C: Bilder und Sagen aus der Schweiz / Pictures and Legends from Switzerland

Gotthelf`s Text Collection  

The narrative collection of Bilder und Sagen aus der Schweiz (Pictures and Legends from Switzerland) was originally published in six individual volumes in 1842–1848 by the Solothurn Publishing House Jent & Gassmann and was never again printed in this very form. Gotthelf united narratives therein that are still considered amongst the most well-known works of the priest-poet: The first volume began with Die schwarze Spinne (The Black Spider), an impressively composed novella that simultaneously posed as an allegory to the ambivalences of the concept of freedom. Gotthelf edited two previously printed texts toward the initial volume of his narrative collection (Ritter von Brandis, Das gelbe Vögelein und das arme Margrithli) (The Knight of Brandis, The Yellow Birdie and Poor Margie).

The second volume follows with the historic novella Der Druide (The Druid) as well as the narrative text Geld und Geist oder die Versöhnung (Money and Spirit or the Redemption) which he subsequently developed into a novel. It is popular nowadays not least thanks to a film-version that is one of the more demanding cinematic adaptions of his work. Originally, he had intended it to be a contemporary novella, but then he extended this text about a Bernese farm into two sequels. The scholarly edition marks the first time this text is made accessible since its original publication and includes all the progressive extensions added along its path. It also includes the historic novellas in their original context, which to varying degrees define interpersonal relationships, family, homeland, freedom and duty as seen in both history and the present.

Volumes three to six contain, in addition to the previously mentioned sequels, the two novellas Der letzte Thorberger und Die Gründung Burgdorfs (The Last Man from Thorberg and The Founding of Burgdorf) which are partly reminiscent of the Scottish novelist Walter Scott. Both these texts reveal Gotthelf as an imaginative narrator, one who retains his view on the anthropological challenges that life poses to man throughout changeable historic circumstances. The scholarly edition provides the collection of narratives in its complete textual form. Diverging drafts or later editing are integrated into the variant apparatus and greater divergences are made accessible in this rendition as integral edition. The manuscripts are comprised within one single volume that is further equipped with both a facsimile and a commentary. The two-volume text edition will be extended with an in-depth commentary.