When life mimics art: from Adalbert Stifter’s 1845 novella Rock Crystal

The children then tried to climb down at the place where they had clambered up, but were not able. There was nothing but ice, as if they had missed the direction from which they had come up. They turned this way and that and could not get away from the ice; it was as if they were clasped in it. They worked down and came to more ice. Finally when the lad went as he thought always in the direction from which they had come, they came to other deformed fragments but larger and more intimidating from the most part than along the ice-margin, and by crawling and clambering, they managed to get out. At the edge of the moraine were gigantic boulders heaped up in a way the two children had never seen in their lives.

(posted from Brooklyn, NY, after a 26.8″ snowfall)

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Jeff Alford

Jeff Alford is a critic and book collector based in Denver, CO. He is a contributor to Kirkus Reviews, Rain Taxi Review of Books and the New Orleans Review and author of the now-retired rare books and small press blog www.theoxenofthesun.com.

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