Rock Crystal

Начало книги

ADALBERT Stifter is generally considered one of the great German stylists. The son of a linen weaver, Stifter was born in the Bohemian village of Oberplan in 1805, educated in a Benedictine monastery and at the University of Vienna and became an inspector of schools. All his life he suffered from fits of depression and anxiety; one of his adopted daughters died of typhus, the other, for no apparent reason, drowned herself in the Danube; in 1868, ill and discouraged by the public indifference to his two big novels, Nachsommer and Witiko, he cut his throat.

As might be expected from a man of his temperament, he loved tradition, order, childhood and the limpid serenity of the classical style. He never traveled without a volume of Goethe in his pocket and shared his master’s interest in natural history and geology; he was also a charming landscape painter. His prose may remind an English reader of W. H. Hudson.

Читать дальше →