The Strudlhof Steps (novel)
| Author | Heimito von Doderer |
|---|---|
| Original title | Die Strudlhofstiege |
| Translator | Vincent Kling |
| Language | German |
| Publisher | Biederstein Verlag |
Publication date | 1951 |
| Publication place | West Germany |
Published in English | 7 September 2021 |
| Pages | 908 |
The Strudlhof Steps: or, Melzer and the Depth of the Years (German: Die Strudlhofstiege oder Melzer und die Tiefe der Jahre) is a 1951 novel by the Austrian writer Heimito von Doderer. It is set in Vienna in the 1920s and portrays a large number of mostly well-off characters, connected by their proximity to the Strudlhofstiege, an outdoor staircase. The novel gives emphasis to location and language rather than actions of the characters.
The book was a critical success at its original publication. Retrospective critics have praised its sense of timelessness, style and portrayal of Viennese society. It has been grouped with Doderer's novels The Lighted Windows (1950) and The Demons (1956), which provide a detailed panorama of Vienna in the 1910s and 1920s. A poem by Doderer that opens The Strudlhof Steps has been placed on a plaque at the Strudlhofstiege. The novel was adapted into an Austrian television film in 1987.
Background
[edit]The Austrian writer Heimito von Doderer had served in World War I and became a moderately successful novelist in Vienna in the 1930s. He became a member of the Nazi Party in 1933, served in the Wehrmacht during World War II and was a war prisoner in Oslo.[1][2] He developed ideas for The Strudlhof Steps in his diaries during the war[3] and began to write the novel in American-occupied Upper Austria in 1945. He was eventually able to move back to Vienna, where he continued to work on the large-scale novel,[1] finishing it in 1948.[3]
In the second half of the 1940s, Doderer lived on little food and worked on three novels—The Lighted Windows, The Strudlhof Steps and The Demons—while being subjected to denazification and undergoing gradual rehabilitation. He had stopped sympathising with National Socialism in 1938, instead turning toward Austrian subjects, Catholicism and the private world, but because of his party background, he was still forbidden from publishing at the time he finished The Strudlhof Steps.[3] The Lighted Windows was published in 1950 and has been described as a precursor to The Strudlhof Steps due to its Viennese setting and narrative mode.[4]
Plot
[edit]
It is the 1920s and Melzer, who served as a lieutenant for the Austro-Hungarian Army in the Balkans, is back living in his home city of Vienna. Melzer becomes an observer of his own life, the people of Vienna and the city itself, recurringly spending time at the Strudlhofstiege, an Art Nouveau staircase with terraces and fountains that has become a symbol for the city.[5]
There are scenes from 1923 to 1925, and most prominently August–September 1925, as well as memories from the period 1908–1911 and especially the summer of 1911.[6] Although World War I and the fall of the Austrian monarchy took place during the period covered, they are almost not commented on at all by the characters, and the narrator argues that war, as it is a collective experience, is of little relevance for the human self-knowledge he is interested in. Melzer becomes a de facto background character as the book portrays the daily lives, minds and pastimes of dozens of people connected by the stairs.[7]
The different plot lines and large character gallery are occasionally woven together but do not add up to any central plot. The characters are mostly from the upper social strata of Viennese society, including the families of military officers, businessmen, government officials and lawyers, but there are also lower-level employees in the city's bureaucracy, who often live in the Alsergrund district below the Strudlhofstiege. Melzer has this lower-middle-class background but has the opportunity to marry a woman from a prominent family at the end of the novel.[7]
Publication
[edit]Biederstein Verlag in Munich published the original, 908 pages long German-language edition of The Strudlhof Steps in 1951. C. H. Beck published an edition in 2013 with an essay by Stefan Winterstein about the novel's topography and an afterword by Daniel Kehlmann.[8] Translations were published in Italian in 1965, Polish in 1979, Spanish in 1981, Bulgarian in 1984, Slovak in 1990, Slovenian and Hungarian in 1994, Estonian and Dutch in 2008 and Croatian in 2013–2014.[9] New York Review Books published the English translation by Vincent Kling on 7 September 2021.[5][10]
Reception
[edit]
The Strudlhof Steps was a major critical success in German-speaking Europe when it first appeared. It turned Doderer into one of Austria's most prominent writers. According to Barbara Petsch of Die Presse, the way the novel portrays a resilient Austrian identity managed to provide comfort in post-war Austria.[2]
In 2013, Helmut Böttiger of Deutschlandfunk wrote that the novel has retained a feeling of being fresh and timeless. He wrote that its appeal lies in how Doderer offers "a perpetual meandering and circling" which creates "an approximation that becomes ever denser and more concrete".[8] Böttiger wrote that The Strudlhof Steps portrays a seemingly endless summer and is a novel where the location and language are more important than the actions of the individual characters. According to Böttiger, this "suprapersonal" narrative mode is a key to the sense of timelessness, because it allows the novel to connect its time levels—the pre-war imperial Austria-Hungary, the republican Austrian rump state of the 1920s, and, through occasional evocations of the author, the immediate post-war period when the book was written—with almost no apparent disruption from the wars and political shifts.[8]
When The Strudlhof Steps was published in English in 2021, David Dollenmayer wrote that Doderer is "among the great novelists of the twentieth century" and called The Strudlhof Steps his masterpiece.[7] He wrote that it differs significantly from The Magic Mountain, The Man Without Qualities and Radetzky March, which portray a development toward the disaster of war, by instead being about the recovery of memories and human dignity on the other side of a war. Dollenmayer wrote that translating The Strudlhof Steps comes with many challenges, to which Kling's English translation contains many "brilliant solutions".[7] Ritchie Robertson wrote that the novel has won devotees thanks to the atmosphere it creates with short, lyrical passages, but also contains detailed character descriptions and a "wholly individual style" that remains pleasurable even at times when it is too verbose.[6] Francine Prose wrote that Doderer uses a level of detail and other elements associated with 19th-century novels, but these "are scrambled by his modernist disregard for the conventions of chronology, introduction, and explanation".[11] Kirkus Reviews called The Strudlhof Steps "both neurasthenic and darkly humorous" and wrote that it "ably captures a lost world".[5] The critic wrote that it contains "a few uncomfortable passages" where Doderer describes foreigners with "a sometimes-disapproving fascination".[5]
The English translation received the 2022 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize.[12]
Legacy
[edit]
A plaque with Doderer's poem "Auf die Strudelhofstiege zu Wien" (lit. 'On the Strudlhof Steps in Vienna'), which opens the novel, has been placed at the Strudlhofstiege.[1]
In 1956, Doderer published The Demons, which is an even longer novel about a large cast of characters in Vienna, set a few years after The Strudlhof Steps. Together with The Lighted Windows, these novels give a detailed panorama of Vienna's social life in the years before and after the fall of the Austrian monarchy.[4] They are sometimes referred to as the Vienna novels.[3]
The Strudlhof Steps was the basis for the two-part Austrian television film Melzer oder Die Tiefe der Jahre. It was directed by Georg Madeja and made for the ORF in 1987.[13]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c Semper, Viola Rosa (2020). Literaturführer Wien. Auf den Spuren von Autorinnen und Autoren und ihren Werken (in German). Vienna: Falter Verlag. p. 31. ISBN 978-3-85439-635-2.
- ^ a b Petsch, Barbara (17 November 2010). "Strudlhofstiege und ihr kurioser Schöpfer-Dämon". Die Presse (in German). Retrieved 23 May 2025.
- ^ a b c d Luft, David S. (2011). Eros and Inwardness in Vienna: Weininger, Musil, Doderer. University of Chicago Press. pp. 156–157. ISBN 9780226496481.
- ^ a b Ivask, Ivar (1957). "Heimito von Doderer's 'Die Dämonen.'". Books Abroad. 31 (4): 363–365. doi:10.2307/40099525. JSTOR 40099525.
- ^ a b c d "The Strudlhof Steps". Kirkus Reviews. 15 July 2021. Retrieved 23 May 2025.
- ^ a b Robertson, Ritchie (15 April 2022). "A waltz through Vienna". The Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 23 May 2025.
- ^ a b c d Dollenmayer, David (2022). "Review of The Strudlhof Steps or, Melzer and the Depth of the Years, by Heimito von Doderer". Journal of Austrian Studies. 55 (4): 88–90. doi:10.1353/oas.2022.0078.
- ^ a b c Böttiger, Helmut (16 March 2014). "Ewiger Sommer in der Strudlhofstiege" (in German). Deutschlandfunk. Retrieved 23 May 2025.
- ^ Bachleitner, Norbert, ed. (2020). Literary Translation, Reception, and Transfer (in German). Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110641974.
- ^ Gabriel, Hans P. (2023). "The Strudlhof Steps or, Melzer and the Depth of the Years: Heimito von Doderer. Translated by Vincent Kling. Afterword by Daniel Kehlmann. New York: New York Review Books, 2021. 872 pp". Translation Review. 116 (1): 36–38. doi:10.1080/07374836.2023.2223102.
- ^ Prose, Francine (10 March 2022). "L'Esprit de l'Escalier". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 23 May 2025.
- ^ "Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize: Past Prizewinners". Goethe-Institut. Retrieved 23 May 2025.
- ^ Schmidt, Klaus M.; Schmidt, Ingrid (2000). Lexikon Literaturverfilmungen. Verzeichnis deutschsprachiger Filme 1945–2000 (in German). Stuttgart / Weimar: Metzler. p. 43. ISBN 978-3-476-01801-4.
Further reading
[edit]- Kling, Vincent (1 July 2023). "The Austrian Riveter: Heimito von Doderer. The Strudlhof Steps". European Literature Network. Retrieved 23 May 2025.
- Wolff, Lutz-W. (2023). Heimito von Doderer (in German). Rowohlt. ISBN 9783644017795.