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Isolation and Death in Stifter's Nachsommer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The idyllic harmony that suffuses Stifter's Nachsommer has been widely discussed and analyzed by scholars in the field, but less attention has been given to the undercurrent of sadness, which, in the words of Walter Rehm, is “hidden between the lines.” A new dimension to our understanding of Nachsommer—described by one writer as “inexhaustible in its mystery”—can indeed be added by further probing into the disturbances that lie beneath the smooth exterior of the novel.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1965
References
1 See, for example, Eric Blackall, Adalbert Stifter: A Critical Study (Cambridge, Eng., 1948), pp. 311–330. The following statement by Mr. Blackall epitomizes the acclaim which this aspect of the work has received: “The whole power of the work proceeds from its complete, unshaken serenity, its all-pervading harmony, its distinguished simplicity and its spiritualized conception of order—all these are aspects both of the higher life and of the artistic expression which Stifter gives to it” (p. 312).
2 “Gleichwohl ist das Schwermuts- und Todes-Motiv im Werk selbst nur sehr verborgen zwischen den Zeilen und den Sätzen da.” Walter Rehm, Nachsommer. Zur Deutung von Stifters Dichtung (Bern, 1951), p. 31.
3 Friedrich Seebaß, “Über Stifters Dichtung,” Deutsche Rundschau, lxxviii (Oct. 1952), 1079.
4 For all the tranquillity which the book as a whole exudes, Roy Pascal exaggerates when he states that in Nachsommer there is “complete lack of incident and accident, tension, struggle, plot” and a “complete absence of internal stress.” The German Novel (Toronto, 1956), pp. 56 and 60. The tranquillity is achieved not through absence of emotional tension, but by the deliberate, calm flow of the style, by the relegation of the more passionate scenes into the past, by the use of images and landscape to suggest states of mind, and by a constant adherence to the highest standards of taste in expression. Roy Pascal himself contradicts the above-quoted statement later in his sensitive analysis of Nachsommer, by finding numerous examples of tension and internal stress in the novel.
5 Adalbert Stifter, Der Nachsommer, ed. Franz Hüller and others, in Sämtliche Werke, vi, vii, viii (1) (Prag und Reichenberg, 1901 ff.). Parenthetical references to volume and page are to this edition. Spelling has been modernized.
6 One might take this symbolism to mean that Stifter regarded the institution of the church as another harbinger of culture.
7 Roy Pascal, The German Novel, p. 69, has noted the characteristic subtlety with which the author apprises the reader of the love developing between these two people, unknown to themselves, and therefore unknown to the story-teller Heinrich. “We become aware of it only in the most indirect manner, and, being experienced readers of novels, we even know more about it than the story-teller himself. … Only after the declaration of their love can we interpret his unease, and her restlessness.”
8 Pascal, p. 65, attributes Heinrich's withdrawal here merely to his exaggerated concern for “propriety”: “When he twice meets Natalie by chance, he urgently seeks to withdraw in order not to offend her; and we feel the offence is more to propriety than to her or to morality.” Instead, Heinrich seeks to withdraw on only one occasion and only because he is embarrassed at finding her in a condition obviously not intended for the eyes of others. For a discussion of Heinrich's second accidental meeting with Natalie, see below.
9 “Wir machten uns das Vergnügen, Steine ziemlicher Größe von ihr [der Klippe] hinabzuwerfen, um den Steinstaub aufwirbeln zu sehen, wenn der Geworfene auf Klippen stieß, und um sein Gepolter in den Klippen und sein Rasseln in dem am Fuße des Felsens befindlichen Gerölle zu hören” (viii, 159).
10 “In der Nachsommer-Dichtung ist der Tod … nicht gegenwärtig.” Rehm, Nachsommer, p. 99.
11 Adolf von Grolman, Adalbert Stifters Romane (Halle, 1926), p. 62, “Doch niemand stirbt, nichts stirbt außer den immer wiederkehrenden Rosen, und selten wird der Tod erwähnt.”
12 For an excellent study of the importance of the marble muse, see G. Joyce Hallamore, “The Symbolism of the Marble Muse in Stifter's Nachsommer,” PMLA, lxxiv (Sept. 1959), 398–405.
13 It is important to be aware of the fact that Stifter frequently uses landscape descriptions to indicate the emotions of his characters, as Franz Matzke has pointed out in Die Landschaft in der Dichtung Adalbert Stifters (Eger, 1932), p. 103: “Denn namentlich im Nachsommer tritt die Landschaft nicht nur neben den Menschen, sondern unmittelbar an seine Stelle und verkündet in ihrer Sprache, was der Mensch verschweigt. Der Leser muß dann … das Innere der Menschen aus einer zart hingehauchten Natursymbolik herausfühlen.”
14 Stifter's writings abound in idyllic nature descriptions, but his feeling toward nature is not purely one of loving admiration. This episode is an example of what Pascal describes as “evidence of that distrust of nature, of that gnawing uncertainty, which always lowers on the horizon of this apparently soothing book” (p. 70).