“Completely papered over”

Vienna, “some years ago.” We enter the apartment of a man known to his neighbors as the pension man. Here he lives with his wife and daughter. We enter his room.

Adalbert Stifter, “Tourmaline,” in Motley Stones, trans. Isabel Fargo Cole (New York: New York Review Books, 2021).

Stifter (1805–1868) is a master of extended and sometimes exceedingly strange description. This room makes me think of the allegory of the cave. It also makes me think of interior decoration as it might be practiced in a story by Kafka or Borges.

Motley Stones is a collection of six stories, each named for a mineral or rock.

More Stifter
A passage from The Bachelors : A passage from Rock Crystal

[According to Max Brod, Stifter was one of Kafka’s favorite writers. According to the cover copy of Motley Stones, Kafka referred to Stifter as “my fat brother.” Tourmaline is a mineral.]