Brodecks Bericht (Brodeck’s Report) is a powerful and haunting work of literature.
The original novel was written by Claudel in French. I read the German translation, rather than the English one, because I wanted to work on rejuvenating my literary German. After reading the book, and realizing how much play on language Claudel used for effect, I am glad I did, as I do not know how this could have worked anywhere near as well in the English translation.
For instance, in the French original, they refer to “the event” always as „l‘Ereignis“, the stranger as „le Fremder“, and the victim as „l’Anderer”. These words must appear to the French ear at a minimum as strange, and most likely, even after more than 65 years have passed since World War II, they must invoke feelings of discomfiture.
The story takes place after World War II, somewhere in Alsace, the border region between France and Germany that was in dispute between the two countries for centuries. Alsace was the first “bite” Hitler took into France when he provoked the western front and he took back the land the French took after World War I.
In an unnamed village of 400 souls, where most of the villagers have German names, they call the Germans the “strangers” as they came to occupy and conquer their land in the war.
Brodeck was an orphan from a far-away land. We don’t even know which. Presumably he was Jewish, but being an orphan, not even that is clear and we can only assume. He ends up at the village after being picked up by a woman refugee and she becomes his nurse and housekeeper for all his life.
When a murder takes place in the village, the villagers ask Brodeck to write a report about the events leading up to it, to somehow absolve them of the responsibility. Brodeck is one of the few villagers that have some university education and they pick him because he is a good writer.
As Brodeck researches the event, we get an intensely personal view of life in the village, both present and past, from his narrations. He flips between telling his life story, growing up as an orphan child, eventually being hauled into a concentration camp by the Nazis, and telling of the present goings-on that lead to the murder.
The story is extremely colorful, graphic, and haunting. The greater atrocities and injustices that took place in Europe of World War II are condemned, but ironically, the villagers, in their own micro-world, are mimicking the injustices. The gist is that being different, strange, from somewhere else, is bad and not to be trusted. This goes as far as justifying annihilation of the strange and different elements in the macro world, as the Nazis did, and killing a stranger just because he is different, in the micro world of the village.
Brodecks Bericht, Brodeck’s Report, puts a powerful spotlight on what went on in World War II in France and Germany, on the large stage, but more importantly, in the hearts of individuals.
Rating: ****