Novel
Indian Summer
Der Nachsommer
Adalbert Stifter · 1857
Opening lines
Mein Vater war ein Kaufmann. Er bewohnte einen Teil des ersten Stockwerkes eines mäßig großen Hauses in der Stadt, in welchem er zur Miete war.
My father was a merchant. He occupied part of the first floor of a moderately large house in the town, where he lived as a tenant.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from zeno.org
Synopsis
Heinrich Drendorf, son of a merchant in the capital, roams the mountains to study nature. On an excursion, he is received at the Asperhof by Baron von Risach, a retired old man who lives surrounded by works of art and antiques, and who becomes a fatherly friend to him. Returning summer after summer, he meets Mathilde and her daughter Natalie there. Nothing dramatic happens: a slow education, bonds that form without haste, a harmony sought in everything.
Context
The novel grew out of a plan for a short story that the author had submitted in 1848 to the publisher Gustav Heckenast for the almanac Iris; the almanac ceasing publication in the revolutionary troubles, he took the manuscript back in 1849 and from 1852 made of it a novel whose subtitle, A Story, preserves the trace. The first volume was completed in February 1856, the third in September 1857, and all three appeared the same year in Pest. The old man's estate is built there as a counter-world, set against an age of revolution and industry. The first French translation appeared only in 2000.
Who it is for
A very long novel in which almost nothing happens, to be read slowly or not at all: no event rewards the reader who waits for a plot.
Prizes and reception
Nietzsche admired it; Hebbel, to mock it, promised the crown of Poland to anyone who could prove they had read it to the end.
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