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What would a word heard in the green wood?
WHAT THE PAPERS SAY
"Marlen Schachinger writes with imagination and in a fairy tale voice; the fairy tale is grounded in reality by the plot and elevated to the mythical again by the genesis of words and playfulness of sounds. We eavesdrop on Lore and become, like her, collectors of stories. The parable is a quietly moving reminder of the warnings once made by Michael Ende. A ride on a new luckdragon on a quest for the harmonies of the colours of the world. The text is complemented by illustrations that also play with colours, and with words.
It's about permitting yourself to be affected by words, sounds, images, humanity. To find the profound and the true and to give yourself the time to immerse yourself in them."
Leseschatz / Hauke Harder
"Marlen Schachinger the master of creative coinages has dedicated this volume to a parable about our bewildering world. Illustrated in gorgeous detail with the author's own collages."
kunstSTOFF Nr. 42 / Juli 2023 / Beate Scholz
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A richly imaginative parable about the nature of worries and the power of art to overcome them: Lore Gyldenstern, an extra-ordinary creature, uncategorisable as any species, realises that humans are taking less and less notice of each other; nor do they have any real fondness for themselves. Lore teams up to come up with a creative and promising solution that gets to the root of the problem. A fantastical tale about the power of togetherness and the importance of art to being human: it's the small moments of stillness in experiencing the world that bring us happiness.
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Frozen breath stolen
Slips shatters away from lips
Numb blue and hoping
INSIGHT IN THE BLUE HOUR
pp.7-11
Lore Gyldenstern was neither big nor small, neither fat nor thin. Nor was she old or young, being 393. Lore was Lore – and rightly so. She was similar to others yet entirely herself: her hair flowed tree of heaven green. Sea green shone her eyes. From head to toe little golden-yellow Gyldenstern stars glittered on her, shimmering in the sun when she was happy.
Gyldenstern’s heart was so big that it could never ever all have fitted in someone’s chest, which was why it had long since plopped into Lore’s belly. And for Lore it beat there – not red, but golden.
Every time she touched something – the complex eye of a sunflower, for instance, or the feather-light liveliness of dandelion clocks puffed in the wind – her heart grew by a fraction of a grain of sand, and Lore with it.
Since her pointed ears could twist and turn, and her eyes could see round corners and through walls, she made joyous discoveries every day. She dashed to this or after that, be it the sun-bathed blinking of a peacock’s train, or the play of clouds in a puddle of rainwater. The whole world was her adventure, every scrap worth exploring. And it was enough to reach out her hand to all these beauties to make sense of them, for the palms of her hands hid beneath soft velvet seventy-seven sensitive buds. Then the tips of her seven fingers would shimmer, at a time brightly, at a time bashfully, equally: all depending. When Lore tickled joy forth, they took on a tint like the soft belly of the rainbow trout..
Should she be sad, though, her palms glimmered calming grey-green like the sea. So Lore was never sad for long; and the melodies of the world, which were always around her, did their part. Music was everywhere: in the ballads of the wind, in the gaiety of songbirds, in the steady beat of the rain; above all in the charm of words, each one of which was to her a singular song. Each night Lore lulled the syllables to sleep, and she tickled them awake with gentle vowels each morning.
Lore Gyldenstern lived in the trunk of an old corkscrew hazel, which for two hundred years had been twisting its arms towards heaven’s blue. Came the gentle morning breeze, its tiny crumpled jitterbug leaves loved to quiver and shake, playfully sparring with the wind at rustling and sighing – until the hazelnuts fell clattering to the forest floor in the autumn, so that as winter came, gradually, the corkscrew hazel leaves too could sail past the windows of Lore’s eyes, before in spring tender green would bud again, and the quivering and shaking begin anew.
Because the tree had lived so long its trunk had grown massive, and there, where four branches embraced one another, lived Lore Gyldenstern in her roomy hollow.
Each morning, when the long-eared owl came to rest after another night of hunting and the sun teased the fish and birds from their sleep, Lore too stretched and yawned, and looked at the walls around her. She was happy, for her treasures lived there, word for word, everything that she had collected: all the beauty of the world. ‘Hulled in hoarfrost’ stood where her left big toe pointed, ‘spring soft’ enthroned behind her right foot, ‘October gold’ and ‘sunlighted’ rejoiced in the middle.
In the gaps, though, the next fantastic adventure in sound was already singing its siren song.
© Marlen Schachinger 2023, translation Bryn Roberts 2024
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