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Highjinks in Helvetia
Imagine, if you will, literature as a holiday destination. Instead of travelling to Mont Saint-Michel this year, or visiting the Uffizi Gallery in Florence or revamped Berlin, you visit Literature. Rather than making for Barcelona or Marrakesh, your destination goes by the name of Literature. Forget the pale green waters of the Atlantic or the seaweedy depths of the Mediterranean and bathe instead in Literature. Imagine a train carrying you ever higher through the Swiss Alps - it rounds a corner into a valley imbued with southern charm. This is Wallis and the result of thousands of years of the Rhone's pounding of the cliffs. You come to a small town called Leuk that seems a little lost among the vineyards and pine woods. Here you transfer to a bus with a collection of figures who look somewhat out of place in their crumpled summer dresses and black jackets, their shoulder-bags and suitcases on wheels. Now your suspicions are probably aroused. The coach sweeps you round tight hairpin bends, up through a rugged valley to a plateau nestled on which is an apparently sleepy village of traditional chalets and boldly designed hotels: Leukerbad. A spa with thermal waters that have enticed guests for over five hundred years, a wellness resort in the middle of a dramatic Alpine panorama, surrounded by precipitous craggy cliffs and soaring snow-capped peaks, up to three thousand metres in height. What the devil lies in store? For the next three days you'll wander from Turkish baths to plush hotel, from Art Nouveau café to simple pub or the now disused railway station, indulging in literature wherever your feet take you. You'll meet writers, idlers, booksellers, reviewers and readers; there is no avoiding them. You'll snatch glances at awe-inspiring pinnacles of rock as you listen to poetry recitals in Spanish, Turkish or perhaps Icelandic. You'll splash in pools of warm water beneath the open skies as you're introduced to new works by well-known authors from Germany, Austria or Switzerland. And, come midnight, you'll dangle up the Gemmi Pass in a cable car. Just tell yourself that vertigo and the pressures of altitude are but an invention of literature. Worry not, you'll come through unscathed, even if you don't have a head for heights. I should know. I've had the pleasure several times. It was here in the Turkish baths, in a haze of chlorine and sulphur, softened like a sponge by warmth and humidity, that I heard Raoul Schrott indulge in a lascivious recitation of oriental poetry. Later that evening Raymond Federman was reading in the Alten Bad St. Laurent and he teased me afterwards for being dressed all in black: 'You young Europeans! Can't shake off existentialism, hahaha.' It was here that Andreij Stasiuk thundered, Frank Schätzing swaggered, Herta Müller lamented, and Sybille Lewitscharoff sang. The remarkable thing as a member of the audience is the intimacy, being so close to the passages read and the voices. And vice versa for the author. After my own reading I was party to unusually inquisitive looks in the narrow lanes between the weathered wooden houses. For the duration of the three-day festival participants form a tight-knit community. You greet one another, clink glasses, share the good and the bad. One midnight hour I found myself on a mountain peak with Judith Hermann as shadowy crows swished by and nearby in a mountain hut a musical reading by Peter Weber started up. The temptation to make the summer pilgrimage to the Literature Fesitval in Leukerbad an annual event is great. A must for all those who yearn in equal measure for literature and mountains. For those more at home on flat country, however, there is a spring festival that doesn't require such a head for heights: the Literaturtage (Days of Literature) in Solothurn. In this tranquil town on the banks of the River Aare it is predominantly Swiss literary figures who gather in a mood of merry conviviality at festival time: one is among friends, everyone knows everyone. Literature from all four parts of the country is presented and the readings are correspondingly in German, French, Italian or Rhaeto-Romanic. The bill of fare is spiced with a prominent guest from abroad. Last year it was J.M. Coetzee. His reading occasioned a stampede, scenes of commotion, tickets sold on the black market for an exorbitant price-tag. Solothurn, located between Basel, Bern and Zurich, at the foot of the Jura mountains, is arranged around a quaint old-town and exudes its own special charm. Here and there traces of a near illustrious past can be discovered, the odd baroque building from the days of the French legation, and the reason that Solothurn is described as an ambassadorial town. The imposing St Ursen Cathedral is reminiscent of southern towns while the partially preserved town walls in their turn contain echoes of the distant Middle Ages. Sitting of an evening on the terrace of the Kreuz Restaurant where almost thirty years ago, or so legend has it, the Solothurn Literature Days were hatched up, you can almost smell the sweat of those founding fathers. Over bottles of wine and overflowing ash-trays it was here that the importance of literature was hotly debated while a stone's throw away the Aare flowed silently past. It was here, then, that Max Frisch held forth, that Otto F. Walter cussed, that Peter Bichsel poked fun, and Gertrud Leutenegger mumbled. Here that Swiss literature armed itself for battle - not for the sake of advances or print runs, but for the sanctity of interpretation. Now, too, one could easily wander into the former hospital and stumble upon a room full of discussion about the relevance of contemporary literature; speakers humming and hawing, phrases mulled over, misunderstandings proliferating. It is as though the ghosts of yore have wakened. The same old subjects, fighting their corner for the supremacy of the written word, its validation and efficacy. And always bubbling beneath the surface is the unspoken question: can literature get the better of politics? More than anything, though, the Solothurn Literature Days are a celebration of homegrown literary production, with particular attention paid to tradition, and to the variety and fringes of Swiss writing. In some ways the Literature Days are the personification of Switzerland: modest and defiant, not huge but arranged with aplomb and carefully reflecting the proportional representation of languages. Those who have never heard a word of Rhaeto-Romanic are guaranteed a taste of it here. In contrast to the more internationally oriented Literature Festival in Leukerbad set up by the pioneering spirit of one individual, the Zurich publisher Ricco Bilger, the Solothurn Literature Days date back to a general resolve shared by local literary figures and arts editors. This remains apparent in the programming today: while the selection of authors in Leukerbad is made by one person, currently Hans Ruprecht, in Solothurn a six-person committee of experts, that changes every year or two, decides who will be invited. The original aim of Solothurn was that the literature should take its place alongside the daily activities of the public. Leukerbad's creed was that literature should be brought to the public. Broadly speaking these aims may seem similar and yet the thinking behind them does differ in principle. While in Solothurn politico-cultural considerations hold sway, in Leukerbad the presumed interest of readers takes centre stage. Over time the two events have grown a little closer in terms of programming with both devoting more time to the endeavours of literary translation, for example, and one maxim rings true for both: that literature should be the trigger for encounters with, in spite of, and within literature. Leukerbad and Solothurn are certainly the highpoints in the Swiss literary calendar. A new event has been set up in Basel, too, albeit one suffused with the spirit of the major book fairs, the frenetic activity round its stands more reminiscent of Frankfurt or Leipzig. If however your personal tastes are rather for dizzying Alpine heights or meandering rivers, a literary holiday in either of these two delightful resorts could be for you. This year's Solothurn Literature Days take place from 21 to 23 May. More information at: www.literatur.ch The International Literature Festival in Leukerbad runs from 29 June to 1 July. More information at: www.literaturfestival.ch Translated by Rebecca Morrison
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