Kuno Raeber

Das Ei

«Ich brauchte nur hier im Caffè della Cancelleria sitzen zu bleiben und das Schreibzeug aus meiner Mappe zu nehmen und die Kaffeetasse und das Ei im Eierbecher beiseite zu schieben und den Block vor mir hinzulegen und zu schreiben anzufangen, und ich war Laszlo Toth und war mehr als Laszlo Toth.»

The first-person narrator is sitting in a café in Rome just opposite the Lateran and ponders over a white sheet of paper. He is thinking about the shameful act of Laszlo Toth. In 1972 Toth had damaged the Pietà in the Vatican with a hammer and had thereby pre-empted the first-person narrator. So the latter can only repeat the inglorious act and make it “more complete and more perfect” through words.

“The Egg”, this fascinating, extravagant testimony of an effusive passion is the fantastically meandering tale about the desire to extinguish Maria – representative of the woman and the mother – and with her the very own existence as a son. The narrator then imagines himself into the line of succession of Christian martyrs. Yearning for freedom, at the same time captive in the realm of mothers he dreams of a brotherly community. Raeber’s novel is one big shrill outcry against the motherly, Marian institution. The desperate rebellion against woman paired with a male-mythical rapture in this prose is oddly anachronistic. However, the author manages to absorb this anachronistic dimension through a pompous language that brings forth the holy gravity and the rebellious spirit. No one mirrors the inner turmoil between discipline and debauchery as Raeber does, a turmoil that for a long time characterised the Catholic milieu of Central Switzerland.

(Beat Mazenauer, transl. by Anja Hälg)

Translation of title: The Egg

Erb Verlag, Düsseldorf 1981

ISBN: 3-312-00295-8