Documentazione Letterature Svizzere

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[ Consiglio per un libro di Literatur Schweiz ] Quatemberkinder live in two worlds. They are humans, and at the same time they frequent ghosts and demons of all kind. Melk is a Quatember child. He is not very skilled in magic though, because he finds it insanely dreamy. But Vreneli holds her protecting hand over him.

In 1998, in his novel «Quatemberkinder», Tim Krohn told the story of Melk and how he just wouldn’t understand that Vreneli quite liked him. The novel «Vrenelis Gärtli», then, puts his friend at centre stage. Compared to the reticent Melk, Vreneli is a real tomboy who escapes any social control. His world of magic is fading though. In the very moment in which Melk and Vreneli finally come together, logos, as embodied by Melk, wins over myth, and Vreneli silently disappears from this world.

Tim Krohn surprises the reader again with his inimitable mix of German and the Alpine dialect of the Canton of Glarus. He smoothly weaves together these two idioms into a magical narrative flow such that the language itself mirrors the essential conflict between myth and modernity. Subtle nuances sometimes suspend Krohn’s fine diction and bring forth a wondrously humorous effect. 

(Beat Mazenauer, transl. by Anja Hälg)
  
Full version in german on viceversaliteratur.ch.

[ Citazione ] «All säb war nümmen, und an gewissen Tagen war der Vriinä darum auch zumut, als lebte sie in einer ebigen Leere gefangen, und das Herz pöpperlete ihr so gesprengt als wie einem verschreckten Vögeli, und allpott konnte sie nur an ihr Müetti denken, wie es auf Fessis immer gschpässiger geworden war und ums Verroden fenderen wollte und Tag und Nacht nur nach der Weite planget hatte und endlich ab und ihremengen, schweren Mäntsch entschloffen war auf ebig.»

[ Informazioni sul libro ] Krohn, Tim : Vrenelis Gärtli. Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt, 2007 . ISBN: 978-3-257-23962-1.