Babylon Revisited

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda in September 1921

Babylon Revisited (German first translation under the title Wiedersehen mit Babylon by Walter Schürenberg, 1954) is a short story by the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald , which was first published in December 1930 on February 21, 1931 in the Saturday Evening Post and in 1935 in the fourth and last collection Taps at Reveille , published during the author's lifetime . The story has since been republished in numerous anthologies .

In the story, the protagonist Charlie Wales is confronted with the mistakes of his dissolute, irresponsible life in the Roaring Twenties , which can no longer be undone by later repentance and reorientation in the way of life. In the end, Wales has to accept that his illusion of a happy future with his little daughter will not be fulfilled and that he will have to accept the permanent separation from her as a result of his careless actions in the past.

content

Paris around 1930, painting by Korowin

The external plot of the story appears comparatively simple compared to other short stories or novels by Fitzgerald. Like many other stories or novels by the group of authors known as the Lost Generation , Babylon Revisited is set in Europe, namely in Paris in 1930. The thirty-five-year-old American Charles Wales returns there after leaving the city a year and a half earlier at the lowest point of his life to now to bring his nine-year-old daughter Honoria back to him.

Through speculation on the stock market, he suddenly found wealth in the 1920s, had left the USA with his wife Helen and led a dissolute, indulgent and irresponsible life in Paris that ended with the loss of his fortune and the death of his wife after the stock market crash . One night, out of jealousy, he locked Helen out. Scantily clad, she sought refuge with her sister Marion Peters on that cold winter night, fell ill with pneumonia as a result of her hypothermia and died after returning to Vermont of a subsequent heart disease.

In accordance with the last wish of his wife, Charles Wales, who was penniless at the time and who had been admitted to a sanatorium because of his alcohol addiction, agreed to transfer the guardianship of Honoria to his sister-in-law Marion Peters.

Although his sister-in-law still holds him responsible for the misfortune and death of her sister Helen, it is not least because of the understanding attitude of his brother-in-law Lincoln Peters that he is able to arrange the return of custody to him. In spite of her dislike of him, Marion Peters finally admits that Charles seems to have become a new person, who has been cured of alcoholism, has a new place of residence, has a civil profession in Prague and lives in a decent family. So she reluctantly agrees to his plan to take Honoria back to himself.

Exactly at the time when Charles Wales is about to pick up his daughter, however, two drunken old friends from his wild past appear who cause Marion a nervous breakdown and thwart the plan to reunite father and daughter, so that he has to leave alone in the end. In the hope of being able to win his daughter back sometime in the future, he remains true to his new way of life and is certain that his wife Helen would not have wanted to see him so lonely.

Interpretative approach

With its simple structuring on the level of the external plot, the restriction to a few locations, the time compression to three days and the division into five sections, Babylon Revisited recalls the act structure of the classic tragedy with a careful build-up of tension, climax, turning point and catastrophe.

According to the logic of the external plot structure, the unexpected appearance of the drunken friends from the past for the protagonist initially appears as an unfortunate coincidence, which makes the failure of his project appear as an undeserved or tragic fate. More important than the external, however, is the internal event with the gradual critical uncovering of the past of Charles Wales, which justifies the seemingly accidental turn in the fifth part.

The scenes of the external action mark in their order - bar, street, apartment of the brother-in-law and again the bar of the opening scene - only the different stages of an essentially analytical narrative that leads to an insight into the psyche of the protagonist. After his previous physical disenchantment, this is completed in a shock of knowledge, as it were, by the spiritual disenchantment. The extensive list of ubi sunt questions in the opening scene and the silence in the bar described as “strange and portentious” (p. 35 f., German: “strange and uncanny”) indicate that the present is through past occurrence is predetermined. With the allusion to the expectations of the main character in this foreshadowing, the reader's attention is drawn to the past right from the start: the steady progression of the external plot corresponds to the increasing disclosure of the past.

Although the author tells formally in the third person narrative perspective , however staff strictly limited to the perception of the protagonist. The reality presented thus reflects the protagonist's sequence of experiences and memories; In the reversals, which are almost evenly distributed over the five sections, Charles Wales' confrontation with the failings of his past becomes the actual topic of this short story: The hopes as well as setbacks in his current mission are, without the protagonist being aware of them, precisely those factors which shape the sequence of his memories and the intensity of his confrontation with the obviously repressed mistakes of his recent past.

Charles Wales' opponents, especially Marion Peters, are ultimately only characters, regardless of their individual characterization and importance for the external course of action, who determine the process of self-knowledge of the protagonist and bring back into his consciousness those experiences that he considered remorseful in his new role Believing convert forever banished or dismissed.

In the presented reality of the narrative, however, an authorial distance is discernible, namely in the structure of the tragedy, the dramatic irony and the subtle network of metaphors , which make the reader the witness of an inner action that he has to interpret himself.

The names of the old friends in Charles Wales' ubi sunt questions in the scenic-dialogic opening part of the story refer to their dubious way of life; For example, the specific language level of the “Snow Bird” (p. 35, Eng .: “Snow Bird ”) points to the drug milieu of the heroin or cocaine users.

According to the bartender, the old friends have all lost their money, health or their minds, while Charlie Wales presents himself as a new person who - purified and matured to responsibility and cured of alcohol and drug addiction - now lives in a civil-orderly situation . Against the background of this newly won identity and integrity ( "Charles J. Wales of Prague" , p. 47), Wales succumbs to the illusion that it can undo its previous misconduct; like the protagonist in The Great Gatsby , he hopes for a "second chance" .

The whore of Babylon, depiction in the Ottheinrich Bible around 1530–32, Revelation 17, 1-18

However, its actual behavior appears to be inconsistent. Despite his clear inner distance to the lifestyle of his former friends ( "His own rhythm was different now" , German: "His life now had a different rhythm", p. 49), he is always receptive to the charms of the past. On the one hand, he rejects the offer of a prostitute in the entertainment district of Montmartre and feels, as Schunck writes, "also generally repulsed by Paris as the whore of Babylon ", whose garish nightly neon advertisements ( "fire-red, gas-blue, ghost-green" , German: “glowing red, gas blue, ghostly green”, p. 38) suggest both “moral swamp and mythical hellfire”; on the other hand, he is always fascinated by the royal charm of the city, as his nostalgic, glorified associations of splendor and domination show (see text on p. 38 f.). So he takes z. B. the car horns in front of the opera as "trumpets of the Second Empire" (Eng. "Fanfares of the Second Empire", p. 39) and introduces himself and his friends as infallible kings ( "We were sort of royalty, almost infallible , with a sort of magic around us " , p. 41).

Just as clearly and with extremely serious consequences, his incomplete detachment from the past is also expressed in relation to his former drinking companion Duncan, one of the two “ghosts of the past” ( “ghosts out of the past” , p. 48) who ended up dreaming of fail a happy future. Although he is uncomfortable meeting again ( “an unwelcome encounter” , p. 49), he cannot prevent Duncan from finding out the address of his brother-in-law.

In the course of the narrative, Charlie Wales' nostalgic glorifications become more and more through his memories of the moral corruption and the immensely childlike wastefulness or distraction ( "vice and waste ... utterly childish ... meaning of the word" dissipate ".. . wildly squandered ” , p. 44 f.), which condense into a guilt-laden nightmare with regard to his own misconduct towards his wife.

In the confrontation with Marion Peters at the climax of the narrative in section III, Charlie Wales' previously repressed misconducts are brought back into his consciousness in an extremely painful shock of recognition : "An electric current of agony surged through him" ( Eng . : "It hit him like a fatal electric shock", p. 57). Not external circumstances like the stock market crash are responsible for his fate, but his own irresponsible lifestyle. The ghosts of the past do not appear by chance, as Schunck writes in his interpretation, but are the "embodiments of unacknowledged guilt for Helen's illness and death".

In the memory of the tragic fate of Helen, which he helped to cause, the metaphors of cold, white and snow, which are already mentioned at the beginning, occupy a noticeably broad space (cf. text, pp. 59-70); Wales finally realizes that it cannot simply buy itself out of past mistakes and undo them without actual atonement; his rehearsed attitude of the reformed sinner (German: “purified paint of the repentant sinner”, p. 53) is not enough to win his daughter back. His attempt to prove himself worthy to Honoria inevitably fails as long as he is still “egocentric, selfish and therefore still irresponsible” in his thinking and behavior and cannot completely give up the still existing inner bond with his past .

At the end of the story all that remains for him is the possibly illusionary hope, interpreted differently in secondary literature: “One day he would come again; they couldn't keep him paying for it forever. "

According to Schunck, the metaphors of the last narrative section make it clear that “loneliness will be the existential situation of his future”. Helen is only tangible to him as a kind of dream figure, who sits on a swing dressed in a white robe and retreats further and further into the past in an ever faster pendulum movement (text p. 59 f.). In an analog swing metaphor, Honoria also appears to him to be increasingly removed from reality (text p. 67); the optimism and hope for a happy family life have evaporated. The question of whether he could still manage to win Honoria back at some point in the future cannot be clearly answered at the end of the story.

Autobiographical references

Babylon Revisited is by no means limited to an autobiographically motivated embodiment of Fitzgerald's marital or family problems, nor is it just a kind of chronicle of the age to which he gave his name with his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). Nevertheless, references to Fitzgerald's own personal and contemporary history can be made.

After studying at Princeton, the writer, who was educated in exclusive private schools on the east coast, married the beautiful and extravagant Zelda Sayre , who, with the considerable income from his early short stories, led a lavish life and life in the 1920s. a. in Paris, New York and Hollywood, as was common at the time for many Americans who had suddenly become rich. The 30s, on the other hand, not only represented the time of the Great Depression nationally , but also brought numerous personal blows for Fitzgerald. After a nervous breakdown, his wife Zelda spent the rest of her life in psychiatric institutions, while Fitzgerald himself became more and more alcoholic .

In this regard, there are various parallels between Zelda's mental derangement and the illness and physical death of the narrative character Helen Wales. Similarities can also be found between the 1930 nine-year-old Honoria and Fitzgerald's own daughter Scottie. In the same way as Charles Wales in the short story, F. Scott Fitzgerald himself suffered from guilt over the breakup of his family.

Fitzgerald comes from a Catholic family of origin and was raised Catholic; Accordingly, as Hagopian shows in his analysis, Babylon Revisited contains numerous references to Catholic confessional or penitential sacraments; so Charlie Wales regretted "his sins in Babylon", the reference to the Café of Heaven and the Café of Hell (p.44, dt .: "the heaven and the hell Café") plays within the meaning of the Catholic faith on Purgatory as symbolic place of purification.

In Babylon Revisited , Fitzgerald's exploration of his conscience, which began with the personal crisis around 1930, is expressed accordingly; There is quite a lot to suggest that he is using the Catholic faith from his youth , which he long doubted and which was completely abandoned during the Jazz Age , as a basis for his own moral judgments, at least temporarily.

References to American values

In Babylon Revisited , the author not only creates a purely individual experience, which is shaped by his personal fate as a member of his generation in a specific historical situation. Following on from a tradition that has existed in American literature since Hawthorne , Melville and Henry James , in which Europe becomes the scene of problems or conflicts that primarily affect America alone, Fitzgerald's narrative is thematically equally about the critical confrontation with America as well as its fundamental values ​​or attitudes.

It is true that the characters in Babylon Revisited are initially isolated from American society by the European setting; nevertheless they represent central American attitudes or norms which, according to Kruse, become a “reflection of national conflicts and problems” as they are presented to Fitzgerald “immediately after the spectacular end of the Jazz Age ”.

It is noticeable that Lincoln Peters, who by his name and his behavior embodies basic traditional American values ​​in positive form, plays only a relatively insignificant role in the context of the plot. In contrast, the events and the depicted family life are dominated by his wife Marion, who “once had a certain American freshness and prettiness” ( “who had once possessed a fresh American loveliness” , p. 41), but now “the ideals of Puritanism and a Puritan Way of Life ”realized in a completely exaggerated way.

Their description in the narrative makes them appear as a " pathological case"; so it is said u. a. from her: "[T] he discouragement of ill health and adverse cirumstances made it necessary for her to believe in tangible villainy and a tangible villain" (p. 57, German for example: " Depressed by illness and other adverse living conditions took her obsession from the meanness of the world down to a downright personal figure ”). In relation to American society, this means that puritanism has been perverted in the course of historical development and moral rigorism has lost its power and usefulness as a meaningful moral norm.

However, not only the traditional American attitude embodied by Marion Peters, which was concerned with order, stability and sedentariness, has deviated from its original content and objectives; in the same way, in Babylon Revisited , the opposing American tradition, which is oriented towards mobility and liberality , is perverted by Charles Wales. Wales, who himself has worked hard after 10 years (p. 56), for his part renounces the work ethic based on Puritanism , when he suddenly becomes wealthy through a streak of luck in his stock market speculations (p. 56). The extent of his materialistic perversion of the original values ​​is tellingly illustrated with the help of metaphors determined by the stock market and the financial world, which are symbolically condensed in the last section of the short story : “... the snow of twenty-nine wasn't real snow. If you didn't want it to be snow, you just paid some money ” (p. 70, German:“ ... the snow of 1929 wasn't real snow. With a little money it was possible to make that snow there was no more snow if it didn't suit you ”).

Marion Peters and Charles Wales thus become opponents on an allegorical level as representatives of broad American circles; In their confrontation, Fitzgerald dramatizes the conflict between two opposing forces or extremes in American society, which for him both represent a threat to the American Dream . The perversion of both attitudes is mutually dependent: the strict puritanism ends in materialistic hedonism , which in turn leads to excessively strict moralism .

Fitzgerald suggests a solution to this conflict with the balancing, mediating function of Lincoln Peters; For him, a reconciliation of the extremes would only be possible through a return to the original values ​​and attitudes that have degenerated or corrupted in the course of history .

Impact history

From today's literary perspective, Babylon Revisited is counted among the short stories that endure and thus secure a permanent place in literary history for the author, who is named as an important representative of American short stories alongside writers such as Hemingway , Faulkner or Katherine Anne Porter seem to be. This assessment is also reflected in the almost unanimous judgment of the critics that Babylon Revisited is "probably the finest of all his short stories" (German: "probably the most beautiful of his short stories"). Nevertheless, Fitzgerald had been almost completely forgotten as a novelist and short story writer at the time of his death in 1940; It was not until the 1950s that more intensive literary critical engagement with his work began again.

As the “historian of the Jazz Age ”, Fitzgerald is still far from presenting the manners and customs of his generation in a purely chronic manner; according to his own claim he sees himself rather as a “moralist at heart” (Eng .: “basically a moralist”). Despite all the differences related to the history of literature, there is, for example, a fundamental similarity between the figure of Honoria in Babylon Revisited and Pearl in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter .

Babylon Revisited also addresses a variant of the lost generation . Regardless of the unmistakable differences between Fitzgerald and Hemingway, who met and became friends during their self-imposed exile in Gertrude Steins' literary salon in Paris, both authors are related in their rather tragic- pessimistic worldview. Like Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms , Charlie Wales is similarly lonely and abandoned by the end of Babylon Revisited ; he too has lost his wife and daughter. In the final part of Babylon Revisited , Charlie Wales shows a self-discipline corresponding to Hemingway's code hero; he suffers without complaining or loudly expressing his feelings.

In contrast to the characteristic “ syntactic simplicity” in Hemingway's prose , Fitzgerald's short story is more characterized by a “linguistic elegance”.

Adaptations

The plot of 1954 directed by Richard Brooks film Romance produced The Last Time I Saw Paris (English title: The Last Time I Saw Paris ) with Elizabeth Taylor , Van Johnson , Walter Pidgeon and Donna Reed in the lead roles is based on the template of Babylon Revisited .

In 1995 an audio version was made with Dietmar Mues as a reader and other speakers at Solo .

Secondary literature

  • John V. Hagopian: Fitzgerald, F. Scott - Babylon Revisited . In: John V. Hagopian, Martin Dolch (Eds.): Insight I Analyzes of American Literature , Hirschgraben Verlag Frankfurt a. M. 1971, pp. 60-64.
  • Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 225-234.
  • Ferdinand Schunck: F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , pp. 44-52.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 225.
  2. ↑ In Germany, the publication of the original text is easily accessible in the published by Ferdinand Schunck. Short story collection Modern American Short Stories , Phillipp Reclam jun. Verlag , Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 978-3-15-009216-3 , pp. 35-70. Text passages are quoted after this edition. The first German translation by Walter Schürenberg was published in the F. Scott Fitzgerald Collection - The Best Stories by Lothar Blanvalet Verlag, Berlin 1954. In 2012, a new translation of Bettina Abarbanell's story was published under the same title in the one edited by Silvia Zanovello. Anthology: Wiedersehen mit Babylon: Erzählungen / F. Scott Fitzgerald in Diogenes Verlag , Zurich, ISBN 978-3-257-24183-9 .
  3. ↑ See Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald · Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 229. See also Ferdinand Schunck: F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 44
  4. ↑ See Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald · Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 227. See also Ferdinand Schunck: F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 46. Schunck also points out that the external plot curve of Babylon Revisited also corresponds to that of a nouvelle with its peak at a critical turning point.
  5. ↑ On this analytical approach, cf. Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald · Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 227 f. and p. 230 on dramatic irony. See also Ferdinand Schunck: F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 46 f. On the narrative situation and especially on the symbolic metaphor, see also John V. Hagopian: Fitzgerald, F. Scott - Babylon Revisited . In: John V. Hagopian, Martin Dolch (Eds.): Insight I Analyzes of American Literature , Hirschgraben Verlag Frankfurt a. M. 1971, p. 61 ff.
  6. ↑ See in detail John V. Hagopian: Fitzgerald, F. Scott - Babylon Revisited . In: John V. Hagopian, Martin Dolch (Eds.): Insight I Analyzes of American Literature , Hirschgraben Verlag Frankfurt a. M. 1971, p. 62 f. and Ferdinand Schunck: F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 47.
  7. ↑ Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 228.
  8. ↑ See Ferdinand Schunck: F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 47 f. See also Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald · Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 228 ff.
  9. ^ Ferdinand Schunck: F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 47 f. Unlike Schunck, however, because of the narrative tension between objective events and subjective depiction, Kruse opposes a one-sided deterministic interpretation of the final part of Babylon Revisited . See Horst Kruse: F. Scott FitzgeraldBabylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 229 ff.
  10. ↑ In this context, cf. also the references to the sacrament of penance and confession in the text, which, according to Kruse, are to be interpreted as dramatic irony. See Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald · Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 230 f. On the metaphor, see also the detailed analysis by John V. Hagopian: Fitzgerald, F. Scott - Babylon Revisited . In: John V. Hagopian, Martin Dolch (Eds.): Insight I Analyzes of American Literature , Hirschgraben Verlag Frankfurt a. M. 1971, pp. 61-63.
  11. ↑ See text on p. 70. According to Kruse, the naming Honoria is an “obvious sign of his lost honor”. According to him, however, the name Charles Wales also contains a sonic allusion to "Charles wails" ( Eng .: "Charles wails"), d. H. an allusion to the requirement for the forgiveness of sins mentioned in the Catholic Sacrament of Penance (dt. Penance ). In contrast to Schunck, on this background Kruse considers an interpretation wrong, according to which Charles Wales lost his daughter forever; According to him, "repentance and repentance [...] postulate the possibility of forgiveness of his sins". For these different interpretations, see Ferdinand Schunck: F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , pp. 48-52, and Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald · Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 229 ff.
  12. ↑ See Ferdinand Schunck: F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 49. Schunck sees this metaphor in connection with the text passage on p. 50 ( “She [Honoria] was already an individual with a code of her own […] crystallized utterly " . German:" She was already a small character with her own principles [...] very firmly established ") as proof that Wales has finally lost its daughter. See Ferdinand Schunck: F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 49. Kruse, on the other hand, contradicts such an interpretation; the (Catholic) Christian reference area of ​​the narrative and the negative portrayal of Marion Peters as a limited and inadequate, frustrated and bitter woman suggest that Wales can win his daughter back despite everything if he is willing to real repentance and penance. See Horst Kruse: F. Scott FitzgeraldBabylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 230-233.
  13. ↑ See Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald · Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 234.
  14. ↑ Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 232.
  15. ↑ Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 232.
  16. ↑ Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 232 f.
  17. ↑ See in detail on this interpretation Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald · Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 232-234. On the Catholic symbolic references in history, see also in detail John V. Hagopian: Fitzgerald, F. Scott - Babylon Revisited . In: John V. Hagopian, Martin Dolch (Eds.): Insight I Analyzes of American Literature , Hirschgraben Verlag Frankfurt a. M. 1971, pp. 61-63. For more detailed information on the autobiographical parallels, see Ferdinand Schunck: F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 44 f.
  18. ↑ See the information and evidence from Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald · Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 225 f.
  19. ↑ See Horst Kruse: F. Scott Fitzgerald · Babylon Revisited . In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 234.
  20. ↑ See Ferdinand Schunck: F. Scott Fitzgerald: Babylon Revisited . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 50 f.
  21. ↑ Back then in Paris in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  22. ↑ [1] . Entry in the catalog of the German National Library . Retrieved May 24, 2014.