C1.2 · 26 of 34
Lesson · 3 rules · about 3 min
Eine eigens geschriebene kurze Prosapassage: Eine Frau hält am Abend einen ungeöffneten Brief in der Hand, erinnert sich an einen Streit vor zwanzig Jahren, liest ihn schließlich und merkt, dass er alles und nichts verändert. Der Text arbeitet mit Verzögerung (ohne ihn zu öffnen; irgendwann, als die Straßenlaternen angingen), mit Paradoxen (nicht wiedererkannte und doch zu kennen glaubte), mit Bildern, die ihren Zustand spiegeln (die Dächer, die Farbe und Kanten verlieren; die Wörter, die wie Steine ins Wasser fallen), und mit drei Partizipialsätzen, wie sie für literarisches Deutsch typisch sind. Erzählt wird in der dritten Person, aber nah an ihren Wahrnehmungen und Gedanken (dachte sie). Die Fragen zielen auf Perspektive, die Wirkung der Bilder, Stimmung und Haltung. Übersetze also jedes Bild in schlichte Worte, bevor du wählst.
Sie hielt den Brief lange in der Hand, ohne ihn zu öffnen. Auf dem Umschlag stand nur ihr Vorname, in einer Schrift, die sie nicht wiedererkannte und doch zu kennen glaubte. Keine Adresse, kein Absender, keine Marke; jemand musste ihn selbst in den Kasten geworfen haben, irgendwann zwischen Mittag und dem Augenblick, in dem sie von der Arbeit gekommen war.
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She held the letter in her hand for a long time without opening it. On the envelope was only her first name, in a handwriting she did not recognise and yet believed she knew. No address, no sender, no stamp; someone must have put it in the letterbox by hand, some time between midday and the moment she had come home from work. Still holding the envelope between her fingers, she went to the window. Down in the courtyard the neighbour was taking in her washing, sheet by sheet, with the care of a person who has nothing else left to do. Somewhere in the building a door slammed. Outside it was slowly getting dark. The roofs opposite lost first their colour, then their edges, until only a grey outline was left that might just as well have been a mountain range. She thought of the flat in Lindenstraße, of the smell of turpentine and cold coffee, of a sentence that had been spoken in a quarrel back then and that neither of them had ever taken back. Twenty years. In twenty years one could build a house, raise two children, forget a language. One could also simply do nothing and wait until the waiting itself became a habit. At some point, when the street lamps came on, she tore the envelope open. It was just a single sheet, closely written, without a salutation. At the end there was no name, only a date. She read slowly, then a second time, and the words fell like stones into water: they sank, without the surface being willing to settle, and the circles they drew grew wider and wider. Carried up from the street, the laughter of a few teenagers reached her, who were waiting at the stop for the last bus. She barely heard it. Her knees drawn up to her chest, she sat on the windowsill, the sheet in her lap, and did not know whether she was crying or laughing or both. What she had read changed everything – and nothing. The flat was the same, the street lamps were burning as they did every evening, and tomorrow she would get up at seven. And yet the room had become a different one, as if someone had moved the furniture a few centimetres overnight. Some words, she thought, come twenty years too late and just in time at once.
Exercise
Lesen: Literarischer Text · C1.2
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