Burning Autumn

Der goldene Herbst ist hier!

Switzerland is beautiful any time of year, but I don‘t think I‘ve seen an entire country completely blanketed in a natural golden Insta-filter of autumn foliage. There are specific places where visitors flock to see the spray of yellow larches and red maples, but sometimes even our usual Sunday walk in the local woods offers just as brilliant scenes.

At the end of August, when the weather was still balmy and the cool crisp days of autumn are barely on people‘s minds, I took part in a unique creative writing workshop based on the Kunstmuseum Thun‘s current exhibition Johannes Itten und Thun: Natur im Mittlepunkt. A group of us — mostly Swiss and native German speakers, as well as a handful of non-Swiss with other mother tongues — took a tour of the exhibition, with the prompt to pick one of Itten‘s artworks and write something in relation to it. It could be a description, a memory, a poem ... anything that stirred creativity in our heads that could be put down with pen on paper. We spent an afternoon in a creative writing workshop, with the goal to present our writings as a uniquely curated tour of the exhibition to the Thun Netzwerk „Lese Abend“ group in the beginning of September.

I chose Itten‘s 1954 work „Brennender Herbst“ or „Burning Autumn“ in English. Though I make the effort to practice my German writing as much as possible, my first reaction was to write something in English. Most of the works were in German, one in the Bernese variation of Swiss German (Bäärndüütsch), one in Russian. 

Here is what I wrote:

It‘s ironic to write about the burning autumn as I sit in the heat of late summer. Perhaps the only thing that summer and autumn have in common is a sense of burning. Heat. Flames. Don‘t these trees look like flames? The trunks, like wicks of a candle?

It‘s ironic to write about the autumn when the heat of the summer sun is beating on your back and the burning of Sunday grills creep into your nose.

It‘s ironic to write about the autumn when the trees are bushy and green, and the stinging bug bites briefly burn the skin on first contact.

It‘s ironic that in the autumn, the trees burn with such fervor the brightest colours of the year. It‘s not the soft pastels of spring flowers, nor the deep greens and blues of summer follies in the mountains and lakes. It‘s a far cry from the bleak monochrome winter. 

No — the autumn burns. It is ablaze. It is alive. 

It‘s the last gasping breath of the earth — as if to say, I‘m still here. I will show you my life, my passion — my fire. 

It‘s ironic that these leaves hold no more life, that the sun‘s energy is spent, and that they will eventually fall to the ground.

And even there, they still shout — I‘m still here! Crunch, crunch. I‘m alive! say the crackling of the dried leaves, the crackling of the fire. 

Autumn is the season of transition, of slowing down and preparing for the seriousness of winter. The weather turns colder, the impending darkness creeps earlier into the day — such a contrast with the life of summer, its warmth and long lazy days.

But here, autumn has a dramatic side, perhaps playful. 

Those burning leaves — yellow, orange, red ... green certainly can‘t compete with this show

We also composed short poems called Elfchen, made up of eleven (elf) words, with one on the first line, two on the second, three on the third, four on the fourth, and the last line containing only one word. While my main composition was in English, I wrote two Elfchen in German — a challenging feat in a language whose beauty lies in its precision! Here‘s one of them:

Bäume

brennender Herbst

golden flimmernde Flammen

Blätter rascheln am Boden

unterwegs

The Johaness Itten exhibition is at Kunstmuseum Thun until 22 November. However, with the current Corona situation, Canton Bern‘s museums are currently shut until 24 November. However, you can still virtually visit the exhibition!