The Shadow of the Coachman's Body
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- 6,49 €
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- 6,49 €
Description de l’éditeur
A meticulously observed and macabre tale of hell on earth from the revolutionary German author of the famous play Marat/Sade
Peter Weiss’s first prose work, The Shadow of the Coachman’s Body, was unanimously praised as an original and perfect work of art by critics when it appeared in 1960. Here, in poet Rosmarie Waldrop’s stunning translation, Weiss arranges a dark, vividly alive comedy of inert objects in a dismal boarding house—stones, buttons, hooks, needles, chairs, newspapers in an outhouse, clinking tin cups, celestial orbs, sewing machines, an overwound windup music box—which have oblique characters’ shadows as their supporting cast. Described by Weiss as a “micro-novel,” The Shadow of the Coachman’s Body can be obscene, trivial and brutal, and yet it is also peculiarly intimate and offers endless possibilities—like a telescope and kaleidoscope rolled into one.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Weiss (The Aesthetics of Resistance) follows in this intensely visual story an unnamed narrator's attempts at documenting all he sees at his boardinghouse over the course of several days. The narrator starts by observing his muddy, damp surroundings while using the outhouse. By his own account, his attempts to write are perennially stalled, comprised of "short, broken-off beginnings." Nevertheless, he keeps at it. At dinner, he details the looks of the housekeeper and other boarders, and how they fill their plates, use their utensils, and cant their arms. Later, he watches through a keyhole as a father beats his son. An evening party in the housekeeper's room turns farcical, with furniture getting broken and people being locked in a closet. When his observations grow too dull to produce any writing, he retreats to his attic room, where he puts salt in his eyes to induce visions. Weiss's lifelike descriptions, for example as the narrator imagines shapes and colors morphing into the shape of a woman, are complemented with surreal illustrations by the author. This captivating exercise rises above its mundane and grotesque material.
