Belphegor (Wezel)
Belphegor or The Most Likely Story Under the Sun is a satirical novel by Johann Karl Wezel in the sequel to Voltaire's Candide or Optimism . It was published by Crusius in Leipzig in 1776.
content
The sobering journey of the idealist Belphegor through the world is told in satirical form, the egocentric social and radical power structures he has criticized and fought against in circles that are increasingly drawn into the fantastic: first in Germany, then in the Ottoman Empire, in the exotic In Africa, in Muslim Arabia, in Mongolia, in California and even in legendary lands, he basically experiences the same thing everywhere: envy, rivalries, bloody battles, destruction, brutal persecution, enslavement, torture, etc. The protagonist returns from badly damaged and disaffected back to his bad trip. In addition to stories of individual minor characters, such as B. the marquise (3rd book) and the dervish (7th book), v. a. the discussions with his friends Medardus and Fromal who accompanied him about his theory of the egoistic world order in comparison with the humanistic image of man. These discussions are taken up and updated again and again after new painful experiences of the protagonist, e.g. B. in the 5th book, when Belphegor experienced slavery first hand.
Belphegor
In the foreword the author presents his plan and his people: “This wonderful compound that we call humans is, individually and as a whole, a true JANUS , a creature with two faces, one hideous, the other beautiful - a creature, both of them The composition of its originator must have wanted to prove that he can unite the most controversial elements, combine sociability and unsociability and also form something whose mass is made up of sheer contradictions and consists of contradictions. "
The four main characters, who are separated again and again on their journey and brought together in other places and then tell of their experiences in the meantime, represent different ways of thinking and living: The "buzzing and active" Belphegor recognizes as he is A pure idealistic thought laboratory has to leave that people “cannot put together a harmonious functional whole from the confused scenes of the world”, that basic rights are disregarded and that he repeatedly succumbs to his appeals and active rescue attempts, or even to the power structures he criticizes gets involved and even benefits from it. In contrast to him, Medardus, the leisurely Magister of Philosophy and Liberal Arts, chatting over cider, does not reflect so much. He believes in predestination in the sense of theodicy and seeks to see the beginnings of a positive future development in disaster: “Little brother [...] be of good courage! The caution [= providence] is still alive. [...] You would still like the cider if you had a jug full here [...] Stop worrying and groaning! Who knows what you are good for? ”(3rd book). The opposite figure to the two is Fromal. The rationalist controls his emotions, accepts the power structures of the world, which he developed in detail in the 4th and 9th books, as laws of nature and uses them for himself for survival and enrichment. As a courted woman, Akante tries to profit from the system and becomes its victim when she descends from the well-off mistress and harem lady to a street prostitute and beggar.
First part
The motto bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all) is a quote from the work De Cive by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes .
first book
After Belphegor has been roughly thrown out of her house by his lover, the beautiful and calculating Akante, for whom he has spent himself, his friend Fromal opens his eyes to this unfaithful mistress of rich men as well as to the selfishness of people and endorses the naive idealists out with money to get to know the real world and be cured of your dreams. As he later learns, the friend took his place and, what he did not know at first, another wealthy protector.
On his journey, Belphegor immediately experienced, symbolized by a dove torn by a hawk, the first painful disappointments in the realm of everyday life: a farmer's son is cheated by his brother, mocked by the village youth and ridiculed by his parents for his weakness, a tricky one Robber serves as his protector. For those wrongly treated, e.g. For example, a serf, a blackmailed girl, a girl envied by rivals, a peasant who was ruined by his envious brother, he campaigns without success. In his attempts to help he is often chased away, beaten and even seriously injured by the villains and the people who sympathize with them, and he loses an eye and a finger. A further disappointment is the experience that the betrayed people whom he came to help, after initial gratitude, envy and slander him once he is in an advantageous situation. B. prevent his marriage to the daughter of the rich employer.
Belphegor's disillusionment then continues to a greater extent in the war: when he asks soldiers about their right to devastate the country and exploit the population, he is thrown into a penitentiary, has to spin wool, but escapes after a fire and ends up in the land of the Latomans into a peasant war. He was forced to become the leader of the peasants who fought against the noble landlords for their freedom. They have already set eighteen locks on and slaughtered the residents. During an attack on another junker's castle, they are wiped out by troops of the land army. Belphegor is imprisoned, defends the peasants' rights before the judge and is sentenced to death by hanging. A storm prevents the execution. The scaffolding collapses, he flees and finds refuge with Pastor Medardus.
second book
Medardus has to leave his house the next day because he has shown understanding for the peasants' protest. He tells Belphegor his changeable biography and the ambivalence of right and wrong. In his youth his love affair with Akante earned him the envy of his teacher and the admission to the monastery. There his wives' visits annoyed his classmates. He fled their harassment to another country and converted. Now he was successful. The prince's mistress helped him to the position of court preacher and supported him against intrigues, from which he gained the insight: "I was right because I had the upper hand ". But his opponents did not give up and managed to get him transferred to a small community. As a loser, he was also wrong. Then he became a chaplain in the war and competed with his colleague for the favor of the worshipers. When filling positions after the war, his opponents doubted his orthodoxy and he was only given a small office. His marriage earned him the hatred of his neighbor, who also wooed the girl. This intrigued against him and made his life difficult. He changed jobs. Now he has a new office again and Belphegor accompanies him on the trip, since his wife has now died and his children are being looked after. On the way they witness how a man abuses a Jewish trader and talk about the prejudices of Christians. This experience leads Belphegor to self-reflection: “I was happy, friend, because in solitude my busy imagination and my heart composed a colossus from all moral perfections and called it man . [...] my whole view was concentrated in myself [...] a fantastic dream, but really sweet! "
On another day of travel they meet Akante, who, as he learns in Book 10, tells Belphegor her version of the separation that corresponds to the truth: she was faced with the decision to say goodbye to him or starve to death. Fromal wooed her with his money and ousted him. He then killed her second protector in a red-handed situation of jealousy and had to flee. Then she tells them the bizarre story of how she became the mistress of rich and influential men on a journey through Italy. B. Pope Alexander VI., With whom she forged plans to conquer the world, or the Margrave of Salocca, in whose seraglio the rivals destroyed her beautiful face out of jealousy and cut off her white right hand, which is why she now has an artistic one Wear a mask and a marble prosthesis.
Third book
On the march they get caught in a waterspout, a storm that carries Belphegor and Medardus through the air into the “Wallachey”, while Akante lands in Turkey (7th and 8th book). They find shelter in a hut with a French woman. A boy hidden in a vessel thinks the two are his pursuers and stabs himself. He is the youngest brother of the Sultan, who is in the process of exterminating his relatives in order to maintain power. The French, who took Amurat in out of pity, is the "Markisinn of E." and, as Belphegor learns in the 7th cp., The sister of the dervish. She tells why she had to emigrate from Paris to the wasteland. She was unhappily married to a sinister, misanthropic man and, as the murderess' confession revealed twenty years later, got caught up in the intrigue of an admirer who had been rejected by her and who was taking revenge on her. He instigated her maid to poison the marquis. She was suspected of being a wife, a court convicted her of murder and she fled to Wallachia. But not only they, their brothers too, fell victim to justice and the despotism of superstition. When he exposed fake miracles, the younger brother was burned for blasphemy. Her older brother had to leave the country as a "secret Huguenot". The complaint of the French woman and her guests about the rule of stupidity and ignorance over common sense is interrupted by Turkish soldiers. They look for Amurat, find his body and kill the marquise. Belphegor and Medardus sell them as slaves. Their owner wants to escape the cruel power struggle in the sultanate by fleeing. His caravan is attacked and cut down, the two protagonists survive under a pile of corpses in which they discover Fromal. He is their master, the slave owner.
On their march out of the war zone, Fromal tells them his, as he later admits in Book 10, his untrue version of the Akante story: he had to separate the naive emphatic friend from the unfaithful woman who was looking for a new protector. The killing of the rival was not done out of jealousy, as Akante claimed, but for self-protection in order to forestall a planned murder. Then he reports how his view of the world of envy and selfishness was activated in Paris and London, once in a poets' quarrel in the theater and then in the rivalry of jugglers for the public's favor. As an example of the artists' narcissism , he tells of Nikanor's attempt to achieve the "universal monarchy in the realm of applause" by spying on the work of his competitors and reviewing or parodying them in order to undermine their success. As a further example of the manipulation of the audience for self-expression, he cites the freedom campaign of a London journalist. Fromal's career began with the marriage of a wealthy merchant widow and her move to Turkey. First things went uphill economically, now downhill: “Like light shavings, let us swim on the stream of necessity and chance: let us sink below - good night! We have swum! - "
Fourth book
The three of them flee from an advancing Turkish troop and fight for a ship that is guarded by the people of the Grand Vezier and lying on the beach in readiness to flee. In doing so, they kill the guards and then discuss the behavior that violates their peaceful principles. While Belphegor is desperate about her “fratricide”, Fromal justifies this with her natural right to survive. Their conversation is ended by pirates who take them prisoner and sell them as slaves in Algiers.
After two years, Fromal instigates a slave rebellion, in the confusion of which the three can escape to the exotic and legendary land of Bilidulgerid. They continue their discussion under a palm tree by a small river. Belphegor mourns his golden time in his dream land of ideal humanity and Fromal gives the friends a long lecture, which takes up the greater part of the chapter, about his evolutionary world and human image, which is based on self-love, self-preservation, "envy and preferential addiction" as well as competition based around the strongest position and allows pity only as a corrective companion or as a virtue facade and active humanity only as ornament in safe situations: "Europe lies under heaven, where this happy contract [between virtues and vices] was first established: there the war of nature is waged more intelligently , I might say that it is waged under the supervision of compassion: but it is waged, only with different weapons and in a different way than before. ”In this picture of the natural war tempered by culture he closes the "delightful" parlor games like the "frog mouse war" of the philosophers for the truth and the "pos the poets' fiery war [-] ”for public applause. They are torn from the discussion about Fromal's world interpretation by an attack by the lions on the black inhabitants of the country. They help defend the village and drive away the animals. At the victory celebration this time the priests do not want to sacrifice one of the residents, as usual, but one of the strangers, Medardus. He is thrown to a lion to eat, but the animal recognizes in him the helper who recently pulled a stone from his injured paw and approaches him in a friendly manner. The priests see this as a sign that Medardus was a lion in a previous life and became a sacred animal through transmigration of souls. They hide him and take the other two to King Nazib's residence in the mountains.
Fifth book
Belphegor and Fromal are prepared by the French master of ceremonies for the monarch's antics. They are supposed to appear as ambassadors of the king of the north, who he invented, and arouse the envy of the neighbors. These are in the vassal hierarchy, on an equal footing with him, at the bottom, as they are all tributary to the ruler of the sailing fair, who in turn is due to the "King of Morocco". Now that the king of the north pays him the honor of visiting ambassadors, Nazib stages himself as the most glorious prince, even before his overlord. For the festive audience followed by gladiator fights, he summons all subjects as well as the four-footed and feathered animals of the country to a parade. The hoped-for effect is only partially achieved. Although the neighbors are jealous, they join forces, force the Nazib to submit and rob him of the two envoys. Even the ruler of Segelmesse feels put back, intervenes in the war, has his vassals executed and redistributes the land. He forces Belphegor and Fromal to appear as ambassadors in his parade and rewards them with two kingdoms. Fromal rules successfully, pragmatically, while Belphegor is chaotic. Now he envies his friend. The French court master incites him and the king of Segelmesse against Fromal. He lost the war, but was pardoned on Belphegor's intercession, transported to Nigritia in a caravan, sold there as a slave and, as he later told his friend in the 10th book, was brought to the island of New Wight in North America. As the leader of a plantation workers' uprising, he frees himself and his troops and is elected commander. Belphegor, too, can only hold office for a short time. In the fight for Fromal's legacy, the King of Segelmesse prevails again, arranges the areas and banishes Belphegor to Nigritia as well. From there he accompanies his patron in a caravan to "Abissinien", where a Portuguese tells him a strange story about the Emperor Neguz, whose posture and disabilities are imitated by his subjects and courtiers in a competition: Everyone wants the one-eyed and allegedly limping emperor be most similar and hurt yourself.
The experience of slavery makes Belphegor think again about life during a break from traveling and accuse each other of exploitation: “What numbing of all senses does it take to do a trade with the freedom of a creature of my kind? [...] A part of humanity is tortured to death so that the other eats itself to death. [...] ". He deduces from the misconduct of people: “Either that oppression was part of nature's plan, that it laid out people in such a way that one had to fight with the other for freedom, power and wealth; or that man, if she did not designate him to do so, is the only creature that has lived continuously against the intention of nature since creation, or that nature bore children with extraordinary fertility and nourished them with neglected care [...] I would have Desire to become a rebel against nature and fate [...] in order to be happy under the sun, one has to have ignorance in one's head or cold blood in one's veins; - one must dream or die: because to watch - woe, woe to the man who comes there and is not composed of ice! "
Second part
The motto about the mutual exploitation of humans “Of all Animals of Prey, Man is the only sociable one. Every one of us preys upon his neighbor, and yet we herd together ”comes from The Beggar's Opera by John Gay .
Sixth book
With his trip to Abyssinia, Belphegor's patron is pursuing the plan to travel disguised as a mining expert, incite the subjects to rebellion, kill the king of Niemeamaye, a vassal of Neguz ', and take his gold treasure into his possession. In the event of failure, he would blame his slave. The ruler had acquired his wealth through protectionist measures. The gold grains of the river were screened in the country and not allowed to flow abroad. Then the potentate surrounded his land with a wall and forced his economically dependent neighbors, through an import ban, to buy his goods and the transportable property of his serfs with their gold. Its population became impoverished and received only rationed food from its own cultivation. Belphegor has to promise his owner that he will participate in the assassination attempt, but has remorse and warns the king, recognizing Medardus. His friend tells him what has happened since their separation, how he freed himself through the war of the vassal kingdoms and fled to Nigritia. On a trip with the slave girl Zaninny through the fantasy land of Maladellasitten, they were welcomed in a village by heavy, laughing women served by tame monkeys, whose husbands, who only stop by now and then, cultivated in the nearby mountains for maintenance. In this idyll he dreamed of becoming an African and living with the pitch-black beautiful Zaninny, who rode away from him on a monkey. Then he explains how he was seduced by the Emunkis, who gave him the kingdom of Niemeamaye, to deviate from his principles and become a tyrannical exploiter. Now he regrets his weakness, wants to return the collected gold and appoints the friend as co-regent. But both are only beginning to implement the promised reparation with their own people. The moralist also becomes an oppressor and enjoys the power and the obeisance of his subjects until the discontented emunkis overthrow their tyrant and then drive the neighboring regents out of Niemeamaye. As one learns in the 8th book, Medardus survived the palace fire and becomes a partner in a commercial shop in Karthagena, Spain.
Belphegor flees to Egypt and travels to Persia on behalf of a merchant. On the way he befriends an Aliden in Arabia , is fascinated by its deep religiosity and recognizes in it the equality of religions, which worship the same god in different variations. However, his hope for a tolerant coexistence between people is disrupted by two conflicting Islamic denominations. The Alide is attacked by an Abubecker supporter, accused of treason and killed. Belphegor, who fled injured after the attack, is nursed to health by a robber captain in his castle. When asked about the contradiction between his professional brutality and private humanity, the host succinctly explains to him that within his walls he is his sacred inviolable friend and outside of it his enemy at all times. Belphegor recognizes his honesty in relation to the hidden double standards of the Europeans. Their conversation is ended by a robbery on the house. Only that which is worthless to the robbers remains, namely Belphegor and his old host. They walk together through the Diarbek landscape, which was destroyed by the war between two sultanates.
Seventh book
Belphegor is appalled by the tyrants' fury, sees no more meaning in life and does not fear death: “We no longer breathe the polluted air of this world, the smallest part of which has been desecrated by the breath of a monster and passed through the lungs of a barbarian . Profit is such a loss. ”During this crisis, some survivors tell him about a wise dervish who lives secluded in the mountains. He lets himself be led to him on arduous paths and finds him in a lovely, fertile agricultural landscape, which is described as a Locus amoenus . The hermit is the brother of the Marquise (3rd book), who in France suffered both from the competitive system of the achievement society and from the doctrines of the church, which forced him, the Huguenots, to renounce heresy. To survive he gave in outwardly and "decided to be out of the world, to exist only in an imagination, to live for me and a family." He had long loved married Lucie but who was tied to her sadistic husband and children until she finally left him. With her, her two daughters and some like-minded people he emigrated to Persia and since then has lived under simple conditions in a small, self-sufficient society. According to his experience, there are two alternatives for people: “Either throw yourself into the tangle, the tumult of the joys, the business, the general dispute of self-interest, fight, win or die!” Or “tear yourself from all the ties that broke tie yourself to people, exist only in your soul, bury yourself in quiet lonely silence! [...] abandon yourself entirely to the sweetest illusions that people can invent, the belief in caution, immortality and sublimity of the soul ”. But his paradise in the mountains was endangered from the beginning, already in symbolic foreshadowing, when Lucie ate tempting, poisonous fruit under a tree and died despite her husband's warning. Now the idyll is being destroyed by greedy neighbors, who ironically just gave Belphegor the idea. They could not imagine that a person would go to such great lengths to climb the mountains without the hope of finding riches there. Disappointed in their mistake, they burn everything down and kill the colonists. Belphegor escapes and wanders through Persia as a money teller with self-painted panels and then as a beggar. A prostitute speaks to him on a street. It is the Alkante, who has come to the bottom of her sloping career, who at first does not recognize him in his rags.
Eighth book
Alkante tells how she was sold as a slave several times and finally instrumentalized in the harem of the general Fali in a power struggle with his rival Edzar. At first she was praised as a favorite. Then Edzar spread the rumor of her beauty and talent at the court of the Persian king. The ruler became jealous, demanded the slave for himself, disempowered Fali after a fierce fight when Fali refused to give in to the order out of pride, and then had the intriguer Edzar executed after seeing the physically damaged and repaired woman. The slave was driven away and ended up on the street. Now, ironically, she is complaining to Belphegor, the only lover in her bondage whom she has ruined, of her suffering as an example of the socially dependent role of women and calls on him to fight for emancipation in a great tirade supported by heroin consumption. In view of her misery, he forgives her infidelity and hopes for a new beginning of their relationship.
Together they hike on to the “Chinese Tartarey”, where the Hiutschis, Niungis, Aldschehus and Mongolutschis fight in changing alliances for land ownership and exterminate each other, and come to the sea. Here they spend a few days in a dwarf kingdom delimited by hedges, into which they are lured by divine music. But inside, the little residents compete on stilts or they climb onto a high sofa and fight for the coveted central seat. Others hunt golden birds and shining deer without success. An old dwarf explains to the visitors that they live in a world of fools, that they “run after empty fantasies” and “cry or laugh at the follies of [their] life” at this assembly point. Suddenly an earthquake tears away the piece of land on which Belphegor, Alkante and the old man are standing, and it drifts as an island across the ocean to California.
Ninth book
In America, the two travelers have had similar experiences as before. You move from one difficulty to the next. This time they are received in a seemingly friendly manner by one tribe and richly entertained, then robbed by another and treated the same way. Belphegor believed in “unspoiled nature” for a short time, then discovered that in reality it was fattened for consumption, sometimes without and sometimes with divine sacrifice. They are saved by an attack by a warlike tribe, but they are captured again and enslaved. In the confusion of the conflict, they escape and come across two Spanish officers who they want to take with them on their ship. But first they have to face another adventure because the boat drifted off the pier on the river. They bring it to the bank and rescue the inmate. It is Medardus, from whom Belphegor was separated in Niemeamaye (6th book) and who is now on a trip to America as a merchant. He offers them the return trip to Europe and wants to take them up in Cartagena, Spain.
During the trip across Panama, Belphegor and Medardus discuss their world views based on their new experiences. Both feel confirmed: Belphegor: “Perhaps the whole series of my, your life, the events of the whole earth were nothing but this - effects of chance and necessity.” Medardus: “I believe […] that everything is well and wisely arranged […] Enjoyed every joy as it presents itself, accepted every pouf as it comes, and always thought: who knows what it's good for? - that means lived wisely . ”As proof, he tells what has happened to him since their last separation. He escaped from the burning palace with grains of gold sewn into his clothing, using it to buy into the Abyssinian capital from merchants who took him to New Guinea. He survived a mutiny on an English slave transport ship. Since England was at war with Spain, the English was captured by a Spanish ship that brought the booty to Cartagena. Here he found work with a merchant who sent him to California, where the friends met again.
In Cartagena, Belphegor marries "Akanten, the companion of his sorrows". Medardus arranges for him employment with merchants. But he gives accusatory idealistic speeches about the universally valid human rights and the exploitation of serfs and slaves: "You are monsters [...] you make your shoulders light and lay all the burdens of humanity on these creatures without pity: you press them because they are not real Christians without considering that they are human. ”He was then released and lived on the income of his wife, who ran a brothel in his house as a matchmaker unnoticed by him. Here he meets a visitor in whom he finds a soul mate. They talk about the unjust nature of the world, the despotism of the rulers and the church, the poor working conditions of industry, which is increasingly organized for performance and pressure.
Tenth book
Belphegor is reunited with Fromal through the family friend. The starting point is his complaint about the injustice of a New Wight island commander named Fromal, who was paid for the execution of his inheritance affair with an estate attached to his property. Belphegor accompanies the friend to North America to stand up for him and demand the return of the extorted goods. He speaks to Fromal, from whom he has not heard anything since their separation in Africa (5th book), into conscience, but the latter skilfully shows him human weakness and tendency to double standards by giving him the good that the idealist now has managed with the help of slaves. This is exactly what happened to him, Fromal explains later, when he rose to command the island after a slave revolt and was seduced by the comforts of power and prosperity. He also confesses his betrayal of his boyfriend when he fell in love with Akante and, out of jealousy, urged her to throw her financially exhausted lover out of her home.
In this context, they take up their old discussion about human nature: one position sees life as a free play of natural law processes, the other as a well thought-out machine with interlocking wheels. Formally it is concluded that there is no evidence for all further thoughts about a predestination with reward and punishment or pure unintentional randomness or about the sense or nonsense of an event, all assumptions exist only in our imagination. All observations in the world speak for an aggressive competitive and enriching behavior of humans, apart from a few exceptions. To Belphegor z. B. he always admired his sincerity and dedication to his ideals, but criticized his lack of realism. Since he has just lost his office through intrigue, he suggests leaving the island and buying a property in Virginia. There one could try a compromise between reality and ideal, a life in a medium mild temperature by living together in a friendly community in a small colony, shielded from the envy of the world and its seductions. You invite Medardus and Akante to participate. The third friend arrives alone, clarifies the two of them about their false image of the beloved who has been converted to morality and tells of the end of the matchmaker through manslaughter in a jealousy affair. The book concludes with a discussion between the three friends, with the result that Medardus' philosophy of life was taken as a basis, although being aware of it as an illusion. Fromal sums up: “Let's throw away all of this tiresome knowledge [about the world]! Let us not overlook anything but our little circle of friendship, and if our speculation ventures beyond it, to look at everything with Medardus' eyes, with the intention of finding everything well: lying to ourselves like that is a duty that demands our satisfaction. ”Belphegor asks in addition: “Friend, if it were possible to throw away the annoying rubbish of experience, to blunt the eye of our minds and to narrow its scope as much as possible, wouldn't we be happy? Yes, Medardus interrupts him, we will be so, little brother. "
decision
In conclusion, the author describes life in the small colony. As patriarchs, the three cultivate a piece of land with their slaves, whom they see as their children, and have resolved to “think less and act more, to scatter and sow themselves in all the little horticulture and field work, to plant, to water, to harvest, and thereby to bring their way of life close to those who are least respectful and most important in happiness, the peaceful way of life of the first fathers, of the Arcadian poetical land and of the peasant in the zones of freedom. “But the project is a temporary idyll and an illusion. Fromal and Medardus have invested their money with a merchant and can use this reserve to supplement things that are missing in their economy. The raw merrymaking of the slaves is alien to them and dances together do not succeed. After Medardus died and Belphegor went into the war of freedom against the English colonial power, Fromal, who wanted to hold him back, was left alone. The last sentence of the novel leaves the result open: "The excerpt from the war will teach us who of both parties should be right, and whether Belphegor should become generally known as a patriot and philanthropist, or perish without praise in the struggle for freedom."
Notes on understanding
Classification in literary history
Wezel's novel was published in a period of upheaval in intellectual history in the late Enlightenment . The author positions himself through the mottos of the first and second parts, for which he selected quotations from Thomas Hobbes (1642) and from the beggar opera by Gay (1728). The contemporary reception confirms this and evaluates the work in connection with the critical successor to the utopian drafts of the 17th and 18th centuries. as well as the theodicy discussion of the early Enlightenment on the model of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and compares it with Jonathan Swift's Gullivers Reisen (1726) and v. a. Voltaire's Candide or Optimism (1759). Gersch also points to Julien Offray de La Mettrie's L'homme machine (1748) as a model for Fromal's mechanistic theory, e.g. B. in the 9th book.
reception
In the contemporary reception the philosophical position of the work was rated controversially: essentially positive u. a. in the General German Library , the mouthpiece of the Berlin Enlightenment and in the Leipzig Almanac of the German Muses for the year 1778 , negative by Christoph Martin Wieland and Johann Heinrich Merck in the Teutscher Merkur . In addition to the design and language, Wieland and Merck criticize the one-sidedness of the image of man, which does not correspond to reality. "What the heck did you get back to committing this new outrage against poor humanity [...] I will explain you in the Poetic Eight and But," Wieland judges, while the late Enlightenment group focuses on another aspect of the novel: the Discussion between the extreme positions.
In the following years Wezel's work fell into oblivion. Gersch justifies this with a “collective defense reaction” against Wezel's tendency. It wasn't until almost 200 years later that Arno Schmidt drew attention to Wezel in his radio essay Belphegor, or How I Hate You, 1959. Thereupon two reprints of Belphegor appeared in 1965 in Insel-Verlag and in 1966 in Rütten & Loening . Since 1978 the novel has also been accessible again as the second volume of the Haidnian Antiquities series published by Zweiausendeins . Its rediscovery met with a mixed echo: mainly as a significant find in the successor to Voltaire: "A negative utopia, a desperate appeal to reason, one could call the book", albeit lengthy because of its repetitions. Adel, on the other hand, criticizes the newly awakened interest in that “a mood that was understandable shortly after 1945 [...] after twenty years is unduly supported and reinforced”, “with the help of a book that Wezel outgrew in the development of his work . "
Interpretations
While the research agrees on the content analysis, the author's double criticism of the unjust social order and the power structures on the one hand and the naivety of the idealist in dealing with it on the other, there are differences in the definition of the worldview and the message of Wezel. Similar to Merck and Wieland, Arno Schmidt sees the novel as the portrayal of “the most venerable hatred of God, the world and people”. Prütting puts this assessment into perspective and evaluates it as an illustration of Schmidt's own "pandiabolism". He himself does not regard Belphegor as a normal epic novel in the tradition of 18th century novels, "but as a philosophical novel, as an epic illustration of philosophical theses" and justifies this with the main characters as representatives of three discussion positions: belief in theodicy, naive idealism and skeptical pragmatism. In their approach in the last book and - deviating from Voltaire's Candide conclusion - in leaving the idyll and the participation of Belphegor in the American Revolutionary War, an open situation, possibly with new possibilities, or a new story of suffering: the "apparent conversion of Belphegor stands up just as weak feet as the problematic idyll in which he lives, because at the beginning of the American War of Independence he of course immediately 'glows' again and throws himself into the fray. The story, the story of his suffering, can begin again… ”. "In addition, the character of the novel as an anthropological experiment is being recognized more and more, which does not proceed statically from the evil human nature, but rather declines variants of dispositions and influences."
expenditure
- Belphegor or The most likely story under the sun . Novel, 2 volumes, Leipzig 1776. (Volume 2 as digitized version and full text in the German text archive )
- Complete edition in eight volumes , edited by Klaus Manger and Wolfgang Hörner, Mattes Verlag, Heidelberg 1997 ff .: Vol. 1, Tobias Knaut / Belphegor, 2008.
literature
See Johann Karl Wezel and individual references
Web links
- Works by Belphegor (Wezel) at Zeno.org .
- Works by Belphegor (Wezel) in the Gutenberg-DE project
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thomas More's Utopia (1516), Tommaso Campanellas Die Sonnenstadt (1623), Johann Valentin Andreaes Christianopolis (1619), Francis Bacons Neu-Atlantis (1626), Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe (1719) Johann Gottfried Schnabel's Insel Felsenburg (1731–1743 )
- ^ Lenz Prütting: Some remarks on Johann Karl Wezel's philosophical novel Belphegor. Afterword to Johann K. Wezel Belphegor. Frankfurt a. M. 1978.
- ↑ Hubert Gersch: Gloss to Wezel's Belphegor. In: Johann Carl Wezel: Belphegor… . Frankfurt: Insel 1965, pp. 315–322.
- ↑ JKA Musäus: Belphegor… In: General German library. XXX, 2nd Berlin-Stettin. Nicolai 1777. 525-528, here 527.
- ↑ Anonymous: Belphegor ... second part . In: Almanac of the German muses to the year 1778. Leipzig: Weygand 1778. 94.
- ↑ Christoph Martin Wieland: Letter to Wezel from July 22, 1776.
- ^ Johann Heinrich Merck: Belphegor… In: JHM: Works. Ed. V. Arthur Henkel. Frankfurt: Insel 1968. 596–598, here: 597.
- ↑ Gersch s. O.
- ↑ Arno Schmidt: Belphegor ... In: AS: Belphegor. Messages from books and people. Karlsruhe: Stahlberg 1961. 6-57.
- ↑ Uwe Schweikert: The war of all against all. In: DIE ZEIT, year 1967, edition: 11.
- ^ Kurt Adel: Johann Karl Wezel. A contribution to the intellectual history of the Goethe era. Vienna: Notring 1968, p. 169.
- ↑ Prütting s. o. pp. 471, 492.
- ↑ Prütting s. o. p. 490.
- ↑ Prütting s. o. p. 485.
- ↑ Lothar Müller: Nothing for buttery souls. FAZ 31.10997.