Review: Schweigeminute by Siegfried Lenz

Earlier this year I reviewed the classic novel Deutschstunde (published in 1968) and became a fan of Siegfried Lenz, who thankfully has remained productive into his 80s.  His most recent work - Schweigeminute - displays his mastery of the novella form. Schweigeminute is a bittersweet story of a summer love affair between teenage student and his high school English teacher.  The story of the affair is recounted as a sustained flashback during a "moment of silence" (Schweigeminute) during a school assembly; the "moment of silence" is to honor the memory of the English teacher - Stella Petersen - who died in a tragic accident.  Christian, the young student, recalls in his mind how his relationship with his teacher began. The narrative shifts between the first and second person, as Christian address his dead lover directly. As the students honor Stella with their silence, so too must Christin remain quiet about his forbidden love relationship; he mourns in silence.

The story takes place in Hirtshafen on the Baltic Sea.  Ray Charles is playing on the radio, so we know it is the late 1950s or early 1960s.  But otherwise Hirtshafen seems to exist outside the boundaries of time.  There is the Seaview Hotel, where Christian and Stella first make love, there is the beach, where the festival takes place every year, and then there is the sea. Most of the action in the novella is on, in and by the sea.  Stella seems to be a creature of the sea: she swims dolphin-like faster and better than anyone else, a sketch artist at the hotel draws her as a mermaid.  The sea delivers Stella to Christian at the start of the story and in the end the sea takes her away from him forever.

Lenz excels his precise description of the sea and the people that make their living on the water.  Christian's father makes his living harvesting stones from the ocean floor in a flat-bottomed vessel in order to extend the breakwaters. The descriptions of nature and the timeless portrait of Hirtshafen are reminiscent of Lenz's favorite novelist: William Faulkner. Stella reads Light in August on the beach and she initiates Christian in the importance of Faulkner:

...ohne dich lange zu besinnen, weihtest du mich ein in Faulkners Welt, in seine Feier der Wildnis dort am Mississippi, einer Wildnis, in der Bär und Hirsch herrschten und in der Opossum und Mokassinschlange heimisch waren, so lange, bis Säge und Baumwollmühlen das Land verwandelten. (without giving it too much thought, you initiated me into Faulkner's world, into his celebration of the wilderness there on the Mississippi, where the bear and stag held sway, where the possum and water mocassins lived, until the saws and cotton gins transformed to land.)

it is an old story Lenz tells here: lost love, lost iillusions of youth.  And he tells in the old style - more in the style of Theodor Storm than William Faulkner. But he tells it with such grace and control that it seems new, just as the world seems made anew in the eyes of young lovers.

Comments

[Katy]

I've just started reading it, what a coincidence! It seems to be emerging as many readers' book of the year...

[David]

Katy, please post your thoughts after you've finished reading it.