Stifter & Corduroy

There's a Stifter story called Aus dem Bairischen Wald, and when I think of it now, it reminds me of the Corduroy story, A Pocket for Corduroy, which was a favorite when I was little.

Courduroy the bear becomes lost in the laundromat as he's in search of a pocket. He ends up in a snowpile of detergent and then in a cage, which he hates. Eventually he is found, and he finally acquires a pocket with a card which has his name in it, in case he should ever be lost again. He also ends up in a bag of someone else's laundry, which he mistakes for a cave in the dark. Nothing like getting mixed up in someone else's laundry by mistake, I think. In the Stifter story, the main character gets lost in a snowstorm, and is eventually packed up and sledded out, and has a lovely homecoming. One thing the two share is how being lost in foreign landscapes, or a landscape which was once familiar but foreign under different circumstances (a snowstorm, night), can throw all ideas of identity and belonging into question. The endings are about restoring identity. I think that Stifter would have loved the laundry element of Corduroy, with his (Stifter's) extensive discussions of Waesche.