Leo Tuor

Catscha sil Capricornen Cavrein

«Tegn mei en buna memoria e pren mes meinis buca per la sontga scartira. Scriva si empau da quei che nus vein trafficau, ed empau metta vitier.»

«If you want know everything, every last detail, about a valley, everything about a mountain and its slopes, its rocks, its screes, outcrops and peaks, its ravines, chasms and crannies, then you should go hunting ibex in the high Alps.»
Hunting ibex is regarded as the supreme specialty of the Bündner Oberland, the high alps of the canton of Graubünden; and especially so - because it’s so demanding - in the Val Cavrein, a wild side valley off the Val Russein. In this essay, the Rhaeto-Romanic writer Leo Tuor leads us into a world where vigilance and patience are the watchwords…a world where only one thing is certain: that man the hunter must wait and wait. And wait, until – maybe – an ibex comes by. And wait, until the moment arrives when he has the animal in his sights.
Tuor is a passionate reader of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: he even reads philosophy when he’s out hunting and always keeps a copy of Wittgenstein’s legendary work 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' with him…for even hunters encounter things, which are hard to understand and difficult to put into words without help and explanation. And the very process of waiting creates insights, which are otherwise hard to come by. Leo Tuor tells us how hunting is one means to understanding our fellow men. And that a hunter must also be a storyteller. Wittgenstein said: «If a lion could speak, we couldn’t understand him.» Neither could we understand the ibex, if he could speak, writes Tuor. But his essay does give us some idea how a hunter feels, as he moves in on the King of the Alps, the ibex.
(Martin Zingg, translated by Max Easterman, Rosie Goldsmith)

Recommended for translation by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia: www.12swissbooks.ch

Translation of title: Hunting Ibex in the Cavrein

Chasa Editura Rumantscha, Chur 2010

ISBN: 978-3-905956-02-3