Locus Amoenus: A Lexicon of Contrasts in Adam und Evelyn

In literary history the locus amoenus has often had the function of purifying and revitalizing the soul of its dwellers by way of contact with idyllic nature. Its prototype is the Garden of Eden, to which the title of Ingo Schulze’s novel Adam und Evelyn (2008) refers. Nevertheless, Schulze moves away from this canonical setting by creating a polyphonic universe that reflects the society and underlines how ambivalent the concept of locus amoenus has become for the citizens of the GDR by the end of the 20th century. On the one hand, the idea of idyllic nature was still alive for many citizens of East Germany; on the other, for many citizens that same idea had vanished and the borders of locus amoenus merged with those of the Federal Republic’s cities. This paper aims to pinpoint the different representations of locus amoenus underlining the cultural distance between the word choices of the main characters. In fact, thanks to the use of such an accurate lexicon, the writer creates a semantic and linguistic net of contrasts, expectations and premonitions. The new elaboration of this topos goes hand in hand with the attempt to highlight the inner structure of the novel, an interpretive model that the reader can only see after several readings. The dialogic and polyphonic character of the novel imposes a reading that continually retraces its steps in search of occurrences, memories and omens that reveal the relationship between the protagonists and the surrounding environment.