Brand's Heath by Arno Schmidt

 


Brand's Heath is Arno Schmidt's first published novella, written when the great experimental author was thirty-six years old. It's a semi-autobiographical tale set in 1946, a year following the end of the war in Germany. During this time, the narrator (also named Schmidt) and millions of his countrymen attempt to move on to the next phase in their lives. Schmidt, a returning POW under the British in Brussels, now travels to the outskirts of a rural town in Northern Germany where he lives a hardscrabble life with two young ladies: small, composed Grete and broad-shouldered, lithe Lore.

Arno considered a 24-hour day as comprising 1440 minutes, and Brand's Heath mirrors how our stream of consciousness truly experiences the world. In other words, the novella bears Schmidt's signature style: instead of following a conventional storyline with standard punctuation, each mostly short paragraph starts with italics and indents all subsequent lines. Additionally, there's a touch of the author's unconventional punctuation.

To share a taste of what a reader will encounter in this 75-pager that, in many ways, reminds me of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I'll offer my comments linked to a dozen direct quotes.

“Parents who continue to bring children into this world should be punished (i.e, fined : made to pay 20 marks a month for the first child, 150 for the second, 800 for the third.”

Arno judged humans as life's true catastrophe! In his wish for a less populated planet, one can hear echoes of Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe who wrote an extended essay on the subject - The Last Messiah (I wrote a review; please check it out). Although Arno eventually married, he and his wife, Alice Murawski, had no children.

“Pleased to meet you he said perfunctorily. Late twenties and already completely bald : along with that offensive behavior characteristic of officers down through the ages.”

Arno Schmidt detested anything smacking of a military mentality, especially those men in charge barking out orders. One of Arno's frequently quoted lines: “A decent human being is ashamed at being somebody's boss!”

“Swung himself back up : wonderful shoes, US-made with thick rubber soles : Uncle Adolf had never been in the running : bye-bye.”

Arno has absolutely no loyalty or allegiance to anything related specifically to the German nation. This more worldly valuation extended to literature – two of his favorite authors were Americans: Edgar Allan Poe and James Fenimore Cooper.

"What a wild West store : where you can buy simply everything, a co-op. I waited patiently in the sultry yellow lamplight, sings, ads, Knorrs soup cubes; margarine as weighed out in ounces, to the dram. “A loaf of bread” I said (hard as Germany's youth; ah well; it'll keep longer.)”

Co-ops and food rationing were a common experience during those post-WWII years. And you gotta love Arno's view of German youngsters who became the hardheaded Hitler youth carrying their Hitler daggers, a theme much developed in his Scenes from the Life of a Faun.

“For instance, last night, as the window panels shimmered a yellow-gray, hours on end, light acreeping up there it seemed, it occurred to me to rite a literary essay : “The First Page”; how they set out to “grab” the reader : has something like that been done before ?”

Throughout the tale, Arno continually makes references to writing and himself as a writer.

“They ran be ragged : Grete especially had her bit of erudition touchingly together, and I made the deepest impression (I consider “intellectual” a title of honor : it is after all man's most distinguishing characteristic ! If everybody was one, at least brawls would be fought with pens, or with mouths. Would be a considerable improvement !).”

Arno, a man living the life of the mind, doesn't have a high regard for those men who spend much of their off hours as barhopping drinkers and fighters.

“Why can't you connect other people's brains onto your own, so that they can see the same imagines, flashes of memory, that you do ? (But then there are the bastards who would).”

Actually, isn't this the wish of many war veterans? To somehow be able to share a direct experience with civilians of what it was like, really like, to be a soldier fighting in a battle. But, but, but...if a technology of this variety existed, those in power would surely employ such a sophisticated gadget for mind control.

“Art for the people ? ! : leave that slogan to the Nazis and Communists : it's just the opposite : the people (everyone !) are obligated to struggle their way to art !”

You tell 'em, Arno! True art is anything but easily digestible. Arno Schmidt knew his writing would only appeal to a small number of intelligent readers, readers willing to make a heroic effort to fully appreciate his books.

“I couldn't help it : I closed my hand around her sturdy ankle and she smiled a mocking and kindly smile : even in that regard I would be content. - (Has got herself new stockings on the cuff). - I gazed at her, for a long time, had to let me head drop, and joined my left hand around hers. From there I breathed slow and hard, until she laid her head against mine, and our long hair mingled in the wind for a good while, brown and ashen; and was woven anew : ashen and brown.”

I included the full paragraph here to show Arno's poetic voice. Likewise, how Arno did have an emotional bond, of sorts, with the two ladies.

“As a young man : I was 16 when I resigned from your club. What bores you : Schopenhauer, Wieland, the Campanian Valley, Orpheus : is axiomatic happiness to me; what you find so wildly exciting : swing, films, Hemingway, politics : pisses me off.”

Forever an individualist and loner, Arno Schmidt knew from an early age he would be at odds with his society and culture.

“...but it's all too long : you know no more about the characters after 300 pages than you already knew about 100; I call that overdeveloped, or more simply stated : too much pointless chatter. Hachoo !”

Beautiful, AS! A slam against the pop novels of his day. We can only wonder what Arno would make of John Grisham thrillers or the shitshow doorstops of Tom Clancy.

“With ringlets : it's a painful enough spectacle when individuals can't grow old gracefully : how much worse with nations ! Hitler's German already offered one such unseemly show; Its Soviet zone now offers it anew, in sufficiently exaggerated and grotesque form : in the last analysis Europe itself does.”

Arno Schmidt refused to be pigeonholed into ANY political ideology. As a singular, solitary literary artist, his had one simple request: “Leave me in peace!”


Brand's Heath is part of Nobodaddy's Children, magnificently translated by John E. Woods and published by Dalkey Archive Press.


Arno Schmidt, 1913-1979