I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch

First published:Stiller, 1954 (English translation, 1958)

Type of work: Existential mystery

Time of work: The mid-twentieth century

Locale: Switzerland, Europe, and the United States

Principal Characters:

• Anatol Ludwig Stiller, the protagonist, who insists that he is James White
• Julika Stiller-Tschudy, his wife
• Rolf, his public prosecutor and his friend
• Sybelle, Rolf’s wife, who has an affair with Stiller
• Dr. Bohnenblust, Stiller’s defense counsel

The Novel

I’m Not Stiller is the story of a man’s fight to deny his past and to create a new identity for himself. At every juncture he is forced to confront the image of the man he once was and does not want to be. Anatol Stiller’s story is told in two parts: in the accounts recorded in seven notebooks written by Stiller/ White in prison, and in a postscript written by Rolf, Stiller’s public prosecutor and friend.

On one level, the prison notebooks reveal the story of Anatol Stiller, a failure trying to be a hero. After proving himself a coward in the Spanish Civil War, the mediocre sculptor Stiller, insecure about his masculinity, marries a ballerina, Julika, a beautiful but frigid woman. Unsuccessful in his attempts to bring out the “woman” in his wife, the restless and moody Stiller embarks on an affair with Sybelle. Meanwhile, his tubercular wife is confined to a sanatorium in Davos. Haunted by guilt and abused by his mistress, Stiller jumps a ship to the United States. After several years of drifting through the American wasteland, Stiller tries to put a bullet through his head, narrowly escaping suicide. Confronted by an inexpressible presence, which he calls his angel, Stiller considers himself reborn and returns home to Switzerland, where he is arrested and put on trial to prove to him his identity.

On another level, Stiller’s notebooks document his struggle to maintain his fabricated identity as James White, a smuggler, wife murderer, and American soldier of fortune, who rescues women from burning huts, survives volcanoes, and murders millionaires in the heart of the jungle. In order to make him accept his old identity, the court presents Stiller with irrefutable evidence: photo albums, testimony from his wife, verification by his former mistress, and corroboration by five of his friends. Stiller is taken back to his favorite restaurants, to the sanatorium where he deserted his wife, and finally, to his former studio, which he physically demolishes as he pleads with his wife to accept him as his new self. In the end, the court condemns him to be Anatol Stiller and he acquiesces.

In the second part, Rolf, Stiller’s public prosecutor, recounts the years after Stiller’s trial. Stiller reclaims Julika as his wife and settles down as a potter in a ramshackle farmhouse in Glion. The marriage, however, self-destructs; Julika is hospitalized, and Stiller, obsessed with becoming her savior, sees himself once again as her murderer. On Easter Monday, Julika, who had always been dead in Stiller’s eyes, dies. The novel ends on an ambiguous note: “Stiller remained in Glion and lived alone.”

The Characters

I’m Not Stiller is a novel about characters seeking freedom—the freedom to accept themselves as they are. Stiller always casts himself in the role of a hero, thus setting impossible tasks for himself. Trying to be a hero, he finds himself to be a coward. Attempting to re-create his wife, he symbolically becomes her murderer. Only when he examines his life can he come to terms with his failures. Armed with this knowledge, Stiller refuses to accept his old identity. In his path toward freedom, he moves toward self-acceptance but finds himself once again pursuing the impossible task of saving his wife. After her death, Stiller withdraws from the world and falls silent. Whether his silence signifies the true inner freedom of self-acceptance or reveals the resignation of a man absorbed in his own despair is one of the haunting questions of this novel.

Like Stiller, Rolf hides behind a false persona, trying to create an open marriage that would allow him and his wife to engage in extramarital affairs. Only by coming to grips with his true feelings is Rolf able to see that there is no freedom without commitment. Sybelle, Rolf’s wife, seeks to challenge her husband by freely engaging in an affair, which leads her into open promiscuity. Only when she leaves Rolf to earn her own living in America is she able to gain freedom. In the end, Rolf and Sybelle are reunited.

Julika, unfortunately, is never able to be free. Although Stiller continually molds her into a “graven image,” not allowing her to be herself, she remains with him, unable to see that she is compelled to play the part of a victim. After seven years of health and prosperity, she returns to Stiller, once again becoming a childlike victim instead of a mature, independent woman. In the end, her inability to free herself and face responsibility costs her her life.

Dr. Bohnenblust, Stiller’s defense counsel, is the typical patriotic Swiss who sees freedom in terms of laws, rights, and institutions. He questions nothing, always appeals to common sense, and offers Stiller a middle-of-the-road path of self-sacrifice, connubial obligations, and public responsibility. His is a life based on shallow, external appearances. Inwardly he is empty—an inauthentic man, imprisoned in a sterile system which he has created.

Critical Context

I’m Not Stiller is a mixture of many literary styles. On one level, it can be viewed as a Bildungsroman in which Stiller makes self-discoveries and finally comes of age. The book also follows the tradition of romantic realism in the vein of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1875-1877; English translation, 1886), a novel often mentioned in the text, for it examines in detail the psychological torments of modern relationships, but I’m Not Stiller goes beyond realism, using many of the techniques of the late modernist. The narrative structure is fractured so that incidents appear out of chronological order. Stories are filtered through several narrators; Stiller tells the story of Rolf’s marital problems as they are related to him by Rolf and narrates his own actions in the third person. The same incidents are related from the viewpoints of two or three of the involved parties. Many times there are conflicting accounts. Sybelle and Rolf relate different versions of their last confrontation before Sybelle leaves for America.

In keeping with the modernist tradition, I’m Not Stiller creates a montage effect, interweaving dreams, fabrications, fanciful stories, and eyewitness accounts. Anticipating the postmodernist tradition, I’m Not Stiller introduces parody into a serious novel. For example, Stiller’s adventures can be seen as a pastiche of several Ernest Hemingway narratives. Stiller fights in the Spanish Civil War (For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940), reenacts the bravura of bullfights (The Sun Also Rises, 1926), falls in love with a nurse/medic (A Farewell to Arms, 1929), and becomes obsessed with an act of cowardice (“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” 1936). Moreover, Stiller is a parody of a Hemingway hero living in a Kafkaesque world in which the bureaucratic machinery of the state puts him on trial, primarily to prove to him that he is really himself. I’m Not Stiller is the novel which established Max Frisch’s reputation, not only in German-speaking countries but also around the world. It stands in the forefront of the postwar renaissance of the German novel.

Bibliography

Adamson, G.L. The Contemporaneity of Max Frisch’s Novels, 1973.

Butler, M. The Novels of Max Frisch, 1976.

Peterson, C. Max Frisch, 1972.

Probst, G., and J. Bodine. Perspectives on Max Frisch, 1982.

Weisstein, Ulrich. Max Frisch, 1976.