Crisanta

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Crisanta is a story by Anna Seghers from 1950. It was published a year later by Insel Verlag in Leipzig. After returning to Germany from Mexico in 1947 , Anna Seghers wrote in the GDR about her country of exile . It tells the story of a simple girl: Crisanta grew up in the poor security of a small village and suddenly finds herself on an arduous and painful path in the hostile world of Mexico City . In the uncomplicated story told, the reader gets "insight into the customs and ways of thinking of Mexicans".

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Crisanta's mother from Pachuca did not survive the birth of her daughter. Mrs. González had taken the girl into the large family of the old, good-natured miner González as a very small child. The foster mother knows nothing about Crisanta's biological father. When the 16-year-old's sleeping mat is needed for something else, she has to go to Mexico City for work . Crisanta is lucky. In the vicinity of the Alvaro Oregon square, she finds accommodation in the tortilleria of Aunt Dolóres - a close friend of Mrs González's - as a tortilla baker. Crisanta finally has a real bed.

The girl falls in love with the potter Miguel. Aunt Dolóres tolerates the relationship. But her husband Crisanta can't climb up recently. After work, the two take part in a literacy program. Crisanta, unlike her lover, does not go through the course. Miguel, eager for a better job, is leaving, leaving Crisanta. The young woman is stunned. So far she had hardly given any thought to the past. Crisanta doesn't want to go back to Aunt Dolóres. She wanders through the city, steals her mouth , becomes a prostitute , pregnant and has an abortion . She swaps her job as an embroiderer for prostitution again.

She later meets a single young bricklayer who lets her move into his hut. With him she moves to the changing construction sites. When Crisanta strays again, she is found and picked up by the worried Aunt Dolóres. At the behest of her aunt, Crisanta has to go back to Pachuca to see Mrs. González. Crisanta - "weak, small, ignorant" - obeys. The foster mother does not overlook the young woman's new pregnancy. The old González speaks to Crisanta's conscience: Abortion is out of the question this time. That's how it happens. Crisanta gives birth to her child, but she “doesn't know who his father” is.

Crisanta gets a new, simple job on a lemonade stall made from oranges at a bus stop. She has her child with her.

Shape, themes

The author begins with a grand rhetorical gesture. She could tell a lot - about Hidalgo , Morelos , Juarez . No, she's not talking about great men, but about Crisanta.

Anna Seghers has a weakness for the symbol blue . In this Mexican novella, too, she uses the symbolic color as a poetic text bracket. At the beginning of the story, Crisanta vaguely remembers a “special heaven” from her early childhood. “Whenever she wondered what it was, the only thing that came to mind was: blue. A soft and strong blue that was not found anywhere later. The whole world rushed by and did not penetrate the blue. ”At the end of the story, Crisanta sticks her head under the rebozo , in which her child rests. “Suddenly she remembered the place where she had been as a child. The incomparable, incomprehensible deep and dark blue. That was the rebozo, the shawl of Mrs González, and what flowed behind it, her people. ”Brandes speaks of the“ sudden impulse of happiness ”triggered by“ belonging to the homeland ”.

Crisanta is not equal to the beloved. Miguel, as soon as he is sure of her, treats Crisanta from above. "That foolish girl" makes it happen. Love makes them obedient. The proletarian Miguel asserts his rights on the strike front - the Seghersian theme of class struggle . In doing so, the author also manages an almost “inconspicuous” treatment of the topic “gross disadvantage of the female sex”.

Kurt Batt writes that Crisanta “processes her suffering unsentimentally and without complaint and, even as a marginalized social existence, gains a silent greatness.” She is one of the most beautiful female figures Anna Seghers has ever created.

expenditure

First edition
Further editions

literature

  • Heinz Neugebauer: Anna Seghers. Life and work. With illustrations (research assistant: Irmgard Neugebauer, editorial deadline September 20, 1977). 238 pages. Series “Writers of the Present” (Ed. Kurt Böttcher). People and Knowledge, Berlin 1980, without ISBN
  • Kurt Batt : Anna Seghers. Trial over development and works. With illustrations. 283 pages. Reclam, Leipzig 1973 (2nd edition 1980). Licensor: Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main ( Röderberg-Taschenbuch Vol. 15), ISBN 3-87682-470-2
  • Ute Brandes: Anna Seghers . Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1992. Volume 117 of the series “Heads of the 20th Century”, ISBN 3-7678-0803-X
  • Sonja Hilzinger: Anna Seghers. With 12 illustrations. Series of Literature Studies. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, RUB 17623, ISBN 3-15-017623-9
  • Josefina Sandoval: México in Anna Seghers' life and work. 1940-1947 . Scientific publishing house Berlin, 2001 (Diss. FU Berlin ). ISBN 3-932089-67-7

Web links

annotation

  1. ↑ Perhaps Anna Seghers is alluding to the Mexican President (1920-24) Álvaro Obregón (edition used, p. 256, 10th Zvu)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Batt, p. 151, Mitte and Hilzinger, p. 136 Mitte
  2. ↑ Sandoval, p. 164 above
  3. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 128, 14. Zvo
  4. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 128, 9. Zvo
  5. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 127, 8. Zvo
  6. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 136 middle
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 254, 9. Zvo
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 279, 5th Zvu
  9. ↑ Brandes, p. 70, 16. Zvu
  10. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 127 middle
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 266, 3rd Zvo
  12. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 137, 13. Zvo
  13. ↑ Batt, p. 151, 7th Zvu
  14. ^ Batt, p. 151, 3rd Zvu