The counterfeiters
The counterfeiters ( French: Les Faux-Monnayeurs ) is a novel by André Gide and was published in 1925.
content
Main storyline
The protagonists of the main storyline, which lasts a few months of summer and autumn, are two teenage boys and a man of 38 years. 'Bernard Profitendieu', a 17 or 18 year old Parisian high school student, discovers shortly before graduation that he is the product of a relationship between his mother and a casual lover. Through this he feels confirmed in his previously inexplicable distance from his supposed father and the two supposed brothers. He decides to run away from home; but since he doesn't know where to spend the first night, he slips into the home of his classmate and friend Olivier Molinier, a frightened boy who lacks affection. He looks for this in his closest friends and in his uncle Edouard, with whom he shares a mutual love , but which neither of them can really express.
However, as a result of a chance meeting, Bernard is employed as a secretary by Edouard, who is active as a writer, and travels with him to the mountains of Saas-Fee . Out of disappointment and jealousy, Olivier then gets involved with Count Passavant, a rich, snobbish and homosexual fashion writer who is prone to cynicism and manipulation and knows how to exploit the boy's emotional state for himself. As a result of the Count's harmful influence, Olivier becomes increasingly vicious, brutal and hideous, even towards his best friends. Eventually he becomes aware of this and falls into deep depression , of course without knowing how to reverse the development.
On a glamorous evening he gets drunk and makes a fool of himself in front of the whole world before he falls into delirious stupor . He is finally picked up by Uncle Edouard, in whose arms he also spends the night. The next morning Olivier tries to kill himself, not out of desperation, but because he believes that he will never be able to enjoy such happiness as last night in his life. Finally, he is saved by his uncle, thanks to the vigilance of his mother, who suspects the relationship between her brother and her son but does not want to destroy them either.
Sides of the novel and their storylines
Several smaller stories are grouped around this main storyline: One should mention Olivier's older brother Vincent , who first begins a love affair with his distant cousin Laura , impregnates her, but then steals from responsibility and turns to Lady Lilian Griffith , the cynical friend of the Count Passavant. His younger brother Georges becomes a criminal offender as a result of manipulation by Count Passavant. Olivier's friend Armand , who was marked by disappointment and depression , turned to extreme nihilism in his views and ideas and in the end came mentally close to the cynical Count Passavant. The fathers of the two high school students, the investigating judge Profitendieu and M. Molinier are also often involved in affairs.
The old organist La Pérouse longs to meet his missing grandson Boris again, but is disappointed when the time finally comes. Edouard and Bernard had found the fragile child in a sanatorium in the mountains and brought it back to Paris , not least to remove Boris from the ominous influence of his ailing friend Bronja , but also to dissuade him from his habit of masturbating with friends. Alone, desperate and abandoned by everyone, including Edouard, who had actually sworn to take care of Boris, mistreated by Georges and his comrades, Boris is the victim of a plot in the last chapter: As part of a test of courage , he supposedly shoots himself with the his grandfather's unloaded pistol.
Incidentally, the novel ultimately refers to itself, as Uncle Edouard, as a writer, is writing a work that is also entitled “The Counterfeiters”.
interpretation
Narrative technique
The carefully constructed novel breaks with the classic narrative tradition insofar as it does not follow a chronological storyline, but artfully interweaves a multitude of stories, changes the narrative perspective several times and constantly reveals new relationships between the countless characters. In addition to the traditional epic narrators, there are excerpts from Edouard's diary , letters between those involved and even a chapter in which the author "criticizes" his people (Part 2, Chapter VII). The whole thing is rounded off by interspersed quotations from La Rochefoucauld , Flaubert , Pascal or Fénelon .
Using the figure of the writer Edouard, Gide shows the limits of the narrative of a novel and the difficulties in depicting the real world in the forms of a fictional work. The Counterfeiters is therefore also regarded as one of the groundbreaking novels of the 20th century , as a forerunner of future literary movements such as the Nouveau Roman .
Counterfeiting
The central motif of the novel is the problem of distinguishing between real and fake, between honesty and - ethical or intellectual - "counterfeiting". The title of the novel and the use of the motif allude to the famous counterfeit comparison that the doctor of the church Thomas Aquinas used to justify the appropriateness of the death penalty for the guilt of the heretics .
Almost everyone in the novel is affected by it, to varying degrees: the counterfeiting is most evident in the case of the cynical and egocentric Count Passavant, of Profitendieu, who falsely pretended to be Bernard's father, of the flighty Vincent or of Azais, the old hostess father “Christian” pension owes its attribute to the observance of certain external forms and conventions rather than a life in accordance with the gospel . But Bernard and Olivier, little Georges, grandfather La Pérouse, Laura and even Edouard sometimes become counterfeiters of morality, justice or feelings. This is partly done consciously, partly unconsciously; the motives are varied, ranging from self-love, fear and confusion to lying out of politeness. And so Bernard finally confesses to Laura that almost all of the people he met "sound wrong".
On a real level, the motif is reflected in the boarding school children around Olivier's brother Georges, who actually put counterfeit money into circulation.
Theodicy
In the dark last chapter with the senseless death of the boy Boris, another moral question arises in full sharpness: that of theodicy , the origin and meaning of evil. In a longer monologue, the old Pérouse reflects on his dead grandson, whether “on this earth God is always silent”, whether man “has no organ for God's voice (...)”, whether the devil's “dissonances” drown out God's word or whether am In the end, God and the devil act “in agreement” if they are not “one and the same”.
Autobiographical
According to a diary entry made by Gide's friend Claude Mauriac in 1939, the novel contains numerous autobiographical references: "Everything that Gide entrusted to me, I find here again, barely modified. Very often they are even the same expressions as I put them out of his mouth heard."
In fact, the author Gide, a pioneer of literary modernity, faced the question of the narrative ability of a novel, the relationship between reality and its depiction, in a similar way to his protagonist Edouard.
Behind the other figures people from Gide's environment are suspected, behind Olivier about Marc Allégret , behind Count Passavant Jean Cocteau and finally Gide's cousin Madeleine is said to have been the godfather of Laura ; with the latter, the author has connected a similar "forbidden love" as that between Laura and Vincent (cf. The narrow gate ). Nevertheless, these characters - like many others in the novel - have individual personality traits Gides.
Finally, her author shares the homosexual disposition with numerous people - a central motif not only in the counterfeiters, but also in the immoralists and other works of the author as well as his theoretical writings.
History of origin
Gide documented the genesis of the novel in the Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs published in 1926 , which can also be understood as a supplement or continuation of the novel on a higher level.
Impact history
The counterfeiter was first published in 1925 in the Nouvelle Revue Française . The response was initially rather cool, which among other things is also due to the revealing portrayal of homosexuality. The novel was first translated into German in 1928.
Hans Blumenberg precedes his book Die Legitimität der Neuzeit (1966) with a quote from The Counterfeiters .
particularities
In a party scene, Gide lets the writer Alfred Jarry perform. Jarry's real name is mentioned, and his play King Ubu , premiered in 1897, is also mentioned. On the other hand, one passage refers to Marcel Duchamp's "Mona Lisa with Mustache" from 1920. The plot of the novel can therefore not be clearly defined as a specific year in the early 20th century.
literature
- André Gide: The counterfeiters. Novel . Dtv, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-423-01749-X
- Claude Martin: André Gide in self-testimonies and image documents . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2001, ISBN 3-499-50089-2 , p. 116 ff.
- Hanspeter Plocher: André Gide, "Les Faux-Monnayeurs" 1925. (German) in Wolfgang Asholt (Ed.): Interpretations. French Literature, 20th Century: Novel. Stauffenburg, Tübingen 2007 ISBN 978-3-86057-909-1