© 2002 by Court of the University of St Andrews
Dürrenmatt's Dogs: Intimations of Evil, Death and Spirituality
1 Department of German, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
This article addresses a number of central aspects of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's work and thought. Although not a dog-lover, Dürrenmatt owned many dogs over the years, and dogs occur remarkably frequently in his writing and painting. By reference both to published work and to material from the Dürrenmatt-Nachlass in the Schweizerische Literaturachiv in Bern, the paper begins by exploring the connection between dogs and evil in his fictional and autobiographical writings, and then goes on to consider links in his thinking between dogs, death and spirituality. The paper concludes with an analysis of the short essay, Begegnungen, in which Dürrenmatt describes the death of his first wife and the death of her dog. Unpublished material in the Nachlass shows that Dürrenmatt's account of his wife's death underwent several drafts and revisions before publication. This material provides insights into his views on death and into his method of working, notably his ability to transform personal responses into more modulated, literary ones.