Emma Braslavsky:
Das Blaue vom Himmel über dem Atlantik
For some, silence is punishment, for others liberation. No, although it was a profoundly biographic question (What happened to my great-greandmother after she vanished from the life of the family without trace?) that formed the starting point for the idea of this book and my research tour, I already felt I wanted to invent a biography for her the day I arrived, because I was simultaneously gripped by the fear that she might have just been boring or confused and have simply fallen into a river, been carried away and drowned. Today, I finally have to live with the fact that she is dead. This is why I was not just looking for traces of her alone – traces that led me back to the beginning of the 20th century and that needed a tracker dog whose nose was capable of sniffing through the smoke and stench of an eventful century.
So, instead of looking vehemently for the truth, I concerned myself more with finding answers to the question: What is it that makes the life story of a person true? Or, to be more precise: What makes the story of a Silesian true? I collected true and truthful (German-Polish + Polish-German = Silesian) stories, traveling to and fro for about 2,000 kilometers. I investigated archives and owe to the midwife Emma Grimm and her accurate margin notes in the birth register an arsenal of sociological details on the early years of the 20th century, which I could then build on. This is not a biographical novel therefore this time, but a fictional biographic family study. And, above all, a conclusion of the thought that I took up with my first novel „Aus dem Sinn“: How do memories, time and identity relate to each other? This question emerged inevitably from the loquaciousness of the Egerland branch of my family. In this novel, it runs: How do no (or zero) memories, time and identity relate to each other? In other words: If no one talks and there is nothing to remember. I gained one important additional insight: Silence is Silesian and both a virtue and a curse! The novel includes others.
For some, silence is punishment, for others liberation. No, although it was a profoundly biographic question (What happened to my great-greandmother after she vanished from the life of the family without trace?) that formed the starting point for the idea of this book and my research tour, I already felt I wanted to invent a biography for her the day I arrived, because I was simultaneously gripped by the fear that she might have just been boring or confused and have simply fallen into a river, been carried away and drowned. Today, I finally have to live with the fact that she is dead. This is why I was not just looking for traces of her alone – traces that led me back to the beginning of the 20th century and that needed a tracker dog whose nose was capable of sniffing through the smoke and stench of an eventful century.
So, instead of looking vehemently for the truth, I concerned myself more with finding answers to the question: What is it that makes the life story of a person true? Or, to be more precise: What makes the story of a Silesian true? I collected true and truthful (German-Polish + Polish-German = Silesian) stories, traveling to and fro for about 2,000 kilometers. I investigated archives and owe to the midwife Emma Grimm and her accurate margin notes in the birth register an arsenal of sociological details on the early years of the 20th century, which I could then build on. This is not a biographical novel therefore this time, but a fictional biographic family study. And, above all, a conclusion of the thought that I took up with my first novel „Aus dem Sinn“: How do memories, time and identity relate to each other? This question emerged inevitably from the loquaciousness of the Egerland branch of my family. In this novel, it runs: How do no (or zero) memories, time and identity relate to each other? In other words: If no one talks and there is nothing to remember. I gained one important additional insight: Silence is Silesian and both a virtue and a curse! The novel includes others.
Das Blaue vom Himmel über dem Atlantik (novel)
400 pp., hardback with jacket
Claassen Verlag, Berlin, September 2008
ISBN 9783546004329
€ 19,90 [G], € 20,50 [A], sFr 35,90
