Nobel Prize Literature Collection: Minna

Author: Carl Adolf Gjellerup (Denmark)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-10-01
Features:
Volume 1
This semester at the technical college was exhausting. Dresden began to feel unbearable hot, and worse, I lived on a small street in the "Old Town," though clean, it was not very bright. I missed Denmark's "sund." The evening of the Elbe River was picturesque, yet offered little relief from the heat. Between nine and ten at night, as I dragged my steps up the famous water meadow plateau for a breath of fresh air, the thermometer still hovered around eighty-eight degrees. On the other hand, this was some comfort, as I had every right to feel hot. Eating an ice cream outside the Tonya Man café, sitting among the pillars, listening to the intermittent music from the "Winnert Garden" concert hall across the river, was a justifiable luxury. On such a night, I made a bold decision: to go to the countryside during the upcoming summer vacation. At least for me, this was quite reckless, as I had heavy studies and was very frugal. I wanted to go to Upper Saxon Switzerland, and before the last ice cream had melted, I had decided to go to Ledden, where I would rent a cabin and stay. Ledden was a dear, small, quiet place that left me with a rare, gentle, pastoral impression—even though, like most travelers, I only glimpsed it briefly, especially during the evening as I descended from the. A few days later, nearly noon, I got off at a small train station, walked through several orchards, and headed to. In this area, the Elbe River winds through the fields, which gradually rise in gentle slopes to become rolling countryside; above them, dark pine forests cover the high cliffs. "Upper Ledden" is here, with a few fertile farms scattered around; cornfields and green meadows are interspersed with fruit trees. Across the river are rolling mountains, with only a gap in the center, through which the small village of Upper Ledden peeks out; the village, besides two small inns, has almost nothing else. The new inn is bare, while the old one is overgrown with trees. Both are on the side of a clear little stream flowing into the Elbe River, which rushes away. On the left side of the valley stand the blue-gray cliffs of the, covered with pine forests and beeches at the base; descending from them are the glittering sandstone quarries, the most beautiful part of the place—a series of high yellow cliffs, some standing straight for hundreds of feet. Opposite the village is another quarry, along the mountain base like a continuous stone wall, with the forest waves above it, and floating among the waves are lily rocks—huge like warships. The ferry, like a swimming dog, moves at an angle, driven by the side impact of the river water. The boat is tied to a chain, which is fixed to a buoy in the middle of the river and anchored high on both riverbanks. The ferryman only needs to pull the connecting chain attached to the pulley on the small mast a couple of times to get the desired power and direction. Despite this, the ferryman still wiped sweat from his sleeves, and his face was redder than the Theoxus Indian I saw at the zoo the first night. But here, in the center of his domain, you would not be surprised at his skin and sweat, because the curved riverbank with cliffs acts like a concave mirror, facing south, with its focal point...