by JOACHIM SARTORIUS
PHOTO/© Barna Burger
Just as we are unable to coherently piece together parts of our own lives, it is impossible to neatly assemble the pieces of this formidable novel – three books, thirty-nine chapters, 1724 pages with sudden breaks and links – which initially seems to be an irresponsible scattering of people and motifs. Because the many stories really do run parallel to each other, almost without beginning or end, the reader is initially frustrated and tries to find a linear thread, the outlines of heroes evolving throughout a narrative, a bird’s eye view from which to view the entirety of the story. But finally, with a persistence that is most abundantly rewarded, the reader realises the great, ingenious architecture holding together figures and timelines.
Peter Nadas responds to questions about the structure of his novel by pointing to the chaos and lack of orientation which defines our lives. He works with “an open structure that does not aim beyond a world experienced as chaotic.” This corresponds with his intention of “writing stories about people who have never encountered one another or who know each other only superficially and whose fates are nevertheless fundamentally bound to one another.”
The novel has many elements which metaphorically convey this structure. Most vivid is the chapter “Hans von Wolkenstein”, which tells about a boarding school for boys where the boys are measured for studies based on racial biology. Hans, who is under close scrutiny, comes from Annaberg, a region whose noble estates have been constructed on the local gneissic rock. The passage reads: “This very prevalent stone, though it is not easy to notice close to the earth’s surface, can thank its mining and architectural career to the parallels that dominate its structure, which allow it to be split easily along its layers. Several varieties of its texture are known; in veined gneiss the mica are arranged in ribbons, in layered gneiss the ingredients change with each layer.” The text continues: “Gneiss forms a large thick envelope around the globe. On it rest all sorts of deposits and sediments; when the magma moves underneath it and opens the structural cracks, the eruptive rocks burst to the surface through this three-thousand-meter stone casing.”
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