Category Archives: Novella

Wednesdays are wunderbar – Kleist Novellas Giveaway

Posted in Books, German Literature, Novella by

As Lizzy already announced last week, you should get used to our “Wednesdays are wunderbar” series that will take place on a fairly regular basis until the end of November. They are an integral part of our German Literature Month in November.

This week’s giveaway has been kindly provided by Melville House Press. We have two of Heinrich von Kleist’s novellas to give away, The Duel (aka Der Zweikapmpf) and Michael Kholhaas (Michael Kohlhaas deutsch).

Heinrich von Kleist died 200 years ago, on November 21 1811. Kleist was 34 years old when he died or – to be more precise – killed himself together with his friend, Henriette Vogel. As much as we appreciate his work now, that was not the case during his life. He got little recognition at the time. His plays and novellas that are considered to be among the finest in German literature had to wait until the 20th century to be discovered and treasured.

Like Jean Paul, or the equally tragic Friedrich Hölderlin, Kleist didn’t belong to any specific movement. He was neither a classic nor a romantic, but somewhere in between and quite unique. He certainly was a troubled man who was too sensitive for his time. Not being understood and the fear of losing his livelihood made matters worse.

He may be more famous for his plays but he has written some extremely impressive novellas. The stories are often violent and somewhat stretching believability but the accuracy of the descriptions and his use of language are what make him one of the very great German writers. He has a voice entirely his own.

Below you can see the two novellas we are giving away. As I haven’t read these two, I added the blurbs.

Based on actual historic events, this thrilling saga of violence and retribution bridged the gap between medieval and modern literature, and speaks so profoundly to the contemporary spirit that it has been the basis of numerous plays, movies, and novels. It has become, in fact, a classic tale: that of the honorable man forced to take the law into his own hands. In this incendiary prototype, a minor tax dispute intensifies explosively, until the eponymous hero finds the forces of an entire kingdom, and even the great Martin Luther, gathered against him.

One of the few novellas written by the master German playwright, The Duel was considered by Thomas Mann and others to be one of the great works of German literature. The story of a virtuous woman slandered by a nobleman, it is a precise study of a subject that fascinated von Kleist: that people are sometimes seemingly punished for their very innocence. This new translation reinvigorates a key work by this revolutionary German writer

If you are interested in reading these two novellas, please leave a comment. The only condition is that you read and review them during the Kleist and Other German Classics week of our German Literature Month in November (week 4).

The giveaway is open internationally, the books will be shipped by the editor. The winner will be announced on Sunday 16 October 20.00 – European – (Zürich) time.

Steven Millhauser: Enchanted Night (1999)

Posted in American Literature, Books, Novella by

“This is the night of revelation. This is the night the dolls wake. This is the night of the dreamer in the attic. This is the night of the piper in the woods.”

Hot summer nights have a special magic. In the middle of the night, when everyone is sleeping and only night creatures are awake, the hot still air is heavy, time seems to stand still and the world is indeed enchanted. This is the magic captured by Steven Millhauser in his beautiful and poetical novella Enchanted Night. I have never read this book before but the images, the atmosphere felt so familiar. It was a bit like looking into my own imagination.

Thanks to Carl who reviewed the book not long ago (here is his review), I waited for a hot summer night to read it. I’m glad I did. It felt so right to read this novella during one of the very few hot nights we had this summer.

Here is the beginning of this wonderful book.

A hot summer night in southern Connecticut, tide going out and the moon still rising. Laura Engstrom, fourteen years old, sits up in bed and throws the covers off. Her forehead is damp. her hair feels wet. Through the screen of the two half-open windows she can hear a rasp of the crickets and a dim rush of traffic in the distant thruway. Five past twelve. Do you know where your children are? The room is so hot that the heat is a hand gripping her throat. Got to move, got to do something. Moonlight is streaming in past the edges of the closed and slightly raised venetian blinds. She can’t breathe in this room, in this house.

Laura isn’t the only restless being on this hot and sultry night whose quiet darkness is illuminated by moonlight. All over the little town people feel their yearnings and desires, think of their dreams and wishes. Many of them feel lonely and driven by a secret longing. There is the writer who has turned the nights into days. He writes until midnight, then goes out to visit an elderly woman, roams the streets and sleeps until after noon. He is 39 years old, lives with his mother and has been trying for years to write the definite historical novel. Mrs Kasco, the widow he visits in the middle of the night, still regrets that she didn’t seduce him, when he was still a teenager and she a fairly young woman. On the other side of the city a mannequin in a shop window feels a secret stirring and comes to life. A young man who has never made love to a girl is visited by the moon Goddess while he lies in a backyard dreaming. A mysterious piper plays a flute and attracts stray children. Black cats haunt the streets, four girls wearing masks break into houses. A lonely woman walks the street in a pink bathrobe. A sleezy man spies on a young girl who takes a moon bath.

The story of this hot enchanted summer night, in which abandoned dolls come to life in the attics of the houses, is told in small tableaux, little atmospherical sketches that seem to originate in our childhood imagination. I remember how, when I was a child, I used to check in the morning  whether my toys had moved. Like many children I secretly thought and hoped they were alive at night. My biggest wish was to catch a glimpse of their doings.

Millhauser doesn’t only capture childhood dreams and wishes but also those of teenagers, grown-ups and the elderly and interweaves them in this haunting tale which is written in beautiful, melodious prose that seems inspired by lyrics.

He’d like to wipe it all out, start things over again, give the land back to the Indians. Or better yet, give it to him, to Haverstraw, King of the New World: trapper, hunter, fisher, farmer, sower of appleseed, stargazer, trailblazer, pathfinder, deerslayer, barefoot boy with cheek of tan, Huck Finn on the Housatonic, crackerbarrel philosopher, wily old coot in a coonskin cap, shrew-eyed Yankee, inventor of the cotton gin, the printing press, the typewriter, founder of libraries, distributor of American jeans to the Indians, self-made tycoon in a thirty room mansion, a hometown boy, worked his way up, one in a million, lone ranger, a wayfaring stranger, a born loser, a man down on his luck.

I don’t know anything about Millhauser, only that he won the Pulitzer Prize for Martin Dressler, but his style is so accomplished that I’m curious about his other books.  Does anybody know them?

Balzac: La Vendetta (1830)

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I read La Vendetta as part of a mini-readalong together with Danielle and Emma. It was Danielle’s idea to read it for  Book Bath‘s and Thyme for Tea‘s event Paris in July.

You can find different English versions of the novella or, if you read in French, you will find it in the collection La Maison du chat-qui-pelote or as a stand alone.

La Vendetta is one of Balzac’s earlier stories and part of the so-called Scènes de la vie privée. It is an interesting story for various reasons. On the one hand because it reflects some of the themes that were fashionable in the literature of the time but also because we can already see some of Balzac’s key themes emerge. I would say this novella is still rooted in romanticism with only a touch of realism.

The central story is the story of two families, the Piombos and the Portas,  who are connected by their mutual hatred. We learn at the beginning that after the Portas killed almost the whole family of the Piombos, the old Piombo killed the whole Porta family with the exception of a son, Luigi.

As Balzac tells us, the Corsicans are a fierce people and take revenge, or vendetta, as they call it, seriously. It is almost a religion for them. There will be no mercy or forgiveness ever. It’s a blood feud that can cost each and every member of a family his or her life.

After seeing their family so drastically decimated, Bartholoméo Piombo decides to leave Corsica and look for assistance by Bonaparte in Paris.  He has to learn an important lesson before being accepted in Paris. He must acknowledge that there will be no more vendetta. In Paris justice is not a personal matter but part of an official legal system.

After the first scene in which Bartholoméo is introduced the book fast forwards some ten years and focuses on the daughter of the family, Ginevra. The young woman is taking painting classes with a famous painter. She is quite skilled and produces many a good copy of existing pieces of art. The girls taking these calsses are a composite group. Some are of aristocratic background, some are nouveaux riches. There are many petty rivalries that are influenced by their families political orientation

Ginevra is a beautiful and cherished young woman. She is already 25 years old but has never fallen in love. She thinks that she will never leave her family and go on living a peaceful life at the side of her elderly parents. Destiny has other plans and one afternoon, while painting, she discovers a young soldier, who has been hidden by the painter. The young man is no other than Luigi Porta. It is a time of great turmoil, Napoléon has been overthrown for the second time and all those who followed him are in grave danger. Luigi has endured a lot, he was part of the Berezina campaign, he fought at Waterloo.

The two young people fall in love and Ginevra wants to get married but her father doesn’t want to accept this. His reasons go far beyond the fact that the young man is a Porta. He doesn’t want to lose his daughter. He doesn’t even care that this refusal might lead to a tragedy. When he finally realizes that he has made a mistake, it is too late.

I can’t really say I liked La Vendetta. Should you know Merimée’s Mateo Falcone, a novella on a similar theme, written just one year prior to La Vendetta, you will know why. Mérimée’s novella is accomplished and renders life and customs of Corsica without falling into the trap of stereotypes. Unfortunately this isn’t the case here. Balzac doesn’t do the Corsican people justice. He probably chose the theme because it was fashionable and I think what he really wanted to write about is the jealous possessiveness of a father. Bartholoméo Piombo isn’t the only selfish father in Balzac’s books. There are many others. This is why I could at least appreciate parts of the story. Another typical Balzac theme is the artist. Balzac was fascinated by painters and regularly evokes them in his stories. I found it sad that Ginevra who seems to have been very talented wasn’t encouraged to paint anything else but copies and in the end this speeded up the economical downfall of the young couple. This element is certainly realistic. There weren’t many accepted female painters in the early 19th century. Still it saddened me to see that young girls with talent had to paint mediocre works.

La Vendetta isn’t a bad novella but it isn’t Balzac at his most original. We see a few glimpses of the future master, but he isn’t there yet.

I’m curious to read what Emma and Danielle think.

Here are the links:

Danielle (A Work in Progress)

Emma (Book Around the Corner)

Cees Nooteboom: Mokusei! (1982)

Posted in Books, Dutch Literature, Novella by

Cees Nooteboom’s novella Mokusei! Een liefdesverhaal – Mokusei! a Love story is my second contribution to Iris’ Dutch Literature Month. It is currently out of print in English but there are German and French translations available.

Cees Nooteboom is one of those writers who simply never disappoint me. While reading this short book (70 pages) I was once more wondering how he does it. How can he write such stories that are feathery and light and still so full of meaning. His writing is inventive and informative, playful and deep, beautiful and melancholic. Apart from Nooteboom I know only the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi with a similar style.

Arnold Presser comes to Japan to shoot pictures of a woman in a Kimono standing in front of Mount Fuji. He has a image of Japan in his mind that is very idealized. He thinks, he knows what the real Japan is like. It is the Japan of Kimono’s, Basho’s Haikus, Hokusai’s paintings, the Japan of the many views of Mount Fuji, the Japan of rigid traditions and beautiful gestures. The modern Japan which adopts Western traditions, buys into consumerism, the big cities, the traffic and pollution are not Japan for him. Same as he has fixed ideas about the country he knows what a beautiful Japanese woman has to look like. It takes a while until he finds the perfect model but then he discovers Satoko.

He photographs her and falls in love with her. Their story will last five years. Five years in which they are more separate than together, five years of secret love-making and intense moments in which she will never tell him about her life, never introduce him to his parents. Presser has three names for her, her real name Satoko, the one he calls her to himself, Snow Mask, that implies that he cannot read her expressions and the term of endearment he uses when he calls her, Mokusei. Mokusei is one of the rare Japanese flowers with a scent and seems to perfectly fit his mysteriously withdrawn lover.

Mokusei! is masterful for many reasons. It’s a short, intense and tragic love story, and a meditation on Japan and the images and ideas we can have of a foreign country. What is so amazing is that Nooteboom writes at the same time about an idealized Japan, the real Japan and manages to adopt the Japanese writing style. The concept of wabi sabi pervades this novella on every page. There is a scene in which Presser goes for a walk in a garden and sees a dead leaf hanging not on a branch but on a torn spider web. This image captures beauty, fragility and perishability.

Mokusei! is a beautiful and profound piece of writing and I am glad I finally read it thanks to Iris’ event.

Louise Welsh: Tamburlaine Must Die (2004)

Posted in British Books, Crime, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literature, Novella by

It’s 1593 and London is a city on edge. Under threat from plague and war, it’s a desperate place where strangers are unwelcome and severed heads grin from spikes on Tower Bridge. Playwright, poet, spy, Christopher Marlowe has three days to live. Three days in which he confronts dangerous government factions, double agents, necromancy, betrayal and revenge in his search for the murderous Tamburlaine, a killer who has escaped from between the pages of Marlowe’s most violent play. The Final Testament of Christopher Marlowe is a swashbuckling adventure story of a man who dares to defy God and state and who discovers that there are worse fates than damnation.

I really enjoyed Tamburlaine Must Die. I liked Louise Welsh’s latest novel Naming the Bones (here’s the review) and wanted to read another one and I wasn’t disappointed. However I know the book got very mixed reviews and this mainly because of the language. Clearly Welsh tried to write 16th century English and might not have been 100% successful. I didn’t care or – because I’m not a native speaker – didn’t notice. I thought the language was beautiful.

In her novella Louise Welsh lets Christopher Marlowe, the famous playwright, tell his final ten days. Someone has written a libel in his name, imitating his writing, signing with the name of the main-protagonist of one of his plays, Tamburlaine. Welsh imgines how and why he must have been killed, how he spent his last days, sleeping with men and women, drinking too much, picking fights, putting himself in danger through his blasphemies.

I think Christopher Marlowe is one of the most fascinating figures of literature. An immensely gifted writer, a rake, a debauchee, a spy, a rough neck, a ruffian, an innovator and subversive man  and many other things. The book is atmospheric and evocative, you see the streets of London, the intrigue, the danger of a city afflicted by the plague, the violence of the times. Any sign of not following the Church, not being loyal to the Queen, being a homosexual were highly dangerous.

We know Marlowe escaped the dungeon but only to face death through an unknown enemy. His murder has never been solved and to this day there are many speculations.

I think I start to realize what type of historical novels I like. I like it when a writer manages to give a voice to historical figures, makes them come alive, imagines how they thought and felt.

One thing that has been criticized is that she didn’t depict a fear-ridden Marlowe although he knew he was going to be killed. I think from what I know of the man, he wasn’t too anxious, he threw himself into life until his last moment. He would have gladly gone on living, writing more plays but if this wasn’t to be, then it wasn’t. As simple as that.

The best about the book is that it sparked my imagination. I’m in the mood to read Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, The Great and Doctor Faustus which influenced Goethe and Thomas Mann and I would also be interested in reading about him.

Louise Welsh based her book to a large part on Charles Nicholl’s The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe but David Rigg’s The World of Christopher Marlowe sounds equally interesting.

Has anyone read any of these or other books about Tudor England?

Herman Melville: Bartleby the Scrivener. A Story of Wall Street (1853)

Posted in American Literature, Books, Fiction, Literature, Novella by

bartleby

Academics hail it as the beginning of modernism, but to readers around the world—even those daunted by Moby-Dick—BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER is simply one of the most absorbing and moving novellas ever. Set in the mid-19th century on New York City’s Wall Street, it was also, perhaps, Herman Melville’s most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce finally just said, “I would prefer not to”?

There is a specific reason, why I read Melville’s novella Bartleby. I have just read and reviewed Delerm’s novel Quelque chose en lui de Bartleby and since it was obviously inspired by Melville’s story, I had to read it.

I was never tempted to read Moby Dick although my parents had a copy with beautiful etchings. I can’t tell you why but some books just do not sound like you would like them.

Reading Bartleby I was very surprised how humorous it is. The characters are very eccentric and so is the story. It is basically the story of a young man called Bartleby who just doesn’t want to comply. Like the raven, in Poe’s eponymous poem, he has his stereotypical sentence which is “I would prefer not to.” Whatever it is he is asked to do, Bartleby invariably refuses it uttering the sentence I just quoted.

Bartleby is told in the first person peripheral, by a lawyer who has his office on the Wall Street. He once hired Bartleby as a copyist or scrivener. He already had three different copyists, each one of them with his own eccentricities, that’s why at first he didn’t pay too much attention when Bartleby declares that “he would prefer not to” read the copies together with anyone else.

The lawyer thinks at first that this is just a whim but soon enough it is obvious that there is more to it. While in the beginning he doesn’t want to read with the others, never goes out or seems to eat, after a certain time Bartleby stops working altogether. On a Sunday morning the lawyer makes another discovery which leaves him quite fazed. Bartleby never leaves the office. He stays there over night and during the weekends.

As much as he threatens him, offers him money, tries to negotiate, Bartleby doesn’t work anymore and he doesn’t leave either. If he wants to get rid of him, the lawyer has to take extreme measures. After some time and many frustrations, he decides to change the office and move away from Wall Street.

Not long after he has moved, he hears complaints by the new lawyer about Bartleby. The man is still there and haunts the building.

I’m not going to tell you the end in all its details, it should just suffice to say that the narrator tells the reader, that he thinks he might have found out what drove Bartleby to this extreme behavior. Bartleby used to work for another lawyer handling “Dead Letters”. I must admit I had no idea what “dead letters” are. It reminded me vaguely of Gogol’s Dead Souls and it proved that the association wasn’t totally wrong. “Dead letters” are letters that never reach their recipient because he has died or disappeared or left without leaving an address.

While reading this novella I was reminded of many other books. Not only Poe’s The Raven came to mind but some of Poe’s other writings. He didn’t only write Tales of Mystery and Imagination but a fair amount of absurd tales like we find them again in Kafka’s work. The already mentioned Gogol came to mind as well. I was also reminded of the first scene in Balzac’s Le Colonel Chabert (see my review)  in which the clerks bicker and quarrel.

Bartleby is the tale of someone who gives up on life, who stops participating and contributing. He is tired of it all. I often wonder when I see beggars in the streets how many chose to live like that. I met Clochards in Paris who told me that the hassle of a job, an apartment, a wife and children was just too much for them and they found it easier to live on the street. At first this may seem absurd but thinking of it for a while, it may make sense.

If it hadn’t been for Delerm, I wouldn’t have read this novella but I’m glad I did. It’s surprisingly modern. It is interesting to discover its intertextuality and a  more thorough analysis would be fascinating. I’m sure Kafka read it, as sure as I am that Melville was influenced by Poe, Gogol and maybe Balzac. However, I must say, I don’t think that Delerm’s Spitzweg and Bartleby have much in common.

Peter Handke: Wunschloses Unglück aka A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (1972)

Posted in Austria, Books, Fiction, German Literature, German Novel, Germany, Literature, Novella by

Peter Handke’s mother was an invisible woman. Throughout her life—which spanned the Nazi era, the war, and the postwar consumer economy—she struggled to maintain appearances, only to arrive at a terrible recognition: “I’m not human any more.” Not long after, she killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills.

Peter Handke’s Wunschloses Unglück or A Sorrow Beyond Dreams is the bleak account of a German woman’s life. It is the story of Handke’s mother, her struggle, her despair, her suicide.

The author starts with his own motivation to write this book, the attempt to make sense to put into words what is hardly comprehensible and to escape a feeling of being utterly numb. What did surprise me at first is his choice to call the account novella. Not memoir. After a few pages I realized that he wanted to make this an exemplary account. His mother’s life stands for numerous invisible women’s lives. When I finally got that, I felt like standing in a corner of a room and just scream. It’s such an outrageous account. It’s outrageous and infuriating and sad because it’s such a common story. Numerous women born in small towns (or even cities) between the wars lead lives like this. No one took them seriously, no one thought they should have a proper education. They were oppressed, and crushed, ridiculed and held small. All they were offered was the proverbial Kinder, Küche, Kirche (Children. Kitchen, Church).

Handke has by now become one of the most controversial German authors, but at the time of the publication of Wunschloses Unglück he was still the German literary Wunderkind, so too speak.

Handke’s mother is born in Kärnten, a region in Austria, in the early 1920s. She belongs to the Slovenian speaking minority. Despite a joyless childhood and hardly any education – she is only a girl – , her curiosity and interest in many things make her leave home and enjoy life for a while. She is only a young woman, almost a girl still, when she gets pregnant from a married man. He is the love of her life and she will never love anyone else after this. Afraid of the shame and what would become of her and the child she gets married as fast as she can to someone else. They live in Berlin and stay there until after the war when poverty and the difficult situation in the bombed city drive them back to the village in Austria from which she came.

What follows is indeed exemplary and that is why it’s so sad. Her husband starts drinking and hits her. She gets pregnant at least another five or six times, three of the children she aborts herself. The society in which she lives consists of uncultured peasants. She looses all interest in life and starts to develop all sorts of ailments. In the end she has a chronic headache that is so severe that she can hardly think, barely see and speak. She goes to a doctor who diagnoses a nervous breakdown, gives her pills. She does get a little bit better. She starts to visit girlfriends, reads extensively. She reads the books Handke gives her and with the help of those books, she speaks about herself for the first time.  She tries to have some fun but her marriage is so love- and joyless, she can hardly stand it. Her husband has tuberculosis and is gone often, when he is back, they sit and stare silently at opposite walls. She says she wants to die by she is afraid of death. She starts speaking about how to kill herself and finally writes long letters of goodbye to everybody. She buys a red umbrella, goes to the hairdresser, has her nails done, lies on her bed and swallows all the tablets she has.

When Handke hears of her suicide his first reaction is one of pride. He is proud of her. After a while he starts to feel horrible. He starts to write about her but that doesn’t help. He wakes regularly in terror and dread.

Handke could have chosen numerous ways to tell this story, more personal ones. Throughout the narration he hardly ever uses perosnal pronouns like “I” or “she” but always “one did this, one did that”. The alienation is as complete as possible.

Handke is famous for his style, unwieldy at times but sparkling here and there with metaphors and sentences that you don’t find often. If you want to get to know him, it isn’t a bad thing to start with a short text like this one.

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams has been published by Pushkin Press and by the The New York Review Book Classics. It’s extremely depressing but a very important text. It describes in details the life of many a woman in Catholic petite bourgeoisie in dreary post- war Germany and Austria. It speaks of the misogyny and sexism that pervaded the society. The poverty, the struggles, the joylessness. Manic saving, mistrust of anything that looked like frivolity and be it only reading a book. It’s an oppressing account but worth reading.

Handke didn’t only write depressing books. He has, amongst a lot of other books, written the script of one of the most beuatiful movies, Wim Wender’s Himmel über Berlin aka Wings of Desire.