The Siding - Stefan Grabiński
- Author
- Stefan Grabiński
- Title
- The Siding and Other Stories
- Edition
- Suhrkamp 1978, 300 pages
- Language
- German translation by Klaus Staemmler, original language: Polish
When I discovered the short story collection The Siding by Stefan Grabiński in an antiquarian bookshop in the city of Schweinfurt, I had never heard of this author before. But with a buying price of 3 € you feel like taking a risk and the dust cover blurb had already piqued my interest: it tells us that Stefan Grabiński (* 1887, † 1936) was a Polish high school teacher in the city of Lwów/Lviv/Lemberg as well as the author of fantastic short stories and novels who, “like Lovecraft” portrayed lonely, eccentric outsiders as protagonists who have to face an unknowable, threatening world and an inescapable fate.
After I had bought and read the book, the afterword - written by none other than Stanisław Lem - as well as Wikipedia also informed me that Grabiński was a sickly, withdrawn and dreamy child, later developed a strong interest in parapsychology, occultism, demonology and both Eastern and Christian mysticism and is often described as “the Polish [Edgar Allan] Poe”. This comparison seems more fitting to me than the one with Lovecraft. Although if I were asked of whom I had been reminded the most when reading Grabiński, personally I would have said Algernon Blackwood.
Themes
“Suddenly it seemed to Boroń as if he heard the sound of naked feet treading on the floor of the corridor. […] The conductor already knew what this meant; this was not the first time that he had heard these footsteps on the train. He stuck his head out and peered through the twilight of the wagon. […] it was only for a second that he caught sight of his hunched body, dripping with sweat. Boroń trembled: the Sloven had appeared in the train again.” ~ The Sloven (Smoluch)
The aforementioned authors as well as Grabiński’s interests give us a taste of what we are in for: in this collection of short stories we become witness to strange, supernatural phenomena seep into the seemingly orderly and modern world of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Peculiar foreboding, manic obessions and alien moods changing their entire personality overcome the protagonists, eerie apparitions are sighted, strange creatures hide in abandoned industrial buildings, night after night the shadows cast a detailed murder scene on a white curtain and lonely huts in the woods never bode well.
Apparently the same goes for women too. The reader cannot help but notice that merely three female characters are portrayed in a positive light in these short stories, with two of them being already dead at the onset of the plot and only living as idealized images in the heads of the protagonists. All other women in Grabińskis stories either directly embody a demonic and destructive force, or are at least so depraved that their immoral influence leads the male protagonist (who is often quite receptive to that immorality, in all fairness) straight on the way towards his doom. Some short stories indeed evoke a peculiar atmosphere of sinister and threatening eroticism, partly with explicit passages.
The short stories in this edition can be categorized into three groups, each with its own theme:
- Railway stories: these type of stories are all about a fascination with frenzied speed, breaking through time and space, overcoming vast distances and narrow, pre-defined tracks. The protagonists become obsessed with one (or all) of these fascinations, are confronted with one of their manifestations, or experience the train as a world of its own, away fro the “normal world”, where they can live another life or are overcome by a different state of mind and develop a different personality.
- Fire stories: in my opinion generally the weakest stories in the collection, they present the element of fire with an unconditional will to destroy and slowly taking over those people, who were either born with a fascination for flames and burning or who dare to challenge the element. The best of these stories, while being very predictable, is “The Fire Site” (Pożarowisko), which does make an impression by its portrayal of the merry, disconnected descent of its protagonists into pyromania, unnoticed by themselves.
- Parapsychological stories: the “classics” in regard to their topics: hypnosis, evil doppelgangers, demonic creatures and ghostly apparitions, telepathy and energetic vampirism, sometimes with a psychological component. To me, these are the best and most effective stories of this edition.
Writing style and effect
Soft willow rods, swayed by the summer breeze, stood along the wall, crying over the sad lot of humanity. A hunched shadow slid along the wall, stretched upward, grew longer and longer and then disappeared in the garden. Phantasms scurried over the wall, where the chalk had crumbled. They recognized me from afar and called me to them with signs. They clattered and rattled with their giant jaws, grasped with the sparrowhawk claws of their shaggy hands or ran ahead, leading the way, goading me into following - evil, snickering, unassailable…" ~ On the Trail (Na tropie)
Most of these stories have a dense atmosphere, Grabiński knows how to create tension as well as an ominous, sometimes surreal mood. His style of writing is clear and rather sober, he does not lose himself in digressions or theatric exaggerations. I will have to add something regarding this verdict at the end of the review, though.
However, his characters are mostly portrayed in a superfical manner. In these stories you will not find main and side characters with fascinating personalities, with complexity or psychological depth to them. But some of his protagonists can get interesting in their monomania. The best example for this is train driver Grot from the eponymous story (Maszynista Grot).
It also has to be said that the quality of the stories in this collection varies. Some left me with a feeling that I can only describe as “So what?”. Others come off as a little too constructed and forced, at least in my opinion. And it is not a rare occurrence to see the supposedly “surprising plot twist” coming from miles away.
That can really hurt some of the stories, but it does not necessarily have to in all cases. Some of the affected stories still work and have their appeal, even though the solution to the mystery is obvious from almost the beginning. Yet the dense, mysterious and surreal atmosphere und the build up of a threatening tension will still make an impression upon the reader.
Personal favorites
“I slowly pulled the tiepin with the opal from my necktie and thrust it into her naked foot. Blood sprayed, a cry of pain sounded - but it had come out of my throat: at the same moment I had felt a fierce pain in my foot. With a strange smile, Jadwiga looked at the blood which seeped out of her wound in large, ruby-red drops. No word of complaint came out of her mouth…” ~ Szamota’s Mistress (Kochanka Szamoty)
That can also be said about two of those three stories which to me are the best in this collection, despite their “mystery” being very obvious. My favorites are all from the third category of themes that I laid out above:
- Fumes (Czad): An engineer gets hopelessly lost in a snowstorm, until he discovers a lonely and ramshackle inn at the wayside. There he is served by a lecherous, intrusive old man and an equally lascivious young woman. Who strangely enough can never be seen in the same room at the same time.
- The Raven (Kruk): the title already gives away that this is the most “Poe-like” story. A young man feels irresistibly drawn to the grave of a woman completely unknown to him and discovered only by chance. Yet it seems that the grave is guarded by a raven, who is not happy about the visitor.
- Szamota’s Mistress (Kochanka Szamoty): After the protagonist has been consumed by a burning yet unfullfilled and secret passion for the town beauty for years, his wildest dreams seem to become true all of a sudden: the woman he so desires, only just returned from a long stay abroad, sends Szamota a letter, inviting him to visit her with no uncertain intentions. However, she only ever receives him at night, in her seemingly empty house, her darkened bedroom and in complete silence.
Final verdict
“While his wife gave piano lessons to Józio in the living room, Rojecki decided to throw a ›surprise‹ for them. Silently, without attracting attention, he sneaked into the bedroom with a bottle of spirit and poured its entire content on one of the pillows. Then he lit it up.” ~ The Fire Site (Pożarowisko)
Grabiński cannot reach the hights of the initially mentioned authors - Lovecraft, Poe, Blackwood - whose works lend themselves to comparison with his. Their works are more facetted and richer in depth, finesse, complexity and bizarre creativity. Yet this is not to say that Grabiński has nothing to offer, only because he is surpassed by the grand masters of this genre.
Grabiński has a style of his own and clearly an allure of his own. Reading his short stories, with a few exceptions, was a pleasurable and gripping experience to me and I felt well entertained. If I get the chance to read more by this author, I will definitely not hesitate to do so.
About this I have to make two remarks, though: Grabiński also wrote novels, but Stanisław Lem, in his afterword, attests that they have “unfortunately become unreadable”, because Grabiński uses them as a stage for displaying his own scholarliness and erudition as well as portraying decidedly superficial, cookie-cutter black-and-white plots and protagonists. I cannot judge the accuracy of that and personally I would not let Lem’s verdict keep me from at least giving Gabiński’s novels a try, if I should come across them.
The second remark is in regrards to my German edition from 1978 by the Suhrkamp publishing house: I definitely can not recommend this edition! In a final note by the translator we learn that the German translation of several short stories in this edition is not only based on a Polish edition, where the stories were significally edited and shortened, with whole passages cut out, which was done without consent of the author posthumously. What is more, the German translator confesses to have cut other stories in a similar unauthorized way too!
Above I mentioned that Grabiński writes in a concise way and is not prone to digressions. Yet here we learn that both the publisher of the Polish edition as well as the German translator agree that Grabiński has a tendency for describing scenes of landscape and nature in a lyrical and excessive way which does not only have no purpose for the plot but would furthermore destroy the atmosphere and expose the entire story to ridicule.
That may be so. I cannot judge the accuracy of that verdict either - and this is exactly what really irritates me here: this judgement should be left to the reader! Instead of depriving me of the possibility to come to my own conclusions in that regard, the Polish publisher and the German translator rushed ahead, “only for my own good” and distorted the works of a deceased author, who could no longer defend his writings.
It this both this aspect, this insolence and disrespect for the author, and the disrespect for the reader, this obtrusive, unsolicited paternalism towards the reader, that strikes me as intolerable. If I read the works of any author it should theoretically be taken for granted that I get to read them in the way that the author intended them to be read and how they were published during his lifetime, with his consent in regards to editing.
Which parts of an author’s writings are redundant, digressive, anticlimactic and/or ridiculous is a judgement which should be left to and made by each respective reader own their own. For one, different readers are very likely to reach very different conclusions and after all this is the only way in which one can come to their personal verdict about an author and their works.
If someone thinks they know better and can do better than an author, then I strongly urge them to write their own works, instead of engaging in “well-intentioned” tampering with the works of somebody else, in order to “improve” them. Therefore: Grabiński - recommended. This cut German edition - not recommended.