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"...ailesgleichzeitig nah und fem."
The Spatiaiization of Time in Narratives by
Thomas Bernhard, Wo lfgang Hildesheimer, Jürgen Becker,
Sten Nadohy and Christoph Ransmayr
by
Anke Maria Uebel
A thesis submitted to the Department of German Language and Literature
in conformity with the requirements for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
August, 1998
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Unlike the relationship of "ExzWeit" and "erzahlte Zeit," aspects of literary space and spatiality are generally examined in isolation, bot. fiom each other, and from the closely related temporal structures of texts. While one school of thought concentrates on represented space, the other considers spatiality a structuring element of modem novels.
To demonstrate the dynamic interdependence of narrative space and narrated space in the production and reception of texts, this dissertation synthesizes several aspects of literary spatiality and applies them to eight disparate novels which are each centrally concerned with space and tirne. The first chapter reviews the critical history of literary spatiality and introduces the three main aspects that will be examined in the texts: narrative space, narrated space, and the space of the reading process. In the second chapter, Thomas
Bernhard's Das Kalkwerk is examined as a self-reflective late-modernist work where the narrative space is dominant, inhibiting the progressive linear movement of the story, and producing a stasis containing a potentidly endless motion of language, withdrawn fiom a world that is essentially mhowable. in the third chapter, Jürgen Becker's Erzühlen bis
Ostende, and Wolfgang Hildesheimer's Tynset, Masante, and Marbot, show a transitional movement away from the tendency expressed in Bernhard's novel. in Becker's text a fkagrnented, spatialized discourse reflects the unstable, pluralistic story space, while
Hildesheimer's novels gradually abandon such discursive experimentation for an apparently conventional, but relativized, form. Finally, in the last two chapters, Sten
Nadolny's Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit, and Christop h Ransmayr's Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis and Die ietzte Wek are found to occupy the opposite end of the spectrum from Bernhard's novel, while continuhg and developing its themes on a different level: the discourse appears conventional, but the spatialization of time and the potentially infinite motion of language are expressed as explored narrated space. No longer withdrawing kom an inaccessible reality into uifinite language, the characters now venture into a world which is itself cornposed of a collection of texts. Spatiality and temporality, the basic organizing categories of perception and representation, are seen to be keys to the relationship of reality and texts, and it is in this relationship that the continuity between these novels can be seen. For Jochen Dickbertel Acknowiedgments
1 would like to acknowledge the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities and the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the financial assistance 1 received during the vvriting of this thesis. 1would also like to thank Dr. P. J. O'Neill for his supe~sion.FUiaIIy, my thanks go to Julia Stevenhaagen, Ruediger Mueller, Maria
Uebel and Hanns Uebel for their help and moral support. Table of Contents
Abstract
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter II: Thomas Bernhard's Das Kalkwerk
Chapter III: Jürgen Becker's Eniihlen bis Ostende
and Wolfgang Hildesheimer's Tynset
Chapter N: Christoph Ransmayr's Die Schrecken des Eises und der
Finsternir and Sten Nadolny's Die Entdeckung der
Langsam keit
Chapter V: Christoph Ransmayr's Die Zetzte Welt
Conclusion
Works Cited
Vita Chapter 1: Introduction
~ookXVI of bis Laow,Lessing distinguishes the linguistic fiom the visual arts according to their affinity to time and space, respectively. His argument, despite its
Uitemal contradictions, still resonates in considerations of literary temporality and spatiality. Lessing posits that "Malerei" and "Poesie" use different means for achieving mimesis: "jene n-lich Figuren und Farben im Rame, diese aber artikulierte Tone in der
Zeit." Since the signs must have "ein bequemes Verhaltnis ni dem Bezeichneten," sequential signs can only express sequential objects, and CO-existingsigns CO-existing objects. Consequently, the plastic and the visual arts each possess a specific range of appropnate subject-matter:
Gegenstiinde, die nebeneinander oder deren Teile neben-einander
existieren, heiBen Korper. Folglich sind Korper mit ihren sichtbaren
Eigenschaften die eigentlichen Gegenstkde der Malerei. Gegenstihde,
die aufeinander, oder deren Teile aufeinander folgen, heiBen überhaupt
Handlungen. Folglich sind Handlungen der eigentliche Gegenstand der
Poesie. (244)
The contradictions which arise fiom this argument begin already on the following page, when Lessing asserts that "Homer malet nichts als fortschreitende Handlungen [italics mine]"; nevertheless, since Laokoon critics have echoed the argument that literature is an essentially temporal art, as opposed to spatial arts like painting and sculpture, and have continued to base this argument on the sequential nature of language as a succession of sounds or as written symbols on a page. Whether time and space can be so neatly separated, however, is doubtfil. Their mutual dependence begins at the most fimdamental level, where they function as the bais of perception. Kant articulates the realization that spatiality is necessary to al1 knowledge:
Der Raum ist eine notwendige Vorstellung, a prion, die allen auOeren
Anschauungen zum Grunde liegt. Man kann sich niemals eine
Vorstellung davon machen, daB kein Raum sei, ob man sich gleich ganz
wohl denken kann, daB keine Gegenstmde darin angetroffen werden.
Er wird also als die Bedingung der Moglichkeit der Erscheinungen, und
nicht als eine von ihnen abh-gende Bestimmung angesehen. (67)
A few pages later, he says vimially the same thing about the, thereby making space and tirne equally essential and simultaneously present in al1 acts of perception. And, while a distinction must certainly be upheld between physical and metaphysical conceptions of
space and time and their appearance as literary elements, the shift that has occurred in the
understanding of these categories since Einstein has had a general cultural effect: even in
the popular imagination, space is seen as existing only in relation to time and vice-versa.
The two can no longer be said to exist independently of each 0ther.l
Since Kant, the and space have been seen as the fundamental categories of
perception, through which any observing subject accumulates and organizes knowledge of
the world. Impressions of reality are perceived and ordered according to spatio-temporal
structures. In this way, a comprehensive picture of the world is formed and diverse
1 See Capek, The Concepts of Space and Time, especially H. Minkowski's essay "The Union of Space and Tirne" (339-52). impressions gain an additional dimension of meaning. In a literary or histoncal text, these categories are needed both by the author (to present a fictional or histoncal reality through the narrative), and by the reader (to perceive it and relate it to physical reality).
The text presents a reflection of the process of both constituting and comprehending a world, and the categories of temporal and spatial organization are essential to this process.
The question of the and space concerns, then, not only the epistemological question of how we know the world, but also the ontological relationship between textual and extra- textual realities. In narrative fiction, this relationship can become particularly cornplex, especially if both fictional and non-fictional elements are combined or if the distinction between them becomes blurred.
Many discussions of narrative spatiality have been limited by the tendency to see this concept solely as the opposite of temporality, thereby overlooking the mutual dependence of time and space in the apprehension of reality. Ernst Cassirer notes the inevitable presence of the two categories in any consideration of perception: "Raum und
Zeit [...] bilden innerhalb des architectonischen Baues der Erkemtnis die beiden
Grundpfeiler, die das Ganze tragen und das Ganze zusammenhalten" (1 7). He goes on to describe the difficulty of analyzing these concepts, suice they themselves lie at the basis of al1 our thought and so ca~otbe considered from a distance. This difficulty has, perhaps, contributed to the artificid division of these concepts in much critical literature-the opposition has provided the delineation necessary for analysis.
The interrelationship of time and space in the production and reception of modem and contemporary novels will be the central topic of the present work, with the focus on the generally neglected spatial aspect. Modem literature can be seen as an attempt to corne to tems with a radically changed reaiity and, hand in hand with this, the rise of a new understanding of perception. A central and defining question of modem narrative is how reality is perceived and how this process of perception, this wllinuig of knowledge of the world, can be expressed in language. This is a deparhue fiom the realist novel typical of the preceding century, where the relationship to the world was not generally subject to scepticisrn but could be taken largely for granted: a unified, rneaningful world was perceived and could be presented as such. The process of presentation itself was not typically subjected to analysis, but could proceed as simple correspondence and mino~g.
Since spatiality and temporality form the bais of perception and conceptualization, they naturally become more important and interesting to literary analysis once perception and knowledge are themselves treated as themes in narrative texts, and especially when the role of the discourse (the corresponding question of representation) also cornes to the fore. The relationship of the text to reality, particularly in the sense of fact versus fiction, of language and reality, becomes, to a greater or lesser degree, the theme of the text. As will be seen, more recent texts have moved beyond the question of epistemological scepticism and have also abandoned the necessity of a foregrounded and destabilized discourse. Here, the elements of plurality and instability which had formerly been expressed through the discourse are reabsorbed into the thematic level. The narrative no longer focuses simply on the perception and representation of a world which must be approached sceptically, but rather on the possibility that the world itself is unstable and indefinable-in short, that it is only one of many possible worlds. Although the emphasis here will be on space and spatiality, it will be seen that it is both inappropriate and illogical to exclude the concepts of tirne and temporality fiom such a discussion. Though time may occasionally be seen as an alternative to space, this is merely a heuristic strategy, a way to determine the dominant tendency present in a work, but not a key for definitively classi~gany novel as "temporal" or "spatial."
Temporality may be distinguished from spatiality in that the former is associated with chronology-oriented narration, while the latter suggests the strongly undennined chronology of many modem works. It will be seen, however, that chronology is itself in many ways a spatially-based concept. Furthemore, the focus here is to remain on novels which can be regarded as fictional narratives. Eüch work examined here attempts, to some degree, to build up a fictionai world and, equally important, to tell a story; either overtly, like Chnstoph Ransmayr's and Sten Nadolny's novels, or, in the case of Thomas
Bernhard and Jiirgen Becker, implicitly-events are presented in such a way that the reader is virtually forced to construct a narrative fkom them. Radically experimental works which are no longer true narratives, like Arno Schmidt's Zettels Traum, to take one notorious example, will not be examined here. This approach contradicts the guidelines set down by some theorists, who see "spatial form" as an alternative to narration, an antithesis to the notions of sequence and linear organization inherent in the storytelling process. Although works like Errahlen bis Ostende and Dar Kalkwerk push the limits of the form, they are still recognizable as novels and as narration, and it is this perceived identity that, together with the anti-narrative aspects of the texts, creates the tension between temporal and spatial organization that will be discussed here. Additionally, the works discussed here were selected both on the basis of their fomal differences and their underlying similarites. They represent the wide range of narrative structures available to novelists in the past three decadw, but at the same tirne dl are centrally concemed with temporal and spatial questions. This cm be seen, for example, in the fact that each of the novels takes the journey-the motion through space and the-as a pnmary motif
The study of literary spatiality has a varied and often inconsistent history, with a number of definitions and applications of the term "space" being accepted, depending on the interests and methodologies of the critics. Despite the diversity of the different approaches, it is viable to bring them together to form a mode1 for the analysis of literary space which includes both phenomenological and stmctural considerations. This is crucial for the present study, where story and discourse are exarnined in their interdependence. Traditional examinations of space in literature tend to be built upon an assurnption of the rnimetic function of narrative; Alexander Ritter's position that "Raum in der Dichtung" is essentially equivalent to "Landschaft in der Dichtung" (Landschaf! 2) is shared by most of the critics who first ventured into this comparatively neglected field of enquiry. Ritter goes on to trace a development in the examination of literary space as moving through four stages focusing, respectively, on "Naturgefühl," "Landschafts- kulisse," "Handlungsschauplatz" and "erlebter Raum" (4). This development can be followed in the essays collecteci in Landrchai und Raum in der Enahlkunst, the fint, and still the most complete, collection on this topic in Geman.
The cornmon-sense approach shared by Ritter and other early critics is not without consequences. Indeed, the implications of equathg space in literature with represented physical space are far-reaching. Space has generally been examined in opposition to time, which, shce Günther Müller's distinction of "Erzahlzeit" and "erzahlte Zeit" in his Die
Bedeutung der Zeit in der Edhlkumt, has been seen as the basic structural element of
textual organization. Space, on the other hand, has been widely consigned to the realm of
"reality" as represented in the text, the "what" that is nanated, rather than the "how";
Ritter writes, "Die Analyse der Landschaflsdarstellung ist wesentliche Vorraussetzung für das Verstiindnis der rezeptiven Wirklichkeitsaneignung im dichterischen Vorgang, tUr das
Raumverstihdnis und die Wirklichkeitsdeutung" (Landrchaft 2) Representation, the relation of the text's story to reality, the production of meaning, and thereby also the convergence of textuai and extra-textual reality-dl are implied by the treatment of space. But, as will be seen, this division of labour between tirne and space inevitably creates a certain confusion. Müller's "Erziihlzeit" and "erzahlte Zeit" already in themselves imply the relation of world and text, in that the narrated time refers to the level of represented reality, while narrating time structures the concrete textual organization. When the two are compared, the distinction of story and discourse is made possible. If narrated time and space both belong to the story, then a correspondhg ten of structural spatiality, the spatial equivalent of "Erzahlzeit," appears to be lacking, if only because theory tends to deplore such a lack of symmetry. Before this is considered
Mer, however, it is necessary to recall some of the developments in the treatment of narrated space, an area which, despite its apparent limitations needs to be integrated into any consideration of literary spatiality.
The interest of "enahlter Raum" lies not in its use as mere matenal in a text, but in its fiction as a bais for whole systems of signification. One of the earliest examinations of how narrated space produces meaning in a text is found in the work of Ernst Cassirer, who, in his essay "Mythischer, hthetischer und Theoretischer Raum," notes that in myth, places and directions (abovehelow, insideloutside, EastMrest) derive content and meanllig nom their particular quality and ciifference fiom each other: they cm signifi
"Heiligkeit oder Unheiligkeit, Zug&glichkeit oder Unzughglichkeit, Segen oder Fluch,
Vertrautheit oder Fremdheit, GlücksverheiBung oder drohende Gefahr" (27). Aesthetic space grows out of this mythic association of position or direction and significance, though it possesses the additional fieedom of an arhtically created world. Especiaily interesting in Cassirer's thought is that the meaningfùl space is presented as a senes of oppositional pairs, that is, significance lies in the relation, and so presurnably in the motion, between these two tems. Although the material associated with space is imagined and representative (that is to Say, operating on the story level), a structural semiotic is already at work here. While Cassirer's ternis, like "above" and "below," are in themselves spatial, there is an additional spatiality to be seen in their positioning relative to each other, as opposed pain. This idea plays into the concepts of boundaries and motion, which will be applied to the texts here.
Robert Petsch also examines the creation of meaning out of spatial relationships, taking as an example the "Gegensiitze von Dorf und Stadt, von Residenz und Amtsstadr" in Goethe's Die Lezden des jurzgen Werlhers (38). Petsch distinguishes between "Lokal" and "dichterisch-epischen Raum." Whereas "Lokal" simply refers to the places where the characters live and events occur, the space of the narrative transcends this; as "poetischer
Raum" it embodies ideas and values. Indeed, Petsch argues that the information about the
"Lokal," such as measurements, numbers, names, or descriptions, is irrelevant to the
"poetische Wirkung" unless it refers to the imrneasurable space of meaning (38). Petsch does not, however, entirely succeed in making the distinction between his categories of
space clear, indeed, this would be difficult, since it would entai1 establishing the
difference between a literary object and its meaning.
Hermann Meyer picks up on Cassirer's concept of space as a symbolic
construction and goes beyond it to suggest that space and time belong together in the
formation of a narrative. Meyer asks whether space has a role to play in the production of
the overall structure of a work, and discovers this role in the symbolic character of space,
once more making the distinction between this space and simple "location." Again,
Meyer recails Cassirer's significant pairs: neadfar, high/low, opedclosed, and so on.
Meyer assumes that the structural importance of space is greater in highly
symbolic works and less evident in "realistic" novels. It is most significant in those
works "wo irdische Wirklichkeit selbst als ideehaltig erfdt und in den Stand der
athetischen Gnade erhoben wird" (40). Following this assumption, he focuses his
examination on Goethe's Novelle and Eichendofls Audem Leben eines Taugen ichts,
two works in which the descriptions are not strictly realistic (though they seem "real"),
but where the relation of things and places in space, and the movement between them,
create the meaning. For the present work, the significance of Meyer's study lies in his
insistence on seeing time and space as working together, and his conclusion that space is
one of the central constituents of the interplay of narrative elements. He determines "da der Raum in der Dichtung nicht bloD eine faktische Gegebenheit, sondern vor allem ein
eigenstadiges Gestaltungselement bildet, das nisamen mit verschwisterten Elementen wie Zeit, Eaahlperspektive, Figur und Handlungsgefolge den intendierten Gehalt bekorpert und die Struktur des Werkes bestimmt" (56). The setting of a narrative, then, is not simply a background for the action, but is rather itself an active element that helps create the meaning and overall form of a work.
Frank Maatje continues this line of reasoning with his argument that the manner in which space is structured into systems of signification within the narrative can relate to the fomi of the narration itselfi "Enahlgebilde, deren Raumgestalhmg offensichtlich eine besondere Bedeutung hat, haben haufig den eigenen Reiz, daB die Erzahlweise unmittelbar mit ebendieser Raumgestalhing zusammenhiingt, anders gesagt, daO die
Erzahlweise und die Art und Weise, wie der Raum in der Eniihlung aufgebaut werden, sich gegenseitig bedingen" (407). While this is essentially a fairly elementary conclusion, since it is obvious that the decision to present a narrative fiom a limited-omniscient or first-person point of view will have an inevitable effect on the representation of space in the narrative, the fact that it is formulated in these terms makes it significant. Though al1 the examinations discussed thus far are based on the narrative's description of physical space, which is endowed with symbolic significance, there is a growing awareness of the need to apply the question of spatial organization to the discursive level of the text as well.
Bruno Hillebrand also approaches space as an expression of characters'
perspective when, rather than just functioning as a background to action, it corresponds to
the subjective inner life of the characters. Rather confusingly, it also registen the
perspective of the author, whose "Geist" is discemibie in the space of his work (Mensch
und Raum 10). Hillebrand is here once again refeming to represented space in the story,
which he sees as "Ausdmckstrager des Gehaltlichen" in the literary work (9). He sees
space as one of the Wo fundamental constituents of the reception of narrative, corresponding to the act of memory when that which has been read is reconstmcted in the mind. Time, he argues, corresponds to the pmcess of reading itselt The limitation of this view, as he himself points out, is that space here is highly subjective, and therefore open to endless variations while remaining essentially closed to organization or universal applicability. The distinction Hillebrand makes between the two receptive stages of reading and memory, however, anticipates somewhat the arguments made by theorists of
"spatial form". While Hillebrand refers to the narrated space which materializes in memory when a reader recalls a work as a whole in one "Augenblick," it is only a short way nom this spatial receptivity to a spatial productivity, which devises works that demand such a slrategy from readers even while they are still irnmersed in the process of reading. This idea echoes not only in the spatial theories of Joseph Frank, but also in the novels to be examined here, particularly in those of Bernhard, Becker, and Hildesheimer.
Represented space is seen, then, as contributing to both the content and the meaning of a work, and it is in its function as a producer of meaning that the space of the story will be considered here, not as a symbolic element, but rather as a structural element. So, for example, the abstract concept of boundaries becomes important within a story, to the degree that it represents the movement between binary opposites, a relation that creates significance. Given the theoretical basis of modem texts, however, a sole
emphasis on the story-level would be inappropnate. Consequently, it is necessary to consider the meaning of spatiality to discourse as well.
In traditional examinations of space in literature, based on an assumption of representation, the discursive structure usually remains in the background, while the mimetic functions are given precedence. In part, as will be seen, the dominance of temporal and spatial themes and structures in considerations of narrative fiction is a question of literary penod and genre. While experiments with tirne and çpace have always been present to some degree in the history of the novel, for example, in exceptional works like Sterne's Tristram Shandy or in the formal experiments of the
Romantics, they became typical and thematic with the advent of the modem novel. As a de, critics considering spatiality as a stnrcturing element of narrative discourse (as opposed to examinhg its role as the basis of symbolic meaning) have established a contrast between modem texts and those of nineteenth-century realism in order to establish a paradigm with which earlier works could also be compared. What is at issue here is not, strictly speaking, merely a question of mimetic versus non-rnimetic writing.
In works of nineteenth-century realism, a natural, realistic representation of spatial and temporal perception and organization was attempted-this included chronological plots based on linear development and causality, as well as realistic inner and outer spaces endowed with symbolic significance and definable meaning. The modem novel, with its distortions of chronology and spatial relationships, can be seen as an attempt to show a di fferent reality, a world radically changed b y techno logical innovation and social restnicturing, in which the perception of the world, and not the world itself, is the mie object of mimesis. In some contemporary novels, such as those of Ransrnayr and
Nadolny discussed here, the focus moves back to the world, which, however, no longer possesses its nineteenth-century autonomy. The disturbance and alteration of perception, still implicit in these novels, relativize the world and undermine its statu as one valid redity. In an examination of critical responses to the realistic novel, Ulf Eisele writes:
"Realistische Grundbegriffe wie Abbildung oder Wiederspiegelung, erkennbar der Sphiire des Visuellen entnommen, irnplizieren, dd vom Diskurscharacter der Literatur buchstablich abgesehen wird" (17). Eisele argues that with the nse of discourse over mimesis, the acoustic takes precedence over the visual. Speech, not the image, is important. This need not mean, however, that space, in Lessing's sense, disappears from narrative. Expanding on Eisele's thoughts, one could Say that, in realistic literature, spatiality was necessarily equated with landscape or scenery, for the production of realistic images, the desire to "show," was central. When the focus moves to discourse, however, the understanding of what constitutes spatiality must also be expanded. This revision of the concept of space in literature has been underway since Joseph Frank's influential essay "Spatial Form in Modem Literature," which will be discussed below.
Unlike the rnajority of those who have moved on to a consideration of space as an organizing element, however, 1 will continue to examine its significance as a producer of meaning within the namative, not, however, as symbolic content, but purely in the form of spatial relations.
Since the beginnings of the modem novel, critics have been explicitly discussing the role of time and space in namtive fiction, not simply as elements of story and setting, but as part of the conceptual bais for the production and reception of narrative texts. The various crises and developments in technology, transportation, communication and social structures which have defined the modern age are often linked to a change in the understanding of temporal and spatial structures which, necessarily, must alter the textual representation of reality.2 in critical considerations of modem novels, it is conspicuous how often reference is made to changing conceptions of space and tirne, both in the world at large and in the texts of the time. In particular, many of the discussions of literary spatiality, in the past fifty years, were responses to the new discursive forms of narrative fiction that appeared in this changed world.
Describing this change, Edgar Neis writes, "Mit dem Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts verliert die Welt vollends ihre Mitte" (7), thereby echoing a cornmon metaphor for the loss of a stable historical and social "narrative." The novel could, under these circumstances, no longer remah cment and relevant while presenting unities of plot with linear continuity and an authoritative narrator. In their place appeared "die Aufsplitterung und Segmentiemg des Geschehens in einzelne, lose aneinandergereihte, mininter sogar zusammenhanglose Bildfolgen, die analytische Zerlegung des Gesamtvorgangs in seine
Elemente und Bestandteile" (Neis 9). The modem narrator, seeing the relativity of al1 temporal experience, observes "dal3 die Zeit zurn Raum und der Raum zur Zeit wird"
(Neis 67). It is just this ambiguity of thne and space that is reflected in the narrative style
Neis describes. A smooth, comprehensive succession such as that found in the chronological style of realist narrative disguises the discontinuity of its images and their
2 It would be impossible here to give even a bnef overview of al1 the cultural, social and political analyses of this change in modem perceptions of time and space, but a few references can be made, for example to Anthony Giddens, who, in his The Consequences of Modemify, sets modemity as being prirnarily about the transformation of space and time. In his essay "Nahe und Ferne: Wahehmungswandel im Ubergang zum elektronischen Zeitalter," GGtz Grossklaus examines the beginnings of the change in the relationship of time and space in the early era of industrialization, and how concepts like high speed and simultaneity effect the structure and practice of literature and philosophy. Leonard Lutwack, in his The Role of PIace in Liferafure examines how the rise of mass media, modem communication and transportation and political lack of completeness in relation to reality. It mimics the conventional, linear, teleological apprehension of existence and so appears naturai, cove~gup the incomplete character of its rnhr to the world.3 A hgmented narrative reveals itself opedy as a senes of images; it shows its relative constniction, and demonstrates that its connection to
"naturai" flowing time is only conventional and metaphorical, as indeed our conception of tirne as linear is also mere convention.
Wnting of this literary transition, Wilhelm Ernrich notes the difficulty many readers have orienting themselves in modem, as opposed to "classical," novels. Using
Kafka as an example, he describes the situation in the modem novel:
Die empirischen Ordnungen von Raum und Zeit, Ursache und Wirkung,
scheinen nicht mehr ni bestehen. Der Leser sieht sich in eine Welt
venetzt, in der ihm gleichsam sein gewohntes RealitatsbeMtsein
abhanden kommt. Er sieht sich auBerstande, von seiner Erfahnuigswelt
aus diese Vorghge noch als wirklich oder auch nur als moglich
aufmehmen und zu verstehen. (123)
While the usual CO-ordinatesof reality are abandoned here, the novel is not, strictly speaking, unrealistic. It is merely reflecting a world in which the general understanding of the categones of time and space, cause and effect?has changed.
The modem novel attempts to portray the totality of modem life, according to
Emrich, with the use of forma1 devices like "Simultantechnik," for example, Gottfried resûucturing lead to a diminished importance of place and an increased importance of motion in the twentieth century. 3 This incompletencss is examined under the term of "Unbestimmtheitstellen"by Roman Ingarden in his Das literarische Kunsîwerk. Benn's concept of the "phihotypischer Roman," "der keine Psychologie, keine
Enhvicklung, keine Handlung mehr ken* sondern shtliche Phhomene des Lebens gleichsarn von einer statischen, ruhenden Mitte aus gestaltet, sie scheinbar beziehungslos nebeneinanderstellt, aber gerade dadurch ihr inneres Beziehungsgeflecht au fdeckt "
(Emrich 118). It is notable that while Emrich, Joseph Frank, and many other critics writing on modem literature approach the modem novel fiom various different corners of
the critical debate, comments on the tempo-spatial aspects of diese novels, and the forms
used to deal with these aspects, are ofien very similar. Few cal1 attention to textuai
spatidity as explicitly as Frank, but the notion is often implicit, and here, in Emrich's
description, the spatial images are so strong that they definitely suggest the use of the
term.
In his Theorie des Erzühlens, Franz Stanzel aIso differentiates between the
nineteenth-century novel and the modem novel on the basis of their relation to temporal
and spatial categories. For Stanzel, the nineteenth-century novel tends to be characterized
by "AuBenperspektive," in which the narrated reality is seen nom the outside (72t).
"AuBenperspektiveWtends to be "aperspektivisch," and its finity is to narration as a
temporal art fom. Spatial relations in the narrated reality are not generally seen as
thematic but rather are subordinate to the narrative mode of "und dann" (151). In the
"aperspektivische Raumdarstellung," the narrator relates the events but does not focalize
them in a manner which allows readers to orient themseIves in the narrative situation,
such that the readers' own spatial perceptions are not activated (160). Stanzel compares
this with Genette's concept of extemal and zero focalization. The modem novel, according to Stanzel, tends to rely on "Innenperspektive;" it is
"perspektivisch" and has an affinity to space as a category of perception. The relation of narrated people and things in space, the standpoint boom which objects are related and the limited horizon of the narrator's knowledge al1 become significant (15 1). Perspective is relevant to the production of meaning. The "perspektivische Raumdarstellung," comparable to Genette's "internai focalization," is perception-centered: there is a camera- eye presentation or focalization through a character. Stanzel then, is implicitly speaking of a change in the relation of the text to narrated reality, a question which is of central
importance to the present study. In the nineteenth-century novel, the world is taken as a
constant and fimctions as a background for the events of the story. In the modem novel,
the perspective fiom which the narrated world is seen becomes more significant. Stanzel
is speaking here of space as represented space within the novel, but implicitly also of
spatial structures of form, as suggested by terms like "outside," "inside" and "standpoint."
The comection of spatiality in the story and in the discoune is easily made.
If the perspective fiom which narrated reality is presented becomes central, then
the marner of this presentation gains in importance and draws attention to itself. A novel which focuses on a series of events and allows the presentation to fade into the background disguises this presentation as natural. As soon as the question of how existence cm be perceived and presented becomes a theme of the novel, its own mode of representation will corne under scrutiny, and its discursive level will be explicitly linked to its themes.
Stanzel discusses the importance of perception to the modem novel; Btuno
Hillebrand, who speaks of the "Raumentfiemdung und Raurnverlorenheit des modemen Menschen," reaches a sirnilar conclusion by a different way (Mensch und Raum 28). He describes the situation of the novel der the Second World War as afflicted with an acute crisis of narration. There is no longa a belief in reality as a world open to one meaningful interpretation, and therefore this reality can no longer be naively narrated without commentary or open mediation. Hillebrand sees the change in the consciousness of time-space relations as central to this changed view of the world ("Deutsche
Romanpoetologie" 489). Reality is no longer seen as comprehensively knowable; the understanding of it is always relative. This changes, as well, the function of the author:
"heute ist der Autor ein Mensch in Raum und Zeit, relativiert wie diese selbst,
Benchterstatter begrenzter und ungewisser Erfahrung" ("Deutsche Romanpoetologie"
494). In contrast, "der Roman des 19. Jahrhunderts resultierte aus der Vontellung einer
fdlich intelligiblen auBeren Welt" (501). One could Say, then, that the situation of the modem novel has become largely a question of the relation between reality and narrative or text (or language), and these tems entail a central position for perception and representation. The question is: how is the world perceived, and how can this perception be represented?
Joseph Frank also responded to this fragmentation and segmentation, which he saw as a typical new form of the modem novel, and used it as a spnngboard to bnng forward his theory of literary spatidity. In his essay "Spatial Form in Modem Literature," he finds the distinguishing characteristic of this modem literature in what he calls its
"spatial form," the reflexive activity required of its readers, who must hold diverse aspects of the text in their min& as a synchronous structure in order to find meaning. Refemng to writers like Pound, Proust, Joyce, and Djuna Bames, Frank writes, "Al1 these writers idedly intend the reader to apprehend their work spatially, in a moment of time, rather than as a sequence" (9). Elements of a text are "juxtaposed with one another and perceived simultaneously"(l2), and this emphasizes the centrality of the reader's role in
Frank's theory. The meaning that arises out of the text does not depend on the temporal relationship of textual elements, but on this work of juxtaposition and cornparison, which is done by the reader and which is required by the spatial positioning of textual elements.
The works are therefore reflexive: their primary reference is to something within themselves, and they are properly understood only "when their nits of meaning are apprehended reflexively in an instant of tirne."4 The nineteenth-century realist novel, in contrast, is seen by Frank as temporally structured, as a ûue succession in which each new element builds upon those preceding it. With Frank, Merdefinitions of spatiality are suggested, though his essay, never intended as a theoretical manifesta, does not always go far beyond simple suggestion. First, there is spatiality as discursive forrn, the fragmentation of the narrative flow. Related to this, there is the reader's conceptualization of the work as a static entity in a moment of time.
Like Emrich, Frank recognized the difficulties inherent in the modem novel, and he intended his essay as assistance tu those readers who, used to traditional conventions, had to leam to read the new texts. In the same way, Sharon Spencer, whose work is strongly influenced by Frank, states that the intention behind her book Space. Tirne und
Structure in the Modern Novel is to assist readers in finding ways to approach modem novels, which are widely considered "unreadable." Spencer writes that the public must be
Frank 16. A similar thought has arisen before-in Hillebrand's "Augenblick." "taught to read" modem novels, and, like Frank, she sees the answer in a new conception of the novel as a spatial constnict.
Sharon Spencer also relates her study of spatiality to the question of the representation of reality, arguing that spatid form is both a response to a new understanding of reality, and a strategy that makes representation of the new reality possible:
In our the, space is conceived not as one-sided or linear-as in the
Renaissance idea of perspective-but as many-sided and vimially
inexhaustible in its potentiality for relationships, none of which are
mut-udly exclusive. Consequently, absolute description of any object or
area is impossible fiom a single point of reference. Each position which
provides a perspective will reveal a different aspect of the subject of
observation or contemplation, for in modem physics, space is conceived
as relative to a moving point of reference. (xviii)
The consequence of this changed view, to Spencer, is the "architectonic" novel, which is inclusive of many different views: "The 'tnith' of the total vision of such a novel is a composite tnith obtained from the reader's apprehension of a great many relationships arnong the fragments that make up the book's totality" (xxi).
The traditional assurnption that space in the novel refers to the represented reality, while tirne is linked to the process and stmcture of representation, is inverted by Frank's assertion that "spatiality" is in fact a forma1 charactenstic of narrative. While this simple reversa1 of concepts has its limitations, the clarity with which it illuminates certain aspects of the traditional argument make it useful for gaining a new perspective. This can be seen, for example, in the work of Jerome Klinkowitz, who, writing in the tradition of
Frank's concept of "spatial foxm," defines the ideaily spatial novel as one wholly divorced nom the necessity of representing an extemal reality. No action in the world is shown, and therefore the narrative-if it can stilI be given this name-is independent of time or
"historical" events. The reader's interest is "to appreciate its elements of composition, which just as in a painting would be a spatial &air" (Klinkowitz 39). The realization of spatial foxm in literahire is thereby seen as a work which is wholly self-reflexive.
Klinkowitz here continues Frank's association of spatiality with a non-realist, non- representational stance that is, ultimately, non-narrative. He regards narrative as illusion, and indeed it is clear that any account of events implies an imagined setting and actors through which these events can exist. That is, there must be a reference to some reality beyond the text. For Klinkowitz, a text whose centre lies in its compositional order can be self-conscious, not needing to make this extemal reference. Spatial fiction is generative of reality, rather than representational. The work is only about itself, for
"when there is an explicit idea or meaning behind the work, what results is the dramatization of that idea through story. And once that happens, the possibilities for space are limited" (42).
This statement implicitly shows the central limitation of Klinkowitz's view, and the difficulty inherent in an overly one-sided pursuit of Frank's ideas. There is, among certain critics, a tendency to see spatial fom as a virtue in itself, engaged in a stniggle with temporality. This is a view which is not only of limited use in literary analysis, but which also reduces the spatial mode1 to an unnecessarily restricted range of applicabiiity.
The texts that would actually meet Klinkowitz's ideal criteria are few, and are rnoreover of a highly experimental nature. His assertion that a text like Vomegut's Slaughterhouse-
Five is "prirnarily spatial Ui formW(39)relativizes the hework of his own argument, since any reader will recall that this text is by no means devoid of narration, representation and, indeed, histoncai the. The novelts effect depends largely on the dismantling of this thne, but the recognition of its existence as a literary convention is
equally necessary for the attainrnent of the effect. Experimental texts such as Raymond
Federman's Double or Nothing or, in German, Arno Schmidt's Zettels Traum, might better
fulfill Klinkowitz's precondi tions. But Frank himsel f acknow ledged that temporali ty is
not banned fiom spatial literature. One of the primary concems in the present work is the
tension produced by an interplay of spatialking and temporal elements, which is linked to
a tension between story and discourse, reality and text.
Car1 Darryl Malmgren begins his discussion of literary spatiality with the same
opposition of representation and reflexivity, which he expresses as the relation of fiction
and reality. Referring to Lukacsts division of fiction into two modes-realistic (mimetic poetics) and modem (autonomous poetics)-he perceives a need to reconcile these two poles, normally treated as mutually exclusive. Malmgren recalls Hawthorne's idea of the
"space" of art, suspended between the imaginary and the actual, partaking of both and yet
"other" (24). In doing so Malmgren uses the term "space" in a purely metaphorical way, based upon his assurnption "that fictional configurations simultaneously create and inhabit a hybnd zone or interface generated by the conflation of the Real and the
Imaginary; and that inscribing a world itself represents an essentially spatial act" (25).
Inscribing a world is a spatial act because the text occupies physicai space, because the fictional world consists of imagined space, and because the fictional world evokes an interpretive space.
Prose narratives, according to Malmgren, are composed of sign-vehicles with either a factual or a fictional reference; these are joined into fields of reference which cm either refer outside the text or inside it. From this we can determine if the narrative world is modally factual or modally fictional2 A fiction inscnbes a world within our world, and
Malmgren examines this process, using "fictional space" as the concept which embraces al1 aspects of the process. By "fictional space" Malrngren means "the imagina1 expanse created by fictional discourse, a fictional field which, though ultimately self-referentiai and self-validating, necessarily exists in ascertainable relation with the "real world" outside the text" (29). This concept of fictional spaces "potentially encornpasses al1 three centen of the act and expenence of literature-the author, the reader, and the literary object itself' (29). "Fictional space" as Malmgren sees it consists of the signiQing
systems "text space," which is the space of the fictionai world and of the speaker, and
"paraspace," which is the space of the reader, ofien made up of those gaps in the text
which readers must fil1 in. There is an interrelation of dl the various levels of narrative
which will be significant in the present work, existing in an interactive mode, so that al1
"the various spaces of a fiction exist simultaneously and in a condition of continuous
dynamic" (34). msdynamism will be seen below in McHale's concept of the "Zone,"
which is adopted as well by Hugo Caviola.
Here Malmgren echoes Hrushovski's concept of intemal and extemal fields of reference, which makes up one of his three 'dimensions' of the literary text. Hnishovski's dimensional mode1 of the literary text is metaphoncally spatial, as is Malmgrem's; both depend on the assumption that With the rise of late-modem and postmodem novels, there is, curiously, a shift back to the importance of the represented world within the text, and once again critics begin to speak of Literary spatiality as "eniihiter Raum." This is not, however, simply a return to traditional conceptions of space and narrative. While the modem novel, with its focus on discoune, questions how we perceive and know the world, many examples of more recent literature represent in their story not an assumed cornmon reality, but a reality, a possible world or, as a consequence of this, multiple possible realities at once.
These realities are not a reflection of immediate perception but a creation in themselves, differing in their being, and so may be seen as the consequence of modem scepticism.
Brian McHde describes the dominant focus of this sort of novel, which he calls
"postrnodem," as ontological; that is, it raises such questions as
what is a world? what kinds of world are there, how are they
constituted, and how do they differ? what happens when different kinds
of world are placed in confrontation, or when boundaries between
worlds are violated? what is the mode of existence of a text, and what is
the mode of existence of the world (or worlds) it projects? how is a
projected world stnictured? and so on. ("The Semantic and Syntactic
ûrganization of Postmodernist Texts" 60)
It is clear that such questions produce a shift back to the represented material while retaining irnplicitly the basis of epistemological scepticism, without which they would
the interrelation of diverse textual elements can best be described in spatial terms. Cf. Benjamin Hwhovski, "The Structure of Semiotic Objects: A Three-Dimensional Model." never arise. To thuik about potential worlds and altemate realities, one must first have questioned the reliability of empirical howledge.
McHale focuses in part on the fictional space of the novel, asking how it is constructed and, at the same the, "deconstmcted" (Posmtodernist Fiction 45). Along with the pagina1 space, the space of the sign, and intertextual space, he takes the space of the fictional universe as a basis for his discussion of postmodem texts. This interest in
space arises naturally from the ontological emphasis of the novels which, because they are
dealing with altemate worlds, give primary importance to the representation of space.
While in the modem novel, which McHale terms "epistemological," the "how" of the
presentation is of central importance, in the postmodern text the "what" again cornes to
the forefiont. Because this is not sirnply a return to traditional narrative, McHale cm
conceptualize other types of space significant to the postmodem text. The space of the
sign refers to the space between signifier and signified, while intertextual space is seen,
for example, when a novel borrows a character fiom a different text-what Umberto Eco
calls "transworld identityW-and both wilI be seen at work in the last three texts to be
discussed here.
Two basic conceptions of space have been discussed so far: first, represented
space as the producer of rneaning in a work; and second, spatiality as a genenc and forma1
concept in the organization and reception of narratives. In the former, space is equated
with the material of the story, while the is the organizing element; in the latter, space is
examined as an alternative principle of organization to temporality. Narrative theoy has
tended to view time as the defuiing element in the structure of texts. Curiously, time here
takes over the role that space, in other areas of literary analysis, played as a producer of meaning. Günther Müller, who fïrst examined the relationship of "Erzahlzeit" and
"erzahlte Zeit," argues that meanhg is produced by the dynarnics of this relationship:
"nicht erst die ausdrlicklich wertende Stellungnahme macht die Enahlung zur Deutung.
Es ist vielmehr ein grundlegendes Gestaltgesetz der Erzahllcunst, daO schon einer ihrer elementarsten Bildungsvorgiïnge, die Vergegenwartigung von Zeitablaufen in einer
Spannung von Eaahlzeit und erzahlter Zeit, deutend wirkt" (70).
The difficulty of separating space and time has been seen ofien in discussions of narrative structure, where temporality has generally been taken as the basis, with spatiality largely overlooked. Günther Muller postdates that the "Grundform allen
Erzahlens" is "und dan-" (68). Eberhard Lihmert takes the sarne starting position, positing temporality as the fundamental pnnciple of representation and perception in a narrative, based on the nature of language. Succession is seen as the most general principle which narration shares with al1 other forms of linguistic communication. Only through this succession can the communication be presented and received, so that the framework of a narrative, according to Lbunert, must be "Geschehen in der Zeit"
(Bauformen des Emïhlens 2 1) .
The tension between the "reality" represented in the story and the discourse gives rise to what L-ert tems the "Doppelheit von erzahltem Vorgang und Erzahlvorgang," that is, what is told and how it is told. Lhmert seeks to illuminate the relationship between "erzahlter Wirklichkeit und sprachlicher Wiedergabe" by comparing "erzahlte
Zeit und Enahlzeit" (Baufurmen 23). In doing so, he posits a relationship between the opposition story/discoune (and so, metaphorically, realitykext) and the opposition narrated time/narrating tirne. By examining the temporal structure of the text, then, conclusions could be reached about the implicit relation of the text to reality.
Tmetan Todorov makes a similar distinction between story and discourse, and while he, too, bases his analysis on time, his story-time is described in spatial terms: "Die
Zeit des Diskurses ist in einem bestimmten Sinn eùie lineare Zeit, wahrend die Zeit der
Geschichte mehrdimensional ist. In der Geschichte konnen sich mehrere Ereignisse zur selben Zeit abspielen; aber irn Diskurs rnlissen sie gezwungenermaDen in eine Folge nacheinander eingesetzt werden; eine kornplexe Figur wird auf eine gerade Linie projiziert" ("Die Kategorien" 347). Here, again, the implicitly spatial element is associated with the material of reality-the multilayered natural flow of events. The implications of the spatial description of tirne ("lineare Zeit") are, however, not pursued.
A possible drawback inherent in Müller's and Lbunert's analyses, and others that pursue a similar line, is that they do not openly examine the role of space, the importance of which is, however, implicitly suggested by their own choice of terminology. Both acknowledge a spatial element in their discussions of temporal structures, but neither pursues it any Mer. Müller admits that "Erzahlzeit" is just as spatial as it is temporal:
"Es macht [...] keinen grundsatzlichen Unterschied, wenn man die Erzahlzeit nicht nach
Minuten, sondem nach der Zahl der Druckseiten eines Werkes rniBt" (73). Liimmert reaches the conclusion that counting pages is, in fact, the best way to measure
"Erzahlzeit" (Baufmen 32). From this it could be concluded that the discursive element of a narrative is spatial.
The examination of spatial form does not take place in these works, however.
Liimnert, for example, discusses a variety of temporal structures which a11 contain an irnplicit spatial element, but he does not analyze this aspect. Reading his work critically, one might conclude that it is in fact necessary to use spatial tems when discussing temporality. In Lhmert's discussion of "Unterbrechuug," for example, we read the following account of multi-layered narrative:
Haufig ergibt sich dabei für den Erzahler die Notwendigkeit, gleiche
Zeitspannen mehrmals ni durchmessen; so entstehen Btïndel- und
Facherfmen, die gegenüber der Longerstreckung einer Geschic hte
ihre Breitendimensionen darstellen. In mehrgleisigen Erzahlungen und
überhaupt bei reichem Personenaufiand wird die Geschichte vielfach
mehr in die Breite als in die Lange aufgegliedert [italics mine].
(Baufonnen 3 3-34)
Naturally, the fact that such comments on form will depend on spatial metaphors is not surprising, form itself being a spatial term. In more general ways, however, the way we think and speak of time is always formed by spatial modes of perception, whether tirne is seen as a line or a circle. Thus we can speak of a "length of time," a "short time," and so on. It will be seen that the linearity of a text, however it is defined and although comrnonly associated with temporality, is itself a spatial concept.
Genette follows a line of reasoning similar in many ways to Lihmert's but with a more expansive and specific vocabulary, and he does, ultimately, consider the contradictory position of space. Genette considers "tensen-the temporal relations between story and narrative-to be one of the basic categories of discourse. While he
States that texts are constrained by the "linearity of the linguistic signifier" (34), he emphasizes the fact that this implies a confusion of tenninoiogy: The temporality of written nmtive is to some extent conditional or
instrumental; produced in the, like everything else, written narrative
exists in space and as space, and the tirne needed for "consuming" it is
the tirne needed for crossing or traversing it, like a road or a field. The
narrative text, like any other text, has no other temporality than what it
borrows, metonymically, from its own reading. (34)
When speaking of duration, Genette chooses to remain with temporal categonzation,
urging that "Erziihlzeit" should be accepted as a kind of "pseudo-time;" however, he states
that this in fact refers to "length of text" (35). When he speaks of order and fiequency,
however, Genette makes a cIear distinction between the "temporal plane of the story" and
the "spatial plane of the text," thereby reversing the usual association of space with story
and time with discourse. The ternis "order" and "fiequency" can be transposed from one
plane to the other; for example, we can Say that event A occurs after event B on the spatial
plane of the text, or that event A is earlier than event B in the story's time. Thus, the
analysis of the relation between story and narrative comes down to the relation of the
temporal and spatial levels of the text. In his discussion of "speed," which he comes to
prefer over the tem "duration," Genette again underlines this relationship: "By 'speed' we
mean the relationship behveen a temporal dimension and a spatial dimension (so many metres per second, so many seconds per metre): the speed of a narrative will be defined by the relationship between a duration (that of the story, measured in seconds, hours, days, rnonths and years) and a length (that of the text, measured in lines and in pages)"
(87-88). It is necessary here to emphasize two points which will be of Merconsequence: ht, that the terms of temporality used by cntics of narrative are also based on spatial concepts, and, second, that the use of spatial terms instead of temporal ones is more than a matter of arbitrary substitution. With regard to the first point, it is clear, once again, that al1 the terms used by the above critics to signi6 temporal succession, including the widespread concept of linearity, themselves &se out of a spatialized understanding.
Points in time do not actuaily exist in relation to each other on a line, but are transposed into this form in order to facilitate their conceptudization as existing before or after each other. me terms "before" and "after" are themselves based on a spatial ordering of events, and dlow for a teleological conception of narrative in which later events actually arise out of earlier ones. In the present work, this "before" and "after" will be especially significant in the examination of causdity and sources within narrative texts, where the questions of whether causality is truly uni-directional, and whether experience necessarily precedes its literary presentation will be considered.
In his "Spatial Fom in Literature," W.J.T. Mitchell uses the spatiality of descriptive temporal terms to argue that spatial form is an essential aspect in the reading and interpretation of al1 literature of al1 eras. Referring to the spatial concepts that arise when speaking of texts (these include "levels" of meaning and narration; the text as a physical, spatial entity; and the idea of "structure,") Mitchell finds that "spatial form is no casual metaphor but an essential feature of the interpretation and experience of literature"
(546). Mitchell defines four essential aspects of Iiterary spatiality: the space of the book as a physical object, the presentation of Vnaginary space in the narrative, the spatial metaphors used to describe a work's structure, and, hally, the momentary synthesis of diverse parts of the text when they are held together in the reader's mind at the moment of understanding. While 1 agree with Mitchell's contention that spatiality is a universal
literary element, my purpose here is to anaiyze a particular manifestation of spatiality in
narrative, one which began with a heightened awareness and a conscious manipulation of
the temporaVspatial structures of texts. As seen above, it is with the start of modemity
that çpatiality begins to become thematic, and with that it also becomes a point of
contention for the critics.
Coming to the second point, it has been seen that much attention has been focused
on the relationship of story and discourse in terms of time. Space has been variously
linked with the material of the story (in relation to temporal structure) or with the
structural form (in opposition to the temporality of the story). What has not been given
adequate consideration is the relation between the spatiality of narrative and the space of
the story, and a consideration of the difference between this and the relation
"Erzahlzeit"/"erzahlte Zeit" shows that what is involved is more than a substitution of
interchangeable terms.
Seymour Chatman takes up this point in his assertion that the "dimension" of
story-events is time, while that of story-existence is space, and he adds "as we distinguish
story-time fiom discourse-tirne, we must distinguish story-space fkom discourse-space"
(96-97). For Chatman, story-space is the mental constmct that allows us to "see" the
objects that exist in a story and the space where they exist; discourse-space is something
very like perspective: "it is the hedspace to which the implied audience's attention is
directed by the discourse, that portion of the total story-space that is 'remarkeâ' or closed
in upon, according to the requirements of the medium, through a nanator or through the canera-eyeliterally, as in a film, or figuratively, as in verbal narrative" (102). This defintion of discoune-space is, however, more applicable to cinema than to literature, where it is essentially reduced to the mode of presentation, and, indeed, Chatman discusses it in relation to film but does not consider its hinction in narrative texts to any great degree.
Ursula Reidel-Schrewe, in her examination of Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg, is the first to undertake a systematic anaiysis based on this term of discursive space. She builds her examination of spatiality on concepts of narrative theory, denving a concept of
"Erzahlraum" which corresponds to "Erzahlzeit." This refers not only to the "volume" of the text as a more accurate measurement of narrating tirne, the concrete space of the text, and the location of the narrator, but also to the introduction of the linguistic terms diastole and systole: "Mit der Einfühning des Gegensatzpaares Diastole/Systole wird die
Moglichkeit geschaffen, den Sprachmechanismus der Kontraktion und der Expansion, aiso das wechselnde Volumen von Text und Eaahltem, von Signifikant und Signifikat, raumlich zu erfassen" (Reidel-Schrewe 4). This recalls McHaIefs space of the sign-the potential for change in the relation of signifier and signified.
Both Chatman and Reidel-Schrewe see the application of spatial terms as being at le& in part a matter of literary genre and history. Chatman distinguishes between two types of narrative. On the one side there is the "traditional narrative of resolution," whose basic question is "what will happen?" and which shows its events as "linked to each other as cause to effect, effects in turn causing other effects, until the final effect." One the other side there is the "modem plot of revelation" where "early on we gather that things will stay pretty much the same. It is not that events are resolved (happily or tragically), but rather that a state of affairs is revealed" (46-48). Although Chatman does not cd1 this latter a spatial form, he does note that "a strong sense of temporal order is more significant in resolved than in revealed plot^."^
Reidel-Schrewe uses her division of the temporal and spatial in a histoncal way.
She writes:
Der Zeitaspekt überwiegt in Erzahlungen, in denen die Ereignisse
diachronisch, in ihrem evolutioniiren Verlauf verstanden werden. Der
Raumaspekt dorniniert in Erzahlungen, in denen die Ereignisse
synchronisch, in einem stationiïren Wirkungs feld erfdt werden.
Historisch gesehen konnte man der ersten Gruppe den "realistischen"
Roman des 19. Jahrhunderts zuordnen, der zweiten Gruppe den
"modemen" und post-modernen Roman. (13)
Reidel-Schrewe notes that the examination of space in nanative has generally been based upon the older literature, making the representative studies I have mentioned possible; the new novels cal1 for a new understanding of space: "Die Untersuchung des Raumes im
Roman des 20. Jahrhunderts [...] befaDt sich nicht mehr mit dem inhaltlichen Aspekt des erzahlten, begehbaren Raumes ais Wirkungsfeld gesellschaftlicher Wirklichkeit, sondem sie richtet sich vielmehr auf die Funktion des Rames als konstituierendes Element der
Stniktur des narrativen Textesn(14). Her examination, focusing on one work, is by necessity syntagmatic; in the present work, relations of spatiality are seen in a range of
6 Chatman, Story and Dkcourse 48. Note that Chatman takes the revealed plots to be strongly character-oriented, a point of view applied by Spencer, Mickelson and others to "spatial fiction." works, thereby suggesting less an historical development than a motion within a new field of possibilities.
As the preceding overview has shown, there are several options for the application of the terni "spatiality" to literary texts. For my purposes here, three of these will be of central significance: the organization of the space represented on the story-level; the spatiality inherent in the reading process, which is, in the texts exarnined here, closely linked with the active production of significance by the reader (as opposed to the dominance of passive reception in authorial narratives); and the spatiality of discursive organization. Again, the separation of these tems must be seen as a heuristic device, for their interplay and interdependence is necessary, and indeed their relation to each other will be of primary importance.
Represented space, as discussed above, comes to the fore again with the more recent of the texts examined here, where questions of textuality and rneaning are translated into imaginary landscapes, and the movement through the "erzahlte Raum" comes to represent the production and reception of texts as such. Particularly in
Ransmayr's Die Zetzte WeZt, the narrated space plays a central role in demonstrating the discursive interest of the novel, the breaking down of bamers between world and text, and the positing of an endless field of ontological alternatives instead of a critical examination of the means of understanding the world. Conversely, in a discursively disrupted work like Bernhard's Das Kalkwerk, represented space acts as both a mirror and a foi1 to the discourse, reflecting the reader's motion through the text while at the sarne time giving a measure of stability where temporal organization has been completely undermined. Closely related to this presentation of space is the process of reading and writing.
Joseph Frank began the long association of spatial form with reader-oriented criticism; his concept of reflexive reference is entirely dependent on the activity of the reader. Frank's
spatiality is the moment of comprehension, when elements of the text are simultaneously
present in the reader's mind as a "spatial" structure. A similar argument is made by
Mitchell, who considers the moment of understanding a work as a whole one of the
essentially spatial aspects of al1 literature. The reliance on the reader has brought Frank
and his heirs cnticism fiom some quarters, for example f?om Jan Joost van Baak, who
argues that "the notion of space is confused as a result of the inclusion of the reader" (4).
Van Baak banishes the reader fiom his discussion of literary semiotics, on the grounds
that the reader's consciousness "should not be confused with the narrative space of the
text, nor with the literary and semiotic status of the spatial properties of states of mind of
characters in the text" (4). Van Baak's argument, however, that cntics should draw a
fundamental distinction between the reader's consciousness and the mental space of
literary characters is questionable when dogmatically adhered to. While the
consciousness of readers is an impossible object for precise literary analysis, the textual
structures designed to influence this consciousness cm and should be considered, whether
they are conventional or experimental. Neither narrative spatiality nor the characters'
states of mind have any existence beyond the consciousness of the readen; al1 must be
constructed, actively, at each reading, and can be examined as independently existing
objects only if they have been established in the popular imagination to such a degree that
they no longer depend on any particular textual manifestation-at which point they are
best treated as the subject of sociological, rather than literary, semiotics. Hugo Caviola, drawing heavily on McHde's ideas, has pmued the reader-oriented theory of literary space in his concept of the "Zone," a metaphorical space referring to the moment of disorientation when the reader is half-absorbed in the fictional world of the text and half present in the physical world, inhabiting both simultaneously, yet simultaneously absent fkom both. Caviola sees the production of this "betweenness" as a typical characteristic of postmodem literature: "Postmodem fiction is illusion-breaking fiction, it tends to be self-referential by foregrounding its own fictionality. In doing so, such fiction fkequently aspires to integrate the readers' interpretative activity into the text.
The result is the readers' experience of 'betweenness,' a suspension of identity and linearity tha! calls into question received notions of orientation" (1). The assumption
Caviola makes here is essentially spatial and metaphorical. Texts have an "inside," that is, the fictionai space inhabited by characten and actualized in the reader's mind, and an
"outside," the real, physical space where we read and write. The Zone represents the boundary. The fictional space within the text is real only as a mental constmct of the reader; on the "outside" we have the pages and marks of the text, which actually constitute it, and the remaining physical world. The boundary, however, is fluid; as a result, everyhng potentially becomes text" (Caviola 4). Caviola essentially takes Frank's ideas a step further:
Poised and hesitating between two Eames of reference, the reader of
illusion-breaking fiction expenences disorientation sirnilar and de-
identification comparable to the awareness of dreaming in the midst of
the dream. Ln this state, both the linearity of the fictional narrative and
the continuum of the real world are suspended. Time seems arrested, creating through this elimination of linearity a pure form of 'spacet: a
spatiaiization of the. (5)
To varying degrees and in varying forms, this "spatialization of tirne" will be found in each of the novels examined here.
Caviola adopts McHale's distinction of modem and postmodern texts based on a shift kom an epistemological to an ontological orientation, and posits an analytical mode1 based on types of reading. Postmodem texts can be read both exotencally, as story, and esoterically, as allegory. That is, there are many superimposed fiames of reference and a multiplicity of meanings read simultaneously, so that the reader expenences multiple links witb the body of the text in a kind of speculative free-play: "Released fiom linearity and causality, every person, every thing, and every relation can be looked at spatially through another person, another thing or another relation" (Caviola 121 ).
Caviola thereby creates a foundation for considering different variants of spatiality together: the represented space of the text's projected world in the creation of a specific meaning, and the metaphoncal spatiality that arises from concepts like analogy, where relations are created between apparently unrelated elements.
Reading as a process is a theme of a11 the texts to be discussed here, but so too is the process of writing-the two are seen as closely linked. In fact, in several of the texts they are in a sense identical. Reading and writing are always an interplay of the temporal and the spatial. The thoughts of the writer occur as a temporal mental motion with no concrete spatiaiity, but are translated by the act of writing into a spatial form, as words on a page. The thought behind the writing, as extracted and understood by the reader, is spatial in the sense that various portions of the text must be seen synchronously and s~ultaneouslyin order for a comection or meaning to emerge. Whether it is simply the plot as a connection of successive events or, on another Ievel, an interpretive understanding of the narrative, various elements mut be seen together, in one moment; otherwise, the elements of the text would be nothing more than isolated fragments. The act of reading itself, however, as a physical act of following the words on the page, is temporal and successive, due to the spatial disposition of the words on the page. In other words, the acts of reading and writing, in their tempo-spatial aspects, present an inverted mirror to each other.
This paradox can be expressed as a relationship of stasis and motion-both terms which depend on a particula. configuration of time and space. The movement through the text is a motion widiin a structure in stasis. The act of writing has produced a fixed configuration of signs which is experienced by a reading subject, and reading is a motion through the text. This motion is by no means purely linear and uni-directional, but can and usually mut move back and forth in an attempt to produce meaning. Linearly, the text is expenenced as a series of units; free motion within it produces a whole structure.
In the texts to be discussed here, 1 will show how the concept of motion is applied, and how it creates an explicit relationship between the organization of the text and the story it tells.
The relation of reading/writing and narrated space will be seen in al1 these texts, but most clearly in Nadoiny's Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit, where the exploration of the physicai world can be understood as an essay on semiotic systems, a parallel to the process of reading. Describing the experience of the world, the text simultaneously comrnents on itself, thereby absorbing the epistemological themes of perception and lmowledge into the more general question of how a world or a text can be constituted.
This is achieved with a minimum of discursive experimentation; the comrnentary is made
on the thematic level.
Both essentid levels of the text, the story and the discourse, cm be drawn into this
schema. The two can be seen as distinct from each other only on the most abstract level
of analysis; otherwise, they are constantly relative to each other. It is not their position in
themselves but their interrelation which must be discussed when analyzing how a text
works. In a text whose discursive level interferes with the motion through the story,
where chronology and succession are broken down to such a degree that discourse
becornes dominant, then the theme of movement as an experience of space within the
story must also be drawn into consideration. In a text whose discourse appean highly
conventional but which has a story in which space, time and motion and perception are
thematically related to reading and writing, this must be seen also as a comment on the
discourse. These two extremes are illustrated here with Das Kalkwerk and Die
Entdeckung der Langsam keit, respective1y.
Above, 1 have discussed the reasons why, when the discursive level of a narrative
text is examined, time and space should be considered together. They take on a special significance in the modem novel, when questions of perception and knowledge are of central importance. It is possible to use either spatial or temporal terms to descnbe textual organization, but when the narrative ceases to mimic a "natural" chronological flow, the focus is more strongly set on the spatial aspect, and the corresponding tenns are more productive than those comected with temporal structures. Drarnatic disruptions of linear organization in the text and abandonment of causality in the story, for example, undermine the temporal illusion of a narrative, and create a sense of stasis in which the synchronous relation of textual elements, rather than the fornard motion of the plot, creates the rneaning.
The principle of causality is one of several spatial concepts which will be applied to the works selected here; the others include the assumed pnority of sources or expenence, the concepts of natural chronology and of physical boundaries, as well as the presence of gaps or blank spaces withui a text. While dl these terms cari be defined as belonging to the story-level, they are also produced and reflected in the discursive organization of the text. To demonstrate why they are being classified as spatial ternis it will suffice to consider the least apparently spatial of hem, the pnnciple of causality. It has been observed that a sequence of events, presented sequentially, suggests a relation of cause and effect, even if the comection between the events is not explicitly stated.7 When the spatial organization of the events within the text is dismpted or never permitted to establish itself, the implied order is negated and the effect may appear before the cause.
This is closely linked with the concept of the priority of sources or expenence, which suggests that the language of the text is produced by some authority (though this may be veiled) and that, for example, historical events have priority over the texts that pomay them. Beginning with the examination of Dar Kalkwerk it will be seen how significant these concepts, and their inversion, are to the production and hindrance of rneaning in a
See for example Lâmmert, Baufomen der Emïhlens 25f. and Schlornith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poe fia 1 7f. narrative, and how they structure the relationship between the language of the text and reality.
These concepts are best seen as spatial because they depend on a category of organization that is most appropriately expressed in spatial ternis. It can be seen, for exarnple, that causality cannot be seen simply as temporal, for it depends entirely on the simultaneous presence of both the cause and the effect-conceptually, it is a purely synchronie structure. Similarly, an intertextuality based on the absorption of earlier sources into a new text may appear temporally ordered but in fact requires the simultaneous presence of both texts, thereby relativizing the purely linear order of temporal organization. Patncia Tobin has examined how the organization of narrative into linear chahs of influence and priority gives nse to such constructions as origination, the authoritative source, fkom which the meaning of the work &ses and is directed toward a specific and inevitable end; a time is presupposed "that may be imagined as a unidirectional and irrevenible arrow, whose trajectory is detennined by an original intention" (12). Paradoxically, it is only by means of such spatial constnictions that a
"temporal" concept like causality can be understood, and it is the undermining of the same construction that cdls the validity of causal relations into question.
A primary concem of this study is those works which, after the discursive expenments of modernism, return to an apparently conventional narrative form. The contention here will be that they do not have a truly traditional form but rather that they continue the developments seen in the rnodemist novel on the thematic level. Rat is, those questions raised by modernist discourse are continued and intensified in the newer novels, and this intensification opens the conventional form of narrative to a new level of
awareness.
To examine this phenomenon clearly, it is necessary first of dl to consider a work
still fully involved in discursive experimentation. Thomas Bernhard's Dos Kalkwerk has
been selected for this purpose, for it not only provides a strong exarnple of the dominance
of the discourse, without going to the extremes of an Arno Schmidt, but also demonstrates
the central importance of spatial aspects to its interpretation. In this text, various aspects
of spatiality to be examined are seen in their full scope, particularly in relation to the
modernist questions of perception, knowledge and language. In this work, too, it is seen
how the spatial elements present on the discursive level are reflected within the story as
thematic elements-always, however, secondary to the overwhelming discoune.
In the texts following this novel, we see a steady move away fkorn the
foregrounding of the discourse, the "how" of what is told, parallel to the motion away
fiom epistemological questioning. In the later texts, the question is not so much how we
perceive and represent reality, but rather the status of this reality itself, with the
epistemological question more or less implicit. The reality corresponds to "what" is told
in the text, the story and its themes, and thereby, centrally, represented space. In making
this distinction it must of course be kept in mind that the difference is relative, and that
the levels of each text rernain dependent on each other. Nevertheless, the discourse tends
to fade into the background, and the questions it raised in Das Kalkwerk, about
perception, knowledge and language, become the central elements of stories.
In Christoph Ransmayr's Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis, for exarnple,
the story tells of two characters who embark on a journey of discovery into the world of texts. Both act as readers and miters confkonted with a textual reality. The aspects of time and space are presented as entities within the story, as landscapes which are equated with texts. In this novel, the world itself appears as text, the motion through the world is a motion through a text, and so the world is something which must be read. This is also the central theme of Sten Nadolny's Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit. With the world now a text, the opposition of language and reality found in Bernhard changes. The result is an interplay of past and present, near and far, fact and fiction-dl achieve the sarne statu.
To view this simply as a further development of literary history would be both accurate and insufficient, for it misunderstands the attitude of these texts toward both
literature and history. Certainly, the works build upon their modernkt precursors, as will be seen in the comparisons with Das KaZkwerk. Their own thematics, however, belie this
as a simple linear development. Borrowing fieely fiom pre-existing literary trends and
sources, which are newly arranged in a fkee play within a vast field of possibilities, they
present a literahue whose past is explicitly encoded in its present form. This means, too,
that the work presents the process of its own writing, and that this process itself is
incomplete, since it grows and changes with every reading. The work shows awareness
that it is part of the text of the world, and that this text is being continuously re-read and re-created in a great variety of ways. Chapter II: Thomas Bernhard's Das KaIkwerk
The examination of spatiality in texts begins with Thomas Bernhard's novel Dar
Kalkwerk, which presents the interaction of space and tirne as a comrnentary on the nature of language confionted with a world that cannot be definitely known. After a discussion of the relevant critical literature, this chapter goes on to consider several points: the narrative space, the narrated space, and, related to both, the motion of the reading process and the presence of conceptually spatial struchiring elements such as the positioning and transgression of boundaries. Throughout the discussion, elements of textual spatiality applied to dl the texts considered here will be defined. The text is examined here with regard to spatiality on the discursive and the diegetic level, and to the narrated space as it relates to discourse. The ternporality of the text must be examined to determine how chronology and linearity are broken down so that the static, synchronous aspect of the text becomes dominant, and the spatial nature of time is revealed.' This breakdown of linearity is Merseen in the destabilization of the sources or origins of the narrator's information. The discussion of narrated space too, must necessarily take both story and discome into account. Finally, the structuring of the text and its production of rneaning are examined in two central concepts which function as spatial metaphors: first, the idea of boundaries and their transgression; second, the central theme of "das Gehor," the
When speaking of temporality it might be kept in mind that temporal concepts are generally expressed in onginally spatial terms. Max Jamrner explains this by arguing that categories of space are pnor in our understanding to those of time: "Unser Sprachgebrauch bestatigt diese Annahme: Bezeichnungen der Zeit, wie k'oder 'hg' sind vom Sprachschatz riiumlichen Begreifens herübergenomen. Wir sagen 'danach' und nicht, was nchtiger wae, 'dam-nach'; wir sprechen sogar von Zeit-'raum' und Zeit-'abschnitt'; 'vori bedeutet sprachgeschichtlich 'im Angesicht von"' (3). In the Western European tradition we visualize time as a line; points fùrther to the left correspond to events further back in time. subject of Konrad's study.
Dos Kalkwerk, which appeared in 1970, is an extraordinarily complex telling of a relatively simple story. The aging auto-didact Konrad and his cnppled wife, after decades of restless travelling, move into his defûnct old lime works. Over the course of five and a half years there Konrad fails, as he has always failed, to write down his study of "das
Gehor," a project which has occupied hirn for decades and which he daims to have completed, though only in his head. He succeeds, however, in accumulating a cmshing burden of debt, while his health and that of his wife continually decline. Their unhappy mamage is brought to an end one Christmas Eve when he shoots and kills her. Three days later he is discovered by the police and arrested without resistance. This is almost certainly what happens in the novel. That the reader cannot be absolutely certain is due to the discursive level of the text, which is both intricate and complex, and which prevents anythmg from being determined absol~tely.~The narrator is an insurance agent who had, before the murder, occasionally Iistened to Konrad's lengthy and discomected monologues, and who speaks with two others, Wieser and Fro, who did the same. What the narrator writes in the text consists almost entirely of a repetition (of indeterminate accuracy) of these monologues. In addition, he records gossip, heard in various inns, about Konrad and the murder. The first eight pages consist of fragmentary paragraphs;
The terms "story" and "discourse" will continue to be used here as tools for the analysis of the text, and should not be understood as actually separable parts: in any text they exist only in relation with each other. Seymour Chatman defines the terms most simply: "the story is the what in a narrative that is depicted, discourse the how," (19). "Story" is Merdefined by Rimmon- Kenan as "the narrated events, abstracted fiom their disposition in the text and reconstmcted in their chronologxal order, together with the participants in these events" (3), and sindarly by Culler as "a sequence of events, conceived as independent of their manifestation in discourse" (The Pursuit of Signs 169-70). With this in mind, the additional difficulty of making this distinction in Dus Kalkwerk, where most of the "events" are linguistic, will becorne apparent. thereafter the text runs the remainder of its length, nearly 200 pages, without division into chapters or paragraphs and indeed without any evident organizing principle. The narrator offers virtually no descriptive or reflective passages, there are multiple levels of narration, most of the text is written in the subjunctive, the organizing categories of tirne and space are either deliberately undermined or simply omitted, and the text teerns with intemal contradictions.
Earlier critical approaches to Bernhard's work sometirnes show a tendency to ignore the discursive level of the text while concentrating solely on the thematic level, or to regard the discourse as an obstacle to understanding.' Others focus upon the discourse merely as a reflection of the thematic "Sinnlosigkeit" of the novel, or as evidence of a crisis of language.' In recent years, however, the trend in Bernhard research has been to consider content and discourse as combined producers of meaning, and so to focus on the mechanisms which make the texts intelligible. With a body of critical literature now comprishg over sixty book-length studies and well over four hundred articles, as
Margarete Kohlenbach observed, the time is past when one could cal1 Bernhard's works unreadable or nonsensi~al.~
Since the scope of the present study does not allow for a complete review even of the iiteratue specifically on Das Kalkwerk, the most relevant recent works will be
' As an example of the former, see vom Hofe and Pfaff. Jens Tismar look bnefly at the layering of narrative levels, but otherwise omits a discussion of discourse. The latter tendency can be observed in Uwe Schweikert's "Im Gmde ist aIIes, was gesagt wird, zitiert." Jiirgen Petersen notes that the confusion of the language is appropriate to the chaos of Bernhard's 'world." A language crisis was noted by, arnong others, Josef Konig)--it remains a central theme of Bernhard scholarship, and will be Merdiscussed below. For recent bibliographies of Benihard literature, see Dithnar's Thomas Bernhard Werkgeschichre, and Willi Huntemann's "Kommentierte Bibliographie zu Thomas Bernhard" in Texi+Kriiik Thomas Bernhard (1 991). selectively considered. Others will be drawn into consideration when a discussion of a particular point makes this appropriate. A recent contribution which considers both story and discourse and their interrelation is Willi Huntemannls Artistik und Rollenspiel. Dos
System Thomas Bmhard. As indicated by the title, this study focuses on the question of
"Rollenspiel" in Bernhard, which is hardly a new theme, but here for the fiat time discussed comprehensively with a view to Bernhard's complete body of work.
"Rollenprosa," the self-reflection of the artist in his art, the depiction in the text of his relation to his art and environment and of the artistic process, is examined by Huntemann throughout Bernhard's prose, including Dar KaZkwerk. Here, Konrad is the artist in conflict with his society6 The "Studie" is the work of art; Konrad's wife represents the
"geistlose Gesellschaft" (28), the despised yet necessary recipient of art.' Konrad's problem, and thus the central theme, argues Huntemann, is "die Bewahning der Identitat des geistig-künstlerischen Werkes in der VeriiuBerung aus dem Kopf zur Mitteilung" (23).
The fonn of artistic realization is itself Iimited, and the audience indifferent or hostile:
"der Versuch authentischer Mitteilung in der Kunst [wird] als fragwiirdig dargestell t"
(44). Huntemann takes Konrad at his word in judging the "Studie" to be, with appropriate vagueness, a perception of the "Absolute" and pursues this into metaphysical terrain in stating the difficulty of writing it as "das Unendliche in endliche Form ni bnngen" (36),
6 The artist thematic has been widely discussed. Konrad hirnself says that his "Studie," as yet only science, will be a "Kunstwerktt once written. Among those examining this question are Konig, Meyerhofer, Sorg, and FueB. Patrick O'Neill offers an implicit reply to Sorg's remark on why a narrator who seems concerned only with insurance policies would bother to collect and amge al1 the information of the text (Sorg 81):"The fundamental reason for the narrator's interest in Konrad, clearly, is that Konrad is his own mirror image. The story of Das Kalkwerk ... is a story of failure, Konrad's failure as an artist and as a human being" (O'Neill 238)-thereby demonstrating the reflexivity within the discourse itself, and not merely between the discourse and its actual author. which leads to the final question: "Wie komen das ais absolute Erkannte und seine endliche Fixierung (als Kutwerk) miteinander vermittelt werden?" (37).' More concrete results are achieved by Huntemann in his discussion of form, where he concludes that it is actually not in the failed "Studien-Projektetl that Bernhard's "Selbstreflexion" can be found, but rather in "das Nach-Schreiben ihrer Chronisten im Medium des Zitats" (77); this "Zitatstruktur,"being based upon a "Sprach- und Erkenntniszweifel" (73, expresses
"die Zweifel an der Darstellungskmft der Sprache" (76).9
Huntemannts study demonstrates both the advantages and disadvantages of a methodology based upon a comprehensive analysis of an author's body of work, an approach open to Bernhard scholars since his death in 1989.1° This method allows for a comprehensive analysis of the discursive structure of the works, the thematic unity and the mechanisms which produce meaning within this essentially intertextual system.
Certainiy, considering the intemal repetitiveness of Bernhard's body of work, this seems an appropriate method. It requires, however, that the specific charactenstics of individual works must be, at least to some degree, overlooked, and thereby imposes a homogeneity upon the works that is not always substantiated on the textual level." That the present study examines Dar Kalkwerk in isolation fiom Bernhard's other prose works is not an
7 For a supporting view on the role of "Die Konrad" see also Schweikert 238f. A metaphysical branch of investigation of Bernhard's work was opened by vom Hofe and Pfaff, and has since been carried on by Ingrid Petrasch and Gemot WeiB. 9 The question of the adequacy of language to fonnulate thought has been widely discussed; see also Meyerhofer, Sorg, and FueB, as well as Karlheinz Rossbacher. 'O Oliver Jahraus, in his stmcturalist analysis, offers a justification of this methodology. " It must be said that a text like Das Kalkwerk, which effectively undermines the integrity and authority of the author, itself speaks against a method of anaIysis which posits the author as the node connecting a group of works. It will be seen how this authority is undermined on the discursive level; within the story Konrad delivers a tirade against those who confuse an author and his work: "die Person des Schriftstellers bedeute nichts [...]" (1 75). indication that the distortion of temporal and spatial organization and the complexity of narrative and thematic structure are not present elsewhere; quite the contrary. in this text, however, they are present in a unique constellation which can be rediscovered only partially elsewhere, but never in the identical form. The emphasis of this chapter is the peculiar spatiality of the text, which dominates the organizing features of temporality.
Spatiality, both on the discursive and diegetic level, constitutes both the structure of the text and its production of rneaning, both as a narrative element and as a thematic element.
Studies examining space in Das Kalkwerk have been cornparatively rare; of these, al1 have focused on the narrated space, particularly the lime works themselves.12 Jens
Tismar, in an early study, writes of the building as a "selbsterwahlte Isolier-Station," an
"abseitige[n], angeschlossene[n] Handlungsraurn" which afTords Konrad "eh Ausweichen vor dem sthdigen Zwang zur Kommunikation" (13 1-33). This remains the tenor in later interpretations of the building as a place of isolation, a refuge fiom society. Meyerhofer sees it as a "Schutnaum vor der AuOenwelt" where Konrad seeks "Isolation" (34-36).
FueB also stresses isolation and "eine extreme Abkehr von der AuBenwelt" (83). This opposition of "Kakerk" and "AuOenwelt," which is generally considered in relation to the dialectic of artist (Konrad) and society, implies already the meraspects of spatial organization upon which this study will concentrate.
Eva Marquardt canies this thematic a step Merwhen she argues that, while the building appears to be an enclosed and isolated space cut off nom the rest of the world, this sharp boundary eventudly collapses for Konrad when he realizes it is in fact no
'' Still the rnost invenhve of these is Josef Kônig's argument that the "Kalkwerk"is "eine Chiffie für den menschlichen Kopf bzw. das menschliche Gehirn" (232). Konig goes so far as to different fkom any of the many other places where he failed to write his study. Not space itself, but rather the subject's perception of it is described; thereby his consciousness is made concrete: "Das Erlebnis der Unbegrenaheit des Raums als Begrenztheit der eigenen
Fahigkeiten lut Konrad in einen Zustand der auBersten Beunnihigung geraten" (102).
Marquardt uses Elisabeth Stroker's concept of "gestirnmter Raum" to describe space in
Der Kalkwerk: "[es] lut stets subjektive Wirklichlceiten sichtbar machen" (180). " Since this makes the space of the novel largely undeterminable as an "objective" redity, it leads to a loss of orientation, and thus the "Unsicherheit" of the reader (185).
Although the spatiality of Das Kalkwerk has not been explicitly examined, many critics have noted its prescence. Gerald Fetz writes of the "circularity" and "almost labyrinthian quaiity" of the novel's language and thought (95). Bernhard Sorg notes the parallels between Konrad's experience of the lime works (trapped and limited) and the language of the text: "Wie Konrad irn Kafig des Kalkwerks, so bewegt sich die Sprache in der abschirmenden Form der absoluten Indirektheit; seinen latenten Aggressionen entspricht gleichsarn die unterdrückte Gewalt der Worter und Satze" (84). Ferdinand van
Ingen writes of the thought reflected in the text: "Es ist ein Denken, das sich irn Kreis bewegt und ni nichts führt" (47).
Heinrich Lindenmayr, in a full-length study on Das KaZkwerk which also examines the discourse in relation to the story, often touches upon various aspects of the text's spatiality, but without considering these explicitly, as they do not lie within his
compare the high shrubbery around the back of the "Kalkwerk" with human hair. l3 See Elisabeth Stroker, Phiiosophtrche Untersuchungen mm Roum, especially pp. 22-53. August Obermayr earlier pointed out the tendency, in Bernhard's works, of topography being used to demonstrate the inner sbte of the subject. particular field of interest. Lindenmayr's primary concem is the question of how the text promotes an active reading, and what significance can be drawn fiom the interaction between text and reader. This leads him, however, into terrain shared with the present study, as he pursues the consequences of the text's structure. He notes that the various episodes are organized neither logically nor temporal1y, and that Konrad's monologues are based upon a thinking which
kt kein kontinuierlich-sukzessives und logisch-aufbauendes, es ist
vielrnehr spninghafl, impulsiv und widersprüchlich und als solches
dargeboten, vom Erzahler nicht geordnet. Die Erklaningen Konrads
haben nur momentanen und relativen Aussagenwert, sie sind
angemessen nur ni beurteilen, wenn sie in Bemg ni den entsprechenden
Aussagen zum gleichen Sachverhalt an anderer Stelle gesetzt werden.
(29)
Thus Lindenmayr calls for an exegetic reading of the text, which he notes must naturally play off against the necessady successive nature of the reading process. In Lindenmayr's study is found already the foundation for the concept of spatiality to be discussed here.
His description of the text is based upon spatial metaphon which posit a static, intemally related whole against the traditionally linear, successive and progressive story. The present study builds upon this recognition to determine how the text functions as a spatial construction.
Finally, mention must be made of Chnstoph Meister's painstaking reading of Das
Kalkwerk, which essentially ignores the overwhelrningly discursive nature of the text in its attempt to reconstruct a realistic picture of the lime works, their surroundings and interiors. A redistic approach to this novel is no doubt possible. Even Dietrnar Gneser's
question fkom 1974: "Wo steht Thomas Bemhards Kallcwerk?" has by now been plausibl y
answered by Ham Holler in the fonn of a long-defimct lime works on the shores of the
Austrian Traunsee; Bernhard himself indicated that this was the inspiration for the setting
of his novel. Yet the relative fhitlessness of such an approach to this sort of text is best
illustrated by Meister himself when he attempts to defend his method. Meister argues that
the lack of critical interest in the spatial aspect of Bernhard's works cmbe attributed to a
general literary development away from a preponderance of "showing" in the nineteenth-
century novel to "telling" in the twentieth century, whereby the temporality of "telling"
ovenvhelrns the spatiality of description: "Im Werk Thomas Bemhards findet diese
Tendenz im Rahrnen der deutschsprachigen Literatur sicher eine ihrer staksten
Auspragungen. Das 'telling' dmgt jedes 'showing' in besonders krasser Weise zurück
und venchlingt es firmlich; ob dl dem Reden und Sich-Erkliiren des Ich kornrnt es kaum je ni einem zeigenden Beschreiben des Raurnes, in dem es sich befindet" (1 1). As a
consequence, according to Meister, the "erzahlter Raum" is forced into the background.
while attention is focused onto the temporal axis of the process of narration. Meister
severely limits his own field of analysis by restricting himself to this scanty mimetic level
of the text and neglecting the discourse, which he himself claims is so characteristic of
modem literature in general and Bernhard in particular. In doing so he repeats a mistake
often made by critics who have regarded the novel's discoune purely as an obstacle which
must be overcome in order to get at something meaningful beyond it. Juri Lotman has
demonstrated how al1 texts, including those of classical realism, consist of an interrelation of story and discourse which cannot be separated without destroying the text.Id A purely mimetic approach to a text like Dus Kalkwerk, which foregrounds its discursivity with great force, cannot be appropriate. Nor is it appropriate, however, to take Bernhard at his word and claim that there is no story at work here, or at least ody a tattered and wounded one. Is Only when discourse and story are seen relative to each other can the mechanisms of the text be fully appreciated.
Christoph Meister restncts himself to a purely rnirnetic understanding of spatiality, which excludes the possibility of an adequate examination of this text. As discussed in the first chapter of the present study, the representative novels of nineteenth-century realism, with their emphasis on causality, temporal development and linearity of plot- that is, their diachronie ordering of events-can, on the discursive level, be more properly understood as temporally stnictured. In Da Kulkwerk we see a text which undermines temporal organization and linear development, which subverts causality and posits, instead, a vertical axis, a synchronic structure for its meagre narrated events-a novel, therefore, with a largely spatial structure. It is precisely the discourse, not the mimetic aspect, which is given obvious pnority by the text, and so it is appropriate to focus on this spatialization without giving the narrated space undue independent importance. Rather, the described space must be seen in relation to the spatiality of the novel in general. Here
l4 Die Sl~krurdes künstIerischen Textes 25ff. Lotman quotes Tolstoy with the conclusion: "Tolstoj hat ungewohnlich Mar ausgesprochen, da13 der künstlensche Gedanke sich durch 'Verkettung' realisierb-durch eine Struktur--und auBerha1b von ihr nic ht existiert" (25-26). l5 In the interview "Drei Tage," Bernhard stated: "lch bin ein Geschichtenzerstorer, ich bin der typische Geschichtenzerst6rer. In meiner Arbeit, wenn sich irgendwo Anzeichen einer Geschichte bilden, odw wenn ich nur in der Ferne irgendwo hinter einem Prosahügel die Andeutung einer Geschichte auftauchen sehe, schieBe ich sie ab" (Der Italiener. 83). Notable among critics who have followed in this line of thought was Jürgen Petersen with his "Beschreibung einer sinnentleerten Welt," (Annühemngen 143-75). we follow in the path marked out by Joseph Frank's spatialization of tirne, which allows the elements of the novel to appear as juxtaposed in space, and by Sharon Spencer's concept of the "architectonic novel," in which spatial fom predominates over linear narration.
In keeping with the nature of the text, this examination works out an analytic rather than an interpretive strategy, though nahually a certain arnount of interpretation inevitably arises fiom this (and every) analysis. The difficulty of discovering a traditional production of meaning through spatial categones in this text can be best illustrated using the example of narrative distance, which Reidel-Schrewe applies successfÙlIy in her examination of Mann's Der Zauberberg. Whereas there, as in other texts, the varying distance of the narrator to what he narrates can be proven to be systematic and meaningful, an application of this method to Das Kalkwerk remains fniitless. A narrator can move between extreme closeness to his subject, as in the description of thoughts or dreams, to relative distance, as in this text, where the nanator is often several levels of narration removed from the subject. Though the narrator does move between relative distance and closeness, the text does not dlow us to constnict a meaningful system from this motion. As mentioned above, the vast majority of the text cites Wieser or Fro recounting Konrad's words. That the formulation "sol1 Konrad gesagt haben" is occasionally replaced by "hat Konrad gesagt" may seem to indicate a significant reduction of distance, yet it is impossible to atûibute a meaning to such variations. The different formulations are used interchangeably, oflen fkom one sentence to the next (e.g. on pages
41 and 187). The narrator hirnself relates three monologues he personally heard from Konrad, most notably in a relatively Iengthy episode spanning nine pages, in which
Konrad tells of a visit to a professor living downstairs from him in Brussels. Here we read, not in the past tense or even subjunctive, but in the present indicative"Konrad sagt..." (1 18)-and on the following nine pages we find an account by Komad, also in the present tense, intempted only occasionally by a "sa@ Konrad." This would appear to be a closing of the gap, a startling reduction of the narrative distance from Konrad. Yet this apparently significant shift is immediately negated by the end of the opening sentence of the episode. The narrator tells us that "Konrad sagt [...] nicht wortlich, aber doch beinahe wortlich, folgendes [.. .]" (1 18), thus re-establishing his indetexminable distance from
Konrad. And the fact that Konrad recounts this long-past episode entirely in the present tense also relativizes the narrator's use of this form. The episode itself, Konrad's visit with the professor, is a curious mise en abîme: here Konrad reverses his usual role and disturbs his neighbour, who is trying to work on a study of morphology. The scene is made conspicuous by the style of its presentation, but a11 the reasons the text gives for considering this significant are likewise taken away-the text toys with the reader's expectations. Rather than imposing inappropnate categones of interpretation on to the text, then, it is best to use its peculiar indeterminacy as a foundation.
As it exists within the text, Konrad's story is anything but successively organized.
For a story to be presented out of its natural chronological order is far from unusual; this is, for example, the key characteristic of the analytic novei, a genre to which Dus
Kalkwerk certainly belongs, particularly if one judges by the expectations of its readers. '"
l6 Dietrich Weber quotes the definition fomulated by Otto Ludwig: "Der Gang der Eniihlung muB entweder analytisch oder synthetisch sein. D.h. eine Geschichte lie@ entweder ihren Readers typically assume they can hda causal connection that will at lest allow them to speculate on why Konrad committed the crime. They seek a development, a series of causes and effects which co~ectthe beginning to the end. As Lilmmert has pointed out, when we are dealing with a literary work we assume a causal connection between events, even where none is explicitly stated (Baufonnen 25f.)." Reconstmcting a story means more than just abstracting a series of successive events fiom the text. This simple linearity is transfomed by literary convention into a causally-linked sequence in which prior events are seen to drive the action to a particular end. This temporal structure is reinforced by the process of reading; the narrative itself is seen to have a beginning and an end, although as a written document it is a static whole. The text as a physical object exists al1 at once; the activity of the reader gives it Iinearity and a temporal aspect.
A chronology of events can in fact be reconstructed by the reader. Konrad and his wife travel throughout Europe before they move into the lime works. She detenorates; he accumulates debts and continues to fail to write his study. FinaIIy he shoots her and is arrested. Because readers' conventional literary expectations lead them to believe that the text will offer an explanation of the murder, interpretations cannot help arising, despite the difficulties of the text. Thus one scholar, in an exarnple chosen for its extreme simplicity, can conclude that "because words possess value for Konrad pnncipally as
- Hauptbedingungen nach vor dem Anfang der Erzahlung oder so , daB in dieser selbst nur eigentlich die Losmg vergeht, oder wir sehen aus Gegebenem erst die Venvickfung entstehen und dam sich l6sen" (9). Though this is not verifiable solely on the basis of the text, readers tend to see the novel as an attempt to explain the murder; as Rossbacher puts it: "der Roman versucht, über mehrere (Nicht) Gewahrsmher bzw. Gasthausgerüchte die Tat und die ni ihr menden Vorghge zu rekonstruieren" (374)-a view entirely validated by literary convention. Cf. also Fetz (93), Sorg @O), FueB (99), Lindenmayr (23) " Rimrnon-Kenan also discusses this point in Narrative Fiction (17f.). sounds for his experiments, it is impossible for him to write an intelligible essay. His frustration over this inability leads him to mental collapse and to the murder of his wife"
(Godwin-Jones 10). However, there is no necessary logical connection between these events. The tendency to attempt a reconstruction of the story of Dus Kalkwerk is unavoidable and certainly valid. The task here, however, is to isolate those elements of the text which work against a conventional, linear reading. Patricia Tobin makes the connection between chronologicd order, causality, and the priority and prestige of the origin in her Theand the Novel:
By an analogy of function (with human genealogy), events in time corne
to be perceived as begetting other events within a line of causality
similar to the line of generations, with the pnor event earning a special
prestige as it is seen to originate, control, and predict future events.
When in some such manner ontological pnonty is conferred upon mere
temporal anterionty, the histoncal consciousness is bom, and time is
understood as a linear manifestation of the genealogical destiny of
events. The same Iineal decorum pervades the structure of realistic
narrative: al1 possibly random events and gratuitous details are brought
into an alignment of relevance, so that at the point of conclusion al1
possibility has been converted into necessity within a line of kinship-
the subsequent having been referred to the pnor, the end to the
beginrïing, the progeny to the father. (7-8)
A solid chronology depends upon the clear separation of events as points upon a line of time stretching back into the past and forward into the future. This becomes difficult when the story exists within a biased discourse, especially when the extent of the bias cannot be determined. Since a11 of what the namator, Wieser and Fro recall about Konrad happened (or more accurately, was said) before the murder, their accounts are clearly conditioned by their knowledge of this final event. They are al1 telling a story whose end is known to hem, and there are indications that this knowledge is forming their mernories of what Konrad told them. We read, for example, "Fro erinnerte sich an diese Aul3erung
Konrads sofort nach Bekanntwerden der sogenannten Bluttat" (143)-which suggests that
Konrad's comment became significant only after the murder. Men Fro and Wieser remember that Konrad once told them about a dream he had, they clearly interpret it in terms of what happened later: "...übrigens sagt Fro, was auch Wieser sagt, daB Konrad die Bluttat vorausgetriiumt habe ..." (149). This interpretation is particularly curious since it is applied not to the dream in which Konrad paints his building and his wife black, but rather to the one in which he finally writes the "Studie" but then must watch helplessly as his wife burns it. He is paralyzed and harmless; his wife is the destroyer. That this drearn is seen by Wieser and Fro as a premonition of the murder indicates the extent of their interpretative activity. Even in the smaller details, revisionism is evident. When Fro relates Konrad's description of the move into the lime works, he refers to "den schon an seinem endgiiltigen Platz in ihrem Zimrner aufgestellten Krankensessel" (34) altho ugh
Konrad could not have known at the time that the chair was in its final spot. The text does not allow the reader to detemine with any certainty how much the various accounts are influenced by the murder and by various discussions of it. The connection of these accounts to Konrad's original words has been broken by the murder. Indeed, the production of these accounts is caused by the murder, which they in tum attempt to explain. This inversion of prionties, which will be fider discussed below, is linked to the presentation of theon al1 levels of the text.
The narrative's duration-the penod of time during which it is written-is unknown, but evidence fiom the text suggests it is at lest four days, and probably rather more. Few clues are given as to the progression of the "Errahlzeit," and those which do appear break down its linearity. It appears that page 108 was written earlier than al1 the other segments; furthemore, pages 72, 148,2 10 and 1 17 were wntten in that order. One might describe the text, using a familiar Bernhard motif', as a disorderly collection of
"Zettel," each written at a different time, which the narrator has not sorted but rather comects randomly together.I8 The few clues mentioned above are al1 we know about the order of narration; the majority of passages in the text simply appear with no indication of when they were written in relation to the rest of the text. Similady, Fro's and Wieser's conversations with Konrad are not chronologicalty ordered, at least in Fro's accounts.
Distortions do not explicitly occur in the accounts of Wieser's conversations with Konrad, which are presented either without any reference to tirne or in chronological order as the text progresses. This apparent order is, however, revealed as illusory when one takes into
- -- -- l8 This lack of temporal organization in the "Erziihlzeit" also affects the hinction of the narrator. Traditionally, as Franz Stanzel points out, the agent of narrative mediation is either "ein aulctorialer Erzahler" or a "Reflektor"-a "BewuBtseinstriigerNwho appears either in the "Er- Ford or as "ein Ich, das sich im Form eines inneren oder stillen Monologs auBert" ("Die Opposition Erziihler-Reflektor im eniihlenschen Diskurs," 173). The first-person narrator usually has a complete overview of the story; "Eine Reflektorfigur verrnittelt dagegen das Geschehen immer in-am; ihr ist der Gesamtverlauf der Handlung nich einsichtig, der Sinn der einzelnen Ereignisse muB ihr daher ofi aIs problematisch erscheinen" (177)-this latter form is more typical of the 20th-century novel. Although Das Kaikwerk has a first-person narrator, he loses, in the non-chronological presentation, his status as one who stands at the end loolang back over the whole story. hstead, he takes on the uncertainty of the "Reflektorfigur." account the irregularities of the "Erzahlzeit." No linearity can be imposed upon the production of the narrative, nor can it be established with any certainty whether there is any development or progress in the narrator's state of knowledge during this time.I9
The unusually widespread appearance of repetitition in the narrative additionally serves to undermine the temporal organization of the text. Many events which "happen" only once are narrated multiple times in different contexts; for example, Konrad's account of how he came to purchase the lime works fiom his nephew Horhager (15f., 41 f., 171f.).
Many events mentioned only once are tagged with phrases like "irnrner wieder" (44, 45) or "an die hunderte und an die tausende Male'' (44, 55, 143). OAen actions appear to reach an end, only to continue again, so that it is said of Konrad: "Schon in der fiühesten
Kindheit hatte ihm immer alles in totaler Erschopfimg geendet" (50). Total exhaustion, which appears to be final, is only part of a constantly repeating process. On the diegetic level there are many exarnples of repetition, the most obvious being the notonous
"urbantschitsche Methode" with which Konrad torments his wife by forcing her to hear the same words, sounds or phrases repeated over and over. The wife retaliates by demanding glasses of cider or the "Toblacher Zuckerzange" again and again, or by continually lnitting the same pair of rnittens, which she forces Komad to try on, only to unravel them and start anew. As Konrad points out, "[es] wiederholt sich im Grunde
l9 Does this disturbance actually break down the linearity of the text? Bisanz differentiates between linearity and successiveness to emphasize the difference between diegetic and textual levels: "Die begriffliche Überschneidung entsteht zum Teil dadurch, dao man zeitliche Sukzession des Erziihlvorgangs, d.h. den eingleisigen chronologischen Ablauf der Geschichte, nicht selten ais 'lineares' Erziihlen bezeichnet, somit also von der Linearitat des verbalen Erzahlmediums selbst nicht unterscheidet" (199). The successiveness of the story can be disturbed, but the linearity of the text remains intact. While this ultimately remains true of Das Kalkwerk as well, the breakdown of the linear continuity of the production of the text (if not its reception) at least makes this linear order appear both randomly chosen and randomly presented. tagtâglich alles" (106). These repetitions on the diegetic level minor the linguistic repetitions in the text, where words, or variations of the same word, are repeated ad nauseam, often to ssuch a degree that they not only retard the development of events, but hait it altogether. If there is no change then there is also no forward motion, and so the narrative becomes static, no longer moving in time.
Additionally, the narrative is spatialized by its unreliability. When the text undexmines the authonty of sources, it calls into question, again, the possibility of a comprehensive knowledge of ongins and the concept that later events both connect to and arise fiom pnor ones. The authority here would seem to be Konrad, since virtually the entire text appears to be a reproduction of his words. The possibility of a comprehensive knowledge of Konrad's words is called into question, first of dl, by the unreliability of the narrator, of Wieser, and of Fro. They act as though they were objective sources, repeating
Konrad verbatim and giving his words priority over their own, while in fact they revise and interpret, so that the original words become irretrievably distorted. The authority of the narrator's subject, Konrad, is undemiuied when his words are first filtered through another level of narration (Wieser or Fro), while the authority of the narrator himself is obscured by intemal contradictions and indications of subjectivity. Because the amount of revision Konrad's words have undergone is never made explicit, the reader cannot extrapolate them hmthe narrative as it is given. When the narrator says, at one point,
"An diese ~uBerungKonrads erinnerte sich Wieser genau" (38), it implies that Wieser's memory of other comrnents is not exact; when Fro, on a couple of occasions, is said to repeat Konrad "wortlich" (134, 148), the implication is that he is otherwise not so precise.
The narrator himself adrnits that his rendering of Konrad's words is not entirely accurate (1 18). This admission of fallibility is particularly relevant, since everything Fro and
Wiser Say is also filterered through the narrator, and thus may be doubly rehcted.
It would be a mistake to assume that the narrator, Wieser, and Fro objectively and mechanically repeat what they have heard, despite the stylistic homogeneity of the text.
Certainly neither Wieser nor Fro has a separate, identifiable voice. Whether the narrator does is impossible to determine; it is likely, but not demonstrable, that he simply copies
Konrad's style of expression throughout. However, both he and his informants carry something of themselves into the material. To begin with, there are indications that the nanator prefers Wieser to Fro, and considers him more reliable. Fro's accounts are far more often presented with qualifications of some sort (e-g., "so Fro, mit geradem bosartiger Schnelligkeit nim Verhhgnis" [15]), and contain many more contradictions than Wieser's-the narrator considen Fro devious and untmstworthy (147f.). Moreover, the narrator perceives Fro's accounts differently eom Wieser's, even when they are repeating the sarne conversation:
Wiesers Bericht über diesen Traum deckt sich voIllcomrnen mit dem
Bericht Fros. Wahrend aber Fro den Traum in einer naturgema mit der
Erzahlweise Konrads unmittelbar auf das zwingendste zusammen-
hhgenden Erregung berichtete, berichtet Wieser Konrad's Traum vollig
x-uhig. Die Wirkung des Traumes aus dem Munde Wiesers ist dadurch
eine vie1 groJ3ere als aus dem Munde des Fro. (15 1)
Certainiy Wieser and Fro have divergent interests in the story. Wieser is much more prone to abstract speculation, to developing theories as to why the murder was cornmitted
(167f., 209), while Fro appean to be motivated to some degree by acquisitiveness, particularly in his devious schemes to gain possession of Konrad's papers. Both are evidently prejudiced about the murder; while Fro beiieves it happened "urplotzlich,"
Wieser sees it as corning "am Ende der konradschen Eheholle'' (8). They occasionally support, and occasionally contradict each other (13O)?
The text does not, then, give a sterile repetition of language, that is, of Konrad's monologues. Although the language of the text is certainly repetitive, it is clearly indicated that any repetition is also an interpretation, especially if it attempts to reproduce a particular meaning behind the original words, rather than the words themselves, or if it selects these words in relation to an event (e.g.,the murder) which they precede. The reader approaching this text does not have access to any of Konrad's original words.
There is no certain, sustained authority in any of the narrative voices, but just a continuing process of interpretation, which is constantly being varied and which cannot with certainty be traced back to any one source. Konrad's words are not distorted according to an orderly system; they cannot be retrieved fiom beyond the narration. It is effectively impossible for the reader to determine "who is speaking," who is the real source of what is being said. The result of such a narrative situation, as Jonathan Culler points out, is that language, not the personality of the narrator or the characters, becomes the focal point
(Sîmcturalisî Poetics 200). The language of Dus Kalkwerk has detached itself nom any source of authority or knowable ongin, and so has become its own reality. In this sense, it is not a story about "what happened," but rather an artefact of language which has
" That the events of the text are therefore seen through many different perspectives, as Gerald Fetz suggests ("Thomas Bernhard and the 'Modem Novel"' 94), is uncertain. While the various informants do differ, a coherent picture of their individual perspectives is never given. This makes the separation of their influence fiom Konrad's original words impossible. disengaged itself tiom the "actual"unfolding of events.
For language which has fkeed itself fiom its subse~enceto reality, anything is possible. Because of this, the reader of this text cannot resolve the many contradictions which arise not only in speculative matters (such as the discussions in the tavems about the reason for the murder) but also in staternents of fact. Did Konrad have two boatloads of fumiture or three (32)? Did Fro last speak with Konrad two days (94) or 1 1/2 weeks
(130) before the murder? Why does Fro at one point insist that Konrad is a
"Wahrheitsfanatiker" (13) only to claim later that lies were the basis of Konrad's relationship with his wife (35)? The multitude of blatant contradictions throughout the text interfere with the readers' desire to "look through" the language, to discover a "real" world with "real events" beyond the bare words of the text. According to Culler, contradictions in a text violate our expectations by hindering our constnction of a
"world," and thereby force us to recognize that "the only reality in question is that of writing itself" (Stmcturalist Poetics 193). Conversely, disorientation is also achieved through meaningless descriptions of objects which are given priority in the text but resist coherent integration into its thematic structure. This, Culler notes, allows the reader to recognize a world, "but prevent(s) him from composing it" (1975: 94). This text abounds with such objects, for example, the so-called "Toblacher Zuckerzange." The readen of
Dar Kulkwerk are constantly made aware that they are dealing exclusively with the reality of language, divorced from any really existing objects. This is significant when the story itself is examined for indications of a nadchronology, since death can be more easily avoided when it is only a word. The chronology of the story is fiequently referred to within the text in terms of decay. Konrad's sight becomes progressive1y weaker; his wi fe detenorates more each day. "Erschopfimg" increases as death, the inevitable end, approaches. This process of exhaustion is concretely illustrated by the miniature behind the wifets chair, which becomes progressively more visible as her strength and posture decay: 'Von Woche ni
Woche sol1 Konrad, seiner Frau gegenüber sitzend, mehr von dieser Miniatur gesehen haben [...] seine Frau sank mehr und mehr msammen, die Miniatur stieg, so konnte man sagen, hoher und hoher, er Konrad, kome sich genau ausrechnen, wann er die ganze
Miniatur sehen werde [...lm (107). The mathematical precision with which this decay can be measured and predicted indicates its irreversibility. From the observing and measuring point of view it seems uni-directional-as with a clock, the movement in space mechanically marks off the passage of tirne.
Within the text, however, this apparently irreversible process is no longer a physical event, but hm been transformed into language. As such it can be repeated, revened, completely removed fiom its connection with naîural necessity, and so the end can be indefinitely postponed. It is, as Italo Calvino put it in his discussion of Laurence
Sterne, the novel as a permanent avoidance of death (Sechs Vorschlüge 69f.).?' The
speeches of Konrad, Wieser and Fro, and the narrator's own text, are potentially infinite.
No conclusive end is reached, as the beginning of the text is aiso its end. Within this
Foucault discusses this "writing against death" in his essay "Language to Infinity": "it is quite likely that the approach of deatb-its sovereign gesture, its prominence within human rnemory- hollows out in the present and in existence the void toward which and fiom which we speak. [...] The gods send disasters to mortals so that they can tell of them, but men speak of them so that misfortunes will never be fully realized, so that their filfilment will be averted in the distance of words, at the place where they will be mlled in the negation of their nature" (53-54). circle there is room for an endless production of language. Here is a paradox noted by
Foucault: although narration appears to be a temporal medium, it strives to retard the 80w of tirne. When Foucault speaks of "the great, invisible labyrinth of repetition, of language that divides itself and becomes its own mirror" he rnight as easily have meant Bernhard as
Borges (56).
Dus Kalkwerk makes evident what traditional analytic texts disguise-that there is no physical event, no murder, but only a linguistic event. This so obvious point arises fiom the most basic literary convention, which is the illusion of a reality behind the words of a text. in Das Kalkwerk the murder is hown, not as a physical event, but only through speech. Nothing is known of the murder as it really happened, and nothing reliable is said of it. All that is known is what was said before by the murderer, and then repeated after, by his listeners. Thereby the question of what cornes first, what causes what, is made unanswerable. The murder causes the story to be told, though it is the end of the story."
On the diegetic level the reversa1 of cause and effect, the ambiguity of the priority of an origin, appears thematically in various speculations about "Schuld" and "Ursachen."
These concepts are used repeatedly by Konrad and other characters, in various contexts.
The readers' questions, which help to structure the text, also inspire Wieser, Fro, and the various tavem patrons: why does Konrad murder his wife and why is he incapable of writing his study? In this way the traditional detective's question "Wer ist schuld?" is transformed into "Was ist schuld?", that is, "Wanim?". These questions presuppose the existence of a pnor cause, an ensuing linear progression of causally related events and a
- - " Jonathan CuIler discusses the inversion of the hierarchical relation between story and discourse and concludes that there is a "double logic" at work in most narratives, so that "it is the effect that final effect or end. In a text where there is constant mention of "Schuld" and "Ursachen" such a readuig seerns unavoidable. Although the inadequacy of simple solutions is obvious, in such a complex text, the reader cannot help grasping at them, with the help of whatever dues are offered. Whether the narrator does so is debatable; if so, then only imp IicitIy.
The text undermines this search for a comprehensive explanation by opening an unbndgeable gap between perceptible effects and their causes, between reality and language. Cause and blame are randomly discussed in relation to everything Eom the murder itself and Konrad's "Schulden" to changes in the weather and dry skin conditions.
The arguments which emerge are illogical and self-contradictory. In Konrad's speculations on the medical profession, to take a central exarnple, the logic of blame is inverted. Doctors are the cause of the diseases they diagnose: "An den sogenannten organischen Krankheiten seien die heschuld [...]"(SI). Although natural diseases do presumably exist, they are not recognized; instead, the doctors create the very diseases they attempt to treat, by confusing symptoms (effects) for causes. The signs by which they might recognize a disease become, for them, the disease itself, so that their knowledge of it remains entirely distorted and superficial:
Die Krankheit, über die die ktereden, sei irnmer eine ganz andere, als
die, die sie von den benbezeichnet wird I...].Man sage, der sei ein
Kopfkranker und die Krankheit, die der habe, sei eine Kopkankheit
und habe den und den Namen, aber man wisse nichts über diese
Krankheit [...]. Der Mensch hinkt, sage man, aber die Ursache seines causes us to produce a cause" (fiePursuit of Signs 183). Hinkens sei nicht bekannt. (51)
The signs or symptoms do not lead to knowledge of the disease as it reaily is; the name by which it is identified does not really refer to it. The diseases discussed by the doctors are without referents in the reai world-they are constructions of language. The comection between what exists and what is spoken of has broken dom.
If no real cause can be named or comprehended in speech, then a logical explanation of reaiity is impossible: "...die Ursache finde man nicht, werde niemals gefunden, irnrner nur eine Ersatnirsache, [...] die ganze Welt, wie wir sie glauben oder ganz einfach tagtaglich wiedemerkennen glauben, erkliire man (sich) aus nichts anderem als aus Ersatzursachen durch ErsatzursachenforschungI1 (136). Again, the superficial
"symptoms" are confiised with true causes: "Man suche hinter chaotischen oder wenigstens hinter merkwürdigen jedenfalls hinter auBergewohnlichen Zustiinden irnrner gleich nach der Ursache dieser [...] Zustiinde [...] und erkliire [...] das Oberflachlichste [...]
als Ursache [...lu (135)Y Reality and language do not correspond; to explain or comprehend reality with words is impossible, for the process itself creates a distortion:
"Jede Erklaning führe ni einem volikommen falschen Ergebnis, daran kranke alles, daB alles erklart werde und in jedem Fa11 immer falsch erklart werde und die Ergebnisse aller
Erklaningen immer verkehrte Ergebnisse seien" (65). If explanation is impossible, then it cm no longer be said that the purpose of language is communication, that its true meaning lies in the intention behd it. This is an obstacle not only for Konrad, but also for
Wieser, Fro, and the others, who want to understand and explain hirn, and for the reader,
Further fnistrating the reader's attempt at an explanation is Konrad's observation that seeing the "Studie"as the "Ursache"for his wife's "Katastrophe"is also "obdachlich"(1 35). who is searching for a meaning and an explanation. These comments present a mirror to the reader who, like the narraor, encounters a chaotic mass of words and tries to make sense of them by finding out their causes or the intention behind them. Konrad's conclusion, at various points, is that al1 is "sinnlos" and "nvecklos": "man denke etwas, und das sei zweckios, man mache oder man unterlasse etwas und das alles sei immer zwecklos, sinnlos sei, was man denke, wie zwecklos sei, worin man handle, so lasse man ais VemWger alles sich selbst entwickeln, ganz gleich wohin" (130). Although
"Entwicklung" seems to imply a linear development, its arbitrariness and the lack of both a "Zweck" and a knowable "Ursache" indicates that any linearity is artificially irnposed.
Any explanation, dependent as it must be on Iinear thought, must fa11 short. On the other hand, and this cannot be emphasized enough, the reader, who naturally has access only to the language of the text, does Ui fact arrive at various explanations. They can never, however, be dehitive.
The reader's understanding does not take the shape of a logical "line" of reasoning, but rather becomes a motion within a field of possibilities. The appearance of this field can be found in the narrated space of the text, especially in the dominant feature of this space, the lime works themselves. With respect to narrated space, the standard aspect noted by critics offers a good point of departwe: the opposition between the lime works and the rest of the world. What is relevant here is the spatiaI constellation itself--the two opposing spaces and the boundary between them. Certainly this is portrayed within the text: "Fenstergitter," which Konrad had set into the "dicke Mauern" (19) emphasize the division of the building's intenor fiom the rest of the world, a division which Konrad, at least, wishes to realize and uphold. The building resembles a "Kerker," an "Arbeitshaus,"
"Zuchthaus" or "Strafanstalt" (18) in his eyes-that is, a place which is shut off f?om the world. With "festverschlossene, festverriegelte Türen, festvergitterte Fenster" (20) the last openings to the outside are shut. Nevertheless, for a building so solidly set off fiom the world, it maintains within the text a curious lack of concreteness. It is difficult for the reader to form a mental picture of it, perhaps because there is no perspective fiom which it can be seen in its entirety (21). The narrator himself has never seen it (28), nor does he seek out the one person who hows it best--Haller, of whom Konrad said he is "[der] am meisten mit dem Kalkwerk vertrauten Mann" (1 1). The reader's attempt to imagine a realistic building is complicated by Konrad's remark that "das Kalkwerk kein Kakerk mehr sei" (21). No direct description is given; the "Kalkwerk" remains a construction of words-mainly Konrad's w~rds.=~
Continually, the building is brought into connection with the "Studie." Konrad had thought it the ideal place for the study; that his wife is against the lime works means for him that she is consequently against the study (18). Indeed, there are strong parallels between his decades-long attempt to gain possession of the building and his equally lengthy quest to write the study, with the one difference that the long-awaited
24 Thus it is at a further remove than most literary places, which are, of course, also verbal constructions. Roman Ingarden was speaking of representational texts when he noted that the "Unbestimmtheitsstel1en~'in the world of the text corne to ow awareness only upon reflection, not during the reading: "Erst eine nachtriigliche Reflexion über die Bedingungen der Konstiîution der dargestellten Gegenstande sowie über die Tatsache, dao manche Fragen nach einzelnen Bestimmtheiten der Ietzten prinzipieII unbeantwortbar sind, lut uns das Bewustsein von dem Vorhandensein der Unbestimmtheitsstelh aufkommen" (Das Literarische Kunstwerk 267). Das Kalkwerk, however, while a representative text, makes such reflection unnecessary. The reader does in fact notice its many obscurities because the sharply-defined aspects are in the minority. The narrator's lack of direct knowledge, the foreignness of the concept "Kalkwerk" and the general indeterrninacy of the text make this unavoidable. "Augenblick" is, with respect to the lime works, finally realized: "das Kalkwerk kauflich ni enverben, war an die drei oder gar vier Jahrzehnte Konrad's Wunschtraum gewesen, der sich [...] irnmer schwienger, aber dann auf einrnal doch über nacht [...] verwirklichen habe lassen [...]" (15). Repeatedly the building is presented as the embodiment of an achieved goal. For decades the Konrads had travelled manically throughout Europe, to
Japan, China, the Philippines; "Und alle diese unsere Reisen," concludes Konrad, "haben letzten Endes hierher ins Kallcwerk geWt(1 70).
These travels are never described, but remain a lengthy and variable naming of cities and countries. They appear in the text in a static form, as a list, or concretely in the story as an old suitcase full of "Hotelzettel," "Prospekte und Schiffskarten und
Eisenbahnfahrkarten" (170). The movement from city to city (like the restless motion in the lime works) was for Konrad always connected with the quest to write the study, and in this quest there has been no development. It was always an etemal moment of failure awaiting a sudden moment of success: "In so viele Orte seien sie, er und seine Frau, nur in
Hinblick auf die noch nicht vollzogene Niedenchrift der Studie gezogen und aus so vielen Orten seien sie oft von einem Augenblick auf den andem wieder weggegangen in
Hinblick auf die niedemschreibende Studie" (196). In each city they wouid live
"wochenlang, monatelang und meistens für irnmer" (196) and yet leave suddenly, over night: "irnmer wieder dasselbe des Niederlassens für immer und des plotzlichen
Aufbrechens und Abreisens" (196). The opposed concepts of "für immer" and the sudden transforming "Augenblick" are equated. It is a picture of &antic forward motion which nevertheless does not progress. It remains static in its inability to move beyond itself.
Konrad, looking back, sees his experience of so many different places as essentially monotonous and repetitive; he has really only been in one place, over and over: "die vielen immer wieder gleichen Menschen in den immer wieder gleichen Verhaltnissen,
Zusamrnenhiingen ermüdeten, das imrner gleiche Gesicht der immer gleichen sich auf sie ni und von ihnen weg bewegenden Landschaft" (174).
The lime works appear to be a final destination closed off f?om this pointless world: the leap inside occurred in one "Augenblick," and it offers an end. Konrad says,
"alles Vorherige, alles Henimreisen wie gesagt batte] nur auf das Kalkwerk gezielt." To underline this finality he continues the association with the final boundary, death: "Unser
Ziel ist das Kaherk gewesen, unser Ziel ist der Tod gewesen durch das Kalkwerk"
(176). Yet this final end reveals itself as relative and therefore not fmal at all. In connection with his study, Konrad says: "mit dieser Schrift sei ein Endpunkt ni setzen, ein Endpunkt, der natürlich in dem Augenblick, in welchem er gesetzt ist, kein Endpunk mehr sein kann und so fort" (61). Indeed, this seems a general state: "ein Endpunkt ist der
Ausgangspunkt Er einen weiteren Endpunkt und so fort" (62).
Similarly, the "Kalkwerk" ceases to be an end as soon as it is reached. Though
Konrad sees it as the place of his death, while his wife is onented toward the place of her birth in Toblach, this opposition is not as simple as it seems. Konrad also calls it his
"mester Kinderspielplatz" (40). Konrad's understanding of his own persona1 history tends to be static rather than temporal. He uses architectural metaphors when recollecting his early years: "Er konne, wann immer, eine Tür in seine Kindheit hinein auhachen und er mache doch nur eine Tür in die finsterste Finsternis hinein auf. Aus seiner Kindheit komme nichts als Kiüte und Rücksichtslosigkeit heraus" (48). Cold and darkness are often associated with the building itself. Konrad sees his childhood not as something which is pst, but rather as being dways present, which he can look at "wann immer."
The "Kalkwerk" is itself seen as a static presentation of time in space: "Am Kalkwerk konne man gut die folgerichtige Menschheitsgeschichte der letzten vier oder hf
Jahrhunderte studieren [...]ll (96). Konrad waiks about in the building with as little real progress as he travelled through the world; life there is characterized by the same ovenvhelming monotony and repetitiveness. His belief in the lime works as an end, that is, as the place where he will finally write down his shidy, is an error. On the other hand, it is in fact the place where the Konrads' life together, and the quest for the study, end.
Konrad's hopes end in confusion: "einmal glaube ich, das Kalkwerk ist schuld, ddich die
Studie nicht niederschreiben kann, einmal glaube ich, gerade weil ich im KaUcwerk bin, habe ich die Moglichkeit, doch noch die Shidie niederschreiben ni konnen" (165).
Staternents about the lime works possess an arnbiguity implied by the comection of "Gebaude- und Gehimkomplexen" (40) as well as references to "GedenkenarchiteW1
(1 13). The text explicitly associates space and thought, as, for exarnple, in the descriptions of Konrad's wife's mernories; the thought of Toblach "sei ihr oft durch den
Kopf und schlieBlich durch ihr Zimrner und in der Folge auch durch das ganze Kalkwerk gegeistert" (1 8). Important here, too, is the question of motion, the expenence of space through time or vice versa. Konrad describes the lime works as a mental space: "Nur [...] wer es [...] mit Kopf und Seele bewohnen und mit diesem ungeheuerlichen Mechanismus ausfillen kann, konne das Ganze ausmessen. Erfassen nicht, aber ausmessen" (26).
Withui the apparent contradictoriness of this statement there is also a note of speculation: if one could fil1 the building it could be measured, but is it possible ever to fil1 it? Were this possible, then one should, at that moment, comprehend it. Comprehension of the lime works, which is "vollig bedeutungslos" (39), is, however, problematic, especially since this meaninglessness is not even relative to something else: "iiberhaupt nichts habe Bedeutung" (62). If this is so, then no parameters of meaning whatsoever can be established-the building has no "Zweck." This purposelessness (or end-lessness) is expressed in concrete terms, as a building which the observer may experience into infinity, so that Konrad claims he waks through the "endlos erscheinende Kallcwerk und versuche, zum Ende des Kalkwerks zu kornmen, komme aber ni keinem Ende, denn das Kalkwerk konne man durchgehen und durchlaufen und durchkriechen, sol1 er gesagt haben, und es nehrne kein Ende" (77).
Two points must be made here. First, the endlessness of the lime works is expenenced, not sirnply given. It emerges only as the observer, Konrad, moves through it, that is, it is the result of a continuing process of perception in motion. At the same time, however, this motion never moves beyond the one space, but is confined to the building, though it develops infinitely within it. As a linear motion without an end, this process of perception is not adequate for a complete comprehension. The infinite space of the building can only be expenenced by a movement through time-it is not comprehended as a "sirnul nunc." The linearity is supeneded by the spatiality of the infinitude of possible experience. The categones of linearity are broken down. The infinity of the space and tirne breaks down the categories of linearity, and yet it must be perceived as a linear process, relative to the observer. It cannot be traced to a begiming or forward to an end; nothing is pnor, in absolute terms, to anything else, and the linearity which seems necessary is only a construction produced by the obsewing agent. Secondly, the comection must be made between Konrad's assertion of the lime works' endlessness and his repeated point that it is his "Ziel" (176), the end of al1 his travels. It is, paradoxically, an end without an end. Sirnilarly, Konrad's story, abstracted
and reconstmcted by the reader, comes to an end in the murder. Within the text, however,
it acquires a kind of endlessness. The reader progresses through the text-knowing it, as
Konrad knows the lime works, only by moving through it in a linear motion, knowing its physical limitation between two covers (or four walls), but aiso expenencing its infinity.
Konrad stops walking and the reader stops reading, but no true end (or explanation) is
ever reached?
It is tempting to speculate that, in fact, Das Kalkwerk is the lime works. One
finds, perhaps, a comment on the impenetrability of the text, noted by many readen:
"Heute [...] ist das Kallcwerk vollkommen abgesichert, man entdeckt es nicht, man sieht
es nicht und wenn man es entdeckt und wenn man es sieht [...] kann man unter gar keinen
Umstiinden herein" (21). There is also the difficulty of finding a perpective fiom which a
comprehensive overview is possible: "man sieht ja auch das Kalkwerk erst, wenn man
unmittelbar davorsteht [...] das heat, wenn man nur noch einen oder einen halben Meter
davor stehe, dam sehe man es aber erst recht nicht, weil man nur noch einen oder einen
halben Meter davor stehe" (21). What is applied to the building can be applied to the text;
the reading of it is both active and static, as is the motion within the lime works.
The "Kallcwerk" is not the hoped-for change, that is, it does not facilitate the
-- -- " Manfred Schmeling discusses non-Iinear discourse as the characteristic of 'labyrinthine' texts which, he remaria, foreground "die Bewegung des Edhfem" ("Semantische Isotopien" 157). Relevant to our purposes, too, is his assertion: "Gerade die Fusion von Thema und Struktur ist typisch fùr den labyrinthischen Diskurs des 20. Jahrhunderts" (1 57). writing of the study, yet it is one sort of end. The Konrads cannot move on to another place; they are hished. Konrad recognizes this in one of the rare scenes set concretely in a specific, identifiable place-the bank director's office. In this scene, which is also conspicuous for its relatively long duration (seven pages, without interruption), Konrad discovers that his debts far outweigh his assets and that the building is going to be auctioned off by the bank. The scene is notable for its sense of finality (ktvisit to bank,
1st money allowed to Konrad) and by the relative concreteness with which it is described, which sets it off fiom the abstractness of most of the text.
Konrad is taken into the director's "Kabinett." He does not want to caI1 it a
"Zimmer" because it is so small, and is surprised when the director does so (179). Here, al1 is narrow and closed in, there is no space, no air to breathe: "schlechte Luft" (177), a closed window, it is filled with iron "Aktenschranke" (178) which reach to the ceiling, and furthemore it is much too hot. The roorn closes in even more as various employees corne in carrying stacks of papers relating to Konrad's debts; these pile up on the desk until Konrad can no longer see the director. Konrad's habitua1 visits to the bank, which had until then occurred twice a week, end: "ein- flir allemal das letzte Ma1 verlien ich die
Bank" (182), states Konrad, and now realizes the "Ausweglosigkeit" (183) of his situation.
On the pages immediately following this scene, the theme of being trapped, surrounded or closed in is repeated in several variations. Konrad's wife covers herself wiîh powder until she cm no longer see herself in the mirror; she is "vollkommen zugepudert" (184). Then, he recalls the burial of the sawmill owner, the hundreds of people "alle schwan gekleidet" (186) and how "erschüttert" he is at the "Tiefe der offenen Griiber" (187). The next episode is a dream of Konrad's, in which he coven the entire building, including his wife, with "schwarzem Mattlack" (187), der which he hurls hirnself into the "Tiefe" (188). Finally, Konrad shuts himself in, he sits in his chair and refuses to open the door, despite repeated knocking (188). At this point the text breaks off again into more abstract reflections of Konrad on the study and on his family past.
This senes of episodes, linked together by their hunediate proximity in the text and by thematic connections, indicates a typical feature of the text-the heightenhg of intensity and anxiety that accompany the appearance even of small arnounts of concrete description in this largely abstract text.
Wide, open, and rather more abstract space is set off against this tightening of the noose, the choking smallness of the bank director's office or the dark closeness of the grave. This is the space and freedom of motion Konrad hds within the lime works.
Here, he cmbreathe, his lungs can expand: "Er atme in gronen Zimmem naturgemaB auf
[...] wahrend er in kleinen Zimmem immer das Gefühl habe, ersticken zu müssen;" he is
"bedrückt" in small rooms by "Sauerstoffrziangel" (29Ebut the lime works have only huge rooms. It is essentially the freedom of movernent he seeks; in any room he wishes to be able to wak twenty or thirty paces in any direction unhindered. Although the building appears nom the outside to be a restrictive space which allows for "nur die geringste Bewegungsfieiheit" (27), the opposite is true: "Sie konnen im Kalkwerk [...] so vie1 Sie wollen [...] hin und her und im Grunde berweitergehen [...lm (27). Motion is what interests Konrad. "Gehen" and "denken" are for him inseparable, and for this he finds, in the building, "den gr6Bten Spielraum" (27). As we have seen, however, this motion does not take him anywhere-it is essentially random in that it takes many directions but never progresses toward an end. Konrad's motion within the lime works is no different fiom his travelkreality he is static.
The ha1 point that arrives near the end of the text was already present near the beginning in a similarly concrete, though shorter, scene. Chronologically it happens after the scene near the end, that is, derKonrad's last vist to the bank. "Schon habe man ihm auf der Bank gesagt, er habe das letzte Mai etwas bekornrnen" (44). He knows that his debts outweigh his possessions: "Die Schulden wiïren hoher als der Wert des Kalkwerks"
(43). The key word of this scene is "nichts." Konrad goes through the lime works fkom top to bottom to ascertain that he has no more valuables to sell, aside from a Bacon painting, from which he does not wish to part. In the attic he hds nothing, "wirklich nichts mehr" (43) except empty containers, "Reisekoffer, Biergliiser, Einmachgliser,
Hutschachteln," (43Mrnpty vessels which by their emptiness signiQ absence more strongly than would an absolute lack of objects-and "Kriicken" (43), which do the same.
In the rooms below there is nothing on the walls, no more paintings, but one can see what was once on the walls: "die Urnrisse der Bilder sehe man noch" (44)-again, signs of absence. On the lowest floor "machten die leeren Zirnmer einen noch vie1 deprimierenden Eindruck," says Konrad (44); "Hohe leere Raume wirkten tUrchterlich auf den Eintretenden" (44). The wide open rooms trap him as much as the tiny office at the bank. Konrad sinks, exhausted, into his chair. He has run out of things, out of money, out of energy. He is at the end of everything. The presence of this scene near the beguining of the text demonstrates that, while there is a progressive exhaustion, a movement toward a certain end in the story, there is no such development on the discursive level. The end is present even at the beginning. The wide open space of the lime works cannot be set up as a space of freedom against the narrowness outside, for it, too, Ieads to this final exhaustion.
The namted space and the discourse, then, &or each other with great precision.
Any attempt to overcome the indetenninacy of the text with a stable system of signification based upon the objects and spaces which are represented is doomed to failure. Meaning is produced dynamically but not progressively. To cl&@ this point it is necessary to consider the stnicturing of significance in the text on a Merlevel with the concepts of limits or boundaries, and of transgression.
A murder, the end of a life, seems to be an absolute boundary, and Konrad's act may be either the end of his own story, or the beginning of the stream of gossip and speculation that cornes to constitute the text. Das Kalkwerk can be read as a story of transgression, of the violation of a boundary and the sudden movement hmone sphere of being into another. This, too, should be seen as a vviation on spatial organization, whereby space is once again seen in its inseparable relation to time.
A boundary is necessary for linearity and comprehensive understanding. To establish boundaries is to establish differences and relations, since a limit-the point where two differences meet-generally has little substance on its own. These differences are themselves not absolute, but are seen as different onIy in relation to each other. A boundary which cannot be crossed has no reality; it cm only be defined by the act of its transgression. As Foucault writes: "The limit and transgression depend on each other for whatever density of being they possess: a limit could not exist if it were absolutely uncrossable and, reciprocally, transgression would be pointless if it merely crossed a limit composed of illusions and shadows" (34).
The boundary between two States of being is, as Juri Lotman determined, one of
the principal organizing features of the literary text (Die Struktur 327ff.). The
establishment of polar oppositions is a prerequisite for literary events, which happen
when sorneone or something crosses the boundary that separates the two sides. Therefore,
this essentially spatial construct of oppositions is needed for the developrnent and the
production of meaning within a narrative. In Dos Kalkwerk, it is difficult for the reader to
determine clear boundaries. Even the story is not easily defined; that is, it is dificult to
establish a boundary between it and the discourse.
In the text, oppositional pairs are established, and boundaries are drawn, only to be
rendered meaningless in their negation. This is not what Marquardt terms the
"antithetische Erzahlweise" (14) of the novel, in which something is given by the text,
only to be taken away again, as for exarnple when Konrad says: "das Absichtliche sei das
Unabsichtliche, das Unabsichtlichste das Absichtlichste und so fort" (62). Rather, it is the
"Gegensatze" which Sorg terms the "Stnikturprinzip" of the novel: poverty/wealth,
age/youth, mass/individual and so on (45). Peîrasch also notes these dualisms, but she
follows in the line of thought set by vom Hofe and Pfâff in seeing them as expressions of
an epistemological stance that posits finitude and language against transcendence and the
"Absolute" (Petrasch 3 17f.). That it is more appropriate to consider these oppositional
pairs as mutually relative will become evident.
One of the central oppositional pairs of the text are Konrad himself and his wife?
26 Examinations of this personal constellation based upon psychological models can be found in FueO's Nicht Fragen and in Manfred Miîtermeyer's Ich werden. Versuch einer Thomas- Although their distance on opposite poles is at times relativized by their shared name and the suggestion that they are siblings, they are in every other respect opposed: Konrad is for the lime works and against Toblach his wife is for Toblach and against the lime works; he is forever walking while she is restricted to her chair; he is for Kropotkin and against Ofterdingen, she for Ofterdingen and against Kropotkin, and so on.
A related field of oppositions is created around the "Studie." On the one hand there is the unwritten study in Konrad's head, which does not really exist since it is not written, and on the other hand there is the finished study as Konrad's imaginary goal, which potentially exists in the future. These two States are separated by the "Augenblick" which Konrad awaits for decades, the moment of realization. This transgression, the crossing of this boundary, is impossible for Konrad: "seinen Kopf urplotzlich von einem
Augenblick auf den anderen auf das rücksichtsloseste um- und also die Studie auf das
Papier ni kippen"(2 1 1bthis remains his unachieved goal. Konrad indicates that this moment would rnean for hirn an absolute exit fiorn his present state, an either-or proposition: the study must fa11 apart in his head at the sarne moment it cornes together on paper. He manages to achieve this transformation only in a dream sequence.
Interestingly, in this dream Konrad, having fuiished the study, is paralyzed, while his wife is suddenly capable of wallcing. They have changed places in a complete reversa1 of roles.
Konrad does, however, commit another transgression: he eliminates the polarity of his relationship with his wife by destroying her. The question here must be: what happens on the other side of this boundary? Before the murder Konrad is a man of manic speech, a man who talks endlessly in what appear to be self-sustaining monologues for a variety of audiences, between whom he appears to differentiate minimally, if at dl. After the murder, he is silenced. Certainly we rnight assume that he will speak during the trial, in jail or in the asylum, but these areas are entirely closed to the world of the text, and
Konrad himself has become inaccessible. Even Fro's letter to Konrad in jail receives no reply. For the reader, the narrator and the various informants, Konrad is effectively silenced after the murder, as he is either not permitted or not able to give an account of his motives, or of anything else. "Konrad selbst sol1 ja bis heute zu der Tat nicht die geringste vorwiirtsbringende Aussage gemacht haben, angeblich hockt er vollig gebrochen in der Welser Kreisgenchtszelle und beantwortet keine der Hunderte und wahrscheiniich Tausende von Fragen, die an ihn gestellt werden" (147) remarks the narrator. This is a stark contrast to the entirely verbal figure he once knew.''
On the other hand, Konrabs language, distanced and dissociated fiom himself, cornes to life after the murder, in the speculations and repetitions of those who had before been his audience. In fact, for the reader, the voluble pre-murder Konrad is silent, as no direct words fiom this time are given, while the silent post-murder Konrad speaks, though only filtered through the discourse.
Konrad's crime, in crossing a boundary, has established this boundary, has realized a boundary against which his chaotic stream of language can be organized. His pnor speeches can now be interpreted under the question of why he committed the murder.
------L7 The narrator recalls: "Ich selbst bin Konrad mehrere Male [...] begegnet, [...] und von ihm jedesmal augenblicklich in ehmehr oder weniger nicksichtsloses medizinisches oder politisches oder ganz einfach naturwissenschaftliches oder medizinisch-polihsches oder naturwissenschaftlich-politisches oder medizinisch-politisch-naturwissenschaftlis Gespriich Because the murder is also the end of the possibility of finishùig the study, the question of why he could not write it is drawn into this interpretive process with equal value. The murder, set up as a limit to aid in defining the hemeneutic process, creates a boundary: before or after the murder. Yet this boundary is constantly transgressed by the text. That which comes before melts entirely into that which comes af€er; as linguistic events they cannot be disthguished. The murder is not shown in the language of the text, for it exists only in language about language, and in this way death, the fuial limit, is subsurned. The end is the beginning. It is not Konrad's story that ends in the murder, rather, the murder causes Komd's story to come into existence. The crime motivates people to recall, reconstmct, and interpret remembered converversations, and to construct possible causes in order to account for what had happened. While Konrad has not written a text hirnself, his deed has produced a text-the narratois text which we find before us.
A good deal of critical attention has been given to the "Studie," entitled Das
Gehor, wwch keeps Konrad busy throughout Das Kalkwerk. Many have agreed that the study, and Konrad's failure to write it, are central to any understanding of the text and, as mentioned above, this question is generally taken as identical or at lest very closely related to the reasons for the murder. hdeed, most scholars have shown far more interest in the study than in the murder. While interpretations of the meaning of the study and the cause of Konrad's failure to write it down have varied, there has been general agreement that "Gehor" has to do with both cognitive perception and communi~ation.~Although
verwickelt worden [...]" (8). Cf. K6nig (238), Tismar (133), Meyerhofer (34), Huntemann (3 1), and Sorg (94). Lindenmayr quotes Gadamer in saying hearing is "ein Weg zum Ganzen" (79), and thus more than a means of communication but also a type of transcendence, which Konrad fails to achieve. this is indisputably so, there is a Merdimension to "das Gehor" which has yet to be examined: the characteristic spatiality of this concept and its relation to the overall thematic and discursive structure of the text. This Merdimension emerges if the usual dualism of successful versus failed communication is momentarily set aside, to concentrate instead on the duality of speech and writing, or between what is heard and what is read. This opposition is well known to Konrad, who appears capable of speaking endlessly but who cannot bring himself to *te. Abstracted fiorn al1 other content, this is the difference between sight and hearing-a dualism which is frequently posited within the text.
A common understanding of sight in the aesthetic realrn follows in the tradition of
Lessing when it describes literary works as linear, successive and temporal; painting
(visual) as spatial and simultaneously perceived. Another point of view is possible if we start corn the opposition hearing versus sight. If "perspective" onginates at a "point of view" and proceeds along a line of sight, then anyone cm"see" how much our "view" of the world is formed by metaphors of visuai perception. Through sight space is organized along a linear axis which necessarily remains uni-directional; objects are ordered sequentially according to their relative distance ffom the subject. Sight may be used metaphorically to denote a perception of reality where only one perspective is possible at a time, where to choose to look along one line is to momentarily shut out al1 others.
Objects or events exist in linear succession and are causally connected. An understanding based upon visual metaphors tends to be historical or diachronie, so that events succeed or cause others along the straight line of expenence. There is an imagined beginning (as in the eye) and an end, in the vanishing point: objects are connected in space, perception moves forward fiorn its origin, and the world is experienced in a progressive motion.
A mode of cornprehension based upon metaphors of hearing would "look" quite different. Sound is perceived, not dong a linear axis, but rather within a field that surrounds the hearer on al1 sides. Many sounds rnay be heard fkom al1 directions shultaneously. While vision creates an appearance of continuity in the perceived world, hearing allows phenomena to appear as disconnected and discontinuous. Nor are clear boundaries established, as with sight-sound does not even stop at the observer but rather moves through and around him or her; different sounds can exist in the sarne space at once. This may be seen as the metaphorical bais of an altemate mode1 of perception and thought, one which is non-linear, non-sequential, simultaneous, based upon synchronie relations rather than causality?
Not surprisingly, the linear limitation of the narrative text is often countered with a cal1 for musicality. Thus, Adam Bisanz, who sees the failure of language today in its inability to express simultaneity, writes:
Nun hat fkeilich schon im vergangenem Jahrhundert der englische
~sthetikerWalter H. Pater die Sentenz geprggt: "Al1 art constantly
aspires towards the condition of music." Auch Joyce sol1 davon
geschwamit haben, alles episch Sagbare eines Tages in einem einzigen
musikalischen Ton ausklingen zu lassen. [...] Für die Erzahlstruktur
This metaphor is takm fiom Marshall McLuhan, who conceived of a distinction behveen "visual space" and "acoustic space" that corresponds not only to cultural paradigms but also to the divided structure of the brain: "The Iefl hemisphere places information structurally in visual space, where things are comected sequentially-having separate centers with fixed boundaries. On the other hand, acoustic space stnicture, the function of the right brain in which processes are related simultaneously, has centers everywhere with boundaries nowhere" (The Global Village stellt sich damit die Frage, ob vielleicht nicht auch sie eines Tages durch
eine einzige (mathematische) Formel oder durch einen einzigen
musikalischen Ton artikulierbar sein wird. (2 14)
So that everything that is necessary can be expressed at once, in a single moment, we need the simultaneous, multi-layered character of music. The question here is what significance one must give the "musicality" of Bernhard's textual language, which has been noted by a multitude of cri tic^.^" A similar thought is expressed by O'Neill, who hds not music but 'noise' to be the result of the discursive domination of the story."
Whether the metaphor is music or noise, however, the bais of its applicability can be found in the word/sound opposition established in the text.
Although Konrad's study deals, he claims, comprehensively with hearing, there is a built-in conflict between the subject of the study and the writing of it. Among the disturbances that prevent Konrad fiom writing, sounds or noises figure very prominently, whether it is Holler chopping wood, his wife ringing, or various visitors knocking at the door. He had considered the iime works the ideal place for writing the study because of its silence; one hem "beinahe überhaupt nichtsM-important, since noise impedes his work (23). He discovers, however, that it is only quiet when he is not working (62).
Sound and hearing, the subject of his study, prevent him (allegedly) fiom writing the
8). " Cf. Holler, Fetz, Rossbacher, Sorg and Jurgensen. " "The sheer amount of information provided (al1 of it of entirely questionable reliability) in the end simply overwhelms the reader, converting narrative into noise--just as Konrad's attempted study has become for him [...].The namitor's discourse, in its obsessiveness, its compulsive repetitiveness and redundancy, its apparent exactness that only superficially conceals a fundamental indeterminacy, ultimately becomes independent, asserting its priority over the story it ostensibly sets out to relate." ("Endgarne Variations" 239). study. A paradox which he cannot overcome is established between hearing and writing about hearing.
Although the precise content of his study is never revealed, Konrad makes several cornments on his understanding of "das Gehijr" which indicate why this paradox has arisen. His own sense of hearing, he claims, is abnomally well-developed, so that he can heu sounds that are technically inaudible (24). What he hears is not a simple sound but a complex of auditory information: "Und naturgema hore ich nicht nur ein einziges, ich hore viele Tausende von Gerauschen herauf und alle diese Tausende von Gerauschen kann ich untereinander untencheiden" (71). With his extraordinary gift, he believes he has access to a level of reality or perception blocked to those with common sensory powers: "Aber nichts schafEe eine gro0ere Klarheit als ein vollkornmenes oder wenigstens ein nahem vollkommenes Gehor" (26). hdeed, he claims, "das Gehor ermogliche alles"
(68).
Hearing, according to Konrad, allows for levels of perception that are closed to sight, and he gives hearing the higher pnority: "wichtiger, als dal3 ein Mensch sieht, sei, daO ein Mensch hort" (25). For him, hearing is pnor to both seeing and thought: "Es sei imrner das gleiche, so Konrad ni Wieser, merst hore er, dam sehe er, dam denke er, in allen Moglichkeiten sei es immer das gleiche. Zuerst müsse er horen, dam kome er sehen, dadurch w&e ihm Denken ermoglicht" (1 94). He emphasizes his ahility to hear what he cannot see, thereby underlining what is actually a banal characteristic of hearing:
"Er konne sogar Menschen horen, die am andem Seeufer miteinander reden, obwohl das nicht moglich ist [...]. Ich hore Leute am andem Ufer [...] obwohl ich sie nicht einrnal sehen km, sol1 er gesagt haben" (24). The various people he questions for his 'experiments' do not have this ability: "Die Versuchsperson gestehe, ddsie nichts sehe und dadurch auch nichts hore" (72). This apparently nonsensical statement focusses attention on the peculiar aspect of acoustic perception which separates it f?om vision-a direct linear comection to the object is unnecessary. If one is too heavily dependent upon sight and neglects hearing, then one accepts what is heard only if there is also visual proof of the cause of the sound. Not so Konrad, whose hearing perceives events inaccessible to sight: "[...] das Auge nehme keinerlei Bewegung in den Fichten wahr, keinerlei
Wasserbewegung, trotzdem hore er Fichten und Wasser. [...] Nimmt auch das Auge nicht die geringste Bewegung auf der Wasserobedkhe wahr, so bore er doch die Bewegung der Wasserobedache, oder: die Bewegung in der Tiefe des Wassers, Gerausche von
Bewegungen in der Wassertiefe" (70). "Das Gehor," operating on its own pnnciples, perceives that which, on the sole evidence of sight, does not exist. This motif is varied throughout the text and becomes quite cornicd during Komad's visit with the bank director, when the documents recording Konrad's debts pile up so high on the desk he cannot see the director: "Wahrrnd ich den Direktor schlieBlich überhaupt nicht mehr sehen komte," says Komad, "horte ich wenigstens noch, was er sagte" (1 79).
Here can be found, too, a possible due as to why Konrad cannot write the study.
In principle, the solution to this writer's block seems simple. One just starts with the first word and keeps adding on more: "Es sei vielleicht nur eine Frage der ersten Worter, annifangen mit den ersten Wortern und so fort" (1 17), says Konrad, and, "da sei auch schon der erste Satz, denke er, und er schreibe den Satz auf. Noch eine Reihe solcher
Satze, denke er, und die Studie lasse sich endlich aufschreiben" (55). But Konrad cannot translate the whole entity in his head into a linear text: "Eine Studie, die man ganz und gar Un Kopf habe, konne man wahrscheinlich nicht niederschreiben, sol1 er ni Fro gesagt haben, wie man auch eine Symphonie, die man zur Garize durch und durch irn Kopf habe, nicht niederschreiben konne, und er habe die Studie durch und durch im KopP' (1 18).
The cornparison of the "Studie" to a symphony seems particularly appropriate, given the above-mentioned cornparisons of the narrative's language to music.
It is not necessary to interpret this complete mental construction as a manifestation of the "Absolute," as some critics have done. It is enough to see the "Studie" as a set of related thoughts which are permanently so present in Konrad's muid that he can cal1 any part of this mental structure into active consciousness at any the. It was noted above that
Konrad tends to see his own history in static, architectonic terms; thus, to give a Mer example, when he remembers his apartment in Paris we read, "er schaute in die Parker
Wohnung hinein" (195), as though al1 points in tirne were eternally present in a cabinet whose many drawers can be opened at will. That "seeing" in this context appears in a diffierent metaphorical field than above is consistent with the nature of the text: Bernhard never hesitates to mix a few metaphors.
Konrad has tumed writing into an dl-or-nothing proposition: "die Studie [muB] in meinem Kopf wieder giimlich zerfallen, damit ich sie auf einmal nir Gme niederschreiben kann" (1 l8), he says. He has not found a way to present the synchronous whole simultaneously ("auf einmal"), that is, in one "Augenblick" in the linear text. How can he transfom into linear writing that which exists al1 at once, as a complete system of relations? "Es erfordere eine beinahe übemenschliche Anstrengung, irnmer gleichzeitig alles ni sehen im Hinblick auf das Gehor" (9 1). It has been observed that Dus Kaikwerk is about two texts: itself, and Konrad's unwritten st~dy.'~How is the writing of his own text made possible for the narrator? His own relation to the hearing-seeing duality rernains implicit, yet evidence of his attempt to reconcile the two may be seen in the existence of the text itself. He has, after all, based his text on hearing; nearly the entire text is a record of what he has heard. He himself is aware of the limitations of this method; for example, after recording various contradictory statements about the number of shots used to kif1 Konrad's wife he States: "Klar ist, da13 bis jeta [...] kein Mensch weiD, mit wie vielen Schüssen Konrad seine Frau umgebracht hat" (8). Yet he persists in recording what he has heard and imposes no authorial organization ont0 the text; nor does he await the results of the trial which, he himself expects, "wud in die sich mit der Zeit merkwürdigerweise immer mehr verfinstemde
Finstemis in Zusammenhang mit der ErschieDung der Konrad durch ihren Mann Licht hineinbringen" (9Wlearly he hirnself does not put too much value on this son of 'light' and as Fr0 observes it is "nur ein juristisches Licht" (9). With this method, he has produced a text which ultimately unites Konrad's categories of seeing and hearing. The text plays its temporal construction, in the linearity of presentation and reliance on literary convention, off against elements of spatiality, in the underminhg of temporal coherence, causality and authority. Thematically, elements such as the search for "Ursachen" and the progressive deteriorahon towards death underline a temporal structure which is simultaneously negated in the revelation that these concepts become essentially repeatable, and therefore non-progressive, in language.
" Cf., for example, O'Neill 240. In his postscript to The Nome of the Rose, Umberto Eco gives a description of the
"Kriminalroman" which provides an appropriate conclusion to this reading of Dus
Kalkwerk. This type of novel, Eco writes, is a "Konjektur-Geschichte im Reinnistand".
It is a story about "das Vemuten" (63), and "eh abstraktes Mode11 der Vermutung ist das
LabyrinthW-an appropriately spatial metaphor. Eco distinguishes three types of
labyrinth: the classical, the baroque, and then finally the type of labyrinth farniliar to
Bernhard's readers :
Drittens schliefllich gibt es das Labyrinth als Netnverk oder, um den
Begriff von Deleuze und Guattari aufiunehrnen, ais Rhizom. Das
Rhizom-Labyrinth kt so vieldixnensional vemetzt, daB jeder Gang sich
unmittelbar mit jedem anderen verbinden kann. Es hat weder ein
Zentrum noch eine Penphene, auch keinen Ausgang mehr, da es
potentieIl unendlich kt. Der Raurn der MutmaBungen ist eh Raum in
Rhizomform. (63-65)
Dos Kalkwerk does not obstnict the production of meaning. Rather, it demands from the reader a different understanding, where meaning is seen, not as fixed and determinate, but as a field containing many possible relations. Within this field-itself static, but allowing
for an infinite range of motion inside its established structure-the reading of the text takes place. Of the possible patterns of rnovernent (or interpretations), none is given priority over the others, and therefore a final destination cannot be reached; a de finitive pattern cannot be produced. Chapter l'II: Jiirgen Becker's ErzühZen bis Ostende and Wolfgang Hildesheimer's Tynset
Even more than Das Kalkwerk, Jürgen Becker's Erzahlen bis Ostende ( 198 1) and
Wolfgang Hildesheimer's Tynset (1965) may be said to fulfil the rather prescriptive requirernents of the "spatial novel" that were first postulated by Joseph Frank in 1945. In
"Spatial Form in Modem Literature," updated and expanded twenty yean after its original publication, Frank uses the metaphor of spatiality to account for the experimental new novels of his day, using Djuna Barnes' Nightwood as the central exarnple. Such novels emphasize the discourse while undermining linear narration and avoiding a chronological and comprehensive story. The discussion of spatial fom begins with a reference to
Lessing, who Frank sees as the first modem thinker to recognize the importance of temporal and spatial concepts in the arts:
No longer was aesthetic form confûsed with mere extemals of technique
or felt as a strait jacket into which the artist, willy-nilly, had to force his
creative ideas. Form issued spontaneously fkom the organization of the
art work as it presented itself to perception. Time and space were the
two extremes defining the limits of literature and the plastic arts in their
relation to sensuous perception; and, following Lessing's exarnple, it is
possible to trace the evolution of art forms by their oscillations between
these two poles. (8)
The modem novel, argues Frank, is characterized by intentional instantaneousness; its various elements, like those of a modem poem, are ideally apprehended "spatially, in a moment of tirne, rather than as a sequence" (9). To create this "one vast image" the author mut "undermine the inherent consecutiveness of language," so that the reader's
expectations of a sequence are frustrated, and the elements of the work are seen as
"juxtaposed in space rather than unrollhg in tirne" (10). The reader is able to find
meaning in the text through a process of reflexive reference.'
Frank bases his discussion of the modem novel on insights acquired £iom modem
poetry. The differences between the literary genres are blurred as novels abandon
storytelling to produce images not stnictured by chronological sequence. The result is
what Seymour Chatman has called the "modem plot of revelation" where a "state of
affairs is reveded," rather than the "traditional narrative of resolution" in which "there is a
sense of problem-solving, of things being worked out in some way, of a kind of
ratiocinative or ernotional teleology"(47). While both Frank and Chatman, as well as later
critics of spatial form such as Sharon Spencer, still rely largely on the concept of
character as the structural centre of such works, Becker and Hildesheimer produce texts
where even the unifjmg force of character has been abandoned, texts which attempt to
show a completely de-centralized state of being.'
Sharon Spencer neatly summarizes this conception of spatial form in her discussion of "the procedure of construction by means of juxtaposition (that is, the setting beside one another without connectives of types of prose)." Spencer writes: "the whole idea of begiming and ending is annihilated by the procedure of juxtaposition, which abolishes al1 overt transitions as well as the suggestion of causality, and which renders possible the free creation of al1 sorts of relationships among the items juxtaposed" (xxi). Although the elernents must be presented successively, they are in dynamic relation and therefore may be conceived sirnultaneously. It has been pointed out above that every narrative text is, to some degree, spatial. As Rimmon- Kenan has noted, the linearity of a text is in itseIf spatial, so that, for example, "episode A cornes after episode B in the linear disposition of the text" (Narrative Fiction 51). "Text-time" is equivalent to "the linear disposition of the text" (52). Here, however, the focus is on texts in which the positioning of the various episodes is arbitrary-thereby, attention is called to the spatial aspect in a manner foreign to narratives with a clear temporal organization, where the reader's attention is focused upon the unrolling of time in the story. Enühlen bis Ostende and Tynset fit so ideally into the concept of the spatial text, with the temporal structure so clearly dominated by the spatial structure, that it might be questioned whether they are, in fact, novels. Both are made up of a collection of longer and shorter episodes, which must be seen in constant juxtaposition if any meaning is to be won. Not surprisingly, both authors are predominantly occupied with more patently
"spatial" arts. Becker is perhaps better known as a poet; his prose texts before EMhlen bis Ostende, Felder, Rander and Umgebungen, obscure the boundary between poetry and prose and cannot with certainty be called either. Hildesheimer painted, drew, and created of collages. It is an interesting coincidence that the work which inspired Frank's essay,
Barnes's Nightwood, also influenced both Becker and Hilde~heimer.~
The two texts provide a fhitful counterpoint to Das Kalkwerk in the context of this discussion, for they represent a different way of exploiting textual spatiality and of treating the. Whereas in Bernhard's novel the focus is upon the style and the form of the narration, whose disjointedness and unreliability break down the textual flow of the story,
Hildesheimer presents us with a minimal story, or radier a collection of episodes in a straightforward narrative framework. While in Das Kalkwerk the reader's attention is forced ont0 the discourse as the "real story," in Hildesheimer's text we corne to suspect that what appears to be the story is in fact an unusual kind of discourse, a new way of perceiving and witing "around" (this word is used to emphasize the spatiality of the word
"about") reaiity. Becker's text cmbe seen as a transition between the two other works. It emphasizes its spatial form both through stylistic and narrative features, and through its
Hildesheimer noted Barnes's influence and produced the German translation of her novel. Becker reviewed this translation and includes a homage to Bames in Erziïhlen bis Ostende. thematic structure.
It is pdcularly in the relation to time that the difference between Dus-Kalkwerk and Tm,the main text to be discussed in this chapter, emerges. Jerome Klinkowitz has written of "spatial" fiction that it "disavows historical time entirely, depending upon no reference whatsoever to the temporal world." It is a fiction of "pure self-reflectiveness"
(41). Yet these comments cannot completely categorïze the texts dealt with here. Das
Kalkwerk does not, in fact, refer systematically to the temporal world, but in its self- reflectiveness it creates a tension which relies upon temporal form. The spatializing aspects of the text are always present in relation to the temporal aspects which they break down. There is, after dl, a hermeneutic structuring that is inescapable in a text with an unexplained murder, a drastic break between the before and the after. In such a text, questions such as the reliability of the nmator and witnesses (the pnor origins of knowledge) are of central importance. Tynset has abandoned this temporal axis entirely: it has no before and der, and it does not suggest a chronological story that needs to be aggressively broken down.
As witl be seen, however, Tynset does not disavow history. [ts central structural element depends upon the reference to historical events outside the fiarne of the text.
Moreover, there is no longer an attempt to obscure linearity on the ievel of narration. The perception of time is changed; it is no longer linear, but in this new fom it is easily incorporated into the text. It could be called mythological tirne, a species of time which
Frank anticipated in his essay.' Before this is Merexamined, however, a look at
' Frank writes: "By this juxtaposition of past and present [...] history becomes ahistoncal. Time is no longer felt as an objective, causal progression with clearly marked-out differences beween Becker's novel, a text which addresses the reasons for the modem interest in space and time, will provide a usehl Iink between these two very different works.
Like Hildesheimer, Jürgen Becker rejects the traditional form of the novel as inadequate for a portrayal of contemporary reality. Becker expressed his scepticism about the continued applicability of the novel form in his essay "Gegen die Erhaltung des literarischen statu quo," where the central problem is "[die] Schwierigkeit, die
Wirklichkeit im Wort ni fassen."' The traditional form of the novel cannot show the world as it is today-this assurnption is expressed by many experimental wnters, who still want to represent reality in their work, and who believe that new ways must be found to do so adequately. Therein lies the bais of the argument, advanced by various critics, that the new forms are, in fact, realistic in the tnie senseS6As Jürgen Zetsche notes,
Jürgen Becker hat seine Prosatexte von Anfang an jenseits der
Romanfom angesiedelt. Keiner seiner Prosatexte besitzt eine
kontinuierliche Fabel, in keinem werden Charaktere durchgestaltet oder
gar eine Handlung geschildert. Becker zerreiBt das traditionelle
Erzahlgefiige, hebt die Grenzen zwischen Innen und AuBen auf, setzt
Bmchstücke, Wahmehmungsfetzen, diskontinuierliche Erfahrungs- periods; now it has become a continuum in which distinctions between past and present are wiped out. [...] What has occurred, at least so far as literature is concerned, may be described as the transformation of the historical imagination into myth-an imagination for which historical time does not exist, and which sees the actions and events of a particular time only as the bodying forth of etemal prototypes" (60). ' Quoted in Kreutzer (13-19). This argument is pursued, for example, by David Mickelsen in his "Types of Spatial Structure in Narrative." partikel anstelle eines simulierten Ganzen. (286)
For Becker, as for Hildesheimer, a key feature of this new form is simultaneity. The various fragments of reaiity are brought together in a fom which reflects a relative, pluralistic understanding of a hgmentary world.' They are not arranged under an obsolete textual hierarchy controlled by an authorial nanator, since diis would express a comprehensive knowledge and mastery no longer valid in modem life. The new form of organization is aiso adequate to portraying the contemporary media, which present the world instantaneously as a vast "Nebeneinander."
Simultaneity is not only a central ahof Becker's narrative structures; it is also an explicit theme within his texts and is therefore impossible to overlook. Rolf Michaelis has noted the "Doppeldeutigkeit und Gleichzeitigkeit aller Gegensatze" present in al1 of
Becker's poetry and prose. As examples of these "Gegensatze" he cites: "Ende und
Anfang, Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Alter und Jugend, einst und jeta, Natur und
Industriegesellschaft, Land und Stadt" (306-09). Because al1 of these are simultaneously present, there is no irreversible passage of tirne: "So sind, in der gegenwartigen Zeit, alle
Zeiten lebendig" (3 10). It is interesting to note that the "Gegensatze" listed by Michaelis are al1 spatio-temporal: end, beginning, past, present, youth, and age are normally seen as relative points on a line, while nature and industrial society, country and city are manifestations on the historical line of social development. If they are presented simultaneously, their linearity is seen not as a motion but as a spatial constnict, in which
7 Peter Zima considers the ideological implications of the anti-authorial stance in Becker's work in his Roman und Ideologie 1247-69). ail are present at once.'
Errahlen bis Ostende consists of 93 brief segments. They are not numbered, like chapters-which wodd emphasize their linear positioning-rather, they each have their own titles ("Übers Eis," "Am Fenster stehend," "Untenvegs"). A few look like poems and consist of several voices in dialogue. With the exception of the fint and last, the positioning of the episodes is essentially arbitrary. As Walter Hinck has pointed out, "Es ist das Prinzip der Collage, der fieien Assoziation, das die einzelnen Textstücke einander zuordnet" (209). This fiee association does not depend on the episodesf proximity to each other: while some placed close together can easily be related to each other, the same is true of widely separated episodes.
Beyond "free association," however, two elements structure the text and bring a certain coherence into the segments. The ktis the apparently brief and comprehensive
"Erzahlzeit," the other is the central figure, Joha~,which emerges gradually from the text as the reader compares episodes. The text begins with a segment entitled "hZug," where an unknown nanator addresses an unknown subject: "Stell dir jetzt vor: du gehst einfach zum Bahnhof. [...] Du weiBt, dd ungef& drei Shinden Fahrt vor dir liegen,
Richtung westliche Küste, nach Ostende. [...] Natürlich, du hast ein paar Vorstellungen, und du hast den Kopf vol1 von Enmermgen" (7). The final episode, entitled
"Vorlaufiges Verschwhden," descnbes the arrival of an "ich" in Ostende. The reader is left to assume that the segments contained between these two brackets refer to the
Mickelsen writes of how a "static narrative" can be achieved through fragmentation: "through discontinuity (juxtaposition), the reader experiences the continuing presentness of events. In this jumbled realm of no-change, the author turns to repetition for coherence, emphasis, and [...] presentness" (73). thoughts and mernories expenenced by this subject during the three-hour train trip. A travelogue in the traditional sense is in no way presented, nor does there seem to be a comection between the subject's actual expenences during the trip, which are barely descnbed, and his mental activity.
The clarity of this spatio-temporal structuring is, however, called into question by the opening words of the segment, "Stell dir jeta vor[ ...]," which indicate to the reader that the trip is in any case imaginary, and which make a definition of "jetzt" impossible.
The apparently well-defined "Erzahlzeit" is also made problematic by the highly ambiguous relation to tirne and place within the separate segments, where there is
fkequently abrupt and unmediated motion between many widely-separated points in the past and present. Moreover, this trip is not a real joumey in the literary sense+ven if
Johann does travel to Ostende, he does nothing different there, he expenences nothing along the way, nothing changes. As Fritz Raddatz notes, this text "deutet die Richtung, in der sich die Menschen seiner Umgebung bewegen: nirgendwo hin[. ..]. Bec kers poetisc he starre Kamera hat die Bewegungslosigkeit erfaDt, in der wir verharren, grundlos erstant"
(Die Nachgeborenen 2 1 3-14).
The second, and more relevant stmcturing element of the text is its central figure,
Johann, who appears throughout, and who appears to be the uniSing point to which al1 the segments refer. He is, one assumes, both the "du" and the "ich" as well as the "er" referred to in further episodes. Thus he acts as the narrating voice, the subject of narration and the immediate addressee of the narrator. This character is a novelty for
Becker; none of his earlier prose texts contained such a point of orientation. Becker's own comments in an inte~ew,however, show how Iittle this figure has to do with traditional literary characters: "da gibt es einen Mann, den ich Johann nenne, der im Nachrichten-
Medium arbeitet [...]. Ich habe diese Figur erfimden, urn sie als Beispiel nutzen ni konnen fi Erfahnuigen, die ein Zeitgenosse, der in diesem Benif arbeitet, heute macht"
(Hinck 209-10). Hinck writes: "Was Becker vor Jahren das 'multiple Ich' nannte, konkretisiert sich hier in drei Entwürfen: in der Figur, die Johann genannt wird, in ihrem zweiten Ich, das 'ich' sagt, und in hem dntten, das der Autor mit 'du' anredet" (210). A coherent, traditional exposition of this figure is not attempted; we how only that he is a newsman, forrnerly in advertking, presumably rniddle-aged, with an ex-wife named Nora and a troubled marriage to a wornan narned Lene.
In some respects, the narration of this text is far more stable than that of Das
Kalkwerk. The narrator is identifiable, and we know his name and various details of his life and penonality. Moreover, his reliability is entirely irrelevant: since he is only concemed with his own perceptions, there is no extemal story here which might change if it were told frorn a different perspective. However, ihis apparent unity and imrnediacy are but a counterpoint to the fragmentation and destabilization of the narrating subject, as reflected in the fragrnentary forrn of the text. Fragmentation, separation, and incoherence are the themes which reoccur not only in the structure of the text, but also in the episodes, in the scenarios and situations descnbed. In Das Kalkwerk, there is constant tension between the destabilizing elements and the force of the murder story. Here, the potential story-for example, the break-up of the relationship between Johann and Lene-is entirely abandoned for an exposition of a static situation, in which the only motion is in the shifting relationships between the various parts. The destabilization of the central unifj4ng figure is a destabilization in space and time. Johann sees himself "in mehreren Mumen, in mehreren Hihem gleichzeitig anwesend; Leute kornmen und gehen nicht, sie sind unvemittelt anwesend oder wieder verschwunden" (10). In a dream the difficulty of his situation is revealed:
Der Zwang bestand darin, in vierfacher Weise anwesend ni sein, und
mgleich eine Entscheidung ni treffen für jeweils eine der
Konstellationen. Mehrere Menschengruppen in verschiedenen Zimmern
mehrerer Hauser in verschiedenen Liindem: dazwischen hatte ic h mic h
gleichzeitig ni bewegen, wobei sich jede momentane Anwesenheit in
einem der vier Bereiche sofort als verfehlt erwies; es gab keine einzige
richtige, weil die Existenz in der Gleichzeitigkeit das Nacheinander von
Hier nach Dort aufhob." (3 1)
The plurality of roles which must an average person must play in contemporary everyday life, the speed of transportation and communication, the negation of perceivable time in the instantaneous electronic media, which allow for a simultaneous experience of various widely-separated realities-al1 of these factors create a fkagmented self which cm no longer act as a stable authonal presence.
The text corresponds to this experience, in which "die Suche nach bleibenden
Tagen, nach der Ruhe eines Kontinuums" (1 14) has long since been abandoned, by itself adopting a de-centralized form. In the attempt to construct a coherent pichue, the reader is like Johann's Wends, who ask: "Mochtest du überall gleichzeitig sein, bleibst du ewig unentschieden, willst du rnehrfach leben, mochtest du imrner ein anderer sein, sol1 man immer nur eine Spur von dir finden, bist du eh so aufgesplitterter Mensch?" (42) This uncertainty corresponds to the destabilized "ic4" which itself is unsure of its stahis:
"jetzt, wo ich mich imrner weiter von mir entfemt habe, wo ich mich so trostlos verlassen habe, daB ich rnich ofl fkage, wo finden wir uns denn einrnal wieder?" (39) This hgrnentation of the self is reflected in the narration of the text, in the many foms in which Johann appears, including the fact that he sometimes addresses himself in the third person.
In Das Kalkwerk there are many questionable witnesses trying to approach a reality which is not ùnmediately accessible. Here, the central subject, a participant in a world govemed by vat amounts of infornation and instant images, himself has many realities. The simultaneity aimed at by the text is an attempt to reflect this: the simultaneous existence of many selves, many realities.
The text openly addresses the nature of the information society, which is largely responsible for the new perception and understanding of space and time dealt with here.
At a meeting in the news offices, for exarnple, there is talk of the "neuen Gerate" which are meant to satisfy the "Bedarf nach rascherem Eingang, unrnittelbarer Wahmehrnung, sofortigem Ausdnick, direkter Widergabe und langfiistiger Speicherung neuer
Nachrichten" (37). Under this constant flood of information and images, the "Strom der
Nachrichten" (56), Johann can exist only in multiple fom: "Nur gut, dachte er, dai3 ich nicht immer dieselbe Person bin, denn alleine schaffe ich es nicht, aufs Risiko hin, daB wir uns selten einig sind" (57).
The paradox of this news world is that nothing in it seems new anymore. In the vast body of stored and irnrnediately accessible information, which, through volume and standardized formulation becomes a unifom mas, al1 possibilities seem already exhausted. One brief episode, entitled "Die Treppe," describes this experience:
Eine alte, bekannte Treppe, im Dunkeln hinab, aber unerwartet fehlte
die letzte Stufe. Indessen, er stürzte keineswegs, denn in irgendeinem
Film war dieser Moment vorweggenomrnen, weshalb er beunruhigt war
allein durch die Erfahning, wie sein Leben bereits vermittelt war.
Dennoch machte er weiter in der Envartung wirklicher Neuigkeiten, irn
Widerspruch zur Vergegenwartigung al1 der Schrecken, die er mit der
GewiDheit des Trostes in den Museen alter Stadte besichtigte. (90)
How is authentic experience possible if it is anticipated by fictional or factual accounts, or by vicarious experiences in the information flood? Indeed, how are the authentic and the imaginary to be distinguished under these conditions? By extension, how is expenence now to be seen as necessarily pnor to narration? As such, Johann's experience is not unique, but it is presented as an extreme form of the human mind in the information society-extreme because he is in perpetual, immediate contact with the news sources.
Along with the constant rush of the "new" there is the "Speicherung" of the old- al1 exist alongside each other, and if the experience of the world is reduced to an experience of images, the present and the pst have equal status. Johann's suburban home contains a "Dachzimmer" (a "Speicher") full of "Kartons voller Papiere und Schriften" and "Fotografien" (58)-al1 consisting of images and texts from his life. Their accumulation interferes with the direct, unmediated view of the world: "(es) entstanden neue Stapel, und der Weg zum Fenster, zum Blick hinaus in den offenen Himrnel über den Garten wurde immer schwierigerl' (58). Although he longs for order, he has not been able to organize al1 this matenal; in his relationship with it we see the basis of his relation to the text as a whole:
Einmal stieB er gegen einen Stapel Fotografien, als er einen Platz zum
Sitzen suchte; der Stapel stürzte und begmb ihn fast vollstandig unter
lauter Bildern, die von einem Münchner Sommer in seiner Kindheit, bis
ni einem dreitagigen Ful3marsch über den Broadway reichten. Wenn
man schon nicht weiterkomrnt, dachte er dabei, w&e es geradezu
sinnvoll, unter den Sachen von damals begraben zu werden. (58)
This is a concrete expression of the thought which structures the text. Johann does not move forward, as the rush of information and images does not form or reveal a consistent histoncal progression; rather, it constitutes a continuous present. Images of different places and times are equally true and present; indeed, they threaten to crowd out "real" perceptions entirely.
As in Dar Kalkwerk, descriptions of narrated space tend here to be explications or expansions of the narrative structure of the text. For example, in the episode
"Appartement 157, achtzehnter Stockwerk," which is set in one of Johann's apartments,
Johann sits on his bed, trying to calm down after the daily "Aufstau so vieler Bilder" (12).
Behind him are the windows, which occupy the entire wall; the wall in front of him consists of a huge closet with six doors, each one covered with mirrored glass. Looking straight ahead, Johann sees not only his own image, but also the image of the world outside the windows behind him: "hinter ihm, vor ihm enchien gleichviel, sah er gleichviel, weshalb auch wieder die Balance gelang und er sich schlieOlich flach hinlegen konnte mit dem Blick gegen die weiDe Decke, auf die er Wünsche projizierte, die niemand würde aufieichnen komen" (12-1 3). Ail these aspects are present in the text: the simultaneous gaze inward and outward at multiple facets of self and world, and, in the balanced CO-existenceof these perceptions, the blank space, the empty surface on which the text can be projected.
For a text to exist in the information flood, and at the same time portray it, it must not only adapt to the new forms of perception by abandoning traditional Iinearity and comprehensiveness. It must also create or fuid a space, like Johann's white ceiling, in which it can exist, a space which is not already occupied by information. In the segment
"Übers Eis," Johann is disturbed by the repetitive words and patterns used to order and mediate the news: "es waren ja die Bestandteile des immergleichen Mitteilungsmusters, die bei den, die sie benutzten, keinerlei Zweifel und Skrupel vemachten" (63). No critical thoughts or reflective distance are to interfere with the endless Stream of words and images. Yet on this day, Johann is seized by doubt; he does not believe a single word: "Ich war auch an diesem Tag nicht besonders nachdenklich; trotzdern wollte sich in den vertrauten Verlauf der Wortfolgen immer ein Vakuum schieben, eine weite Leere, die es mir schwer machte, die üblichen raschen Verbindungen hemstellen, die unaufiorlichen Schübe der Vermittlung" (63). The blank space is not only charactenzed by al1 that the text leaves out (plot and charater development, etc.) but also takes on a concrete form in the blank spaces that separate the end of each segment from the beginning of the next. This empty space becomes the central structural point in the next text to be discussed here, Hildesheimer's Tynset.
While "what happens" in Becker's text is exceedingly difficult to explain, it seems al1 too easy to do so for Hildesheimer's Tynset. An aging man lies in bed in his house in the mountains and waits for sleep. He drinks red wine and smokes cigarettes, invents discomected stones, grasps at fading, fragmentary memones, discovers the name
"Tynset" in a Norwegian railroad directory and wonders how it would be to travel there.
He tries to avoid thinking about the recent German past and the murderers of his father, who are still at large. Wandering through the house he looks at various objects and has an embarrassing scene in the kitchen with his drunken housekeeper. Eventually he manages to sIeep a few hours; when he awakes he has remembered a few more details and given up on the idea of Tynset. Nothhg significant happens, nothing changes: we are aware that this is a night which in no way differs from any other.
Whether this constitutes a novel is a matter of definition. Hildesheimer himself did not think so. The book "ist kein Roman geworden" he writes in "Antworten über
Tynset" (Jehle 33). Peter Hanenberg calls it a "Gedicht," which does less to adequately define the text than to point out the inadequacy of traditional generic distinctions (133).
On this apparent formlesmess, too, rests Reinhard Baumgart's criticism of the text, which he took to be an unfinished "Manuskript," an "ersten, hochzielenden Entwurf." "Wie unfertig das hier Geplante noch ist," w-rites Baumgart, "das zeigt sich erst im ratlosen
Nebeneinander von Partien, die wie mühelos gelingen, und anderen, die vorerst nichts als trockene Bemühtheit verraten, in ihrer Sprache, im Denken, in ihrem Bauplan" (Rodewald
115). With this, Baumgart implicitly recognizes the central point of the text in this
"Nebeneinander"; the weakness of his critique lies in his dismissal of this as a sign of chaotic incompleteness, his inability to see that it is in fact the struchuing pnnciple of a carefully composed text. Hildesheimer, Like Becker, O ften pointed out the inadequacy O f tradi tional narrative forms in the face of a modem reality, a world that resists fictional depiction. In his talk "The End of Fiction," held at four Irish universities in 1975, he stated: "The attempts of Literature, including the littérature engagée, to master our situation by setting fictitious models, have failed, which does not necessarily mean that they will not figure in the history of literature. But they are a matter of the past. No form of novel will do to express our situation [...In(DasEnde der Fiktionen 110). The old Functions of the novel have become obsolete. The purpose of the traditional novel of Dickens's time-to hansrnit information-is now better perfomed by the mass media, while the function of the novel of Kafka's time-to discover the human sou1 and its functions-is now the field of psychoanalysis. The world has changed, it is no longer so concrete, causes and effects can no longer be taken in with one glance (1 12). The possibility of reproducing reality has been nullified by "the non-existence of collective reality" (1 19). Tvnset, written a decade before this talk, can be seen as a foremer of these thoughts. Here, Hildesheimer has not yet overtly given up on fiction, but he attempts to create a form adequate to this ambiguous reality, a form with a different perspective on space and tirne.
îhe narratois dilemma in the face of reality is a theme that recurs within the text itself The narrator despairs of his ability to reproduce the world; he has the wrong tools for the job: "nirgends ist man der Spur eines Lebens weiter entrückt als dort, wo man diese Spur ni imitieren sucht. Es war als wolle ich mit meiner Hand den Abdnick einer
Fdsohle in den Sand prtigen" (57). Nevertheless, a text is produced. The narrator engages in a different fonn of writing; straight mirnesis no longer suffices: "Was Id3t sich von einem Ding oder einem Ort durch Beschreibung überhaupt mitteilen? Nichts" (92). A direct description of reality is inadequate, and so the narrator must write "around" reality, a process in which the blank spaces encountered in Becker's work gain in importance. The episodes stand in juxtaposition to each other, with no connectives or coherent structures-the empty spaces between them become the narrative spaces from which the narrator produces his text, and into which he projects his central themes.
Compared with Das Kalkwerk and Enahlen bis Ostende, the narrative structure of
T'set is exceptionaily simple in its unity of place, time and narrative voice. The narrator records his thoughts sequentiaily within a brief, comprehensive time-span, so that references to the passage of tirne in this night are kequent and correspond to the passage of the text. The text is not a strearn-of-consciousness novel in the strict sense; as Manfred
Durzak has pointed out, the monologue is artificially arranged: "in der Regel ist es so, dal) eigentlich das Erzahl-Ich, das der Mittelpunk des Monologischen ist, vorgezeigt wird von einem andem Erzahler, der sich dahinter verbirgt" (277). This other narrator, however, remains utterly silent, and we have no reason to believe it is not Hildesheimer himself.
The narratois voice remains stable and self-identical, and is clearly contained within a single, highly restncted arena of action, in which, moreover, very Meaction takes place. This unity serves as the organizing background for the various episodes which are embedded in it, episodes which cannot be reconstnicted into a traditional, causally-linked story, but which are, in themselves, often small, intricately consmicted stories or story fragments. While some of these episodes are from the namator's own real or imagined past, they reveal very little about him. Many are invented or fictionalized stories, for example the famous "Bed Fugue," which describes how seven people met their death together in the "summer bed" (which he now owns) during the English Plague in 1522.
As in Becker's text, then, the unity is provided by the stable &me of time and space, and by a central figure; here, the complexities of Becker's text are elirninated in favour of a clear and comprehensive narrative hmework. Unlike Enahlen bis Ostende,
Tynset provides muent and lengthy retums fiom the inset episodes to the "here" and
"now" of the narrating subject. This coherence and stability are Meremphasized by the form of the text, which is flowing and continuous, and which contains no nurnbered or titled paragraphs or segments. There are, however, many blank spaces in the "Textbild" of Tynset: hgmented sentences and spaces between paragraphs. Tynset thereby moves one step beyond Becker's text to provide a more extreme contrast to Das Kalkwerk.
Whereas Bernhard uses the discourse of his novel to spatialize an essentially temporally- structured story, Hildesheimer employs simple juxtaposition within a coherent structure to provide a pichire of spatial and temporal destabilization on the thematic level-the contrast is much clearer here than in Becker's text, where discursive destabilization is also used.
In Das Kalkwerk, al1 that is said refers to Konrad and his story, and in Errahlen bis Ostende al1 the segments help to explicate Johm's situation. The connection between the inserts of Tynset and the person of the narrator is not so easily established. Certainly, he narrates them, and many of thern are episodes fiom his life story, but what relation, what meaning, is to be fond in, for example, the lengthy description of a newspaper photograph showing Franz Joseph Sû-auss and a dead cardinal, or in the mini-novella of the piague bed, or in a lengthy account of how the narrator once lost his way while dnving through Hannover? Hildesheimer himself clairned that the central theme of the text is "das
Entsetzliche" as typified by the crimes of Nazi Gennany-a matter with which he, as a
Jew and a ~latorat the Nuremberg trials, was well acq~ainted.~It is difficult to ignore, however, that this theme is not explicitly, comprehensively treated within the text, where far more space is taken up with discussions of weather, roosters, and Catholicism.
The central thematic structure is established through a few brief but direct statements which are often presented as afterthoughts, and which by no means produce a coherent picture of the Geman past or present. The narrator writes of "Ein Mann mit festem
Nacken, dem ich mich gegenüber fand, irgendwo in einern Speisewagen. Spater sah ich sein Bild in einer Zeitung, er hiel3 Jerka oder Jorka und hat, wenn ich rnich recht erinnere, im Krieg ein paar Diinen die Hiifhochen herausgenomrnen, um sie ein paar Deutschen einnisetzen, eine groBe Kapazitat auf seinem Gebiet [...]" (246). Or he wonders: "und wo war es, da0 ich Larnpenschirme sah, aus heller menschlicher Haut, verfertigt in
Deutschland von einem deutschen Bastler, der heute als Pension& in Schleswig-Holstein lebt?" (139) Such comments arise without connection to preceding passages, and are cut off just as abruptly, without ever being commented or reflected upon. They al1 contain the same thematic elements: the crimes of the pst, the continued existence of the criminals, the identity and simultaneous existence of both in memory. Yet these segments are not explained, and there are no clear connections between them.
This becomes most apparent in the well-known telephone episode. The narrator
"Antworten über Tynset" 32. A reference to this is also included in the text of Masante, where the narrator ponders: "Es sind da unsichtbare Zettel im Zettelkasten. Ich sollte sie ordnen wie ein Lotto, aber das Thema variiert nicht genug, weicht nicht von seinem Grundmotiv ab, dern Schrecken" (1 18). remembers calling various strangers at night and asking them if they feel guilty. All do.
They flee, but not without fint uttering threats: "Warte nur! Bald sind wir wieder da!
Dmgeht es Euch an den Kragen!" (33) Finally, he cails a certain Kabasta, a man with big, red, blond hands, whom the narrator, as he obliquely mentions, has encountered before. The narrator introduces himself as "Bloch," claiming, now, "dieser Name fiel mir gerade ein, er bedeutete nichts, nimindest nicht ni diesem Zeitpunkt" (44). Kabasta is not to be scared off; he notes the name of the caller, who is driven by his subsequent fear and paranoia to quit using or anmering his phone, and evenhially to leave Gerrnany.
The significance of this passage is indicated later, when the taik is of the nose operation of a certain Doris Wiener, who later died in a "Gaskammer" "installiert von der
Finna Fottle und Geiser" (63). Her husband, writes the narrator, "hie0 übrigens Bloch, er war, soweit ich mich jetzt erinnere, der eimige Mensch, den ich jemals gekamt habe, der sich buchstablich sein Grab selbst schaufelte, und zwar unter Aufsicht von Kabasta, der ihn dam, Gesicht grabwarts, vor das Grab stellte und ihn durch einen GenickschuB totete, mit seiner rechten Hand, der groflen, roten, blonden, dieser seiner Hand" (63). In view of the countless clues which appear throughout the text, this appears to be one of its central passages, yet virtually al1 the essential information is left out. We read at length about
Doris Wiener's nose operation, but are not told who she is, and what her comection to the narrator is. And who is her husband, whose narne the narrator, in his cal1 to Kabasta, assumes, ostensibly for no particular reason? Even the Nazis are here, and elsewhere, never called by their name. This indirectness has led many cntics to the conclusion that this is an ahistorical text with no connection to real time.'O
For some clarification one must look at yet another passage, the only one in which the narrator brings himself in personal contact with the crimes that so preoccupy him.
While he wanders around his house at night he regularly sees the ghost of Hamlet's father.
At one point he reacts angrily when he suspects that the ghost wants to win his support:
Aber ich gehe unter seinem Blick hindurch, ich beachte die Erscheinung
nicht, sie hat mit mir nichts ni tun, sie ist nicht mein Vater, nein,
mein Vater war anders
-mein Vater war ein besserer Mann als dieser da, sein Geist steht nicht
an einem Treppenabsatz, er hat vielmehr diese Erde endgültig und ohne
Bedauem verlassen, er halt nicht, wie dieser hier, nach Moglichkeiten
einer Rache Ausschau, obgleich sein Ende nicht so sanft war wie das
Ende dieses Mannes hier, nein, kein Gift bei einem
Nachmittagsnickerchen ins Ohr getraufelt, er ist nicht sanfi ins Jenseits
hinübergeschlummert, sondem erschlagen von chnstlichen
Familienvatem aus Wien oder aus dem Weserland. (1 55-56)
The persona1 history of the narrator, enhKined as it is with history as such-a history which continues to be mentaily present at lest as long as he exists-is not explicitly told, but rather suggested. It depends both on the reader's ability to reflect many hgments of the text against each other, and on an independent knowledge of the histoncal and present reality beyond the pages of the text, to make sense. The centre of the text is an empty
-- 'O For example Fritz Radda&, who writes that Hildesheimer has created "einen von der Zeit nahezu unversehrten Kosmos [...] . Nicht weltlos, aber gegenwartsarm" ("Die Prosa" 58). space. The references to Hdet suggest not oniy the narrator's inability to avenge his father's murder, as is often suggested, but also reveal his refusal to directly transform this central reality into literature.
Apart nom the passages mentioned above, al1 other references to the central theme appear as ofniand, enigmatic references. Scattered throughout the text are brief episodes and remarks which, when seen in isolation fiom the implicit thematic structure, have scant meaning and often no explicit relation to the narrator. So, for exarnple, the
Norwegian town Hamar, home of a famous "Wagners&gerin," is brought into relation with the word "Besetningsprobleme," of which the narrator says: "Dieses Wort gefallt mir nicht" (18). The double meaning of the word becomes evident only later, when the bloody history of Harnar under Nazi occupation, and the narrator's own past, have been mentioned.
So, too, the narrator mentions in passing that he no longer lives in Germany (28,
39), and says that he feels "Angst vor der Stille der Nachte, in denen jene Gestalten am
Werk sind, die keine Angst verspüren" (39), a comment which sounds like banal superstition until the larger context is established. Once the context is clear there is an implicit meaning in his remark about an aunt who stopped sending an annual present der she joined "eine nationale Bewegung" (89), and in the comment on citizens who obey road signs "bis zum extremen Grad des Gehonams schlechthin" (1 13). He mentions a sign advertising "Fottle und Geiser Gasofen" (1 15) in a German city, and also "die
Judengasse, wo ich hingehore" (1 18). When an evangelist tries to take over a house party the narrator remarks that people are "so empfbglich fûr den Willen eines, der sie
überrascht und übemimpelt, der den empfhglichen Augenblick zu nutzen versteht" (165). Commenthg on the scene with Celestina, the housekeeper, he calls it "Eh furchtbarer Irrtum, stellvertretend für andere Irrtümer, deren Zeuge ich war und deren
Zeuge ich nicht war" (228). And, when he lists the narnes and addresses of the buyers of his herbal mixtures he adds: "ja, aile unbekannt und alle gegenwariig-keine Gefahr des
Vergessens hier-" (246). On this level the narrator's remarks only implicitly meaningful, yet once the general thematic structure is identified they can easily be drawn into relation to it.
Certainly, any novel will contain many parts which have meaning only in relation to the larger context. The difference here is that the usual hierarchy is reversed. The centrai theme is pushed Uito the background, hgmented, and written around; it remains largely a blank space, occurs in asides or in subordinate clauses. Central position is given to elements which normally would take the form of digressions or inessential details. The text depends, for its production of meaning, entirely upon reflexive reference.
The question why Hildesheimer chose such a fom is easily answered. He writes around an historkal event, but not about it, thereby remaining hue to his scepticism about the possibility of caphuing the new reality (or realities) in a fictional form. The discursive form of the text, however, is more than an expression of the modemist
"Sprachkrise." The text contains no chronological development; al1 its parts are relative to each other. While the "Erzahlzeit" does progress linearly, in a very bnef time span, and the place of narration remains consistent, these are nowhere presented as unique. On the contrary, the reader is assured that this is a typical night, and that these are typical thoughts which repeat each other constantly: nothing happens to separate this time from any other." Thus, as will be further discussed below, events of the historical past not only repeat themselves, but actually remain present. History itself, its linear progression, is rej ected.
Hermann Kahler, writing in Sinn und Fom, stated: "Entsetzlichkeiten werden als
Bagatellen behandelt, über die sich niemand wundert. Sie rangieren gleichwertig neben den alltaglichsten Dingen" (792-93). He took this as a mimetic effort on the part of the text to portray the situation in West Gexmany around 1965, but found it problematic that
Hildesheimer deliberately treated the most important theme of the text "entweder als
Episode oder Beilaufigkeit" (793). It is, however, just these fiagrnentary cornrnents around the edges of the text that structure it, and provide orientation in it." Hildesheimer himself cornmented on this form in a conversation with Manfied Durzak: "es ist eine ausgesprochene Rondo-Form. Imrner da, wo es an den Schrecken führt, wird es abgestoBen, und es beginnt [...] ein vollig neues Thema, das dam immer wieder auf den
Schrecken führt und wieder abgestoBen wird" (Durzak 285). This musical form has received sufficient comment elsewhere, yet it is interesting to recall Hart Nibbng's remark that such a form leads to "Mitgehen irn Einzelnen bei gleichzeitigem Blick aufs Ganze"
------
" See for example p. 19t I2 The Marxist critic Kahler joins others in condemning Hildesheimer's "anti-historical" stance: "Die Wiederholung als Kompositionsprinzip entspricht hier einem Wettbild, das keine Entwickiung in der Geschichte, sondeni die Geschichte als Figuration eines ewig gleichen Prinzips sieht" (793). It must be noted that Kahler, as a scholar fiom the GDR, follows the party line in seeing his own country as the old opponent of the National Socialist regime-the imaginary clean break with the pst permeates his article. While Tynsef is ahistorical in the sense that it denies a progressive development of history, the importance of past events is not thereby relativized; on the contrary. Peter Hanenberg, one of the few scholars who has noted this, writes: "So wenig diese Ereignisse eine ausf3hrliche Schildening erfahren, so sehr bestirnmen sie doch den gesamten Gang der Reflexion" (120). (12021.1~
The true centre of the text, then, is essentially empty, a blank space which can be
Blled with any number of assumptions and speculations drawn, in equal measure, fiom the text and fiom the extra-textuai reaiity, pdcularly nom history, which in this implicit form is of vital importance. This concept of the "Zwischenraum" is itself a theme within the text and assumes a concrete fom.
The narrator shows a fondness for the factual texts amund him, such as the
Nonvegian train directory, the telephone books, and the newspapers. The tirnetable is a document of unchanging, predictable repetition, which represents an exact correspondence with real time and çpace: "die Entfemungen bleiben irnmer die gleichen, darauf wenigstens kann man sich verlassen" (10). The easily-read symbols of the
"Kursbuch" "offenbaren sich in klaren Zeichen und strenger Ordnung: jede Ankunftzeit und jede Abfahrtzeit steht für einen tatsachlichen, nachprüfbaren Vorgang" (1 1). Even this sûictly utilitarian text, however, contains empty fields which could be filled with
Mermeaning: "aber im nonvegischen Kursbuch steht rnehr, wenn man es recht ni lesen venteht. Zwischen den Zeilen breiten sich die grof3en Entfemungen aus, weitet sich ein sproder, windiger Spielraum, den die Daten einer Ankunft oder einer Abfahrt nur ungefahr umreiBen, ohne ihn ni nennen oder ihn tu erfahren" (1 1-12). A similar point is also made about the telephone book: "Es ist, im Ganzen, ein Buch voller gedriingter
Wiedergabe von Tatsachen, nirgends begibt es sich auf den Boden der Spekulation, und doch findet sich auch hier manches zwischen den Zeilen, das eine Geschichte erzahlt"
I3 Others noting this musical form include Probst in "Die Kategorien von Zeit und Raum und das Steigem der Realitit," and Stanley in "The Structure of Wolfgang Hildesheimer's Tynset." (28). Later he considers those spots "wo das Telefonbuch Unausgesprochenes wiederspiegelt, wo nvischen den nüchtemen Zeilen sich ein kurzer jaher Ausblick auf eine Landschaft unterdrückter, venchwiegener Tragik offiet" (60).
Only in these empty spaces does the narrator fuid the basis of his narration, the point from which he can begin to tell his fiagmentary stories. Therefore he continually searches for empty space, looking through his telescope to fmd a gap between the stars:
"für sie wie für mich ist das Nichts der leere Raum, durch den man hindurchsieht auf
Etwas, Nichts ist das, was Zwischenraum ist und sonst nichts" (181). Here, the blank space would be black, like the painting hanging in an upstaks room of the narrator's house. The signature on the painting is clearly legible, but the painting itself is "schwarz, so ddes auch nicht den geringsten SchluD nilaBt, was es einrnal dargestellt haben mag"
(87).
When he describes his view through the telescope, he is descnbing his own narrative point of view (182f). His thoughts themselves consist of fragments, his stories and memones arise fiom their interplay, fkom the space between them: "wenn ich das, was ich denke, wirklich noch Gedanken nennen soll, diese Splitter, diese Bruchstücke, abgetakelte Sehnsüchte, deren Objekt mir entschwunden ist oder soeben entschwindet"
(73). He himself exists in one of these "Zwischemiiume," moving between various realities but fimly anchored in none.
With this, there anses the question of the narrator's standpoint in this text of
"Zwischenraume." There is, in his own estimation, a destabilization of this standpoint, similar to that in Becker's text, a destabilization which rests in the identity of the individual himself, and not simply in the knowledge about this individual, as was the case in Dm Kalkwmk. The narrator sees himself scaîtered between many simultaneous possibilities, so that a single, stable point of view is no longer possible: "ich sehe mich weit von mir entfernt, sehe mich fem und Hein und sehe mich wieder nah und riesig gr08 und wieder winzig klein, ich bin hier, und ich bin nicht hier, ich bin dort hinten und wieder hier und wieder weit weg von mir" (13). That this indeterminacy seems to contradict the apparent stability of a narrator who never leaves his house and narrates his text in a very brief segment of tirne, is openly commented on: "Standort? Wo stehe ich den.? Hier-nirgendwo. Nirgendwo, der einzige Ort, an dem ich atmen kann, fiei, von allem gelost, von nichts bedrhgt als von Witterung" (50). He seeks a standpoint where the world outside the house no longer has any independent existence, where the break is complete, and it cannot touch hirn. Reality, beyond the cyclical, ever-changing yet etemally recurring weather, takes place inside his head.
Therefore, the narrator cmapproach his material in a pluralistic way; he is nobody and nowhere, so that he can be everywhere. Telling his memory of a garden labyrinth in
Italy he states: "Ich war im Park, in einer Allee von Zypressen und horte das Lachen und die Rufe von weitem, und ich war auf dem Altan und sah hinab auf die Kopfe, und ich war im Labyrinth, in allen Gassen gleichzeitig, ich irrte selbst urnher, ich war innen und auBen, war über allem und unter allem, ich war allein und ich war zu zweit" (98). This is a narrator who has not only renounced the responsibility to represent reality, but has also abandoned the modernist attempt to represent the perception of this reality. He attempts only to show his own reality, and in this attempt has complete fkeedom, is no longer caught within logical temporal and spatial constraints. Therefore, the attempt of a reconstruction of events, as in Dus Kalkwerk, does not even corne into question.'"
Whereas in Bernhard's novel the narrative is perceived as referring to something else (the story of Konrad), the narrator of Tynset has achieved that isolation Konrad had claimed to seek. Nobody speaks of him but himselE "Aber seit ich nur hier bin, bin ich nur noch hier, immer ausschiie0licher, der Kreis, in dem ich mich bewege, wird immer kleiner, und meine Bewegungen innerhalb des Kreises werden immer sparsamer, kaum berühre ich noch seine schnimpfenden Grenzen" (140). No contrasting point of view is offered; it is only because the narrator does not purpoa to explain anything that his standpoint avoids becoming authonal.
Time has aiready been discussed in relation to the thematic structure of the text.
Within the central thernatic complex, the sections of the text can be reflected on and related to each other so that a coherence can be found, despite the fact that the central issues are not openly discussed, and the narrator himself daims he wishes only to avoid them. His dislike of memories, however, directly contradicts his conception of time, and so he cannot avoid his memones. Time is not eliminated, but it does assume a mythic dimension, a static form in which the past is continually present. As such, it is denied the possibility of passage, and forgetting becomes a desired but impossible goal. This is concretely expressed, for example, in the huge pile of old newspapen by the narrator's bed, since they no longer serve their original hinction, to inform readen about the new, to
l4 AS Manfied Durzak has observed, this is a narrative consciousness "das sich in assoziativen Spriingen bewegt und jeglic he Konsistenz, Chronologie und Psychologie als entbehrliche Requisiten einer andem Welt erscheinen 1aDt" (298). Walter Jens has written: "Recht betrachtet handelt es sich um den Erfahmngsbericht eines Menschen, der in einer einzigen Nacht alle Riiume und Zeiten durchmifit [...] und doch immer wieder nur sich selbst trifît f...] sich selbst, das Subjekt und Objekt dieses Buches" (Rodewald 125). be essentially transitory and become worthless as tbe passes. Lnstead, they are contlliually present and retain their relevance. He randomly reaches into the pile and pulls out a paper nom 1961 (100), to examine a single photo showing a moment forever frozen in tirne.'' This image is equally present as the objects surrounding him and the fictional images he conjures up fkom a largely fictional past.
Tirne is expressed throughout the text in the image of the circle, which corresponds to the repetitive, non-linear form of the text itself Not only the narrator's own existence has become cyclical and essentially unchanging. His only human contact,
Celestina (with whom no real communication is possible), also finds herself caught in a despiring loop of failure, in which she drinks because she feels guilty about missing mass, and then misses the next mass because she drank too much: "Jedenfalls kommt sie aus dem bosen Zirkel nicht mehr heraus, er hat sich geschlossen, Iückenlos" (22).
The narrator's comection with the world, the telephone, is not used for communication, but only to Iisten to the recorded weather forecast. Not only is the weather itself cyclical, but the medium is as well, since the recording continuaily repeats itself (48fT). From inside the house he can also hear the fountain in the courtyard, the endless recycling of the water. In the presence of this sound he says, "hier ist Ewigkeit"
(84). He empties his bottle of red wine ana continually refills it (125).
Al1 these images reflect the narrator's understanding of historical time and his belief that the crimes of the past are not overcome, that they continue to exist and will be repeated. Remembering his visit to a ruined city he muses that it is "[ ...] so wie diese
'"imultaneity within the embedded stories, especially the "Bett Fugue," has already been comprehensively discussed by Petuchowski and so will not be Mer treated here. Nabataerstadt wieder ni Wüste geworden ist, aus der sie enstand, eine Stadt aus Wüste"
(77). Particular events or things are simply varying foms of a substance which is continually present.
This concept of the refiects the narrator's view of the central theme, the horron of the past which cmot be simply packaged as an histoncal anomaly and left behind. He ponders: "Das Entsetzen ist nicht an eine Stefle gebunden, es kemt auch keinen Ort, es wachst in der Zeit, und überall gleichzeitig, mancherorts unsichtbar, aber allgegenwârtig, off verdeckt, aber es wachst, es gedeiht, es blüht, es mgt Früchte" (258). The organic metaphor is particularly appropnate here; it suggests cyclical variation within continuous existence. Hildesheimer, writing twenty years before the "Historikentreit," presents a position which to contemporary readers may appear to relativize the crimes of Nazi
Germany. Yet in lifting the Holocaust out of its position of historical and social uniqueness he simp1 y demonstrates hunanity 's inability to develop bey ond the barbarity of this massive crime, which aAer al1 was cornmitted in a country supposedly far advanced on the progressive road of civilization. The linear development of history is, in this sense, discredited by the crimes of the present.
As with Das Kalkwerk and Erziïhlen bis Ostende, the narrated space of Tynset must be seen in relation to the narrative space discussed above. The stasis of the text in juxtaposition, the concept of the "Zwischenraum," and the standpoint of narration are al1 concretely reflected in the depiction of interior and extenor space.
Perhaps the most relevant depiction of place in the text describes a solitary drive up to a mountain pass on a winter's day. The narrator remembers driving along with "kein
Ziel" (51). Eventually he fin& himself in a landscape obscured by white fog and snow: "es herrscht Nebel, überail weiB und grauweiB, keine Umrisse sind erkenntlich" (52). The points of orientation are gone; there is no up or down, forwards or backwards: "Himrnel und Erde und Berg und StraOe gehen ineinander über" (52). His only aid to find his way is his own faulty memory. Here, in this empty place, he happens upon his old nemesis, the Reverend Wesley B. Prosniczer, sitting in his car, fiozen and dead. The evangelist looks as though he made the transition £iom life to death in an instant and now is Iiterally fiozen in time. In this scene narrated space is essentially indistinguishable from the abstract standpoint of the namtor, his ambiguous position and his conception of tirne.
Despite the social isolation of the narrator, the house he has withdrawn into is not a solid fortress, a second "Kallcwerk." It is full of holes, cracks and ernpty spaces:
"anstelle der Substanz klafft Hohlraum in Form von Ritzen oder Fugen oder Spalten oder
Lochem, eine Tiir hebt sich, unheimlich langsam, über ihrer Schwelle, ein Fenster verzieht sich, wird windschief, wird undicht" (8). Therefore, wind, sounds, and scents, a11 evoking other times and places, cm move through the house: "es zieht allerlei durch meine Raurne" (9). Paradoxically, the narrator is withdrawn but not separate from the world.
Above al1 else, the house is a place where time has been spatialized, and this distinguishes it from the world outside. Again and again time is descnbed in spatialterms, as in the description of the draughts blowùig through the rooms: "manchmal, plotzlich, zieht ein jaher Sog von Lufi durch die Zimmer, Wind, ehStoD geballter Zeit" (8) Time is even stored in space: "da groae holzeme Zimmer nebenan, in dem nichts ist als eine groBe angespeicherte Pause" (19). The house is, rnoreover, a centre of rneasurement, where dl phenornena are carefully recorded. The narrator inhented it from a "Nemonkel" who was obsessed with tuming the world into predictable signs:
Das Haus war und ist von oben bis unten vol1 von Uhren, Kalendem,
Barometern, von denen das eine das andere uberwachte, von
Hydrometem und Hygrometern und Thermometern, ein MeDinstrument
in jedem Zimmer, in Treppenhaus, Keller, Schuppen und Speicher,
Überdl Ablesbares, Kontrolle des Spürbaren oder Prognose des ni
Verspürenden, überall P feile, Zeiger, Quecksilber, Skalen von Millibar,
Celsius, Fahrenheit, Réaumur [...]. (14 1-42)
Wolfgang Rath writes of this as the transformation of reality into the matenal of perception: "Was den zeitgenossischen Alltag organisiert und dominiert, kristallisiert in
Tynset zum absurden Heim. Es ist die Welt irn Zeichen des wissenschaftlich ErfaOten, dessen bestirnmende Rolle in heutiger Zeit von Hildesheimer in die Karikatur eines
Hauses übersetzt ist, in dem das Instrumentariurn wissenschaftlicher Arbeit
allgegenwartig scheint" (25). The house, hl1 of old objects and instruments of
measurement, has the static nature of a museum, where various objects are displayed to
signiv distant times and places, entirely removed Corn their usual spatio-temporal
relations. In this static existence, Tynset can be the only possible "Ziel" (75, 99, 11 1) simply because the narrator hows he will never go there, and because he knows nothing about it. It is not until the next text, Masante, that Hildesheimer's namator manages to
leave his house, and this journey leads him ody into silence and nothingness.
Maante may be considered a continuation of Tynset: there are indications that it has the same narrator, and certainly many of the themes are the sarne. The form, however, is less open and more cohesive, while there are several additional characters and a new setting, which add significantly to the story level. In this text, the narrator has travelled to a remote desert outpost, Meona, where he meets an Irish officiai, the smuggler and ex-priest Alain, and the barkeeper Maxine, an alcoholic storyteller. The narrator vends the day settling in, dropping into the tavem La Dernière Chance from time to time to challenge Maxine to rounds of storytelling in which facts and lies are irretrievably combined. He broods about the "H&cherf' who are following hun-arnong them the infamous Kabasta fiom Tynset. In the morning he goes for a little walk in the desert and never returns, presurnably having met his end in the wilderness.
In Marante the position of the narrator is a continuation and intensification of the position in Tynset. No longer simply withdrawn into himself, he has reached a place where extemal reaiity itself corresponds to his inner conception of time and space. The desert is so removed fkom the ordinary passage of time that even the cyclical repetitions of weather are no longer perceptible: "Wie miDt man hier das Verstreichen und gleichzeitig die dauernde Wiederkehr der Zeit, deren Zyklen ja niemals überzeugend gemessen wurden?" (8). The stasis of continuous repetition has given way to an absolute stasis, in which nothing changes except the forms of the sand, lifled and levelled by the wind.
The desert and the outpost Meona have no connection with the outside world; not even the telephone can be used here, and there are no fountains, roosters, or church bells to be heard which might make a perception of temporal life possible. Whereas in Tynset the churchbells in the momhg uiform the namator of the death of a child, nobody dies in
Meona. Instead, people just wak out into the desert and disappear, swallowed by the sand, never to be seen again. The narrator no longer lives in a space isolated from the world; Meona itself is the world for him now, and beyond it is the mere empty space:
"Da tut sich die Wüste vor meinem Fenster auf und dehnt sich hin, als schlieBe sie sich nirgends wieder, weder als Flache noch als Raum. Es wellt sich entlang, entfachert sich, ein Meer von Sandgebilden, von erstarrten Hügeln zwischen entarrten Talem. Von hier ist es kaum denkbar, ddhinter ailedem nochmals eine Welt beginne" (14). Even the sky, previously a field of reference, is affected: "Der Himmel über mir ein einziges Flimmern, unter ihm alles gleichzeitig nah und fem" (1 5).16 This is a world where a11 has been measured, where no external thing can intrude: even the last insect was caught two years earlier (26). It is a vast blank space, where the nmator (and Maxine) can spread out their stories; as such it is like the library he describes, which contains hundreds of books "und die Seiten alle leer. In seiner gesamten Bibliothek stand nicht ein einziges Wort" (60).17
This emptiness presents a sharp contrast to the namitor's previous museum-like home: "Diese Raume, die ich mer bewohnt habe, einen nach dem anderen, diese
Speicher, angehaufi und stetig sich erweitemd, sich stapelnd mit Briefen, Büchem,
Bildem, Zetteln, Fetzen, Resten, allen den Versuchen, das Leben über Bedeutung oder
Beschreibung zu meistem" (59). Now there is only the small tavem, filled with objects to
' Peter Horst Neumann, in a comment on the choice of this setting, makes a connection which wilI also be relevant for Die Schrecken des Eises and Die Entdeckung der Langsarnkeit: "Es war Rilke, der, als er in den Tite1 seines Malte Laurids Brigge das Wort 'Aufzeichnungen' setzte, den Namen fi derlei vergeblic he Romane erfand-Romane, denen die Fabel abhanden gekommen ist, der Reflexions- und Eri~eningsstoff aber unermeBlich geworden ist. In solchen 'Vergeblichen Aufzeichnungen' sind Unterscheidungen zwischen Erfahning und Imagination nicht mehr moglich. Hier ist die letzte Instanz das erzahlende Ich in seiner Isolation, die mgleich Bewahning und Ausgesetztheit bedeutet und die in der Wahl der 'extremen me' (Schneelandschaf't oder Wüste) ihre topographischen Symbole findet" (Jehle 265). inspire stories, set against the huge void of the desert. In this fiontier place, the fictions and the truths of the outside world are no longer separable f?om each other. The narrator soon gives up tryllig to distinguish Maxine's lies fiom her true revelations, just as the reader accepts the narrator's own accounts as al1 equally true or false.
Here, in this new position, the personified "Zwischenraum" or blank space of Our previous texts, the boundary between fact and fiction has broken down entirely. It is not only that the narrator appears to be aware of his own status (he pours himself a drink "wie ein Romanheld" 98). He goes so far as to assert his (fictional) reality as true, against other literary fictions. So, for example, he demands recognition of the veracity of the
"Hkcher" who pursue him and his acquaintance Gerber: "Dennoch, sie waren real,
Gerbers Hacher, Motschmann und Fotterle, sie entstammten nicht seiner Fantasie und entstammten nicht der Literatur. Es sind nicht Kafka's Cette und bleiche Abgesandte, die ihr Opfer nicht ansprechen" (259). Of this confounding statement Christoph Eykman wites: "Hildesheimer stellt seine eigene Fiktion als 'reai' hin und kontrastiert sie mit der
Fiktion Kafkas, die aber ihrerseits als au0erfktionaler Bezugspunkt und qua literarisches
Werk Wirklichkeitsstatus besitzt" (330). If one folIows this argument to its logical conclusion, one ends up in a vicious circle, however, since Hildesheimer's own characters, as existents in a literary text, have the same status as Kafka's.
The fate of the narrator alerted critics, not only because of the implied pun
("Hildesheimer schickt Erzahler in die Wüste"). Clearly, this text marks a tuniing point for Hildesheimer, but may also be seen as symptomatic for the final station of the
" Rath writes of this setting: "Die Adenwelt erscheint so leergesamrnelt[ ...]. Mit Hilfe des wissenschaftlichen Znstrumentariums werden so [...] Raum und Zeit aus der Wirklichkeit narrative crisis, the question being what kind of text one could write after the narrator has been lost to silence. Hildesheimefs answer came with his Marbot, a work that helps to indicate a new direction for the narrative literary text.
Marbot: Eine Biographie is considered by many to be Hildesheimefs masterpiece, the highlight of his literary development. A reader not aware of the work's true nature may well take it at face value; reportedly, at least one cntic has done so publicly.
Opening the book, the reader hds a portrait of Sir Andrew Marbot (1 801 -1 830), by
Delacroix. The book describes the life and work of the little-known yet highly visionary art critic: his conversations and correspondences with the great European artists and thinkers of his tirne, his theories of painting and psychology, his clandestine relationship with his mother, and his early suicide. Excerpts from the diaries and letters of figures such as Goethe, Henry Crabb Robinson, and Schopenhauer, as well as sarnples of
Marbot's own writings, provide glimpses into this long-forgotten life. Included are paintings of Marbot's family and fKends, and photographs of his family's manors. Not only is Marbot exhaustively reconstmcted in this "perfect biography," but the continuing gaps in our knowledge of him are aiso explicitly revealed. It is quite likely that more than one unsuspecting reader has been fooled into believing that this Marbot actually existed.
Various forms of the traditional realistic novel, particularly the "Bildungsroman," are essentially fictional biographies that aim to disguise their fictitiousness. Modernist works such as Woolf s Orlando, on the other hand, openly reveal that they are fiction. In
Murbot we find a work in which fiction and historical fact are mingled and given the herausgelesen" (26). same ontological status, ofien to such an extent that intensive research would be required
to separate the two.l6 As a result, the text both disguises and thernatizes its fictionality, its
status in relation to the world. It works on both levels, and maintains an active interplay
between them.19
Marbot offers a transition between the texts discussed so far and those dealt with
in the following sections. Hildesheirner's own development as a writer can be seen as
exemplary for this development. While his early novel Paradies der faischen Vagel
maintains a relatively haditional fom, Tynset is, as we have seen, an experiment in the
footsteps of Djuna Barnes's "spatial" novel. Marante shows, again, a rather more
conventional discourse and coherent story, while the spatial and temporal elements are
camied over to the thematic level. Murbot is the logical consequence of this development,
a text in which the traditional elements of story and chronological structure are regained
but not unreflectedly executed.
The text no longer attempts to break down linearity and causality on the discursive
level, nor is the story broken down in the events it tells. The text plays with the
categones of time and space by creating an ambiguous relationship between text and
reality which cannot be resolved. The status of history and present, perception and
In her essay "Fictional versus Historical Lives: Borderlines and Borderline Cases" Domt Cohn argues that Marbot, a fiction masquerading as documented biography, is a unique case and not bound to any existing genre. While this is true, a reader with any howledge of Hildesheimer's work would approach ths text with great suspicion and, with the help of several irnplicit dues (such as the absence of al1 the fictitious characters' names fiom the otherwise exhaustive index), will soon realize the text is a mixture of reality and fiction. l9 That the interplay of fiction and reality existed in Hildesheimer's previous works should not be forgotten-where Marbot is essentially a fictitious biography posing as fact, many critics take Tynset and Masante to be the reverse. Henry A. Lea claims the two earlier texts are "eine einzigartige Mischung von WirMichkeit und Fiktionalitat, wobei die Wirklichkeit überwiegt" creation, are continuously rever~ed.~'Because of this the question of textual authority, as
Judith Ryan states, "becomes the very backbone" of the text (58). niis is the question of origins and sources, as was discussed at length in relation to Dar Kalkwerk, with the spatialization of the through the undermiring of hierarchical chronology, the melding together of causes and effects.
The comection between the breakdown of the fictionkeality opposition and the temporal and spatial aspects of the text lies in the differences of perception, which is built on the categories of time and space. A novel may, like Das Kalkwerk, thernatize perception and mediation of reality by fhdamentally disturbing these categories, and this is particularly effective when the discourse itself, the readers' means of perceiving the story and the author's means of transmitting it, is disturbed. A text which undermines linearity and chronology, which confuses the traditional separation of time and space- and here Tynsei is meant as well-such a text questions the relationship between the perceiving subject and reality. Marbot has an entirely different strategy, for its retum to the chronological story is not a return to tradition. hstead, it is an answer to a new situation, one which is well sumrnarized by Peter Horst Neumann:
Es fehlt die kollektive Realitat. Zu viele Wirklichkeiten konkunieren
miteinander, an zu vielen nehmen wir gleichzeitig teil. Mit einigem
Recht darf man sagen, daB sie sich gegenseitig fiktionalisieren, ganz ni
schweigen von der latenten Entwirklichung faktischer Vorgiinge durch
(Jehle 53). Peter Horst Neumann goes even further in claiming that Hildesheimer's works before Mozart and Marbot were anti-traditional biographies. die visuellen Informations-Medien. [...] Im selben Augenblick verliert
aber die Bestimmung des Fiktionalen ihre Verbindlichkeit. Fiktion
kann jetzt nur noch von gewissen Partial-Realitaten her definiert
werden. Verschiedenen Erfahnuigs- und Informationsgemeinschaften
wird sehr Verschiedenes ais real oder fiktiv erscheinen. (25)
Hildesheimer was aware of this new conception of reality quite early, as his talk "The End of Fiction" shows. The treatment of the crisis of narration reached a dead end for him in
Musunte; there, as Günter Blamberger points out, it is demonstrated "daB fiir den Roman der Gegenwart der 'Stillstand in der Krise' eigentlich nicht ni perpetuieren ist, daO sich aus der Radikalisierung der Knse des Romans der Moderne das Schweigen als letne
Konsequenz ergeben muB" (99). With the recognition of a new concept of reality, however, new possibilities are opened for the narrator. No longer restricted to a modemist program, he can wilfully appropriate forms of literary tradition and move with them into unexplored temtory. This will be seen in the two following texts of exploration, Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis and Die Entdeckung der
Langsamkeit.
'O As Kàte Hamburger has pointed out, the text paradoxically never engages in "fictionalization" through dialogues or fictionalized scenes. The narrator "cannot" reconstruct those episodes of Marbot's life for which there is no "documentation"(93). Chapter IV: Christoph Ransmayr's Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis and Sten Nadolny's Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit
Wolfgang Hildesheimer's Marbot melds the ontological status of fiction and histoncal facts. It has a conventional discoune and coherent story, while ambiguities in the order of space and tirne are transferred irnplicitly to the thematic level. The backbone of the text is the question of textual authority-the is "spatialized" when the hierarehical chronology of sources is undemiined, and when causes and effects are melded together.
The next three texts to be examined here, Christoph Ransmayr's Die Schrecken des
Eises und der Finsternis and Die Zetzte WeZt and Sten Nadolny's Die Entdeckung der
Langsnrnkeit, take this development one step forward. Al1 three works refer to a reality which is itself textual. They are based upon the written documents of, or concerning, historical figures, in the case of Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis and Die
Entdeckung der Langsamkeit; or upon the life and works of an historical figure, in Die
Zetzte WeZt. Concretely, then, the reality referred to by the novels is itself textual, and the blending of the narratives with extratextual reality is more complex than in Marbot, which created an historical "reality" of its own.
In Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis and Die Entdeckung der
Langsamkeit, the spatialization of the textual world is given a new reality through its association with physical space in the story. While al1 three novels concem travel, these two in particular posit an explored landscape which CO-existswith the known world and which is explicitly related to the concept of textuality. The presentation of motion within the narrated space as pard1el to the reader's motion within the text, as already encountered in Das Kalkwerk, is given a wider application. In Die Schrecken des Eises und der Fimternis the boundary between the expenence of reality and of texts is permeable and no longer reducible to a simple opposition; in Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit this boundary has disappeared dtogether and physical reality is seen as itself a collection of texts, open to many readings and interpretations.
When the landscapes within a narrative, traditionally the focus for studies of literary space, are explicitly used to represent discunivity, then the structure of the text remains a central concem, even when experiments in the spatio-temporal organization of the nanative are largely lefl behind. Axe1 Gellhaus has written that the priority of reality before experience is thematized in literature as the relation of "überlieferter und eigener
Schrift, als das von Lesen und Schreiben," and has noted, too, how this relationship is expressed in the metaphor of travel: "DaB solche Schrift-Erfkhrung sich in der Metaphorik von Weg, Reise und Expedition selbst thematisiert, mag schon der Begriff der
Wirklichkeitssuche nahelegen" (106). Just this relationship is explored in these texts. In
Ransmayr's novel, the priority of reaiity is revened through an ambiguity in the order of reading and writing, reception and production.
Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis is an apyeritly simple narrative intertwining of two related stories. The htis an account of an Austrian-Hungarian expedition to the polar regions in the early 1870'~~under the comrnand of Car1 Weyprecht and Julius Payer; various historically verifiable excerpts fÏom the journals and reports of different expedition mernbers are scattered throughout the text, and the narrator additiondly provides a dramatic reconstruction of key events and speculation on what may have been left out of the official reports. The other is the story of a young Italian,
Josef Mazzini, whose fascination with the expedition leads him to read through al1 the relevant archival documents and finally to travel to Spitzbergen, where he eventually wallcs out onto the fiozen tundra and disappears. Suggested by the narrative, though only hgmentarily presented, is the additional story of how the narrator, like Mazzini, becomes increasingly absorbed by a textual reality and ultimately disappears in it. The narrator, who had been acquainted with Mazzini and who has access to his joumals, attempts to reconstruct the Italian's joumey into absorption with a supposedly distant historical event, and in doing so himself becomes absorbed. While Mazzini disappears in the northem landscape, the narrator disappears in his own text: we know virtually nothing about hirn.'
The text only appears to be simple: it functions on several complementary levels which interact to produce an image of the interrelation and interdependence of reality and texts, two terms which lose their distinctiveness in the process of reading and writing.
The opposition of fact and fiction loses its meaning here, as in the works of Becker and
Hildesheimer, because reality itself is seen as relative. On the one level, the story of the expedition can be read as an adventure of exploration, a journey into a hazardous land, ostensibly to serve the end of science but in reality promoted by dubious financial, nationalistic and irnperialistic interests.2 On another level, this account is treated as that which it is: a textual construct which codonts Mazzini, who both reads it and ciaims to have independently written it. Further, the narrator takes the role of a reader, thereby once again, like Mazzini, reflecting the activity of the reader of the novel. In this way,
According to KIaus Modick, the narrator copies his characters by disappearing into his material as they did into the Arctic. However, we will see that they al1 re-emerge in some manner, while he does not. Ulrich Fülleborn, for example, sees the meaning of the novel in a "Gleichnis fehlgeleiteter Energen der Menschheit" (373). Sabine Wilke sees a dialectic of civiiization and nature within the ideological context of the novel. the text breaks down the barier between fiction and reality by rnaking reading (including the reading process through which this text itself is experienced) one of its central thematic concem.
Additionally, the spatial structure of reading and writing and the concept of motion in experiencing and producing a text both gain a new level of concrete validity.
Texts are explicitly compared with landscapes, and the theme of exploration and travel is central. In Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finstemis the primary space on the diegetic level is the arctic land- and seascape, a geographical location which acts simultaneously as a physical space and as a mode1 of textuality encoded in the narrative. Mazzini's journey to the Arctic, and his disappearance there, is the final step of his immersion into the texts left behind by the expedition members.3 He does not leave the textual world in order to be confronted by reality; instead the textual world intermingles with, and finally becomes, his reality. The experiences of the expedition become literature and are at any rate known only through textual evidence; these texts lead Mazzini to travel in physical reality (and presurnably to lose his life) but simultaneously to enter textual reality, the world into which he disappears. After his disappearance, he exists as a character within the text; without his disappearance, the text would not exist, and neither would Mazzini,
3 1 disagree, in this point, with Gellhaus, who argues that Mapini's disappearance in the Arctic represents his escape from texts into reality: "Der Übergang Mazzini's in die Wirklichkeit wird im Roman durch eine LeersteHe repriisentiert: was mit ihm geschehen ist, wird nicht erziihlt" (136). The narrator himself says that Mazzini is leaving a Wirklichkeit" when he enters the Arctic (62), and, as shall be seen, he really exists only in the text. Wilke also posits the Arctic as reality: "erst die Suche nach der Realitiit au$ehaib seiner Phantasien, nach der objektiven Korrelation seiner Vorstellungen, befieit ihn von der nur von TextrnodelIen getragenen Visionen von Abenteuer-geschichten und konfiontiert ihn mit einer ganz anderen Logik, die aus der realen Erfahmg mit dieser Grenzwelt stammt" (230f). It should not be forgotten, however, that at Ieast not for the readers.
Much more obviously than Nadolny's Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit, this novei cdls attention to its spatial organization on the textuai level. The histoncal reports are interspersed within the body of the text, and are printed in itaiics, so that they are immediately identifiable. Also included are photographs and pictures; a list of the expedition members, and one of collected views on the North Pole; and two tables, one showing the yearly variations in hom of sunlight in the Arctic, and the other listing various historical ventures of exploration. Photographs fiom 1872 are show alongside obviously subjective engravings, and portions of fiction are presented beside journal e~cerpts.~
This spatial side-by-side is reflected by the sirnultaneity of past and present, rea1 and imagined within the narrative. For the narrator, both the expedition and Mazzini were real, but while he knew Mazzini personally, he expenences the expedition only through the documents it lefi, whereas there is no sign fiom Mazzini after his disappearance in the
Arctic. For the reader, the historically real expedition can be venfied by referring to texts beyond this book, while Mazzini and the narrator are fictitious, existing only in this text.
Both Mazzini and the narrator fünction as readers and writers, and so reflect the activity of the reader, who is drawn into this text as they were drawn into theirs. The real process of reading the novel is reflected within it as a central theme, so that the narrative breaks into the world of the reader.
Mazzini's "fantasies" are never divorced from reality-they are based on historical texts and develop in archives. Two questions emerge. First, what is the difference in the textuai status of the expedition excerpts and the portions of the narrative deaiing with Mazzini? And, more generally, what is the relationship between texts and reality? The textual world is represented in the narrative as a timeless space, the Arctic, a real space which coexists with other realities simultaneously. Once it is posited that there are multiple realities,
fiction becomes a relative concept and the clear definition of any boundary between the previously opposed tems becomes impossible. The reality-fiction question is left behind in favour of an exploration of the relationship between reality and texts as such. This is
less a simple opposition than an opposition in identity: texts becorne reality, reality becomes texts.
To analyse the narrative, it is usehl to begin with narrated space, especially the image of the Arctic, which is associated repeatedly with texts and stonesS5The Arctic is described throughout the novel as an empq space (22, 84, 175, 261). It is a flat, unmarked white expanse, a world "in deren beiingstigender Leere einfach alles moglic h war" (18). Here we find again the blank space of projection found in Emïhlen bis
Ostende and Tynset, and, as in Masante, it is associated with a geographical space, a
landscape. Much more than the desert of Masante, however, this blank space intrudes into reality. No longer purely a space of the imagination, an alternative to the world with no true comection to it, it coexists with the world just as a blank page about to be written
4 Reingard Nethersole sees the technique of pastiche and bricolage in the novel as typically postmodern. Closure and a final meaning are omitted, the technique "emphasizes a spatial rather than a temporal ordering" (136). 5 For example, the Arctic is the ideal setting for the stones written by Mazzini (22), and it is central to the stories told to him by his mother, whose influential narrative style is expressed on concretely exists. Ln this space, anything is possible, just as anythmg is possible in the text, in language.
In this landscape people, animals, and things continue to exist but only der undergoing a transformation. The narrator describes Mazzini's early reaction to stones about expeditions into the northem ice as one of apprehensive fascination: "Was war das für eh Meer, auf dem sich Helden in Lumpengestalten, Kapitbe in Menschenfiesser und
Lufischiffe in eisige Fetzen verwandelten?" (18) This transformation is seen throughout the account of the expedition, which enters the arctic ocean as a rigidly ordered hierarchy observing the usual European protocol and customs and leaves it as a band of starving men who sleep under their boats. The illusion of a stable, objective and continuous identity must be abandoned here. Even during the years in the ice, there are repeated scenes of transformation. Mer the ship is fiozen into the ice, never to escape, the men fight the boredom by sculpting the ice around them into palaces, cities and streets, which are quickly reciaimed by the expanding and contracting ice, and then rebuilt in new foms.6 It is indicated that Mazzini, too, undergoes a drastic transformation der he is swallowed up by the arctic landscape. While no trace of him is found, the sled dogs he had taken rehim to Longyearbyen one day; no longer tame and obedient, they have become so wild and violent that they must be shot.
A crucial element which is also transfomed in the Arctic is motion. When the
tluough a thoroughly spatialized metaphor reflecting the entire novel: "In den men Erziihlungen seiner Mutter.,.war die Welt ein Album, in dem man blatterte" (1 6). 6 Ulrich Scheck defines the transformations that occur here as a transition from the ftuid to the fiozen, as seen in the hurnan body's confrontation with the fiozen landscape, or the futation of a fluid reality in a text. It is important to remernber that the Arctic is not simply portrayed as the opposite of motion and change-in fact, it continually varies within itseif. TegetthoS; the expedition's ship, enters the northern ocean, its motion takes on a new dimension. It is impossible to progress in a straight line: icebergs, canais and other obstacles force the ship to take a course more like "eine[n] verschlungenen, auseinandergezerrten Fadenlaiau1 ais einer ruhig dahin-ziehenden Linie" (79). The mer they go, or, more accurately, the longer they are there, the more their movement can be descnbed as "treiben" or "driften" (84), as no longer directed. They no longer have a goal: "Sie fahren auf nichts mehr ni" (84). The frozen sea is anydiing but static or changeless, but its motion is difficult to recognize with conventional forms, as it is neither linear nor directed anywhere, quite unlike the desired motion of an explorer. It is descnbed as an expanding and contracting mass: "Die Polkappe eine pulsierende Arnobe und die Tegetthoff ein storender, verschwindender Splitter irn Plasma" ( 108). This type of movement can be descnbed as motion within a field, where various positions and foms are produced, changed and repeated.
This motion can be associated with the process of reading, as throughout the text the motion through a story, through a collection of different texts, is compared to the motion of a subject through space and time. Mazzini's absorption into the Payer-
Weyprecht chronicle begins with travels through tex& ("Er durchwanderte die Archive,"
23), and continues without interruption as a joumey into the northem ice: "Mazzini rannte einer verjikten Wirklichkeit nach. Für diesen Lauf waren alle Archive ni eng, zu klein.
Mazzini reiste ins Eismeer" (23). The jouniey f?om texts into reality is one motion; the reality is an extension of the texts. Texts and reality, words and the physical world exist, not in rigid opposition to each other, but rather in a continuai state of flux. When the narrator chooses to start the story of Mazzini with Weyprecht's recruiting speech in 1872, he is reminded of the potential of every story to stretch endlessly in the and space: "Mir war die Tatsache oft unhehlich, ddsich der Anfang, auch das Ende jeder Geschichte, die man nur lange genug verfolgt, irgendwann in der
Weitlaufigkeit der Zeit veriiert" (1 1). Here, the spatial implications of the conventional structuring devices "beginning" and "end" are made evident-a story is something one wanders through, endlessly. The start and Wsh are lost; they disappea. as does Mazzini:
"hGehen wurde ihm die Welt nicht kieiner, sondern imrner @Ber, so groB, daI3 er schlieBlich in ihr verschwand" (1 1). Neither the reader nor the wrîter really reaches an end; the point of exit kom a story is as arbitrary as the point of entry.
On complethg his text, the narrator reaches an end that is not really an end, and finds himself drowning in the notebooks, journals, maps and papers which fi11 his room:
" [ich] stehe inmitten meiner papierenen Meere, allein mit allen M6g lichkeiten einer
Geschichte, ein Chronist, dem der Trost des Endes fehlt" (263). This sea of paper reflects the sea of ice explored by Payer, Weyprecht and Mazzini. The analogy between texts and landscapes or seascapes plays into the motif of the map ("Meine Wiinde habe ich mit
Landkarten, Meereskarten ausgeschiagen [...]. An diesen Wlinden wiederholen sich die
Lader, die imrner gleichen, leeren, zemssenen L&dert' 261). A map is a syrnbolic representation of a concrete piece of reaiity on paper, a reality which has been observed, measured and transformed into recognizable signs that have a merely conventional relation to their original. It is a means for comprehending a reality that is too vast for immediate human expenence. For this narrative, the map functions as a prototype for texts as such. How drastically the drifting motion in the Arctic contradicts the linear motion of exploration attempted by the Europeans can be seen in Payer's expeditions on the newly discovered island, Kaiser-Franz-Joseph-Land, where he ignores the topography completely and measures his progress solely in degrees of latitude. It is evident, too, in the realization that the foms of organization the explorers attempt to impose on the new territories are purely abstract and have no particular correspondence in reality. Payer recognizes that the North Pole is not a country, "kein N erobemdes Reich, nichts als
Linien, die sich in einern Punkte schneiden, und wovon nichts in der Wirklichkeit zu sehen sei" (42). In this place, the arbitrary nature of signs and symbols becomes evident.
The men are certainly in a red place, and indeed the harshness of this reality threatens to kill them dl, yet on another level they are strangely disconnected from this reality. To undentand, organize and report their impressions and experiences they must employ systems of signification which bear no true relation to their physical surroundings.
This can be seen in the men's reactions to, and descriptions of, various physical phenomena. While they are in the Arctic, they are at the sarne time in a text f?om which they cannot escape. One example fiom the excerpts should suffice to illustrate this: when they see the northem lights, many of the men interpret them as "die himmlischen Zeichen der bevorstehenden Befieiung" (100). Even purely physical phenomena with no logical connection to the men are read as significant-that is to Say, nature itself is not only observed, but also interpreted. Weyprecht, the most objective and scientific of them all, writes in his journal:
Vor Allem ist es das Nordlicht, welches den Neuling in jenen Gegenden
mit Staunen erfüllt-jenes ungeloste Rgthsel, welches die Natur mit feurigen Lettem an den arktischen Stemenhimmel geschrieben hat[.. .] Es
ist, als sei die Sage wahr geworden, von welcher wir in den alten
Chroniken Iesen, die himmlischen Heerscharen hatten eine SchIacht
geschlagen und sich mit Blitz und Feuer vor den Augen der
Erdbewohner bekiimpf't. In tiefster lautloser Stille geht Alles vor sich,
jeder Ton ist verstummt, die Natur selbst scheint den Athem annihaken,
in regungsloser Bewunderung ihres eigenes Werkes. (1 0 1)
Despite his rational nature and his dedication to clear, empincal observation, Weyprecht hirnself perceives and understands his surroundings under the infiuence of the text of his culture, and so cannot help determining what he sees.
Given the altered nature of motion in the Arctic space, there is necessarily also a change in the nature of time. The more the linear motion of the expedition is hindered, the more the sense of time changes. "Die Zeit beginnt langsamer ni werden," (76) we read, as they enter the ice fields. Time becomes ever more relative; once they are fkozen in, it appears to be a repetitive cycle allowing for variation but no significant change.
This view of time becomes concrete for the expedition members when various objects they had disposed of continue to resurface:
Was immer sie jeta auch tu.--sie haben es schon einmai getan. Sie
wiederholen ihre Tage. Die Zeit kreist. Selbst was sie Ibgst versunken
glaubten, kehrt wieder zurück. Eines Morgens lie@ auch der Kadaver
des Neufundlandhundes Bop, den doch das Wintereis verschlungen hat,
wieder irn Schnee-steif und hart und unverwest, so, als ob er gestem
verendet w&e ...Und so mu0 hier wohl alles, auch jede Hofiung, zweimai, dreimal uns immer wieder begraben werden. Und weil ailes,
was geschieht, nur die Wiederkehr des gleichen ist, geraten sie in ihren
Gespriichen immer tiefer in die Vergangenheit. (148)
When Mazzini sails into the Arctic Ocean on board the research ship Cradle, he experiences the sarne repetitive timelessness as the expedition, a century earlier: "Die
Zeit ist ein Tümpel, in dern die Vergangenheit in Blasen nach oben steigt" (158). More than any other, this image shows the spatialized nature of time in the Arctic/textual world.
Time is seen, not as a line, but aç a fluid medium in which the present is layered on top of the past, and the past rises up to CO-existwith the present. Similarly, in any text, near and fa.,pst and friture can exist side-by-side. When Mazzini moves into the Arctic Ocean, he actually enten the time of the expedition, since they ail CO-existin one time and space, once he is hlly immersed in their texts and himself drawn into the Arctic. It is not merely a matter of imagination: IfNein, Josef Mazzini hatte sich an nichts erimert. Er hatte alles noch einmal erlebt" (159). Mazzini himself is taking part in the repetition-what he is doing has been done, in various forms, many times before. In the same way, the expedition's expenences are a synthesis of many historical events, as suggested by the rnany references to other explorers. Like the bubbles in the pond, the events of the past are repeated in the present, and so, in the story, as in the textual form, different levels of tirne CO-exist.
Whether in the Arctic, on the diegetic level, or in the narrative itself, time is relative, flexible and subjective. The chronological rnovement of the story is never permitted to establish itself. The "fùture"fate of the various characters, lying as it does in the narrator's past, is told at the beginnuig-we know fiom the start how the various storylines will end. The narrator tends to interrupt the flow of action regulariy with references to other times and their connection to each other. While describing the dining customs aboard the Tegetthofi for example, he remarks, "Aber es wird eine Zeit kommen, in der es keine Tische und kein Schiff mehr geben wird; gerneinsam werden sie im Eis hocken, mit schwarzen Hiinden" (82). Or, when the expedition sends off its frequent messages in bottles, he writes: "Achtundvierzig Jahre wird es dauem, bis ein norwegischer Robbenschlager die erste der von der Expedition irnmer wieder und auf verschiedenen Breitengraden ausgesetzten Flaschen an der Westküste von Nowaja
Semlya finden wird" (138). Such references to later events abound in the narrative, making prolepsis a major structural element of the text.
This temporal understanding can be found, too, in the namator's approach to his material. He is driven by Mazzini's disappearance to reconstnict both his story and that of the expedition. He does not approach them as separate stones. For hun, they are both part of the same narrative, and he explicitly States that, while he chooses to begin
Mazzini's story with Weyprecht's recruitment speech in 1872, he could easily have gone back Merin time (11). This is a reflection of the attitude toward time seen in the descriptions of the arctic/textuaI landscape, a temporal understanding which is further reflected in the structure of the text, not only in its many repetitions, but also in the organization of the story material. This form allows for the juxtaposition in the text of elements which are logically barely connected; for example, on pages 170-1 71, four different fragments are presented together, each about August 23 in four different years- one refers to Ma.,the other three to the expedition. The two stones are one, and in the texhial sense they occur simultaneously. An expenence of a reality engenders texts, which give rise to new experiences, and so on, so that defining a beginning or an end becomes impossible.
The narrator is aware, and conMually points out, that the time of his narrative is open to manipulation, and that only convention gives it substance as a uni-directional flow. The narrative presents a field of reference within which it can move fieely back and forth, unconstrained by iinear logic and so able to connect that which appears unrelated.
Whereas in reality Mazzini and the polar expedition lie a century apart, in the narrative they can exist simultaneously in the narrator's (and readers') mind, as indicated in the introduction to a chapter on the history of polar exploration: "Wahrend in meiner
Vorstellung die Admiral Tegelthof die ersten Treibeisfelder unter Damp f passiert und
Josef Mazzini in einer Linienmaschine der Scandinavian Airlines grellweioe
Wokentürme unter sich aufragen sieht, lasse ich mich ninicksinken in das Dunkel der
Zeit und gleite durch die Jahrhunderte hinab ni den Anfbgen einer Sehnsucht" (49).
One might assume from this that the spatial CO-existenceof far and near, present and past, beyond the formal level, is merely metaphoncal. The question of whether a reality that exists only in the "Vorstellungen" of a subject can be compared to physical reality is answered by the ontological classification of the two levels of reality elsewhere in the text. So, for exarnple, the narrator concludes that the expedition first amved in
Tromso on three different dates. This is a physical impossibility and yet an indisputable reality, since "wirklicher als im BewuBtsein eines Menschen, der ihn durchlebt hat, kann ein Tag nicht sein. Also sage ich: die Expedition erreichte am zweiten, erreichte am dritten, erreichte am Merten Juli 1872 Tromso. Die Wirklichkeit ist teilbar" (41). Three members of the expedition have noted three different anival dates, and although the correct date can be historicaily documented, the namitor declines to do so. The expenenced reality of each member takes prionty over the facts.
This is Mercomplicated by the status of the expedition's reports as a kind of literature. Though ostensibly the records of an actual event, the accounts, as discussed above, show contradictions and episodes of subjective interpretation that go far beyond the confusion of dates. The common source of these inconsistencies lies in the unreliability of perception itself in producing a venfiably objective image of the world.
At one point, the men of the expedition appear to see the Sun, which has in fact disappeared below the horizon for the winter, and so they become aware of the unreliability of their senses: "Nur ein Bild? Was kt die Wirklichkeit? Sie haben ja auch
Lhder gesehen, Gebirge, die durch den Himmel getrieben sind und zerflossen,
Lufispiegelmgen, nein, das waren keine wirklichen Liinder, dochdoch, das waren Liinder, schwebende, von silbernen Rhdern gefdte Welten" (107). ironically, Payer's reports on the expedition after his return to Vienna (which comprise a good portion of the
"historically factual" portions of the text) are greeted by much of his audience with considerable skepticism. They are thought to be "doch wohl ein bikhen sehr fabelhaft, pure Literatur" (255). This cannot be seen merely as a misjudgement on the part of the
Viennese; after all, during his expeditions on Franz-Joseph-Land, Payer gave names to cloudbanks and fog, believing them to be capes and islands. Later exploren recognize
"daB nur Leere ist, wo Payer Alpen sah, daB jenes nordliche Bild eine Tauschung war, eine Dunstbank, eine Spiegeiung, Wahnvorstellung, alles, nu kein Land. Aber was bedeutet eine Wahrheit schon, die in der Zukunft liegt?" (22O)?
More than a literary conceit must therefore be seen in episodes such as Mazzini's flight to Oslo and his impressions on the airplane: "Wem er auf die Rückenlehne des
Vordersitzes schaut, sieht er den Tiroler Alexander Klotz in der Tracht des Passiertales am Fenster eines Zugabteils. Durch das leere Blau des Himmels treibt der Rauch aus dem
Schlot der Tegenhofl Im Frachtraum der DC 9 klaffen Schlittenhunde" (69). If reality lies primarily in subjective perception, the secondary status of these perceptions is questionable. Mazzini is here aiready immersed in texmal reality, and in this sense his impressions are accurate. The boundary between his world as a reader and his physical world is permeable. A similar disorientation is experienced by the narrator, who develops an obsessive interest in Mazzini's story, which transfoxms his own reality:
"Haufenwolken, die sich in Schaufenstem spiegelten, wurden ni Gletscherabbrüchen,
Schneereste in stadtischen Parks zu Treibeisfeldem. Das nordliche Polarmeer lag vor rneinem Fenster" (24f). What is distant is suddenly present; just as the boundaries between different times are overcome, so too are those delineating areas of experience.
Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis is, to a great extent, about the establishment and transgression of boundaries. As we have seen, pst and present, reality and fiction are shown as opposing pairs whose opposition is negated. The theme of disappearance is a part of this structure, disappearance being the crossing of a boundary fiom the known into the unlaiown. As such, it appears to be the end of a story, the beginning of blank pages and silence afler the subject of discourse has moved beyond the
7 On Payer's illusory conquests, see also Harald Eggebrecht, "Nachrichten von der k.u.k. Nordpolexpedition" (128). fikges of our knowledge. Yet the story of Mazzini as it is presented begins with his disappearance as a "reai" person. Like Konrad's murder of his wife, Mazzini's disappearance is the transgression of a boundary. Previously a writer and reader, he now becomes a figure in a nan-ative. But here, too, the boundary does not remain stable, since the transgression inspires the narrator to write his text, making Mazzini as real as the expedition, which is also preserved in the form of writings. Mazzini crosses two boundaries at once, out of the known world into the Arctic, and out of reality into a text.
The theme of exploration attaches itself quite naturally to this constellation.
Exploration expands the boundaries of experience and knowledge, but it does so by producing a symbolic and highly selective representation of this perceptual experience.
Whether it be in maps, measurements, or classifications of life foms and minerals, syrnbolic representations of experience are collected to fil1 gaps in a symbolic structure representing reality, thereby allowing this overall structure to make more sense. What exists in reality enters consciousness not simply by being perceived but also by then being transfonned to fit such a structure. In exploring the world, one produces a text of the world. Payer writes: "Es kann nur wenig spannenderes geben, als das Entdecken neuer
Lhder. Unermüdlich erregt das Sichtbare das Combinationsvermogen über die
Configuration, und die Phantasie ist rastlos beschiiftigt, die Lücken des Unsichtbaren ni ergmen" (208). it has been seen that not only objective measurernents but also subjective impressions reduce the experience of reality and fit it into a framework. The process of transformation, as reflected in the Arctidtextual world, is a component of every experience with reality. The narrator, who hctions as a reader, a writer and an explorer, unites the diverse themes of the text. As a reader, he is confkonted with two different sets of material: the reports of the Austrian expedition and Mazzini's journals, which he reads and fiom which he selects material for his own narrative. As both reader and writer he completes an act of interpretation, not only on these materials, but also on the reality represented by Mazzini's disappearance. Because this enterprise of reading, wri ting and interpretation is linked throughout the narrative with the adventure of exploration, he makes this role his own as well.
In dealing with Mazzini's joumals, the narrator is confkonted with the writings of a man who refuses to accept any priority of extemal reality over his own inventions.
Mazzini posits his fictions as existing paralle1 to the historical events they portray:
Er entwerfe, sagte Mazzini, gewissemaBen die Vergangenheit neu. Er
denke sich Geschichten aus, erfinde Handlungsablaufe und Ereignisse,
zeichne sie auf und priife am Ende, ob es in der femen oder jüngsten
Vergangenheit jemals wirkliche-Vorlaufer oder Entsprechungen für die
Gestalten seiner Phantasie gegeben habe. Das sei, sagte Mazzini, im
Grunde nichts anderes als die Methode der Schreiber von
Zukunftsromanen, nur eben mit urngekehrter Zeitrichtung. So habe er
den Vorteil, die Wahrheit seiner Erfindungen durch geschichtliche
Nachforschungen überprüfen ni komen. Es sei ein Spiel mit der
Wirklichkeit. Er gehe aber davon aus, da, was immer er phantasiere,
irgendwann schon einmal stattgefunden haben miisse. (20) Indeed, the narrator suspects that Mazzini's fascination with the ku.k expedition arose out of his recognition of the story-he saw it as a proof of one of his invented narratives: "Ich kann mir für die Faszination, die dieser Expeditionsbericht in Josef Mazzini ausloste, nur schwer einen anderen Grund als den vorstellen, daB er mit Payen Aukeichnungen einen
Beweis fUr eines seiner erfundenen Abenteuer in den Hiinden ni halten glaubte" (23).
This is a complete inversion of the logical order that demands that reality be prior to expenence, that textual sources be prior to the production of a vuriter integrating these sources into a new work. It is suggested that Mazzini's "Vorstellungen" about the expedition, which took place long before his birth, are of equal validity as the story produced by the expedition's records.
Mazzini's stories are not pure fiction: "Die Grenze zwischen Tatsache und
Ertindung verlief dabei stets unsichtbar" (21). Here, irnplicit comrnentary is briefly abandoned and the text comments explicitly on itself. While it is not difficult to distinguish the authentic histoncal excerpts (printed in italics) fiom the remainder of the text, simply denning the two as fact and fiction is inadequate. It has been seen already that the excerpts contain conflicting information when they are compared with each other.
Indeed, the narrator ofien feels he is in fact reading accounts of many different expeditions:
Auch in der kleinen Gesellschaft an Bord der Tegetthoff waren die
Journale der Untertanen von denen der Befehlshaber so verschieden,
dall es manchmal schien, als würde in den Kojen und Kajüten nicht an
einer einzigen, sondem an der Chronik mehrerer, einander ganz fiemder
Expeditionen geschrieben. Jeder berichtete aus einem anderen Eis. (41) It is signi ficant, then, that the narrator chooses these subjective writings as a basis for his own text, for in their diversity they are for him more accurate than a purely "objective" text. Measurement and numbers are not reliable, as the narrator concludes when he attempts to summarize the history of arctic exploration with a simple listing of historicai facts: "Die Statistik des Unterganges blieb stets widerspriichlich und unvollstkdig, ein vergeblicher Versuch, das Entsetzen und die Ungeheuerlichkeit dieses mythenverzauberten Weges in Zahlen ni fassent' (50).
Mazzini's journals do not remain unchanged by the narrator's activity. He gives them names, taken in part from Inuit mythology or the sonnets of Petrarch; one he calls
"Der GroDe Nagel," others "Campi deserti" or "Tema nuova." He physicaily writes these titles on the notebooks, thereby not only defïning their content but also, due to the comotative power of the names he chooses, bestowing on them a particular interpretation.
Of his own activity he writes: "Ich bin mit den Aufzeichnungen verfahren, wie jeder
Entdecker mit seinem Land, mit namenlosen Buchten, Kaps und Sunden verfi-ich habe sie getauft. Nichts sol1 ohne Namen sein" (177). It has been seen that this cornparison of territory and texts is upheld throughout the work and is by no means arbitrary. Additionally, however, it is worth noting the narrator's attitude to namelessness, the absence of a verbal designation for a piece of reality. Indicating the title of one of Mazzini's notebooks he remarks: "Es ist nicht Josef Mazzini's Handschrifi.
Das habe ich geschrieben. Ich" (177). This is what the narrator remains throughout his text: simply "ich." Though he insists on the necessity of naming everything in existence, he himself is not "getauft," as we never leam his narne. The reader must think of him as
"ich," and this encourages a strong identification with his role. There is also a certain cynicism implicit in his declaration: "Nichts sol1 ohne Namen sein" (177bis the narrator, perhaps, "Nichts"?
This would in fact appear to be his conclusion at another point, when, recognizing his utter immersion in Mazzini's story, he is forced to acknowledge that he has forfeited his own identity and is now a manipulated, insignificant creature, an invention of
Mazzini's: "[ich erkannte9 daB ich Ihgst in die Welt eines anderen hin~bergewechselt war; es war die beschihende, Iacherliche Entdeckung, daO ich gewissemaBen Mazzini's
Platz eingenommen hatte: ich tat ja seine Arbeit und bewegte mich in seinen Phantasien so zwangslaufig wie eine Brettspielfigur" (25). Suffering the fate of every reader, he finds himself following the cmbsdropped by an "author" figure, for whom he is a mere playthmg. Al1 the more reason, then, to celebrate his own power with a small but significant act of CO-authorshipand appropriation-the naming of Mazzini's journals.
This naming is, however, only an indication of the scope of his actual activities.
Although he now resides in a world created by another, it is he himself who gives meaning and reality to this world. His true activity goes beyond a passive reception of matenal: his airn is to fil1 in the blank space left by Mazzini's disappearance.
The narrator explains his reasons for telling the story by stating: "wenn einer verlorengeht, ohne einen greifbaren Rest zu hinterlassen, etwas, das man verbrennen, versenken oder verschmen kann, dmmuB er wohl erst in den Geschichten, die man sich nach seinem Verschwinden über ihn ni erzahlen beginnt, allmahlich und endgültig aus der Welt geschafR werden" (1 1). Paradoxically, because Mazzini simply vanished, he continues to exist, insofar as there is no concrete evidence of his death. It is in the stories about him that he is pushed out of the world. At another point the narrator recalls his initial motive for writing about Mazzini as a desire to hd"ein[e] Erklaning, irgendein[e] Erklaning" (24) for the disappearance.
"Aber aujedem Hinweis ergab sich eine neue offene Frage, unwilllcurIich tat ich so imrner noch einen Schritt und den nachsten, setzte biographische Details, Auskünfie und
Namen wie in einem Kreutzwortratsel in einem Zusarnmenhang ein und Mazzini wurde
t5i.r mich ein FulZ" (24). The metaphor of physical motion is here once again associated with the process of writing in that the narrator wanders through Mazzini's journals just as the Italian wandered through the archiva1 remains of the expedition. The narrator
attempts to make connections between scraps of material in the hopes of discoverhg a
rneaning behind the separate pieces, but finds only what he himself constnicts.
nie narrator's own motives for telling this story reveal much about his position on
the nature of narratives as such, and their relation to reality. It irritates him that Mazzini
has disappeared literally "without a tracew-search parties looking for him find nothing:
"Die Suchfiüge bestatigten aber nur, daB auch die groDen Routen ohne Spuren waren; die
Gletscher leer" (235). There is no physical evidence of the disappearance and presumed
death. Nevertheless, the narrator, who has painstakingly reconstructed the various signs
and traces left by Mauini's passage through life, hopes at the end of his labours that a
concrete sign of the death may still appear and provide him with a true ending for his
story: "Vielleicht liegt dort ein Rest für mich bereit, hore ich mich sagen, vielleicht hat ein
Schrnelnvasse~salaus einem spitzbergischen Gletscher ein Zeichen für mich
herausgewaschen" (262).
This hope is echoed throughout the narrative in the nurnerous references to the
signs and signals left behind by Mazzini and by the expedition. Consistently, these are drawn into explicit relation with the the-space matrix, and thereby not only produce an image of the structure of the text but also offer a mode1 for how it may be read. Not only linguistic signs are mentioned. The photographs affixed by the expedition to the barren rocks of Kaiser-Franz-Joseph Land, the letters sent in bottles, and many other physical signs have a meaning which transcends the significance of image and script.
One of the more ambiguous of these recurring images is a particularly simple one which nonetheless resonates with literary associations: red on white. When Mazzini is preparing to leave for the Arctic, he accidentally tips a glas of red wine on his white carpet, then pours salt on the wine to soak it up:
Er wird das Salz erst nach seiner Rückkehr abbürsten. So nirnrnt er es
sich vor. Es wird dam trocken und bldrot sein. Zwei, vielleicht drei
Monate alter, wird er wieder auf dem Teppich knien, so, als ob
zwischen dem Ausstreuen und dern Entfemen des Salzes nur jene kurze
Zeitspanne verstrichen w&e, die gewohnliche über solchen
Vemchtungen vergeht, und er wird sich an alles, was jetzt noch vor ihm
liegt, erimem wie an einen Augenblick. (61)
When the narrator goes to Mazzini's apartment after the disappearance, he notices this stain, and it biggers a set of associations: "Ich war darnals mit Mazzini's Tagebüchem bereits so vertraut, daO ich über diesen Rotweinfleck auf eine Eisscholle geriet [...lm (63).
He jurnps fiom the red wine stain to the Arctic ice, where Mazzini observes blood fiom a tagged polar bear spreading on the white snow and covering with ice crystals. This image in turn leads him to the polar bears killed by the expedition, who also left their blood on the snow. The very simple image leads him to jurnp to various points in the text of Maaini's joumals in a sort of fiee association. These are al1 seen together, fblfilling
Mazzini's own attitude toward the wine stain, which he believes should si@@ various disparate temporal points held together in one "Augenblick." The narrator gives the reader similar images again, later in the text, both involving red blood on white ice and snow (172, 213), but this tirne without comrnentary-now the reader makes the connection spontaneously, as the narrator had previously done. The rneaning of the image, if one exists, is left open. It rnay of course refer to the Austrian ~olours..~
Certainly, however, it refers to this process of reading which moves within a field of possibilities, breaking down logical sequences and spatio-temporal organization to make connections where none seem to exist. It is a dynamic production of connections which opens, rather than resüicts, the possibilities for interpretation.
In Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis, the world is a text wtiich is written and read; the "erzahlter Raum" stands in for a mode1 of narrative, and the experience of this space is in turn a reflection of textual experience. Time and space are playthings here; they can be rearranged and manipulated to produce any nurnber of combinations.
The text, in its fom and thematics, anticipates the process it will undergo in the minds of its readers--it will be re-constructed and re-formed in countless ways.
In Sten Nadolny's Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit, the dialogue between text and reality is continued with an examination of the modes of understanding and producing both written and physical systems of signification. As in al1 the texts discussed so far, the
8 Cf. Tilman Spengler, "Rot-WeiD-Rot im ewigen Eis." opposition between reality and fiction is relativized. The book is, essentially, the fictional biography of an historical figure, the English explorer John Franklin (1786-1 847), who undertakes voyages of exploration to Australia and Canada. An extensive study of historical documents could help to determine the factual status of various events mentioned in the text to some extent, but this would miss the essential points made by the novel. The narrative tells Franklin's story in a linear, apparently traditional manner, with the focus not only on the histoncal exploits but also on the activities of reading, interpretation and writing as they are practised by the historical biographer and by the writer of fiction. Franklin engages in several voyages of exploration, but in these the reader notices that the main point is never sirnply Franklin's discovery of new landscapes, but rather his quest to perceive and to understand the realities that surround him. The story of Franklin tells of a man who mut lemways to read the world.
In the novel, the story level dominates, while the discourse calls little attention to itself. Chronological sequence is a central structural element, and the text is organized according to the natural temporal flow of the story, though dramatic variations in the relation of "Erzahlzeit" and "erzahlte Zeit" occur thro~ghout.~Charactenstic of the text, too, are abrupt jumps forward in the story; oAen the reader is transported forward into the middle of a new event with no exposition to fil1 in the resulting gap. The conventionality of the temporal structure is fuahermore relativized by the thematic level of the text, where a discussion of thne and motion takes the central place. Again, as in Die Schrecken des
Eises und der Finsternis, landscapes are associated with texts, travel with reading and
9 This point is discussed by Petra Gûnther in her article "2angsam komme ich ni mir und übdege, ob ich das aufschreiben soll' : Der Erzahler Sten Nadolny." writing. Speed, the relative ratio of space and time, is exarnined in relation to the process of understanding a text or a world.
Compared to Ransmayr's novels, this text has received very Mecntical attention, perhaps partly because of its highly conventional narrative form. Generally, it has been read as a piece of social criticism, calling for humanisrn in an increasingly fast technological world, and as a cal1 for the retum of solid and interesting storytelling in a literary scene obsessed with experirnentation and navel-gazing. Claudio Magris writes:
"Der Roman ist eine hervorragende Anleitung fur den Widerstand gegen die Zerstorung der Zeit, gegen die Schnelligkeit, gegen die Vernichtung der Gegenwart, für die
Verteidigung der Gegenwart vor der erdrückenden, von allen Seiten drohenden Gewalt"
(83). Such an approach to the novel is absolutely valid, and there is much yet to be written about the implied cnticism contained in the accounts of Franklin's experiences with war and technology, and as govemor of the pend colony Tasmania. My concern here will focus on the text in a dinerent way, starting with a new understanding of the concept of slowness. Instead of being simply a sign of humanity and a protest against destructive progress, it is, on another level, a way of perceiving and of reading the world.
In his Das Errahlen und die guten Absichten, Nadolny writes: "Was der
Schriftsteller macht, ist 'Narrativierung,' eine der wichtigsten Leistungen unseres
BewuBtseins, und es unterscheidet sich nicht so sehr von dem, was der Architekt, der
Konstnikteur, der Erfinder, der Untemehmer und was der Wissenschaftler treibt" (56).
The act of nanation is "vor allem ein Teil der lebenswichtigsten Arbeit, die das menschliche Gehim überhaupt leistet: Narrativierung, die Herstellung eines nachvollziehbaren Zusammenhangs, sei er nun 'real' oder 'fiktiv" (77). The presence of a "Zusammenhang" is no longer an obstacle to be questioned and underrnined, as it was, most noticeably, in Das Kalkwerk. It is now again recognized as an essential function of narration, the element which dlows for meanhg to be produced and understood, but the status of this connection is not as it was in the traditional realist novel; rather, it is consciously constnicted. The comection is now expressly produced in the domain of the rnind, and it is therefore of no consequence if it is real or imagined, since,on the purely mental plane, the two are indistinguishable. Therefore, too, this connection is referred to as something which is "hergestellt" by the mind, not discovered as really existing in the world. It does not appear as "natural" and so is not discovered in the Bow of events, but is rather artificially produced.
"Narrativierung" is what John Franklin must learn; as a boy, he does not possess the normally unreflected ability to transfomi the signds he perceives around him into a comprehensive "text." In other words, he cannot read the world. The problem, the reader is told, lies in Franklin's slowness, which leads him to perceive the world not as a continuum moving steadily through the, but rather as a series of disconnected verbal and visual images. When he is confkonted with a boy who wants to fight him, for example,
Franklin cannot keep track of his position: "Wie war Tom dorthin gekornrnen, da fehlte schon wieder ein Stück Zeit" (15). The connection between the images is missing, leading him to suspect that he is not seeing "das Entscheidende" (9). Young Franklin is incapable of following a ballgame because he cannot see more than discrete, static moments; in his view, first one child has the ball then, suddenly, another. He does not see the motion of the ball between the two and so he misses the comection, the most important part of the game. It will be seen that this comection between images becomes, on another level, the connections between human beings, an idea already implicitly expressed by the ballgame. This comptex connection is established and comprehended through a communication code which Franklin at first cannot grasp. His unusual
"handicap" makes him aware of what others do not acknowledge: that one must lem how to read and interpret the world, and that there are different ways of doing so.
This is seen, too, in his relationship to written texts while still at school. He expenences them just as he experiences the world, as a collection of varying existents in a static whole: "Er komte lesen, aber er vertiefte sich lieber in den Geist der einzelnen
Buchstaben. Sie waren im Geschriebenen das Dauerhafte, das berWiederkehrende, er liebte sie" (12). Focusing only on the concrete existence of the text, he tends to overlook its connections, the motion between letters and words produced by reading, which gives rise to meaning. He does perceive, however, that texts are limited fields which can contain an infinite number of possible combinations. The symbols available for the construction of a written text-primarily letters-are limited in nurnber and regulated in form, but they can be arranged in an endless variety of ways, thereby relativizing the static nature of the texts.
This focus on the particularites of written texts also accounts for an apparently nonsensical statement describing Franklin's attempts to understand spoken language:
"Wem er ein Wort verstanden hatte, wollte er auch wissen, was es hieB" (19). It seems paradoxical to want to know the meaning of a word once one has already understood it.
When reading, Franklin focuses on the physical form of the letters, and in listening he is first of al1 interested in the sound, to which he only afterward attempts to attach a meaning. For him, signs are actually experienced as broken up into their constituent parts. While the signifier and the signified are gendly apprehended in their connection to each other, like two sides of a coin, Franklin stops at the signifier and first of a11 considers it in great detail as an independently existing object.
The expenence of the world and of texts is presented as parallel. When Franklin experiences confusion at the disconnectedness of his world ("Für ihn komte sich der
Türgriff plotzlich in eine Radspeiche oder in den Schwanz eines Pferdes verwandeln"
[18]) his family says of his uncertain movements, "Er buchstabiert wieder!" (1 8) He makes his way through the world the same way he "travels" through texts at school; he stops to consider discrete signs in detail, but misses the meaningful connection because of the slowness of his motion.
Franklin himself recognizes that his "slowness," his inability to experience the continuity of flowing time quickly enough, leads to these difficulties. He resolves to leam, to overcome his uncertainty: "Er muBte jeta Schnelligkeit studieren wie andere
Menschen die Bibel oder die Spuren des Wildes" (16). The Bible is obviously a text, but it is interesting that animal tracks are here presented as equally "textual," that is, that they too are a senes of signs that can be read to produce a meaning. Again, here, written texts and the textuality of the physical world are presented as parallel. In the same way, leaming to be quick means leamhg to see the connections between bits of existence, leaming to fil1 in the blanks to extract a meaning fiom the text of the world.
This process is largely presented in connection with communication and social relations. Franklin is motivated to learn by his desire to communicate with others, and his later joumeys are first and foremost adventures in communication. As a schoolboy, he simply wants to make sense of the interpersonal world: "Gespriiche wollte er führen lernen. Er horte ohnehin gem ni und fieute sich, wenn die eingefangenen Bruchstücke einen Sinn ergaben" (32). The "Sinn" does not exist, as such, in the ftagments of information, but is denved fiom a process of interrelation which combines them to create a meaningful structure. The form of the combination is variable, depending on the individual, so that no one valid "Sinn" can be denved. Franklin recognizes the importance of this interrelation; he begins his study of communication by leaming to respond to verbal signals automatically: "Er hatte an die hundert Redewendungen auswendig gelemt" (32). He understands that, on one level, the intrinsic meaning of what is said is unimportant, and what counts is simply the connection which is made. This realization reappears later in the difference between navigation and exploration, whereby, of the two, only exploration is concerned with meaning.
Despite Franklin's desire to learn, however, he has doubts as to the intrinsic value of signs. In mathematics he is imtated by the tiny optical difference between plus and minus signs, which leads him to wonder "ob der Unterschied so kleiner Zeichen wirklich von Belang sei" (35). Later, as a navigator, he uses exact nurnbers and rneasurernents in an exact relation to the world, and tiny signs become the difference between life and death. He learns that, on their own, formal characteristics of signs are irrelevant. OnIy when the signs exist in a system of relations with each other do their differences gain significance. It is then, an intangible, the difference between the signs, that holds the signi ficance.
The relationship between the experience of reality and of texts is established early on, and continues in the theme of exploration and discovery. When Franklin is still near the beginning of his nauticai career he determines: "Wer nir See fahrt, kann nicht lange venweifelt sein" (80). When he begins to write his fkst book, he has a sllnilar thought:
"Wer ein Buch ni schreiben hatte, konnte nicht auf Dauer venweifelt sein" (270). The idea of writing appeals to Franklin, "zumal das Vorhaben Ahnlichkeiten mit einer langen
Reise hatte" (268). Like navigation, it does not corne without hard work: "Schreiben war mühselig, aber wie eine Schiffsreise" (269). The idea of the voyage is linked not only to the process of writing, but to reading as well. When the young Franklin is given his fint book of navigation he recognizes that the miniaturized world of a ship at sea is limited enough to leam completely: "Ein Schiff, vom Meer begrenzt, war lembar'' (57). The complete, definite knowledge is not, however, an end in itself, but is merely instrumentai in making the voyages and the discoveries possible. The book Franklin receives has a little mode1 ship on the cover that cm be popped up, while the book itself stands in for the ocean: "das Buch selbst war das Meer" (35).
Later, when Franklin himself is aboard ship, he is a man of order and clarity, demanding the precision and the exact correspondence of signs and physical reality necessary to navigation, a science which allows no room for error in the reading of instruments, charts, and natural phenornena. This exactness corresponds to one part of
Franklin's venture, the side which lems a closed system comprehensively and is occupied with an exact measurement of physical space. Opposing this defined and limited system is the sea, which is equated with the book in Franklin's early experience.
While the sea is one of the most significant spaces in the story, no definite, clearly expressed meaning is attached to it. On two occasions, it is described as a skin; it is "die gute Haut" (42), or "die gute, runzelige Elephantenhaut" (238). It is drawn through these metaphon into a recuning theme of the narrative, where there is fiequent reference to skin which is marked, with lines, scars or tattoos (cf. 52, 121, 147, 302, 323). Here skin is "written on" with signs of age or tomire, in the case of lines and scars, or with actual images and words, in the case of tattoos.
To appreciate this imagery more fdly, however, it is necessary to consider its
Mermetaphorical implications. Skin is a boundary between the inside (of the body) and the outside world. It is at once the surface of the body and yet a part of it, both inside and outside, and at the same the the dividing point between the two. Furthemore, skin is a fluid, flexible boundary, which expands and contracts according to the form it contains. It is the comection between the self and the world. The sea has a sirnilar function, both dividing and comecting, and so providing the medium for voyages between one place and another. At one point, Franklin identifies bselfwith the sea as a medium for images and memories, the link between the present and the pst: "er sah sich als ein Stück Meer. Enmerungen begannen vorbeizutreiben, Bilder, die langsamer wanderten als er selbst" (60). The sea can thereby be associated with a drifting motion, much like the Arctic Ocean in Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis, and in contrat with the motion of navigation, which is directed and purposefûl: "hder Navigation muB man die Ausgangsposition so genau feststellen wie das Ziel" (301).
Franklin hds himself dreaming repeatedly of the sea, and in his dreams sees it expressing the variability of fonn and the expanding and contracting motion implicit in the skin metaphor:
Das mondhelle ngchtliche Meer wuchs ni einer eigenen Gestalt auf [...]
aber nicht aus Wind und Stromung, sondem aus eigener Kraft. Das Meer gab sich selbst einen KGrper, es konnte sich neigen, Haltungen
einnehmen, Richtungen anzeigen. Aus der scheinbar ewigen Geraden
des Horizonts stieg Un Traurn miihelos diese riesenhafte Figur auf, sie
war wie eine Wahrheit, durch die alles anders werden muBte. (86)
Later, in the Arctic Ocean, Franklin discovers the meaning of his dream when he watches the frozen sea take on various shifting shapes. The ice is "wie eine rotgliiserne Stadt"
(346) or "wie Diamantkuppen und Srnaragdgrotten" (194). Franklin approaches these forms just as he does the foreign social systems encountered on his voyages, in that he tries to read and interpret them: "John blickte ins Eis, studierte die Formen und versuchte ni verstehen, was sie bedeuteten" (195). The ice formations are, as Franklin recognizes, an extension of the sea in which it gives itself a multitude of varying forms. The foms are not only real objects, but are also undentood as symbolic representations, like the ice cities built by the sailors in Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finstemis. As in
Ransmayr's book, the sea functions here as a metaphor for the text. Indeed, Franklin sees it the same way as he sees texts, which to hirn are etemal static variations of certain forms
(letters): "Das Meer sah jeden Tag anders aus und blieb sich darin bis in Ewigkeit gleich"
(239).
The motion across this spatial medium must, then, also be a textual movement, as it was in Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsteniis. Franklin's voyages are in essence an essay on the nature of signs. On the one hand, as we have seen, a rigid system of signification is used to determine the position of the ship. Exactness and calculation are necessary to navigate, to reach a destination alive. This in itself is not, however, "Entdeckung," but only the means to achieve it. The discovery itself involves a codiontation with unknown systems of signification, the possibility of a widened experience of the world, which can be read and understood in many different ways. The function of the voyages is to move observers fiom a systern they know into an unlaiown one, and thereby to emphasize the fact that their own system is only one of many possibilities. This is something Franklin, with his "unnatural"relation to the systems of his own home, already Eaiows: that no system has an absolute meaning.
Franklin learns to read England, partially, and the world of the ship, completely.~0
But this is not the world as such, it is only one small portion of it. This becomes clear when the explorers enter unknown temtory and when they meet native peoples who organize their reality differently. When the officers and crew of Franklin's fim journey to
Australia encounter Abongines for the first time, they attempt to present a native man with a shot bird as a gesture of fkiendliness. The man appears uninterested and even hostile, leading the men to wonder whether the meaning of their gifi has been misundentood: "Vielleicht hatte aber gerade diese Vogelart keine so gute Bedeutung"
(91). When they later encounter a group of people who al1 laugh incessantly, they wonder if it is "ein Zeichen des Zweifels" (92) or if it has sorne other unknown meaning.
Throughout al1 the voyages descnbed in the novel, Europeans are confronted with
10 Every time Franklin returns to London he must learn a whole new set of observations, as England is changing rapidly. The home world must continually be re-read and newly interpreted (266f, 286). Unlike the distant wilderness of Australia or Canada, Franklin experiences England as a world in motion, a constanly changing and immensely complex world, and while he is able to understand it in parts, he never achieves full comprehension. Only in the stable and clearly organized society on board ship can he be entireIy competent and take cornmand. This leads to languages, codes of behaviour, dress codes, customs and social structures which for them are unknown and unsettling. The removal fiom their usual surroundings puts their own supposedly stable identities in question. During the meeting with the Abongines, for example, Franklin notices the Englishrnen are uncornfortable and even hstrated: "alle glaubten, die Wilden seien noch ni wenig darüber belehrf wen sie vor sich hatten. Die
WeiDen fiihlten sich noch nicht ausreichend respektiert" (93).
Only Franklin, after long observation, can interpret the natives' behaviour correctly. He has consciously learned to read signs and cannot take their rneaning for granted. This, too, makes him such an excellent "Signalrnann" while at sea (1 10). The voyages in the narrative are al1 filled with such encounters with unlaiown systems of signification, and Franklin is consistently the one who looks closely enough and asks the nght questions. When he and his men are surrounded by a potentially hostile group of huit who al1 clap their bands, he asks himself, "Was, zum Teufel, bedeutete hierorts das
Hiindeklatschen?" (242); he is the only one of his group capable of observing the event fiom the perspective of a questioner. Ody after he has decoded the information does
Franklin act. His acquired quickness makes hirn a good navigator, but his natural slowness allows hirn to make discoveries and understand new systerns. While it originally prevented hirn from making the connections necessary to understanding, it now functions positively. He is slow to attach a particular meaning to a sign and so is held back from automatic rnisinterpretation.
The foreign systems of signification encountered on the voyages give further
his failure as govemor of Tasmania: his desire to reform the penal system is shattered by his inability to play at politics. insight into the systems used to produce and comprehend art. When the expedition's artist attempts to sketch an huit woman, she forces him to comply to her own cultural aesthetic: "Die Frau streckte Hood bereitwillig alles entgegen, was nach ihrer
Überzeugung besondere Genauigkeit verlangte: Zahne, Zunge, rechtes und linkes Oh,
Hbde, FIlBe. Es entstand eh seltsames Bild--die Details ergaben nicht den gewohnten
Zusammenhang. Aber den Eskimos gefiel es sehr [...]" (243). The voyages here are not sirnply a reading of the world; as in Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finrtemis they also generate a productive representation of experience, as will be Merseen in Franklin's activity as a writer.
Speed is a central theme of the text, and this implies not only the speed of perception but the related theme of motion, which is seen in its temporal and spatial aspects as a question of time and distance. Both of these are related to perception, as
Franklin discovers when he watches the landscape pass by during a carriage ride as a boy:
"in dichter Nahe funkelte und hüpfie es, Zaunpfahle, Blumen, Zweige. Weiter hinten gab es Kühe, Strohdacher und Waldhügel, da hatte das Erscheinen und Verschwinden ~chon einen feierlichen und benihigenden Rhythmus. Die femsten Berge aber waren wie er selbst, sie standen einfach da und schauten" (10). Speed is relative to the observer in motion, so that distant things appear static. The distant lands Franklin wishes to explore appear static by virtue of their distance; there, he imagines, time is either drastically slowed or completely stopped, and he wants to travel to such a land, "so weit weg, daB die
Sonne nicht unterging und die Zeit nicht ablief' (12). He can read the unknown territories much better than his home, England, not only because the distant wildemess is seen as an unchanging text, but also because, as the explorer, he is the one in motion, and he himself can set the pace. In fact, it is the achievement of this motion that is the true goal; once he is undenvay, Franklin abandons his search for a timeless land: "Das Ziel war wichtig gewesen, um den Weg ni erreichen... Er hatte nur die Sehnsucht, unterwegs m bleiben, auf Entdeckungsreise, bis das Leben vorbei war" (197). For a true explorer, there is no one end or goal, just as there is no definitive "Sinn" in language; the process is its own end.
It might be deduced that the theme of this narrative is, properly, tirne, and that space takes a second place. If, however, one considen the meaning of Franklin's voyages
(motion through space) and the nature of his idiosyncrasy, this conclusion is relativized.
Franklin's slowness is, as has been seen, a different form of perception. This is seen even at the beginning, by the children who try to play bal1 with him and conclude, "Der tut nichts, der glotzt nur" (14). Franklin himself recognizes the problem: "Es lag also am
Schauen" (17). His perception itself is different f?om that of the others: "Er schaute zu langsam" (18). "Franklin machte jetzt aus seiner ktdes Sehens eine neue Art des
Fragens" (283) we read when Franklin, on his second journey in Canada, lems the Inuit culture and language. He refen to a type of questioning centered on "how?" rather than yes-no questions.
Perception is not limited to a stnctly linear flow of time. It does not take place purely in the present, but must produce a connection between impressions from various points of tirne if it is to make sense. When Franklin watches the revolving bearn of a lighthouse, he redizes that his perception is constituted not only by that which is present, but by that which is temporally absent as well: John sah den Strahl wandem, aber das Licht blieb rechts imrner weiter
sichtbar, auch wenn es schon wieder links hinüber-schwenkte, und es
war links noch da, wenn es rechts wieder auftauchte. Vergangenheit
und Gegenwart-was hatte Dr. Omie darüber gesagt? Am
gegenwartigsten war das Licht, wenn es beim Aufblitzen direkt in
John's Pupille traf. Was er sonst noch sah, muDte schon vorher
geleuchtet haben, es leuchtete jetzt nur noch in seinem eigenen Auge,
ein vergangenes Licht. (47)
Dr. Orme, Franklin's teacher, is obsessed with the perception and representation of reality, and attempts to build various versions of a proto-film projector, a device which will make rnany separate images appear Iike a continuous flow. This, too, is based on the premise that that which is absent in reality, like an image which is no longer being shown, remains present in perception.
If there are different types of perception, as Franklin's boyhood predicarnent would indicate, then the world is open to many kinds of interpretation. Dr. Orme tells Franklin about the theones of the Bishop of Cloyne: "Er stellte sich die ganze Welt mit allen
Menschen, Dingen und Bewegungen als etwas nur Scheinbares vor. Sie war somit eine
Geschichte, die Gott den Gehimen mit Hilfe künstlicher Sinneseindrücke erzahlte" (1 28).
When asked why God should do this, the teacher replies, "'Der Sinn der Schophing kt den
Menschen nicht bekannt. [...] AuBerdem muB eine gute Geschichte keinen Zweck haben"'
(128). Here, an implicit theme of the narrative is articulated: the world as a story consisting of percephial impressions. The central point, for Dr. Orme, is how such a story could be told. The teacher wonden "mit was für einen Apparat Gott, wenn der Bischoff recht hatte, dem menschlichen Gehim solche Bilder eingeben k6nnteW(128). and the experiments with moving pichires are an attempt to answer this question. The final projector prototype invented by Dr. Orme is the "Bildwalzer":
ein Apparat, in den eh goDes Buch eingespannt war. Mit Hilfe eines
starken Mechanismus wurden die Seiten in blitzschneller Folge
umgeblattert. Auf jeder Seite war eh Bild aufgemalt, das sich von dem
vorigen jeweils nur durch geringfügige Veriinderungen unterschied. So
entstand, wenn innerhalb weniger Sekunden s-tliche Buchseiten ni
sehen waren, die Illusion eines einzigen, und nvar bewegten Bildes.
(171)
Here, the central idea involving the perception of images in motion is explicitly associated with a book, whose images appear static. The motion, which produces the co~ection between the images, is reflected by the movement of the reader in the text and the explorer in physical space.
Meditating on art, Franklin recognizes an essential connection between the fiozen symbols that make up a work and the motion it cm represent: "aus mehreren gefrorenen
Augenblicken lie0 sich Bewegung abbilden" (273). This recognition arises out of his own expenence with the perception of physical reality. On the purely functional level, the act of reading produces a dynarnic relationship between static signs. On the level of understanding and interpretation, the reading of a text tums the discrete events descnbed in the story into a whole, a continuous flow with meaningful connections.
This theme is continued in Franklin's own attempts to represent his experiences.
Like Me,he functions not only as a reader but dso as a writer. This is the productive side of his attempt to make a connection with the social world. As a boy, he leams to speak with people by finding useful phrases, which he writes in a diary: "Ins Heft schrieb
John jeta nur noch englische Satze nun eigenen Gebrauch, Erklmgen seines
Eigensinns und Zeitsinns, die er notfails gelaufig wollte abgeben komen" (36). He learns to cornrnunicate verbally by writing, for he can deal with the fixed written language better than the fast-moving spoken language. As indicated above, Franklin sees spoken language, too, as a senes of images arising out of a series of sounds. He likes to listen to the seaman and writer Spavens because of his slow, deliberate speech rhythm: "Ein Won nach dem anderen brachte er an, wie man BiIder an einer Wand befestigt" (38).
Once Franklin has leamt how to speak comprehensively, he must still do it at his own pace, if only to ensure that the full meaning of what he wishes to Say is transmitted.
He has discovered that in productive language, as in perception, the essence is contained in the connection between two images, in the space between them, when they are both present and absent (like the connection between signifier and signified). When he tells a story of his experiences he reflects on what he has learnt: "Jeder Bencht hatte eine auOere
Seite, die logisch zusammenhing und leicht ni begreifen war, und eine innere, die nur im
Kopf des Sprechenden aufschien. Zu unterdriicken war diese imere nicht [...] John mate ihr also Zeit einraumen, ohne sie nach aden zu wenden" (108). He accomplishes this by allowing for many "Pausen" (108f) in his narration. The essential, unspoken aspects of his experiences are given room in these gaps. When, for example, he must report on the near-capsizing of his ship, he leaves enough moments of silence to allow his listener to understand the unofficial, personal aspects of the experience: "Wie das gewesen war, das
Sterben, das Pumpen, die Angst vor dem Siechwerden-John schwieg es in die Pausen hinein" (109). Captain Dance, Franklin's audience, does not engage in the interpretation necessary to understand the report fully: "Dance horte nur Zahlen, geographische Begriffe und Pausen" (109). The essence of the story lies with the recipient, something Franklin has learnt by the thehe becomes a writer.
When Franklin sets out to write his fust book, an account of his fkst expedition in
Canada, he is motivated by a desire for "Rechtfertigung" (269). Since his mission ostensibly failed, its facts and details are hown and considered proof of its failure.
Franklin writes his account of how it was in order to ailow a glimpse behind the bare facts, and an understanding of his own point of view. In writing, Franklin continues his habit of leaving the inner reality of a situation unspoken. Descnbing the first, all- important meeting with a Cree chief, he is aware of what he is leaving out:
John lie0 die Stelle so stehen, obwohl er wullte, daB darnit wenig gesagt
war über seine damaligen Gefiihle bei diesem Anblick, über die unklare,
bange Situation und über die seltsarne Hoffiung, die der Hauptling ihm
vom ersten Augenblick an eingefloBt batte. Trotzdem war es ein
brauchbarer Satz, weil jedermann seine eigenen Geftihle in ihn
hineinstecken konnte oder sogar mu0te. (270)
The meanuig, the inner part of the narrative, is fomed out of what is missing from the surface. This guarantees, too, that each reader will be reading something different, depending of the persona1 degree of involvement with the text.
Franklin's theory of writing will be familia. already to al1 readers who have arrived at this point in the nanative. Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit does not necessarily contain many more gaps and silences than a tdy traditional text, but it makes these
"Pausen" evident, not only by commenting on them indirectly, but also in the selection of what is left out and where. There are extreme breaks in continuity between many of the chapters, for example between chapters seven and eight; and nine and ten. The two-year voyage around Australia is told in two pages (109f); ten entire years are passed over vhally without comment (149). This would not be particularly notable if other, oAen seemingly prosaic events, were not described in such detail. Franklin's first expedition in
Canada, which consists of much plodding about and little true discovery, is told in fifty- five pages; the second voyage, which is described as far more fnlltful, takes less than three pages. Paradoxicaily, it is precisely the strict chronological structure of the text that makes its disconnectedness so evident. The story is presented in a straight line mimicking the perceived "natural" Bow of tirne, and in such a simple succession gaps and omissions are much more evident than in a complex construction full of temporal distortions. The reader is presented with a series of images and events that seem comected only when much speculation is projected into the gaps beween them. The text is by no means unique in this respect, since this is an aspect of virtually every narrative. indeed, with its focus on this aspect, which is normally disguised in traditional narrative, the text deliverç a commentary on the nature of narrative as such and on the reader's role in its construction.
It is certainly possible to read the text naively, to stay entirely on the surface. But any reader aware of the many references to the process of reading is presented with a reflective reference to the construction of the text, which is thereby lifted out of a purely representative hinction. The result is a new awareness of those aspects which in a tmly traditional narrative remain hidden and generally overlooked. The readers then find themselves in a situation similar to Franklin's. While al1 the other children learn to read the world when they are not fûlly conscious of what they are
learning, and so regard their perceptions and interpretations as natural and necessary, he, being slower, Iearns to read the world when he has attained a relatively high level of consciousness. Therefore, he is aware of the process itself and can take nothing for granted. He is also aware, fYom the start, that there are other alternatives, and that no
form of perception and interpretation is natural, as al1 are learnt and relative. Similarly, the readers are made aware that the text they are reading and interpreting is a particular kind of system, an artificial system for representing reality, not a natural reflection of the world, and that those Literary conventions they have grown so used to that they seem completely natural and self-explanatory are in fact nothing of the sort. Additionally, however, the reader recognizes that any perception of the world is, in essence, "textual."
There is no natural and complete reflection of physical reality in the human mind. The conventionality of the novel's form, in mimicking a realistic representation of the world, only underscores this point.
A cornparison between Die Entdeckung der Langsarnkeit and Das Kalkwerk, the most discourse-oriented novel discussed here, would at first glance appear to show two opposite extremes. Yet on closer examination it can be seen that much of what occurs on the discursive level in Bernhard's novel reappears as a central theme in Nadolny's. The discursive elements which "spatialized" Das Kalkwerk by hindering the linear temporal progression of the story are reflected in the concept of "Langsarnkeit." The destabilization of sources is implicitly present in Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeir in its treatment of historical material, since the sources on Franklin's life are completely integrated into the narrative and given no pnonty over the invented matenal. While Dos
Kulkwerk questions sources and authorities and reveals them as uîîerly unreliable,
Nadolny's novel simply absorbs its sources. Bernhard's novel emphasizes its identity as an artifact of language, a text as text with a murder that is ody a linguistic event. Die
Entdeckung der Langsamkeit posits not only the text as a text, but the real world as weli; for this reason, the historical Franklin can be effortlessly integrated into a novel. To draw a Mercornparison, the blank spaces which appeared in the text of Endden bis Ostende and spatialized that narrative, are present here on the story level, as the gaps behiveen moments of existence or the "Pausen" in a narrative that must be comected in the attempt to find meaning. Whereas Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finstentis differentiates at least typographically between its historical and fictional matenal, Die Entdeckung der
Langsamkeit makes no such distinction. Readhg-the process of discovery or interpretation-is equaily applicable to known and unknown spaces, to texts and reality. Chapter V: Christoph Ransmayr's Die l-e Weit
Christoph Ransmayr's novel Die Ietzte Welt (1988) is not only similar in many ways to Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finstemis, but it dso reiterates themes, motifs and ideas that were central to the novels by Bernhard, Becker, Nadolny and Hildesheimer discussed above. Because of this, it offers not only a continued variation on the theme of temporal and spatial narrative structures, but also an opportunity to return to some of the central considerations seen in the other texts analysed here, and to re-examine them in relation to this Merdevelopment.
Mer a general discussion of the novel and its critical reception, this final chapter
will focus on several central points: the spatialization of time in the story; the
significance of the narrated space and its relationship to the theme of the journey; and
the motif of boundaries and "Zwischenraume" as seen in the story, in the structure of the
novel, and in the reading process. Especially this final point, which grows out of the
interrelation on the kst two, shows a central theme of the novel, which will be of
pnmary interest here: the ambiguous status and shifting relationships of different levels
of reality, the possible CO-existenceof various distinct but overlapping worlds. The
questions arising from this theme concem the relationship between our physical reality
and fictional and historical realities, and centre on the problem of which is prior,
experience or narration. The epistemological scepticism of Bernhard's Kalkwerk is, as it
were, written into this text in the figure of Con& who rnoves fiom his initial position as
a rational observer into a new role as a participant in ontological instability and plurality.
The method of representation is far removed fiom Bernhard's: whereas there the
disxupted discourse showed the skeptical relationship to an unlaiowable reality, here the narrated space embodies the pluality of realities. That this leads to an intrusion of the texhial world into the reader's reality is inevitable. The last section of this chapter will focus on the themes of reading and writing as discussed in the text, and examine how these processes are Wedwith its narrative and thematic structure.
Ransmayr's novel grew out of an assignment the author received to produce a modem translation of Ovid's masterpiece, Metamorphoses, for Hans Magnus
Enzensberger's "Andere Bibliothek." The result is a fictional work that combines references to and quotations f?om Ovid's text, as well as historical facts and contemporary themes, in a story about the search for a lost author or at lest his vanished work. Al1 this is transmitted through a highly poetic Ianguage that no doubt accounted to a large degree for the widespread popularity which the novel enjoyed at the time of its publication, but which has also eamed it a certain arnount of criticism and rejection since then. The beautifûl "hi& style" is oflen used to transmit descriptions of ugly events: death, disfigurement, sexual violence and even, in an oblique re ference, the Holocaust , and at the same time it creates a coldness of tone and a distance between the reader and the story. As a result the novel has been condemned for aesthetizing the ugly, and
Ransmayr has been accused of producing a work that is merely façhionable, a tivial exploitation of the postrnodem trend.'
The story is set in Tomi, a coastal mining town on the rocky shores of the Black
Sea. If the novel is read historically, Tomi might be identified as the present-day
See for example Reinhold Glei, who presents us with a philologist's judgrnent of the novel, concluding with the argument that students would do better to read their Ovid. Glei states that Ransmayr's last world is a metaphor for the decline of Our world, and that there is a contradiction between the (beautifid) form and the degeneration and decline shown in the text. Constanta, Romania, and the action would be set around the year 17 A.D. Cotta, an admirer of Naso (Ovid), arrives by ship fiom Rome, having escaped the totalitarian reign of the empire in order to search for the tmth about the poet, who, banished to this place on the outer fiinge of civilization nine years previously, has recently been rurnoured dead in the gardens and salons of the capital city. Specifically, Cotta is interested in tinding the author's lost masterpiece, which is known to us as the Metamorphoses, the only copy of which Naso himself had burned, in a fit of despair or spite, before leaving
Rome. Cotta does not hdNaso; what he does find are the inhabitants of Tomi who, though Cotta cannot know this until the end of the novel, al1 have names taken fiom
Ovid's Metamorphoses. Without at first realizing it, Cotta also discoven versions of stories from this text. First he sees these Ui tales, films, or dreams, and later he experiences them as part of "real" life in Tomi. In Trachila, an abandoned village high in the rnountains, Cotta also finds direct quotations fkom Ovid's work (though again he does not realize this until the very end) written on scraps of cloth or chiselled into stones. The reader who is familiar with Ovid's tales (or who has referred to the
"Ovidisches Repertoire," appended to the novel, which compares the characters and events in Die Ietzte Welt to their "originals" in Ovid) recognizes long before Cotta that the Roman is moving about in the realized, though transfonned, landscape of Ovid's fiction. Cotta recognizes this only at the end of his quest, when he ascends the newly- revealed, newly-transformed mountain that has arisen out of the landscape of the coast
(Mount Olympus) intending to search for his own narne on the cloth scraps of Trachila.
Of the many connections that can be made between this text and the novels examined earlier, several will be discussed here. The most obvious is the intertextual relation to Ransrnayr's novel Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis, which is seen in parallels of plot and theme and in the use of images and phrases already encountered in the earlier text. Again we are presented with a centrai figure who loses himself in the text of a predecessor, and again this text is plastically presented as a landscape; however, it will be seen that Cotta is a "modern man", a rational sceptic, not a romantic like
Mazzini, and he resists his absorption into the fictional landscape as long as possible. In his modernity, Cotta bears some resemblance to the narrator of Das Kalkwerk. In
Bernhard's novel, the insurance agent collects stones about a central figure who has disappeared and lost his voice, and he receives the words of this figure only second-hand at best, thus producing for the reader a text cenhing on questions of truth, reliability, and perception. Similar questions concern Cotta as he moves around Tomi and up the mountain to Trachila, asking the townspeople questions, weighing their answen and considering the reliability of his own perceptions. Furthemore, the physicality of wnting and the shifting relationship of signifier and signified are present as a theme here as they were most notab ly in Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit. Again there is a narrator who must discover a new way of "reading" the world. The blank wildemess into which
Mazzini and the protagonist of Musunte ultimately disappear is present here as well, in a new form, and Cotta, too, disappears fiom our sight at the end. Finally, the question of the comection of reality and fiction, of text and expenence, which have been exarnined in al1 the previous works, is explored as a central theme in this novel, with its spatialization of time and texhiality, its shifting mutilayered relationships of history and invention, of different times and levels of reality. Many themes, both central and peripherd, can be found in this text, as the critical examinations fkom the past decade have demonstrated. The novel is multi-dimensional and allows for, even calls for, many possible readings, with references to political developments (the deformation of rationai, enlightened goverment into a totalitarian state, economic decline, and the hinctionalization of humanity in a capitalist system), ecological problems (the opposition of civilization and nature, extreme climate changes, the exhaustion of nahiral resources), and social issues (the problem of refugees from political and ecological catastrophes, the existence of "Third World" societies on the periphery of the so-called civilized world, and the problem of violence towards women) to name just a few. Although these themes will not be central to this examination, their existence should be kept in mind as part of the text's continued references to external, historical reality.
Most critics have concentrated on the general theme of decline ("Untergang") as it relates various sub-themes of the novel. Helmut Bernsmeier, for exarnple, comects his discussion of the novel to a general mood of doom which he claims is present in contemporary society, a mood arising kom the fact that in today's media we are confronted with a steady stream of threatening news and apocalyptic signals. The catastrophic mood of today is transferred as a theme into the ancient setting of the novel, and this relates the action to our present situation (176). The decline of civilization is characterized by the nse of nature, which takes over and destroys humanity:
"Letztendlich wird der Sinn menschlichen Zusammenlebens, werden Heirnat und
Sprache zerstort" (179). Bemsmeier sees this motif of "Heimatlosigkeit" as a trend in recent literature (for example, as seen in the works of Botho StrauD and Max Frisch) but notes that while some other authors, such as Patrick SüDkind, Siegfkied Lenz, and
Christa Wolf, have found a hurnane alternative to the mood of decline and catastrophe,
Ransmayr offers no escape. His theme is simply "die Auflosung der Welt und der
Kultur" (1 81). Ransmayr offers no positive alternative to the feelings of pointlessness and disconnectedness, but seeks refuge only in an empty fascination with an aesthetic
"Untergang." According to Bemsmeier the poetic language is the reason for the work's success, but does not Save it fiom being an essentially ernpty piece.
Cegienas de Groot takes a similar line of interpretation, noting "Die Vorstellung der aussichtslosen Lage der westlichen Zivilisation entspricht in der osterreichischen und schweizerischen Literatur der lerten Jahrzehnte eher dern Nomal- als dern
Ausnahmezustand" (269). The central themes, according to de Groot, are
"Vergiinglichkeit" and the degeneration of man, as opposed to lasting myths and imagination. The basic political and cultural issues faced by Westem society are essentially unchangeable; so, for example, problems with bureaucracy, censorship, and refugees are inherent in our society, and belong neither to the past nor the present. This creates an image of Westem civilization as being in a state of hopeless and permanent decline. The only consolation de Groot finds in Ransmayr's novel is "die dichterische
Phantasie," which allows for a small measure of escape (269).
Ulrich Fülleborn speaks of the "Endzeitproblematik untergehender Welten" with which, he argues, Ransmayr, as a product of Ausûian culture, must be especially farniliar. Die leizte WeIi is "eine Endzeitdichtung" and this basic theme mingles with the other major themes of the novel, such as art (especially literature) and the relation of man and nature (372). Fülleborn, who focuses largely on the theme of death and the concept that a possible end of hurnanity causes a reassessment of the place of nature, notes that the narrative structure of the novel means that many types of interpretation, many readings, would be possible.
Thomas Epple sees the novel as part of a trend in apocalyptic literature in German since the end of the 19707s, and concludes that it may represent a new kind of fin de siècle literature. Epple concentrates on two aspects: the play of imagination, and the language. With respect to the first point, he argues that the novel shows how neither civilized reason (which becomes totalitarian) nor the barbarian world of Tomi can offer humans a worthy life, so that only the imagination remains as consolation. This is not an idyllic imagination, however, as it only has decline for its content, and indeed it endones the self-annihilation of humanity and makes this appear beautiful. Rather more than an empty excuse for its popularity, the language keeps the text fkom being a mere, meaningless game. Since, in the novel's pessimistic view, man can only be fkeed bom his violent nature by being destroyed, this apocalyptic imagination produces not a
Utopia, but rather the end of humanity. Imagination is an escape fiom ugly reality; and this sarne escape is offered to the reader as well, in the beauty of the language.
Epple also offers a comment on the narrative strategy of the novel: "Ransmayr treibt bis nim Ende des Romans ein Spiel mit dem Leser: Envartungen, mit denen man an den Text herangeht, und solche, die der Text erst aufbaut, werden durchbrochen, und auch der SchluD lost nicht alle Ratsel explizit, sondem überlallt die genauere
Orientierung dem Leser" (29). The text offers the reader "eh Spiel mit vielen Themen und ineinanderfiiefienden Wirklichkeitsbereichen" by working with a "bewd3t organisierte Strategie der Verwimuig" (29). This strategy of disorientation is present on both the receptive and the diegetic level, so that the reader's confusion mirrors that experienced by Cotta.
Kurt Bartsch offers a more positive interpretation, focusing on the theme of
"Vergiinglichkeit" rather than "Untergang. "* With the concept of "Verghg lichkeit " there are signs of hope:
Das Finale der Letzten Welt kann daher nicht als eine modische
kulturpessirnistische Endzeitbeschworung verstanden werden, obschon
die Moglichkeit totaler Zentorung offengelassen wird-aber diese ist ja
tatsachlich eine historisch neue Quaiitat. Das dynamische Prinzip des
steten Wandels alles Seienden steht jedoch der Erstamuig in
Endzeitgedanken entgegen. (Bartsch 126)
He argues that Ransmayr avoids seeing apocalypse as saivation but simply asserts that everything changes, including Augustan Rome and our own time. Literature and myth, however, are seen as a hope for survival, a new beginning. Bartsch emphasizes the novel's relation to our present time, with its themes of current interest (parallels to the
Third World, one world power as guarantor of peace, etc.). The novel's strategy is to become a subversive literary game against any form of absolute authority.
' An additional interpretation that considers the theme of change is offered by Barbara Naumann, who sees the central theme as "Metamorphose von Geschichte" (100), reIating it to themes of temporality and spatiality that will be discussed here: "Bei Ransmayr erscheint die Metamorphose als Weg der Geschichte, dem in ihr-und das ist banal-unterliegt alles der Verihderung, und in ihr-das ist hingegen nicht banal-priigen Zeit und Raum als unabdingbar notwendige Konstituenten der Wahrnehrnung erst nach ihrer Auflosung ein neues Bild" (102). Henk Harbers offm two possibIe readings that must be combined: first, the consideration that metamorphosis is the power of admyth against static tyranny/reason, and second the conflict between civilization and nature. The obvious intertextuality of Ransmayr's novel has led many critics to make a cornparison between the text and its "originalw part of, or even the basis of, their interpretations. Several have also compared the events and characters of Die letzte Welt with the official historical record, to determine how far they deviate nom one another.
The findings of these cntics cm be divided in two groups. First, there are the thematic and narrative differences and similarities between the two literary texts, and second there is the extent to which Ransmayr's novel can be seen as hi~toncal.~These examinations are quite exhaustive, and no new cornparisons will be added to them here. Yet, since the question of history and fiction, origins and interpretations, will be of central significance here, their results should be briefly noted.
Bemsmeier compares Ransmayr's novel with Ovid's Metamorphoses and notes two basic differences: the nature of the metamorphoses descnbed in the texts, and the direction of the respective stones. With respect to the first point, Bemsmeier argues that for Ovid the foms of the characters undergoing metamorphoses change, but the individuals keep their essential identity, while Ransmayr's characters Iose thein. What
Ransmayr describes are not transformations but dissolutions. Glei also makes this point, noting that in Ovid, txansformations happen only on a cosmic level affecting the course of history on a large scale, while individuals keep their essential identity; Glei goes so far as to suggest that Ransmayr erroneously treats as literal fact what was meant by Ovid as metaphor. Secondly, according to Bemsmeier, Ransmayr turns around the process
Referring to the historical background, de Groot has discovered that some of the histoncal references to the lives of Cotta and Ovid are authentic, while others are invented or altered (2550. Bartsch aIso compares the novel to the historical record, with similar findings. described by Ovid: instead of describing the nse of civilization out of chaos we now
begin with civilization and end in chaos. De Groot dso sees this reversal, as Ransmayr
describes not "Entstehung der Erde und der Menschen" but rather "Niedergang und dem
Ende des Menschen und seiner Kultur" (257). This structural aspect has been noted by
many others, including Bartsch and Sabine Wilke.
Referring to elements of intertextuality between the two works, de Groot suggests
that elements of narrative style are reminiscent of Ovid's, while Bartsch argues that the
novel shows its intertextual relationship to Ovid's Metamorphoses not just in its quotes
and references, but in its structure as well. Gellhaus counts various intertextual
references, such as the fifieen chapters of Ransmayr's book, which match the fifteen
books in Ovid; the characten; and the references to the Ages described by Ovid, for
example the Iron Age which is seen in Tomi, the "eiseme Stadt" (1 39). Füllebom,
suggesting that Ransmayr's text would not exist without Ovid's, calls Die letzte Weii
"eine moderne Metamorphose der Metamorphosen des Ovid,"(375), and Bartsch, too,
notes that Ovid's text is one of the many objects that undergo metamorphoses in the
novel. Bartsch notes that the "Themenvielfdt" of Ransmayr's novel is parallel to the
"Vielfalt von Diskursarten" found in Ovid, thereby identifying an additional structural
intertextuality (129).
Al1 in all, however, strict literal cornparisons of Ransmayr's text with Ovid's
Metamophoses and with history have not proven particularly hitfbl. Apart fiom the central points mentioned above, the novel appears too agree with (or deviate fiom)
Ovid's text in a more or less arbitrary way, so that the use of these deviations and agreements as a sole bais for interpretation is at least questionable. However, several points made in the course of these cornparisons will be of some significance, and should be emphasized here. Ransmayr's text does include some historical figures (Augustus,
Ovid and Cotta al1 existed) but feels ~eeto alter or invent many details about them. Die letzte Welt is heavily indebted to Ovid's Metamorphoses, but again, it alters the original stories cowiderably. The explicit intertextuality of the novel means that both texts,
Ransmayr's and Ovid's, are simultaneously present, though in the case of Ovid's work this presence remains fiagmentary. Nonetheless, the past is explicitly encoded in the present fonn, and this intertextuality is not without purpose. It will be seen that it supports the interrelating themes of reality and fiction, history and expenence.
Additionally, it ensures that the text does not simply have the effect of an "anything- goes" fantasy that requires no explanation and has no relation to reality.
A novel which presents a partially mythical story in a partially histoncal setting and which claims to describe the end of a world must give a specia1 place and significance to the dimension of time. Certainly, time, space, and their interrelation are defining elernents in both the content and the narrative fom of this text. The examination of this interplay of elements begins with a consideration of the role of time on the story-level, within the narrated world of Die letzte Welt. Here, time is taken out of its normal role in the background, as a mere medium for events, and is repeatedly presented as spatialized, as concretely present in the physical world. This is an image that has been encountered already in the novels discussed above, particularly in Die Schrecken des Eises und der Fiasternis, but also in Hildesheimer's novels. ' in Trachila, for example, Cotta encounters "Torbogen, durch die hindurch nur noch die Zeit verfiog"
(14). ui Limyra, a nllned and abandoned mining outpost on the way to Trachila, time seems petrified: visiting scavengers dig through layers of time as they go through the rubble hoping to hdrelics frorn the pst, while the abandoned mine shafts contain the past in tangible fom: "aus jedem Schacht rauchte die Vergangenheit" (229). In Tomi, both the past and the hture are continually present: "Im nachstbesten lauchetümpel der eisemen Stadt spiegele sich doch die Zukunft bereits, jeder Tümpel ein Fenster in die von der Zeit verwüsteten Welt" (188-89). In ail of these examples, tirne appears to have al1 the aspects of a concrete object. That is, it exists in its entirety in one simultaneous moment, and so past and present are seen as layers, not as vanished or unrealized-
Spatial and concrete, time is related to the vertical constellation in which depth represents the past and height the fûture.' Cotta experiences mernories of the past as an upward motion of images £kom the depths of time: "Wie die Luftblasen aus der
Wassertiefe nach oben torkeln und steigen, so stiegen aus seinem inneren Bilder auf, aus der Vergessenheit, und wurden, endlich oben, wieder m nichts" (42). When Cotta tells of his past we read that he "geriet imrner tiefer in die Zeit" (18). It has been seen before, in the discussion of Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis, that this is one of the two conventional modes of spatializing time in order to make it conceptually
' That this cm be related to the theme of decline, which has been noted by many critics, is clarified by Caviola's assertion that "An apocalyptic sensibility tends to freeze, and hence spatialize linear experience" (8). Our common popular consciousness is hl1 of metaphors that express this understanding; these include the idea that one "digs" in the depths of memory, that the past is buried, or that we make wishes for the fùture when looking at the stars. accessible-the more common form is the horizontal line, where the past is "behind" and the fiiture "ahead." The line, however, disguises its spatiality, as it appean to mirnic the natural flow of the as experienced in everyday life. A consequence of choosing the vertical axis to represent time as spatial and concrete is that it must also be seen as relative, rather than as a constant progression. At one point we read "Jeta wurde die
Zeit langsamer, stand still, fiel zurück in die Vegangenheit" (238). Sometimes time moves faster (132); sometimes it stands still (270), and this relativity arises naturally kom the vertical construction. When rime is imagined as a line, each point always exists aione-there is nothing present to compare it to. in spatialized layen, however, time is always relative to other portions of itself.
This image of time as a spatialized entity is more than mere literary decoration; it is essential to the central meaning of the novel. As long as time is seen as a line directed toward an end, its spatial organization as a concept cm be largely ignored, and past and future can be seen as largely separate fiom the present. When it is spatialized, however, time allows past and future to CO-exist,though this state is not always perceived by the experiencing subject. What this means for the relative status of Naso's text and Ovid's reality, and of Ovid's and Ransmayr's texts, remains to be seen.
The space in the story can be divided into hvo poles, Rome and Trachila, with
Tomi fùnctioning as the "Zwischenraum" between them. This constellation functions on several different levels, relating to the various themes that can be found in the novel (the decline of civilization, the destructive power of nature, the escape fiom totali tarianism into art) and depending on the reference its meaning is fluid, not ngidly set. It can be reconfigured, and indeed for most critics the defining opposition is that of Tomi/ Rome, with its inherent suggestion of nature against civilization, centre against hh~terland.~For
our purposes, however, we can Say that Rome corresponds to the "real" physical,
histoncal world within the story, the world where the characters and events of Naso's
stones belong blyin the fictional realm, where reason is taken to be the guiding
principle, where there is a clear boundary between reality and drearns. For the readers,
Rome provides the histoncai framework of the novel, its relation to the real world and
the history they themselves know and can refer teleaving aside for the moment the
various fictionalizations and anachronistic objects, which will be discussed in detail
below. It is, der dl, only through this historical fkamework that readen are able to
recognize the anachronisms for what they are.
Trachila is situated outside the reaches of Rome in the mountains, the wilderness
where, we are told, Naso has gone (51). The ruined settiement is also called the "Archiv
verblichener Zeichen" (243), and is, as becomes apparent to Cotta during his journey, the
world of the text, the only place where he cm find the written version of the
Metamorphoses, though only in fiagrnentary form. The reader also Ends direct
quotations nom Ovid's work in the stones and on the cloth scraps of Trachila, and may
recognize them from the start, having an advantage in this over Cotta, who has never
read the text, which, for him, is after al1 lost. The text that exists in Trachila also exists
in the real world of the reader, beyond the boundaries of the novel, and it can be found in
any library. Here in Trachila, images silently become "Geschichte" (43), and at the end
6 Epple, for example, posits an opposition between "Rorn/Metropole/Racht" and "TomilPeripherieNerfall"(36), while Harbers sees a double contrast, with Rome signifjwg both reason and civilization, and Tomi standing for art and nature. Sabine Wilke sees Tomi as the of the novel Cotta will have realized that the words it holds are in fact another reality, parallel to his own.
Trachila is described as silent, a soundless place, in sharp contrast to the noisiness of both Rome and Tomi. While Tomi is full of "Lh," "Gespriiche" and "Geriiusche"
(40), in Trachila it is unusually still; there is a silence that, to Cotta, seems to absorb al1 the voices and noises of the world below: "Cotta empfand dieses Schweigen und
Stillhalten, dieses vollige Zuriicksinken in sich selbst schlieBlich als die einzige diesem
Ort irn Gebirge gemaDe Fom des Daseins; dann enchien ihm die Stille von Trachila sogar groD genug, um den Lmder gesamten übngen Welt aufimeben und verhallen ni lassen" (42). This silence recalls the description of the change that had gradually corne over Naso while he was still in Rome, when it seemed as though he were losing his voice and could produce only silent texts: "Es war, ais hatte er nach und nach alles, was er ni sagen und zu schreiben imstande war, in das Reich seiner Dichtung verlegt, in die gebundene Rede oder eine vollendete Prosa und wXre darüber in der Welt der
Alltagssprache, des Dialektes, der Schreie und gebrochenen Satze und Phrasen verstummt" (53). The silence is the withdrawal out of the world and into the world of art, the "Reich der Dichhuig," and it is threatening to Cotta. When he first arrives in
Trachila he repeatedly yells Naso's name and his own, able to tolerate the place only "im
Schutz seiner Stimme" (16). Later, awakening fiom a nightrnare, he is relieved to hear
"seine rornische Stimme" (81). Significantly, silence is also a characteristic of Mount
Olympus, which in the end appears to Cotta as the concrete realization of Naso's
"Stellvertreter £Ür alIe Randzonen der Zivilisation, wo sich KuItur mit der noch unbesetzten Natur trefft" (242). fictional world, and which finally unites the dimensions of high and low: "aus der Tiefe der Erde den Stemen entgegengestemmt, erhob sich dieses Massiv über die subtropische
Wildnis der Kiiste bis in die toten, tiefblauen Regionen der Eiswolken" (285).
Cotta anticipates the significance of Trachila on his second ascent, when he is overcome by the feeling "als ob alle seine gegenwartigen und vergangenen Triiume und hgste in der Tiefe dieses grollenden Gebirges ihren Ursprung hatten. Das Innerste dieses Gebirges aber hie0 Trachila" (223). Little does Cotta yet know just how hue this is; at the end he will discover that the texts of Trachila contain not only the names and fates of the residents of Tomi but presumably his own as well. There he will find, in written fom, the "Urspning"of everything around him, and of himself.
Tomi fûnctions as a liminal places7 This can be seen fiom the beginning in its geographical position: it lies at the foot of the mountains on the coast, and so it is the place where the sea meets the land, and where the height of the mountains crosses over into the depths of the sea. Additionally, it is on the outermost edge of the Roman
Empire, marking the point where the "civilized" known world passes into the vast unknown wilderness that stretches into the mountains. Though for Cotta Tomi Iies "am
Ende der Welt" (13) another world begins here, and it is actually Trachila, not Tomi, that is identified as the "letzter Oaw(177, 185, 233). Tomi signifies a boundary, not an end.
' Several critics have touched on Tomi's role as a "Zwischenraurn" without expanding this observation into a detailed examination, For de Groot, for example, past and fùture meet in Tomi: "Tomi wiederspiegelt einerseits in seinem Faschingsgeschehen die Geschichte des aIten groBen Rom und andererseits in seinem Verfall sozusagen in fortgeschrittener Form die Zukunft Roms, des Weltreichs, das noch den letzten Winkel der Erde beherrscht" (257); with this, de Groot emphasizes Tomi's boundary status in the temporal, histoncal sense. Gellhaus relates Tomi to the "Zwischenwelt" which Mazzini fond in the Arctic: "In Tomi ist nicht nur die Logik In fact, as Cotta discovers near the end of his stay, Tomi is a town of transients: dl the
inhabitants had at some point appeared there "au dem Irgendwo" and would al1
disappear ïnto nothingness again some day (256). It is a place of transition and change,
not a final destination; it is the place where the reader meets the text.
Since thein the novel is spatialized on to a vertical plane, it is not surprising that
the story space also exists largely on a vertical axis (with a prevailing upward/downward
motion) instead of the motion on a horizontal axis (across a plane) that one might expect
in a work that is essentially about a journey or quest. Even at the start, when Cotta is on
the ship taking him fkom Rome to Tomi, the predominant motion seems to be vertical;
the ship nses and falls on the waves: we read that the sea "hob das Schiff, hob die ganze
Welt hoch über den salzigen Schaum" and that this entire world, the ship, is held "in der
Schwebe" (8). It will be seen that this vertical motion continues throughout Cotta's journey, particularly in his three ascents to Trachila. It is no accident that the vertical
construction of the stoy space correlates to the choice of a vertical, rather than
horizontal, image of time.
Cotta's journey seems to him to be linear; his goal is to find Naso or at least the
lost text of the Metumorphoses. In the first half of the novel, this linearity is still
present, particularly since Rome still plays a large role and is presented as the opposite of Torni, so that an image of distance and remoteness is created. But the vertical motion connected with the ship and the visit to Trachila is continued in the second half, with two Merascents to Trachila and with Cotta's walks through the hills with Echo, so
------ader Kraft gesetzt, auch die Zeiten geraten durcheinander, die Statte der Verwandlung, die Mazzini im Eis gesucht hat, das Zwischenreich, der 'Schwebezustand' [...] heiaen Tomi" ( 140). that the vertical motion gradually appears to be the more dominant. In fact, during the story Cotta stays essentially in one place, moving up and down in his search for the truth. In the £kst half the focus already moves away fiom the horizontd; in the second it is firmly on the vertical. Cona goes up to Trachila, where there are written words and silence, and down to Torni where, at first unbeknownst to him, the characters and events fiom the stories corne to life, but not without undergoing considerable change as they are transformed fiom vnitten fictions hto breathing characters. Not until the end does Cotta realize the connection between the two levels and ask himself which came first, the written words or the real events. He has been moving, without knowing it, up and down in the layers of the text, between words, stories, and reality.
The novel begins as a diachronie plot of resolution: Cotta can assume that his quest will culminate in his discovery of Naso, and the reader, with the expectations raised by the classic quest format, cm share this expectation. And while Cotta does undergo a linear process of discovery, the reader can soon recognize that this is simply the discovery of what was always present-the fact that Cotta meets only people with narnes fiom Naso's book is the first clue-so in fact it is a synchronie plot of revelation.
This vertical organization of space and time finds its strongest expression in the function of the anachronisms which are scattered throughout the text and disrupt the reader's expectations of a logically coherent historical setting. To give only a few examples: Cotta stands at a "Bushaltestelle" (9), Cyparis cornes to Tomi to show films
(24), Naso speaks in the stadium in Rome "vor eine[m] Strauf3 schirnmemder
Mikrophone" (60), and various other objects are mentioned and used, such as guns (64,
85), telephones (69), megaphones (135) and cameras (109). Many critics have seen the presence of these anachronisms as an attempt to relate
the material and themes of the novel to our present tirne. Bemsmeier, for example,
argues that they produce "Beziige zur Gegenwart" (176).' For Füllebom, too, the
anachronisms point to our present tirne and this adds to the curent interest of the theme-the novel shows that it also deals with the end of our world. Epple offers a
more complex interpretation, arguing that the presence of the anachronisms creates a kind of mythical time outside history:
Der Text führt den Leser nicht in eine bestirnmte Zeit, sondern in eine
aus einem Konglomerat verschiedener Epochen gebildete Zeit, die,
durch den Tite1 evoziert, zusatzlich einen eschatologischen Status erhalt.
Der Roman spielt nicht in einer Antike, die ds Paradigrna für heute
herangezogen wird [...], nicht in einer Gegenwart, in der antik-
mythologische Muster durchscheinen, sondem damais und heute, also
imrner. Der Hintersinn dieser Zeitenvenchiebung kann nur der
Anspnich auf eine zeitlos gültige Aktualitat sein. (3 1)
Gellhaus argues that the world of the story is one in which history is completed.
Especidly references to events like the Holocaust go beyond simple anachronistic objects and show that history is closed off: "Der Roman erzahlt also nicht von
irgendeiner femen Zeit, sondem von der Gegenwart des Autors als einer Vision des Ovid und letztes Kapitel seiner Metamorphosen" (137). Tomi is the "Gegenbild" of
- .- -- 8 De Groot sees the anachronisms as "Verbindungslinien zwischen jener Zeit und dem 20. Jahrhundert" (267). PaIm argues that the apocalyptic visions transmitted by the text are applicable to our time, thanks to the "Aufhebeung der Kategorie der Zeit in ihrer historischen Verbürgtheit" through the anachronisms (24 1 ). civilization and culture, the historicd and geographical end of the world: "Dem die histonsche Gegenwart des zwei Jahrtausende jiingeren Erzahlers ist der erzahlten
Vergangenheit als konsequent begleitender Anachronismus eingeschrieben" (107).
Anachronistic objects Iike the bus stop, the microphones, or the telephone, are, in themselves, meaningless within the story. The characters do not recognize them as anachronisms and so do not react to them; the objects belong to their world. Although machines like the film projector and the episcope play an important role in the story through their function as means of representation and the projection of images, their mere existence as anachronisms is, on the story level, also without significance. Only on the receptive level, for the reader, do they play a role. There, the anachronisms are signals, telling the readers from the very start that the reality descnbed in the text is not their own historicai reality. They do this, not by introducing fantasy elements into the text, but by disturbing the temporal continuum, by placing commonplace twentieth- century artefacts within the Roman setting. Both the setting and the objects, on their own, are realistic and historicai; only their simultaneous appearance in one time and place is unred.
The world of the text appears as a kind of reverse museum, a museum of the future. After all, the continued existence and use of objects fiom the past, even the far distant past, are part of everyday experience and represents a kind of logical anachronism which does not violate the flow of conventionally organized time. Only the reversal of this chronology is seen as a true anachronism. The anachronisms are the greatest disruptors of the temporal and spatial histoncal iinearity of the novel, and without this fiinction they are mere decoration. It is ins&cient to Say that they indicate that the story refers to our present tirne despite its ancient setting, for they have meaning only because of their context, and because the readers draw in their own knowledge and expectations. This is particularly tme of the anachronistic events (as opposed to objects) described in the novel, such as the mention of the Holoca~st.~This anticipates the readers' interpretive space and integrates it into the text, which Merbreaks down its boundaries as a purely fictional work.
The text is fiil1 of boundaries which are discovered in the act of their transgression. While many, such as the anachronisms, are accessible only to the reader, others are discovered by Cotta dong his way into the other world of Naso's fiction.
Although Cotta remains in Tomi and its immediate sumoundings throughout the entire novel, his two short excursions to Trachila being the only times he ventures a little farther, he is nevertheless on a kind of joumey. His search for Naso is described as the search for a certain path, or "Weg." When he fint encounters Pythagoras in Trachila,
Cotta takes him for a madman-the old man speaks of metempsychosis not as a myth or metaphor, but as something he has personally experienced: "In das Reich dieses Alten schien kein Weg m fien" (17). The world of Pythagoras, however, is Naso's world, and Cotta's quest is really a search for this "Weg." "Hier war Naso gegangen. Das war
McHale offers an expïanation to those who criticize such distortions of history, as has been the case with Ransmayr's nove1 as welI: "From this point of view, history is the record of real human action and suffering, and is not to be tampered with lightly; inventing apocryphal or fantastic or deliberately anachronistic versions of history is a betrayal of that record. This would be unassailably me, if only we could be sure that the historical record reliably captured the experience of the human beings who really suffered and enacted history. But that is the last thing we can be sure of, and one of the thnists of postmodernist revisionist history is to cal1 into question the reliability of officia1 history. The postmodernists fictionabe history, but by doing so they imply that history itself may be a form of fiction" (Postmodernist Fiction 96). That being said, it remains certain that this view of history remains extremely problematic, particularly when applied to the Holocaust, a singular event in history. Nasos Weg," (14) thinks Cotta the first time he climbs up a "Serpentinenpfad" (13) to
Trachila. At a later point, however, Cotta realizes that of al1 the choices he rnight once have had, oniy one single "Weg" is now left open to W'derWeg nach Trachila"
(224), and this way has changed since the first tirne; it is now a "Labyrinth" (227-28).
Ody at the end, when he has crossed over into Naso's textual world, does he realize that his first ascent was only the beginning, and that only now now has he found the right way: "Hier war Naso gegangen; dies war Nasos Weg" (286). Again, the process of moving between two ontologicdly different zones is made spatial and concrete by the image of the joumey dong a certain path.
Cotta moves between his own physically real historical world (Rome) and the likewise physically real world of the text (Trachila) which, however, refers to a fictional world, and in this motion first of al1 enters a kind of "Zwischenwelt" (Tomi), where the signified persons and events of the text world gain a real existence. He is not, at the beginning, aware of this, for his consciousness is descnbed as a process which develops with his continuing motion through the text. The two sides come closer together until, at the end, they converge and become indisthguishable. As seen above, the ship that brings Cotta to Tomi is held "in der Schwebe" in a kind of suspended state between two points. This suspension is the state Cotta himself will be in until the end of the novel, though at first he rejects it and remains mentally in Rome. As the fiequency of the inexplicable events begins to increase, however, Cotta must recognize where he really is.
Mer Battus, the son of the shopkeeper Fama, turns to stone, Cotta recognizes "daB er in eine Zwischenwelt geraten war, in der die Gesetze der Logk keine Gültigkeit mehr zu haben schienen, in der aber auch kein anderes Gesetz erkennbar wurde, das ihhielt und vor dem Verrücktwerden schützen komte" (220). He sees "ci& die Grenze zwischen
Wirklichkeit und Tram fiir irnmer verloren war" (221). At this point he finally cornes to reaiize that he is in a "Schwebmstand mischen der impenalen, unbezweifelbaren
Wirklichkeit Roms und den Unbegreiflichkeiten der eisemen Stadt" (23 1). The readers, who have been aware from the start of being in a similar state, see their mental state transfonned into a landscape in Cotta's experience.
Having made this realization, Cotta is ready to complete a stage in his transformation. On his way to Trachila he spends a night in Limyra, and sleeps there in a state of suspension: "Inmitten der unemeDlichen Steinwiisten der Schwarmieerküste war er eine Larve, die in Sand, Moos und lindgrüne Flechten gebettet ihre Erweckung envartete" (232). This image descnbes an intermediate stage between two types of existence, a stage charactenzed by sleep, unconsciousness, and passivity.
It is here, too, in the second visit to Trachila, that Cotta momentarily crosses the border, in an anticipation of his final exit fiom the "real" world: "Der qualende widerspmch nvischen der Vemunft Roms und der unbegreiflichen Tatsachen des
Schwarzen Meeres verfiel. Die Zeiten streiften ihre Namen ab, gingen ineinander über, durchdrangen einander" (241), and so the barrier breaks down. Significantly, this is the point where Cotta finally begins to read the nagments of cloth covered in fragments of text stuck in the menhirs of Trachila.
The reader, moving through the text, is also caught between two spaces, caught fiom the start in what Caviola calls the "Zonew[...] half immersed in the fictional world of the text, half present in the physical world, inhabiting both and yet simultaneously absent fiom both (Caviola 3). As with every text, there are the fictional world of the story and the reader's reality. The "Zwischenraum" in this text, however, takes on an independent reality, based on several factors.
To begin with, the world of the text is ambiguou, being interspersed with objects
£Yom the reader's own world, which he or she at first recognizes as not belonging in the text, and also containhg characters with narnes £kom Ovid's work. Furthemore, the readers know that Cotta's redity is not their own historical reality but an altered version of it. Above dl, they know that Ovid's Metamorphoses, the text sought by Cotta and, in his eyes, lost, does exist; it existed in the histoncal past described in the novel and also in the reader's present. The readers are suspended between these two spatio-temporal configurations and many elements of the text propel them into this "Zwischenwelt."
A major element of Cotta's journey is his movement fiom a rational, skeptical view that can accept only one reality to a final state where he is able to accept the existence of an other, illogical world that does not mesh with his earlier conception of reality and logic. Cotta, who, like the other characters in this novel, largely lacks emotional depth or psychological complexity, appean fiom the beginning to be a rational, though curiously passive, seeker. At the beginning of his journey, he is still firmly embedded in his Roman world, asking questions, seeking the truth, and analyzing his perceptions. His aim is clear: "Er würde die Wahrheit über den Dichter nach Rom bringen, vielleicht auch sein venchollenes Werk" (148). He wants to find what is lost, and in doing so solve a puzzle and get an answer to his questions. In this activity he is, at first, confounded by the inhabitants of Tomi, who either give no answers to his questions, or else give answers that are vague, evasive, and even faise. The question of what is real is a simple one for Cotta at the start. It is related to distance and perspective and is reducible, through testing and confirmation, to a final huth. At the beginning of the novel, the "Vogelschwarm" which he sees "hoch oben in der Nacht" comes nearer and is "plotzlich nur noch die Krone einer ungeheuren Welle"
(7). Later, when he climbs up to Trachila the first tirne, Cotta notices the opposite effect: increasing distance transforms a group of townspeople into an anonymous rnass: "Als er hoch oben im Geroll einen Augenblick innehielt und in die Tiefe blickte, war die
Prozession nur noch ein wirrer Zug gesichtsloser Wesen" (13). There is nothing sensational about these "transformations"-they are a play of perspective and perception, and as such they are still rooted in Cotta's essentially rational view of the world. The actual existence of things is neither changed nor called into question, nor is
Cotta led to doubt himself by these simple illusions.
This has changed by the time of Cotta's second visit to Trachila, when he seems to see Naso and Pythagoras at a distance, but then discovers it was only an illusion, a mirage. This time, he questions his own sanity. The sight of Naso "ni3 ihn aus der
Umklarnrnenuig der eisemen Stadt in die Wirklichkeit Roms mrück" (239). When the reality is revealed, he doubts his own sanity: "Kein Zweifel, er rnuf3te verrückt geworden sein" (240ethe barriers collapse; he crosses over. This is one of Cotta's major tuming- points. The final point comes at the end, when Cotta observes the metamorphoses of
Procne, Philomela and Tereus, which he had read about on bis Trachila fragments, and which mean the final "Einsturz von Cotta's Welt" (272). Curiously, the reader, who is given ample oppominity to interpret Cotta's perceptions as a sign of insanity, knows that these events are really happening in the fictional world because they have been recorded already in another fictional text, Ovid's Metamotphoses. Were Cotta to experience unknown, arbitrary fantastic events, the reader would see them as a delusion. Because the experiences are known fiom the original text, however, they are judged as "real."
Even in the second half of the novel, afler the mg-point has long since corne,
Cotta resists this transition into another reality and sees the now very distant Rome as his salvation. He wants to escape nom "Verrücktheit" back into "rornische Vemunfi" and recognizes only one possibility to do so: "daO ihm nur noch ein einziger Mensch vor der
Verrücktheit bewahren und aus seiner Verwimuig in die festgefügte Klarheit der romischen Vemunft zurrückführen komte: Naso" (223). UnIike Mazzini in Die
Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis, he does not consciously want to cross over into the hybrid fictional world. He sees Naso, the author, as the only one who can give a rational explanation for the puzzling events of Torni.
There is an intensification of the ontological concerns and a fading of the epistemological as the novel progresses. For the reader, there is evidence early on that this is not the histoncal, real world. This increases greatly in the second half, especially with Battus' transformation. For Corn, as for the reader, this is an impossible event.
The anachronisrns exist in our time, in the same world where Ovid once existed, but the transformations exist only in the fictional reah of our world and of Cotta's-that is, in
Naso's writings.
The narrative structure of the novel reflects the change undergone by Cotta as he discovers that his perception-oriented, rationai Roman world is an illusion built upon the reality that is Ovid's text, for just as Cotta discovers a boundary between worlds, there is an internai boundary built into the novel. Although Cotta's transition into the hybrid fictional world is. fiom his point of view, a fairly steady process with several notable crisis points (the transformation of Battus, the second visit to Trachila, the final metamorphosis of Procne, Tereus and Philomela), for the reader there is a definite turning-point at the middle of the novel, dividing it into two halves. While this break is not signalled by a structural division ( a new chapter, etc.) and while it may remain unnoticed by many readea, it can serve as one key to the meaning of the process Cotta undergoes.1° The two haives of the novel are distinguished not only by their narrative structure, but also by their treatment of centrai themes. This is one of the many boundaries the reader can perceive in the text-otthers, discussed above, include the ef'fiect created by the anachronisms, and the presence of fictional and historical characters together in one world.
This first half, which goes to app~oxirnatelypage 148, describes Cotta's joumey to Torni and his amival there, his £kst few weeks in the town, his first visit to Trachila, and also the films shown by Cyparis. Lengthy passages arising out of Cotta's stream-of- consciousness also descnbe the background of the story in Rome. On the story level, as
- --
'O At least one critic, Dusan Gorse, has noticed a division of the novel into two halves. Gorse analyses the language of the text, focusing on aspects of metaphor, and applies Jean Cohen's categories of comparisons to five chapters of the novel. Gorse finds that certain types of "Vergleich" occur most fiequently at the beginning of the novel and decline steadily, while others are found with increasing fkquency as the novel progresses. So, for example, "Impertinenz" is nearly absent at the beginning of the text, but very fkequent in the second half: "Impertinenz bezeichnet eine gr6Bere Abweichung von der ReaIitat, vom normalen Zustand der Dinge und Verhaltnisse als andere Vergleichstypen, was man als eine Art Verbindung mit dem Traunihaften, Phantastischen verstehen kann. Die Zunahme der Impertinenz weist also auf den Übergang von einer fiktiven literarischen Realitat ni einer fiktiven literarischen Irrealitat hin, oder mit anderen Worten, auf die Verwandlung dessen, was geschehen konnte, in das, was nicht geschehen kann. Das wird auch durch die Handlung bestatigt: wiihrend in der ersten will be seen, nothhg unrealistic or fantastic happens in this half, ignoring for a moment
the anachronisms and the CO-existenceof fictional and historical figures, which the
reader notices, but not the characters. So, the Tomi which Cotta encounters here is
presented realistically; it is for him "wie hundert andere KüstenstadteM(lO).Because it is
described in quite realistic terms, details which seem to break the boundaries of realism,
such as the celebration of the end of a two-year winter cm, especially in view of the
poetic language, easily be taken figuratively. The namator's attitude to his material is
hidden and mut be surmised from a few small clues. However, his use of phrases like
"Von den neunzig Hausern der Stadt standen damals schon viele leer [italics mine]" (10)
in his description of Tomi indicates that the town is part of his own world, and implies
an identification with the world of the reader. The Tomi Cotta arrives in corresponds to
the poetic, somewhat exaggerated, but essentially realistic images of the town he had
heard described in Rome: the "Bilder von raucherfüllten Gassen, übezwucherten Ruinen
und EisstoBenW(1 1) are exactly what he finds on tiis &val. He cornes to the Tomi of
the "real" Roman narrative, the "Ka.€£",but will eventually find himself in the Tomi of
Naso's "fictional" narrative.
in the first haif of the novel, the chronological flow of the story is intempted by
several lengthy sequences set in the Rome of the recent past, al1 of which arise out of
Cona's mernories. These sequences take the reader back to earlier days in Rome, to the
events leading up to Naso's banishment, to life in Rome der this event, and to Cotta's
experiences, which motivate him eventually to leave Rome in search of Naso. The
Romanhiilfie alles gemaB dm Naturgesetzen abliiuft, beginnt spater mit der Versteinenmg Battus der übernatürliche ProzeB der Verwandlung" (83). narrative leaps back and forth in space and the quite dramatically, and this reflects
Cotta's state of mind; though physically in Tomi, he is mentally largely still in Rome, and Rome plays a large role in this half (in the second half there are no flashbacks to
Rome, which is scarcely mentioned anymore). The first section of the novel ends exactly where it began, with a description of Cotta's sea joumey to Tomi (146- 148), an event which had already been narrated, in a slightly different form, in the fint pages of the novel. With this, we are at a second beginning, and the second half of the nanative cm start.
In many ways, this second half differs significantly from the first. Whereas the structure of the first half can be described as a series of circles, moWig back and forth in the and space, the second half takes the form of a straight lhe. While there are embedded narratives here, too, that take us back in time, their form is different, as will be seen. The main events follow each other chronologically, with little disruption of time and space, and the embedded narratives do not disturb the narrative flow. We stay, with Coaa, in the sunoundings of Tomi, and if he still has memones of Rome, we are not told so. Since Rome is barely mentioned, the spatial dichotomy Rome-Tomi is weakened to the point of insignificance. The interspersed stories here that do recall past events are told by various characters in Tomi, especially Fama, and they concem other characters who are equally present. The stories are not, as in the first part, either told by the narrator or lifted out of Cotta's stream-of-consciousness; therefore, they are more clearly delùieated and more firmly embedded in the chronological fiamework. We are directly told about the past; it is treated as the past, and we are not taken there. An additiond change in the narrative structure between the two halves can be found in the relationship between texhial volume and narrated tirne. The first section is hmed almost entirely by two separate days in the story-tirne: the day and night at the end of April when Cotta is in Trachila and Cyparis shows his first film (13-96) are intempted three times to include Cotta's lengthy recollections of Rome. Most of the rest of the material presented in the first half is contained within the fkamework of a single fatehl day in May that ends with Cotta's rape of Echo, and this section is also heavily interspersed with Cotta's mernories of his own experiences in Rome. Variations in textual volume (the relation of "Erzahlzeit" and "erziihlte Zeit") are extreme. These variations in textual volume are not found in the second haIf, which covers about nine months more or less chronologically, apart fiom the two most significant events: the second visit to Trachila (3 days, 21 pages) and the final night and day, when Cotta witnesses the transformation of Tereus, Procne and Philomela, and when the new mountain is revealed (16 pages).
In the second half of the novel it becomes clear that the apparent temporal ordering of events (Cotta pursues the lost text, hoping in the end to find it) has been radically reversed: the text is revealed as the source of al1 that happens, including Cotta's joumey. On a certain level this has been clear frorn the start, as it was the absent text that led Cotta to Tomi in the first place. But at the end, Cotta lems that the content of his life in Tomi was also prefigured in the text. For the reader there is an added dimension of tmth in this reversal, as the Metamorphoses is indeed the source of Die letzte Welt, which would not exist without Ovid's text. Cotta, too, as a character in
Ransmayr's novel, owes his existence to the original text. The fimt half of the novel, as it leaps about in time and space, motivates the reader to reconstmct the chronology in order to merseveral questions: why is Cotta in Tomi, what is the background to Naso's banishment, and what can Cotta expect to find in Tomi? In the second half this process is abandoned for a more existential question, one which transgresses the boundary between the fictional world and the world of the reader. Here, the reader can abandon the reconstructive activity to focus on a different sort of question: what status has the existence of the fictional world and how does this relate to other narratives in the readers' reaiity?
The break between the two halves of the novel is seen not only in the narrative structure, but also in the treatment of the matenal. 1 will consider two important aspects: first, the embedded narratives that are contained throughout the novel, in the form of stories, films, and dreams; and second, the transformations and other strange events.
The nature of the metamorphoses changes in the second part of the novel, as does the presentation of the sub-narratives.
With respect to the embedded narratives, it can be seen that the fint half of the novel contains several (Cotta's mernories of Rome are not included here, as they are not fictional within the story-world): the story of Alcyone and Ceyx, a melodrarna about two separated lovers, which ends with their transformation into birds; Naso's story of the plague in Aegina, in which the hordes of dead humans are grotesquely resurrected by ants; and Cotta's dream of a misformed monster in Trachila. The story of Alcyone and
Ceyx is presented as a film, shown by the midget Cyparis to the residents of Tomi while
Cotta is absent in Trachila. Although the reader, not yet accustomed to the anachronisms, may find the presence of motion pictures in what is apparently the ancient world disturbing, the spectators do not-they are accustomed to films and see them as a means of presenting fictional worlds and stories, as part of their everyday existence.
Within the story, the division between fiction and reaiity is still upheld at this point (it is destroyed for the reader fiom the start, of course). The films show by
Cyparis offer a window into another world, a "Fenster in Unvalder und Wüsten" (24) and therefore seem to bring stories "ins Leben" (24), but despite this connection the inhabitants recognize that what is represented here is "eine Welt" so distant from their own as to be unreachable (24). For a tirne, while watching the film, they are given the illusion that the hvo worlds exist side-by-side, and this is shown in their perception of both worlds at once-the fine world shown in the film and their own, considerably Iess romantic reality: "In den Garten des Palastes waren die Zikaden laut und Zitronenbaume schwer von Früchten. Aber die Hitze der Glutbecken, die man hinter das Schlachthaus getragen hatte, nahm allrnahlich den Gemch von Blut und Jauche an" (27). The "aber" here is what prevents the illusion from being complete. The side-by-side existence of the two worlds does not allow them to flow into each other; rather, they simply interfere with each other.
That this is only an illusion, and that the CO-existenceof the two worlds, indeed their inter-penetration, is not real, is made evident by the distanced and skeptical reaction of the spectators to the film's attempts to represent the reality they know. It imediately becomes obvious to them that what is shown in the film is unreal : "da0 dieser Ozean dort oben in Wahrheit wohl nur laues, in einem Bottich aufgewühltes Wasser war und das gesunkene Schiff kaum groler als ein Spielzeug" (32). The audience is not incapable of enjoying a work of fiction; what irritates them is that this obviously false piece attempts to stand for a reaiity they know-their reality: "was Cyparis an diesem
Abend zeigte, betraf das nachprüfbare, das eigene Leben, die Plagen der Küste und auf dem Meer [...] selbst der blode Battus konnte sehen, daB an diesen Sturmbildem nichts glaubhaftes war" (32).
A similar distance is upheld in the other embedded narratives contained in the first half of the novel. Naso's story of the plague is remembered by Cona, who heard the poet tell it originally in a stadium in Rome ten years before. It is presented frorn the start as a fictional tale told by a poet, and is hmed by Cotta's memories of his own real expenences in Rome-a double hewhich prevents the story nom spilling over into
Cotta's reality.
Cotta's expenence with the monster in Trachila seems more immediate, but in fact it is only a dream. To prevent it fiorn intmding into his reality at all-after all, the drearn is set in the very house where he is spending the night-Cotta takes the additional rneasure of fleeing back down the mountain to Tomi in the dark early moming hours.
By doing so, he creates an additional, physical distance to the episode. It is worth noting, however, that this is the first time that the potential presence of the fantastic in the physical world is perceived as a serious threat, a real possibility, however subconscious and unfiilfilled.
None of the recipients of these stories is prepared to accept them as a portrayal of his or her own reality. The film-goers scoff at the poor effects that attempt to mimic the real world; Naso's story, once it is interpreted as an oblique comment on reality, is the cause for his banishrnent; Cotta flees fiom the site of his dream. There is a clash. For the reader, this is amplified, as the stories have a double status, since they both exist really in our present (as tales nom Ovid) and are, in themselves, fiction.
Similarly, al1 the transformations or unusual events which occur in the kthalf of the book can be explained rationally. Transfomations occurring in the film, in Naso's story or in Cotta's dream are clearly relegated to the fictional or irnaginary realrn.
Cyparis is transformed into a tree, not in reality, but in a dream he has while showing his film. For him, it is only a favourite fantasy (25). Cotta seems to see the figures on
Arachne's tapestries corne to life, but this is merely a delusion brought about by high fever (98). He does see something odd in the rnountains (his landlord Lycaon nuining up a hi11 apparently dressed in a wolfskin) but he sees this unclearly and later doubts himsel fi "[er] glaubte seiner eigenen Erinnerung nicht mehr" (99).
In the fint half, then, transformations are presented as ordinary events that occur as part of life. They happen everywhere and to everyone, not only in Tomi but in Rome as well. Everyone undergoes "Venvandlungen" of some khd, including Naso and his work (137), Cotta (145), and even the emperor (135). Nor is the "VerfaIl" seen in Tomi particularly unusual; it happens in Rome as well: the emperor dies, and Naso's house detenorates after he is sent into banishment.
While the world of fiction is still seen as distinct fiom the world of physical reality, works of art-stories, films, pictures-are seen as a link, a window between the two worlds. Cyparis, with his film, transfomis the blank wdl of the slaughterhouse into a "Fenster in Urwalder und Wüsten" (24), opening the view to another world the residents of Tomi cannot reach. Arachne's loom, on which she makes tapestries illustrated by scenes f?om Naso's stones, is "eh von Kettfaden vergittertes Fenster in eine grellbunte, lautlose Welt" (155). Naso's stones, too, are seen as a "Fenster in das Reich seiner Vorstellungen" (198). The image of the windows indicates that the two
worlds are still separate and distinct: a window implies a connection but can only exist if
there is a wall, a firm boundary. The other world here stays within its frame, a window-
bethat allows us to see it, but which prevents it fiom spilling over into our reality,
like a picture fmne that clearly delineates the boundary between the painting and the
world, relaying to the observer the message: "this is art." The presence of the fiarne
correlates with the other "modemistic" tendencies seen in the first half of the novel."
The boundary is truly crossed only when the fictional world is experienced, not through
art, but as thoroughly indistinguishable fiom physical reality, when its constituents are
seen, not as signs, but as really existing objects. Anything else is simply a
communication between the worlds, achieved through words or images.
The turning-point that marks the division between the two halves of the novel is
the time Cotta spends with the so-called "Dorfiure" Echo, and particuiarly the night he
rapes her. Atthough this episode has received very little attention, several points suggest
that it has a special significance. Naturally, it is in itself somewhat unusual that the
protagonist of a novel should commit such a crime, without provoking even an implied
judgment on the part of the narrator and without appearing to suffer any consequences.
" Caviola notes the importance of the hme for realist and modernist art: "Reaiist and modernist aesthetics, including their respective reading practices, draw a sharp boundary around the heterocosm of the literary work, integrating it either as a mirror or a (more or less) self-sufficient whole vis-a-vis the real world. A postmodemist aesthetics, in contrast, eliminates the hme of the mirror and concornitantly the ontological boundary between the literary fiction and reality" (15). McHale also makes this point, fiuther noting that mimetic effect is dependent on this fiame: "Classical rnimetic theories [...] had a vested interest in maintaining this conceptual boundary, since without a sharp initial distinction between fiction and reality there could be no relation of similarity or mirroring between the two, no re-presentation of reality in fiction" (Postmodemist Fiction 34). The act is described in the distanced style typical of the novel, and this may account for
the lack of emotional or moral response on the part of the reader, who is not encouraged
to perceive it as a crime inflicted by one real person on another-the aesthetic distance
of the language and the lack of personal detail in the text allow participation in the story
only at a great distance. But it is also the only point in the novel that Cotta, normally a
passive observer, actually does something that has an effect on another character. And
in fact, the act does not remain without consequences for him."
Before this consequence is addressed, however, Echo's significance to the story
should be examined. Like al1 the characters in Tomi, her name cornes fiom Ovid's
work. In the story, she is the ktinhabitant of Torni who will tmly talk to Cotta and
answer his questions about Naso, but her role is not restricted to this. Her name is her
function: she echoes other people's words, including the stories she had heard fkom
Naso, before his disappearance. Further imagery suggests that her identity as a kind of
"echo" transcends the mere repetition of words. Several times she is compared to a
shadow-when Cotta sees her in a cloud of dust she is a "gesichtsloser Schatten" (1 13),
and again he looks at her later at a time when everything is shadowy: "in Anbruch der
Nacht, einem Verloschen, in dem sich jedes Gesicht in einen Schatten, jeder Korper in
einen bloDen UmnB [...] verwandelte" (149). At another point Echo seems like "ein
korperloses Trugbild" (155). Al1 of these images suggest an incorporeal entity, a sign
'' It seerns insufficient to suggest, as Christine Palm does, that Cotta rapes Echo because of the demoralizing influence of Tomi (239), especially since he has spent very little time in Tomi at this point, and has had virtually no contact with its inhabitants. Nor is Harber's argument that the rape is a sign that Cotta has turned his back on reason and is now acting as part of a pitiless nature (Harbers 60-61) particularly convincing, since Cotta continues to cling to reason Iong after this episode. indicating the existence of an absent object. An echo is the vocal equivalent of a mirror- image, and a shadow &ors the outhes of a physical object. These metaphors allow
Echo to be seen as an image of an original. Before and after Cotta rapes her she exists for him only as a creature of words, and only, as far as the reader is told, as Naso's words, which she echoes. Certainly, she is not presented as a living, breathing character, but sirnply as a projection, and perhaps that is the reason for her popularity arnong the men of the coast-they can project their desires on her as ont0 a blank page. With them, she always remains "wortlos" ( 154).
Cotta, the only man who speaks with Echo, breaks down this distance between the original reality and its image when he rapes her. His action renders her utterly mute; as with her other maIe visitors, she is now "wortlos" with him (153). The choice is clear: eiîher she speaks with hirn or he has physicaI contact with her-both at once are impossible. With the rape, he catapults himself into the other world, where there are no longer images or words, but the physical reality of the stories. He becomes a participant, not an observer, listener or reader. He is, to use a famous image for the transgression of ontological boundaries, through the looking-glass. Only af€er the rape, once Echo has regained her words, does he hear Naso's stories, for the first time in Tomi, through the mirror of her words.
The difference this makes soon becomes apparent in the second half of the novel. niough the changes, for Cotta, still occur gradually, it is clear that a boundary has been crossed. The change is first seen when Echo tells Cotta Naso's story of the end of the world. While this may still be identified as a fictional story, the intensity with which it is told has a disturbing efiect on Coaa, who for the first tirne starts writing his own notes imrnediately after hearing it. It is told in a manner that gives it a great deal of immediacy-the story is about a great deluge and about Stones that are transformed into a new race of humans, and Echo tells it while she and Cotta stand in the tide on a stony beach: "Beide standen sie laiocheltief im nirückstr6menden Wasser einer
Brandungswelle" (162). Here nothing interferes with the CO-existenceof story and reality in Cotta's mind: "Cotta sah das Gewinke der Sonnensegel auf den
Steinbalustraden der Bucht, sah die silbergrünen Fahnen in der Tiefe" (1 64), there is no more "aber" here, and the story is followed by a storm and rainfall so extreme "daB Cotta sich plotzlich in Echos Erzahlung von der Flut versetzt glaubte" (172). This is the beginning of Cotta's way dong Naso's true path: we read that the water Cona and Echo stand in washes away "alle Spuren des hinter ihnen liegenden Weges" (162).
Soon after, an episcope appears in Tomi, ordered by Fama, who sets it up in her shop and dlows the townspeople to place various objects in it and admire their projections on the wdl. The episcope can be seen in direct contrast to the film: whereas the film projected images that tned to give the illusion of reality, the episcope projects images of real objects directly from that reality. Things refer to themselves; images and reality are one. They quiver and shake on the wall, and, while they are not in themselves narratives, they are the central objects of multiple narratives of injuries, lost love, and secret wishes, that drive the residents of Tomi to place their chosen objects under the episcope. Furthemore, the episcope's projections are finally related to the first truly fantastic occurrence, Battus' transfomation into a Stone statue. Once transformed,
Battus is an image of himself, and is described in the same terms used for the images produced by the episcope: "Battus Spiegelbild, ein zittemdes Antlitz" (21 8). Signifier and signified are united; the two sides of the sign become one.
The embedded stories in this section are neither films nor dream sequences, neither mernories of Rome nor stones about Tomi's inhabitants told directly by the narrator (and unknown to Cotta), but rather stories by and about the people who surround Cotta in Torni, told directly to him by the inhabitants, especially Farna (250-
265). These are no longer fictional tales but, on the story level, the actual histories of people Cotta knows. Moreover, he himself expenences stones with thern as they happen
(the transformation of Bamis and disappearance of Echo), though he does not yet completely recognize their significance.
The central question mises: does experience precede narration or vice versa?
Starting to make a comection, Cotta sees that the writings of Trachila match the gossip he hears in town: "Cotta verglich das Gerede der Kriimerin mit den Fragmenten und
Narnen auf den gebleichten Fetzten aus Trachila" (268). His dilemma when he discovers they match is a serious one: does the word corne first or the world? 1s the archive in
Trachila a record of the town's gossip, which Ovid heard while he was there, or did the people and events of Tomi spring out of the texts in Trachila? The narrator has forewarned the reader of this dilemma in an intertextual reference earlier on, during
Cotta's first visit to Trachila. When Pythagoras asks Cotta what he wants, the Roman answers, "Das Buch." This is followed by a curious scene: "Das Buch. Wie von einem
Bannspruch abgewehrt, lie0 der Schatten von Cotta ab. Dam wurde es licht" (44). In the Christian creation myth, the Word cornes first and calls the universe into existence, while this creation is signalled by the appearance of light-the same appears to occur here with Naso's book. The power of the word (here the written word) to create a world, is underlined by the 'light' which reveals a new existence.
At the end of the novel, dl borders between words and reality are broken when
Cotta himself witnesses one of Naso's stories as it cornes to life before his eyes-the transformation and flight of Tereus, Procne and Philomela (272-284). It is significant that this transformation does not occur without any preparation but is anticipated near the beginning of the novel, when we lem that, according to nimour, Tereus has been cheating on Procne "mit irgendeiner namenlosen Hure, die nur ein Schafer einrnal hane schreien horen, oben in den Bergen" (30) and that a bird was a bad omen on their wedding day: "Auf dem First ihres Hauses sd darnds gro0, unbeweglich und ohne
Scheu ein Uhu, der Unglücksvogel, der allen Brautleuten eine finstere Zukunfi verhieBW
(30). Only at the end of the novel does this foreshadowing make sense, when it is revealed that the "whore" is Philomela. Mer Procne discovers Tereus' terrible crime and kills their son in revenge, al1 three are transformed into birds. It is not a sign of
Cona's insanity, but an inevitability that was written into the story fkom the start. Cotta sees this inevitability too, for he has already read the story of this transformation on the cloth scraps of Trachila: "Was nun geschah, war nur die Erfüllung dessen, was Ihgst auf den Fetzen und Wimpeln von Trachila geschrieben stand" (284).
The fictional landscape Cotta discovers is generated by witing, and the written word acbieves a new level of concrete existence in the "reaI" world by virtue of this.
The theme of writing thus ties in with the dimensions of time and space in the novel, and extends the question of what is real. The physicality of writing is underlined throughout the text by metaphorical references to witing as a physical act in the physical world. So, for example, we read that the midget Cyparis "schrieb mit seiner Peitsche fauchende, wirre Zeichen in die Luft" (21), or that Pythagoras "scbrieb mit dem Windlicht einen langsamen Bogen in die Dunkeiheit" (48). Pythagoras perfects this aspect of writing; when copying down the stones of Naso he htwrites in the sand. Later, he no longer writes in the sand, "sondern begann lnschriften zu hinterlassen, wohin er auch kam- ment waren es nur die Tische irn Keller des Branntweiners, die er mit Nageln und einem Taschenmesser gravierte, spater schrieb er mit Tonscherben an Hauswiinde und mit Kreide an die Baume und beschriftete gelegentlich auch entlaufene Schafe und
Schweine" (253). In this way, q.thagoras writes Naso's stones on the physical world of
Torni. Indeed, for Pythagoras even the spoken word achieves a concrete physicality: "es war, als fielen seine Worte als Raureif auf die Welt" (76). Literally, too, the concrete aspect of the Yrritten word is continuously underlined, starting with the discovery of
Naso's texts, in fiagmentary form, on stones and rags. Outside the conventional context of the printed or written page, the status of these words as concrete objects is emphasized, and we learn how far this applies even to the standard products of writing, which cm be bumed and destroyed, like Naso's manuscript.
Similarly, reading is presented as a physical act that draws in the whole world.
Naso is described as capable of reading his burnt text in the fiames of any fire: "Der arme Naso behaupte ja von sich, in den Flamrnen, in der Glut und noch in der weiBen, warmen Asche lesen ni konnen, behaupte, in seinen Brhden die Worte, die Satze und
Geschichten eines ganzen Buches zu entziffem" (1 17). Moreover, he can read the entire surounding world, interpreting and understanding even the narratives of rocks and stones: "Naso habe erschreckend und wunderbar erzahlt, habe ihr in seinen Geschichten das Ger611 und noch den Schotter trockener Bachbette gedeutet und in jedem Sediment ein Zeitalter, in jedem Kiesel ein Leben gesehen" (157).13
Naso is not alone in reading or interpreting the world; in both Rome and Tomi the people are conthuously occupied with the interpretation of signs. The Romans attempt to interpret the meaning of al1 the Emperor's signals, such as the slight motion of the hand when he heard of Naso's actions: "Eine Handbewegung. Das Zeichen wurde weitergegeben und sank durch die Instanzen der Hemchaft nur sehr langsarn nach unten.
Fürsorglich nahm sich der Apparat aller Deutungen an" (73). That Naso burns his manuscript is also a cause for interpretation ("es gab so viele Deutungen" 20), as are the reasons behind his banishment (129-30). In Tomi, by contrast, interpretative activity centres largely around natural occurrences, weather, or the appearance of unusual plants or animais. When strange events accompany a particularly hot spring, for example, the inhabitants "deuteten aile Phiinornene der Erwiirmung als die Zeichen einer neuen, unheilvollen Zeit" (120). A slight change in weather receives similar attention: "ob dieser schale Streifen helleren Graus am Horizont das Zeichen einer
Wetterverbessening sei, das Zeichen nun Aufbruch nach der begrabenen Heirnat-oder doch wieder nur das Licht einer trügerischen Hoffnung" (269). If the physical objects of the world can be read and interpreted as signs of an absent meaning, and if words are also physical objects which obviously can be read, the difference between words and the
l3 Ulrich Scheck relates the act of reading to the dichotomy of fluid/solid that permeates the text; as in Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis "werden Texte als fixierîe EmpfindungdGedanken gedeutet, die im Akt des Lesens (und Schreibens) immer wieder neu entiffert und zusamrnengefügt werden. [...] Somit erweist sich in der Letzten Welt die Fixierung von 'Wirklichkeit' durch Schrifi ais nur tempome Verfestigung. Verflüssigt wird der Text stets aufs Neue im Akt seines Rezipiertwerdens" (289). world is overcome. l4
Cotta takes part in this physical process of reading as well. A first step aiong his
path consists of the dissolution of the signifier as he knows it, that is, as a fixed and
static sign related to one signified thing." He must learn to read the world anew, and is,
during his first visit in Trachila, like a child who must leam to speak and read. When the
moon appean, Pythagoras says, "Der Mond. Der Mond, wiederholte Cotta so zogernd,
als habe er eben das erste Vokabel aus der Sprache des Knechts gelemt; luna" (47).
When he reads the engraved Stones he is "wie einer, der lesen lemt" (50). He has ro
lem a new language, a language in which the distance between words and reality is
transformed into identity. For the beginning, however, he clings to his desire for sense
and reason: "Cotta entzifferte die Worte wie einer, der lesen lemt [...] prüfte und venvarf
den Sinn und Zusamrnenhang einmal und wieder, begann das Spiel irgendwo anders und
neu, bis ihrn schlieBlich schien, als seien alle Moglichkeiten der Zusarnmensetzung und
Verbindung der Bruchstücke in einer einzigen Nachricht erschopfi" (50).
It has been noted that Cotta resists Pythagoras' world, and this resistance shows
his difference fiom Mazzini, who £tom the start sees the boundaries of fiction and reality
" Wilke sees the process of often arbitrary interpretation (for exarnple of the emperor's wave) as an implied criticism of postrnodern concepts of reading: "in dieser Welt der arbitraren Entscheidungen, der arbitriüen Interpretationen von aus dem Kontext gelesten 'Zeichen,' an der Ovid ja kraflig mitgeschrieben tiat durch seinen Verzicht auf Stellungnahme, bedeutet dies seine Verbannung ans Schwarze Meer. Die unschuldig anmutende Semiologie der unendlichen Horizontverschiebungen kann also Ieicht in totalitare Simgebung umschlagen. Von daher glaube ich, daB dieser Roman die Gefahren, wie auch die Faszination dieser unendIichen Disseminiemg von Zeichen dialektisch auf mehreren Ebenen gestaltet und ddsich Ransmayr von daher nicht unproblematisch in einen postmodmen Kontext einordnen IaBt" (256). " According to Wilke, Cotta's quest is a developrnent of his ability to "read" Tomi, which is complicated by the implications of the motto "Keinem bleibt seine Gestalt": "Cotta sieht sich also unnighglichen, standig in Verwandlung sich befindenden semiotischen Systemen gegenüber" (243). as permeable, and who seeks absorption into the fictional world. When the old man tells
his stories of transformations, Cotta responds by telling his own true stories of real
events in Rome as a kind of antidote: "schlieBlich begriff Cotta, daO er enahlte, um
diesem Wten Gerede aus dem Dunkel die Ordnung und die Vemunfi einer vertrauten
Welt entgegenzusetzen: Rom gegen die Unmoglichkeit eines Maulbeerbaurnes im
Schnee vor dem Fensterl' (17-18). For Cotta, at this stage, discourse can still be divided
into two distinct types, and the true stones he tells Pythagoras, al1 of them referring to
and directly reflecting his reality, are of a different class and senre a clear fünction.
They ward off the stories told by Pythagoras which, because they are not fiamed as
fiction, threaten the stability of Cotta's world. He is &raid Trachila will trap him and so
leaves "bevor ihn diese furchtbare Einode und der Verfall von Trachila auch am Tag
verwirrten, umfingen, und nicht mehr loslieBen" (82).
Cotta's activity during his fint visit to Trachila consists, then, of a linear
reconstruction of a text, with which he overcomes the spatial and fiagmentary
presentation of the text on the stones. Mentally, he forces the words into a fom he can
control and understand. During his second stay in Trachila, he collects many of the
scraps of cloth with words and fragments written on them, and takes them back to his
house in Tomi. There, he hangs them up, like articles of laundry hung out to dry, on
swings that he has tied up throughout the house. To read the scraps he must walk along
these lines, and so his readings are called "labyrinthische Wanderung" (268). The text is
spatialized; to read it one rnust physically move.16
l6 This is reminiscent of McHale's concept of the "spaced-out"text; while McHale concentrates mainly on the spacing of words on the page, the writing of texts on 0thkinds of materials, However, Cotta is activated to take part in his quest for Naso's text, not just as a potential recipient, but as a second creator, and so he is fïnally drawn into the other world. On the night of Echo's disappearance he begins to record the stones that he hears, to take notes:
er, Cotta, würde sich dieses Werkes bemachtigen und es in die Hiinde
Roms niriickiegen. Aus Echos Gedachtnis oder den Enmemgen
anderer Gate an Nasos Feuern würde er die Geschichten des
Verbannten aufsammeln, auch ohne daB er ihren Urheber in der Wildnis
von Trachila wiederfand. Ein Buch der Steine, hatte Echo gesagt. Also
schrieb Cotta, in die Dachkamrner des Seilerhauses ninickgekehrt, Das
Buch der Steine über jene Notizen, in denen er den Untergang der Welt
festhielt. (172)
Cotta's activity is also seen in his attempts to organize the fiagmentary texts he finds: he reads the stones: "gieng nach dem Zusammenhang und Sinn der Satze" (50)' and attempts to impose order on his scraps of cloth as well: "Cona versuchte die Fetzen zu ordnen: jede Schnur tnig einen Zusammenhang, trug einen Namen und alles, was sich mit diesem Namen verbinden lieD" (250). Cona sees that the act of writing has produced fixed, static signs which in themselves are dead, like the stones or the scraps of cloth.
Only the reader, moving through these signs, creates relations between them and makes them corne to life, so that they are given a meaning. In the end, however, when Cotta crosses the boundary into the other world, he stops writing his notes or organizing his fragments, just as Mazzini did. He disappears into silence, having realized that: "Die
Erfindung der Wirkiichkeit bedurfte keiner Aukeichnung mehr" (287). The end of Die Ietzte Welt brings the reader to the opposite end of the range of options occupied at the other extreme by Bernhard's Das Kalkwerk. Like Konrad, Cotta disappears uito silence, but while Konrad leaves a legacy of language forever divorced kom an unattainable extemal reaiity, Cotta's disappearance is an attempt to close the gap by positing an absolute unity of text and reality. Conclusion
When the novels that have been examined here are compared to each other they may at htseem strikingly dissimilar. Indeed, Bernhard's and Becker's novels appear in many respects to represent the opposite of a work like Nadolny's Entdeckzmg der
Langsamkeit, particularly in the German-speaking world, where the latter is most likely to be considered "Unterhaltungsliteratur"and would hardly be mentioned in the same breath as a "serious" work like Das Kalkwerk. This ofien untenable distinction between great and minor writing, however, is not at issue here. It should simply be considered that the extreme breadth of possible foms available to the novelist today is illustrated in the differences between these narratives.
Nevertheless, it has been seen that there are many points of productive comparison between these works, starting with the fact that dl are centrally concemed with the expenence, nature, and organizational force of time and space. This interest can be seen imrnediately in the fact that each of the novels, in its own particular way, deals with a joumey, with the active interplay of time and space. The differences arnong these various journeys illustrate the different points these novels occupy on the continuum of modemlpostmodem literature, a continuum which, unsurprisingly, is best not understood as linear.
The journeys also illustrate the three points with which this study began: the organization of "erzahlter Raum," that is, the space travelled through; the spatiality of the reading process, which is reflected in the comparison of the traveller to a readedwriter; and finally the spatiality of discursive organization, which reflects and is reflected by a combination of the two, that is, the way the physical landscape (or text) structures the experience of the traveller (or reader).
In the ktthree authon considered here, the readen find journeys through the landscape of language; in the final three novels they enter a reai landscape, but only to find that it, too, is a text. Das Kalkwerk, Enahzen bis Ostende, and Tynset are reflexive works that reflect on the role of language in knowing a world which remains essentially inaccessible. Dar Kalkwerk shows a potentially infinite inward journey that exists only as language within the boundaries of the novel or within the walls of the lime works, which are an exact reflection of the text. The Konrads' extensive lifelong journey through the world does not end in the Kalkwerk, but continues as a motion turned in upon itself, reflecting perfectly the language of the text until Konrad's expulsion into the real world, which means the end of his joumey and so also his silencing in the world of the text.
Sirnilarly, Becker's Erzahlen bis Ostende concems a joumey which is both perceived and presented as a purely inward, self-reflexive experience-while the text is framed by descriptions of the beginning and end of the train journey, we learn nothing about the motion through the real world, which serves merely as a blank space on which to inscribe the inner experience of a subject that experiences many selves, many realities.
In Hildesheimer's Tynset the reflexiveness and withdrawal, the distancing fiom the world, are also noticeable-here the journey never actually takes place, but is merely planned and imagined by the narrator. There is no longer the confrontation with reality or the attempt to present how it is perceived, but there is an attempt to construct and show one possible reality. In the last three novels the central characters venture out on real joumeys, but the world they find is not the world fiom which the others have withdrawn. The journey into reality is a journey into texts-the two, reality and texts, are interrelated and interdependent. While in Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis there is still some distinction berneen the two (and the relativity of time and space in the story is still reflected in the narrative structure of the text), the boundary is permeable and no longer reduced to a simple opposition. Finally, they are revealed in Die letzte Welt to be identical: the boundary disappears, and physical reality is revealed to be a collection of texts open to a multitude of readings and interpretations. The world, as Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit describes it, is not ody a text, but a collection of different texts, and different sorts of readings are not ody possible but essential. As in Das Kalkwerk, the
"eaahlter Raum" in these novels stands in for a mode1 of narrative, but the priorities are now reversed: it does not tum inward in a spiral of language, but is pushed outward through the force of exploration. The characters of these texts venture out into the world that has been transfomed by the linguistic experiments of theu predecessors, and so they find a pluralistic, relative reality that no longer has any precedence over the text.
In al1 of these journeys we can see that the narrated space-be it the abstracted infinitude of the limeworks or the histoncally readable landscapes explored by Nadolny7s
Franklin-is engaged in a process of mutual reflection with the narrative space, the overall structure of the text. What changes as we move through the texts is the relative emphasis and importance given to different aspects of this constellation. So, for exarnple, the "erzahlter Raum" of Das Kalkwerk reflects the labyrinthe discoune while remaining always (necessarily) secondary to it, since the discourse does al1 it can to discredit the validity of the concept of "straight" representation. In the texts by Becker and
Hildesheimer, spatial structuring elements like juxtaposition and fragmentation reflect the story's structure and its themes; the structuring device of empty space appears not only in these works, but in Nadolny's and Ransmayr's as well, where it is crucial to stones which rely on the existence of "empty" unexplored temtory. When we reach our final three works we can see that the initial focus has been reversed-now the represented space is central, and it supports and reflects the thematic structure of the texts.
In each case, however, this mutual dependence of narrative space and narrated space also means a high level of involvement for the readers, whose role is reflected on by the text. The fact that only the reader's motion through the text allows this dynamic exchange to happen is emphasized in each of the novels. Time is spatialized when textual authority, literary influence, and the hierarchies of experience and narration, writer and reader, are relativized or reversed. What this means for the reader is a more central rote beyond the control of the purely linear storyteller. In Die Zetrte Welt the relationship between the author and reader seems to have retumed to the traditional hierarchy, but the relationship is infinitely relativized by the shifting frames of reference between Ransmayr and Ovid and their respective texts. In our final three works, the world is a text the characters must leam to read in the absence of any absolutely meaningful system of signification. In these texts, which employ relatively conventional discourse, the theme of perception and howledge is carried on with straightforward structures. Perception and understanding both depend on the spatial construct of simultaneity-the presence of several fiames of reference at once-which allows readers to make connections. The motion which produces the comection between the Mages or signs is reflected by the movement of the reader in the text and the explorer in physical space, so that the story contains an implicit comment on discursive organization.
As we have seen, space and time becarne central concems for novels when issues of perception and presentation entered their modem phase. By focusing on the three elements of Iiterary spatiality/temporality which we have discussed here, we cm determine a shifi but also a certain continuity in the development of German-language novels in the past three decades. It is in this central issue of space and time that the novel's attitude to world, text, and reader, ernerges, and in which we cm also find the key to its construction and theme.
The analysis of these apparently so different and yet related novels has produced two conclusions. Fint, it has been seen that narrative space and narrated space work together in the production and reception of texts, and play a particularly important rote in modem or contemporary works, where questions of time and space have become so central. It is more productive to examine these elements in their interrelation, rather than to isolate narrative space, narrated space, or indeed to focus simply on "Erzahlzeit" and
"erzahlte Zeit." In taking a synthetic approach, several unnecessarily separated theoretical trends are brought together, and this serves not only to gain a new perspective on narrative structure, but also to open new interpretative possibilities.
Secondly, because this approach to the functions of space and time on both discursive and diegetic levels grows naturally into a discussion of the relationship between the text and reality, it also contributes to the attempt to organize the apparently infinite range of narrative forms of today. While the present work did not aim to advance yet another attempt to define the terms "modem" and "postmodem," it has shown that there is a continuity between, for example, the modernist discursive experiments of a
Thomas Bernhard and the apparently conventional discourse of more recent writers like
Ransmayr and Nadolny. Whether it is primarily expressed through a distorted discourse or through a deceptively conventional story, the changed modem relationship to space and tirne, the changed understanding of how reality is perceived and constituted and what role narration and textuality play in these processes, are a central concem of al1 the novels. Works Cited
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