‘Warum nun Dieses?’: Verblendung and Verschulden in the Stories of Adalbert Stifter

‘Warum nun dieses?’ This is a question that people have been asking for hundreds of years. Why do terrible things happen? On the surface, Adalbert Stifter claims that there is a simple, God‐given explanation for everything – and that all will be clear to us once we have obtained the ‘right perspective’. Below their serene surfaces, however, his texts suggest something more sinister. For not only is our own blindness such that we mostly only ever see what we imagine or invent – but, if we do ever see the ‘truth’, then what we will see is that we ourselves are responsible for the disasters that so inexplicably befall us. In this respect, Stifter’s fiction is Kafka’s avant la lettre : Stifter is so to speak Kafka in a different key – apparently sunnier, but in truth even more menacing.