L’ossatura di Europa

Raumtheoretische Überlegungen zur Erinnerungsliteratur des Alpenraums

Abstract

Since the 2000s, numerous novels and stories have been published about the European experience of the Second World War. These post memory texts often focus on regional events that have so far received little attention, including combat operations and border shifts in the Alpine region. Building on various spatial theories, this article examines how the mountains are constructed in four Italian novels and what functions the textually imagined mountains fulfil in the negotiation of European memory between past, future, and anticipation. The interweaving of a horizontal-topographical axis and a vertical-chronological axis appears to be decisive in this context. The geological nature of the mountains is thus investigated to initiate trans-European memory processes; their spatial continuity serves as a bridge between the narrated, no longer remembered past and the present moment of narration. The mediatised Alps always refer to the real Alpine region, but not always with the same geographical precision. On the contrary, the often deliberately vague referentiality is skilfully positioned between subjectivity and universal mountain experience, between authentic experience and virtual description.