Wolf, Christa (Vol. 29) - MARGARET McHAFFIE
MARGARET McHAFFIE
The Quest for Christa T. (re-issued to coincide with the publication of Christa Wolf's more recent novel, A Model Childhood) anticipates many of the themes and preoccupations of the later work: the fallibility of memory and the compulsion to remember, the tension between fiction and fact, the struggle for a form commensurable with experience, writing as a means of self-definition and of understanding others…. Christa T's experiences suggest with admirable economy the large-scale horrors of Nazi Germany and, in the post-war world, initial euphoria and progressive disillusionment with the Communist slogans which superseded the Nazi ones. Yet for all its sombre aspects, and despite Christa T's early death, the novel is ultimately an affirmation of individual resilience in the face of evil and adversity. Christa T's moments of happiness, the solace which she finds in literature and in writing her poems, her craving to "see" and the...
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