Poverty, wealth, guilt and penance of the Countess Dolores
Countess Dolores' poverty, wealth, guilt and penance is a novel by Achim von Arnim that was published by Reimer in the Realschulbuchhandlung Berlin at Easter 1810 .
The story is told from the lives of the sisters Dolores and Klelia and Count Karl.
content
poverty
In a small residential town in southern Germany: Count P. has gotten into debt through a reckless lifestyle and is making off overseas with the rest of the cash. The countess dies of grief at home. The two daughters, the pious, thoughtful Klelia and the more pleasurable, prettier Dolores, remain impoverished at their parents' castle. The staff must be fired. The property is decaying. The two beautiful girls have to defend themselves against billeted soldiers during the war. The military withdraws. Count Karl, a passing student, takes a liking to Dolores, who is willing to marry. Despite the oppressive poverty in the castle, he becomes engaged to her and gives most of his limited means for the sisters' livelihood. The student only keeps the bare essentials for himself.
wealth
While Klelia makes ends meet with relatives in Sicily , Dolores manages her fiancé's fortune. When Count Karl, who has finished his studies, returns from university, the bridal couple argue. Dolores looks forward to marrying a "tough man". She wants to be adamant. Karl, on the other hand, realizes that he cannot live happily with Dolores, but at least he wants to live for the happiness of his future wife. The couple are getting married. Before that, Karl surrendered to Dolores with a sigh. Your rule over him is sealed. Having come of age, the count takes over his property. He has thus become a wealthy man and can also purchase the wife's parents' city palace. But the count is drawn to his rural property. The couple also quarreled and made up in the country. Mail from Palermo arrives. Klelia's homesickness, the longing for the “dear German spring”, makes the Count think. Dolores, who has meanwhile become pregnant, is skeptical about her husband's “world improvements”. Dolores finds the customs of the rural population absurd, but is seized upon by tradition. Dolores mocks both the farmers' diligence in harvesting and her husband who oversees the harvesting work. With all this, the count loves his wife devotedly. Dolores longs for the more entertaining city. Not really a farmer, says Count Karl. The couple leaves their country estate in autumn and visits the city palace again.
fault
Dolores gives birth to a boy. The little one is called Karl. The next letter from Palermo announces that Klelia has married the wealthy Spanish Duke von A. Dolores is envious of her sister's marital happiness and haughtily looks down on her noble husband, who wants to teach a few peasant boys to read. Markese D., allegedly a cousin of the Duke of A., brings Dolores new messages from the sister. Count Karl goes to his farmers. Dolores stays behind in town. The Markese D. courted Dolores, arouses her desire, then humiliates her and sleeps with her once. When Count Karl returns to the city, he notices "something wicked in" Dolores and remains silent. The Markese goes to the country with the count and steals the friendship of the host. When the Markese returns to town alone from the country, he hands Dolores a tender letter in which her husband recommends “his dearest friend”, the Markese, warmly. Shortly before the Markese rushes to his next conquest, Dolores makes him bitter reproaches in vain. She gave herself to him and the ungrateful man is now leaving her. Sometimes Dolores talks in his sleep. Three months after the Markese's departure, the Count is now back with Dolores, the woman, who is now pregnant again, confesses her “heavy guilt” to her husband while sleeping at night. Count Karl seeks revenge on the Markese. One day he opens a letter - a warm invitation to Sicily. In it, Klelia writes that she has finally got her husband back. Duke A. had enjoyed the hospitality of his sister and brother-in-law in Germany under the name Markese D.
The count arranges for Dolores to shoot him during a rifle festival, untrained with firearms.
Buses
The bullet ricochets off a rib and misses the heart. When the count rises from the sickbed, Dolores confesses her sin and submits to him. “They no longer have a will of their own.” From now on, the couple often sit across from each other. Everyone looks aside. In the next letter, Klelia writes of her happiness at the duke's side, which is only marred by the absence of a child of her own. The duke is a pious man. Klelia's piety initially attracted him, until later the cheerful letters from Dolores' pen drew him to his sister.
Dolores is delivered "by a beautiful blond boy", an image of the Count. The couple breathes a sigh of relief. The child is called John. Duke A. dies a quick death and leaves Klelia "childless with an immeasurable fortune". Because Duchess Klelia wants to appoint her sister's children to be heirs, Dolores and Count Karl give in to the widow's insistence and henceforth live in Sicily. Years go by. There, in the ducal seat in the Mezzogiorno , Dolores gives birth to ten more children.
Meanwhile, Count P. - disguised as an Englishman Moham - returns to Germany with his East Indian wife Moham and their two children. He moves into his city palace. The walls are burning down. His old friend, the prince, appoints Count P. as first minister. Count P. sends his two daughters Dolores and Klelia "splendid oriental presents" to Sicily, but does not know what to write in the accompanying letter. The regent of streamlined apoplexy time. The princess continues to rule and keeps Count P. in office. The Princess had wished for children in vain. The first minister has heard from his twelve grandchildren and persuades the regent to travel to Italy. The goal is to be the farm of his daughter Klelia. The princess leaves. Their clerk, the fish-headed Primaner, is also in their wake. In Sicily, the princess joins Countess Dolores, tells her children fairy tales, feels “her feminine nature is awakening” and her heart burns in love with Count Karl. It is true that the count finds “intellectual entertainment” with the princess, only - “the word” does not become “flesh for him”. During an excursion to Etna, the princess, the clerk and the count spend the night in an inn. The princess says she spent the night with the beloved count. She mistook him for the clerk after the strenuous mountain ascent in the dark at night. Dolores does not hide the princess's passion, but she is silent. Because the countess repents. Count P. is reluctant to part with his Indian wife, but a letter from the writer calls the statesman to Sicily: The regent has fallen in love with his son-in-law. When the princess confesses to the countess the supposed night with the count, Dolores faints. After she has come to, she confesses her guilt to the princess. From this and from the night on Etna, the princess derives her claim to the count. Dolores - still atone for ten years - wants to hand over her husband, if his will should. Everything turns out very differently. By chance the princess becomes aware of that nocturnal error to which she had succumbed in the inn on Etna. The first minister is a little late. The princess poisons herself and the writer. There is no end to dying. A stream of blood fills the countess's mouth. Dolores dies. A larger-than-life statue will be erected on the Sicilian seashore of their blessed memory.
Quote
- "Anyone who wants something right can achieve an infinite amount with a little."
shape
Some people - the prince, the princess - remain anonymous except for the title. In addition, Arnim writes carefree. For example, he mentions the princess in a subordinate clause and then lets her appear for the first time four chapters later.
Inserted stories are incorporated into the plot. For example, the bookworm Klelia reads the story of Hugo Capet to Sister Dolores . Meanwhile, Dolores throws in comments in which she comments on the story with her fate: Where is the father? Is he coming back?
The narrator anticipates. He lets the reader suspect that the story with Dolores is not going to end well.
When Arnim, in Department II: Wealth, tells about the life of the Count's married couple Dolores and Karl in the country, the reader's patience is put to a severe test by inserted stories. Arnim knows the reader very well. He writes: "Why are the readers so impatient most of the time ... Don't turn over these instructive verses." This is followed by a page-long, off-beat elegy. The deposits accompany the plot until the end of the novel. Arrived there, Arnim looks back: “My readers, with whom I gradually came to an understanding on the collective journey through this story, will not have escaped how the poetry, but especially the dramatic, intervenes in the lives of individual people. We saw this in the story of Hollin ... "
Sometimes the narrator interferes briefly. When, for example, Dolores is seduced by the Markese, Arnim writes: "Instead of telling stories, I want to try to wake the unfortunate with a huge funeral march: but it's too late."
Arnim's comment on the utterances of the dying princess, these “hard blows of fate”: “We do not want to record your last moaning exclamations; they probably no longer belonged to her, they are the mere cry of general human nature, which with difficulty separates itself from the familiar sphere of life. "
Some of the many minor characters - such as the Prince of Palagonia - are briefly characterized: "... he is the most unhappy and noble person the earth has borne."
Testimonials
- Letter of January 26, 1810 to the bride Bettina : "It [the novel] was a favorite plan for a long time and I carried it out with pleasure."
- Letter from February 1810 to Görres : "... it was now a novel interwoven with beautiful novels and songs, which as a narrative, in my opinion, has become a more satisfying work of art, but at the same time an extremely rich, beautiful book."
- Letter of May 28, 1810 to Wilhelm Grimm : “If you would like to review my book in the Heidelberg yearbooks, I would like it very much. You may be good or bad to speak of. "
- The letter from Jacob Grimm of September 24, 1810 (see below) hits Arnim's heart. In October of the same year he replied: "It is hard of you that Count Karl does not attract you."
- Arnim sent the book to Goethe in a cover letter dated May 28, 1810 . He addresses the addressee as “dear master of the German language” and is “so bold” to present him the novel.
reception
- In his chapter “Structure and Content” within the commentary on the source, Lützeler writes that Arnim indirectly calculates in his Dolores, among other things, the elective affinities and the Weimar classical cult. The above-mentioned voucher copy has not been answered by Goethe - he condemned only on 7 October 1810 in a letter to Karl Friedrich von Reinhard , the Countess Dolores as "Narrenwust". This is his reaction to romanticism, a phenomenon that he wants to see "as already passed". According to Goethe, a novel shouldn't preach morality. Riley believes that Arnim does not imitate Goethe in his “typically romantic work”, but offers an alternative to the elective affinities .
- On May 8, 1810, Brentano wrote to Wilhelm Grimm that when he read the book he felt as if he were eating “cakes that are far too sweet”, but that “the whole thing” is “extremely original and rich, here and there excessively carelessly written.”
- Wilhelm Grimm complies with the above-mentioned review request of the author. He writes in the Heidelberg Yearbooks of Literature 1810 (3rd vol., 2nd vol., P. 374): "There lives a rich spirit, a free view of life, and real courage in the whole book."
- On July 22nd, 1810, Jean Paul praised: "Your characters are as sharp as cut in stone" and continues: "Regardless of the rather divergent surface of the story, it finally rises to the mountain peaks of a comprehensive dramatic outcome."
- Jacob Grimm wrote to the author on September 24, 1810: "But the whole book, if it were a girl, for example, I would not marry because I could not believe in it."
- On June 21, 1811 Görres wrote to Wilhelm Grimm: "The Dolores is the best thing that has appeared since Titan ."
- In Eichendorff's “ Awareness and Present ” the young Count Friedrich “ holds this book in high esteem”. When a lady criticized it at an evening party, he gave up his restraint and courageously spoke up as an advocate.
- In 1836 in the Romantic School Heine remarked about the author of the Dolores : "He was not a poet of life, but of death."
- On March 1, 1842, Hebbel criticized after reading: "What has no right beginning cannot find a right end."
- Gundolf sided with Goethe when he condemned this "arabesque work" in 1930: "Arnim wants too many things at the same time and thereby confuses the view."
- Arnim was guided by Edmund Burke's “Reflections on the Revolution in France”.
- Towards the end of the novel, the adulteress Dolores became a saint.
- Lützeler calls the work a “chaotic mixture of novel, novella, saga, myth, legend, fable, anecdote, sermon, drama, essay, poem, elegy, song, reflection and aphorism.” The people would become “de-individualized fictional characters” . The contemporary reader would have got caught “in the allegory and reference thicket of the book”. Lützeler names two dissertations on the novel: Helmut Fuhrmann: Achim von Arnims Countess Dolores (Cologne 1955) and Ernst-Ludwig Offermanns: The universal romantic contemporary novel Achim von Arnims (Cologne 1959) and Renate Moering's book Die open Romanform von Arnims 'Gräfin Dolores' (1978).
- Arnim had neatly separated the "improvement story" of his Dolores from the "chaotic digressions". That chaos, the “fatally untamed”, can be explained quite casually. Arnim is in the tradition of oral storytellers.
literature
- Helene M. Kastinger Riley : Achim von Arnim . rowohlt's monographs edited by Kurt Kusenberg . 158 pages. Reinbek near Hamburg in July 1979, ISBN 3-499-50277-1
- Klaus Peter: Achim von Arnim: Countess Dolores (1810) . In Paul Michael Lützeler (Hrsg.): Novels and stories of German romanticism. New interpretations . 389 pages. Reclam Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-15-010308-8
- Werner Vordtriede : Achim von Arnim. P. 317–343 in Benno von Wiese (Ed.): German Poets of Romanticism. Your life and work. 659 pages. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1983 (2nd edition), ISBN 3-503-01664-3
- Kurt Böttcher (Ed.): Romanticism . From the series of explanations on German literature . 668 pages. People and knowledge. Berlin 1985 (5th edition)
- Gerhard Schulz : The German literature between the French Revolution and the restoration. Part 2. The Age of the Napoleonic Wars and the Restoration: 1806–1830. 912 pages. Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-09399-X
- Gerhart von Graevenitz : Novel form and gender struggle. To Arnim's “Dolores” . In: Gerhard Neumann (ed.): Romantic storytelling . 243 pages. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, ISBN 3-8260-1103-1
- Hartmut Fröschle : Goethe's relationship to romanticism. 564 pages. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-8260-2298-X
- Detlev Kremer: Romanticism. Textbook German Studies. 342 pages. Metzler Stuttgart 2007 (3rd edition), ISBN 978-3-476-02176-2
Quoted text edition
- Achim von Arnim: Poverty, wealth, guilt and penance of the Countess Dolores. A true story for the instructive entertainment of poor ladies . P. 101–684 in Paul Michael Lützeler (Ed.): Achim von Arnim. Hollin's love life. Countess Dolores. Vol. 1 in: Roswitha Burwick (Hrsg.), Jürgen Knaack (Hrsg.), Paul Michael Lützeler (Hrsg.), Renate Moering (Hrsg.), Ulfert Ricklefs (Hrsg.), Hermann F. Weiss (Hrsg.): Achim von Arnim. Works in six volumes. 825 pages. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag Frankfurt am Main 1989 (1st edition), ISBN 3-618-60010-0
Web links
Individual evidence
Source means the quoted text edition
- ^ Lützeler in the comment of the source, pp. 733–734
- ↑ on July 14, 1789 (source, p. 651, 29. Zvo and Vordtriede, p. 319, 1. Zvu)
- ↑ The clerk causes the mix-up by accidentally occupying the count's stately room in the dark and the count having to take the servant's room a little later. The princess, groping in the dark, misses Count Karl.
- ↑ Source, p. 524, 7. Zvo
- ↑ Source, p. 471, 7. Zvo
- ↑ Source, p. 523, 7. Zvo
- ↑ Source, p. 575, 17. Zvo
- ↑ Source, p. 644, 33. Zvo
- ↑ Source, p. 384, 3. Zvo
- ↑ Source, p. 673, 30. Zvo
- ↑ Source, p. 669, 16. Zvo
- ↑ Source, p. 669, 29. Zvo
- ↑ quoted in Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 736, 14th Zvu
- ↑ quoted in Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 737, 13. Zvo
- ↑ quoted in Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 738, second entry from above
- ↑ quoted in Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 749, 3rd Zvu
- ↑ quoted by Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 738, first entry from above
- ^ Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 760, 13. Zvo
- ^ Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 758, 1. Zvo
- ↑ see also Fröschle, p. 339, 16. Zvo
- ↑ quoted by Lützeler in the source's comment, p. 749, first entry from above
- ^ Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 757, 11. Zvu
- ^ Riley, p. 83, 2. Zvo
- ^ Lützeler in the commentary of the source, p. 746, 9. Zvu
- ↑ quoted in Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 742, 14th Zvu
- ↑ Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 747 below - 748 above
- ^ Lützeler in the commentary of the source, p. 748, 18. Zvo
- ↑ quoted in Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 753, 8. Zvo
- ↑ “I have to confess,” said a young lady, “I cannot understand myself about it, I never knew what to do with this story with the thousand stories.” ( Awareness and Present , 2nd Book, 12th Chapter, see also Kremer, p. 138, 5. Zvo)
- ↑ quoted in Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 743, 15. Zvo
- ↑ quoted in Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 743, 3rd Zvu
- ↑ quoted in Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 744, 9. Zvo
- ↑ Böttcher, p. 283, 5th Zvu
- ↑ Schulz, p. 398, 5. Zvo
- ^ Lützeler in the commentary of the source, p. 753, 9th Zvu
- ↑ quoted in Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 755, 8th Zvu
- ^ Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 760, 14th Zvu
- ^ Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 744 below
- ^ Lützeler in the comment of the source, p. 745, 7th Zvu
- ↑ Gerhart von Graevenitz, p. 119, 9. Zvo
- ↑ Wolfdietrich Rasch (anno 1955) quoted in Peter, p. 258, 3rd Zvu