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Ilse Aichinger, 1948
Lilly Axster
Katherine Klinger
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Reference text Aichinger
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Herod’s Children
Ilse Aichinger, 1948

“What’s your name?” shouted the Captain. “Where do you live?”
“One has to search for oneself,” whispered the secretary.
“Where’s your home?” asked a fat policeman, bending over her.
“The place where I lived,” said Ellen, “was never my home.”
“So where is your home?” repeated the policeman.
“Where your home is,” said Ellen.
“But where is our home?” shouted the Captain.
“Now you’re beginning to ask the right questions.”

If you can’t show an identity card you are lost. If you can’t show an identity card you are given up. Where shall we go? Who will find us our real identity? Who will help us to ourselves? Our grandparents have failed us. Our grandparents don’t vouch for us. Our grandparents have become our guilt. It’s their fault we’re here; their fault that we grow from night to night.

Since being banned from public gardens, especially since the adventure on the quayside, the children now made the last graveyard their playground. They played almost nothing but hide-and-seek, but the finding had become harder—finding oneself and each other. [1]
The last graveyard was full of desperate secrets, of spells and curses, and its graves ran wild. There were little stone houses with strange lettering, and benches on which you could sit to mourn; there had been butterflies and jasmine while it was summer and an abundance of secrecy, with wildly growing bushes over each grave. It hurt to play here, where every quick, romping shout immediately changed to fathomless yearning.

So there’s only one place left: the land where the dead live again. So there’s only one place left: the land where traveling birds and torn clouds are identified. So there’s only one place left.

/

Ilse Aichinger, Die größere Hoffnung (literally “The Greater Hope”) first published in German in 1948 by Bermann-Fischer Verlag NV, Amsterdam. All rights reserved by S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main. These quotations (with minor corrections) from the English edition, entitled Herod’s Children, copyright © 1963 by Atheneum House, Inc., New York. Translated from the German by Cornelia Schaeffer. The gaps between the selected passages mark large cuts. Quotes from pages 183, 44, 49 and 51.

Notes

1) In the German original, this passage is only found in the edition of 1948. In the 1960s, Ilse Aichinger reworked her novel, cutting this section. (Editor’s note)