‘Je lijkt me gevaarlijker dan al die hoge heren bij elkaar’ - Referentialiteit en retorica in De keisnijder van Fichtenwald (1976) van Louis Ferron

Abstract

This article offers a new interpretation of one of the main works of Louis Ferron: De keisnijder van Fichtenwald [The stone-cutter of Fichtenwald] (1976). The hypothesis elaborated here is that, in the guise of Friedolien Mahler, voice is given to a Nazi-Täter who does all he can to obscure his role in the war and his ideas, which are fed into by the ideology of national socialism. In order to show this, a rhetorical reading of the novel is offered, i.e. one which assumes that Friedolien practises impression management from the beginning to the end and is out to manipulate the reading public. For this purpose he for example makes use of the stylistic repertoire of irony and goes in for role-playing of an especially subtle kind in which he, the SS man and guard at the Konzentrationslager Fichtenwald, makes it appear as if he were a victim, a convert and a harmless madman respectively. The stress laid on Friedolien’s guilt here is new in the reception of Ferron’s novel. Finally, the last pages of this article show that Friedolien is ultimately a figure thought up by the camp doctor Jankowsy on which the latter projects his own Nazi past.