In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

136 ARRAYS
and guilt-ridden over a marriage that has remained childless for many
years, he has become impotent and is obsessed with hallucinations about
killing his wife. A Freudian cure offers Dr. Fellmann redemption from
his sufferings and renews his sexual vitality. The final scenes of the film
show the reconciled couple and their new baby happily enjoying a vacation-in
an Alpine setting.
But how can a constellation that looks so much like a literary motifmountainous
landscapes, death, and sexuality-be part of the publicly
shared stock of knowledge? And how is it possible that, as a complex
element of social knowledge, this constellation even becomes a social
reality? Numerous narratives of mountaineering develop and illustrate
the tacit assumptions that frequently link icy mountains to erotic desire
and violent death. In the third chapter of Rene Schickele's novel Maria
Capponi, Claus, the narrator-protagonist, and his wife, Doris, set out for
a trek across a glacier. Their relationship suffers from symptoms similar
to those of the couples in Schnitzler's Traumnovelle and in Pabst's Geheimnisse
einer Seele. This is why Doris and Claus not only rely on the
psychic healing power of the Alpine environment, but find it important
to undertake their tour without a guide. It is thus due to their own
temerity that, after some hours of hiking and climbing, they fall into a
crevasse. Or rather, they slowly glide into the abyss as the soft snow sinks
beneath the weight of their bodies. The slowness of their fall into the
subterranean spaces of the mountain plateau seems to announce that the
hours of agony which follow will bring to Doris and Claus an ultimate
experience of deep and genuine meaning. [see Authenticity vs. Artificiality]
At first, they do not realize the danger of their situation. But when
it finally occurs to them that no one will come to their rescue for quite
a long time-because nobody knows where they were going-a strange
euphoria comes over Doris. This confrontation with mortality intensifies
her life spirit [see Boxing, Bullfighting, Mummies] and restores her ability
to rouse Claus into an ecstasy of desire: "'No, we only wish to see
how a person feels when crossing that smooth rainbow bridge! My
dearest, you're a poet, though you've served in the infantry. Do you
know now what you're experiencing? Your wife freezing to death!' ...
I took her in my arms. On the floor of the crevasse it was too narrow
for us to lie side by side, but that didn't bother us. We sank into caresses-our
blood, our ears roared with desire. 'Never have you loved
me this way!' Doris exclaimed suddenly, and cried out again, her heart