Tourmaline: Adalbert Stifter

“The tourmaline is dark in colour, and the events which I am going to relate here are very dark, too; they took place in times gone by, just like the events described in the first two tales*. In them we can see, as in a letter bearing sad news, how far a man can go when he dulls the light of his own reason and is no longer able to understand things, ignores the law of his conscience–which leads him unerringly along the way of righteousness–yields completely to the intensity of his pleasures and his pain, loses his step, and falls into circumstances which we are scarcely capable of unravelling.”

(*Granite and Limestone)

With an intro like that, Tourmaline seemed to be my kind of story. I’ve yet to get used to Stifter’s pacing and his use of details, but since there’s more Stifter in my future, no doubt that will happen. Just like Brigitta, Tourmaline is a story of passion, but it’s stained with other, much darker elements.

The story opens in Vienna with a man of “about forty,” and immediately there’s the sense that there’s something a little off about this man’s domestic arrangements. It’s here that Stifter’s use of detail comes into full play as he describes the man’s home which is located on the fourth floor of a house. The details: passages, an iron grille, a clock so quiet you can’t hear it tick,  iron railings, argue for an oppressive, prison-like environment which is controlled by the man of the house who is known as “the pensioner.” The pensioner has a beautiful wife who is about 10 years younger and they have one child,  a little girl. The wife “did not maintain a great deal of contact with the outer world,” and more or less stays inside. 

A well-known actor, a good-looking, charming man named Dall visits the pensioner, listens to his stories, but eventually Dall begins a love affair with the pensioner’s wife. “This went on for a while until, at last, the wife became afraid and confessed everything to her husband.” The wife vanishes and the pensioner goes to Dall’s home three times and demands the return of his wife, but Dall has no knowledge of her whereabouts.

The pensioner and the child also disappear, the apartment is closed. Years pass and eventually the courts order that the apartment be opened, the belongings sold and the landlord paid. Money leftover from the debt to the landlord is retained in case the pensioner ever reappears. 

In the wife’s rooms nothing whatsoever had been changed, every piece of furniture was in its accustomed place and the objects were still upon them; but the minor changes which had taken place revealed how different things now were.  The heavy curtains, which had always swayed slightly when the windows were open , now hung motionless; the flowers and plants were now shrivelled wisps of brown; the clock which used to tick so quietly now ticked no longer, for the pendulum did not stir, and the clock indicated immutably the same time of day. The linen and other items of handiwork still lay upon the tables, of course, but showed no signs of having been touched, and mourned under a veil of dust. 

The story then shifts to a different narrator: this time it’s a friend of the first narrator, a married woman who becomes involved in the life of Professor Andorf and meets his reclusive concierge. …

Tourmaline is a dark fairy tale, sinister, threatening and bleak in its portrayal of the child who pays a heavy price for the folly of human passions. While the tale stands on its own, reading about Stifter’s disastrous attempts to adopt children added to its meaning. 

Jonathan likes Stifter also. 

Another fan … Tom