Approximate landscape

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Approximate Landscape is - after Agnes - the second novel by Peter Stamm , published in 2001 by Arche Verlag .

action

Peter Stamm prefixes the novel with a line of poetry by Paul Celan : “You are like you, always.” The predominant location of the plot is a small harbor in the far north of Norway during the polar night, more of a village than a city, the central figure is the 28-year-old Kathrine. She works as a customs officer, is married for the second time and has an eight-year-old son from her first marriage. Kathrine has never come further south than Hammerfest , the northernmost city in Europe. The first marriage came about because of the pregnancy and failed because of the man's drunkenness. With the second husband she married into a well-off middle class family, out of need for security and without love.

Kathrine hates the dark. In winter she feels “as if she were not alive” . The conversations with a Russian captain, whose ship she has to check as a customs officer when he has just docked again, and whom she looks through the fingers of the other, bring variety to her monotonous life. During one of their conversations on board, he asks her why she is not finally leaving here. She cannot give herself an answer. But when she discovers that her second husband is a hollow and mendacious existence, the Russian captain's request takes effect. She takes the Hurtigruten , a ship connection along the Norwegian coast, to visit Christian, a chance acquaintance from the past. During the journey, it is a captain again whose conversation she is looking for. When the ship crossed the Arctic Circle to the south overnight , he greeted her on the bridge in the morning with: "Welcome to the world" .

She finds Christian in Boulogne but is disappointed to be with him and returns to her hometown. When she came back she is no longer the same and recognizes the stagnation in her previous environment: "They [the people in the village] always told the same stories, talked without interruptions and yet were as silent as the countryside."

She makes contact with her childhood sweetheart, the "dark-haired" Morten. Adverse coincidences had prevented them from becoming a stable couple. Increasing tensions with her husband's family, slander and the lascivious desire of her father-in-law make those who have returned from “the world” realize that they must go away forever. During a family celebration in the house of her parents-in-law - it is the birthday of her son from his first marriage that is being celebrated there - this inspiration comes to her with such certainty that she takes her nine-year-old son by the hand, quietly informs him of this decision and without much ado goes.

With Morten, her son and a child with Morten, she now lives in a brighter world.

comment

Leitmotifs are darkness and twilight, both as a scenic background and in a metaphorical sense. The small port city at the end of the world is inhabited by hopeless undead. Kathrine and Morten are among the few light figures of the place.

Mythologically, darkness and seclusion are reminiscent of Hades . The two captains lead Kathrine into the world. Her role in educating and conveying insights allows her to take on a Hermes role. Leaving Hades, the Nekyia , is both a myth and a recurring literary motif. 'Through night to light' is the motto of Kathrine's story.

Kathrine finds her way out of her lethargy and to herself during the short stopover in the polar night after she has returned from her first major trip. Finding oneself after leaving the familiar environment is characteristic of the genre of the development novel . Seen in this way, “Approximate Landscape” would be a contemporary development novel in which the hero is not a young man, but a young woman.

After two failed marriages, Kathrine finds her childhood sweetheart, dark-haired Morten. Your literary alternative, Tony Buddenbrook , also divorced twice, was denied. She could only keep her Morten Schwarzkopf as a memory.

Text output

Reviews

  • Reto Sorg: Praise for progress. Peter Stamm's novel "Approximate Landscape". In: NZZ . August 23, 2001.
  • Bettina Kugler: geographer of the approximate. Peter Stamm and his new novel “Approximate Landscape” - an encounter. In: St. Galler Tagblatt . August 29, 2001.
  • Friedmar Apel : Serpentine in the sky. Peter Stamm reads the Nordic landscape. In: FAZ . September 15, 2001.
  • Martin Brinkmann: Blurred soul landscape. About the novel "Approximate Landscape" by Peter Stamm. In: At the bay window . Journal for Literature No. 43. Münster, spring 2002.
  • Review notes on Approximate Landscape at perlentaucher.de

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ You be like you, always./Stant up Jherosalem inde / Erheyff you / Even whoever cut the ribbon towards you, / inde hosts / enlightens / tied it anew, in the certificate, / I swallow chunks of mud, in the tower, / language , Finster-Pilsen, / kumi / ori ./ ("Lichtzwang", 1970)