Playing Heidi

Bird On The Wire
an online column by Carmel Bird

No. 8
27 July 1998

Previous columns

The future of the book

Time Slices

Outside In

The Tried and Tested

The Man Behind The Woman

Uncorrected Proof

Stories My Mother Should Have Told Me

Switzerland gave us the cuckoo clock and great pharmaceutical companies; it gave us Jung and cheese with holes and Heidi.
Johanna Spyri, a Swiss author who died in 1901, was the creator of stories, beginning in 1879, about a girl called Heimathlos, known in English as Heidi. Heidi, you understand, was a character in fiction. The stories were not biography, they were fantasy. They have delighted readers in many languages, and the stories have been made into several movies. I expect there have been musicals. Girls have been named after the little heroine. The genre is a kind of sentimental realism, telling of the ordinary trials and joys in the life of an orphan child in the Swiss Alps at the end of last century.
The Heidi of fiction and fantasy has recently passed into history and fact, and has been re-fashioned as a commodity with a birthplace and a hometown and all the trimmings of the theme park. We are accustomed to this kind of thing; we need places to take the children for their entertainment. That two different villages are claiming Heidi (not Johanna Spyri, but Heidi) does not strike me as unusual or problematic. Grotesque, perhaps, but normal.
I imagine no child will care that there are two places; human beings are accustomed to there being multiple birthplaces and stamping grounds for popular figures of both history and fiction -- think of King Arthur or Jesus. Maybe the competition between Sarganserland and Maienfeld will keep both towns on their toes.
Like many another character from the fiction of the distant past, Heidi is off and running with a life of her own. The hell with the book and the author. Perhaps this is OK. It's a nice thought that the creation is more powerful and flexible than the creator, that fiction is (well, I suppose it always has been really) more vigorous fun than fact. Like toys in the middle of the night, characters in fiction leap from the pages of their books and off they go.
In Maienfeld you can send emails from Heidi's House. Sarganserland will sell you a Heidi compact disc. There will be Heidi wines and coins and museums, naturally. You might wonder what took them so long. Check Heidiland Packages on the Net. Mind you, whereas Sarganserland doesn't get a run in the books, the first paragraph of my translation of Heidi goes:

'From the old and pleasantly situated village of Maienfeld, a footpath winds through green and shady meadows to the foot of the mountains, which on this side look down from their stern and lofty heights upon the valley below.'

Sounds like fantasy to me, but there, smack in the first line is the name of the village of Maienfeld. But this does not seem to trouble the business men of Sarganserland. Actually I think the paragraph has a faint echo of Alice's rabbit hole, the removal of the characters from real life into the world of dreams. So maybe the mention of Maienfeld is by the by.
It's kind of interesting that nobody can lay claim to the real Wonderland, even the real rabbit hole. Because Carroll himself is so endlessly fascinating and documented, and because the girl for whom he wrote the story was real and documented, there can be no argument about which places on earth have the right to make money out of Alice. And poor Alice has long since been done over by Disney so that there is a distinct split between the popular image of Alice and the vast academic study of Alice.
It is true that I have not visited the Heidi shrines, and maybe, just maybe, they are inoffensive enough. However, I have seen plenty of theme parks and I don't hold out much hope. Once you turn a character from fiction or from history into the central motif of a money-making theme park the character is pretty well doomed. By letting them loose you shut them down.
The best place for a fictional character is in a book. But books are not safe any more. The characters become the brands that will put Swiss villages on the map. (My old Michelin Guide to Switzerland, 3rd Edition, does not list Sarganserland or Maienfeld.)
I suppose it's lucky Heidi stopped being known as Heimathlos, the meaning of which is 'homeless'.

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Copyright © Carmel Bird 1998. All rights reserved.


	Bird On The Wire an online column by Carmel Bird No. 8 27 July 1998
Previous columns The future of the book Time Slices Outside In The Tried and Tested The Man Behind The Woman Uncorrected Proof Stories My Mother Should Have Told Me	Switzerland gave us the cuckoo clock and great pharmaceutical companies; it gave us Jung and cheese with holes and Heidi. Johanna Spyri, a Swiss author who died in 1901, was the creator of stories, beginning in 1879, about a girl called Heimathlos, known in English as Heidi. Heidi, you understand, was a character in fiction. The stories were not biography, they were fantasy. They have delighted readers in many languages, and the stories have been made into several movies. I expect there have been musicals. Girls have been named after the little heroine. The genre is a kind of sentimental realism, telling of the ordinary trials and joys in the life of an orphan child in the Swiss Alps at the end of last century. The Heidi of fiction and fantasy has recently passed into history and fact, and has been re-fashioned as a commodity with a birthplace and a hometown and all the trimmings of the theme park. We are accustomed to this kind of thing; we need places to take the children for their entertainment. That two different villages are claiming Heidi (not Johanna Spyri, but Heidi) does not strike me as unusual or problematic. Grotesque, perhaps, but normal. I imagine no child will care that there are two places; human beings are accustomed to there being multiple birthplaces and stamping grounds for popular figures of both history and fiction -- think of King Arthur or Jesus. Maybe the competition between Sarganserland and Maienfeld will keep both towns on their toes. Like many another character from the fiction of the distant past, Heidi is off and running with a life of her own. The hell with the book and the author. Perhaps this is OK. It's a nice thought that the creation is more powerful and flexible than the creator, that fiction is (well, I suppose it always has been really) more vigorous fun than fact. Like toys in the middle of the night, characters in fiction leap from the pages of their books and off they go. In Maienfeld you can send emails from Heidi's House. Sarganserland will sell you a Heidi compact disc. There will be Heidi wines and coins and museums, naturally. You might wonder what took them so long. Check Heidiland Packages on the Net. Mind you, whereas Sarganserland doesn't get a run in the books, the first paragraph of my translation of Heidi goes: 'From the old and pleasantly situated village of Maienfeld, a footpath winds through green and shady meadows to the foot of the mountains, which on this side look down from their stern and lofty heights upon the valley below.' Sounds like fantasy to me, but there, smack in the first line is the name of the village of Maienfeld. But this does not seem to trouble the business men of Sarganserland. Actually I think the paragraph has a faint echo of Alice's rabbit hole, the removal of the characters from real life into the world of dreams. So maybe the mention of Maienfeld is by the by. It's kind of interesting that nobody can lay claim to the real Wonderland, even the real rabbit hole. Because Carroll himself is so endlessly fascinating and documented, and because the girl for whom he wrote the story was real and documented, there can be no argument about which places on earth have the right to make money out of Alice. And poor Alice has long since been done over by Disney so that there is a distinct split between the popular image of Alice and the vast academic study of Alice. It is true that I have not visited the Heidi shrines, and maybe, just maybe, they are inoffensive enough. However, I have seen plenty of theme parks and I don't hold out much hope. Once you turn a character from fiction or from history into the central motif of a money-making theme park the character is pretty well doomed. By letting them loose you shut them down. The best place for a fictional character is in a book. But books are not safe any more. The characters become the brands that will put Swiss villages on the map. (My old Michelin Guide to Switzerland, 3rd Edition, does not list Sarganserland or Maienfeld.) I suppose it's lucky Heidi stopped being known as Heimathlos, the meaning of which is 'homeless'.


HOME	Copyright © Carmel Bird 1998. All rights reserved.