The Ends of Vision

Horizons are borderlines of perception that produce a here and a there, and determine the space of living. Christian Lehnert’s new book, The Ends of Vision, walks towards horizons, towards the limits of perception and existence, in an effort to explore them – those worlds that only exist in our imagination and at the same time transcend them, because they hint at something beyond them. But what lies beyond the ends of vision, marked by the meagre facts of birth and death? Nothing?

Jakob Heyschow, who wants to pace out this »beyond« through dreams and imagination, ends up in a boundary zone himself. He has moved into an old house in the mountains for a while. Walks in nature and everyday work on the former farm are superimposed on memories from childhood, in an age of dictatorship, where strong hopes for a beyond under the banner of communism marked his childhood consciousness. But is the house real? Can he trust these memories? And is the child who just shows up one day seeking comfort just a phantasm of Jakob’s own missing daughter?

As it moves, this prose, along with the religious stories embedded within it, becomes itself a form of possibility of the impossible, a radically open space, in which the limiting horizons implode and the space expands into the beyond.