By Robert Seethaler, 2012
(Translator: Charlotte Collins)
This book seems a bit like a fable reset in the mid-20th
century. It opens with Franz, a simple/innocent young man in a forest village,
who loses his father and has to make his own way in the world. He discovers much
about life that is not good. In his innocence, he tries to side with truth,
justice and love. And, as in many of the original European fairy tales, this
life journey does not end well. The strength of the story is in what it
illuminates about life, not the happy ending of the hero.
Instead of going into the forest to seek his future, at his
mother’s bidding our modern hero goes to the capital city, Vienna. There he
meets a one-legged gnome, (his mother’s former lover) who advises him to read
the newspapers in his tobacco shop so that he will gain knowledge about what his
customers want. He meets a wise man who can offer him no advice. He falls for a
beautiful young woman who cannot return his love. When he objects to the
terrible things he sees in 1937 Vienna as the Nazis take power, the henchmen of
the evil leader take him off to prison.
While certainly not fated to a bad end – Franz could have
made many choices that might have led to a different outcome – he finds himself
in conflict with history and society. Many of those around him go along with
the evil around them, sometimes enthusiastically. His love, who is certainly
the least idealistic character in the story, chooses to make her accommodations
with evil, and seems to be the only one who survives. Some people choose to oppose
the Nazis, but they come across as heroic but futile sacrifices. Franz is
himself one of these sacrifices, although I wonder to what extent he is heroic,
and to what extent he is merely innocent, or foolish. He knows that he is
facing an overwhelming power, but he sees no alternative other than direct
opposition. In the face of Naziism, this is not a winning strategy.
There may be something of a happy ending. Franz tries to
share his dreams, which people find whimsical, but meaningless. Nevertheless,
at least one person seems to be inspired by them and keeps Franz alive in her
heart.
The writing reinforces this fable-like sense. Seethaler’s
simple declarative sentences and poetic descriptions of nature and of the
streets of Vienna give them a universal character. The writing is in fact quite
engrossing and makes a moving story.
Modern western fables often end with a simple moral, but
there’s no simple moral here. Franz has an unquestioning innocent belief in
justice and love, but his belief does not guide him to a positive resolution.
And how could it in an overwhelmingly evil society? The story offers no
guidance to a reader other than the sad reality that certain forces – such as
Naziism – will not be defeated by idealism. It was only the combined military
force of a world war that defeated it, although Seethaler is more interested in
the lead up to the war than in its conclusion. Austria, notably, has tended to
avoid, rather than to acknowledge, its embrace of Nazi power. Seethaler here shows
how the ordinary citizens of Austria accepted the clear and brutal evil of Naziism
in spite of the examples of those who opposed it.
While it may have been futile for individuals to oppose it
on their own, a united resistance by ordinary citizens before the Austrian
Nazis gained power might have changed this history. This may be Seethaler’s hope
in writing this book, that it would lead to Austria starting to face its past.
