Archibald Strohalm
Archibald Strohalm is Harry Mulisch's debut novel . The manuscript was awarded the Reina Prinsen Geerligs Prize in 1951 and was published as a book in 1952. In 1957 the novel was awarded the Anne Frank Prize .
It tells the story of Archibald Strohalm, who lives as an office worker for a welfare organization in a Dutch provincial town. The weekly, Christian-conservative puppet theater performances of his opponent “Ouwe Opa” directly in front of his window become an occasion for him to question his entire way of life. Angry about the attempts to lead the children with the horrors of hell on an adapted path in life, he promises an alternative. He wants to write and perform a play himself, which the children can reach through laughter. Strohalm gives up his job, his lover and social contacts to become a writer. He buries himself more and more in philosophy and writing and increasingly loses contact with reality. Menacing hallucinations frighten him, for the good citizens he is increasingly becoming a figure of hatred. In the end he fails as a writer, his performance, which shows the myth of Sisyphus in endless repetitions , becomes a disaster.
The novel has a clear basic structure: Strohalm wants to write and perform his play in one year. The action takes place in a small Dutch town and its surroundings. It tells the chronological period from December 1949 to autumn 1950.
Nevertheless, the reader is increasingly irritated. From Strohal's perspective he participates in the increasing distortion of the perception of reality. Dark hallucinations and obsessions are inextricably mixed with reality. More and more bizarre people appear with absurd projects, for example the incapacitated factory owner who always goes backwards and works on a time machine to reverse the passage of time. Positive creator is the painter Boris Bronislaw, who tries to live his artistic ideas and go beyond the horizon of artistic forms.
The novel works heavily with ironically distorted set pieces from philosophy, art and literature. The loneliness of the unsuccessful writer is pointedly thematized, who tries in vain to fill the white paper with writing until he surrenders, and who repeatedly fails, burns drafts, takes refuge in dreams and strange activities.
The historical context, the situation in the Netherlands in the post-war period, the coming to terms with resistance, collaboration and the horror of the Holocaust appear only in marginal remarks. Due to the mythical-magical narrative style, the novel appears timeless in large passages.
Title and name
The title is shown in most Dutch print editions as archibald strohalm without capital letters. Only the second and third Dutch editions wrote the name in capital letters like the German editions. In the book, Archibald Strohalm “falls” from his name and thus from his identity, from now on he is written without capital letters.
"The leap out of the name, that's what it's about, the leap to a new and higher level of possibilities: into a new name ..."
The loss of the capital letters marks "an explosion of his personality" (3rd chapter p. 56). This explosion happened on New Year's Eve 1949/50, when Strohalm had a strange awakening and unification experience with an ancient chestnut, the "Archfather ... Abram" (3rd chapter, p. 60) of the forest. The FAZ reviewer sees Strohalms change as more of an implosion, the desired more possibilities remain:
“Yes, the explosive effect of this explosion even fizzles out, and what remains is a crumbling existence. That is why the explosion is to be understood more from Archibald Strohalm's perception as a metaphor, because what he actually goes through is an implosion. ”But the name Strohalm is also a metaphor in another sense:
“'What do you cling to in dire need?' asked Boris Bronislaw. 'Nine letters.' "
Ironically, the correct spelling is also assumed here.
motto
"Symbols become cymbals in the hour of death" Gerrit Achterberg
The motto borrowed Mulisch from a poem by Gerrit Achterberg, whom he greatly admired. He even had him read his novel before he dared to use a line from the poem.
In the last weeks before Archibald Strohalm's collapse, symbols of death such as dead birds, figures of Satan and traces of decay that only Archibald Strohalm sees appear in the novel. The novel uses such symbols as a leitmotif to mark the destruction of the main character.
content
1st chapter
The protagonist Archibald Strohalm lives in a provincial town on a square with a Romanesque church . The beginning of the narrative already points to decline and decay:
"The owl also looked out at the square ... Staring glassy in front of itself, filled with hay, she looked through Archibald Strohalm's floorboard window at the old, silent square."
In this world of decline, Strohalm lives an inconspicuous life. He has an office job and lives alone in his room. He has hardly any friends and his only relative is his sister Jutje. He rarely sees his mistress in Amsterdam .
Every Saturday, Strohalm looks increasingly angry at the puppet theater performances that “Ouwe Opa”, a strange old snap pea manufacturer, is putting on for children with his son Theodoor. The performances are religious and somber in character. “Horror and emotion” (22) should lead the children to faith.
On a Saturday in December, Strohalm fell furiously onto the church square. He describes the medieval form of influencing children as a "fascist procedure" (22) because it is based on "unconsciousness and ignorance" (22). He challenges “Ouwe Opa” to a competition. He wants to write his own puppet show that leads to knowledge through laughter and can positively influence a child with a single performance.
2nd chapter
The painter Boris Bronislaw, "hunchbacked, bowlegged and long-armed" (26), but still vital and strong, rescues a dog from the icy canal and gives it to Archibald, who calls it Moses . In the evening, Strohalm visits Bronislaw in the hope of “outsiders and holy intoxication” (29) in an artist's pub.
"... with a solemn smile and a measured step Archibald Strohalm stepped out of the company!"
The two discuss vigorously about artistic creation. Bronislaw makes fun of his own and foreign formal concepts and symbolic representations of the world. He wants to write a "poem about the pairing" (35) of two lovers that dispenses with symbolic narration:
"By the way, I won't write anything, I'll do it ."
The two indirectly confide their traumatic experiences to each other. Bronislaw tells of a father who threw his 7-year-old son out of the window to save him from the fire. The sheet was torn and the boy died - shortly before the fire department arrived.
Strohalms trauma stems from his relationship with his father, a biology teacher and ornithologist . As a child, he had destroyed his extensive collection of bird eggs. His legacy, however, consists only of a collection of stuffed birds. Strohalm set out on the “hunt from one woman to another ... in search of breasts and legs, the enemy of all men” (41). Even then Strohalm wrote and painted, "pathetic and fake" (42), Teufel "with the face of his father" (42). His marriage to Meta only lasts a year, Strohalms real great love is a hairdresser who cuts his hair in a dream.
Both men have plans. Bronislaw wants to renew his son's life by procreating a successor, Strohalm an author. He designs a strange mirror motif:
“'I plan to write a story in which a man is about to write a story. And in the story that this second man writes, there is again…. And do you know who the man is who makes history in the story of the most infinite man? ... I. '
Boris Bronislaw grimaced.
'My old grandmother,' he said, 'would call the Infinite Man God .' "
The motive of recognizing or losing oneself in reflections runs through the entire novel.
3rd chapter
Strohalm quits his job and creates an outburst of anger in his boss Ballegoyen, who hatefully prophesies his doom. Strohalm has enough money to live on for a year. He says goodbye to his old life and burns texts and letters, gives “Novels mit Menschlichkeit” (56) to the second-hand bookshop, and writes a farewell letter to his girlfriend.
The real turning point in Strohalm's life occurs through an experience of nature: he discovers that everything lives around him, he experiences the forest and the trees as “rulers with face and shape” (57). On New Year's Eve he visits the Tree King, a huge chestnut, which he emphatically describes as “the fireworks of life itself”, as “his friend” (59) and to whom he gives the name “Abram: 'sublime father!'” (60) . Near Abrams, Strohalm begins to hallucinate, finally he feels mythically one with the tree, feels reborn, Archibald Strohalm becomes Archibald Strohalm (63). The experience ends exactly with the New Year's fireworks, after hours it wakes up on the forest floor. What remains of the hallucination is a saying that he repeats like a mantra on the way home : "Stones, women, stars, yes" (65)
Since this experience Strohalm has been on his own with his writing project, sitting in complete solitude in front of the white paper: "the pen - that was archibald strohalm", "a man lost for life" (both 67).
4th chapter
Strohalm becomes an author. He feels “a wild stream”, a “flood of ideas” (70), which he tries to record in his notepad. The “invasion of ideas” (69) follows him even in his dreams: flocks of birds appear and drop their eggs, which have to collect straw and put “in padded boxes” (69). Writing becomes a threat, "a matter of life and death" (69). He is not interested in people who “left him indifferent ... to be precise, he was himself humanity” (68). He does not develop a position on the ideas he collects, does not even think about the consequences for his own life. His books are said to be like the rivers Heraclitus : "You cannot step into the same river twice, because other waters flow in." The more the reader "discovered of himself, the more he would discover in the books" (72). In his books the reader should only see himself as in a mirror (cf. 72). Human misery frightens Strohalm, but does not move him, he considers humans, unlike animals and nature, to be jointly responsible. The first signs of decay appear:
"Sometimes, however, a dead bird lay in his garden." (78) "
5th chapter
Jutje, Strohalm's sister, who is 4 years older, breaks the isolation with a telegram. The familiarity and "intimacy" (80) between the two, jealously observed by Jutjes husband, the private lecturer Stokvis, triggers memories in Strohalm. When he was 15, his sister had enlightened him and after her marriage to the sterile Stokvis kept looking for contact with her brother. She wants a child more and more. When Strohalm was 23 years old, Jutje thought out loud about a possible sperm donor in front of her husband and brother. After the husband has fled, Jutje points out to her brother that he is similar to his father. She thinks through all the men in her circle of acquaintances, whether they are a potential producer, but she lacks confidence in everyone. Suddenly Strohalm realizes with horror that Jutje is thinking of him, he flees trembling with fear. At the end of the chapter, another motif of decay emerges: The telephone is covered with signs of decay, "a cloudy goo surrounds it, it hangs in the fork like a skinned animal" (94).
6th chapter
Strohalm meets HW Brits, a 50-year-old incapacitated factory owner who goes backwards with great skill and without exception. He turns out to be an end-time prophet who believes that “time as such” is “almost exhausted” (105). In his house he is building a surreal time machine to reverse the passage of time:
“'… That time is running in the wrong direction, my dear. Instead of dying, rejuvenating more and more and finally disappearing into the womb, it is now the other way around. Instead of the increments through the anal opening ... '"
Strohalm recognizes Brits as his greatest enemy and begins to yearn for people.
7th chapter
Signs of death and putrefaction are now growing ever closer through the city. Strohalm observes the boy Bernhard Heidenberg, the outsider, playing marbles. Bernhard is the addressee of Strohalm's play; it is precisely he that is supposed to be influenced by the performance. The boy claims to his playmates that he will get a magic marble from Strohalm to win the decisive game. In fact, the alleged magic marble that the boy secretly pulls out of his pocket reaches its target with several ricochets. On the way home, Strohalm sees more and more dead, rotting birds. When he even discovers a half-dead bird on his desk, he realizes that he has lost touch with reality.
8th chapter
Strohalm has collected thousands of "dark and incoherent" (121) notes from which he wants to " create the great work " (121). His first attempts are "stories in which, without exception, a great work was created" (121). The narrator makes a comment: Successful works say nothing about their author, have “nothing more to do with him as a human being”. (121) As a person, Strohalm is shaped by, even “synonymous” (122) with his unsuccessful work . He does not see the only way out: "if he wrote a story in which someone failed a great work ..." (122)
Sometimes Strohalm finds solace in his erotic dream during his pain attacks. His angel now appears to him no longer "in a white hairdresser's coat, cutting his hair" (125), but naked "with spread thighs" (124).
Strohalm begins the author's struggle for the right word, but he does not succeed in capturing the liveliness of the thoughts in the writing process; as a text they appear “laid out, caged and buried”. (123) Only rarely do people, the narrator comments, manage to 'hatch' eggs (= ideas) that cannot be put into words. H. to make something living out of it, like Strohalm his dream angel. Only a few greats in history like Jesus and Buddha would have expressed their ideas in a “language of action”, not in words or numbers, nothing written down. Strohalm dreams of charging the words that have become impotent in the course of a poem so strongly that one word at the end could kill the reader. But the words remain "like an old, hardened sponge" (133), completely unsuitable for absorbing his thoughts. Strohalms hallucinations grow stronger, dead birds appear, satanic slime covers an entire block of flats.
9th chapter
Strohalm reflects his situation by comparing it to Jesus and the alchemists' search for gold. His work appears to him as a “dark colossus”, as a “process into which he was thrown” (135). He is desperate and sees himself as a caricature of the crucified.
"In the middle of the room stood the scarecrow: the wooden cross, hung with his oldest clothes and a hat - the lonely one."
In the beginning of spring he meets Bernard's father on the street, who reminds him of his promise and of Bernard's trust. The boy is completely isolated because he continues to believe in Strohalm. Strohalm explains Bernard's father that his project is “a conscious mythology” (140), that he himself is a genius, in all modesty, like his interlocutor, a dental technician.
10th chapter
In May Strohalm meets the painter Boris Bronislaw and his pregnant wife Hilde on a walk. Bronislaw proudly reports on his fatherhood ("I procreated, man!"; 150). They discuss the Bible, especially Genesis , which Bronislaw interprets psychoanalytically . The tree of knowledge is the “symbol of the male member ” (153) and Adam and Eve were “ashamed of their sexual organs” “because they had used them” (154). Hilde's question why the two should have died, Strohalm answers scholastically , "something that has a beginning must also have an end" (157). "Sexuality and death" (157) are closely connected, without individual death there would be no need to preserve the species, love then turns into hate.
Bronislaw and Strohalm begin to tell theological jokes. Strohalm feels particularly inspired by the following joke:
“Two ghosts or two ghosts. One asks the other: 'Do you believe in life before death?' "
He is impressed by the motif of repentance, the "loss of all fixed points" (162). He drew hope again to reach people again through the jokes. He then worked for a month and a half on a play entitled “Do you believe in a life before death?” (164).
11th chapter
It is summer, the play is finished - "the worst that has been written in literary history" (165). He burns the pile of paper. Strohalm realizes that he has not mastered the craft of writing, that as an author he has lost sight of reality and logic. He missed his intention of making the audience laugh and thus the contact with people. Gradually there are no ideas either, and Strohalm hallucinates more and more images of decay and death. He thinks of suicide, but overcomes this thought and begins to write the promised puppet theater piece, again under the title: “Do you believe in a life before death?” (172), supplemented by a dedication for Bernard. In June and July he completes the writing.
Theodoor, the son of the puppeteer "Ouwe Opa", visits Strohalm and tries in vain to convince him to give up his attempt. Strohalm begins "like a Gothic builder" (179) with the construction of the puppet theater and the figures. To be able to practice, he puts a mirror in front of the theater.
12th chapter
Strohalm visits Bronislaw and Hilde on their houseboat. Bronislaw has given up painting, he no longer sees any meaning in life as an artist:
“'An artist,' he said, 'is not expressed in his life, but in his work. In his work he can live an infinite number of lives, but not a single one in life. He always just stands aside and looks over at life, even if he's going through I don't know what. A normal person, you know, a normal person lives for life and is dead after death. An artist is dead during his life. '"
Strohalm confesses his fear of madness and describes himself as a faulty construction. He, too, sees art at the end, expressive stories of people are done, everything that can be said about them is “portrayed, in eternal, dead beauty” (204). Artists are "Hein's friend of life ..., this expressive type of man himself expressed and dead, ... art is destruction" (204f.). He dreams of a better world, in which consciousness conquers the unconscious and in which everything living is inextricably linked, so that you cannot destroy anything without destroying yourself. On the way back, Strohalm sees that Abram, the primeval tree, is being felled.
13th chapter
In autumn on the "national holiday" there is a fair with fairground attractions in the provincial town. Strohalm's money supply is running out and he wants to perform his play. He sits restlessly at home and philosophizes about the language.
“'The word holds people together, like Granny's water glass holds eggs, and because of words they murder one another. ... Language is the starch of society. In the beginning was the word. The unity through language is the distorted mirror image of the unity of the world. '"
He philosophizes about Hegel , Marx and Aristotle , about means and ends. Finally he visits the fair, rides the Ferris wheel and meets his former colleague Victor, who is now selling an 8-volume work on art history.
Strohalm visits a fairground attraction called "Bay of Biscay" (231), where visitors are shaken up in complete darkness. He falls on a woman who willingly embarks on a sexual adventure, but becomes so afraid to see her that he eventually escapes.
14th chapter
Strohalm reflects his accidental sexual experience as "very great love" (237), as the incarnation of his angel of dreams. He meets HW Brits, who bought some candy canes as the last component of his time machine and now wants to reverse the time. The two men part as enemies. Strohalm also experiences the world as "upside down" (242). Finally he visits a mirror cabinet. He looks sadly at the distorted images, hates his identity and the “world divided into images and distorted images” (245). He sees himself as "a mockery of a person ... abandoned in his destruction" (246).
He enters the Romanesque church, mounts the pulpit and gives a strange sermon until he is driven out. When he arrives in front of his house, Jutje is waiting for him there, but he puts her off. When he recharges his puppet theater at home, he has a new vision:
"Something appeared: brown, something big, the chair of God ..."
15th chapter
Strohalm prepares his performance in a doomsday mood. Strohalm cuts his hair, thinks of dark texts from Jewish mysticism and the Bible. His dream angel appears to him again naked, but the erotic fantasies also end here, he "had put them into words" (258). Under the heading "Image:" the novel then describes the felling of the ancient tree Abram.
The whole provincial town is on its feet when Strohalm sets up his puppet theater. He is insulted as a “city idiot” (262) and “communist” (263). Once again, Strohalm sinks into thoughts and visions.
The narrator turns to the reader as a commenting author and points out that Strohalm was his creation:
“Here I stand: the main character. Something of me went crazy in you Something that had gone crazy inside of me, I puked into you. ... I didn't know anything about it then. But maybe my instinct for self-preservation caught it and got rid of it just in time. And in you my doom continued to grow autonomously until you became the wreck that you are now, and which I now kick as if you were vermin. ... With you I saved myself once. "
Encouraged by the audience, Strohalm now begins his performance.
16th chapter
Hilde is in labor on the houseboat, a young doctor helps with the birth. In panic, Boris Bronislaw runs away towards the fair. To the displeasure of the audience, he interferes in Strohalm's performance with his bare hands until the young doctor picks him up in the car. The actual performance begins. Death forces the buffoon to portray the myth of Sisyphus over and over again . The puppet appears and recites gloomy poetry while the Sisyphus plot is repeated endlessly. Strohalm suddenly rises and observes the events he staged, visibly for the audience, fascinated. The audience explodes with rage, a police officer brutally hits Straw twice in the face with a rubber club. The novel ends in gloomy visions of the end of the world.
Biographical background
archibald strohalm is Mulisch's first novel to actually be published. He had previously sent preliminary work to publishers, but they were rejected. It was a breakthrough for Mulisch. Not only was it his first, the novel opened the way for his other books too. Mulisch later explained that archibald strohalm had to be written like a structure that is erected to make it collapse. All of the frustrations of his early work as a writer came together and went with the protagonist of the novel. At the end of the novel, the author speaks out and turns to its protagonist.
“'Here I stand: the main character. Something of me went crazy in you Something that had gone crazy inside of me, I puked into you. ' And so it goes on in a highly symbolic way: “You have put my cross on your shoulders, my little savior. I will succeed where you have to fail. "He was right, the twenty year old, he became a famous writer."
Some aspects of the content of the novel refer to Mulisch's biography, such as the motif of the puppet theater, which goes back to the childhood experiences of the author, which he described in his autobiographical collection "Self-Portrait with Turban". It is noticeable that even in childhood puppet theater, “Death in the Body” appears as a character.
Literary influences
In contrast to many Dutch and German authors of the post-war period, Mulisch made only few direct references to time in his first novel. Nonetheless, given the diverse styles in the novel, reviewers are looking for contemporary literary influences.
“In some passages, especially those that introduce the enormously deformed figure of the painter Boris Bronislaw, you think you can hear Elias Canetti's voice speaking from the“ Blinding ”or the“ Wedding ”. Then again Mulisch sets surrealistic signals and, in Archibald Strohalm's perception, lets telephone receivers hang like “a skinned animal in a fork”. The direct reference to “communicating tubes”, which occurs a few pages on it (immediately before there is also talk of a “surrealist machine”), cannot be read otherwise than as a direct reference to Breton 's 1931 book of the same name. And in the central fair description, in turn, an accuracy of the scenic description has gone into, which is reminiscent of the best that has been written about such a scene, even if only a few years later: Arno Schmidt's story "Sommermeteor" from 1956. "
The FAZ reviewer judges Mulisch's handling of the literary ideas of the time rather negatively, above all he criticizes a lack of independence:
Mulisch certainly connects most to Schmidt in terms of the horizon of experience and the worldview, but also Canetti's exile experiences, whose will to an all-encompassing work, from which “mass and power” arose, and the anticipation of the magical realism that surrealism meant - all of that is a product of that period of which one can sense so much in Mulisch's novel. However, this is not a strength of the book because its means are still epigonal here . In the mirror cabinet scene you can also feel that Mulisch saw Orson Welles ' 1947 film " The Lady of Shanghai ". "
Existentialist influences, for example from Albert Camus , are also evident . B. in the confrontation of Strohalms with the myth of Sisyphus , the central scene in Strohalms absurd puppet theater performance.
“During this time, a young man in the Netherlands started to write his first novel. He didn't care about the debates in German-language literature; he wrote an existentialist thriller. He left the contemporary history to his colleagues from the neighborhood. "
subjects
The historical background
The end of the German occupation of the Netherlands, cracks that run through society, and the needs of the post-war period, which are also central themes for Mulisch in his later works, are only present in the novel indirectly and with a few direct, sometimes absurd allusions. This is surprising insofar as Mulisch was very directly affected by anti-Semitism and the Holocaust as well as by collaboration, and later downright obsessed with literature:
“The reason for this lifelong, extremely fruitful obsession: Mulisch's own biography is insanely involved in world wars and the Holocaust. As the son of an Austrian officer from the First World War and a Jewish banker's daughter from Antwerp, little Harry, born in Haarlem in 1927, could justifiably see himself as a creature of the disaster from 1914 to 1918; Father and grandfather on their mother's side knew each other from the front. In 1936 the parents had separated again. Harry grew up with his father who, after the attack by the Wehrmacht, quickly advanced as a "Reich German" at an Amsterdam bank to become the main Aryanist of Jewish assets - that is, the henchman of the "Final Solution". As a high-ranking collaborator, however, Mulisch was able to protect his separated wife and Jewish son from deportation; The writer's grandmother and great-grandmother were gassed nonetheless. Harry Mulisch liked to tell you that he not only experienced the war, but worse: "I am the Second World War." What anti-Semitism means was a tear in the heart of this mystical agnostic, who was a Jew according to the religious law. "
A blatant example of references to Nazi terror is the helpless, absurd attempt of Archibald Strohalm to comfort the painter Boris Bronislaw after he told him how he killed his son in an attempt to rescue him.
“'Well,' said Archibald Strohalm, 'these are hideous things. But he should console himself with Dachau and Auschwitz . There the parents were forced to pour gasoline over their children and set them on fire and the like. '"
Most of the allusions to the traumatic war experience appear only marginally, for example as an expression of fears. Strohalm compares "a fearful tension" with the situation in the bombing war, "when one lies in bed and a bomber drones over the house." (Chapter 14, p. 252) Sometimes references to time mix with hallucinations and mythological fragments.
"He said the latter with sudden emphasis, and immediately it streamed out of his mouth: ' Ares, the city-devastating human butcher, bloodshed had to come with atom bombs, jet fighters, bazookas to free him again, yes, Sisyphus of Corinth, yes, he must have come. '“
The novel shows the tensions in Dutch society mainly in the incomprehensible and sometimes aggressive reaction of the inhabitants of the provincial town to the few outsiders.
symbolism
Mulisch novels were never psychological novels. Its source and destination is myth . The story describes the writers' struggle with their work, the creator who suffocates on his own creation. Mulisch wrote the first draft of the book in the late 1940s when he was struggling with his writing. The book is a reflection of that. This also explains why Mulisch appears at the end of the novel as the creator who destroys his creation. It is the symbolic end of the struggle with the writing profession.
But the novel contains more symbolism. It is almost a catalog of creators. The figure of the old puppeteer "Ouwe Opa" is a symbol for the Creator God, who lets the children come to themselves into the afterlife. He is a negative creator in this novel, but the community has respect for him nonetheless.
The other creator is Boris Bronislaw. Bronislaw is a painter and is thus a creator of art, but he is also the father of his wife's unborn child, that is, the creator of a person. His wife's pregnancy actually plays a role throughout the book and only at the end is the child born. In parallel with the literary creation of archibald strohalm, the child of Bronislaw comes into being.
Another creation is due to Frets. If the name is reversed, you get the Dutch word 'sterf' ('to die'). Frets runs backwards and everything seems to go back in time, all the way back to the womb. He is the inventor of a complicated machine, which he calls the time machine . He wants to overcome time by running backwards.
Finally, there are biblical motifs, like the dog Moses who is literally saved from the water like Moses in the Bible. The tree "Abram", the forefather of all trees, refers by the name to the patriarch Abraham .
Strohalms' dream woman, who cuts his hair, also seems to come from the Bible. Like the hero Samson , straw is tamed by a woman who cuts his hair. Cutting hair as a dream motif is also seen as a fear of castration .
The issue of incest also plays a role. Mulisch often incorporated the Oedipus myth into his work. Oedipus slept with his mother and killed his father. The subject of incest is also addressed in this novel when Archibald's sister Jutje offers herself to her brother.
mirror
Mirrors and reflections pervade the novel on different levels. Strohalm designed his planned work based on the pattern of opposing mirrors.
“I plan to write a story in which a man is about to write a story. And in the story this second man is writing, there is another man in the process of writing a story. (...) And do you know who the man is who writes the story in the history of the most infinite man? ... I. "
For him, the function of mirrors is to guarantee his fragile identity. Even as a schoolboy he had stood in front of the mirror and said his own name. Later, when he decided to become an author, he discovered that books were mirrors for him, because the author "is everything", albeit unreliable mirrors, "fogged up by his restless breath". (Chapter 4, p. 72) Doubts about the mirrors are growing. Strohalm refers to Plato's allegory of the cave , and thus to the possibility of turning from the distorted “mirror image to the actual image”. (Chapter 10, p. 157) But that is precisely what he does not succeed in doing. The "mirror of his consciousness" (Chapter 11, p. 172) twists the ideas. When he is practicing his puppet theater play, he watches himself in a mirror.
“He was strangely moved to see his work; because on the one hand he saw it as something alien, while at the same time it was exclusively his work that he saw - he only saw himself. "
At the end of the novel, Archibald Strohalm visits a cabinet of mirrors at the fair. He looks at himself in increasingly distorting mirrors. He hates “this awkward world divided into images and caricature images” (Chapter 14, p. 245), feels threatened and wants to flee.
"Where was he? There or here? It was immediately gone again; something empty and uncertain remained in him. ”And so happens what has to happen:“ It seemed as if the mirrors were slowly driving him out of himself. ”This expulsion of himself through his own image, which was already delusional (and of course in earlier capitalization than Archibald Strohalm) had added to the unfortunate Archibald Strohalm, corresponds to the change that Strohalm went through when he was still capitalized. It is anger that drives this change.
Strohalm can no longer see himself in the last mirror and yet he sees his defeat right there.
“There was a mockery of a man, miserably abandoned in his annihilation. That was himself, and a great mercy came over him. "
Myth, philosophy, religion
Greek mythology, philosophy, religion and hallucinations mix more and more in the novel to an opaque stream of thoughts.
“In nightmarish sequences, Mulisch describes how his main character grapples with the cardinal questions of life: What is good, what is bad? What is love? What is the meaning of life? "
Archibald Strohalm's thoughts revolve again and again around the philosophical terms “purpose” and “means”. In the classic categories of ethics , Strohalm repeatedly asks the question whether in our time people are only a means to an end, only a tool for others. The thought chains of the great philosophers are combined, ironicized and dismantled through the sometimes absurd chains of thought. One of the chains of thought is based on one of the formulations of the categorical imperative by Immanuel Kant :
"Act in such a way that you use humanity both in your person and in the person of everyone else at the same time as an end, never just as a means."
In the version of Strohalm it sounds like this:
“When I look around, gentlemen, I find that one of the most common human bad habits is making the means to an end. All things that humanity calls part of their life are - apart from one thing - for the others only an unintended means. Blessed are those who are blessed. But it is obvious that the absolute pure end of man is that which cannot be made a means. "
While Strohalm is brewing coffee and letting his thoughts run free, his play on words and strange associations lead him from Kant to Aristotle , whose systematic search for the highest goal is transferred to the present and alienated. Aristotle tries to find out through a systematic analysis what the highest goal of a person could be, by examining whether a goal stands for itself or can be assigned to a higher goal.
“So the goal of medical art is health, that of shipbuilding is the finished vehicle, that of warfare is victory and that of housekeeping is wealth. Where now several activities are placed in the service of a uniform, comprehensive area, such as the making of reins and other aids for mounted people in the art of riding, but the art of riding itself and all kinds of military exercises in the field of the art of war, and in exactly the same way other activities belong to the field of other arts: there the aim of the dominant art is always the higher and more significant compared to that of the subjects subordinate to it; because for that sake the latter are also operated. "
Aristotle's highest goal is eudaimonia , the pursuit of happiness. According to Aristotle, the best way to achieve this goal is to devote oneself to philosophy. With Strohalm it sounds like this:
“'For example, someone makes it his goal to make the best clothes, but clothes are only a dummy target: for the car manufacturer, they are just a means of not walking around naked. For the truck driver, his goal of building the best cars is just a means of transporting things. ... Through the bank, however, tailoring, car manufacturing and freight transport will only be a means for the tailors, car manufacturers and truck drivers themselves, and their real goal: gold-backed money - although all too obviously this is only a medium of exchange. It is true that even God-covered thoughts are not an end but a means. A means to what? Perk up your ears and look skyward! The only unmediated and immediate goal of man lies in striving for spiritual perfection. Hosanna in excelsis! … For the benefit! Long live spiritual perfection! Long live the demony! ' ... 'The demon is a harlequin with a felt hat and briefcase', he murmured, 'who has wrapped a black cloth around him and shouts' Boo' ""
Even if Strohalm, with his alienation of eudaimonia into demonia, uses the original sense of the word, he also integrates the philosophical construct into the world of his hallucinations and obsessions and thus turns the original meaning on its head: Strohalm's demons are threatening symbols of doom and decline.
Ingrid Ickler sees the pressure of suppressed war experiences in this abstract and sometimes absurd philosophical search for meaning:
“'Archibald Strohalm' is primarily understandable through the historical context in which the novel was written. Mulisch seems to process his own war experiences in Strohalms nightmares, with a mixture of philosophy and motifs from Greek mythology he is looking for a new moral framework for himself and the post-war society. "
Authors and artists
Complete review interprets “Archibald Strohalm” as a special form of the artist novel . Above all, the figure of the painter Boris Branislaw represents the true artist in the novel and therefore exerts a strong attraction on straw. While Boris is a man of action, Strohalm is more interested in perception, he is more interested in describing a great work than in living it.
Boris Branislaw and Archibald Strohalm represent opposing art concepts. While Branislaw wants to get away from his earlier formal experiments and his ideas for art, does not want to write love poems but to love, Strohalm isolates himself more and more from his surroundings in order to become an author. He “cuts himself off from all experience” (“he tries to cut himself off from experience as much as possible”) and lonely tries to transform the stream of ideas, which initially flows abundantly, into literature, but “his ambitions (for example the plan to write 7 books at once) exceed his talent ”.
“Mulisch varies the romantic conception of the artist as a being resistant to society and adorns it with philosophically dressed up thoughts. Archibald Strohhalm thinks a lot, and his author willingly gives him the space to articulate himself, even if he can only think of stale second-hand sentences: "Discouraged, he said to himself that the words were like an old, hardened sponge that was already lay in the gutter in front of the house for days. ""
Despite the extreme contrasts, Bronislaw Strohalm was the last stop for a long time. Bronislaw accepts Strohalms strange ideas and lets him participate in his strength and vitality. At the end of the novel, Bronislaw cannot support Strohalm because he is brought to the birth of his child.
“Only the pregnancy of his artist friend's wife still gives him groundedness; parallel to this biological "incarnation", he tries a spiritual one. But while the birth of the child is taking its course, the “birth” of his play turns into a fiasco: The disappointed viewers take his puppet theater apart and he himself takes a beating.
In order to become a writer, Strohalm gives up his job and social contacts, “the white paper - that was loneliness; and perpendicular to it: the pen - that was archibald strohalm ... a man lost for life. ”(3rd chapter, p. 67) Strohalm sees writing as“ a matter of life and death ”(3rd chapter, p. 69 ), as the task of capturing all the ideas that flow into him and putting them into words. He is not interested in people, nor in the consequences that the ideas could have on his own life. He formulates the aim of his writing with Heraclitus : "Always different for those who repeatedly bathed in it" (4th chapter, p. 72)
Strohalm describes one of the techniques of the novel: that “a word should gradually get charge” (8th chapter, p. 132). Central metaphors such as the birds' eggs are repeated as leitmotifs and associated with different meanings. The bird eggs that Strohalm dreams of go back to a traumatic experience of his childhood when he destroyed the entire egg collection of his father, who was an ornithologist. The eggs also represent the fragility of the ideas that Strohalm wants to collect and preserve. (7th chapter, p. 113) The eggs continue to stand for the "ovum philosophicum", the matter that alchemy wanted to shape into the philosopher's stone through philosophical fire .
Strohalm believes in the power of words, the "word holds people together ..., because of words they murder one another", language creates the "unity of the world", but this unity is only a "distorting mirror of the unity of the world". (Chapter 13, p. 212f.) Strohalm often searches in vain for the right word for his ideas. He notices himself that he is failing as an author, technically he is not up to his ideas, he lacks the “connection with general reality and logic” (11th chapter, p. 168). Strohalm burns his manuscripts.
In terms of authorship, the novel works with a variety of reflections and duplications. Archibald Strohalm writes “Stories in which, without exception, a great work was created” (8th chapter, p. 121), Harry Mulisch writes a novel in which a work fails. The narrator regularly switches between these two perspectives. In the role of the author, the narrator reveals the function that the novel has for its author. With his work he distances himself from the negative aspects of his development as a writer. Like a carpenter smashing a failed table in literary terms, he smashes the wrong concepts, the failure, the desperation of writing. (see Chapter 8, p. 122) In the end, as the author, he turns to his main character "like an executioner" (Chapter 15, p. 272):
“Here I stand: the main character. Something of me went crazy in you Something that had gone crazy inside of me, I puked into you. Maybe it wasn't crazy when I started, maybe it had just started to go crazy: I didn't know about it then. But maybe my instinct for self-preservation caught it and got rid of it just in time. And in you my doom continued to grow autonomously until you became the wreck that you are now, and which I now kick as if you were vermin. And I'll give you another kick, and another, in the groin, in the kidneys, in the eyes, because you attack me again, because you threaten to grow into me again! ... With you I saved myself once. "
Literary evaluation
Although Merkur “finds the form-content fabric artistically unsatisfactory”, he praises the young Mulisch's “stroke of genius” because the novel is “so wild, so courageous, so cocky”.
The FAZ reviewer sees typical weaknesses of young authors in the novel. The novel lacks a specific reference to time, it is a “hodgepodge of different narrative traditions of the European novel”. He sees the construction of the main character as inadequately justified, "since Mulisch only reveals fragments of the biography of his protagonist, who lived up to that point in time, the starting point of the novel is one that one simply has to believe in the author, because he does not follow the plot is made plausible. This is precisely why the book fails. "
The FAZ also sees the variety of allusions and associations rather negatively:
“It is Mulisch's first, published in 1952; the author was then just twenty-five years old. And “archibald strohalm” also got a lot from the exuberant wealth of information, educational cues and observations that so many young writers' first works contain. "
"Archibald Strohalm", a parable of creativity, tells, despite or perhaps because of the fresh horrors of World War II, apparently harmlessly about a quirky puppeteer whose theater is in the end in pieces. "
Complete review emphasizes the ambiguity of the goals that Mulisch pursues with his characters. Mulisch seems to be experimenting with the characters he has created while writing, trying out new scenarios and how they might react. The work is nevertheless fascinating and offers many entertaining ideas.
Ingrid Ickler judges the novel rather critically, the late edition of the first work “as a reference by the Hanser Verlag to the great narrator Harry Mulisch as we know him today”. She criticizes the novel as difficult to read and excessive.
“Unfortunately, his scenes often turn out to be confused and incomprehensible, and Strohalm's thought experiments of believable fears often turn into lengthy, magically exaggerated monologues that demand a lot of patience from the reader. Here less would have been more and so "Archibald Strohalm" leaves an ambivalent reading impression: a mixture of fascination and boredom. "
Anton Thuswaldner sees signs of a lack of modesty in the novel.
“The 25-year-old Harry Mulisch was alien to modesty. A touch of megalomania wafts around this novel, in which the eponymous hero treads an increasingly tricky, rocky path inward. "
The strong self-confidence of the young author is documented in the eagerness to educate, in the numerous allusions and connotation networks of the novel.
“Young Harry Mulisch wants to look smart at all costs. That is why he lays out traces of philosophy, literature, religion and myth, lays out the bait of allusion and weaves a close-knit network in which important names and great books are caught. A reference system pervades this novel, everything is interrelated, and in the middle of the net sits the author, who lies in wait for the reader to provide him with a ration of dejection. The real figure of suffering, as Mulisch reads, is the artist who takes on the suffering of the world. He is the lonely demiurge, the creator of heaven and earth from the spirit of fantasy. "
Dirk Schümer sees the novel in his obituary as valid evidence of Harry Mulisch's great talent.
“Both novels validly outline Mulisch's unique talent:" Archibald Strohalm ", a parable of creativity, tells, despite or perhaps because of the fresh horrors of World War II, apparently harmlessly about a quirky puppeteer whose theater is in the end in pieces. In an ingenious adaptation of a thriller, "Das Attentat", on the other hand, works out the mixture of perpetrator and victim, good and evil, collaboration and resistance under German occupation so ludicrously that after reading the reader, all the established patterns of the National Socialist era are shaken. Mulisch is by no means downplaying it; he just wants to understand the catastrophe of the twentieth century in all its complexity and make it understandable. "
Gerrit Bartels and Bernd Müller see in the Archibald Strohalms puppet theater an allegory of Mulisch's later life as a writer:
“Mulisch's relationship to his lyrics was symbiotic. They reflect him and he was part of them. His literary world essentially corresponds to the puppet theater from his first work "Archibald Strohalm". There is an imaginary divine authority there, the puppeteer who "makes the puppets dance". "
Cees Nooteboom , fellow writer and younger friend of Mulisch, is particularly fond of the early work :
“I personally loved some of the» smaller «books from his work, such as Archibald Strohalm (1951), which bordered on madness, the mysterious Oude lucht (" Alte Luft "), the novel Schwarzes Licht, Mijnheer Tienoppen or Voer voor psychologen ("Food for psychologists"). "
Trivia
After Archibald Strohalm was awarded the Reina Prinsen Geerligs Prize, publishers wanted to publish his work. Van Oorschot wanted to shorten the novel by fifty pages. Geert Lubberhuizen of De Bezige Bij then suggested that the novel could be published without deleting any pages. Mulisch decided to revise the novel to see if maybe Van Oorschot is right. While editing, he came to the conclusion that it should be fifty pages more. Lubberhuizen was happy. After Mulisch, Lubberhuizen was a good publisher.
Mulisch claims that he only submitted the manuscript for the Reina Prinsen Geerligs Prize at the last moment. He took it to the jury chairman's house and a violent storm broke out as he was about to hand it over. Whether or not all of this is true lies in the myths Mulisch created around his books.
Text output
- Harry Mulisch: archibald strohalm. De Bezige Bij 1952, 298 pages, ISBN 9789023438793 .
- Harry Mulisch: Archibald Strohalm. Novel, translated from Dutch by Gregor Seferens, Hanser March 15, 2004, hard cover, 304 pages, ISBN 978-3-446-20464-5 .
- Harry Mulisch: Archibald Strohalm. rororo paperback April 1, 2006, 304 pages, ISBN 978-3-499-24104-8 .
literature
- Harry Mulisch: Self-Portrait with a Turban . From the Dutch by Ira Wilhelm. Munich, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-499-13887-5 , original Amsterdam 1961.
Web links
- Review note at perlentaucher.de
- Harry Mulisch: Archibald Strohalm. Implosion of a personality. Review in the FAZ on May 8, 2004.
- Here I stand: the main character. In: Merkur.de of September 21, 2004.
- Ingrid Ickler: Is there life before death? Harry Mulisch's novel "Archibald Strohalm". In: literaturkritik.de , July 1, 2004.
- Dirk Schümer: On the death of Harry Mulisch. Weltweiser and private mythologist. In: FAZ from October 31, 2010.
- The complete review's review . In: complete-review.com .
- Anton Thuswaldner: Harry Mulisch's loud-mouthed appearance: "Archibald Strohhalm" ( Memento from September 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: Die Presse of March 26, 2005.
- The heavenly puppeteer . In: FAZ from October 31, 2010.
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. For example, the information in Chapter 15, p. 265
- ↑ z. B. Chapter 1, p. 9 and Chapter 15, p. 257
- ↑ The information on the page numbers refer to the paperback edition by Rowohlt, April 2006
- ↑ specific year 1950 in Chapter 13, p. 234
- ↑ a b c d e f g Harry Mulisch: Archibald Strohalm. Implosion of a personality. Review in the FAZ on May 8, 2004. Retrieved on February 25, 2017.
- ↑ "symbols have been dead cymbals in de ure des doods"; from the poem "Werkster" by Gerrit Achterberg
- ↑ Heraclitus: Fragments . B 12.
- ↑ Final sentence of the chapter
- ↑ Marx point looking to strohalm 207
- ↑ either Prinsjesdag on September 19th or Koninginnedag (Queen's Day), which was celebrated on August 31st until 1948, only when Princess Juliana was crowned queen, Koninginnedag was moved to her birthday, April 30th, in 1949.
- ↑ a b Here I stand: The main character. In: Merkur.de of September 21, 2004.
- ↑ Harry Mulisch: Self-Portrait with a Turban. From the Dutch by Ira Wilhelm. Hanser-Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-499-13887-5 .
- ↑ cf. Harry Mulisch: Self-Portrait with a Turban. From the Dutch by Ira Wilhelm. Hanser-Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-499-13887-5 , p. 31
- ^ A b c d Anton Thuswaldner: Harry Mulisch's loud-mouthed appearance: "Archibald Strohhalm" ( Memento from September 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: Die Presse of March 26, 2005.
- ↑ The Heavenly Puppeteer . In: FAZ of October 31, 2010. Retrieved on February 25, 2017.
- ↑ cf. 1st chapter, p. 8
- ↑ a b c d e Ingrid Ickler: Is there life before death? Harry Mulisch's novel "Archibald Strohalm". In: literaturkritik.de , July 1, 2004. Accessed February 25, 2017.
- ↑ Immanuel Kant; Academy edition, Works IV, p. 429, 10-12, quoted from Wikipedia
- ↑ Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics. Preliminary remark. Ladder of purposes and the highest purpose. Quoted from: zeno.org
- ↑ literally "having a good demon"
- ^ The complete review's review . In: complete-review.com . Retrieved February 25, 2017. "Archibald Strohalm is a different sort of artist-novel."
- ^ The complete review's review . In: complete-review.com . Retrieved on February 25, 2017. "More appealing is the true-artist vision he sees in Boris Bronislaw, a free spirit who Strohalm - in the absence of all other artistic models - is drawn to. He can't emulate Boris, but he seems to hope some of Boris' attitude will rub off. "
- ^ A b The Complete Review's Review . In: complete-review.com . Retrieved February 25, 2017.
- ^ The complete review's review . In: complete-review.com . Retrieved on February 25, 2017 ("but his ambition (a plan for seven books, for one) outstrips his talents").
- ↑ cf. Chapter 11, p. 168
- ↑ a b Dirk Schümer: On the death of Harry Mulisch. Weltweiser and private mythologist. In: FAZ of October 31, 2010. Retrieved on February 25, 2017.
- ^ The complete review's review . In: complete-review.com . Retrieved February 25, 2017. “Mulisch paints an unusual but engaging slice-of-life picture. There's too much uncertainty about what exactly he wants to accomplish with his characters, about where the focus should lie - he seems to be making it up as he goes along, seeing what he can do with these figures he's created, adding, at whim , new scenarios to see how they might react - but it's still largely engaging, with many entertaining bits to it. "
- ↑ Gerrit Bartels, Bernd Müller: Obituary Harry Mulisch: The Second World War in Blood. In: Tagesspiegel online from October 31, 2010. Retrieved on February 25, 2017.
- ^ Cees Nooteboom: Obituary. He weighed the world. DIE ZEIT, November 4, 2010 No. 45