Max Frisch

Sketchbook

«A person who does not concern himself with politics has already made the political choice he was so anxious to spare himself: he is serving the ruling party.»

Frisch might have written an intimate journal in the usual sense, yet the collected entries that were published as «Tagebuch 1946-1949» were meant for publishing from the outset. They were meant to shape the image of a committed writer. These notes rarely show any spontaneous ideas or subjective thought experiments, rather this diary reveals a well-planned and composed structure.
So, the reader follows the author in his quest for a self-definition as author and, at the same time, finds the architect who reports on the completion and opening of the Letzigraben public swimming pool. Historically incisive are his travel reports and reflections on post-war Europe, on the landscapes of destruction, the destroyed cities and their inhabitants. Here he is a seismographic writer.
Max Frisch ruminates on his writing and reading, on his relation to Bertolt Brecht or Albin Zollinger whom he meets on a hike. The diary also contains autobiographical and literary sketches, for instance the original version of «Graf Öderland» which forms a central passage next to «Tagebuch mit Marion» (Diary with Marion) and the entry «You shall not make for yourself any graven image». Interestingly, almost his entire later literary oeuvre is outlined here, one could read it just from these notations. Next to his analyses of his time, this first diary also allows for a glimpse into the studio of the writer and thinker he was. As a literary form this diary has won style-forming status.

(Marc Caduff, transl. by Anja Hälg)

Translation of title: Tagebuch 1946-1949

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York / London 1977

ISBN: 0-15-182893-8