Die Wassernot im Emmental / The Terrible Flood in the Emmental

I just re-read another of Gotthelf's early works, Die Wassernot im Emmental, a description of a terrible flood of the Emme River that occurred in the year 1837. (The Emmental is the valley of the Emme River, and it is the area where Emmentaler cheese comes from -- i.e., Swiss cheese.) Interestingly, the flood (and Gotthelf's account of it) even gets a mention on the very brief Wikipedia page on the Emme.

Gotthelf, a pastor, describes the flood as a "sermon" of God's, who speaks to us, he says, not only through his Word, but also through Nature. He describes the terror and suffering that the flood caused, and how it brought out both the best and the worst in people afterwards. He treats it as a kind of parable, showing not only God's judgement but also his ability to bring new life to the devastated land the following spring, just as he can cause new life to spring in the hearts of humans, if they listen to his voice.

I found it interesting to read this as we go through the coronavirus crisis. Like Gotthelf's farmers in the Emmental, we also find ourselves asking about the meaning of this rather different natural disaster. We wonder why God would have sent this plague, we see how it too brings out the best and worst in people, and we look for signs of new life to come again. Gotthelf's summons to sympathy, solidarity, and charity is relevant for us today also. As is his reminder that "Freiheit" should always be accompanied by Frömmigkeit"--freedom by piety.

Comments

Dursli

Back to Gotthelf! I have already mentioned that I re-read Gotthelf's novella about the five young women who were ruined by drink. Last week I also re-read the second of his two early novellas tackling the problem of rural alcoholism, Dursli, der Brannteweinsäufer, oder Das heilige Weihnachtsabend ( Dursli the Brandy Drinker, or The Holy Christmas Eve ). This story also warns against the pubs springing up all over the Emmentaler countryside and their consequences for the rural poor. But it is also--even more than I had remembered, in fact--set in the broader political context of the times. Gotthelf begins the novella, in fact, before he ever even introduces the main characters, with about a 10-page discourse on the problematic reception in Switzerland of the ideas of the French Revolution. Its call for equality and freedom, he says, is naturally interpreted by the poorer classes not in terms of true Christian equality and freedom, but rather as a ...

Chinese Painting

The Wall Street Journal has been running some interesting articles under the heading of "The Staying Inside Guide," offering suggestions for artistic or cultural resources to view online during the pandemic. Yesterday I came across an interesting one entitled "Immersive Painted Worlds," on Chinese painting, about which I know virtually nothing. (The article may be behind a subscription firewall.) The article has an impressive number of links to various things online, and I watched the first couple, a pair of 15-minute videos from a former BBC program called "The Culture Show," which together form an episode on "The Art of Chinese Painting." I thought they were quite interesting. The first episode introduced me to the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang , which I had never heard of before. Located in the Gobi Desert, they contain a wealth of wall paintings and statues that are well over 1000 years old and were unknown to the outside world for cen...

Alias, or Real Life

I mentioned yesterday that I'd managed to read several things over the past week. And believe it or not, not all of them were by Gotthelf! On Saturday I decided I should give myself a break and read something else for a change, so that morning I decided to finish off a book I'd been in the middle of for a while, Alias, oder Das wahre leben ( Alias, or Real Life ), by Felix Philipp Ingold . Ingold is a Swiss author, editor, translator, and journalist; there isn't much about him in English, and I don't think any of his books have been translated, but you can read a one-paragraph summary of him here . It was an interesting book, partly because of the premise. It purports to tell the life story of one Kirill Beregow, alias Carl Berger, a Volga Russian of German descent. The hook is that Beregow/Berger is a real person, an acquaintance of Ingold's, and the book is supposedly based upon conversations with him and papers that he left behind, fictionaliz...

Plague Time

Search This Blog