By Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Trans. Richard and Clara Winston
here's the evaluate from new york instances evaluation of Books by means of Kurt Vonnegut:
une thirteen, 1965
Everything is going Like Clockwork
By KURT VONNEGUT, Jr.
ONCE A GREEK
By Friedrich Duerrenmatt.
Translated by means of Richard and Clara Winston from the German, "Grieche Sucht Griechin."
the object to appreciate approximately Friedrich Duerrenmatt is that his stories are lovely and queer Swiss clocks. There aren't any mechanical mysteries or flaws. The intricately twinkling, twitching works might be widespread via situations of glass, they usually make little dolls act out jerky little scenes of human love and greed and stupidity and homicide and politics and wish. The dolls are frankly dolls, doing what the equipment says they have to. there's one human soul at which to marvel--the soul of the inventor.
"Once a Greek..." is Durrenmatt's most recent publication in the United States, a publication 10 years outdated in Europe. In it, the dolls of Duerrenmatt discover a toy Duerrenmatt urban, which has a Presidential Palace, an American Embassy, a white, satanic mill through Corbusier, the place every thing from an obstetrical forceps to an atomic cannon is made; a countrywide artwork Gallery, a crematorium, a slum.
The inventor's prime doll, Archilochos, the Greek within the identify, seeks love during this baroque, HO-gauge, middle-European Hell. alongside the best way he learns a lesson that Nelson Eddy attempted to coach in the course of the nice melancholy, that love and love by myself is worthy searching for, that love and love on my own will pay off. Does he locate it? He does, as the clockwork says he has to.
Which isn't to mock Duerrenmatt. As i've got already indicated, he's a desirable, endearing maker of clocks. He chooses to put in writing this manner, invented this manner of writing. The puzzle is: He appears to be like attacking anything brilliantly, yet what's it? a main goal should be the white manufacturing facility, the place Archilochos works as one in all hundreds of thousands of shabby bookkeepers. yet there by no means used to be any such manufacturing unit at any place, and there by no means can be. at the first ground is the Tank department, at the moment, the Atomic Cannon department, at the 3rd, the desktop Gun Division...on the 7th, the Obstetrical Forceps department. Duerrenmatt is fabulous at describing palaces, down to the final putti, yet he doesn't supply a rattling approximately what sleek factories are quite like, or what smooth commercial jobs are particularly like. Shoals of bookkeepers were distributed with for particularly a few time.
It fits the writer to populate this drastically profitable manufacturing unit with pompous fools who don't know what's going. this kind of scenario isn't really attainable. He exhibits up politicians and educators and churchmen who're intended to not smoke or drink or devote adultery, notwithstanding they do all 3. the sort of scenario isn't really inevitable. Duerrenmatt easily desires issues that method, for purposes of his own.
For purposes of his personal, he has the untalented, no longer remarkably vibrant, unambitious clerk upward thrust in a short time. The clockwork cause of the increase is person who was once utilized in "The Visit," too: a whore with robust connections. In describing the opulence of Archilochos's new existence, the palace, the furnishings, the garments, Duerrenmatt misfires hilariously whilst he tells us approximately his glamorous motor vehicle. God support us, it's a pink Studebaker. the superb translator should not have enable that stand. Duerrenmatt wasn't creating a comic story. He has reliable jokes, yet no longer that kind.
His jokes are Jungian jokes, it sort of feels to me--private, Kraut, mythological. And, whereas he turns out to protest opposed to the absurdities of recent occasions, he doesn't care adequate approximately them to benefit a lot approximately them. What now we have here's a chic exploration of a Jungian dream.
"Archilochos begun wandering in the course of the little rococo palace which now belonged to him," writes Duerrenmatt. "At first he had wandered approximately planlessly, yet after some time he started following a coloured path, paper cutouts of blue, crimson, and golden stars which lay at the smooth rugs and appeared evidently intended to steer him. He got here finally to an unforeseen slender, winding staircase which he reached via a mystery door within the wallpaper." and so forth. "Satire," says the e-book jacket. "Dream," say I.
The shades and the structures and the costumes are as attractive as something you are going to ever see.
Mr. Vonnegut is writer of "Cat's Cradle," "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" and different works of fiction.<
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Additional info for Once a Greek
Sample text
Their footsteps echoed from the walls of houses. It was as if they were passing through an un derground vault. Not a person was in sight. A half starved dog trotted toward them out of the gloom, a dirty black-and-white spaniel, dripping with wetness, with drooping ears and dropping tongue. The red lights at intersections shimmered through the mist. Then a bus rolled past, pointlessly sounding its horn, evidently headed for N orth Station. Archilochos pressed his head into the soft fur of her coat, to find room under her dainty red umbrella.
She put her arms around his neck, kissed him once more, then a third time. “We’ll go to Greece,” she whispered. “To our old homeland. Soon. ” She opened the iron gate and vanished into the mist among the trees, waving to him once more and calling out something, some tender phrase, like a mysterious bird as she walked toward some invisible building deep in the spacious garden. Archilochos, for his part, trudged back to his working-class neighborhood. It was a long walk; he retraced the whole route he had taken with Chloe.
A t last he managed to don them again, and through splashes of milk he blinked at Chloe Saloniki, frozen. “Another cup of milk,” he said at last. “O h,” Chloe laughed. ” Archilochos sat down, unable to take his eyes off her or to invite her to take a seat, although he wanted to. He was terrified, depressed, and did not dare think 2 I of his ad. M iserably, he removed the rose from his lapel. He thought that any moment she would turn in disappointm ent and go away. Perhaps, too, he thought he was only dreaming.
