From the life of a faun

From the Life of a Faun is a short novel by Arno Schmidt from 1953. The novel, later published together with Brand's Haide and Schwarze Spiegel as a trilogy Nobodaddy’s children , deals with the German bourgeoisie at the time of National Socialism .

Creation and publication

Schmidt wrote the short novel from December 1952 to January 1953 in Kastel, Rhineland-Palatinate , where he lived from 1951 to 1955. The working title was The Faun . The writing was interrupted by a ten-day crisis, during which the first two parts had appeared to him to be "too similar!" To the stories Brand's Haide and Schwarze Spiegel that had been written shortly before . It was not until December 30, 1952, as his wife Alice Schmidt noted in her diary, that he had the idea of ​​the dramatic third part “on the toilet”, which marked a sufficient difference to the other two texts. With them, Schmidt summarized the Faun in a trilogy, an idea that, contrary to what he had his publisher believe, only came to him after the manuscript had been completed.

Schmidt wanted to publish the Faun as before, Die Umsiedler, in the studio frankfurt series of the Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt . Publishing director Eugen Kogon had concerns about the sometimes blatant "anti-religious polemics" of the novel. Because Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt was also interested in the text, Schmidt therefore accepted his offer, under the pretext that it would facilitate a later summarizing edition of all three volumes of the trilogy. In 1953, From the Life of a Faun was published by Rowohlt Verlag . In 1963 all three texts actually appeared there in one volume under the title Nobodaddy's Children - an allusion to William Blake's name for God . 3,000 copies of the first edition were printed, Nobodaddy's Kinder achieved a circulation of 8,000.

shape

Narrative technique

The novel is told using a narrative technique that Schmidt himself characterized in his “Calculations 1” as a grid or “PointillierTechnik”. The plot and the inner monologue of the first-person narrator , which makes up the text for a long time, are not presented in a continuum, but in short and shortest prose fragments, which are identified in the layout by paragraphs with a hanging indent and a beginning in italics . What happens or is thought between these fragments must be reconstructed by the reader in this highly elliptical narrative style. With this form Schmidt wanted to make his thesis clear that human perception and memory itself are also highly fragmented: He lets the protagonist of the novel formulate this " musical existence" of the human being on the first page:

" My life? ! : is not a continuum! (Not just broken into white and black pieces day and night! For even during the day there is someone else with me who goes to the train station; sits in office; books; stilts through groves; mates; chatters; writes; thinker of the thousands; fan falling apart; he runs; smokes; feces; listens to the radio; 'Herr Landrat' says: that's me!) a tray full of glittering snapshots. "

In Schmidt's grid technique, narrative time and narrated time coincide. The author tries to depict the current processes of consciousness in language.

The literary scholar Marius Fränzel contradicts this interpretation. He noticed several anachronisms in the text: The first-person narrator admired Otto Mueller's expressionist painting Two Girls in the Green , which Schmidt saw in 1950, during a trip to the Hamburg art gallery : in 1939 this picture was classified under degenerate art and was not shown publicly. Elsewhere it is shown how the first-person narrator imagined in the late summer of 1944 that a “ mirror” reporter would visit an exhibition about him. Thirdly, a movie he saw at the same time can be identified as The Forester Christels from 1952. Fränzel draws the conclusion that the narrative is written as a retrospective that the aged first-person narrator cast on his last sexual adventure in the 1950s. Schmidt did not consistently apply his own literary theory, rather the Faun, like the other parts of the trilogy , offers “traditional first-person narratives, albeit with unusually present and decisive narrative figures”.

style

In the choice of words, Schmidt in the Faun oriented himself towards expressionist writers such as August Stramm , whom he called his “greatest formal experience” in the Faun alongside Christoph Martin Wieland . Typical features are the formation of neutral collectives (the “memorial”), compound adjectives (“kücheallein”, “lampenöde”) and the derivation of verbs from nouns or adjectives (“breathless”).

action

First-person narrator

As usual in Schmidt's narrative work, the Faun also focuses on a first-person narrator who in many ways closely resembles his author. In this case his name is Heinrich Düring and he lives in Cordingen , a small town in the Lüneburg Heath , where Schmidt lived from 1945 to 1950. Despite his rather boring everyday life - he is an administrative officer in the nearby district town of Fallingbostel - Düring is characterized by a stupendous, detailed knowledge of sometimes remote literature, to which he expresses very explicit likes and dislikes. Like Schmidt, he admires Wieland, like him he is skeptical or even negative about Goethe (“He never had any idea that prose could be an art form!”) The world of books enables him, as it were, a “second existence”: It is for a retreat to which he resignedly flees his real life, but at the same time it also enables him to provoke his fellow human beings effectively.

Living in inner emigration

At the beginning of the story, Heinrich Düring's frustrated existence in petty-bourgeois confinement is described: with house and garden, a pensionable position in the Fallingbostel district office and a family that has long been estranged from him. The woman is quite a housewife and mother, and the couple have been sleeping separately for a long time, which is why his sexuality is limited to raving about his daughter's eighteen-year-old classmate and occasional masturbation ( indicated in the novel by the abbreviation "O."). Düring's relationship with his son is also distant. He looks at the HJ enthusiastic boy in a cool, resigned manner. Düring finds himself in a state of internal emigration without openly revolting against his unsatisfactory private living conditions or the despised Nazi regime. He continues to do his job as if nothing was happening and takes refuge in long walks through the beloved heather landscape - at one point he describes himself as a “heathen servant, leaf worshiper, wind worshiper” - and in dream worlds from old books. Düring has no friends and no people to talk to, apart from rare contacts with like-minded younger colleagues. Only in his inner monologues does he find the opportunity to formulate his various violent dislikes, for example against National Socialism , against overpopulation , against Christianity or against hilly landscapes.

Breaking out of the confines of the District Office

In the instruction from above to the District Office to set up a district archive, which the District Administrator delegates to the supposedly harmless Düring, Düring experiences a partial escape from his sad existence. Half of his working hours are released for this task, he travels by bus, bike and train all over the district and collects certificates with obvious pleasure . His visits to an old farmer and a rectory are described as examples. Düring enthusiastically buries himself in the history of his district, and the first acts of shy rebellion arise: he steals the most interesting pieces for himself privately, he swindles himself on a business trip to Hamburg , where he visits the art gallery, in half agreement with his superior . He's also physically revived, and there is even a love affair with the long-sought-after neighbor's daughter Käthe.

Double life as a faun and apocalyptic end

Düring is particularly interested in the story of a deserter in the French army that occupied the area during Napoleon's time. On the way back from Hamburg he wanders through a moor landscape and, rather by chance, discovers the hut that this deserter had built for himself and there for years the existence of a faun , a free and uncanny forest spirit. The hut becomes his refuge, into which he secretly sneaks - sometimes with, sometimes without his lover. He also identifies more and more with the faunal deserter. Towards the end of the war - Düring's son has long since fallen, which leaves him surprisingly cold - his double life is in danger. The increasingly nervous authorities suspect a deserter loitering in that bog. Düring decides to burn down the hut after a last rendezvous with Käthe. But before that, the two of them experience an apocalyptic bomb attack on the nearby Eibia ammunition factory - a symbol of the impending fall of the Nazi regime. In the hail of bombs, Düring leaves his wife to herself without losing a thought, in order to save himself and his lover by cruel deaths in the secret hut. Schmidt paints this night in the brightest expressionist colors, in whose imagery , staccato-like language the exploding factory is depicted. After a night of love, they burn down their refuge. The novel ends almost optimistically:

"How much longer will you be here exactly?" "Ten days." And our expressions relaxed wonderfully: Who is still thinking 10 days ahead today? ! "

literature

Text output

• Arno Schmidt: From the life of a faun . Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 1953 (first edition with a dedication to Alfred Andersch ).
• Arno Schmidt: From the life of a faun . In: Nobodaddy's Children . Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 1963 (first edition as a trilogy).
• Arno Schmidt: From the life of a faun . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1973 (first paperback edition).
• Arno Schmidt: From the life of a faun . In: Arno Schmidt: Works. Bargfeld edition . Werkgruppe I, Volume 1, Haffmans, Zurich 1987, pp. 299–390 (= BA I / 1, authoritative edition).

Secondary literature

• Jörg Drews (Ed.): Further explanations on the »Faun« . In: Bargfelder Bote , Delivery 164/165 (1992).
• Kai U. Jürgens : Ni Dieu, ni Maitresse. Exile and eroticism in Arno Schmidt's “Nobodaddy's Children” , Verlag Ludwig, Kiel 2000.
• Ulrich Klappstein: Faunic escapes. Arno Schmidt and the Brücke painter Otto Mueller , Neisse Verlag, Dresden 2015, ISBN 978-3-86276-180-7 .
• Dieter Kuhn : Commentary manual on Arno Schmidt's novel “From the life of a Faun” , Edition Text + Criticism, Munich 1986.

Radio play editing

• From the life of a faun . Radio play with Ulrich Wildgruber . Editing and direction: Klaus Buhlert . Bayerischer Rundfunk 1998. Length: 86'40. As a podcast / download in the BR radio play pool.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Martynkewicz, Arno Schmidt with self-testimonies and picture documents (= Rowohlt's Monographs 1090), Reinbek 1992, p. 60
2. ↑ Marius Fränzel: "This miraculous mixture". An introduction to the narrative work of Arno Schmidt. Ludwig, Kiel 2002, p. 85 f.
3. ↑ Christoph Jürgensen, "The frame works". Paratextual strategies for guiding reading in the work of Arno Schmidt , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, p. 114.
4. ↑ Information from the Arno Schmidt Foundation
5. ↑ Arno Schmidt, Bargfelder Edition, group of works III: Essays and Biografisches , Vol. 3, p. 167ff; on-line
6. ↑ Arno Schmidt, Bargfelder Edition, Work Group I: Novels, Stories, Poems, Juvenilia , Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1987, Volume 1, p. 301
7. ↑ Marius Fränzel, This miraculous mixture. An introduction to the narrative work of Arno Schmidt , verlag ludwig, Kiel 2002, pp. 78–84 (here the quote).
8. ↑ BA I / 1, p. 351.
9. ↑ Hartwig Suhrbier : On the prose theory by Arno Schmidt . Special delivery Bargfelder Bote , Edition text and criticism, Munich 1980, p. 22, general: Jörg Drews : Arno Schmidt and August Stramm. Observations on the Expressionist Style Elements in the Early Novels . In: text + kritik 20 / 20a: Arno Schmidt . 3rd Edition, 1977, pp. 82-88.
10. ↑ Bernd Rauschenbach : A tray full of glittering snapshots. Preliminary considerations for a biography of Arno Schmidt . Lecture at the conference of the Society of Arno Schmidt Readers in Ahlden on October 2, 2004 (accessed on September 8, 2012).
11. ↑ Heiko Postma: Processing and conveying literary traditions. Arno Schmidt and his work on literature . Bangert & Metzler, Frankfurt am Main 1982, p. 7.
12. ^ Kai U. Juergens, Ni Dieu, ni Maitresse. Exile and eroticism in Arno Schmidt's Nobodaddy's Kinder , verlag ludwig, Kiel 2000, p. 29
13. ^ Kai U. Juergens, Ni Dieu, ni Maitresse. Exile and eroticism in Arno Schmidt's Nobodaddy's Kinder , verlag ludwig, Kiel 2000, p. 25
14. ↑ Jörg Drews , Nobodaddy's Kinder , in: Kindlers Literatur Lexikon , Kindler Verlag, Zurich 1965, Sp. 6770
15. ^ Arno Schmidt, Bargfelder Edition, group of works I: Novels, Stories, Poems, Juvenilia , Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1987, Volume 1, p. 390
16. ↑ Nobodaddy's Children - From the Life of a Faun. BR radio play Pool