For quite a few years, I’ve spotted too late that German Literature Month was happening in November – run by Lizzy’s Literary Life. And this year I also spotted it pretty late in the day, but I didn’t have any emergency reading to finish for book group etc., so decided to see what I had on my shelves. Even better if it qualified for Project Names. So I was very pleased to dig out The Quest for Christa T by Christa Wolf, originally published in 1968 and translated into English shortly afterwards by Christopher Middleton.
It’s a short novel in which the main character is Christa T, but her life is told entirely in retrospect. Her friend is the narrator, although we don’t learn much about her – instead, she gives us a fractured portrait of Christa as she knew her [pronouns are going to be tricky in this post!].
We know from the outset that Christa died young, and we keep waiting for further hints that might explain how. And since we start in Hitler’s Germany, there is the constant threat of Nazis being the answer to that question. Especially since Christa is alarmed by the rampant nationalism she sees around her – the placards and the shouting.
But this is not what kills her. We move on into post-war Germany, as Christa meets various suitors, and tries her hand at teaching. Hers is an ordinary life in extraordinary times. An ordinary and not very ambitious life, that becomes exceptional because of Wolf’s way of writing this strange novella. It resists every norm of writing the usual Bildungsroman – it is, as the title suggests, a quest. Christa might be dead, and she cannot be physically sought, but the narrator is on a quest to compile an understanding of her – for letters, papers, and memories.
She wasn’t aware of the effect she had, I know. I’ve seen her later, walking through other towns, with the same stride, the same amazed look in her eyes. It always seemed that she’d taken it upon herself to be at home everywhere and a stranger everywhere, at home and a stranger in the same instant; and as if from time to time it dawned on her what she was paying for and with.
The writing is so unusual. Fragments of recollections are spread on the page, interspersed with guesswork and extrapolations. She is piecing together a life from what she knows and what she imagines – and the reader is always chasing a little to keep up. It’s like an impressionist painting, but where nothing quite coheres. The Quest for Christa T reminded me a lot of Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, but where that exercise in piecing together a life flows in beautiful, poetic sentences, like the coming in and going out of tides, there is no similar beauty in Wolf’s writing. It is beautiful, but in a different way – a stark, disjointed, abstract way. Each sentence is set at slightly the wrong angle to the next one. So, even when the words are profound or lovely, they don’t quite settle before we see Christa from a different vantage. We are putting together an impression of a life at one remove, with jigsaw pieces that don’t quite align.
As such, it isn’t an easy or quick read. I found I really had to concentrate as I read it. But it definitely rewards the effort. It’s not the sort of novella that I think I’ll remember in terms of the details – but I’ll certainly remember an impression of Wolf’s novel, and what it felt like to read it.
I love your final comment about remembering not details from the novel but instead impressions and what it felt like to read it. I was just trying to describe to my daughter what the novel I am reading now is about — Sarah Perry’s Melmoth — a f I already have trouble summoning up details. But the overall gloom and coldness of the novel is the best I could come up with to describe it.
I read this a few years ago for women in Translation month. I certainly remember the feel of the book more than specific incidents. I do remember someone shouting loudly through a tube or something. It is quite fragmentary. So, I can understand you being reminded of Jacob’s Room, which I think I read after Christ’s T. I thought it was a quite challenging read but very evocative.
Welcome to #germanlitmonth, Simon. Better late than never. 😉
Great review, Simon! I loved the image of the ‘jigsaw pieces that don’t quite align’. :)
It *is* excellent, isn’t it and as you say the writing is most unusual – I don’t know what I’ve read anything else like it. Not a quick read, but definitely a worthwhile one!
Thanks, now I’m really intrigued!
I don’t think I would describe any of her work as an easy read, but it is all stunning, and very thought provoking.
I read this book in 1991, a long time ago. At the time, my mum had just died, and I very much identified with the quest to find Who Christa T was. I too, like another commenter above, remember Christa T’s yell or hoot of some kind in the Novell, which the author is reflecting on many years . I can’t remember the text, but do remember Christa being portrayed as a care free spirit against a back drop of constriction and oppression. I remember the friend (the author ?) Of Christa T searching for her, her need for her….what she (christA T) meant in her great simplicity of a person….almost an idealization on the part of the author…..as we tend to idealize those we have lost in our grief. I loved the book. Must get a copy and read again now I’m old. Also remember the description of Christa T’s brown tan in her 32nd year…..have I got that right. I think this was just before her death, and if I remember rightly .. something about Christa T coming into her own. The world was about to change dramatically in the 60’s…..I feel the author is torn between the past while being drawn to the future, after all, here she is now without all that Christa T was, and a world without a Christa T, would make for a duller future. Who could make such a noise as didChrista T. Against all decorum and political mores of the time. Perhaps the author portrays her desire,bor a cultural desire for the spontenaity of Christa T. And a life unfettered in a post war world.