Bread and Brilliance

Christoph Meckel is a contemporary poet, novelist, and graphic artist whose works have yet to receive in North America the critical attention they deserve. Some of his fascinating and enigmatic short stories promise to become classics. `Der Zund' is a masterful short story which has implications far beyond the destiny of its deliberately unpretentious protagonist. Uwe-Michael Gutzschhahn, in his excellent dissertation on Meckel, points out the dualism in structure and narrative style in this story and perceives it as narrating the liberation of its protagonist from the bonds of obligation, freeing him to exist in an ideal state of `kindhaften Ungebundenseins. I do not dispute this interpretation, which clearly reflects the spirit of the rebellious era in which the story was engendered (1964); the wave of youthful resistance to convention which swept Western Europe as well as this continent is surely echoed in Zund's rhapsodic escape from conformity. However, I should like to draw an additional conclusion which centers not on the protagonist but on the mysterious entity, `die Geschichte,' which evidently directs his fate. The central figure in Christoph Meckel's `Der Zund' is unintelligent, inarticulate, and unappealing. `Eine gleichermasen fluchtige und hartnackige Erscheinung, in Gasthausern sitzend, an der Omnibushaltestelle herumlungernd, kleinkopfig, stumpfaugig, lallend und lachelnd, wenig mitteilsam und ziemlich lastig.' 2 Zund is a simpleton, and the events in the story are as uncomplicated as the man himself: he

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