Crossing Frontiers: Cultural Exchange and Conflict; Papers in Honour of Malcolm Pender ed. by Barbara Burns and Joy Charnley (review)

According to the introduction, the theme of this volume is “intercultural exchange and its potential either for positive or negative outcomes” (7). This is certainly a fair summary of the contents and is far more accurate than the back cover, which suggests that all the contributions focus on Swiss studies. While Swiss studies, in particular Swiss German studies, does dominate, there are several chapters that do not fit into this category. Additionally, there is a clear emphasis on literary studies, although other cultural and linguistic areas are not ignored. With few exceptions, the main period of interest is firmly in the twentieth century.

For those readers whose main interests lie in the field of Swiss studies, the collection boasts a broad range. Darius Komorowski discusses two pieces by the author Hermann Burger, the short story “Diabelli” and the novel Die künstliche Mutter. Thérèse Moreau looks at the depiction of cities, principally Geneva, in a number of works by Alice Rivaz. Beatrice von Matt traces Max Frisch’s fascination with the sea throughout his life: an unexpected interest for a writer from a land-locked country. One of the coeditors, Barbara Burns, provides a very readable introduction to Eveline Hasler’s Ibicaba (1985) and Die Wachsflügelfrau (1991), both of which are historical novels dealing with the Swiss past; the other coeditor, Joy Charnley, turns to French-speaking Switzerland for a study of the travel writer Laurence Deonna, who has visited the Middle East extensively. Regina Wecker analyzes Iris von Roten’s Frauen im Laufgitter (1958) and suggests a number of persuasive reasons for its surprising lack of impact on postwar feminism. Rémy Charbon focuses on new directions in Swiss German dialect literature, using Hansjörg Schneider’s version of Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell as a case study and mixing linguistic analysis with a brief history of the amateur dramatic tradition in Altdorf. Felicity Rash considers why some contemporary Swiss German authors, such as Roger Graf and Ruth Schweikert, are using Standard German words even when there are perfectly good Swiss German alternatives. Dorota Sošnicka considers Zsuzsanna Gahse’s Instabile Texte and its depiction of contemporary Switzerland. None of these chapters demands any great prior knowledge of Swiss studies, and indeed most of them are of an introductory nature. Several of these chapters also give a glimpse into women’s issues in Switzerland, a country that at times seems out-of-step with its European neighbors.

The remaining chapters are, perhaps inevitably, something of a mixed bag without the Swiss studies theme to tie them together. Moray McGowan reveals the intertextual references in Ja, sagt Molly by the Turkish-German writer Kemal Kurt. Judith Purver analyzes some Eichendorff settings by Prince Albert. Gordon Burgess describes Wolfgang Borchert’s last few months before his death, a period that—and this links it somewhat to the volume’s main theme—was dominated by the legal and financial difficulties of traveling to Switzerland just after World War II. Donal McLaughlin highlights the debt that Ingo Schulze’s Simple Storys owes to the work of Raymond Carver.

There is only one real disappointment in the collection as a whole, and that is that Pedro Lenz’s poem Der Lottoschein is given only in translation, in a Scottish English rendering by Donal McLaughlin. This is a missed opportunity! Reading the lively, bawdy verses made me wonder why the editors had decided against a parallel text, particularly as the biographical notes at the end of the collection inform us that it has a history of bilingual delivery. Having the two versions side by side in the original and in translation would have made for a fascinating comparison and might well have provided a stimulus for university classes in translation.

As with any festschrift, there is also an opportunity to learn something about the honoree, in this case Professor...