David Kehlmann’s Tyll, translates from German by Ross Benjamin, takes us to the dark, murky woods of Germany, to a village within which an unusual young boy practices walking on a tightrope. His name: Tyll Ulenspeigel. A German legend, Tyll has been seen dancing through the pages of German history since the 1500’s, and is now transplanted into the thirty years war. Having hovered on the edges of German imagination for centuries, the legendary figure is breathed once more into life, his story told anew as he skips through the novel like a shadow.
‘What has gotten into you?’
‘ ‘The great, great devil!’ The boy says cheerfully.’
Kehlmann delves into German folklore, painting a dangerous land ruled over not by the powers fighting over it, but by violence, folklore and religion. When Tylll’s father is murdered in the most medieval fashion, Tyll leaves for the road with a young village girl, and thus the making of Tyll Ulenspeigel begins. Although his early chapters read as an origin story of sorts, Kehlmann maintains the ambiguity of the legendary figure, and I still feel as though I know nothing more than flashes of his character. A detached boy, and a lively but unknowable adult, he is untouchable, a character held together by his consistent love of light-hearted pranks and tricks. As he transforms from a boy to a legend, there is a certain on-the-nose awareness that he will live forever in the immortality of the written word, a recurring wish of the characters in the novel as they pine for their remembrance.
Tyll flits from page to page like a will o’ the wisp, and I chased him across Germany, through war-torn countryside, murky forests, and courtly palaces. Popping up like a jack in the box, Tyll encounters significant people of the age, as Kehlmann cleverly weaves historical figures throughout the novel. With lively wit and entertaining pranks, Kehlmann, through Tyll, brings great men down from their Heavenly pedestals, while amusing side notes from a modern perspective accompany each epic tale, correcting embellishment and hypocrisy. Events are experienced through the lens of an omniscient, unfaithful narrator, as Kehlmann shows how fickle history really is; with conflicting reports and perspectives, the reader must decide on whose side of the fence they wish to fall.
‘But do you know what’s better? Even better than dying in one’s bed?’
‘Not dying, little Liz. That is much better.’
As the novel came to a close, I was left with the feeling that I had skipped through several different epics, a mere peek through the window of young Germany’s history, as the country and the language begin to take their shape, in the way a roughly hewn rock is gradually fashioned into a sculpture. Kehlmann invites you to step into an intricately carved world of spirits, tradition, and war, revealing the hard life of a traveler in a land where community is the barrier between life and death. We see villages torn apart by soldiers, and the laughable gymnastics of diplomacy as peace is slowly brought to the land once more. And all the while, Tyll slips into the immortality of legend.
Nice