Sweet Days of Discipline – Fleur Jaeggy (1989)

Translated from Italian by Tim Parks

I read this slight novella between my two 1977 club reads, and that feels oddly long ago now as I sit here trying to find something to say about it. I had seen so many tantalising reviews of this one that I found myself buying it just a few weeks ago. I love a tightly controlled novella – and this is certainly that, written in beautifully spare prose, it is enigmatic and dark. I had expected to love this more than I did, I certainly enjoyed it – if that is the right word, but something about this story left me feeling quite low. In many ways there isn’t a lot to say about this novel – so you may be relieved to know that this review will be quite short.

“At fourteen I was a boarder in a school in the Appenzell. This is where Robert Walser used to take his many walks when he was in the mental hospital in Herisau, not far from our college. He died in the snow. Photographs show his footprints and the position of his body in the snow. We didn’t know the writer.”

Set in post-war Switzerland; the narrator of Sweet Days of Discipline is a fourteen-year-old girl at a boarding school in the Appenzell. The opening of the novel has a deceptive feeling of innocence – our narrator looking back on the days of her schooling reveals herself as quite knowing, well versed in the world of the boarding school – having attended others before this. A child of separated parents she receives her instructions from her mother in Brazil and writes long letters to her father that are only briefly and infrequently answered. The narrator describes her life as a boarder – a life she sees as being that of a captor – always looking for a freedom she can’t find.

“The wind wrinkled the dark lake and my thoughts as it swept on the clouds, chopped them up with its hatchet; between them you could just glimpse the Last Judgement, finding each of us guilty of nothing.”

A new girl arrives at the school named Frédérique, who is immediately noticed by our narrator – who sees her disdain and her high forehead, and that she has ‘no humanity’. Frédérique is fifteen, seemingly perfect and perfectly obedient, and the younger girl is determined to conquer her. As she vies for Frédérique’s attention and friendship she muses on the nature of control and how close to madness it can come.

Dazzled by Frédérique she seeks to understand her, seeking ways to spend time with her and in time to emulate her.

“It was as though she talked about nothing, Her words flew. What was left after them had no wings. She never said the word God and I can barely write it down myself when I think of the silence she surrounded it with.”

The discipline and control represented in the character of Frédérique, is contrasted with that of another girl Micheline. Our unnamed narrator is torn between these two different girls, Frédérique’s cool, poised perfection and Micheline’s chatty exuberance. Having rejected a younger girl’s request to be her protector, and almost immediately seeing how she will regret this, our narrator puts all her energies into winning favour with the object of her (almost) obsession. Frédérique who can play piano and whose handwriting is so beautiful our narrator works hard to copy it. As time passes so does the unsettling nature of these relationships gather pace.

“There is a mortuary look somehow to the faces of the boarders, a faint mortuary smell to even the youngest and most attractive girls. A double image, anatomical and antique. In the one the girl runs about and laughs, and in the other she lies on a bed covered by a lace shroud. It’s her own skin has embroidered it.”

School days end and eventually we get some glimpses of these girls grown up – beyond the confines of their politely controlled world.

There are many strikingly beautiful passages and within them some extraordinary images. While I loved the quality of the writing of this delicately nuanced novella, the narrative left me feeling rather flat as I said before – but I definitely want to read more by this author – and I suspect I would get a lot from reading this again one day, as such prose deserves to be reread.