‘Aus den Papieren eines Wärters’ (‘From the Papers of a Prison Guard’) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (Review)

After a couple of short, eventful journeys around the north of Germany, it’s time to head off again on our German Literature Month travels.  Today’s book takes us to Switzerland, where we’ll be looking at the work of a writer who provided possibly my first ever encounter with G-Lit.  However, the pieces we’ll be exploring today date back even further, as we delve into the literary cupboards of a man who (in his writing, at least) liked to walk on the dark side…

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The Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt was born in 1921, so with this year marking the centennial of his birth, it seems only fitting to take a GLM look at some of his work.  As I’ve mentioned before, I first encountered Dürrenmatt in the form of his classic dark detective thriller Der Richter und sein Henker (The Judge and his Executioner) back when I was doing A-Levels almost thirty years ago, and when I took a unit on Dürrenmatt during my second year at university, I revisited that book, as well as looking at a few more odds and ends.  That includes today’s choice, which is one of the oldest books in my personal collection in terms of when I bought it.

Aus den Papieren eines Wärters: Frühe Prosa (From the Papers of a Prison Guard: Early Prose) brings together some of Dürrenmatt’s earliest writing in a handy collection running to around 190 pages.  It consists of eleven pieces, but there’s a huge range in the length of the stories, ranging from a one-paragraph piece of flash-fiction to an extended story clocking in at more than forty pages.  However, they have a lot in common, including a constant thread of dark humour, and the ability to engage and disconcert the reader in equal measures.

The earliest pieces certainly seem like the experiments of a young writer.  ‘Weihnachten’ (‘Christmas’) has a nameless protagonist stepping out on a stark, cold winter’s day, only to find the body of das Christkind (‘baby Jesus’) in a story that certainly doesn’t end as you’d expect.  ‘Der Sohn’ (‘The Son’) is another stylistic exercise, a two-page story of a man bringing up a feral son, written in a single, almost breathless sentence.

Even in these early experiments, though, you can see the writer’s obsession with themes such as the misuse of power.  A good example of this is ‘Der Alte’ (‘The Old Man’), a bleak war story in which a country’s people attempt to fight back against an army controlled from afar by a shadowy figure.  This idea is perhaps best seen here in the allegorical piece ‘Der Theaterdirektor’ (‘The Theatre Director’), in which the new head of a city’s theatre company makes sweeping, brutal changes while the townsfolk watch on, powerless to do anything about it:

Wir dachten an einen bösen Trieb, der die Menschen zwingt, ihre Mörder aufzusuchen, um sich ihnen auszuliefern, denn jene Veränderungen enthüllten, daß er die Freiheit zu untergraben bestrebt war, indem er deren Unmöglichkeit nachwies, so daß seine Kunst eine verwegene Attacke auf den Sinn der Menschheit war.
‘Der Theaterdirektor’ p.61 (Diogenes, 1986)

We thought about an evil desire that forces people to seek out their murderers and deliver themselves up to them, for those changes revealed that he had the intention of undermining freedom by showing its impossibility, so that his art was a daring attack on the very meaning of humanity.
*** (my translation)

There are definite shades here of Dürrenmatt’s famous play Der Besuch der Alten Dame (The Visit), with the ‘audience’ watching on as a victim is brutally singled out and ostracised.  The story was written in 1945, and it’s not hard to see the influences of the events of the Second World War here.

As we move on, there are more intriguing stories.  One of my favourites was ‘Das Bild des Sisyphos’ (‘The Painting of Sisyphus’), an excellent dark tale centred around the titular painting.  This is a clever story featuring a frame narrative in which the narrator is told of an obsessive attempt to cheat fate, one that ends, unsurprisingly, rather badly.  ‘Die Falle’ (‘the Trap’) has a similar story-within-a-story structure, with the tale wandering into surreal territory as the narrator blurs the boundaries between dreams and reality.

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However, these early pieces are (in my eyes, at least!) merely leading up to the two-part main event.  The penultimate piece ‘Die Stadt’ (‘The City’), dating back to 1947, is an eerie tale told by a man who has found himself, for reasons unknown, in a mysterious city run by all-powerful authorities. After a few superb dark scenes, including a night-time demonstration march to the heart of the city (a futile endeavour brought to an end by a single obstacle placed in the crowd’s path…), we come to the heart of the story, as the narrator is offered a chance to be a part of the system:

Ich vernahm, daß ich mich im Gefängnis der Stadt befand, dem die drei alten Weiber als Vertreter der Verwaltung zugeteilt waren, und daß ich hier meinen Dienst als Wärter beginnnen konnte.  Sie wiesen auf das Wesen der Bewachung hin, die sich im geheimen abzuspielen habe, so daß dieser Umstand es notwendig mache, den Wärter nicht von den Gefangenen zu unterscheiden; der Dienst sei schwer, doch freiwillig, und ich sei jederzeit in der Lage, auf mein Zimmer in der Stadt zurückzukehren.
‘Die Stadt’, p.134

I perceived that I found myself in the city’s prison, to which the three women were assigned as representatives of the administration, and that here I could begin my service as a guard.  They emphasised the nature of the guard duties, which were to be carried out in secret, which circumstance made it necessary not to distinguish guard from prisoner; the duty was hard, but voluntary, and I was free to return to my lodgings in the city at any time. ***

Of course, once down in the prison, the situation appears somewhat different.  As the narrator takes up his new role, doubts arise in the darkness – is he really a guard, or has he been fooled into taking his place as a prisoner?

‘Die Stadt’ is a clever tale, with more than a nod in the direction of Kafka in its style. We have one man raging (politely) against the authorities, making his way through darkness and decay, and finding himself in grotesque situations, such as the room where he’s met by the three old ladies gorging themselves on tea and cakes.  There’s even a hint of the erotic in the form of the young woman who takes him down to the cellar, a temptress leading him to his fate.

However, it’s also a piece that gradually runs out of energy, seemingly unfinished, and Dürrenmatt himself was unhappy with it, gradually coming back for a second attempt.  The 1952 remake ‘Aus den Papieren eines Wärters’ (‘From the Papers of a Prison Guard’) cannibalises the old text, with several scenes, and even sentences, intact.  However, the silent march has now gone, the prison itself is very different, and there’s the addition of a Kafkaesque interview with a low-level civil servant in a run-down office hidden inside a dilapidated building (I hope you’re following all this…).

This second story is a slightly more coherent, less disjointed effort, but yet again it breaks off rather suddenly, as if Dürrenmatt still wasn’t happy with his work.  Luckily, the author clears a few things up for us in the notes attached to the end of the collection, informing us that ‘Die Stadt’ is meant to play on Plato’s cave allegory.  Even more interesting is his admission that the attempt to transform ‘Die Stadt’ into ‘Aus den Papieren eines Wärters’ ended in failure, and that he only managed to finish the piece to his satisfaction decades later in Der Winterkrieg in Tibet (a work that, annoyingly, isn’t included here!).

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Overall, it was great fun revisiting these pieces after so many years.  Yes, Dürrenmatt can be bleak at times, but there’s plenty of humour, too, if of a rather dark variety.  This is most evident here, perhaps, in a story I didn’t mention above, ‘Die Wurst’ (‘The Sausage’).  This one features a brutal murder, a trial, and the disappearance of a vital piece of evidence, all of which is typical of the writer’s ability to add a light touch to even the darkest of situations.  I’m not sure if any of these stories are available in English, but if you do manage to give them a try, I’m sure you’ll agree.