The Miss (novel)

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The Miss ( Serbo-Croatian original title: Gospođica ) is a novel by the Yugoslav writer Ivo Andrić .

action

The plot describes the life of Rajka Radaković from Sarajewo, whose father, a bankrupt but respected merchant at the end of his life and a victim of the practices of unscrupulous businessmen, gives up on his deathbed the lesson from his own defeat as a rule of life: to be merciless towards himself and others be and kill all other considerations in yourself. Rajka, who was still a minor, immediately organized her father's remaining assets according to her new maxim. She acts in the business world with growing unscrupulousness, so that she has already made a fortune when she was just of full age. With usury credit and dodgy speculation, she increases her money, the power of which she enjoys with a shudder and whose possible loss frightens her. In her actions she exercises a form of vengeance for the death of her father; The only thing that matters to her is saving the long-awaited million, she is indifferent to everything else. The political events, war and peace mean something to her only in terms of profit opportunities. After the end of Austrian rule in Bosnia, she is ostracized as a war profiteer and fears for her wealth; so she goes into exile in Belgrade, where with a touch of her self inexplicable recklessness she is caught by a youthful impostor. Finally repulsed by the disappointment, she withdraws and surrenders to hoarding cash and gold until she dies as her own victim in February 1935 - because she was ultimately too stingy for medical treatment.

Origin and classification

The novel, like “ The Bridge over the Drina ” and “ Viziers and Consuls ”, was written during the author's intensive creative period after he was recalled from the diplomatic service and the occupation by the Wehrmacht; like the others, it appeared in 1945 and forms a “Bosnian trilogy” with them. The first translation into German was done by Edmund Schneeweis , it was published in 1958.

Andrić creates a tragic grotesque against the background of the eventful history of Bosnia between the rule of the Turks and the interwar period. He shows the title character at the same time ignorant of the history runs and completely dependent on them. This judgment also haunted Radaković as a vague premonition until her miserable death in the “great, glorious, deadly desert of saving”.

filming

In 1979 the Czech director Vojtěch Jasný filmed the novel on original locations in what was then Yugoslavia. Heidelinde Weis played the leading role , and the German-Yugoslav co-production was broadcast for the first time on December 20, 1980 on Bavarian television. The script was written by Leopold Ahlsen , cameraman was Živko Zalar ,

expenditure

Serbo-Croatian

Gospođica / Госпођица

  • Sarajevo 1945
  • Sarajevo 1952
  • Sarajewo / Belgrade 1958 (in Izabrana dela , 4 volumes, 3).
  • Belgrade u. a. 1963 (in Sabrana dela , 10 volumes, 3)
  • Belgrade u. a. 1976 (in Sabrana dela , 16 volumes)

German

Das Fräulein (translation by Edmund Schneeweis)

  • Berlin 1958.
  • Munich 1962.
  • Berlin / Weimar 1969.
  • Frankfurt am Main 1976.