I was surprised more than once while reading this novella by Adalbert Stifter. Firstly, I had to look up the meaning of the word "Hagestolz". Stifter is often praised for his exuberant descriptions of the natural scenery, and together with the cover picture on my edition I thought is would refer to a magnificent old tree. In a way it does, although this has nothing to do with the etymology of the word, as the word Hagestolz in German means the bachelor.

With that knowledge, the opening sentence almost gives away the story. The first part of the story feels very much like an allegory. The second part, when the young man visits his uncle, who lives in a walled up monastery on an island, has significant Gothic overtones, and at this stage I started wondering whether perhaps the story was a dream vision, and whether the events were really happening to Victor not. While, in fact, the story is very straight forward, the style and story elements make it intriguing and exciting.

The story does of course have a clear message, it is morally didactive from the start. Despite the fact that it was written in the mid-Nineteenth century, it has a medieval feel to it, and in a sense it is an epithalamium in prose.

Und wenn ein uralter Mann auf dem Hügel seiner Thaten steht, was nützt es ihm, wenn er kein Dasein geschaffen hat, das nach ihm noch dauert?

There are numerous editions of classic literature, but I must say this series of DTV is among the more original. The edition is issued in the "Bibliothek der Erstausgaben" (Library of First Editions). Although published without extensive introduction, and only a small glossary, the book throughout has line numbers and the page breaks of the original (historical first) edition are indicated by "page numbers" in square brackets in the text. ( )

A young man and his aged uncle
By sally tarbox on 14 February 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
Written very much in the Romantic style, this short (159p) novel opens with orphaned youth Victor about to leave his kindly foster-mother to take his first job. But first, it's arranged that he spend a few weeks with an uncle he has never met...
Stifter's prose is beautiful and poetic, as he hikes through the mountains to make his visit. But once there, the story starts to have almost a fairy-tale and Gothic quality, as the uncle's life in an old monastery on an island appears very strange...
I really enjoyed this work - the reader has no clue how it's all going to work out. ( )

The end of a novel has rarely shaken me so -- and not because of plot, but narrative. Thus no danger of giving anything away, as I can't even describe the effect to myself, let alone tell anyone else.

I started reading Adalbert Stifter because W.G. Sebald said his prose style was influenced not by the German poetic tradition but by the older writers of the 19th century and their long complex sentences, and mentioned Stifter, whose name I hadn't heard. Here's one of those sentences:

"And so the two continued living together, two stems from the same family tree, and who should therefore have been closer to each other than to anyone else but who could not in fact have been further apart -- two stems from the same family tree and yet so different: Victor, like all beginnings, free and full of life, his eyes shining softly, a blank sheet for deeds and joys to come -- the other man, in sharp decline, with his defeated air and with every feature marked by a bitter past; but it was this same past that at the time he had seized hold of both for his pleasure and, as he had thought, his profit." p. 119

This also indicates how objections might be raised to this coercive narrative, intent on telling us everything it thinks we need to know, but the reader is carried along despite them and it all works in a way that seems familiar but deceptively so. Apparently Stifter was a successful but unhappy person, from which the yearning quality of the prose might arise.

The painting on the cover is by the author -- Stifter could describe and appreciate natural beauty in more than one way. ( )

"While they were speaking of--in their opinion--great things, around about them only little things--also in their opinion--were happening: everywhere the bushes were turning green, the brooding earth was germinating and beginning to play with her first little Spring creatures, as one might with jewels." - p10

There's something strange creeping around in Adalbert Stifter's prose. On the one hand, it is very plain, open, descriptive. But perhaps it is over-descriptive, and perhaps it is overly precious, and overly tedious. But then isn't it also almost shyly self conscious of its own style? Or is that just my always suspicious way of reading books? Is it not weirdly visual also? Especially the beginning, where we are presented with a visual scene and dialogue, in which we find out who these characters are only through their speech, as if the narrator knew nothing of these folks, and were just spying on them from afar himself. And then later is it also not inconsistent what the narrator knows? Does he not know more than he at first lead on? Is there not something really plainly funny about how he phrases some things? Like the oh-so-telling 'in their opinion' above, the repetition of the phrase, the almost too symmetric balance between big and small, between the young bachelor and the old uncle bachelor? Everything is too tidy, something must be wrong, as in this overly objective detailed (almost dissected) description:

"Distracted from her work by the sound of the young man coming in, she turned her face towards him, the face of an old but beautiful woman, something so rarely seen. Its various pastel shades of colour were soft and each one of the countless little wrinkles bespoke kindliness and warmth. Around all the wrinkles were the further innumerable wrinkles of a snow-white, crimped bonnet. On each cheek there was a delicate blush of red." p18

And yet, this something is so quiet. Like a strangeness just bubbling under a very low heat. It is like a slow cooked turkey, with juices sealed in. It's not giving you a clue as to its directions or intentions, but always hinting at something. Meanwhile it's whistling down the street like nothing is out of the ordinary at all. In fact, it's because it is so ordinary that you become suspicious. In a way, this type of strangeness is so much more interesting to me than the outright strangeness of many modernists/postmodernists. You can read the whole book and come out thinking it is a normal story. It's practically impossible to put your finger on what's abnormal, and yet everywhere it is riddling, creeping, conniving, and acting innocent.

"We must remark at this point what a puzzling, indescribable, mysterious and fascinating thing the future is, before it becomes our present--and when it has, how quickly it rushes by, slipping through our fingers--and then how delineated it lies there as the past, spent and insubstantial!" - p11

The story is a simple one but told in such a style that requires the utmost patience. Then again, because of the above elements, I was always riveted, so no patience was required at all. It pulled me along in a mysterious ever wondering. What happens--as far as plot--is straightforward, yet confusing. I immediately wanted to read it over again, but here I heard there's another version translated by another guy in the collection [b:Limestone and Other Stories|6388394|Limestone and Other Stories|Adalbert Stifter|/assets/nocover/60x80.png|6576686], so maybe I'll wait and re-read it there, to see if the different translation will be enlightening. What follows are a few things I'm puzzled about, so spoilers will be employed.

It's mostly the uncle's monologue that confuses me. He says that he held Victor as a prisoner because a young man must experience a certain degree of oppression. Something along those lines. That it builds character, basically, in my own words. He criticizes V's foster mom and guardian for being soft, for protecting him and saving up little amounts of money for him. But then later he leaves him all this property and money, which seems to contradict that opinion, and says "don't go to work... many people have toiled their lives away". But isn't working 8-5 the best guarantee of experiencing oppression? Instead he says start a farm, so that all your faculties can be utilized. Here I am again using my own words. I am thinking aloud, as this whole last portion is confusing to me. He emphasizes getting married, and then briefly talks about his relationship with Victor's foster-mother (she rejected him, chose his brother instead, brother and foster mom had a relationship, but then brother married someone else out of obligation (Victor is son of said brother), and foster mom married someone else, and had Hanna.) Later Victor marries Hanna, and this part was out of the blue also, except for an earlier parting where they kissed on the lips, which seemed vaguely incestuous even though they weren't technically related. But also at the time was written in a way where it was perfectly natural, i.e. just pure love of one's brother/sister. Overall, what did Victor learn from his uncle? That if he didn't marry, he'd become lonely and bitter? Why did he say his uncle was a great man? Was it only because he could finally detect the emotion and human-ness beneath the cold exterior? Is that all that's required to become a great man? As far as I can see, he was just a man with a set of very normal complexities. Then there is the weird conclusion about offspring, about leaving a trace. Am I to take these sentiments in earnest? I have a hard time believing them, and believing that the author believed them. Or is he saying the opposite, as "everything perishes" anyway? It is hard to tell, with all the sentiments and advice being tossed around, and without seeing how it plays out in a grown up Victor, which ideas are the ones the writer himself believes. But then again, this doubt about the book's intentions, this constant lack of surefootedness, is what made the entire book so intriguing to me.

PS - look at this lovely face:

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