Households of the Self

Abstract

Drawing from Bachelard and Heidegger’s theories, this chapter examines Magris’s conception of individual identity in connection with the motifs of home, language as dwelling place, and transience in the play Stadelmann, the narrative monologues You Will Therefore Understand and Voices, and the short novels A Different Sea and B. Conde. Magris’s attachment to the human and aesthetic value of home does not render the latter a stable, private site of non-negotiable inclusions and exclusions. Just like identity is “making” and not “being,” conquest and not permanent ownership, the supposed intimacy of the home is inseparable from the experience of the unknown. Through his characters’ inability to accept precariousness and change, Magris shows that clinging to stability amounts to destroying life itself.