Stella A Novel

by Lenz, Siegfried

• ISBN13: 9781590513354
• ISBN10: 1590513355
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-08-03
• Publisher: Other Press

Summary

In a small town on the Baltic coast, in a community steeped in maritime industries and local mores, a teenager falls in love with his English professor. Christian looks older than his years, Stella younger than hers. The summer they spend together is filled with boat rides to Bird Island, secret walks on the beach, and furtive glances. The emotions that blossom between Christian and Stella are aflame with passion and innocence, and with an idealistic hope of a future. The two lovers manage to keep their mutual attraction concealed, but as the hot months comes to an end, their meetings become more difficult to conceal. Stellabegins at the end, at Stella Petersenrs"s memorial service, where Christian relives the memories he shared with his first love. There is nothing salacious about their relationship, nor is it just a case of a teenagerrs"s crush on his teacher. Their affair changes both Christian and Stella, allows them to expand their views, and pushes them out of social and familial constraints. Theirs is a tender love story of a time, and yet speaks to any time; it is actually through death that their love is transformed. The sparseness of Siegfried Lenzrs"s narrative is reminiscent of the existential stringency of Ernest Hemingway. Only a master stylist of his standing could compose such a story that is equally modest and powerful, a work that leaves a lasting authentic impression, and that strives to comply with W.H. Audenrs"s famous request, "Tell me the truth about love."

Author Biography

Siegfried Lenz, born in Lyck in East Prussia in 1926, is one of the most important
and widely read writers in postwar and present-day literature. He has published
twelve novels, including The German Lesson, and produced several collections
of short stories, essays, and plays. His works have been published since 1951
by Hoffmann und Campe, and he has won numerous prizes, including the Goethe
Prize and the German Booksellers’ Peace Prize.
 
Anthea Bell is a freelance translator from German and French, specializing in
fiction. She has won a number of translation awards in the UK, the USA, and Europe.

Excerpts

I couldn’t, I just could not take my eyes off her picture; while the school orchestra
was playing I kept gazing at the photograph. It was as if we had made a date for
this hour of remembrance in the hall, meaning to say something we didn’t yet
know about each other. I had heard our orchestra rehearsing twice, the orchestra
and the choir, and now, in front of your picture, the Bach cantata unexpectedly
took a strong hold on me—that sense of abandonment, that desperate search,
the hope for an answer, for salvation, an appeal to the victorious power of the
Father and the Son. God’s time is the very best time, in the words of the cantata.
   How your face suddenly shone, Stella, the face I’d kissed all over, on your
forehead,on your cheeks, on your mouth. Praise and glory unto the Lord, I call
upon Thy names, I am resigned, glory unto Thee. And then that Amen, taken up
like an echo by our orchestra, an echo dying away, growing quieter and quieter,
losing itself most wonderfully in a universe of consolation, the Actus Tragicus
overcome. I stared at your face, I had never before felt a loss so powerfully, which
was strange enough, because I had never before known what it was to have
possessed what was lost.

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Excerpted from Stella by Siegfried Lenz
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