, viel tiefer and viel schöner blau als das Firmament, gleichsam wie himmelblau gefärbtes Glas, durch welches Lichter Schein hineinsinkt."

"But throughout the depression it was blue, so blue, like nothing else in the world, a much deeper and more beautiful blue than the sky, almost like sky-blue coloured glass into which rays of light are absorbed."

The brother and sister, all alone on the mountain, are witness to beauty beyond the dreams of most people.  The fact that this beauty has a definite bite to it only adds to the weight of Stifter's prose...

As in Brigitta, the ending is a little kitschy and melodramatic, but the path to the conclusion, winding as it is, is wonderful.  I doubt that Stifter is for everyone - anyone who spends much of their time imploring the author to get on with it should probably stay well away.  However, if you like your novellas descriptive and fairly eventless, then Herr Stifter may well be the writer for you :)

*****
And so to the winners of my Stefan Zweig Giveaway :)  Using the usual random-number-generator thingy, I tossed the entries into the pot and left it to fate to see what came out - and the winners are...

The Pushkin Press (English-language) edition goes to: Jereme Gray

The Fischer Verlag (German-language) edition goes to: Bettina @Liburuak

Congratulations!  Both winners will be e-mailed shortly, so as soon as you reply with your full name and address, I'll be getting the books off to you.

That's all for today then - but stay tuned,  There'll be a lot more G-Lit going on around here this month...

There Goes The Fear Again (Let It Go...)

A hearty welcome to everyone joining me from Judith's Literary Blog Hop for this special giveaway post - please visit her page for a list of all the participants :)  As German Literature Month is just around the corner, I thought I'd use today's review to promote Caroline and Lizzy's wonderful event and highlight an excellent writer too.  Last year, I read Stefan Zweig's Schachnovelle (Chess) for the first German Lit Month, and it was one of my favourite books for the year, prompting me to rush out (metaphorically...) and order Angst (Fear) - only to leave it on my shelves for the best part of a year...

I'm making up for that oversight now, and after my review, I'll be giving you the chance to get a copy for yourself.  Oh, and don't worry if your German's not quite up to scratch; those lovely people at Pushkin Press, obsessed as they are by Herr Zweig, have a lovely English-language version of Fear, and I'll be giving away one of those too :)

*****
Angst, like Schachnovelle, is a wonderful, psychological tale.  It's a relatively short work, but right from the first words, Zweig plunges us into the world of his hapless heroine:

"Als Frau Irene Wagner die Treppe von der Wohnung ihres Geliebten hinabstieg, packte sie mit einem Male wieder jene sinnlose Angst." p.9 (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2011)

"As Irene Wagner walked down the stairs from her lover's apartment, she was once again gripped by that pointless fear." ***

Irene Wagner is a wealthy married woman who has taken a lover to get out of the rut of her boring bourgeois existence, driven to the affair by the eventlessness of her life.  The thrill she initially experiences becomes the 'Angst', the 'fear', of the title, and her relationship becomes a series of brief moments of excitement and happiness, surrounded by long periods of crippling anxiety.

We enter Irene's life at a crucial point, as her world begins to crumble once she reaches the bottom of those stairs.  As she attempts to leave the building, a woman stops her, claiming to be a girlfriend that Irene's lover has cast off in favour of his new conquest.  Panicked and confused, Irene (hidden behind a veil) thrusts some money into the woman's hands and flees, hoping never to see her again.

Of course, it's not quite as simple as that.  The woman somehow finds Irene's house and threatens to tell the wealthier woman's husband about what has been going on.  Irene's initial plan of brazening it out crumbles immediately under the strength of her rival's onslaught, and she agrees to keep paying her blackmailer.  As the sums begin to get higher and higher, Irene doubts that she can continue to pay for much longer without her husband becoming suspicious.  And indeed, Herr Wagner is suddenly very concerned about his wife's strange behaviour...

Angst is another brilliant book, one I can recommend to anyone.  The theme of the novella is fear itself and the incapacitating effect it can have on the human mind and body.  Having been attracted into an affair by her humdrum everyday life and the perceived glamour of such a relationship, Irene is actually ill-suited to such an existence.  As Zweig says:

"...wie die meisten Frauen, wollte sie den Künstler sehr romantisch von der Ferne und sehr gesittet im persönlichen Umgang, ein funkelndes Raubtier, aber hinter den Eisenstäben der Sitte." p.25

"...like most women, she wanted the artist to be romantic from a distance and very civilised up close, a sparkling predator, but behind the iron bars of manners." ***

Irene feels trapped by her unchanging, tedious, bourgeois existence, but she soon comes to realise that this is the way she is meant to live her life (in fact, after the initial excitement of the affair, it becomes just another part of her weekly routine, slotted in between her visits to friends and in-laws...).  Once the affair is discovered though, this all changes, and she begins to suffer the consequences of her betrayal.  Zweig repeatedly shows us the physical effects of the psychological strain - cold chills, electric shocks of emotion, a racing pulse, fatigue...  But what is she actually afraid of?

Her mental torture has little to do with the outside world - Irene is her own torturer, subconsciously punishing herself for her indiscretions (well, this is Vienna, after all...).  The writer constantly repeats the words 'Angst' and 'unterirdisch' ('subterranean' or 'underground'), emphasising the psychological nature of her struggle, a struggle against herself.  Even in her dreams, she can find no respite from her emotions:

"Wie zwischen Kerkerwänden, müßig und erregt, ging sie auf und nieder in ihren Zimmern; die Straße, die Welt, die ihr wirkliches Leben waren, waren ihr gesperrt, wie der Engel mit feurigem Schwert stand dort die Erpresserin mit ihrer Drohung." p.42

"As if between prison walls, idle and excited, she walked up and down in her rooms; the street, the world, which were her real life, were barred to her - like the angel with the flaming sword, her blackmailer stood there with her threat."***

Her fear prevents her from confessing the affair to her husband, but as the story progresses, we begin to wonder if that is the whole truth.  Why is she doing this to herself?  What exactly is it that Irene is so afraid of?  The answers, to these and other questions, may well surprise you.  As well as being a wonderful psychological story, Angst has a great ending :)

*** All English translations in the text have been messed up by yours truly :)

*****
So, on to the giveaway!  I will be giving away two copies of the book reviewed above, one in the original German and one in the 2010 Pushkin Press English-language version.  If you want to enter, simply:

  - comment on this post, stating whether you want the English or German version
  - write the word 'please' somewhere in your comment; manners are important :)

  - a contact e-mail would be nice, but I will endeavour to track down the winner!
  - commenting on my review is welcome but not obligatory ;)

This competition is open to all, but please note that I will be using The Book Depository to send this prize, so it is limited to people living in countries where The Book Depository has free delivery.  Entries will close at midnight (Melbourne time) on Wednesday, the 31st of October, 2012, and I'll be announcing the winner shortly after.  Good luck to all, and may your dreams be free of fear...