Abstract
What can we learn from Alpine literature about natural hazards in Alpine areas and how they affect local communities? In this essay, we contend that fiction can be an important means of learning more about environments, and how human fate is inextricably linked to them. Heinrich von Kleist’s 1807 novella “The Earthquake in Chili” (Das Erdbeben von Chili‘) about the Spaniard Rugera’s experience and survival of a catastrophic event in 1647 and Voltaires works on the Lisbon earthquake, the “Poe`me sur le desastre de Lisbonne” (1756) and “Candide” (1759), are considered literary milestones in the fictional depiction of the forces of nature acting on mankind. These famous works help us to remember these disasters while also stimulating thought about them beyond the scientific community of researchers studying disasters. Disaster and apocalyptic narratives have a long tradition in literary and cultural history. They deal with natural hazards such as earthquakes, storm tides and floods, landslides, avalanches, and similar events (Dürbeck & Stobbe, 2015, p. 332). Depicting these danger zones and destructive events in literature allows us to ask fundamental questions about humanity’s relationship with nature.