Faber & Castell

I came across a cabinet of antiques in a shop called M. Goldstein recently, run by a maniacal character called Nathanial, with objects ranging from old business cards, to curious nuts and seeds (strictly not for sale), and among all this was a tiny Faber & Castell diary pencil, the lead worn down, the crooked nib sharpened by hand with a knife. But where was the diary? Among Irving Finkel’s collection of abandoned diaries is an entire box crammed with these little pencils: “I keep them for use as propaganda to show how diaries disappear; only their pencils survive”.

Sonar

In post war Germany the novelist Walter Kempowski began amassing diaries, letters, reports and other kinds of unpublished autobiographical documents by witnesses of the Second World War in an attempt to tap into stories and experiences which might otherwise be lost. He called it 'Das Escholot', meaning 'Sonar' or 'Echo-Sounder' - a method of using sound waves for underwater navigation.

The project became vast and sprawling, like many collectors, Kempowski appeared to be seeking for a higher form of order, or as the historian Philip Blom describes: "...a hidden law among the innumerable individual objects of his treasure trove. In the event, he has orchestrated the disparate voices into a gigantic and frightening whole ...things can be catalogued and arranged in patterns, but ultimately they lead the honest observer to an admission of defeat."

Novelistic touches gleaned from the evidence are never far away: birds building their nests from debris in bombed buildings, the hysterical rants of Hitler's testament juxtaposed cunningly with wild looting, Thomas Mann records a visit to the hairdresser, while Paul Valery catalogues phobias he shares with Goethe. It is these two aspects, the polyphonous and the individual, which mould Das Echolot into one of the great and tragic monuments of German post-war literature.