Swiss Review 6/2018

Swiss Review / November 2018 / No.6 21 Literature Thus the experiences in Trivandrum in the state of Kerala, where they meet a German dropout, the chemist Dr. Sub- barao and also littleMoli, who tries to attachherself to them like a limpet, are always juxtaposed with reflections on Switzerland: for example on 1 August and the Swiss national consciousness, and before they visit the temple of the god- dess Meenakshi in Madurai, Hartmann mentions the mo- ment that he looks forward to most in Switzerland in 1981: bathing in Lake Gerzen on warm summer evenings. The stay at Broadlands, a lodging house in Madras that once housed the haremof a nabob, is contrasted by the image of the Bernese onion market, where mechanical orange-red trunked animals suck up the confetti mountains under the motto “keep Switzerland clean”. But inMahabalipuram, be- fore the beginning of awild festival, the full moon rises out of the sea, paints the sky bright or- ange and “quite unpoetically, takes on the colour of cheese; it could be a Camembert…” The perspective on Switzer- land may have changed in the al- most 40 years since the publica- tion of this travelogue, but the spontaneous glance at India, which is enchanted in a dazzling, vivid sense by the curiosity, the re- ceptiveness but also by the hunger for experience and the sensuous narrative exuberance of a talented chronicler, remains as relevant as ever. CHARLES LINSMAYER IS A LITERARY SCHOLAR AND JOURNALIST IN ZURICH CHARLES LINSMAYER Lukas Hartmann’s novels are often set in distant countries. For example, “Die Seuche” (1992) contrasts the medieval plague in Bern with the Ugandan AIDS sufferer Sam Ssenyonja, while “Die Tochter des Jägers” (2002) takes place in the Kenyan big game hunting areas of the 1920s, and the painter JohnWebber travels the South Seas in “Bis ans Ende derMeere” (2009). “Abschied von Sansibar” (2013) describes the childhood of a princess on the same island and “Ein Bild von Lydia” (2018) is mainly set in Florence and Rome. Experienced personally: India 1980 Only one book features Hartmann sending himself to a dis- tant country: “Mahabalipuram. Als Schweizer in Indien” (1982). The trip took place in the winter of 1980/81 and had India as its destination: a country the author had already visited on behalf of an aid organisation, but which he now privately explored by train, bus and bicycle. As soon as they arrived in Bombay, he and his wife Silvia felt thrown into the throngs of people. This had nothing in common with the poetic wonderland of childhood. Suddenly they were confronted by an “exotic raggedness”, masses of people sleeping in the streets and crippled beggars, got lost “in the trampling of thousands of feet around themselves” and be- came “gradually indistinguishable, faces among faces, in the darkness of the night”. Hartmann’s words are able “towithstand the impact of the unknown”, the NZZ wrote, “but at the same time they are steeped in it, and this explains to a large extent the fas- cination of his book”. The traveller’s account had a very specific and personal purpose: “Travelling in order to awaken. A journey to the unknown? Or into oneself? The desire to break down (in- ternal or external) boundaries. To be on the road for weeks, not to make commitments (and the difficulty of not mak- ing commitments)”. Keeping an eye on Switzerland as well This search for self is also connected to the fact that a sub- stantial part of the book is dedicated to faraway Switzer- land: “Thinking about Switzerland. Here of all places? Right here. Here I depend on a nameable identity like a second skin.” “The desire to break down boundaries” In 1982, Lukas Hartmann published a book about a journey to India, which is still enchanting. “Without being able to retreat and process my experiences by writing, I would be helplessly exposed to the deluge of images and the intense rush of India. Fear of being wiped out by sudden, everlasting impressions; fear of dissolving in the nev- er-experienced. So I continue to write, to write along the bounda- ries of what is still bearable.” (From: “Mahabalipuram. Als Schweizer in Indien», Arche Verlag, Zürich 1982) BIBLIOGRAPHY: “Mahabalipuram” has been out of print for years and can only be found in libraries or antiquarian bookshops.