Content area
Full text
Hermann Lenz. Zwei Frauen. Frankfurt a.M. Insel. 1994. 200 pages. DM 36. ISBN 3-458-16637-8.
The topic of aging accompanied by the characteristic turn to the past and increased introspection appears particularly suited to highlight the concerns and strength of a writer such as Hermann Lenz, who focuses on inner reality and the private sphere in most of his novels and autobiographical texts. In Zwei Frauen, his ninth volume of reminiscences, Lenz's writer-narrator and apparent stand-in for the author, Eugen Rapp, revisits the places of his childhood and youth in the country setting of northern Wurttemberg. Now white-haired and well past sixty, Rapp is a respected writer known to his friends as an introverted and aloof person who keeps the affairs of his heart to himself. It is just such a secret attachment to a woman (Gertrud) he has known and admired for some thirty years that lies behind his journey home at this particular time. They eventually run into...