The grass

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The grass ( French: L'Herbe ) is a novel by the French Nobel Prize laureate Claude Simon from 1958. The novel was first published in German in 1970.

The author has put a Pasternak quote in front of the novel : "Nobody makes the story, you don't see it, any more than you see the grass growing." It tells of the effects of the war on the French Thomas family. Louise married into this family after the war. The marriage with Georges is not happy. The young woman is rolling in the grass with a lover from the nearby Pau .

content

In September 1952, the unmarried Marie-Arthémise-Léonie Thomas, an 81-year-old teacher from a valley in the Jura , lies dying in a country house near Pau . Louise, who lives in the country house with her husband and his parents, tells her lover about it. Louise wants to leave Georges; at the earliest after Georges' aunt Marie has died. In 1942, while fleeing the Wehrmacht, Marie had come to the country house of her fifteen years younger brother Pierre and never left it again. Marie in particular, but also her sister, who was also unmarried, the teacher Eugénie, had financed Pierre's studies with her low primary school teacher salaries. The widowed father, an uneducated farmer, had wanted it that way. Eugénie has already passed away. After all, Pierre Thomas had made it to the university professorship. Although Pierre still writes and writes, it seems as though no great scientific achievement can be expected from him in old age. Nothing is said about what he has done in his professional years. Pierre's wife Sabine finds it difficult to grow old. Sabine - that is, Georges' biological mother - is of aristocratic origin (see reference by the author in the chapter "Classification in the work of the author" below). The aging woman defends herself with all conceivable means - cosmetics, jewelry, et cetera - against the cold that has penetrated the marriage bed. She is also jealous. The quarrels with Pierre, which she constantly breaks from the fence - without exception revolve around the probably imaginary infidelities of the husband in the bygone younger years.

In the disputes of the young married couple Thomas, however, it is about Louise's very real infidelity in the grassy breach of the nearby garden wall and also about Georges' gambling debts. Sabine had supported the only son financially beyond measure. She had to hide this from her daughters Christine and Irène. Sabine says that Georges could not continue his studies because of the war. Georges is probably the only one in the Thomas family who can be trusted to do anything. Against the advice of the locals, he grows pears on a large scale. But this fruit cannot be marketed. Sometimes Georges walks around the house - with hands as dirty as a locksmith. Apparently he makes himself useful. At least that's what he's trying to do.

Pierre and Sabine are just in Vichy when Louise no longer knows what to do with the dying Marie. The young woman calls her parents-in-law. On the train journey, Sabine loses all of her jewelry due to an accident. Georges and the domestic worker Julien are sent out with precise details of the location and actually find the pieces on the track bed.

Louise is a desirable woman. Marie's doctor chases after her to no avail. Louise bequeaths her "valuables" to Louise on her deathbed. On the one hand, the recipient does not want the junk and, on the other hand, she is magically attracted by the notebooks and a photograph hidden in it. Louise wonders why she was given the banal notes, suspects something important and wants to draw parallels between Marie's and her vita. Louise raises such questions as: Did Marie turn down a suitor at a young age to sacrifice herself for Pierre? Of course, Louise's research - how could it be otherwise with Claude Simon - do not produce a solid result.

Self-testimony

Claude Simon in 1985: "From L'Herbe on, all of my novels were written on an autobiographical basis." In this sense, nothing in the texts was invented.

shape

Claude Simon doesn't care about readers' expectations. Marie's death is announced at the beginning of the novel, but the woman is apparently still alive at the end of the novel. Louise wants to leave Georges, but she is apparently staying in the Thomas family.

The outer structure is rugged. Thus, the rules of orthography are grossly disregarded in places, but then again adhered to too precisely in other places. Quite numerous appearing, never-ending sentence monsters are beyond the understanding of the "normal" reader.

Classification in the work of the author

According to its form, the novel was assigned to the nouveau roman by literary studies .

In her commentary “The Adventure of Storytelling”, Burmeister deals with the principles of the nouveau roman . Awareness of them and constant consideration could also greatly promote the “understanding” of the present work: Neither an extraordinary fable nor disturbing human fates would be presented. Reading is exhausting and boring. The hero would have been abolished. Instead of conclusive constructions, lengthy descriptions of vain processes dominated in this anti-novel. A nouveau roman author considers his remarks to be images of reality. Just as there is no significant protagonist, there is no omniscient author. Moreover, the author has nothing relevant to say. It only produces language.

Claude Simon stated in 1960 that “The Grass” was the continuation of the war book “ The Road in Flanders ”. In “Strasse in Flanders”, the protagonist Georges remembers how Sabine once mentioned her aristocratic origins. In general, “The road in Flanders” is important for understanding “the grass”. For example, the retrospective Georges in the “Straße in Flanders” distances himself from the unsuccessful attempts of his educated, write-mad, bourgeois reputation-conscious father to turn his only son into an educated French.

reception

Burmeister discussed the novel. In contrast to the previous novel, Der Wind , the story is not told about the past, but mainly about the present. Questions that the reader would like to have answered at least at the end of the novel would be neglected. Minors became the main thing. What are meant are "digressions" and "excesses". An unspecified “Review from 1958” is cited. In it, the reviewer called “Das Gras” a “dense, confused, obscure and difficult book”.

literature

Used edition

  • The grass. From the French. Translation by Erika Tophoven and Elmar Tophoven . With a comment “Adventure of storytelling” by Brigitte Burmeister. Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig 1980 (licensor for the translation: Luchterhand, Darmstadt), without ISBN

Other translations into German

Secondary literature

  • Claude Simon: The street in Flanders. Novel. Translated from the French by Elmar Tophoven. With an afterword by Brigitte Burmeister. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1980 (licensor of the German translation: R. Piper, Munich 1961), without ISBN
  • Brigitte Burmeister : The senses and the sense. Exploring Claude Simon's linguistic world . Matthes & Seitz Berlin 2010 (1st edition), ISBN 978-3-88221-686-8

Remarks

  1. ↑ Burmeister, p. 30, 9th Zvu
  2. ↑ Marie's notebooks are dated to 1952 (edition used, p. 75, 10. Zvu).
  3. ^ The dying of Marie lasted ten days (edition used, p. 89, 3rd Zvo).
  4. ↑ Christine and Irène are only mentioned (edition used, p. 35).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 166, 4. Zvo
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 5
  3. ↑ Burmeister, p. 42, 11. Zvo
  4. ↑ quoted in Burmeister, p. 45, 3rd Zvu
  5. ↑ see for example output used, p. 122
  6. ↑ see for example output used, p. 112 below
  7. ↑ Burmeister in the commentary of the edition used, p. 166 below
  8. ↑ Edition used, pp. 166–173
  9. ↑ Burmeister, p. 55, 3. Zvo
  10. ^ Claude Simon: The road in Flanders, p. 87, 13. Zvo
  11. ↑ Claude Simon: Die Straße in Flanders, p. 230, 12. Zvo - p. 232, 6. Zvu
  12. ↑ Burmeister, pp. 34–46
  13. ↑ quoted in Burmeister, p. 39, 11. Zvo