Sun, sea and picaresque
By Alan Riding |
October 14, 2012, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
IT'S somewhat intimidating to review a book already described by Thomas Mann as "one of the greatest" of the 20th century - or so its publisher claims. It also seems odd that, despite Mann's blessing, Albert Vigoleis Thelen's picaresque romp, "The Island of Second Sight," only recently became available in English - published in Britain in 2010, 57 years after its first appearance in German. But welcome it is. Without presuming to echo Mann, this is one of the most unusual and entertaining books I have ever read.
The cover announces that it's a novel, although a subtitle inside ("From the Applied Recollections of Vigoleis") clearly identifies it as a memoir, specifically of the time Thelen and his Swiss wife, Beatrice, spent in Majorca between 1931 and 1936. Later German editions carry corrections, included in Donald O White's excellent translation, that suggest its author valued accuracy. That said, the narrator is not Thelen but his alter ego, Vigoleis, a college nickname.
Still, why should we care about a destitute German writer living on a Mediterranean island decades ago? Because he has a narrative style that is farcical, byzantine and philosophical, and a sense of humor that makes light of countless catastrophes. Vigoleis also provides droll portraits of the friends, conspirators, eccentrics and enemies encountered on this madcap journey. And in its 730 pages, the book has ample room for digressions. (Thelen died, at the age of 85, in 1989.)
Politics add darker variables. Then, as now, the island was much loved by German expats, retirees and tourists. And before Hitler came to power in 1933, his shadow already divided its German community.
But when Thelen and Beatrice arrive in 1931, their lives were shaped more by happenstance. Alerted by a cable from Beatrice's brother in Majorca that reads, "Am dying. Zwingli," they set off on a mission of mercy only to discover that Zwingli's problem is a former prostitute, Pilar, with a furious sexual appetite who has left him a physical wreck. Zwingli insists that Vigoleis and Beatrice move in with him and Pilar. Foolishly, they agree.
This leads to a series of escapades that feature a supporting cast that includes unlikely characters such as the poet Robert Graves, whose book "I, Claudius" Vigoleis claims to have typed; Count Harry Kessler, an exiled German diplomat, who dictates his memoirs to Vigoleis; a fugitive Honduran general plotting a revolution back home. Well, you get the idea.
When Franco launches his revolution in July 1936, Vigoleis manages to get aboard a British destroyer evacuating foreigners. He is hiding 200 letters to be posted abroad and, by good fortune, the customs officer has overslept. Thanks, Vigoleis notes, to "some insatiable Spanish whore."
The cover announces that it's a novel, although a subtitle inside ("From the Applied Recollections of Vigoleis") clearly identifies it as a memoir, specifically of the time Thelen and his Swiss wife, Beatrice, spent in Majorca between 1931 and 1936. Later German editions carry corrections, included in Donald O White's excellent translation, that suggest its author valued accuracy. That said, the narrator is not Thelen but his alter ego, Vigoleis, a college nickname.
Still, why should we care about a destitute German writer living on a Mediterranean island decades ago? Because he has a narrative style that is farcical, byzantine and philosophical, and a sense of humor that makes light of countless catastrophes. Vigoleis also provides droll portraits of the friends, conspirators, eccentrics and enemies encountered on this madcap journey. And in its 730 pages, the book has ample room for digressions. (Thelen died, at the age of 85, in 1989.)
Politics add darker variables. Then, as now, the island was much loved by German expats, retirees and tourists. And before Hitler came to power in 1933, his shadow already divided its German community.
But when Thelen and Beatrice arrive in 1931, their lives were shaped more by happenstance. Alerted by a cable from Beatrice's brother in Majorca that reads, "Am dying. Zwingli," they set off on a mission of mercy only to discover that Zwingli's problem is a former prostitute, Pilar, with a furious sexual appetite who has left him a physical wreck. Zwingli insists that Vigoleis and Beatrice move in with him and Pilar. Foolishly, they agree.
This leads to a series of escapades that feature a supporting cast that includes unlikely characters such as the poet Robert Graves, whose book "I, Claudius" Vigoleis claims to have typed; Count Harry Kessler, an exiled German diplomat, who dictates his memoirs to Vigoleis; a fugitive Honduran general plotting a revolution back home. Well, you get the idea.
When Franco launches his revolution in July 1936, Vigoleis manages to get aboard a British destroyer evacuating foreigners. He is hiding 200 letters to be posted abroad and, by good fortune, the customs officer has overslept. Thanks, Vigoleis notes, to "some insatiable Spanish whore."
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