The blue siphon

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The blue siphon is a story by Urs Widmer , first published in 1992 by Diogenes Verlag . It is one of the more important works of Swiss literature and is also included in the 20-volume Swiss library of Das Magazin .

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The blue siphon is a fairy tale for adults in which the narrator describes a fantastic journey through time into his past. At the same time, his childlike self travels into the future. A visit to the cinema takes the narrator back fifty years and visits his parents in rural Basel in the middle of the war years. The blue siphon bottle , to which he is already tied through childhood fantasies, is still unchanged in the living room of his parents' house. In the meantime, the child is standing in amazement in front of his future family's house in the city of Zurich.

Summary

The story begins with the narrator visiting the cinema at Bellevue in Zurich . He watches a film that he doesn't really know what it is about, and when he leaves the cinema again, after leaving Rämistrasse and Hottingerstrasse behind him , he finds himself in front of his house, which is now owns a new door - or rather, an old door. As it turns out, the narrator has been taken fifty years back in time.

The 53-year-old man travels to Basel, his home town, in astonishment. Once there, he is witnessing the death of a young woman jumping from a water tower for the second time. In Basel he meets old friends such as his wife, who is only two years old, and his former nanny Lisette. He has also met his family, his mother and father, who are both younger than himself, and his dog Jimmy in the past. Only someone is missing: himself! Because his previous, three-year-old self, disappeared for a day. In fact, he disappeared without a trace after a visit to the cinema Lisette had brought him to. Despite the many acquaintances he makes as a new person, he remains a stranger during this time.

A second journey is taking place exactly parallel to the journey into the past. Because the 3-year-old first-person narrator suddenly finds himself in Rämistrasse after going to the cinema. As if guided by a magic hand, he comes to the house in which he will live in fifty years. There he meets his own sixteen-year-old daughter, with whom he talks and - it seems - even falls a little in love with her. When they look at an old photo album together, the three-year-old toddler claims that he is the boy in the 50-year-old picture, about which Mara, the daughter, can only laugh. When the old first-person narrator comes up with the idea that if he returns to the cinema, he might also return to his time, and when his little self returns to the cinema again as if by magic, the boy becomes the boy and the elderly gentleman actually transported back to their own times.

Formal

The book is divided into two larger chapters. One is about the 53-year-old narrator who travels into the past, the other about the three-year-old who travels into the future. Both chapters have their own first-person narrator, although basically the same person. So she is fifty-three in the first chapter, but only three years old in the second. This creates an intense experience that adds to the depth of the book. It is noticeable that the narrator is never mentioned by name and is actually an abstract personality until the end of the book. Perhaps Urs Widmer does this on purpose so that the reader can better identify with the person without a name. Perhaps, however, the narrator should have the name Urs Widmer for the sake of correctness, and that would be a bit too autobiographical for the author for his fairy tale. What is certain, however, is that there are many parallels between the author and the narrator. Urs Widmer grew up in Basel, too, and he also lived in Zurich while he was writing the book. He also has a wife and a daughter and their ages are also the same. The book also contains a lot of longing. Perhaps the author wished such a journey into his own childhood had happened to him, and that is why the narrator has so many similarities with the author.

The writing style adapts strongly to the plot and thus supports the prevailing mood. This is how stories about childhood are described in long and elaborate sentences. Stories about war and death, however, are always told in strikingly short sentences and appear garbled like scraps of images.

people

People from the present

Adult narrator

The 53-year-old narrator, who lives in Zurich, is a writer and has both a wife named Isabelle and a daughter named Mara. Although he genuinely loves his wife, he feels transported back to childhood and also drawn to his nanny, who is only sixteen. This passion is probably based on the narrator's longing for his past. At that time Lisette, the nanny, was his first love.

Isabelle

Isabelle is the narrator's wife and lives with him and their daughter Mara in Zurich. She also appears briefly in the past as a two year old girl. She is a loving wife and mother.

Mara

Mara is the narrator's daughter and Isabelle. In the second chapter she also comes into contact with her three-year-old father, but does not notice this at all. The young narrator, like the old narrator, feels drawn to Lisette, to Mara.

People from the past

Young narrator

The young narrator is only three years old, but already seems much more mature. He is a very curious boy and thinks about everything. After his journey through time, he meets his future daughter Mara, to whom he feels drawn. He has a very good relationship with his parents and his nanny Lisette, who is like a big sister to him.

Lisette

Lisette is the young narrator's nanny, but much more a friend to him than an educator. She also has great feelings for the narrator and even feels a certain love for the 53-year-old, although she doesn't recognize him at all.

father

The narrator's father, though strict, is a caring and loving father. He is a stubborn personality who gets his coffee illegally even in wartime. At first he is also suspicious of the strange 53-year-old, who is actually his son.

mother

The mother is a kind and caring woman. Not only to her three-year-old son, but also to the 53-year-old. She offers him work and some money without recognizing him. She takes on the typical role of housewife in the family and is a faithful wife. Although she is a bit scared of the older narrator at first, she soon takes him into her heart. As a mother, she probably senses that there is something familiar in the strange man.

subjects

war

In the “blue siphon”, war plays an important, supporting role. At the beginning and at the end of each chapter and also scattered through the chapters, images of war can be found; Images of falling bombs, of dying, of disappearing, of death. When the little narrator goes back to the cinema in the future to get back to the past, he remarks: “This time I didn't see a children's film, but a story with war and death, from which I only understood that people can be finally separated , without making amends, forever. " , or when he, finally arriving there, runs home with Lisette: " When we passed the radio building where the anti-aircraft gun was buried, I tickled her with a peacock feather (...) " . In the course of the story we learn that the narrator has always dreamed of simply making those siphon bombs that squeeze carbon dioxide into the siphon bottle disappear so that there would be no more bombs at all, which amounts to a pure child's fantasy - but after all, it is traveled back to his childhood. War is a part of life, both in the past and in the future - war is ubiquitous, even as the narrator tries to manipulate time by making the bombs go away. Man is powerless - he can travel around in time, but he will never be able to prevent war.

Time travel and films

Time travel is not only about the main story, in which the narrator experiences a journey through time, but also in the film sequences that the narrator sees in the cinema during his own journey through time. The total of four films (one film for each time jump) are all about an Indian boy. The time factor also plays an important role in all films. In the first film, for example, a young Briton is predicted by a clairvoyant that his wife will be shot. But the young man does not understand the old man's murmur and turns his attention to the young, pretty assistant to the clairvoyant. Back on the street with their wife, the young couple walk to the next street corner until an Antibrite with a rifle shows up and fulfills the prophecy. The second and third films are about the same Indian boy who shot the British woman from the first film. One describes his childhood and the loss of his mother as well as the associated experience with death. The other film tells about the afterlife of this boy who unexpectedly befriends a British man after his murder, who takes him to England and enables him to receive an excellent education as a patron. The former young Indian becomes a well-known writer, fame and fame go to the head. One day he goes to a cinema and experiences a journey back in time to his childhood. In contrast to the narrator, however, he decides to stay in the past and live as a clairvoyant, since he already knows about the unstoppable passage of time.

The blue siphon

The siphon bottle is not only found in the title, but also a few times in the text. On closer inspection, however, it becomes apparent that this siphon is more than an old soda bottle. The siphon represents both the narrator's childhood memories and the fear of war and death. As a little child he had thought that the bomb that served as a carbon dioxide dispenser was a real bomb that could kill people. He often imagined what would happen if a bomb were dropped on him. At first you only see a small black spot in the blue sky. The same picture can be seen on the siphon bottle: A small black bomb in the blue siphon. The siphon can therefore be associated with heaven, perhaps with the heavenly, with the idyll. The black bomb is lurking inside. The spot in the sky is now getting bigger and bigger. People start screaming. The mothers cover the children's eyes, but in vain. The shadow in the sky is getting closer. And before you can even grasp it, you crumble to ashes, and the only thing you leave behind is a burned-in shadow on a half-torn house wall. The narrator was afraid of such an event, and therefore as a child he was also afraid of the bomb in the siphon. Perhaps it was that fear that, fifty years later, brought him back to this place during the Second World War. Perhaps it's the undigested memory of death and destruction. The memory of the fear that ultimately enables someone to travel back in time. So it could have been with him. It could have been the same with the boy in the movies. The background of the siphon is therefore much more serious than it first appears.

Relation to Switzerland

Switzerland plays an important role in the “blue siphon”. The author expresses Switzerland's position as a neutral state during the war by playing the story of the narrator on the German border in Basel. So both the narrator and the reader are confronted with the war. Of course, this is perhaps only based on the autobiographical part of the book, but it is still impressively shown how even family houses on the border were occupied in order to be able to keep an eye on the "enemy".

Book editions and literature

The blue siphon is currently available as a paperback:

An annotated school edition was published as:

  • The blue siphon. Text & Commentary , ed. v. Karl Hotz. Buchner (School Library of Modern Age 13), Bamberg 2002, ISBN 3-7661-3963-0

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ www.referate10.com , as of January 22, 2007