"One sweltering summer" is a feast of aromas, sounds , colors and sensations ...
before the storm, who knows if
announced ... A Keyserling is known for being the leading exponent of German literary Impressionism. The only or the best, the truth is that this novelist and playwright shared with the Impressionists (for many, the most important artistic movement of modernity) is not only a creative, apparently unfinished, but also a life of more random.
tenth of twelve children, Count Eduard von Keyserling was born on May 15, 1855 at the family castle of Paddern (Lettland, on the Baltic Sea). But from an early age, due to its unique personality, was considered an aristocratic environment Außenseiter (what we know, by the English voice as outsider). Twenty-three years decided to break away, in part, to his family and settled in Vienna (and a year in Graz) to study philosophy and art history. Following the studies, at the request of his mother, manages the family estate for five years until she died in 1894. Then he decided to move, along with three of her sisters, the cultural and literary par excellence of those moments: Munich, where, except for a trip, stay for the rest of his life. But the writer is facing this new phase already sick with syphilis, which will cause numerous and terrible diseases, and among these, perhaps worse, blindness. From the fifty-three years until his death in 1918, a decade living Keyserling blind. A fact which increases their tendency Außenseiter and he advocates a so absolute isolation of writers such as Rilke or R. Walser ... because not only is a physical refuge: from 1908 are held at home and virtually no walk on the street again, but also, I am not aware of any relationship is significant. And many agree to say that his best works are in this time when it gets going beyond naturalism and, without neglecting the social precepts that it creates, enters Impressionism with novels like "Beate und Mareile. Schloßgeschichte Eine" (1903) , or with Novell as presented here, "Schwule Tage" (1904) under the title "One sweltering summer." (It should be clear that the German Novelle is a genre that is not reduced to being a novel or lesser extent, eg, to be compared with the nouvelle, it works with a very specific structural laws as, among many others, that the plot must revolve around a single core, or must contain a Wendepuntkt (turning point) that precipitated the end.)
Thus, the writer already known sick and strikingly unattractive since adolescence, when it starts to live this time of maturity in Munich, must learn to endure hardships economic (World War I decline the family property income), or endure the terrible and painful consequences of syphilis, like going blind ... therefore, unable to see, or write ... so you see forced to rely on their memories, his imagination and dictate to her sisters. Of the whole of his literary output, has retained only a small part because, apparently, much of his work was destroyed by his express desire. Not so "That stifling summer," that conveys much of that peculiar Keyserling vital context and, in particular, by double exile, physical and emotional, which is forced Bill, the protagonist, since the argument novelle impressions of this stands out for what happens, but what kind of views cause us what happens. In this and many other aspects, the story of Bill reminds us, much to the "Ewald Tragy" of Rilke. In both cases, it is a semi-autobiographical story of two young players in just eighteen and soul of a poet. So, Bill (as Ewald) begins to discover life while giving away the ambivalent relationship with a parent rigid and unable to communicate with him (again with a remarkable absence of the mother) and, above all , trying to survive in an environment-so innate and very young-sensed corrupted, and, as it grows, it produces more and more uneasy surprise, coming to assume that (nor would the temptation to not feel alone) never fit into it. But as Rilke, who always had the aspiration to belong to the upper class, dissected (from below) every angle of his petty bourgeois environment stifling, the Count Keyserling, however, unmasks (from above) that supposedly privileged aristocratic environment. And this versatile oblique perspective is what gives this work of great interest. Keyserling
Impressionist call it describes reality, not only as it is, but as we perceive it. No recreation rooms, creates them. Well, like Monet, Degas, Renoir ... enrich their texts with moments of this idyllic world that hosts plein air nature, for whose explosion of colors, sounds, atmospheres ... any vocabulary seems to fall short. Maybe that's why, in the way of presenting the course of this German writer, the first thing surprising is how to put the differences: the color, smell, the way one thing always matters more than anything. Not that I consider the syntax more traditional, formal ... is precisely the power to create that aesthetic. Thus, adjectives and adverbs generally relegated to the status of accessories, right here opening prayer, are the main protagonists and all other narrative elements are subjected to its surprising semantic load. And all that, in the end, wrap it in a style that, at first glance may seem unfinished, ungainly ... well, for example, with an apparent stream of consciousness in which deliberately avoids ties, requires rare breaks. Although the thoroughness of Keyserling goes much further: to finish the fictitious improvisation, using a first-person narrator unfolds, without notice, in two voices that are interspersed: the adult who remembers that summer, and the young Bill who lives in a present that, although history is known, it seems real. And more suggestive of these two narrative levels is that maturity is reminiscent contained: it seems to curb their own interpretation, that it, like it or not, requires the passage of time. Thus, we present these first experiences as they were discoveries as Bill's lives, from the most mundane, even those that will represent an irreversible events before and after the protagonist's life. This reading room (also found in ET) gives the reader the possibility of a broader imagination, a 'freshness' that not all texts are able to provide or, if preferred, to safeguard. That
But sweltering summer, perhaps the most novelle Keyserling lyrical, not all formal mastery, or aesthetic, quite the opposite, because each and every one of their players can feel how they are haunted by the tragedy, from the side as Gerda: "We always round a bit sad. I do not know what it is, "to the main and Bill:" At any time, you may receive some of the darkness, something awful, why? ". Thus, to this writer impressionist-in my opinion it should be noted, also in this narrative and, above all, by the weight of its moral weight. As the author warns us that all that glory is fleeting, it reminds us that reality is not total, only a part, that such blinding, unlimited and magnificent gradations of twilight hides a considerable darkness ... many shades ... the author addresses without being crushed by the magnificent beauty that fascinates him so much. The wisdom and the aim of Keyserling shows someone able to look in the mirror of others, such as farmers and servants of the One sweltering summer ... and that is not afraid to expose such pulse golden cages whose representatives boast to recreate behaviors inbred, mean and sinister, underpinned by a multitude of formalities hypocrites. As well, all ending up with a single destination: the tragedy, unhappiness ... or worse: a vacuum. Behaviors and consequences that Keyserling himself had to suffer and those who always wanted to disengage. This was emphasized by his friend K. Holm in 1932 in memory of the writer: "Ich kleingeschrieben" ("I lowercase). According to Holm, there was nothing more than hate Keyserling false compassion and did everything possible so that they never knew of his unhappiness, though, even then, was an enigma. And on that need for independence with his own life, his own suffering, we read also in the One sweltering summer: "I never feel more sorry for ourselves, that when others comfort us."
Yet despite his own pain and thanks to their ability to understand human pettiness and weaknesses waiting in the recesses of the mind, was able to give us shelter in their stories since, and in line with what was said by M. Mosebach:
"Summer Nights Keyserling, will always be a haven in which the reader can protect themselves when they feel cold." Dauster
Miriam Madrid, May 2010
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