224
t.4ICHAEL ROLOFF
were a few years in which it
was
terribly difficult to decide which
language I should choose. These were a few very difficult
years,
those years of transition. Only in the beginning of the fifties did
I
realize that I would write in Gennan from then on. That took a
very
long time to decide. Then I began again. The first book I
wrote
entirely in German was
Der Schatten des Kempers des Kutschers.
ROLOFF:
Are the books you wrote entirely in German obtainable in Swe–
dish in your own translations?
WEISS:
Yes, they are available in Swedish but not
in
my own translations.
I looked at the translations and made many suggestions but I would
not have liked to write the same books twice.
ROLOFF:
Being almost bilingual places you in a very special relationship
to language as such, doesn't it?
WEISS:
Yes, one could say that it gives one a very sharpened, very critical
attitude toward language, an instrument which one treats very critical–
ly, which I haven't ever been able
to
treat with complete freedom and
naturalness, at least not at first, when it gave me great difficulty.
The fact that one has to reflect time and again about so very many
things, how one goes about writing such a thing in the first place,
that was why
Der Schatten des Korpers des Kutchers
was a purely
linguistic exercise for me, that is why it is so complicated. I wanted
to find out how well I could handle the language: that's why it con–
tains these immensely intricate, long and difficult sentences.
ROLOFF:
In an essay about your work, Just Nolte has this to say about
Kutscher:
"Meaninglessness reveals itself in a series of fascinating ,
images." I wonder whether you had meant to express meaningless–
ness with this piece?
WEISS:
No. What interested me was the absolute isolation of the life
led in such a farmhouse. I was not striving for anything symbolic
whatsoever. The Coachman or anything of the sort is not meant
symbolically. For me, these were just persons in the country.
The
entire piece is quite realistic as far as I am concerned. I just hap–
pened to know people who did live like that and I know such
people and such a milieu in Sweden where there are' such completely
isolated farm houses where people just sit around. There are such
houses in Strindberg and Swedenborg. Swedenborg's descriptions of
hell contain such isolated farms with goats and pigs and dirt ...
ROLOFF:
Is it customary at the end of these descriptions for a virile
coachman to come and deliver coal?
WEISS:
Well, he comes from the outside world and that,makes a some-
