The protagonist of the novel is a house, a lakeside property outside Berlin, which has witnessed history's mood-swings from its origins as a pine foreThe protagonist of the novel is a house, a lakeside property outside Berlin, which has witnessed history's mood-swings from its origins as a pine forest owned by a local town mayor back in the 1600s CE down to our present times when the knocking down of the Berlin Wall forced it to change its inhabitants once again. Before I say more I’d like to say a few words about our own house (a landed estate actually) located in what is today central Pakistan, to which I had been comparing the house outside Berlin as I read the book.
My family’s permanent address has not changed for the last +/- 350 years. My ancestors came from a town 150 km away and have lived here ever since, although in recent times many of us have moved out to big cities and to other countries, in search of new lives, but have always endeavoured to return to our place of origin every now and then, especially on festive occasions like Eid, and once every few years if living abroad.
The oldest part of the house dates from 1870s and the rest of what stands today was built and added in the 1930s. This latter addition was done by demolishing an old extended section that was originally built sometime in the early 1700s on fallow land. An uncle of mine added the latest amendments, a new men’s parlour and few guestrooms, in 2000s, in the oldest part atop a hummock which my grandfather had left to his elder brother and moved to a newer construction in the 1930s.
I can give more details, of constructions, additions, demolitions, caving-ins, earthquakes, Persian tilework, old furniture built to last generations (the old charpoys my grandmother had brought in her dowry, still in good condition after minor repairs); of births and deaths, disputes and disagreements, wars and famines, the place changing hands from Mughal India to an independent princely state, then from British India into Pakistan, through which generations of its inhabitants have passed. Many things have happened during that long stretch of time but no upheaval or misfortune has been great enough to dislodge us from our estate.
But humanity has a quarrel with reality, having for eons rejected definitions of it while seeking, with the craving of an addict, one more new interpretation, whilst destroying the world in its stubborn refusal to learn from history, all that presumably for the benefit of humankind. The house in Ms Erpenbeck’s novel is located at a place which has seen the worst of European history pass through its doors, defiling its peace, trampling its serenity, destroying its meadows, and, in a cruel joke, turning the lake as a dead end for the escapees than a spot of leisurely activity for holidayers.
The new world is to devour the old one, the old one puts up a fight, and now new and old are living side by side in a single body. Where much is asked, more is left out.
To make sense, it might be better to read this story as a parable of the human mind than a psychological sketch grounded in realism, though I suspect To make sense, it might be better to read this story as a parable of the human mind than a psychological sketch grounded in realism, though I suspect this is not what Zweig had intended.
As with the rest of his novels, the narration is superb and eminently readable, especially when he expounds on the tragedy of one Dr. B and his capture that eventually led him into creating a mental defence mechanism to survive the nothingness of solitary confinement. Chess, the king of games, or the game of kings, whatever you prefer to call it, at once saved him and drove him into insanity.
Czentovic the chess champion, our other protagonist, is the total opposite of Dr. B in how they come to master the game. One is devoid of imagination, the other plays best when he plays inside his mind etc. But despite this interesting contrast, Czentovic the champion is no more than an accessory to the story of the Austrian Dr, B, the narrator’s compatriot; and it is in his story the author is interested and shows us what the death of liberal continental Europe had done to the intellectual life of society, also at the same time reflecting on his own fate in the tragedy that devoured Dr. B.
The fascinating story remains unresolved and the fate of Dr. B unknown. In a way the doctor is symbolic of Zweig’s own world, driven to insanity yet trying to survive but not without permanent damage caused by the savageries of Fascism. For we know this is his swansong. He committed suicide soon after having finished writing this story and became “Hitler’s posthumous victim.�
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