When I was dying

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When I was dying , engl. As I Lay Dying , is a novel by William Faulkner published in the United States in 1930 and describes the eventful funeral procession of a poor farming family.

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Addie Bundren, a poor farmer's wife, dies and is due to be buried in her hometown of Jefferson, fictional Yoknapatawpha County . The events on the way there, 40 miles across the country road on a team of mules, are told by members of family, friends and neighbors, a relay run of reports to an undisclosed interviewer. Contributing: The family man Anse , hunchbacked, initially without teeth and teeth, self-pitying, devious, lazy and cowardly, but who knows how to get his way; the eldest son, Cash , a bit simple-minded but clever; the second oldest Darl , pensive, always thought to be crazy and eventually becoming one; the third, Jewel , choleric, stubborn, brave, horse-mad; the only daughter, Dewey Dell , pregnant and silent, after the sexual intercourse with Lafe, which was disturbed by Darl, also with a grudge against Darl; the youngest, Vardaman , about five years old; the late Addie himself and - among a few other characters - the fundamentalist preacher Whitfield , with whom Addie betrayed her husband Anse.

Even though the funeral procession forms the main strand of the narrative, a number of secondary strands are woven into the journey: before the start of the transport, earning money quickly with a load of wood, riding along with jewels on the horse that was once bought without the family's knowledge, overcoming of an overflowed river, the renewed broken leg of Cash in the whirlpools - later splinted with cement by the family, the loss of her team and the purchase of a new one, the abuse Dewey Dell - sold to her by a doctor's assistant as a remedy for pregnancy, which Gradually odor-forming corpse of the mother, the subordination of the family to Anse's secondary goals of the trip: the acquisition of new dentures and the wooing of Addie's sister - all this turns the funeral procession into a hilarious journey into hell, at the end of which the arsonist Darl is admitted to the madhouse, Dewey Dell the money for an abortion, Jewel his horse and cash possibly se loses one foot. Nevertheless, it will somehow continue - with a new woman at Anse's side.

Narrative

With this figure experiment, Faulkner develops a poetry of slowness and changing perspectives. All figures initially have a vaguely circumscribed character, which only gradually takes shape in the mutual reflections. Faulkner chiseled the characters with sparse dialogues, sparse plot and many reports from the perspective of the characters, with some things remaining indistinct until the end. He devotes himself in detail to the everyday philosophies of the characters, B. Anse's explanations on the subject of horizontal and vertical , those by Dewey Dell on being alone , by Darl on being and non-being , by neighbor Tull on the solidity of things, or those by Addie on the relationship between beautiful concepts and reality . This figure perspective enables Faulkner not to assert or comment on the emotional states from the outside, but to show it from the inside, through actions and figure comments. He uses his images as guiding metaphors and works on the inner film of the reader by combining several levels of attributes: "... he pulls it on, slowly, terribly ...", a parable for the state in which a part of humanity is in the author's opinion continues to torment.

German-language editions

  • 1961 When I was dying , German by Albert Hess and Peter Schünemann, Fretz and Wasmuth, Zurich
  • 1961 When I was dying , same translation, Goverts, Stuttgart
  • 1963 When I was dying , same translation, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main ( Suhrkamp Library )
  • 1973 When I was dying , same translation, Diogenes, Zurich. (Diogenes Taschenbuch) ISBN 3-257-20077-3
  • 1984 When I was dying , same translation, people and world, Berlin (GDR)
  • 2012 When I was dying , German by Maria Carlsson , Rowohlt, Reinbek. ISBN 978-3-498-02133-7 .

Others

  • The US metalcore - band As I Lay Dying contributes just happens that name.
  • In 2013 the novel was made into a film by James Franco . Not only did he direct, but he also wrote the script and played the role of Darl Bundren .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reviewed by Paul Ingendaay in FAZ No. 155 of July 6, 2012, p. 28.
  2. ↑ Interview with Tim Lambesis , accessed on July 21, 2010
  3. ↑ [1] cf. Entry on Internet Movie Database , accessed March 24, 2014