George saunders novel lincoln in bardo - tragic and comic ghost story (archive)

Night after night, ghosts talk about their former lives, which they would like to return to, President Lincoln mourns at the coffin of his deceased son – this hustle and bustle in the 19th century becomes a mirror of society whose inner contradictions drive the USA into civil war.

By Michael Schmitt

"Lincoln in the Bardo" offers itself as an extensive historical meditation, as a conversation with history, with the living and the dead – and not least with yourself (book cover: Luchterhand Verlag, photo: Imago)

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George Saunders: "Lincoln in the Bardo" The fear of unknown death

A horror novel could easily be developed from this material: an old cemetery in the 19th century, a myriad of ghosts who talk night after night about the life that they have led and that they would like to return to. All marked by the experience of dying, trapped forever in the expression of wonder, terror or fear that gripped them at that moment. Some of them have been dead for decades, others only since short time. And all together a mirror of that American society, whose inner contradictions and open conflicts have driven the United States into civil war since the middle of the 19th century.

George Saunders leaves over 160 voices in his novel "Lincoln in the Bardo" to speak. Many in a kind of oral history as quotes from historical sources; most, however, as fictitious and already deceased observers who report on their personal destinies, some in anger, some self-pitying, some resentful – possessed by themselves in their undead and dead unrest. They are white and black, free and slaves, soldiers and women, powerful and poor. Only three of these voices belong to living figures, namely the American President Abraham Lincoln, who was forced to bury his son Willie, who died of typhus, in February 1862, the cemetery attendant and an old woman who lives in a house that belongs to the cemetery portal opposite, from where she can watch everything that is going on there.

Cemetery activity as a mirror of the country

"Lincoln in the Bardo", Awarded the Man Booker Prize in 2017 and now published in a German transmission by Frank Heibert in the Luchterhand Literaturverlag, it mainly focuses on the day of the funeral of the little boy and the night on which Abraham Lincoln visits the burial chamber alone, the coffin opens and hugs his son’s body because he doesn’t want to let him go. Around this core George Saunders groups the concert of his many benefactors and forms a contemporary painting that spans decades, which includes mentalities and calamities as well as injustice, violence and citizenship. This hustle and bustle becomes a mirror of a country in the process of destroying itself; the ghost voices form, so to speak, the side facing away from the day.

Everything in this novel is initially under the sign of possible destruction – in private as well as on the political stage, where the presidential couple give a sumptuous reception on the evening the son dies, which is subsequently criticized:

"The flower arrangements made history. towering
Color explosions – what opulence just to end up in the trash,
to fade and dry up under the cloudy February sun.
The animal carcasses – the "meat" – on expensive platters,
warm, covered with sprigs of herbs, steaming,
juicy: thrown away wherever, clearly waste now,
body parts again, unadorned, after their brief collection
in the state of enjoyable food! The thousand
Clothes, ready in the afternoon, awesome
the door threshold carefully freed from the last dusts that
Skirts gathered for a carriage ride: where are they now? Is a
only one of them exhibited anywhere in the museum? Is there
a few more, kept in attics? Most
have crumbled to dust. Like the women they are full of
Proudly carried in that fleeting moment of splendor."

In: "Social life in the civil war. Faxing, butchery, devastation" (unpublished manuscript) by Melvin Carter

Representation and good company, death and dissolution are inseparable – that is like a motto above the book. In interviews, George Saunders has repeatedly explained how he was fascinated by this episode from Abraham Lincoln’s life, how long he was busy either making something out of it or putting the topic aside forever. He has become famous as the author of short stories, as the inventor of unusual settings and as the grand master of fantasies that leave the usual framework of realistic storytelling behind. For German readers, the volume published in 2014 is probably the highlight "December 10th" the point at which Saunders has become more popular. That out "Lincoln in the Bardo" did not become a short story again, he explained that when he finally got involved, the material had grown more and more, that he had blown up the short form himself. The result is a small-scale mosaic, a novel that does not want to give the impression for a moment that it wants to trace the path of Abraham Lincoln, which has often been retold, in traditional narrative.

Lincoln’s dilemma

His situation was somewhat uncomfortable at the beginning of 1862: Abrahm Lincoln was elected President of the United States in 1860 without much experience in public office or Washington politics, and, as a moderate opponent of slavery, is more pragmatic and compromise-minded because preserving the Union is more important to him than radically solving this social question. His surprising choice exacerbates the conflict between the slave-holding states in the south and the northern states. And although Lincoln, as president, says the Washington government will not use arms to fight the renegade Confederates, the latter open the civil war with an attack on Fort Sumter. The question of freedom for all slaves only comes to the fore when it can be exploited to weaken the south. The war also initially takes an unfavorable course for the north and it soon becomes clear that it will not be possible to end it in a few weeks and with a few military measures. This puts the president under pressure, Lincoln experiences a low point in his presidency at the beginning of 1862, lives with complaints about his hesitation and weakness:

"At your behest, the people have had sons for nineteen months,
Brothers, husbands & Money delivered without ceasing. – What
is the result? – Is you actually clear that despair,
the grief, the grief that covers this country,
Your fault? – that the young men who shattered,
crippled, murdered and for the rest of her life
have been made invalid, all just your weakness,
indecisiveness & owe a lack of moral courage?"

Tagg, ibid., Letter from S. W. Oakey

Private and political crisis interwoven

Parallel to this dilemma, Lincoln, as the father of a family, had to accept the death of three of his children during his lifetime, in February 1862 that of his beloved son Willie, who had been suffering from typhus for weeks. The private catastrophe and crisis of his presidency coincide and Saunders interweaves them so that they mirror and comment on each other. He thought of the Pieta when he was first told about Lincoln in his son’s burial chamber, he said, this picture was a key to his novel.

"He is just one.
A burden that almost kills me.
I pushed that grief away. About three thousand times.
So far. Until now. A mountain. From boys. Someone’s boy.
Gotta keep going. Maybe I don’t have the courage to do it.
Make decisions without knowing where that is going
the one. But what’s in front of me here is an expensive example of this,
where
my orders –
Maybe I don’t have the courage to do it.
What to do? Stop it? These three thousand in the hole of losses
throw? Looking for peace? The great fool of the U-turn
become king of indecision, laughing number up in
all eternity, rambling hillbilly, poor Mr. Wendehals?
It’s out of control. Who does it. Who is to blame for it.
Whose appearance triggered it.
What am I doing.
What am I doing here.
All nonsense now. These mourners arrived. With outstretched
Hands. Intact sons. Wore cramped masks,
to hide every sign of their happiness, that – that
continued. They couldn’t hide how lively it made them
were still, by their luck over their still living-
the sons and their possibilities. I was one until recently
from them. Strolled whistling through the slaughterhouse, turned
my eyes off the carnage, could laugh and dream
and hope because it hasn’t happened to me yet."

George Saunders’ art is to never allow room for this despair of the President. The reader only learns about the President, what is written about him in the memories of contemporaries, or what the spirits of the dead in the nightly cemetery hear or see in him, when they are, as disembodied as they are, in his soul and sneak in his body to influence him.

"Bardo" – Intermediate realm between life and death

These spirits do not act selflessly, they are, each in their own way, just fickle and indecisive and just as alone with their suffering. You live in "Bardo", in a room that Saunders modeled on the Buddhist idea of an intermediate realm between life and death, a room in which life with its hopes and goals has not yet been saved, and salvation from these desires has not yet been achieved. They have not yet accepted death as their fate, they speak of their coffins as "Ill-boxes", they hope for treatments and recoveries that have failed for a long time. Above all, however, they hope for visitors, for people to whom they mean something and who could lead them back into the life that they are from own Can no longer achieve strength. When Abraham Lincoln visits his buried son, it reinforces her hopes.

George Saunders highlights three men as observers: an old reverend who always appears with ruffled hair and wide-eyed eyes; a former printer who, on the night when he wanted to sleep with his second, very young wife for the first time, hit a beam in the head and hit the genitals hard, who has since appeared naked and with an excessively swollen limb, as well as the homosexual suicide Roger Bevins, once a young man who, also deformed, just like everyone else, repeatedly and frankly tells how he got there where the reader now meets him. How he first cut his wrists, but then didn’t want to die:

"My only hope was from one of the
I knew that servants would be found, so I staggered
I went to the stairs and rushed down. From there
I managed to crawl into the kitchen –
And I stay there.
I’m waiting to be found (to rest on the ground
come, head by the oven, overturned chair next to
me,
a piece of orange peel on my cheek) so that one
revive me and I could rise to the terrible
Clearing away the mess I made
(Mother won’t like that at all) and then go out
in this wonderful world, as a new, braver man,
and finally to live! I will pursue my preference?
You bet! And how! I was close to everything
to lose and
therefore I am now free from all fear, hesitation and
Shy. When I am resuscitated, I become reverent
walk on earth and soak up, smell, taste, love,
who i want;
touch, try, stand still
amidst all the beauties of this world (…)."

George Saunders creates a bizarre-looking situation that lives from pathos, sympathy and suffering, but which is scene by scene at the same time comic-like, one could also say "trashy" Staging is turned into a comic. The souls in the cemetery lead a boring existence, they long for variety and hover over the cemetery like ghosts from a children’s book and the novel uses a lot of language jokes on these productions. But when things get serious, when they have to decide whether to stay there or accept death, they fear the hell that might be waiting for them. Just like the old Reverend, who has already faced the question "Did you live correctly??" fled who looked into this hell and shrank from it.

"The diamond doors flew open.
I blinked in disbelief at the change behind it. The
The tent was no longer made of silk, but of meat (stained
and pink of spoiled blood); the feast was not
Feast, but rather lay on long tables there
numerous human figures stretched out inside
different stages of distress; was the host
no king, no jesus, but a beast with bloody
Hands and long fangs in a sulfur-colored,
robe stained with offal. You could also have three
Women and a stooped old man recognize that long
Ropes from (their own) intestines carried (terrible!). But
the most terrible thing was how they screamed for joy when
my friend in a suit was dragged in to them,
and how the poor guy kept smiling as if he wanted to
ingratiate himself with his catchers like he does all the charitable
Listed things he did in Pennsylvania
had the many good people who vouch for him
would, (.)
Now it was my turn.
How did you live? Asked the creature on the right.

Cruelty to civil war

These pictures are more borrowed from the Christian tradition of purgatory and the hell pictures of Hieronymus Bosch and not from the Buddhist Bardo. Among the living, there are only the impressions of the battlefields of the civil war, which early in 1862 gives an idea of how bloody it will be. If you do research, you will find photos of these battlefields, but George Saunders succeeds in illustrating the cruelty of this civil war even without such illustrations using the descriptions. Otto Dix’s pictures of the battlefields and trenches of the First World War lend themselves to comparison – the American Civil War, like the First World War, was not planned as an endless massacre – and then dragged on for years.

"The dead, as they had fallen, lay in every imaginable
Attitude, some clung to their guns
as if they were shooting while others,
a cartridge in her icy grip, just reloading.
Some expressions wore a peaceful, happy smile while
a hostile look of hatred on others
would have. Every face seemed the exact counterpart of the
To be thoughts that went through one’s mind
were when the messenger of death mowed around him. Maybe
felt that noble-looking youth with his skyward
nimble smile
and the shiny, bloodied curls,
how a mother’s prayer stole through his senses, just
when his young life went out. A young husband lay next to him,
the prayer for the wife and the little one still open
lingered on the lips."

In: "The civil war years. A daily chronicle of a nation’s life", edited by Robert E. Denney, report by Corporal Lucius W. Barber, Co.D, 15th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, fighter at Fort Donelson

The faces of the fallen, like the bodies and expressions of the spirit beings in the cemetery, have what they felt at the last moment of their lives. In this respect, too, the cemetery is the mirror of the above-ground world – and Abraham Lincoln as a nightly guest in this cemetery becomes the resonance room for the mourning of the many who are already buried there.

Intensive exchange between the living and the dead

But not only the father is meant when the romantic title of "Lincoln in the Bardo" speaks. His son Willie also plays a crucial role in this intermediate realm. Children, the veterans of the spirits know, should leave this place immediately, because it is reserved for those who want to hold onto a life that has left them unfulfilled. But Willie resists it, he hopes for his father’s visit, who always turns only to the body in the coffin and never to the boy’s spirit, which he does not notice and which he does not hear when he speaks to him. In which the spirit of the son overhears the father, as he leans over the corpse complaining about the loss, the boy understands his own situation and its hopelessness. And with it the situation of all the spirits around him.

It is a constant, intensive exchange between the living and the dead that George Saunders designs here, a vision of humanity, because the souls of the deceased not only penetrate and overhear the president, but hardly that process has started, they penetrate each other also mutually in hundreds and only then realize who their companions at night really were before they arrived at the cemetery in a humiliating state.

This all-round amalgamation could have an uncomfortably esoteric effect if it hadn’t been broken again by the bizarre idea of the many interwoven souls. Saunder’s novel is a daring act of balance, constantly in danger of falling. However, this never happens, not even when political America in 1862, as a field of action, comes into focus again towards the end of the book. Again, it is one of the dead who describes what is going on in Lincoln at the moment, it is not the great orator Saunders speaks:

"His mind was again drawn to suffering; the fact that
the world was full of suffering; that everyone in their own way under one
Groaned the burden of suffering; that everyone suffered; that one, which one
The path you took in this world, never forgotten
allowed, the others all suffered too (none satisfied; all
treated unfairly, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood),
and so you had to do what you could to get the
To relieve the burden of those you met; that
his current suffering was not his alone, not at all,
Rather, countless others have had something similar
at all times, felt at all times and would still be there
get to feel why it is neither extended nor increased
was allowed to, because in this state he could
not help anyone, and since he is by his position in the
World either give a lot of help or do a lot of damage
if he could, he shouldn’t be as depressed as possible
stay."

No history, but exploration of inner processes

The president who climbs on his horse late at night and leaves the cemetery is now Abraham Lincoln, who is venerated by all parties as a figure of light. From then on he will vigorously wage the war against the southern states and for the liberation of all slaves and will save the United States from breaking up. This is the point at which Saunders is interested, not history. He lets deceased slaves have their say, describes the suffering of a young mulatto woman who, traumatized, has lost her language through countless rapes. And he grabs the pathos of the famous to this day "Gettysburg Address" Lincoln’s, the three-minute speech in which the President, after winning at Gettysburg in 1863, invoked the value of a democratic and united America.

It is the suicide of Roger Bevins who most recently takes up these ideas most clearly in the novel and evokes a departure in which he himself will no longer participate.

"Was it worth it. Worth the killing. On the surface, it went
it is a matter of form (the Union), but in depth
much more. How should people live? How could they
People live? Now he remembered the boy who
he had been (who was hiding from father to Bunyan
to read; the rabbit bred for some money too
to earn; who stood around in the city, so that the glare
Everyday parade drown out the harsh language of hunger;
who had to stumble back if one of those who
luckier, happily came by in his carriage),
who felt weird and weird (and smart, superior),
long-legged, always jostling somewhere, always with
Nicknames considered.
(…)
On the other side of the ocean sat kings
maliciously because after a good start here is something
was derailed (as were kings further south like it), and
if something derailed, the whole shop was over,
forever, and if anyone ever gets it going again
wanted, well, he would get to hear (and that too
Right): The mob cannot organize itself.
And whether the rabble could. And would.
He would lead the mob.
Win the whole thing – it would happen."

Conversation with history

So George Saunders novel is a political, even a committed book?

In some reactions, a reference to America under the current President Donald Trump has been emphasized, which Abraham Lincoln is compared to larger than life. But Saunders does not actually take sides, the novel makes no recommendations except perhaps to face the demands that come up to you – and there is a lot to be connected with. "Lincoln in the Bardo" offers itself rather as an extensive historical meditation, as a conversation with history, with the living and the dead, not least with oneself – and always enjoying a certain ironic distance.

George Saunders: "Lincoln in the Bardo"
From American English by Frank Heibert
Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Munich, 448 pages, 25 euros