In The Pond, Pauline de Bok withdraws to her home in the countryside of Northeast Germany. There too, in the midst of forests and lakes, the ecosystem is under threat: the water level is falling, trees are affected by disease and for the first time in twenty years the natural pond near her cowshed dries up.
The biotope around the cowshed
withers and dies and
I search for new life there
It is alarming, but she refuses to lose heart. She lays a new, clay pond, does battle with goosegrass and brambles, makes room for swallows, bats and insects. In the meantime, she ponders our relationship to nature and the extent to which human intervention is useful or necessary. ‘We happen to be an animal species, but within a century we have depleted the earth. And now we think we can carry on like that and save the day too.’ And if we do manage to turn the tide, what’s the point in the long run? ‘We are taking on ever greater burdens and at the same time we realize how powerless we are as individuals and how out of control as a species.’
‘Writer and philosopher Pauline de Book shows that climate change is also being felt around her cowshed in north-eastern Germany. She tries to grasp nature’s unfathomability.’ — Filosofie Magazine
Pauline de Bok (b. 1956) read theology and philosophy before going into journalism and radio documentaries. She lives partly in Amsterdam and partly in the Mecklenburg countryside, the latter the inspiration for Blankow or the longing for Heimat (2006) which was translated into German and awarded the Annalise-Wagner Prize. A novel The Huntress was published in 2014, the non-fiction book Prey. A year of hunting in 2016.
The German translation by Gerd Busse of De poel (2021) will be published by C.H. Beck in february 2022.
In The Pond, daily toil outdoors is connected with fundamental questions about man and nature.
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