In Search of Lost Sounds

In this lyrical essay, Emre Aracı follows Hans Christian Andersen’s sketch of a pine tree and a curious domed pavilion into the hills of Saxon Switzerland, where art, music, and fairy-tale intertwine. At Schloss Maxen he evokes the circle of the Schumanns, the Javanese painter Raden Saleh, and Andersen himself, whose poems Robert set to music and whose presence Clara once recorded with frank fascination. Weaving together landscapes, letters, and song, Aracı conjures a realm where past and present meet in enchanted harmony, and where the spirits of Andersen and the Schumanns still seem to linger among trees, pavilions, and remembered melodies. When, one morning, I alighted quite alone at the deserted station of Mühlbach from my two-carriage train that had wound its way along the banks of the Müglitz, through the green pine-clad mountains and high plateaux of that region known in Germany as Saxon Switzerland, I was perfectly aware that it was Hans Christian Andersen who had led me hither...