A Son of the Gods

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Ambrose Bierce (1892)

A Son of the Gods (subtitle: A Study in the Present Tense , German : . A son of the gods A study in the present tense ) is the title of a short story by the American writer Ambrose Bierce , in the collection 1891 Tales of Soldiers and Civilians published .

It belongs to the group of stories set in the American Civil War and tells of a young officer of the Union Army who sacrificed himself during the Atlanta campaign in order to scout out the strength and position of the enemy.

The work is kept in the present tense throughout and at the beginning works with short sentences that seem like stage directions. With the soldier's selfless sacrificial death , it deals with the motive of suicide , which Bierce also circled in other civil war stories.

content

Advancing troops of the Union Army have come through a forest and are looking from the edge of a hill about a mile ahead and over which a stone wall runs. Plowed through by the traces of the retreating enemy infantry , open land lies before them and offers not the slightest cover .

After a brief review of the struggles of the last days of the group of observed staff officers belonging narrator , a young, distinguished officer in gold sparkling uniforms - "a blue-gold edition of the War Poetry" - on the edge of the open field on a white horse galloping and the Commanders saluted at a respectful distance. With his red saddlecloth , the vain “fool” would be a target on any battlefield, mocking laughter resounds. The superior seems to refuse a request from the young man, whereupon the latter rides across the field towards the ridge of the hill. At a signal from the bugler, the advancing skirmishers stop immediately.

If the enemy were behind the wall, it would be "madness to attack him head-on", because your own ranks would be exposed to the deadly artillery fire and hail of bullets . In order to prevent the senseless mass sacrifice, one would have to maneuver the enemy out of this position by threatening the supply lines . But is the opponent standing there or has he moved on? As usual, a line of swarms could be sent ahead and sent to certain doom, because with the second volley at the latest , all men would be struck down in defenseless retreat - a high price that the "military Christ " wants to pay alone.

Admiring his courage, those who stayed behind watch him ride up the slope at a relaxed pace , without looking around and seeing the love but also the remorse of those who just laughed at him. The sun rests on his shoulder pieces like a “visible blessing” while “ten thousand” pairs of eyes follow him and hearts beat in time with the inaudible steps of the horse. From the commanding officer - now an "equestrian statue of himself" - to the staff officers to the commonplace, everyone follows the show of the brave and remains in the position in which the consciousness of the event hit them like a bolt of lightning.

As long as the rider only moves forward, a possible opponent will not fire and give himself away, and if he would pass the ridge and become a prisoner of war , the enemy troop strength would remain secret. About a quarter of a mile from the wall, he turns his horse around and gallops parallel to the opposing line. Apparently he has seen the position of the enemy which he could now report on. Since this no longer seems possible and his fate is sealed, he has to lure the enemy in the last minutes of his life to reveal as much as possible about himself.

The riflemen and gunners , who you can't see but whose thoughts you can guess, know that they have to hold back in order not to give anything away. A targeted shot would be possible - "but firing is contagious". The distant rider does not stop and constantly changes direction. Suddenly he rushes towards the wall, pulls his horse aside and "down the slope - to his friends, to his death!" A cloud of smoke rises, and before the volley can be heard, he falls to the ground - but jumps again on horseback and gallops towards your own ranks. A "tremendous hurray" sounds. One soon realizes that the rider has reached another hill to "reveal another conspiracy of silence". An explosion - the mold rears up and collapses dead. But the son of the gods stands upright, looks at his comrades and with his saber performs the "salute of a hero for death and history."

The spell is broken, the skirmishers and other soldiers, contrary to orders, push into the open field, only the rear battalions obey the order and stay behind. The commandant sees the men on both sides of his escort rush forward and again gives the signal to withdraw, which is taken over by other buglers and which is finally followed sullenly; the wounded are dragged along, the dead are picked up. In view of the many senseless sacrifices, the narrator asks whether that great soul could not have been spared the "bitter consciousness of a futile self-sacrifice".

background

Shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, Bierce, influenced by the abolitionist sentiments of his uncle Lucius Verus, reported to a regiment in Indiana and was used there as a scout . He took part in the preparations for the battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga , was wounded, and was promoted to the rank of titular major for his bravery. Until its mysterious disappearance during the Mexican Civil War , the war remained at the center of his literary and journalistic work.

With his essays and stories he eluded certain directions and could not easily be assigned to the common categories. He distanced himself from the local color fiction of Mark Twain or Bret Harte as well as from the realism of William Dean Howells and was more attached to a romanticizing literary term. His attitude towards war was ambivalent and fluctuated between disgust and fascination. While the horror and absurdity of war become visible in his prose, he seems to need his extreme situation precisely in order to be able to describe the psychological experience of the protagonist. His pessimistic attitude and the gruesome images of destruction and suffering repelled the readers of the turn of the century and led to a comparatively low popularity.

While many interpreters believe they recognize an anti-military tendency in his civil war stories, Gisbert Haefs points out that Bierce would probably have resisted being claimed as a pacifist or having written an American version of war and peace . If anything, he would have spoken out against unilateral disarmament and more in favor of military deterrence .

interpretation

Actually, it would have been the task of the skirmishers to determine the strength and position of the enemy, but puzzlingly the young officer, who with his white horse and red saddlecloth attracts the eyes of the enemy and apparently wants to offer himself as a living target. If the comrades had followed the command of the corps commander, had remained calm and had not left cover, many lives would have been spared. Since they were carried away by the Maelstrom of “courage and devotion”, the hero's sacrifice appears in vain. The phrase, which is astonishing for the reader, was only logical for the cold observer Bierce, who as a former officer in the Union Army was familiar with such extreme situations and described them in numerous stories.

For Jerôme von Gebsattel the work boils down from the beginning to reveal the heroic gesture of the “military Christ” in a bitter and ironic way as recklessness that amounts to mass hysteria and thus condemns the strategic purpose of the undertaking to senselessness.

literature

Text output

  • Ambrose Bierce : The Collected Stories and the Devil's Dictionary. From the American by Jan-Wellem van Diekmes, Viola Eigenberz, Gisbert Haefs and Trautchen Neetix. Edited by Gisbert Haefs, Zurich, Haffmans Verlag. Licensed edition for two thousand and one, ISBN 978-3251203086 , pp. 45–54

Secondary literature

  • Jerôme von Gebsattel: A Son of the Gods. A Study in the Present Tense. In: Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Volume 2, Munich 1989, p. 672
  • Roy Morris: Ambrose Bierce. Alone in bad company. Biography. Zurich: Haffmans Verlag 1999, ISBN 3-251-20286-3 , pp. 142-143

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ambrose Bierce : A son of the gods. In: The Collected Stories and the Devil's Dictionary. Zurich, Haffmans Verlag 2000. Licensed edition for two thousand and one, p. 47
  2. ↑ a b Ambrose Bierce: A son of the gods. In: The Collected Stories and the Devil's Dictionary. Zurich, Haffmans Verlag 2000. Licensed edition for two thousand and one, p. 50
  3. ↑ Ambrose Bierce: A son of the gods. In: The Collected Stories and the Devil's Dictionary. Zurich, Haffmans Verlag 2000. Licensed edition for two thousand and one, p. 49
  4. ↑ Ambrose Bierce: A son of the gods. In: The Collected Stories and the Devil's Dictionary. Zurich, Haffmans Verlag 2000. Licensed edition for two thousand and one, p. 51
  5. ↑ Ambrose Bierce: A son of the gods. In: The Collected Stories and the Devil's Dictionary. Zurich, Haffmans Verlag 2000. Licensed edition for two thousand and one, p. 52
  6. ↑ a b Ambrose Bierce: A son of the gods. In: The Collected Stories and the Devil's Dictionary. Zurich, Haffmans Verlag 2000. Licensed edition for two thousand and one, p. 53
  7. ↑ Ambrose Bierce: A son of the gods. In: The Collected Stories and the Devil's Dictionary. Zurich, Haffmans Verlag 2000. Licensed edition for two thousand and one, p. 54
  8. ↑ Gisbert Haefs , In: Ambrose Bierce The Collected Stories and the Devil's Dictionary. From the American by Jan-Wellem van Diekmes. Zurich, Haffmans Verlag 2000. Licensed edition for two thousand and one. Appendix, To Ambrose Bierce. P. 1087
  9. ↑ Rainer Schöwerling: Ambrose Bierce · An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1981, p. 149
  10. ↑ Arno Heller: Ambrose Bierce: "Parker Adderson, Philosopher" - A story of wrong and right dying. In: Ed .: Klaus Lubbers The English and American Short Story, Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1990, p. 89
  11. ↑ So Rainer Schöwerling: Ambrose Bierce · An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1981, p. 156
  12. ↑ Rainer Schöwerling: Ambrose Bierce · An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1981, p. 157
  13. ↑ Gisbert Haefs , In: Ambrose Bierce The Collected Stories and the Devil's Dictionary. From the American by Jan-Wellem van Diekmes. Zurich, Haffmans Verlag 2000. Licensed edition for two thousand and one. Appendix, To Ambrose Bierce. P. 1091
  14. ^ Roy Morris: Ambrose Bierce. Alone in bad company. Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 142
  15. ↑ Jerôme von Gebsattel, In: Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Volume 2, Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, A Son of the Gods. A Study in the Present Tense Munich 1989, p. 672
  16. ↑ Jerôme von Gebsattel, In: Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. Volume 2, Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, A Son of the Gods. A Study in the Present Tense Munich 1989, p. 672.