Hinter dem Bahnhof

Ingold's Alias was not the only thing I read last Saturday. In the evening I re-read Hinter dem Bahnhof (Behind the Train Station), by the Swiss author Arno Camenisch. Camenisch is from the canton of Graubünden and writes in both German and Romansh, the fourth of Switzerland's national languages. This particular book has various Romansh words tossed in among the German from time to time, giving it a very unusual and distinctive linguistic feel. There is an English translation available under the title Behind the Station.

The book is actually the second Camenisch's so-called "Bündner Trilogy" (i.e., a trilogy sent in Graubünden), though I didn't realize that when I first picked it up a few years ago, so I will have to go back and read the first one, which I also have. It's only about 100 pages long and is really quite delightful; I have read a few other things by Camenisch because I enjoyed this one so much. It is told through the eyes of a boy living in a small town up in the mountains. We see the ordinary daily activities of a town that has not changed much through the years and is in a sense hanging on, barely, as the rest of the world around it modernizes and moves on. The cast of characters includes most of the town's inhabitants, and we see the boy raise rabbits, help out in his grandfather's shop, and get into typical young-boy trouble. In a sense, nothing happens--just a slice of life. But very nicely done. Camenisch is one of my favorite contemporary Swiss authors. His short books offer a look at a vanishing world, affectionate and honest without excessive nostalgia. I recommend him.

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