The court of the sea
The Judgment of the Sea is a short story by Gertrud von le Fort , published in 1943. Anne, a Breton woman, regarded by the Christian British as a pagan , sacrifices herself because she does not want to atone for a murder .
action
On the way home from Normandy to Cornwall, the fleet of the British King John gets into a lull in the middle of the English Channel . The Queen and the Prince are on board the royal ship. The prince, an infant, suffers from insomnia, refuses to eat and dies. In this hopeless situation, someone comes up with the idea to save them: Anne de Vitré , a young Breton hostage, is on one of the escort ships . She is supposed to sing the prince to sleep with a slumber song.
Anne supposedly inherited this talent from her ancestor, Mrs. Avoise. King John is against it. On one of his campaigns against the Bretons he had kidnapped their duke, almost a child, to Rouen and murdered there with his own hands. And the same woman Avoise had sung the entire British crew to sleep, that is to say to death, at Reaux Castle with a Breton slumber song. After days of reluctance, the king gives in to his desperate queen in the persistent calm and insomnia of the prince. The Breton Budoc, in John's wake, has to row Anne over. Anne thinks Budoc is a defector, a traitor. But it turns out that Budoc is just as much of a mortal enemy of the British as the hostage Anne. The Queen feels that Anne probably wants to sing her child to death, but over time she nevertheless gains confidence in the young girl. Anne, in the struggle with the sea, which is almost like God, realizes that the little prince must be killed in revenge for the murdered young duke. Because the sea, this supernatural being, can do more in the story than a calm body of water.
The sea around the royal ship not only glows at night, it also wants to penetrate the deck and the prince's tent despite the calm. The sea even demands atonement for the murder of the young Breton duke. The British prince is about to die. Anne, gifted with the power of Mrs Avoise's slumber song, chooses a different path. With the slumber song it is, more precisely, like this: If the beginning is sung to you, you slumber. And whoever is sung the end of the song will never wake up again. So Anne sings the prince into slumber so that his nurse can nurse him again. Anne, the life saver of the enemy prince, does not finish singing and is thrown into the sea by the vengeful Budoc. Her sinking and drowning is only an agony at first. Then the dying woman hears a voice. She sings the end of the slumber song to her.
history
An English King John is known: Johann Ohneland (* 1166; † 1216), as King John successor to Richard the Lionheart . Even the father Henry II was Duke of Normandy. Johann had two sons with his wife Isabella von Angoulême : Heinrich (* 1207) and Richard (* 1209). Since the prince is in the cradle, the act could be set for around 1207 or around 1209. The young Breton duke mentioned is Arthur I (* 1187; † 1203). He is said to have been killed by King John in Rouen in 1203.
literature
source
- Gertrud von le Fort: The court of the sea . Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1943 ( Insel-Bücherei 210/2). The 1st – 20th is largely destroyed in the war; the 21.-30. published in 1947 by Insel Verlag, Wiesbaden (23rd edition: Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig 1999, 50 pages, ISBN 3-458-08210-7 ).
Secondary literature
- Karina Binder: Not to be hated, I am there to be loved. The role of women in Gertrud von le Fort illustrated by the works “The Last on the Scaffold”, “The Woman of Pilate” and “The Court of the Sea” . Thesis. Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna, 2013 ( Online [PDF; 1,2 MB ]).
- Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German authors A - Z. 4th, completely revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 , p. 382.
annotation
- ↑ Gertrud von le Fort consistently uses the term British , although German historiography always speaks of English in connection with King John .