Arno Camenisch | |
|---|---|
 Arno Camenisch, Zurich 2014 | |
| Born | 1 February 1978 Tavanasa, Switzerland |
| Occupation | Novelist, poet, playwright |
| Language | German, Romansh |
| Nationality | Swiss |
| Period | 2005–present |
| Notable works | Sez Ner |
| Website | |
| web | |
Arno Camenisch (born 1 February 1978 in the village of Tavanasa in the Swiss Canton Grisons) is a Swiss writer publishing in German and Romansh.
Camenisch grew up in Tavanasa and moved to Chur to study at a teacher training college at the age of sixteen. After finishing his degree as an elementary school teacher he decided to travel all over the world, including half a year- residencies in Australia and Ecuador. Whilst travelling Middle and South America, Camenisch with his Romansh background easily picked up Spanish. After a short return to Switzerland, Camenish moved to Madrid, where he was employed as a teacher at the Colegio Suizo de Madrid from 2004 to 2007. Since 2007, Camenisch's place of residence is the bilingual city of Biel/Bienne in the canton of Berne where he attended the Bern School of Arts (Class 2007-2010) and received a Bachelor's Diploma in Literary Writing.
Camenisch is father to one daughter who lives with her mother, his former wife, in Biel/Bienne. This constellation is frequently mentioned by Camenisch himself as the reason why he decided to make Biel/Bienne his permanent place of residence after finishing his Bachelor's Diploma and lives there to the day. [1]
Most of his publications are deeply influenced by his roots in the Romansh-speaking part of Switzerland in terms of content and lingustic form.
Camenisch writes prose, poetry and plays. In the Anglophone world he is best known for his novel Sez Ner (translated under the English title The Alp by Donal McLaughlin [2] ), about life in a modern Alpine village, which was written jointly in two languages - first in German, afterwards re-written by himself in Romansh.
While still a student at the Bern School of Arts, Arno Camenisch met his future editor and publisher in unison Urs Engeler at a reading session. They instantly formed a productive bond and teamed up as author and editor. Since Sez Ner, Arno Camenisch exclusively publishes new prose works via the self-titled Engeler-Verlag.
With German and Romansh printed side to side, Sez Ner portrays the life of a group of men and their daily chores on an Alp. Characters are only represented by their profession and do not have proper nouns. Critics widely recognized Sez Ner as a lively but fictional portrayal of Swiss Alpine live. Camenisch's style of writing especially within Sez Ner sometimes evokes a feeling of reality being depicted, which Camenisch denies continuously - instead he insists on his writing as a result of extensive knowledge about people, landscape and culture he chooses to describe.
Hinter dem Bahnhof (Engl. title Behind The Station [3] ) is the second prose work in the Grisons Trilogy. With a highly stylized Swiss German Grisons dialect, the narrator, a child of pre-school age, tells about his life with parents, grandparents and his brother in a micro-village in Grisons. Camenisch has confessed that various elements of the story are autobiographic, but is rather taciturn which ones they are.
Initially, Camenisch's intent was not even to publish the book, instead he just told his editor Urs Engeler about a prose fragment that he had written about his childhood, but just for himself. Engeler then convinced Camenisch to show him what he had written down. Eventually, they decided to make the text his second novel to be published by Engeler.
The universal imagery of childhood contributes to a large part to the novel's popularity with its audience: Though its language clearly roots the story in Switzerland, foreign readers often state a feeling of nostalgy towards their own childhood in other places evoked by reading Hinter dem Bahnhof .
After two books with interconnected settings had been published, Camenisch decided to round up the portrayal of his region of origin with the play-like novel Ustrinkata.
The plot sets around the closing evening of a local pub in a Grisons village. Camenisch has confirmed the closing of his aunt's pub Helvezia in Tavanasa to have been the initiative inspiration to write his novel. Special about the prose in this publication is its rule of dialogue that gives way to characterizing the novel rather as a play for the stage.
For Ustrinkata, Camenisch received the Swiss Literature Award.
Publications that have not yet been (fully) translated into English include Las flurs dil di (2013), Fred und Franz (2013), Nächster Halt Verlangen. Geschichten I (2014), Die Kur (2015), Die Launen des Tages. Geschichten II (2016), Der letzte Schnee (2018), Herr Anselm (2019), Goldene Jahre (2020).
Sez Ner, Ustrinkata, Las flurs dil di, Fred und Franz and Der letzte Schnee have yet been adapted for the stage by different Swiss theaters.
A movie adaption for Die Kur has been announced but not taken place yet.
For Sez Ner, Camenisch has recorded a bilingual audiobook with each three audio discs in German and Romansh. [4] Hinter dem Bahnhof is available as a German audiobook edition as well. [5] The short story collections Nächster Halt Verlangen. Geschichten I and Die Launen des Tages. Geschichten II are also available as audiobooks read by the author himself. [6] [7]
Radio Play versions of Ustrinkata [8] , Fred und Franz [9] and Der Letzte Schnee [10] have been produced in cooperation with the Swiss Radio and Television (SRF).
Camenisch has been a member of the Spoken Word Ensemble Bern ist überall until 2016. [11]
Romansh is a Romance language spoken predominantly in the Swiss canton of the Grisons (Graubünden). Romansh has been recognized as a national language of Switzerland since 1938, and as an official language in correspondence with Romansh-speaking citizens since 1996, along with German, French and Italian. It also has official status in the canton of the Grisons alongside German and Italian and is used as the medium of instruction in schools in Romansh-speaking areas. It is sometimes grouped by linguists with Ladin and Friulian as the Rhaeto-Romance languages, though this is disputed.
The Grisons or Graubünden, more formally the Canton of the Grisons or the Canton of Graubünden, is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eleven districts and its capital is Chur. The Alpine ibex is the heraldic symbol of the canton.
Biel/Bienne is a town and a municipality in the Biel/Bienne administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.
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As there is no dominant national language, the four main languages of French, Italian, German and Romansch form the four branches which make up a literature of Switzerland. The original Swiss Confederation, from its foundation in 1291 up to 1798, gained only a few French-speaking districts in what is now the Canton of Fribourg, and so the German language dominated. During that period the Swiss vernacular literature was in German, although in the 18th century, French became fashionable in Bern and elsewhere. At that time, Geneva and Lausanne were not yet Swiss: Geneva was an ally and Vaud a subject land. The French branch does not really begin to qualify as Swiss writing until after 1815, when the French-speaking regions gained full status as Swiss cantons. The Italian and Romansch-Ladin branches are less prominent.
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