Sleep brother

Schlafes Bruder is a novel by the Austrian writer Robert Schneider from 1992. The book was an international success and has so far been translated into 36 languages. It is a classic Bildungsroman , the hero of which holds up a grotesque mirror to the reader in the rural milieu of an Austrian mountain village of the 19th century, characterized by inbreeding and double standards . The criticism of the relationships portrayed shows art, here music, as the engine of a life condemned to failure by dramatic entanglements. All the other characters in the novel, who are mostly driven by an inner compulsion (Peter, Elsbeth, etc.), are confronted with the harshness of a fate that they can neither see through nor avert. The title of the novel refers to characters from Greek mythology . Hypnos is the god of sleep; his brother is Thanatos , the god of death.

content

At the beginning of the 19th century, the protagonist Johannes Elias Alder (called Elias) was born in a small village in Vorarlberg , whose residents have only had two surnames for many years. As the biological son of the curate , he grew up in the house of Seff Alder, his mother's husband.

Rejected by his mother and locked in the room for the first few years, at the age of five he experienced an aggravation of his hearing that caused him to fall into a trance lasting several minutes . During this listening experience, he pubesced long before the time and the irises of his eyes turned yellow, which earned him the shameful names "Mannkind" and "Gelbseich". From then on he was obsessed with love for an unborn child whose heartbeat he heard from the village. Months later, it turns out that it is his cousin Elsbeth.

Elias has a great talent for music. He practices his voice until he is able to sing in all possible pitches and imitate almost all the villagers. Peter, his cousin of the same age and Elsbeth's brother, is fascinated by Elias in a homophile manner. Later, when Elias, fascinated by the poor organ music during services, sneaks into the church at night to teach himself to play the organ , Peter becomes his bellows treadmill .

At Christmas , when Elias is twelve years old, Peter ignites the home court out of anger over the abuse of his father. Elias, who was the first to discover the flames, rescues the sleeping Elsbeth from the uncle's burning house. The foehn wind blows the flames on other farmsteads, so that half the village is burned up by morning. Only Elias knows that Peter started the fire, but he is silent out of love for his only friend.

Elias develops into a good-looking man for the so-called social inbreeding of the village, who is also hard-working and has an unusually elegant manner. After the unskilled organist and village teacher Oskar committed suicide , he took his place. His musical genius gives him a high reputation, although he always remains an eccentric due to his different nature.

His love for Elsbeth is growing steadily, it determines everything he does and his music. When the two gradually get closer - purely as friends - Peter becomes jealous and he arranges an early wedding between his sister and Lukas, the son of a wealthy farmer. Peter desires Elias and does not want to lose him to his sister. Elsbeth, who has been used to making no demands throughout her life, accepts her fate and is satisfied.

Elias begins to quarrel with God, he cannot understand why God lets him burn into such love and why Elsbeth should then marry someone else. He has a divine vision during a desperate night of insulting and accusing the Lord . When he wakes up the next morning, the love for Elsbeth has left his heart, just as the yellow has left his - now green - eyes. Elias becomes lethargic and depressed over the emptiness in his heart . He begins to wish his painful love back, because he now sees an unfulfilled love as more bearable than no love at all.

When Elias was 22 years old, the Feldberg cathedral organist Goller happened to witness his extraordinary organ playing. Stunned, Goller asks him to come to Feldberg for the organ festival. Peter, who senses the friend's great opportunity, persuades the impulsive Elias to accept the invitation and accompanies him to Feldberg.

When Elias the organ festival on the chorale "Come, O death, you Brother of Sleep" (from the cantata " I want the cross-staff gladly carry " by Johann Sebastian Bach ) extemporaneously , the organ takes all listeners to unprecedented way. Elias himself is aflame in a new love for Elsbeth and decides to put an end to his life, like the thought of the chant.

On the way back to his home village, he remembers the words of a hiking preacher whom he once overheard and who said that a true lover never sleeps. He decides to stay awake until death comes. Peter, who has to swear not to say anything to anyone, becomes the only witness to his suicide, which lasts for several days. Johannes Elias Alder ultimately dies of the deadly nightshade , which he consumed in order not to fall asleep. Peter buries his beloved friend and finally finds peace.

External conditions

Time: The action takes place between 1803 and 1825, so it covers exactly the hero's lifetime. With these precise details, the author wants to underpin a truthfulness. But this story is fictitious, the hero is an example of a person whose genius is misunderstood. In addition to periods of time that are strongly gathered (baptism to the experience on the Emmer ...) there are also those that are told in great detail (the birth, the experience of the water-polished stone, the story in which Burga is fooled ...). In the examples mentioned last there is a congruence of narrated time and narrative time. In addition, many retrospectives and anticipations stand out, the author is very free with the chronology.

Location: There are real locations in the book. In addition to Innsbruck, localities in the Vorarlberg part of the Rhine Valley are mentioned, but their name has been corrupted. Feldberg = Feldkirch; Götzberg = Götzis; Dornberg = Dornbirn; Altig = Altach; Eschberg refers to the town of Meschach, which belongs to the political municipality of Götzis, where Schneider grew up and still lives at times. With these locations that exist in reality, Schneider pretends that the narrated plot took place in this way, with striking parallels to his own life, moved to the beginning of the 19th century.

Milieu: There is essentially a uniform milieu. The apparently wealthy and respected listeners in Feldberg Cathedral do not play a role, everyone else belongs to the peasant class, even curate Benzer and the teacher Oskar Alder manage an estate. They are all poor and uneducated. In the present work, social opposites are not discussed.

Language and style

Language is an archaic artificial language tinged with dialectal elements and with numerous word creations of its own. The text is interspersed with sentences in indirect speech . On the one hand, Schneider uses many ancient terms, on the other hand also dialect words that come from Vorarlberg. Another particularly noticeable point in Schneider's expression is the excessive use of synaesthesias , which are mostly embellished with (increasing) repetitions (sound weather, sound storms, sound seas, sound deserts).

The structure of the story is symmetrical, which is also reflected in the chapter headings. A striking example of this are the two major fires that almost destroyed Eschberg and that appear at the beginning and at the end of the novel. The novel consists of 19 chapters of varying lengths. The story of Elias - from his birth to death - is set in a double framework. The first chapter "Whoever sleeps does not love" and the last "Mother, what does love mean?" Form the outer framework.

The life of Elijah is described by an omniscient ( authorial ) narrator who at times addresses the reader directly. Often times, the narrator even seems to know the reader's mind. This creates closeness to him. Towards the end of the novel, the reader is even referred to as a good friend.

Translations / edition

The first edition of the novel was published in 1992 by Reclam Verlag Leipzig . The book has been translated into 36 languages and 41 editions have been published so far (German-speaking countries).

Processing of the fabric

→ Main article: Sleep's brother (film)

1995 directed by Joseph Vilsmaier with André Eisermann (Elias), Ben Becker (Peter) and Dana Vávrová (Elsbeth) in the leading roles, the film of the same name was shot freely based on the novel. The film received several awards and was also nominated for a Golden Globe . In 1994/95 the composer Herbert Willi , with Robert Schneider as librettist , wrote an opera "Sleep Brother" on behalf of the Zurich Opera House on the occasion of the anniversary year "1000 Years of Austria". The production was invited to the 1996 Vienna Festival . In 2005 the book was set to music by the band Helangår .

Secondary literature

Norbert Berger: Robert Schneider. Sleep brother. Contemporary novels - ideas and materials . Auer Verlag, Donauwörth 2006, ISBN 3-403-04438-6 .

Johannes Diekhans (Hrsg.): Teaching model of sleep brother . 1st edition. Schöningh, Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-14-022351-X .

Martin Doerry : A splinter of bone . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 1992 ( online ).

Sybille Fritsch: If you love, you don't sleep. In: Profile. 2 (January 11, 1993).

Erich Hackl: laudation to Robert Schneider. In: The time. October 1, 1992.

Wolfgang Höbel : Caution trappers! In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. March 26, 1994.

Marion Kosmitsch-Lederer: Robert Schneider's “Sleeping Brother” - An analysis of the novel. In: Austria in history and literature. 50 5b / 6 1999.

Jutta Landa: Robert Schneider's “Sleeping Brother”: Village chronicle based on calculation. In: Modern Austrian Literature. Special "Heimat" Issue, Vol. 29, No. 3/4, 1996.

Michael Lammers: Interpretation aid German - Robert Schneider - Schlafes Bruder . 1st edition. Stark, Freising 1996, ISBN 3-89449-437-9 .

Mario Leis: Reading key Robert Schneider Schlafes brother . 1st edition. Reclam Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-15-015372-7 .

Beatrice von Matt : Foehn storms and sound weather. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. October 20, 1992.

Magret Möckel: Notes on Robert Schneider, Schlafes brother. C. Bange Verlag, Hollfeld 1997, ISBN 3-8044-1772-8 . (King's Explanations and Materials 390)

Rainer Moritz: About Schlafes brother . 2nd Edition. Reclam Verlag, Leipzig 1996, ISBN 3-379-01559-8 .

Iris Radisch : Sleep Brothers. Pamphlet against naturalness or why young German literature is so good . In: Die Zeit , No. 46/1992.

Michael Saur: One from the village. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin. October 13, 1995.

Mirjiam Schaub: Phantom Images of Criticism. A look at the card index for young German-language literature. Robert Schneider and the disappearance of literary criticism . In: Christian Döring (Hrsg.): German-language contemporary literature against their despiser. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995.

Lars Schmeink: Hypnos and Thanatos: the image of death in Robert Schneider's sleep brother. In: Modern Austrian Literature. Vol. 37, no 3/4, 2004.

Angelika Steets: Robert Schneider, Schlafes brother: Interpretation. Oldenbourg, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-486-88695-9 . (Oldenbourg Interpretations, Volume 69)

Hermann Wallmann: Sound weather, sound storms, sound seas, sound deserts. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. September 30, 1992.

Mark Werner: The conception of genius in Robert Schneider's "Sleeping Brother": Interpretation , Marburg 2003 (also: Bonn, Univ., Master's thesis, 1996).

Herbert Zeman (Hrsg.): History of literature in Austria: From the beginnings to the present. Vol. VII. Academic printing and printing Publishing house Graz 1999.

Klaus Zeyringer: Attempting a literary autopsy of a bestseller - On Robert Schneider: “Sleeping Brother”. In: Klaus Zeyringer: Austrian literature 1945–1998, overviews - incisions - waymarks. Haymon Verlag, Innsbruck 1999.