At the start of the Second World War, medical student (and former actress) Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer and her playwright husband Carl Zuckmayer were forced to leave their home in Germany. A farm in Barnard, Vermont became their home for five years, and the letters that Herdan-Zuckmayer wrote to her in-laws back in Germany turned into published dispatches and then into the essays that comprise The Farm in the Green Mountains. Originally published in 1952, this gem of a book has been re-released by NYRB Classics, translated from the German by Ida H. Washington and Carol E. Washington and with a thoughtful introduction by Elisa Albert.
Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer’s voice is sharp and funny. She looks at our region in a way that few people have before or since, though many people have moved to New England and attempted to wrangle the scene, the people, and the patterns of speech onto the page. Of the yearly lumberjack’s celebration, she writes:
Great tree trunks stand in front of the town hall, driven a yard deep in the earth, and powerful lumberjacks stand by the trees and wait for the signal to compete in felling the trees with their axes. Blow follows blow until one tree after another falls. Roger wins, and his nine children who are sitting on the huge lumber wagon add their voices proudly to the murmur of applause. His wife waves to him and then disappears into the darkness with her tenth child to nurse it. Meanwhile the competition continues as the giant logs are sawed through, and this time young Campbell is the winner.
Radios, printed mail and telephones bring them the news of the world. Of the telephone, she writes:
Our telephones consist of brown boxes that are firmly attached to the wall and have a black handle on the side. The telephone itself is attached to the box by a wire. We have a modern set, with mouthpiece and receiver in one piece; many, however, still have telephones where you grab the mouthpiece with your left hand and hold it like a bouquet, while you hold the receiver to your ear with your right hand like an earphone for the hard-of-hearing. Each of us has his own ring, a Morse code signal which is hard to recognize for newcomers, especially if they are not musical or have no sense of rhythm. Our number is Bethel 69 ring 12. The number 12 is our special signal.
Dearest to my own heart are the two essays that look at her trips to the Dartmouth College Library. She writes:
The books are all here, the Americans, the French, the Scandinavians, the Dutch, and the Italians, the Russians, the Indians, the Chinese and the Spanish. Here are the masses of people of all eras in their literature and their history. Here are religion, law, music, folklore, the sciences, agriculture, fishing and hunting, sports, technology, detective stories. Everything is arranged, but not abridged and not selected. The students to whom this library has been given are to search, choose, and decide for themselves what they want to do with it. The older generation does not want to rule the younger, and the young people do not fear their elders.
Don’t miss her essay on the history of Dartmouth: “Vox Clamantis in Deserto.” You may think you know the history of college, but it’s worth examining it through the eyes of someone coming to it for the first time, puzzling through what she’s presented with, and reconciling it with the political moment she inhabits.
Rena J. Mosteirin is the author of Disaster Tourism (BOA Editions) and Experiment 116 (Counterpath Press). Mosteirin is co-author, with James E. Dobson, of Moonbit (punctum books) and Perceptron (punctum books). Mosteirin teaches at Dartmouth College and owns Left Bank Books.
Want to check out all the previous Enthusiasms? You’ll find them here.
