Making the Silent Deep Speak
Making the Silent Deep Speak

Summary/Abstract: “The fate of the Danube, flowing through the heart of Europe across Austria and Hungary in its watercourse that once was gouged, then stabilised and regulated, is to swallow up the discharge of its tributary streams so that eventually it swells to become the lower Danube. The fate of men and women living along its banks is frequently to be incarcerated between and beyond borders, also beyond Danubeborders, which is one of the most perverted things, except for the Dam2 that is even worse than the border”, Thomas Kabdebo highlights in one of his Danubelectures. 3 This two-sentence statement quite tangibly points out the tension between the concept that depicts the Danube as a silver, sometimes blue waterway connecting nations, peoples, cultures and languages with the actual reality that sometimes is in harsh discordance with the idealised and desired Danube-picture. To present this complexity with the means of art is quite a daring endeavour, and doing so using the language-bound medium of literature is a particularly monstrous challenge. Thomas Kabdebo’s4 roman-fleuve

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