Ein Hermelin in Tschenopol, published in 1958, is a neglected gem of postwar German literature. Gregor von Rezzori, who died in 1998, had some success as a film actor and television host, but for the most part has fallen into obscurity. That is, until The New York Review of Books (bless them) published a new translation of the novel by Philip Boehm - An Ermine in Czernopol - earlier this year. After reading John Wray's excellent review in the New York Times, I picked up the German original. So now we have a growing Gregor von Rezzori fan base in the US, but still very few German readers: there is only one reader review on Amazon's German site.
Why has Gregor von Rezzori been ignored, for the most part, by the German literary establishment? There are perhaps several answers: Rezzori was a man without a set nationality. He could have been Austrian or Romanian and preferred to live in Italy. Also, Gregor von Rezzori was a maximalist writer in an age of minimalist prose. Er hat sich Zeit genommen - with long, detailed observations and digressions which today seem a throwback to the 19th century novel. Gregor von Rezzori's aristocratic instincts clash with today's embrace of plebian sensibility. Finally, Gregor von Rezzori's examination of anti-Semitism in Hermelin and in his other books was unwelcome in postwar Wirtschaftswunder Germany, which wanted to forget past unpleasantness.
Much of the pleasure in reading Hermelin comes from the richness of the language. Gregor von Rezzori was a genius of making his characters come alive through their distinctive speech. I know Philip Boehm is a brilliant translator; after all, he translates the books of fellow Romanian Herta Müller with the difficult German of the Banat-Swabian minority in Romania (see my review of Herztier), but, judging from the reviews of English readers, this richness doesn't quite come through. The myriad of German dialects mirrors the extraordinary diversity of Tschernopol, a fictional city located somewhere east of the Balkans. There is the crude German of the handyman Kunzelmann, the witty, Yiddish-tinged German of the precocious pupil Solly Brill, the noble language of the beloved Jewish princess classmate Blanche Schlesinger, the bombast of the tutor Herr Adamowski and, most importantly, the expansive, breezy German of the district prefect, Herr Tarangolian, which makes up nearly one third of the novel.
The novel Ein Hermelin von Tschenopol can best be described as Marcel Proust meets Joseph Roth. For Hermelin is an extended meditation on the challenges of memory and remembering, on the precariousness of youth, combined with a melancholy homage to the lost world of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which had vanished even before the events of the book occur. The lost world is embodied vy the novel's pivotal figure, Major Tildy, who is put in an insane asylum for defending the honor of his (highly promiscuous) sister-in-law. Tildy is idolized by the children/narrators of Hermelin, who mistake his maniacal military rigidity for nobility.
And the narrative perspective is another unusual aspect of this novel; it is in the first person plural of a brother and sister who mostly eavesdrop on the conversations of the adults. Only towards the end of the novel does the perspective shift to the first person of the brother, after an emotional crisis pushes the sister prematurely into adolescence. The children (and thus the reader) learn the most from Herr Tarangolian, the highest ranking official in Tschernopol as well as the town busybody and gossip. It is Tarangolian who most closely mirrors the sensibility of von Rezzori: he is a bon vivant who dearly loves the beauty of women, the art of dance, as well as good wine and cigars. Most of all, he loves the city of Tschenopol - a multicultural goulash of ethnic groups and languages and dialects of languages. A city characterized by its love of laughter - not a joyous laughter, but the cruel laughter of Schadenfreude. Tarangolian is well aware that the cosmopolitan openness of Tschernopoal carried the seeds of its own demise:
"Wir sind [...] Bürger einer Welt von solchen Gegensätzen, dass mit uns verglichen die Amerikaner zu materialistischen Stümpern herabsinken. Wir sind dadurch Weltbürger aud die alleräusserste und gefährllichste Weise, nämlich in unserer schrankenlosen Toleranz. Nennen Sie uns beliebe nicht Nihilisten. Wir verneinen nichts, aber auch gar nichts - und das ist es eben. Denn wenn wir nichts, aber auch gar nichts gelten lassen, so doch nur darum, weil wir schlechthin alles gelten lassen"
("We are citizens of a world comprised of such contradictions, that compared to us the Americans are nothing more than materialistic bunglers. We are world citizens of the most extreme and dangerous sort, especially in our boundless tolerance. You cannot call us nihilists. We don't negate anything, anything at all - and that's the point. For if we don't let anything stand it's because we let absolutely everything stand.")
Already at the beginning of Hermelin there are cracks in the multicultural facade. Right-wing Hakenkreuzler are defacing the windows of Jewish-owned shops. Ethnic tensions mount, especially within the German community, and, following a soccer match, Tschernopol erupts in a Kristallnacht-like spasm of violence against the Jewish citizens. Tschenopol, or at least Rezzori's beloved city, is finished, and Tildy's demise will follow shortly.
"Das Hermelin stirbt, wenn sein Vliess befleckt wird," ("The eremine must die if its white coat becomes soiled"). WIth this novel Gregor von Rezzori succeeded magnificently in evoking an entire world that, like childhood itself, vanished before we realized what would be lost.
Kristallnacht was clearly more of Hitler's deranged thinking. Why attack Jews? The best thing is to run away from them. The real protest is just to leave. If all the Germans left Germany instead, and only Jews remained, the Jews would leave. They need the whites to profiteer. That's why they stay in the USA, when they could all just go back to Israel.
Posted by: michijo | June 10, 2012 at 11:55 AM
The Jews like a free-market dont they?
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=207558
Posted by: michijo | June 10, 2012 at 12:13 PM
Actually, the town is not fictional, it is Czernowitz: now Ukraine, but before 1918 still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Both wonderful: the book, and the town (or what is left of it). As for the book, please read it in German if you can: no translation can make it justice.
Posted by: Alexandra Morgenstern | June 26, 2012 at 06:28 PM