I discovered Max Frisch’s ‘An Answer from the Silence‘ while browsing in the bookshop. I am happy and excited that in these days when we discover most books through the internet, it is still possible to visit the bookshop, spend sometime browsing, and discover a beautiful book. This is the first book I read for this year’s German Literature Month hosted by Caroline from Beauty is a Sleeping Cat and Lizzy from Lizzy’s Literary Life.
The story told in Max Frisch’s book goes like this. The main character, whose name we don’t know, is staying in an inn near the mountains. He is thirty years old. He is passing through and he is trying to climb one of the nearby cliffs. We learn that he feels that he hasn’t accomplished much, has drifted from one dream to another, and finally decided that he is going to attempt climbing a cliff which no one has ever done before, and if he succeeds, he feels he would have accomplished something and not just lived a regular, mundane life. And then he meets a woman at the inn. And they begin a wonderful conversation. What happens after that and how their friendship evolves and whether this man climbs the cliff and finds the meaning of life is told in the rest of the story.
‘An Answer from the Silence‘ is a slim book at around a hundred pages. It is also a beautiful book. It is one of the great introvert novels like Marlen Haushofer’s ‘The Wall‘, Alexis M.Smith’s ‘Glaciers‘, Robert Seethaler’s ‘A Whole Life‘, Peter Stamm’s ‘Unformed Landscape‘, Muriel Barbery’s ‘The Elegance of the Hedgehog‘ and Rabih Alameddine’s ‘An Unnecessary Woman‘, in which the main character lives a rich inner life and contemplates on some deep questions. It is the kind of book I love. There are so many beautiful passages in Frisch’s book that I couldn’t stop highlighting. The character of Irene, the woman who starts a conversation with our mountain-climbing main character, is so beautifully depicted, and she was my favourite character in the book. Max Frisch’s prose is beautiful and flows serenely like a river. There are beautiful descriptions of the mountains and nature. One of my favourite descriptions went like this :
“Outside there is no light visible that has been lit by human hand. There are just the stars glittering above the mountains and it’s bright, so that you can even see the blades of grass on the ground nearby, almost as bright as day, though it’s a different gleam, a lifeless gleam pouring over things, dull and without shadow, very strange, as if one were on another planet where there’s no life, on a planet which, with all its rocks and ice, is not made for man, however indescribably beautiful it may be.”
The book also asks some deep, profound questions on life which are relevant even today. This book came out in 1937, during the time when Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann were still active, and so it is not surprising that it asks some profound questions. I haven’t read a Max Frisch book before and I am surprised that he is not that well known today, because this book is really good, as good as the best ones of Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann. Frisch seems to have led an interesting life too – he was a writer and journalist, but couldn’t pay his bills, and so went and studied architecture and became an architect, and while he was in the army during the Second World War, he started writing again and he continued his successful architecture practice alongwith his writing after the war. It seems he was also in a relationship with my favourite, Ingeborg Bachmann. I want to read more about him and I want to read more of his books.
I will leave you with two of my favourite passages from the book.
“It’s just like a relay race, he laughs, a relay race with no finishing tape; they hand life over to us and say, ‘Go on now, run with it, for twenty or seventy years.’ And you run, you don’t look at what you have in your hand, you just run and hand it on. And what, he says, if one of us asks what the aim of it is? You could be nasty and grab one of them by the sleeve and take him to one side and when he opens his hand – nothing. And that’s what we’re running for, one generation after another? It’s nothing but a circus, round and round in a circle…”
“Why do we not follow our longing? Why is it? Why do we bind and gag it everyday, when we know that it’s truer and finer than all the things that are stopping us, the things people call morality and virtue and fidelity and which are not life, simply not life, not a life that’s true, great, worth living! Why don’t we shake them off? Why don’t we live when we know we’re here just this one time, just one single, unrepeatable time in this unutterably magnificent world?”
Have you read Max Frisch’s ‘An Answer from the Silence‘? What do you think about it?
Frisch has been fallen off the radar a bit in the last years even in the German-speaking countries, but while I was in school we read no less than four of his books. That gives you an idea how popular he was especially in the 1960s and 1970s in Germany. I haven’t read this particular work, but your review sounds very interesting.
Yes, I like this type of books as well, Vishy. I like the look of Homo Faber as well—I saw a copy in a secondhand bookshop recently, but didn’t buy it for some reason.
Glad to know that, Jonathan. Hope you get to read this book and like it. Homo Faber sounds interesting. Happy reading!
This sounds excellent. I wonder if I have it on my piles. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what the original title is. I’m so glad you enjoyed. It’s the kind of book I like best too.
Yes, it was wonderful, Caroline! It is one of my favourite books now. Want to read more of Frisch’s work. Hope you enjoy reading it, if you haven’t read it before.
I was just in a book shop and held the German in my hands and so I found out it had been out of print in German for 70 years. That’s why I hadn’t heard of it. I didn’t get it this time as I still have Montauk and another one to read first. But I will get to it.
Very fascinating to know that, Caroline! I am wondering why the German edition was out-of-print for so long. Hope you enjoy reading Montauk! Happy reading!
I just had a look and the title is a literal translation. I have read a lot if Frisch and still got several unread books but wasn’t familiar with this.
Very interesting to know that, Caroline! Hope you get to read this one and like it. Which is your favourite Frisch book? I’d love to read that.
Homo Faber. But I’ve read a lot of his plays too and they are amazing.
Thank you for the recommendation. Will try to read Homo Faber soon. Will try to read his plays too. He looks like a fascinating writer!
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