The weather 15 years ago
The novel Das Wetter 15 years ago by the Austrian author Wolf Haas , who was previously known as the author of the Brenner crime thrillers , was published in September 2006 and was praised by critics and readership mainly for its unusual narrative technique .
action
On the first narrative level, the novel consists of an interview that a literary critic from a German newspaper conducts with a (fictional) Wolf Haas about his new, also fictional book entitled “The Weather 15 Years Ago”.
For this book, the fictional Wolf Haas researched the story of the German engineer Vittorio Kowalski, who during an appearance at Wetten, dass ..? caused a stir when he was able to describe the weather in an Austrian mountain village in detail for every day for the past 15 years.
As a child, Vittorio Kowalski went on vacation every summer with his parents from the Ruhr area to that Austrian village and made friends with Anni Bonati, the daughter of the head of the local mountain rescue service . In the summer when Vittorio and Anni are both 15 years old, a tragic incident occurs: The two young people are on a hike when they are surprised by a heavy thunderstorm, but manage to get to the "smugglers' camp" to save a hut where Annis father keeps smuggled goods. Because of their exhaustion after the mortal danger they escaped, or because of the first sexual contact that may occur in the hut, they ignore the knocking signals on the hut door, which come from Annis father, who is also out and about in the mountains and seek refuge. As a result, Annis father died in the storm and the Kowalski family left hastily and never returned to their holiday destination.
Vittorio then begins to obsessively collect and memorize the weather data of that Austrian mountain village on a daily basis, which ultimately leads to his appearance on “Wetten, dass ..?”. After this performance, he receives a postcard from Anni and immediately sets off for Austria. Once there, he realizes that the postcard was a fake from his employee and that Anni is about to marry Vittorio's former tormentor Lukki, who is now a hotelier and mountain rescue chief.
On a lonely hike that leads Vittorio back to the smugglers' camp, he is buried in the hut and spends several days underground among the smuggled goods. There he finds old letters from which it emerges that his mother had a love affair with Mr. Bonati for years. With the help of the explosives, which are also stored, Vittorio Kowalski finally succeeds in causing an explosion in the course of a daring action, which buries him even deeper, but also ensures that one is looking for him.
This explosion takes place exactly at the time when Anni and Lukki's wedding is being performed in the church in the village. The ceremony is interrupted, Vittorio is rescued and taken to hospital with minor injuries, but Lukki is killed in the course of the rescue operation.
This plot, with all its entanglements and turning points, is revealed to the reader of the (real) novel only gradually and a chronological order in the context of the editor's interview with Wolf Haas. But even at the level of the interview, which extends over five days, an independent action can be identified, which consists primarily of the relationship that extends beyond the conversations about the fictional novel and questions of literary theory and life philosophy between the editor and the Author and ends very abruptly when the dictation machine is switched off, shortly after the two of them suddenly started to speak confidentially.
Narrative technique
The innovative achievement of the novel consists primarily in the addition of the traditional instance structure literary figure - narrator - author (whereby the first two are fictional, but the latter is real) a fourth level of a "fictional author" (the Wolf Haas, who is about having his book interviewed). Strictly speaking, this creates two textual worlds: on the one hand that of the fictional interview, on the other hand the plot of the fictional book (the story of Vittorio and Anni), which, viewed from the perspective of the real reader, must appear “fictional to the power of two”, but from the perspective of the The first text world is based on a real occurrence (the story of Vittorio and Anni actually played out in the first text world).
This alleged "real" basis creates additional complexity - the real reader learns, for example, that Vittorio Kowalski acts as the first-person narrator in the fictional book, but also that the fictional author Wolf Haas was partly involved in the story he told ( He witnessed the wedding, the explosion of the hill and the rescue of Kowalski) and thus shuttled back and forth between the plains. The intertextual references in the course of the interview to other books by Wolf Haas, in turn, thematize and at the same time blur the boundaries between the instances of the fictional and the real author.
This unusual complexity of the four-dimensional narrative structure arouses in attempts to look at and describe it more closely, sometimes similar impressions as the impossible pictures by the Dutch painter MC Escher , in which the spatial dimensions seem to merge.
The achronological representation of the plot of the fictional novel is a consequence of the interview form and splinters the story in a cubist manner, but without losing any plot elements. Particularly tragic turning points (the facts of the death of Annis father, then Lukki) are interspersed as if incidentally in the interview and lead to a profound revision of the overall picture of the story that the real reader gradually develops. Sometimes the real author also addresses this construction game in the course of the interview through preliminary interpretations or by announcing relevant aspects, but without naming these aspects.
The literary theoretical discussion at the meta level of the interview is also interesting . Intertextual references to other works by Wolf Haas, which in turn create a relationship between the fictional and real author and blur the boundaries between the instances, are also attractive.
The game with the instances extends itself beyond the material book: The bound original edition by the Hoffmann und Campe publishing house quotes the first sentence of the fictional book as a blurb, the air mattress on the dust jacket turns out to be a symbol for the novel and an object (at times to the absurd borderline) protracted discussions between the editor and the author. However, the real reader also learns that it is the image on the cover of the fictional book, and the silver star under the dust jacket is an ambiguous symbol from the world of text (better: the world of text).
language
Wolf Haas often uses word games to create text coherence. In “The Weather 15 Years Ago” the word weather creates a framework around the plot and the complex narrative world - both the ambiguity of “weather” for the meteorological condition, in the context of mining for the air available underground and as a Bavarian term for "Storm", as well as the similarity of the words "weather" and "bet", Haas gave his Thomas Gottschalk as a play on words during Kowalski's appearance at "Wetten, dass ..?" puts in the mouth.
The language variant Austrian German , which also plays an important role in Wolf Haas' Brenner crime novels, has a constituent effect in “The Weather 15 Years Ago”, especially on the narrative level of the interview. In the talks between the German editor and the Austrian author there are always misunderstandings as Wolf Haas typical Austrian terms used ( Blitzgneißerin , linen , ...), which are sometimes taken up by the German interviewer - in the written version then each in quotes set. The German origin of the editor underlines the real Wolf Haas through the consistent reproduction of the distinctive sound structure of words such as 'ürgendwie', 'Kürche'. Without ever explicitly naming the editor as German, he shows her origins in this way - and through the obvious duplication (Anni Bonati - Vittorio Kowalski on the one hand, author - editor on the other hand) makes the contrast between Austria and Germany a theme of the entire novel.
Book editions
- The weather 15 years ago . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-455-40004-3 (hardcover).
- The weather 15 years ago . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-423-13685-3 (German literature).
- The weather 15 years ago . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-423-21269-4 (German entertainment).
literature
- David-Christopher Assmann: Autonomy or Corruption? Literature business (in) the Austrian literature after 2000. In: Michael Boehringer, Susanne Hochreiter (Hrsg.): Zeitwende. Austrian literature since the millennium. 2000-2010. Praesens, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-7069-0621-0 , pp. 82-101 (including on Wolf Haas: The weather 15 years ago. ).
- David-Christopher Assmann: Exhibiting yourself. Literature mediation and author interview with Wolf Haas . In: Katerina Kroucheva and Barbara Schaff (eds.): Kafkas Gabel. Considerations for Exhibiting Literature . Transcript, Bielefeld 2013, pp. 297–322.
- Angelika Baier: Border / Relationships in Wolf Haas' novel Das Wetter 15 years ago. In: Michael Boehringer, Susanne Hochreiter (eds.): Turn of time. Austrian literature since the millennium. 2000-2010. Praesens, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-7069-0621-0 , pp. 173-193.
- Andreas Böhn: Metafictionality, memory and mediality in novels by Michael Kleeberg, Thomas Lehr and Wolf Haas . In: Bareis, J. Alexander, Grub, Frank Thomas (Ed.): Metafiktion. Analyzes of contemporary German-language literature (= kaleidograms 57), Kadmos, Berlin 2010, pp. 11–33.
- Michael Jaumann: “But that's exactly the theme of the story!” Dialogue and metafiction in Wolf Haas' Das Wetter 15 years ago. In: J. Alexander Bareis, Frank Thomas Grub (Ed.): Metafiktion. Analyzes of contemporary German-language literature (= kaleidograms 57). Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86599-102-7 , pp. 203-225.
- Hubert Winkels (Ed.): Wolf Haas meets Wilhelm Raabe. The Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize - the event and the consequences. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0195-5 .