WAs he plows through Thomas Hettche’s work, he repeatedly comes across refuges there. Already in Hettche’s debut “Ludwig must die” (1989), a person in his brother’s apartment told the story of his unsuccessful escape from death to Italy – a 180-page plunge into nothingness, which could only become a novel because it was enclosed in the Museum of an abandoned apartment. “Nox” (1995) – perhaps the most drastic text from Hettche’s pen to date – had its narrator report on the third page and from the afterlife the path of his murderer through Berlin on the night of reunification.
That literature and life do not only depend on the landscapes they pass through, but that one must create an immovable place for what happens, where it can become thinkable and sayable: This is a core idea of this work, which is expressed through the contrast is dominated by historical and social erosion and static. In “The Arbogast Case” the blind spot from which the post-war Federal Republic of Germany was reflected in a new way was in the cell of Hans Arbogast, in “Peacock Island” (2014) Prussia broke through in the palm house built by Schinkel, “Herzfaden” ( 2020) in turn found its anchor point in the most classic of all refuges, namely the attic.
So now a new location: a chalet near Leuk, formerly owned by Thomas Hettches’ parents, now orphaned and haunted by their son, who – as heir and formally the new owner of the plot – was appointed in writing by the castellan of Leuk. “Sinking Stars”, Hettche’s latest novel, begins with the return to the house that was still familiar from childhood, and whether its narrator has ever left this house: who wants to decide? First of all, we hear about some upheavals that have affected the Upper Valais, above all a landslide, as a result of which the Rhone was dammed and the valley was flooded.
The cracks in the rock go deeper
This of course has elements of climate fiction, but Hettche was always known for not serving genres, but rather using them for her own benefit. This is also the case here: one suspects what could have caused the catastrophe – winters that were too warm, too much rain, limestone falling down – but the reasons may lie deeper. After all, the landslide “also triggered invisible changes and with it something began to slip that transformed society itself.” Perhaps the social collapse was less the result of the ecological one and more of its cause.
So the person who has returned home to a foreign country now finds himself in a world that is, to make matters worse, poorly heated and in which the clocks have begun to run backwards. The community of remaining mountain dwellers is not alone in taking the flood as an opportunity to cut all connections to the valley and re-feudalize themselves. The political-historical archaism also corresponds to a narrative one: the mountain landscape becomes a mythical sphere again, death and life mix, ghosts appear, “poor souls”, in the notary’s office, on the mountain ridge, everywhere. The cracks in the rock go deeper.
#Review #Thomas #Hettches #Sinking #Stars