Catherina - Countess of Armagnac
" Catherina - Countess von Armagnac and her two lovers " was Karl Gustav Vollmoeller's first play. The piece, a drama in verse , is one of the significant "almost ... only examples of symbolist theater in Germany". (Edward Jaime)
Premieres
The play was published in 1903 by the S. Fischer publishing house in Berlin and had its world premiere on March 6, 1905 at the Carltheater in Vienna and its German premiere on December 22, 1905 at the Wilhelma Theater in Stuttgart. The premiere in the Kammerspiele in Berlin followed on December 9, 1907.
prehistory
"Catherina" was preprinted in 1901 with the support of Stefan Georges in "Blätter für die Kunst". Hugo von Hofmannsthal in a letter dated June 18, 1902 to Stefan George: “Now it ties in well with the fact that an appearance of the“ leaves ”has exerted the most lively admiration and sympathy from me: Mr. Karl Vollmöller through his 'dramatic fragment'… die The deepest gift of dramatic creation: to feel the situation from the heart of the characters is bestowed on him and I expect another work from him with the greatest eagerness. ” Arthur Schnitzler and Josef Kainz managed to get the verse drama premiered in Vienna in 1905 .
content
"Catherina" is set at the time of the Hundred Years War between England and France, around the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, in Paris, France. The wife of the Marshal of France fell in love with the French Crown Prince. When her husband, the Count of Armagnac, realizes this, he kills the prince by beheading him with his own hands. He brings his bloody head to his wife. In order to disguise her relationship with the prince and not to endanger his life, she lured a knight named Tristan into the castle palace. Out of love for her, he is ready to be killed for her. However, after Catherina learns that her lover, the Crown Prince, has already been killed, she does not want to endanger the knight's life and sends him away on the pretext of preparing to flee together. Then she rushes to death together with the bloody head of her dead lover from the window of the castle. Vollmoeller has its history at the time of King Charles VI. and Queen Isabeau . The jealous and evil Count of Armagnac was Bernard VII d'Armagnac . Whose wife the Bonne de Berry. The Jehan of the play was Jean de Valois, duc de Touraine . The father of Catherina (Bonne) de Berry was Johann von Berry . As a patron and art collector, he had the Limburg brothers produce the illustration for the Book of Hours (Très Riches Heures). Vollmoeller created this prime example of symbolist drama with the aid of symbolist techniques - rapid changes in moods, momentary sensations and impressions. The focus of his "Catherina" is not the acting, but the person who has suffered his fate. Vollmoeller used the stylistic devices of unconscious mental states, dreams, spontaneous associations and chains of thought to design the symbolic situations. In doing so, he implemented the strategy of symbolism: internalized narration, experienced speech and internal monologue perfectly. His "Catherina" contrasts the dominance of words and actions in the classic-realistic drama with the expressiveness of gestural moments, the "dialogue du second degré".
reception
In Germany the symbolism emanating from France never fully developed, except for Vollmoeller and Rainer Maria Rilke . Rainer Maria Rilke struggled most bitterly in his poems and Vollmoeller in his early dramas with Mallarmé's pure conception of art . As a representative of the symbolist avant-garde, Vollmoeller quickly made important enemies. His "Catherina" acted as a kind of burning glass, over which proponents and critics of the symbolist theater waged a bitter position battle. While proponents such as Edward Jaime wrote: “ Stefan George did not love contemporary theater ... One of the most important dramatists of the turn of the century was formed in his circle (Karl Vollmoeller) ... His dramas are almost the only examples of symbolist theater in Germany. George has praised Vollmoeller's set-up very much . ", Says Julius Bab , who can be attributed to the critics :" Only Vollmoeller deserves special attention ... So Vollmoeller's strong surface talent has found enthusiastic admirers, especially his Catharina, Countess of Armagnac! ... the poetry, which is rich in beautiful details, is, viewed in terms of its dramatic formal value, a ballad drama crushed by lyrical overgrowth . "The Germanist Friedrich von der Leyen, on the other hand, wrote:" His Katharina von Armagnac was equal to Hofmannsthal's early poems in terms of sound and intoxicating beauty: It savored the effects of the theater more courageously and more ruthlessly . ” Rudolf Lothar , a theater critic, commented positively:“ Vollmoeller is excellent at letting emotions echo. He knows ... how to hammer with the repetition of words ... This romantic is above all an artist of stylization ... The figures ... are strangely colored shadows of the dark scene of being. He gives us poetry, woven from dreams and premonitions, he plunges us into a purple intoxication ... In this drama ... lyric and drama are so intertwined that they are inseparable. The art of mood ... is developed to virtuosity . " Alfred Kerr praised and criticized in the" Schaubühne "( Die Weltbühne ):" Vollmoeller unfolds ... the abundance of his means, the deafening abundance of what the lyric of music and painting, the Pre-Raphaelites or thanks to a Beardsley. .. And finally one last thing is not missing to complete the intoxication of surprise: the music isn't missing here, isn't it - Wagner? ... Vollmoeller's "Catherina von Armagnac" begins as a drama and ends in an intoxicating piece of music, which is only missing "music" for the final completion . "
literature
- Karl Vollmoeller Catherina, Countess von Armagnac and her two lovers , S. Fischer, Berlin 1903
- Julius Bab The Chronicle of the German Drama Volume I, Berlin 1926
- Hermann Bahr : Epigones. Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 37 (1903) # 207, 1-2. (July 30, 1903)
- CM Bowra The legacy of symbolism . Vienna 1948
- Edward Jaime Stefan George and world literature , Ulm 1949
- Soergel / Hohoff seal a. Poets of the Time Vol. I, 1961: From Naturalism to the Threshold of Expressionism
- Dolf Sternberger About Art Nouveau . Hamburg 1956
- Frederik D. Tunnat: Karl Vollmoeller: poet and cultural manager ; a biography. tredition, [Hamburg] 2008, ISBN 978-3-86850-000-4
- Die Nation, vol. 22, booklet 4, Rudolph Lothar, of two new poets
- The Schaubühne Vol. 1, Issue 1, Alfred Kerr, Catherina von Armagnac