"The Correspondent": Adelheid Duvanel must be discovered and placed at the highest level
By Didier Jacob
Published on , updated on
Adelheid Duvanel, in 1985. BRIGITTE FRIEDRICH/INTERFOTO/AURIMAGES
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Review: Adelheid Duvanel was also a painter. We have never seen color treated by a writer in this way. ★★★★☆
We could compare her to Robert Walser, for the brevity of her tales, their poetic dimension, on the edge of everyday life. Born in Basel in 1936 (she died there in 1996), Adelheid Duvanel was also a painter, as these short fictional texts testify. We have never seen color treated by a writer in this way, as when Sigmund, driving in his father's car, " suddenly notices the absence of red color." Or like, of a man's silhouette, we see only the " broad pink back." Fiction, patches of color all the time.
We must discover and place Adelheid Duvanel, whose last book published during her lifetime is here, at the highest level. She was passionately in love with Chopin. And, like Walser, she was one day found dead of hypothermia in a mountain meadow, her face turned toward the blue sky. She also called herself Judith, and sometimes Judith January. Winter Judith, in all seasons.
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