I've now had a chance to read Jenny Erpenbeck's Visitation for myself, in the Bernofsky translation, and it is indeed a tour de force. I'm almost inclined to seek out the German original (Heimsuchung), because to judge from the superb translation, Erpenbeck's German must be incredibly flexible and multi-faceted.
Central to the novel is the concept of time, and the mutability of things. The book begins with an italicised passage depicting the advance of the glacier, 24,000 years ago, that cut out the Märkisches Meer, the sea-like lake of the Mark Brandenburg. But even that is not destined to last for ever:
" ... but one day it would vanish again, since, like every lake, it too was only temporary - like every hollow shape, this channel existed only to be filled in completely some day."
The fixed point of the novel is a fine old house by a lake in Brandenburg, with wrought-iron balconies, stained-glass windows like jewels and a bedroom with a hidden closet, set in a lovely garden. As the house stands silently by the lake, Germany's violent history is played out around and through it. A young woman in the grip of madness is drowned. The Jewish neighbours disappear one by one. The Red Army requisitions the house, burns the furniture, tramples the garden. A young East German tries to swim to the West, and is caught. A couple return from brutal exile in Siberia and leave the house to their granddaughter, who is forced to hand it over to new owners, who demolish it.
Apart from the house itself, the most durable feature of the landscape is The Gardener, the genius loci:
"No one in the village knows where he comes from. Perhaps he was always here. He helps the farmers propagate their fruit trees in the spring, inoculating the wild stock with active buds around Midsummer's Day and dormant ones when the sap rises for the second time, he grafts new scions onto the trees chosen for propagation using whip or cleft grafts depending on the thickness of the stock, he prepares the required mixture of wax, turpentine and resin, then bandages each wound with raffia or paper, everyone in the village knows that the trees propagated by him display the most regular crowns as they continue to grow. During the summer the farmers hire him as a reaper and to build the shocks ... he knows how to weave green spruce twigs into braids and place them in the boreholes to the proper depth to draw out the water ... he lives alone in an abandoned hunting lodge at the edge of the woods, he's always lived there, everyone in the village knows him, and yet he is only referred to by both young people and old as The Gardener, as though he had no other name."
Some novelists go in for the grand, general sweep of events and avoid the practicalities of daily existence. Others revel in describing the physicality of things and processes, how people practise crafts and how things work. Erpenbeck is of the latter variety.
The Gardener builds and repairs and refurbishes the house and garden according to the whims of successive owners, and heals the damage caused by the fury of war. His ubiquitousness in the story is demonstrated by the chapter-headings:
THE GARDENER
THE WEALTHY FARMER AND HIS FOUR DAUGHTERS (an intense and detailed study of Brandenburg folklore)
THE GARDENER
THE ARCHITECT
THE GARDENER
THE CLOTH MANUFACTURER
THE GARDENER
THE ARCHITECT'S WIFE
THE GARDENER
THE GIRL
THE GARDENER
and so on.
In her Acknowledgements at the end of the book, Erpenbeck thanks a host of organisations and foundations and archives that have made documents, letters, film material and photographs available to her, then goes on to thank a total of 36 individuals and one whole family "for assisting me in my research as well as offering ideas, advice and answers to a great many questions".
We've all read novels - especially historical ones - in which the author's researches are like ballast that shifts and sinks a boat under its weight. It's a tribute to this author and, my God, to her dedicated translator (who has to deal with ironic screeds of German bureaucratese at the end, relevant to the selling of a house), that the novel reads as lightly and gracefully as it does.
Harry
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