Long Shadows

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French studies at the University
of Guelph.

The Ontario Arts Council’s pilot program for the translation of
foreign authors into English has, with Long Shadows, made available a
collection of short stories by a highly respected German author, Marie
Luise Kaschnitz (1901–1974). Kaschnitz’s work has not been
translated in book form before. Only anthologies of women’s literature
have included some of her poetry.

MacRae’s translation is accurate and sensitive. It cannot have been
easy. Kaschnitz uses a blend of classicism and stream-of-consciousness
writing, long sentences with very little punctuation, images that are
often surprising and sometimes far-fetched. Such difficulties may
explain certain incongruities, such as, in “Christine,” where a man
is seated staring into space and is suddenly being told by his wife not
to stare into the idiot box, although no television set was previously
mentioned. In such cases, the reader is obliged to stop, to reread the
text, perhaps to accept its disjointedness as poetic licence. In
general, though, MacRae has succeeded in making the text flow without
hindrances. Certain stories, such as “Late Adventures,” which deals
with the last days of a writer living in Rome (as did Kaschnitz), have
an admirable rhythm.

Kaschnitz deals with the pains, sorrows, and darkness of human
experiences. Growing up, love and sexuality, old age, war, and pacifism
are some of her themes. Her use of mythological figures links the
present to other periods. Melancholy prevails, but flowers and their
scents abound. Kaschnitz is one of the twentieth-century romantics, and
her texts should certainly be widely read.