Literature is a Transformative Tool

Many of the people sitting in the beautiful Basilica Palatina di Santa Barbara in Mantua might not know Lukas Bärfuss. Yet, not too long ago the Swiss author won the Buchner Prize, the most prestigious literary prize for authors writing in German. 

To approach the work of Bärfuss, explains Marcello Fois, one should first delve into his life story. He was born in Thun in 1971 in a family environment marred by violence and crime. To escape his family, he needed to analyse it: his tool was literature.

Bärfuss is self-educated, and the encounter with literature was a source of change. As a teenager, he was homeless for a while. He would often found refuge in libraries: warm, free, and police-free. In libraries he satisfied his hunger for knowledge, and started writing. 

Bärfuss debuted as a playwright. He recounts being heavily influenced by Swiss popular theatre, which is related to the Italian Commedia dell’Arte. These are stories of ordinary people and everyday events, and from there he took the idea that every life, however small it may appear at first, can be representative of its time. 

For Bärfuss, literature is a gnoseological tool, useful to understand oneself, the world, and the connections between them. This is evident in his novels, in which the author draws from his life, weaving its characters and plot into broader histories. Throughout, he maintains a universal gaze, aimed at breaking the constructs that divide cultures, languages, and people. 

Koala, perfectly exemplifies the unique structure of the books penned by Bärfuss. It’s an an unconventional elegy, exploring the violence and failure surrounding his brother’s suicide, which Bärfuss then ties to the history of Australia and of koalas. Writing this book, for him, was like peering into an open wound. But what Bärfuss loves about writing is the idea of creating something beautiful out of a devastating event.

It’s even difficult to call these books novels. Don't call them auto-fiction, for biographical elements often supersede the fictive. Biography does not cut it either due to the frequent incursions in the essay format. Take his latest novel translated in Italian, Father’s Box. The novel deals with the theme of inheritance, building from the box his father left him after his death and touching on Darwin, the Bible, and Wittgenstein. It's a polemic and political interrogation that dismantles the principle of genealogy.

The reason Bärfuss writes these ULOs (Unidentified Literary Objects), he affirms, is to be found in his lack of formal education: “I didn’t go to school, I can’t be systematic; I can’t put things in the order they’re supposed to be”.