Rock Crystal : A Christmas Tale

Adalbert Stifter's Rock Crystal is a Christmas story and a story about the heart of the ice, the crystal.The charm of this quasi-fairy tale is made even more poignant by the knowledge of the author's eventual suicide. This seemingly simple fable of two children lost in an icy landscape is eloquent in its innocence, but is implicit with an unremitting consciousness of the fragility of life and the inevitability of death. This is a wintry story of village life in the high mountains, but also a parable of belief and faith. The Rock Crystal of the title are shards of ice of the glacier that dominates the landscape that Adalbert Stifter describes.Translated from the German by Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore, Adalbert Stifter's Rock Crystal is published by Pushkin Press.