On Marble Cliffs

"A strange period then began for us at the Marina. While in the country crime prospered like the network of molds on rotten wood, we became more and more deeply absorbed in the mystery of flowers, and their calyxes seemed larger, more radiant than ever." In an imaginary country, a narrator and his brother lead a peaceful life by the Marina, on the marble cliffs. But not far from this tranquil refuge camp the Grand Forester, lord of Mauretania, and his bellicose troops, animated by violence. On the Marble Cliffs was published in Germany a little before the beginning of the Second World War. It was immediately interpreted as a protest against the rise of Nazism, but the story is in reality an indictment against terror and dictatorship, which are not limited to the Hitler regime. A masterpiece of romantic literature, traversed by signs and symbols, metaphors, echoes of the slow rise of threat and barbarism.