Once a Greek

By Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Trans. Richard and Clara Winston

here's the assessment from long island occasions assessment of Books by way of Kurt Vonnegut:

une thirteen, 1965

Everything is going Like Clockwork
By KURT VONNEGUT, Jr.

ONCE A GREEK
By Friedrich Duerrenmatt.
Translated through Richard and Clara Winston from the German, "Grieche Sucht Griechin."
the object to appreciate approximately Friedrich Duerrenmatt is that his stories are lovely and queer Swiss clocks. There aren't any mechanical mysteries or flaws. The intricately twinkling, twitching works may be well-known via instances of glass, and so they make little dolls act out jerky little scenes of human love and greed and stupidity and homicide and politics and desire. The dolls are frankly dolls, doing what the equipment says they have to. there's one human soul at which to marvel--the soul of the inventor.

"Once a Greek..." is Durrenmatt's most modern e-book in the USA, a e-book 10 years previous in Europe. In it, the dolls of Duerrenmatt discover a toy Duerrenmatt urban, which has a Presidential Palace, an American Embassy, a white, satanic mill via Corbusier, the place every little thing from an obstetrical forceps to an atomic cannon is made; a countrywide paintings Gallery, a crematorium, a slum.

The inventor's top doll, Archilochos, the Greek within the identify, seeks love during this baroque, HO-gauge, middle-European Hell. alongside the way in which he learns a lesson that Nelson Eddy attempted to educate throughout the nice melancholy, that love and love by myself is worthy trying to find, that love and love by myself can pay off. Does he locate it? He does, as the clockwork says he has to.

Which isn't to mock Duerrenmatt. As i've got already indicated, he's a desirable, endearing maker of clocks. He chooses to write down this manner, invented this fashion of writing. The puzzle is: He seems attacking whatever brilliantly, yet what's it? a primary aim could be the white manufacturing facility, the place Archilochos works as one among millions of shabby bookkeepers. yet there by no means used to be this kind of manufacturing unit at any place, and there by no means can be. at the first ground is the Tank department, at the moment, the Atomic Cannon department, at the 3rd, the computer Gun Division...on the 7th, the Obstetrical Forceps department. Duerrenmatt is brilliant at describing palaces, down to the final putti, yet he doesn't supply a rattling approximately what glossy factories are quite like, or what smooth commercial jobs are quite like. Shoals of bookkeepers were allotted with for really a few time.

It fits the writer to populate this significantly winning manufacturing unit with pompous fools who don't know what's going. the sort of scenario isn't attainable. He indicates up politicians and educators and churchmen who're meant to not smoke or drink or devote adultery, notwithstanding they do all 3. this type of situation isn't really inevitable. Duerrenmatt easily desires issues that manner, for purposes of his own.

For purposes of his personal, he has the untalented, now not remarkably vibrant, unambitious clerk upward thrust in a short time. The clockwork reason behind the increase is one who was once utilized in "The Visit," too: a whore with strong connections. In describing the opulence of Archilochos's new existence, the palace, the furnishings, the garments, Duerrenmatt misfires hilariously whilst he tells us approximately his glamorous automobile. God aid us, it's a pink Studebaker. the superb translator shouldn't ever have allow that stand. Duerrenmatt wasn't creating a comic story. He has strong jokes, yet now not that kind.

His jokes are Jungian jokes, it sort of feels to me--private, Kraut, mythological. And, whereas he turns out to protest opposed to the absurdities of recent occasions, he doesn't care sufficient approximately them to benefit a lot approximately them. What now we have this is a sublime exploration of a Jungian dream.

"Archilochos begun wandering during the little rococo palace which now belonged to him," writes Duerrenmatt. "At first he had wandered approximately planlessly, yet after it slow he started following a coloured path, paper cutouts of blue, purple, and golden stars which lay at the smooth rugs and appeared evidently intended to steer him. He got here ultimately to an unforeseen slender, winding staircase which he reached via a mystery door within the wallpaper." and so forth. "Satire," says the ebook jacket. "Dream," say I.

The shades and the structures and the costumes are as stunning as something you are going to ever see.

Mr. Vonnegut is writer of "Cat's Cradle," "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" and different works of fiction.<