Farewell for longer

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Gabriele Wohmann (1992)

Farewell for Longer is a little novel by Gabriele Wohmann from 1965. Rowohlt published the work eleven times from 1969 to 1984.

the novel

The 33-year-old first-person narrator brings up two farewells. One day she would like to be closer to her Strass, a former math student. She says goodbye to her family and makes two trips to see her married pharyngitic lover, who is over forty years old and who has children with his wife. The second farewell concerns the tired, sickly, overweight Strass himself. The young woman leaves the now divorced man who does not want to marry her and prefers to be with someone else. The narrator returns to her family's lap, although she would like to continue with Strass, the man who not only whispers because of illness.

While the first trip from the narrator's hometown - that is a district town on the little river Litter - takes six hundred kilometers by train over many hours south to Swabian , the second trip takes her to north-east London .

The narrator pretends to be outside the profession. The parents know nothing about rhinestones. There, in Swabia and England, he is rationalizing the bookkeeping of small and medium-sized businesses with the help of booking machines and is leading seminars on rationalization everywhere. You live in the age of punched cards . The narrator has to wait a long time for her lover in the hotel or pension. If Strass holds out at his respective workplace until the end of the day, he does so not out of a sense of duty, but out of interest in rationalizing office work. In addition, his employer expects Strass to accept dinner invitations in the house of the respective entrepreneur. So the narrator has a lot of time. In Swabia, she doesn't wait in her Hotel Wachturm, but kills time by writing short texts for the company novafilm and taking part in interviews for documentary films. In London she sometimes goes on excursions in the vicinity of the metropolis.

The reader must first get used to the form of the bulky text. Because the grueling repetition of details of the bookkeeping activity of Straßen has to be accepted as well as continual blatant violations of the rules of the German spelling. This means, for example, questions without question marks or dialogues without the common punctuation. Jumping between the text's inner levels of meaning is more difficult than these little things. On the superficial level - let's call it a “journey outside” - it criss-crosses the family who stayed at home and the dead sister Ruthie. The narrator directed the entire text of the novel to the latter. Ruthie had a fatal accident nearly twenty years ago. The child fell from the crown of a plane tree while daring to climb . The narrator can't get over it.

The narrator does not always follow the laws of logic. So she quotes what one of her rivals, audible only to Strass, whispers to her lover.

Despite the above-mentioned "shortcomings", the performance of a love story told with great restraint must be admired: When Strass turns to a certain Fraulein Maltan at the invoicing machine in Swabia , the narrator does not make a scene for him, but observes with keen eyes and excessively pricked ears what is looming new relationship. The narrator drinks a bottle of the “death agent” Korn and withdraws from Strass for a long time. So the novel does not stop at two farewells. But the narrator is drawn back to her lover. In England, Strass would like to repeat his Miss Maltan “affair” with a certain Monica. The narrator then withdraws for the last time in the novel from Strass, which is now life-threatening with the larynx .

The inner honesty of the text also seems disarming. Several times in the novel, Strass asked the narrator what she actually wanted. Each time she promptly replies: Get married. Sleeping next to Strass is exhausting because he sleeps restlessly. She writes: "I sleep better without rhinestones." It is worth reading - how reluctant the narrator is about her experiences "in the arms of rhinestones"; that is, their intercourse with rhinestones, circumscribes. So she hides the two pajamas from the cleaning ladies in the shared bedroom. That’s clear. Some things are ambiguous - for example, when she writes whether she can be satisfied or the repeated reference to Strasse's "sympathetic hands". Then in London the narrator speaks of “our room” and increases “our bedroom”. The narrator becomes clearer: "His [street] hand carefully pushed up my skirt ... the other hand came under my sweater ..."

reception

  • Dagmar Ulbricht writes that the narrator and the "terminally ill, completely closed" Strass lived past each other. It is not a love story, but a family story, because the text begins and ends in the family. In addition, the narrator would not get rid of her family at any stage of this monologue to the address of the dead sister Ruthie.
  • Hans-Albert Walter hits the narrative core of the novel several times, for example when he emphasizes the reservedness of the narrator. She says neither her name nor the first name of the lover. The reluctance degenerates into mutual concealment: Strass hides both his divorce and his illness and the narrator hides her knowledge of the divorce. When the narrator becomes aware of the life-threatening illness of the lover, she wants to assist in dying. When the plan cannot be carried out, she goes back to Germany. The painting of the superficial constitutes Gabriele Wohmann's stylistic strength. The narrator composes succinctly, pointedly and skillfully. Naturally remaining in the tone of voice, she succeeded in achieving a sensitive realism with the almost omniscience of the reteller. The narrator is to blame for the death of sister Ruthie.

literature

First edition

Used edition

  • Farewell for longer. Novel. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1970, 121 pages, ISBN 3-499-11178-0

Secondary literature

  • Hans-Albert Walter : Retreat inward . Pp. 53–55 in: Gabriele Wohmann. Materials book. Introduction by Karl Krolow . Bibliography by Reiner Wohmann. Edited by Thomas Scheuffelen. Luchterhand, Darmstadt and Neuwied 1977, 150 pages, ISBN 3-472-61184-7
  • Günter Häntzschel, Jürgen Michael Benz, Rüdiger Bolz, Dagmar Ulbricht: Gabriele Wohmann . Verlag CH Beck, Verlag edition text + kritik, Munich 1982, authors' books vol. 30, 166 pages, ISBN 3-406-08691-8
  • Rūta Eidukevičienė: Beyond the gender struggle . Traditional aspects of the image of women in the prose of Marie Luise Kaschnitz , Gabriele Wohmann and Brigitte Kronauer . S. 152. Röhrig, St. Ingbert 2003, 351 pages (dissertation Uni Saarbrücken ), ISBN 3-86110-345-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ July 21, 1967, Marcel Reich-Ranicki in der Zeit : Bitterness without anger
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 46, 7. Zvo
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 51, 2. Zvo
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 47, 4th Zvu
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 104, 4. Zvo
  6. ↑ Häntzschel, Benz, Bolz, Ulbricht, p. 126, 20. Zvo to p. 132, 7. Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 118, 1. Zvo

Remarks

  1. ↑ In 1965, when the novel comes onto the market, Gabriele Wohmann is also 33 years old.
  2. ↑ Hans-Albert Walter indulgently speaks of sovereign "leaps in association" (p. 55, 4th Zvu).