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Camino nocturno
Una hoja cae sobre un hombre desamparado en mitad de la calle, un matrimonio en las tristísimas afueras de una triste ciudad encuentra compañía en un erizo que acaba convirtiéndose en un monstruo, el onírico paisaje del turbio invierno holandés, las lentas deformaciones internas que sufren las mujeres borrachas obligadas a ocultar su embriaguez, una figura tan silenciosa y oscura que se confunde con la noche, un pequeño país a orillas del mar donde las jóvenes se vuelven feas después de casarse, tres viejas de un pueblo de montañ Camino nocturno presenta nueve relatos en los que, con un estilo sobrio y contundente, revelador, Hohl expone los hechos, a partir de pequeños detalles y breves escenas, en su más íntima y humana profundidad. «Conozco a muchos escritores —afirma Dürrenmatt—. Ludwig Hohl es el único ante el que tengo mala conciencia. Hohl es necesario, nosotros somos pura contingencia. Nosotros documentamos lo humano, Hohl lo establece.»
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1943
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About the author
Ludwig Hohl
28 books10 followersHohl was the son of a pastor and was born in the small town of Netstal. He went to Gymnasium in Frauenfeld but was expelled due to the alleged bad influence he had on other students. He never worked in an ordinary profession and spent most of his life in poverty suffering from alcoholism. From 1924 to 1937 he lived outside of Switzerland, first in Paris (1924–1930), then in Vienna (1930/31) and The Hague (1931–1937). He then returned to Switzerland and lived first in Biel, then in Geneva, from 1954 to 1974 in a small basement flat which became legendary. His financial situation then improved due to an inheritance, but in his last years, he suffered from several physical illnesses. Hohl died in 1980 from an inflammation of his legs. He had been married five times and had one daughter.
Hohl’s works never gained him commercial success; he published several himself. His small income came from writing for magazines and newspapers as well as private and public support. In the 1940s and 50s, he took legal action against his publisher who refused to print the second volume of his Notizen (see below) because the first volume had sold less than two hundred copies. Hohl won – which, according to some sources, substantially improved the position of authors versus publishers in Swiss jurisdiction – but the second volume sold equally badly. In the 1970s, he finally achieved some recognition from the literary world. Siegfried Unseld, head of the renowned German publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag, had been introduced to Hohl by Adolf Muschg, and Unseld and Hohl agreed on a contract for a new edition of Hohl's works. In 1970 and 1976, Hohl was awarded prizes by the Schweizerische Schillerstiftung, in 1978 he received a special prize dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Robert Walser's birth, and in 1980 he won the Petrarca-Preis. Ludwig Hohl's literary estate is archived in the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern.
Works[edit]
Hohl published some poems and stories. His best work of fiction may be the narrative Bergfahrt (the German word Bergfahrt, literary mountain ride, is an old term for climbing), which he wrote in 1926, rewrote several times over the next decades and which was finally published in 1975. An English edition of this novella, called Ascent, was published in 2012; it is the first and, as of 2013, only English translation of one of Hohl's works.
Many regard Die Notizen oder Von der unvoreiligen Versöhnung as Hohl’s opus magnum. The title could be translated as Notes, or: On Non-Premature Reconciliation. Hohl wrote it in 1934-36; problems with his publisher (see above) delayed the publication until 1954; it was re-published, with some additions and in one volume, in 1981, a few months after his death. The volume is divided into twelve parts (with titles like 'On Working', 'On Writing', 'On Death') which consist of hundreds of numbered 'notes' in the form of short essays, aphorisms, quotations, poems, outlines for stories etc. Hohl insisted that these notes are not a disparate collection but have a deep inner connection. The main thought which lies behind them is that there is only one true meaning of life, namely to exercise one’s own creative forces. This is what Hohl calls 'Arbeit' (work). This 'work' includes the philosophical concepts of knowledge and action, which become one in the person who works. Hohl also polemizes against the masses of people who do not 'work' in this way, but are very busy trying to 'avoid' such true work. Hohl personifies this flawed way of life in his antagonist, 'der Apotheker' (the pharmacist) or 'Herr Meier' (Mr. Average).
A second volume with similar format was not published until after Hohl's death. It is called 'Von den hereinbrechenden Rändern' ('On the margins closing in') or simply 'Nachnotizen' ('After-notes').
Hohl often quotes the few authors and thinkers he held in highest esteem. They include Goethe, Lichtenberg, Montaigne and Spinoza. He called Goethe's writings his 'daily br
Hohl’s works never gained him commercial success; he published several himself. His small income came from writing for magazines and newspapers as well as private and public support. In the 1940s and 50s, he took legal action against his publisher who refused to print the second volume of his Notizen (see below) because the first volume had sold less than two hundred copies. Hohl won – which, according to some sources, substantially improved the position of authors versus publishers in Swiss jurisdiction – but the second volume sold equally badly. In the 1970s, he finally achieved some recognition from the literary world. Siegfried Unseld, head of the renowned German publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag, had been introduced to Hohl by Adolf Muschg, and Unseld and Hohl agreed on a contract for a new edition of Hohl's works. In 1970 and 1976, Hohl was awarded prizes by the Schweizerische Schillerstiftung, in 1978 he received a special prize dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Robert Walser's birth, and in 1980 he won the Petrarca-Preis. Ludwig Hohl's literary estate is archived in the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern.
Works[edit]
Hohl published some poems and stories. His best work of fiction may be the narrative Bergfahrt (the German word Bergfahrt, literary mountain ride, is an old term for climbing), which he wrote in 1926, rewrote several times over the next decades and which was finally published in 1975. An English edition of this novella, called Ascent, was published in 2012; it is the first and, as of 2013, only English translation of one of Hohl's works.
Many regard Die Notizen oder Von der unvoreiligen Versöhnung as Hohl’s opus magnum. The title could be translated as Notes, or: On Non-Premature Reconciliation. Hohl wrote it in 1934-36; problems with his publisher (see above) delayed the publication until 1954; it was re-published, with some additions and in one volume, in 1981, a few months after his death. The volume is divided into twelve parts (with titles like 'On Working', 'On Writing', 'On Death') which consist of hundreds of numbered 'notes' in the form of short essays, aphorisms, quotations, poems, outlines for stories etc. Hohl insisted that these notes are not a disparate collection but have a deep inner connection. The main thought which lies behind them is that there is only one true meaning of life, namely to exercise one’s own creative forces. This is what Hohl calls 'Arbeit' (work). This 'work' includes the philosophical concepts of knowledge and action, which become one in the person who works. Hohl also polemizes against the masses of people who do not 'work' in this way, but are very busy trying to 'avoid' such true work. Hohl personifies this flawed way of life in his antagonist, 'der Apotheker' (the pharmacist) or 'Herr Meier' (Mr. Average).
A second volume with similar format was not published until after Hohl's death. It is called 'Von den hereinbrechenden Rändern' ('On the margins closing in') or simply 'Nachnotizen' ('After-notes').
Hohl often quotes the few authors and thinkers he held in highest esteem. They include Goethe, Lichtenberg, Montaigne and Spinoza. He called Goethe's writings his 'daily br
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July 31, 2014The Swiss-German author Ludwig Hohl (1904-1980) wrote the unusual short stories in this collection in the 1930's and published them in 1943. When Adolf Muschg convinced Siegfried Unseld, the head of the great German literary publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag, in the early 1970's to read some of Hohl's work, Unseld was impressed and started publishing Hohl's texts, most for the first time. Among these was a new edition of Nächtlicher Weg (Nocturnal Way/Path), for which Hohl revised the stories in the first edition, dropping some of them entirely. There is a French translation with the title Chemin de nuit , but there does not appear to be an English translation at this point.
How can one describe the strange little stories in this book? They are parables, allegories, meditations, anything except stories with characters and plots. The shortest are like parables, written to make a point by poetic means. In "Der Igel" ("The Porcupine") a sad little couple, living in a wasteland at the outskirts of a city and feeling as if the masses of air and cloud above will crush them, find a porcupine in their garden. This sign from fate/heaven signals that they may have something to hope for. But the porcupine grows and grows and slowly tranforms itself into an enormous elefant, which destroys their house and lives, leaving them with nothing. This story is told with a curious mix of irony and straight narrative with little or no compassion for the luckless couple. Though surreal, the language used is hard and direct.(*)
Somewhere Hohl wrote
(The consideration whether something appears complicated and new and sufficiently poetic for certain people was never able to guide me. I was concerned with something quite different: perhaps the degree of heat; or the degree of hardness.) Unlike many such pronouncements from authors, I find this one quite apt. Hohl forged a characteristic, hard language; he looked hard and close at what interested him. Occasionally he looks so closely that time seems to stop, and one enters a dreamlike state of super-realism.
Themes and phrases echo from story to story, are re-examined, change their nature. In "Der Suchende" ("The Seeker") phrases from the previous story "Landschaften" ("Landscapes") reappear and, as in "Der Igel", the object of the narration's interest is a person who desperately needs a little sign of grace from fate. But here the outcome is quite different, and not in the expected manner.
The title story, at 30 pages the longest in the book, is, at least partially, about the necessity and extreme difficulty of compassion, of direct human contact, and transforms itself into a meditation about how one can morally deal with both the necessity and the difficulty. I reluctantly leave that remark standing only as orientation, for what I wrote is abstract, and the text is not, at all.
Hohl was an untrained, nonacademic philosopher; his major texts (like Die Notizen ) are idiosyncratic musings located somewhere between Montaigne's Essais and Lichtenberg's Aphorismen . This is reflected in his fictions, but, at least for my taste, these are not just clumsy vessels for his thoughts, for Hohl thought very concretely, not abstractly.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt wrote, referring to contemporary authors, "Hohl ist notwendig, wir sind zufällig. Wir dokumentieren das Menschliche, Hohl legt es fest." (Hohl is necessary, we are incidental. We document that which is human, Hohl determines/fixes/defines it.) I wouldn't go quite that far in dismissing all other contemporary authors, but I agree that there is something essential about Hohl's writings. Hohl's work is certainly not for everyone, but I really like his hard-nosed poetics and his concrete philosophy. Perhaps you will, too.
(*) But that Hohl is quite capable of empathy is made amply clear in the lovely final story, "Drei alte Weiber in einem Bergdorf" ("Three Old Women in a Mountain Village"), in which he sensitively profiles three such women.
How can one describe the strange little stories in this book? They are parables, allegories, meditations, anything except stories with characters and plots. The shortest are like parables, written to make a point by poetic means. In "Der Igel" ("The Porcupine") a sad little couple, living in a wasteland at the outskirts of a city and feeling as if the masses of air and cloud above will crush them, find a porcupine in their garden. This sign from fate/heaven signals that they may have something to hope for. But the porcupine grows and grows and slowly tranforms itself into an enormous elefant, which destroys their house and lives, leaving them with nothing. This story is told with a curious mix of irony and straight narrative with little or no compassion for the luckless couple. Though surreal, the language used is hard and direct.(*)
Somewhere Hohl wrote
Die Erwägung, ob etwas kompliziert und neu aussehe und dichterisch genug für gewisse Leute, hat mich nie leiten können. Es kam mir auf etwas ganz anderes an: vielleicht den Hitzegrad; oder den Härtegrad.
(The consideration whether something appears complicated and new and sufficiently poetic for certain people was never able to guide me. I was concerned with something quite different: perhaps the degree of heat; or the degree of hardness.) Unlike many such pronouncements from authors, I find this one quite apt. Hohl forged a characteristic, hard language; he looked hard and close at what interested him. Occasionally he looks so closely that time seems to stop, and one enters a dreamlike state of super-realism.
Themes and phrases echo from story to story, are re-examined, change their nature. In "Der Suchende" ("The Seeker") phrases from the previous story "Landschaften" ("Landscapes") reappear and, as in "Der Igel", the object of the narration's interest is a person who desperately needs a little sign of grace from fate. But here the outcome is quite different, and not in the expected manner.
The title story, at 30 pages the longest in the book, is, at least partially, about the necessity and extreme difficulty of compassion, of direct human contact, and transforms itself into a meditation about how one can morally deal with both the necessity and the difficulty. I reluctantly leave that remark standing only as orientation, for what I wrote is abstract, and the text is not, at all.
Hohl was an untrained, nonacademic philosopher; his major texts (like Die Notizen ) are idiosyncratic musings located somewhere between Montaigne's Essais and Lichtenberg's Aphorismen . This is reflected in his fictions, but, at least for my taste, these are not just clumsy vessels for his thoughts, for Hohl thought very concretely, not abstractly.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt wrote, referring to contemporary authors, "Hohl ist notwendig, wir sind zufällig. Wir dokumentieren das Menschliche, Hohl legt es fest." (Hohl is necessary, we are incidental. We document that which is human, Hohl determines/fixes/defines it.) I wouldn't go quite that far in dismissing all other contemporary authors, but I agree that there is something essential about Hohl's writings. Hohl's work is certainly not for everyone, but I really like his hard-nosed poetics and his concrete philosophy. Perhaps you will, too.
(*) But that Hohl is quite capable of empathy is made amply clear in the lovely final story, "Drei alte Weiber in einem Bergdorf" ("Three Old Women in a Mountain Village"), in which he sensitively profiles three such women.
February 21, 2018
Een klein boekje met verhalen, mijmeringen, parabels, tekstfragmenten van een niet zo bekende Zwitserse schrijver (1904-1980). De vertaler geeft in een nawoord notities bij de tekst, en een verhelderende schets van leven en werk van de schrijver.
De vertaler maakte zelf een selectie uit het niet erg omvangrijk werk van de auteur. De eerste teksten zijn min of meer afgeronde verhalen met een summiere plot. De meeste spelen zich af in een berglandschap. De meesterlijke beschrijving van vreemde personages, outcasts, primeert. Een fragment uit Drie zotte wieven in een bergdorp:
Naarmate het boek vordert komen er meer surrealistische stukken, droombeelden, notities. In die laatste heel korte fragmenten gaat het steeds weer over bergbeklimmen, als metafoor voor het schrijven én voor het leven. Uit alles komt een getormenteerd schrijver naar voor, die scherp maar met erbarmen naar mensen kijkt, en zich niet thuis voelt in de wereld. De meer afgeronde schetsen spreken me het meest aan omwille van de uiterst precieze beschrijvingen die een heel specifieke sfeer schetsen waar eenzaamheid alomtegenwoordig is.
De vertaler maakte zelf een selectie uit het niet erg omvangrijk werk van de auteur. De eerste teksten zijn min of meer afgeronde verhalen met een summiere plot. De meeste spelen zich af in een berglandschap. De meesterlijke beschrijving van vreemde personages, outcasts, primeert. Een fragment uit Drie zotte wieven in een bergdorp:
Het meest opmerkelijke aan haar uiterlijke verschijning waren misschien wel haar handen: angstaanjagend, met een kleur tussen zoolleer en oud koper,plomp en met duidelijk zichtbare aderen staken ze uit de dikke zwarte lompen, die, amper als afzonderlijke kledingstukken herkenbaar, van hals tot voeten om de vormeloze gestalte gewikkeld hingen.
Naarmate het boek vordert komen er meer surrealistische stukken, droombeelden, notities. In die laatste heel korte fragmenten gaat het steeds weer over bergbeklimmen, als metafoor voor het schrijven én voor het leven. Uit alles komt een getormenteerd schrijver naar voor, die scherp maar met erbarmen naar mensen kijkt, en zich niet thuis voelt in de wereld. De meer afgeronde schetsen spreken me het meest aan omwille van de uiterst precieze beschrijvingen die een heel specifieke sfeer schetsen waar eenzaamheid alomtegenwoordig is.
November 20, 2015
Ludwig Hohl is, above all, an esthete, his main concern is how words would translate into sound regardless of the (often non existent) plot in his stories, he is an impressionist, and wants to create an extra literary feeling, an imagery with his words, but it only delutes the text in a procession of phrases, well written yes but in the meantime the story itself gets lost in the details. There are however memorable stories, which give this book a high grade just for that. In the end Hohl's writing is the same Rossini said about Wagner's music: "It has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour".
November 20, 2017
Alleen al vanwege het straffe drieluik "Drie zotte wieven in een bergdorp" was dit boekje voor mij een ontdekking. Verder vele mooie zinnen en beelden. Soms raakt de schrijver mij even kwijt tijdens wat uitgesponnen observaties. Waarna hij me al snel weer weet te vangen met... een uitgesponnen observatie. Het verhaal over het paardje raakte me in mijn maag, iets wat me nauwelijks overkomt bij boeken. Ludwig Hohl koos niet voor een gemakzuchtig schrijverschap, dat dwingt respect af. "Op weg door de nacht" leidt deze schrijver zijn lezers doorheen weerzin en verwondering. Tegelijk vol mededogen en meedogenloos.
September 7, 2017
De kortverhalen van Ludwig Hohl mogen dan wel mooi geschreven zijn, ze mogen dan wel leuke tafereeltjes beschrijven uit een tijd die voor ons zo moeilijk voor te stellen is (en zich afspelen in Holland, Zwitserland of Marseille), ze beklijven niet. Vorm is belangrijk, maar inhoud moet er toch ook wel zijn, en deze verhalen missen voor mij wat ziel om me echt aan te spreken.
March 17, 2019
Ongenadige karakterschetsen in een taal waar over ieder woord wordt nagedacht. Helaas is niet ieder verhaal van hetzelfde niveau. Ogenschijnlijk eenvoudige verhalen met in het hart een bedrieglijke donkerte geplant.
February 14, 2018
Verzameling kortverhalen, de een al vager dan de ander, maar telkens met een of andere melancholische toets. Wisselend van niveau, maar over het algemeen wel ok
October 27, 2019
Zoals het geval is met heel wat kortverhalenbundels: enkele heel goede verhalen, de rest overbodig. Vooral de "notities" aan het einde voegen volgens mij weinig toe.
July 4, 2017
Mijn recensie op MappaLibri staat hier: http://mappalibri.be/?navigatieid=61&...
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews