title

Mein Vater war ein Kaufmann. (My father was a merchant.)

With such a simple sentence starts one of the most uncommon and surprising classics, a book that Nietzsche ranked amongst the best of German literature:

Wenn man von Goethes Schriften absieht und namentlich von Goethes Unterhaltungen mit Eckermann, dem besten deutschen Buche, das es gibt: was bleibt eigentlich von der deutschen Prosa-Literatur übrig, das es verdiente, wieder und wieder gelesen zu werden? Lichtenbergs Aphorismen, das erste Buch von Jung-Stillings Lebensgeschichte, Adalbert Stifters Nachsommer und Gottfried Kellers Leute von Seldwyla, - und damit wird es einstweilen am Ende sein.

If one prescinds from Goethe’s writings and namely Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann, the best German book that exists: what remains of German prose-literature that is worth to be read again and again? Lichtenberg’s Aphorisms, the first book of Jung-Stillings life story, Adalbert Stifter’s Indian Summer and Gottfried Keller’s The People of Seldwyla – and with this it is finished for the time being. - Friedrich Nietzsche, 1879

Stifter’s Indian Summer is one of the most famous classics of the genre Bildungsroman. The plot is easily told: a young man becomes acquainted with an old, educated and art-minded man, Risach, who lives in an idyllic utopia, the Rose House, somewhere in the Alps. In the years to come the young man visits him many times, travels in the Alps, studies in many fields and develops his personality and taste for art. In the end he marries Nathalie, the daughter of Risach’s youth love and lives happily ever after. Not exactly much content for a book of almost 800 pages.

Sounds boring? Well, if you read for action Stifter is certainly not for you. He writes verbose, the story circles around the protagonist’s parents’ house, the alpine Utopia and his studies of nature and art – year in, year out. The characters are as flat as the plot; even though the story is told by a first-person-narrator, the reader knows almost nothing about him, only in the very last chapter, after 750 pages, his name is mentioned once. During Stifter's lifetime his works enjoyed moderate popularity, after his death he was quickly forgotten. It wasn't until WW1 that the perception of his works changed.

Since all of this doesn’t sound too promising, you might ask why the modern reader should pick up The Indian Summer?

First, there is finally an Austrian author who describes the natural beauty of his homeland – his sensitive perceptions of nature and growth save him a place amongst the greatest of this sujet.
This leads us to the next point: the atmosphere. I cannot think of another book that has such a breath of silence to it. While reading it a deep peace overcame me and time ceased to matter. Stifter’s simple, consequent style deploys a maelstrom that one cannot elude.

There is no shadow of his time in Stifter's work: of war, March Revolution and its bloody abatement we hear nothing. He is the perfect representantive of the Biedermeier period, in The Indian Summer a radical escapism is praised: happiness is not to be searched outside, but only in the closest circles of society, the private life.

Still, it’s not all flowers and sunshine. There is a subtle undertone to it – when the plainness turns into naivety, when very gentle humour reveals that Stifter can and does mock himself. Don’t take this novel too serious, but do also not condemn it for its ideals.

Please, take the time to read The Indian Summer, and I promise you will have a reading experience uttlerly different from everything you had before - and you will either love that or taunt it and go back to old ways.

To end, another quote:

Stifter ist einer der merkwürdigsten, hintergründigsten, heimlich kühnsten und wunderlich packendsten Erzähler der Weltliteratur.

Stifter is one of the most extraordinary, the most enigmatic, the most secretly daring and the most strangely gripping narrators in world literature. – Thomas Mann, 1949