The heart of the king

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The King's Heart is a 2003 novel by the German writer Viola Alvarez . The author made her debut with the work published by Verlagsgruppe Lübbe .

The novel tells the life of Marke , King of Cornwall , in the form of a fictional autobiography . Through the unusual choice of perspective and the representation of the characters, the novel renegotiates the Tristan and Isolde material, which is caught in the European narrative tradition .

As the only adaptation so far that describes the story of Tristan and Isolde from the inside of Mark, The King's Heart stands in a prominent position in the almost thousand-year history of reception of this material.

Table of contents

The book begins with King Marke, who lies motionless in bed and remembers his life in retrospect.

In a childhood full of privation, Marke is prepared for the difficult life as King of Cornwall. His parents send him to live with relatives in Brittany, where he learns to fight and kill. When he returned to his homeland at the age of 21, the country was shattered by armed conflicts. Despite the dire situation, his mother refuses to give him control of Cornwall. Marke succeeds in getting his mother's most important advisor, the opportunistic and power-hungry Majordomus de Zwyyntek, to his side. He grants him and his son a lifelong claim to the influential position as his personal advisor. With her help, he succeeds in luring his mother from the court, banishing her to a monastery and taking power.

After proving his abilities as a king, he agrees to the majordomo’s proposal to enter into a politically motivated marriage. To ensure peace in his country, Marke is ready to alliance with Cornwall's worst enemy, Ireland, by marriage.

Since the Irish queen is not available, the second choice falls on her daughter, Isolde. Markes foster son Tristan goes to Ireland to bring her the courtship. On the way home, the two sleep together. When Isolde arrives in Cornwall, Marke welcomes her and her entourage at the harbor. At this point in time, Brand, who already regards the marriage to the very young, simple-minded Isolde as an imposition, meets Brangaene for the first time. Impressed by the clever and pretty servant of his future wife, he nevertheless remains true to his political considerations and marries Isolde.

Now the tragic events are taking their course. Marke notices the love between Isolde and Tristan. However, he does nothing against the fraud, as he himself only has eyes for Brangaene. De Zwyyntek discovers the affair and uses it to realize his own claims to power. Brangaene disappears under unexplained circumstances. After this loss, the brand becomes paralyzed and has to leave the business of power to the majordomo.

When Marke had little hope of an improvement in his condition, the tide turned: Brangaene, now a nun, returned, sent from her monastery of St. Materiana to heal the sick king. When Marken showered her with questions about why she went to the monastery, he discovers that Brangaene is mute.

All chances of ever finding out what happened seem lost, but the story takes an unexpected turn. Brangaene can write. She branded her story on a piece of parchment. De Zwyyntek had her kidnapped and cut out her tongue and banished her to the monastery.

Happy to be reunited with Brangaene, Marke dies facing the sea. When the majordomo discovers that the king has been informed of his betrayal, he murders Brangaene from behind and throws the corpses of the lovers out of the window into the sea. A long-time friend of Marke, the Bishop of Salisbury, comes to court shortly after the murder. De Zwyyntek confesses his crime and is executed. In memory of Marke and Brangaene, the bishop fills an amphora with sea water and has it sealed with tin. The land of Cornwall is now rulers, and Marke and Brangaene are united in death.

Literary basics

The story of Tristan and Isolde is one of the most frequently edited epic medieval materials of European origin. The most important lines of transmission are the version primitive Eilhart von Oberg and the version courtoise , founded in German-speaking countries by Gottfried von Straßburg .

Viola Alvarez takes up both versions in her novel, which she explicitly points out:

"In this novel, motifs from the medieval Tristan novels by Eilhart von Oberge and Gottfried von Strasbourg are used."

It thus places itself in the tradition of a centuries-long history of reception. Her handling of the Tristan and Isolde material is characterized by a psychological approach, which results in a consistent dismantling of the mystified Tristan love.

Due to this requirement of dismantling, the focus of The Heart of the King is not the lovers Tristan and Isolde, but the brand. This shift in focus on brand is not new, it can already be found in Georg Kaiser's drama König Hahnrei from 1913. However, Alvarez shows the king from the inside for the first time and in the course of her story exposes Isolde and Tristan as pathetic characters. They clear the place of the ideal pair of lovers for Brand and Brangaene, whose love however establishes a much more mature and less perfect partnership than the inflated, absolute Tristanminne.

The King's Heart therefore represents an innovative variation of the Tristan and Isolde fabric, which is unique in the history of reception to date. Alvarez's handling of the sources , motifs and figures is discussed in more detail below.

swell

The main sources for The King's Heart are Eilhart's by Oberg Tristrant , Gottfried's Tristan from Strasbourg and, to a lesser extent, Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde .

Alvarez deals with these sources in four different ways:

  • direct transfer, in the case of Middle High German texts in the form of partial translations ( e.g. Minnelied deskurvenal, love dialogues)
  • indirect takeover through variation of motifs (e.g. Minnegrotte)
  • Parody and countersigning of motifs and characters
  • Recesses

It is particularly striking that Alvarez discards all mythical-magical aspects of her sources. For example, she renounces the dragon fight and the judgment of God. This results in the effect of a far-reaching de-romanticization of the material, which goes beyond the level of the couple relationship.

In part, the changes are due to the reversal of perspective : the lists for discovering adultery have to be dropped or parodied - they would not be psychologically conclusive, since Alvarez's brand is by no means a jealous husband, but simply does not love Isolde.

The goal of de-romanticizing Tristan and Isolde becomes particularly clear in Alvarez's design of the motifs and figures.

Motifs

The following comparative overview is an example of a large number of the motifs taken up by Alvarez.

Motifs Urgent hard Gottfried wagner Alvarez
Imram motif consistently present; Tristan ends up on the coast of Ireland by accident regressed; Tristan's arrival in Ireland is psychologically motivated not applicable not applicable
Swallow hair motif clearly elaborated; Tristan’s second trip to Ireland is motivated by higher forces Gottfried refers to the motif, but rejects it as illogical; Tristan's second trip to Ireland is psychologically motivated not applicable not applicable; the wedding with Isolde arises from political calculation
sea Motif only rudimentary symbolically charged; plays a role mainly through the Imram motif Motif clearly related to Tristan and Isolde; This becomes clearest in the play on words with lameir :

"'Lameir' said sî, 'daz is mîn nôt, lameir that swaeret me the muot, lameir is that I suffer.'"

Motif is associated with the death of love:

"In the surging gush of the sea of ​​bliss, in the scent waves resounding sound, in the universe wafting in the breath of the world -

drown -

sink in -

unconscious -

highest pleasure! "

The motif is transferred to Brangaene and Brand; As with Wagner, there is the motif of drowning:

“When she came to be with me, we often just held on wordlessly with the feeling of drowning. And the worst part was not being able to save the other. "

Tristan and Isolde are excluded from this motif; Isolde only sees “water, […] but otherwise?” In the sea.

Love death is explained by the power of the potion:

"Daz made the potion's craft."

Not applicable as the work is not completed is idealized and transfigured is shifted to Marke and Brangaene or transformed into a jealousy conflict with regard to Tristan and Isolde
Minnegrotto not applicable; instead of the grotto there is a life full of privation in the forest ideal, fantastic place where people do not need any food; Allegory of love with a detailed allegory Condensation to the "wonder realm of the night" Variation in the form of a day by the sea; The singularity of the moment emphasizes impermanence
Minne potion The effect of the potion is limited in time; mechanical action The effect of the potion is unlimited in time; Psychologization of the effect Effect is not specified in detail Drink is demystified as the "strongest brandy" in all of Ireland

Overall, Alvarez's handling of the traditional motifs shows a clear tendency to transfer those motifs that are related to love on the one hand to the brand and Brangaene and on the other hand to adapt them to the modern understanding of the world. Magical elements disappear, perfect places give way to perfect moments that cannot survive and remain unique for Brangaene and Marke because they are not allowed to make their love public. The novel therefore does not address the great, perfect love of romantic fantasies, but a love in which two people with all their weaknesses meet, make mistakes in each other and still find each other again - even if they cannot fully realize their love for one another in their lives .

characters

In her representation of figures, Alvarez follows on from the ambiguities already laid out in Gottfried's text . She avoids any idealization , even the heroes of the novel, Brand and Brangaene, are complex, difficult characters . The complex character design moves The Heart of the King far away from the genre of trivial literature , in which the main characters are usually presented as "human super-beings" who are characterized, among other things, by completely trouble-free relationships, especially with their parents and siblings. This description hardly applies to a brand that denies his sister her great love and puts his mother in a monastery without gross scruples to take over the rule of Cornwall. The other figures cannot be classified into a classic scheme of good and bad, as the analysis will show. Compared to the medieval sources, this complexity is a modern element that makes it easier for readers to identify with the characters.

brand

Alvarez shows a brand that instantly intellectualizes every emotion . He is a brooder who, due to his difficult youth, cannot find direct access to his feelings. However, his love for Brangaene overrides these difficulties, and through it, Marke begins to actually enjoy life.

Alvarez takes up Gottfried's allusions to homosexuality in the form of running gags between Brand and his friend Philipp von Salisbury. In contrast to Gottfried, however, she characterizes Marken as clearly heterosexual .

Furthermore, Alvarez describes Marke as a king who is betrayed by his majordomo, but in principle proves to be capable in political matters. Gottfried's brand, on the other hand, is a weak king who mainly serves as a negative film for the ideal lovers Tristan and Isolde.

Alvarez shifts the focus, which is why the dialogues between Brand and Brangaene are partly quotations from the dialogues between Tristan and Isolde as well as Riwalin and Blancheflur in Gottfried's Tristan. With this trick Alvarez legitimizes Marke and Brangaene as the great lovers in this story.

Brangaene

Brangaene is already very positive at Gottfried. In Brangaene, Marke finds the mature, equal woman he wants. She is characterized by an above-average education, she can read and write and even master Latin.

Tristan

Tristan is characterized as an effeminate, narcissistic boy whose only interest (and unfortunately talent) is music. Politically, the young heir to the throne represents a catastrophe. When it comes to fighting, it fails miserably, and it is hardly popular with women either. The big exception is Isolde, of course, who clings to him with all her heart. The adolescent flirtation is of little importance for Tristan, he loses interest in Isolde and then turns to other women.

Isolde with the golden hair

Isolde is extensively parodied. Gottfried compares it full-bodied with the sun, at Alvarez Brand does not exactly describe it as a “young chicken” in a flattering way. In addition, there is “nothing royal about her”, she looks stupid and inexperienced.

The love between Tristan and Isolde, whose shaky foundation is nothing but an alcohol-laden night, turns out to be a narcissistic, juvenile love projection, which Isolde cannot part with because no other men can be found who are interested in her.

Isolde Weißhand

Isolde Weißhand, described as beautiful by Gottfried, is the horror vision of a wife in The King's Heart :

“To call this Isolde a lady would be to take a donkey for a warhorse. It is said that she is rude, vulgar and quick-tempered. "

The “robber baron daughter” and “Fury” finally murder both her husband Tristan and the other Isolde in a jealousy dispute. A rumor has it that she was pregnant at the time. In this way, Alvarez moves the relationship between Tristan and Isolde away from the myth of sexual exclusivity that Wagner, for example, clearly builds up. This is necessary because Alvarez is transferring this exclusivity to the brand and Brangaene.

Majordomo

The figure of the majordomo shows clear parallels to Marjodo in Gottfried and combines all the traitor figures that Eilhart and Gottfried encounter. With this consolidation, Alvarez creates a clear opponent to the brand.

Petitcrü

In Gottfried's work, the little dog stands for the lovers as "vremede unde wundererlîch" and refers in its characterization to the magical state in the Minnegrotte: it needs no food and has a wealth of special properties.

This small miracle is disenchanted with Alvarez analogous to the lovers Tristan and Isolde. In The King's Heart he meets the readers as an annoying lap dog, which Isolde is supposed to serve as a substitute for her love for Tristan.

Storytelling technique and style

In terms of content, material and language, the novel is a synthesis of medieval and modern elements. This update is necessary in order to adapt the topic to the modern reception context.

There are some elements of the postmodern novel in the tradition of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose :

  • Decomposition of the boundary between E- and U-literature
  • Play with fiction
  • intertextuality

Understanding of the reading is not restricted even without knowledge of the real historical sources and templates. If you know this, however, there is a varied reception from the Middle Ages. This expanded potential for meaning blurs the line between entertaining and upscale literature in Das Herz des König .

Narrative technique

The novel is portrayed from the perspective of the first-person narrator König Marke. The inside view, however, is combined with elements of the letter novel (letters) and authorial elements (chronicles).

Structurally, the novel is divided into a framework and an internal story. This differentiation is also through the two stages of the narrative tense clear: The in present -described background story includes the solidified King Marke at the beginning and the common death after Brangäne return at the end. Brand remembers his life in the internal plot written in the past tense . In this stream of consciousness, other text documents are interspersed like collages (passages from Cornwall's Chronicle, Minneieder, letters from the secondary characters). These expand the subjective inner view with authorial elements.

language

At the linguistic level, The King's Heart has the following special features:

  • Integration of direct quotations from the Middle High German sources in the form of translations.
An example of this are the first two verses of a minnie song :
"Who never knew what love sorrow was,
He never knows what love is either. "
The quote comes from Gottfried's text and shows the concept of ambivalent love, which is determined in equal parts by positive and negative emotions. Alvarez adopts this approach, but her portrayal of a love forbidden due to the social norms of court society is sober and objective. The two lovers are well aware that their relationship will not be tolerated, they know that political ends take precedence over the need for personal happiness, that a happy ending is ultimately not possible. Nevertheless, they try to live out their relationship despite all adversities.
In the passages from chronicles and minneongs , Alvarez uses an artificial language she herself invented , which is approximated to the Middle High German of the originals. The use of a spelling that is no longer in use and punctuation marks that are no longer used increases the degree of similarity to Middle High German: For example, the umlaut is missing in the name Brangaene , a circumflex marks long vowels like in Tintâgel, Ruâl, Morgân etc.
Alvarez himself calls the Middle High German she invented a “presumptuous form of New High German ”.
  • Mixture of colloquial formulations with archaisms
This mixture results, among other things, in ironic contrasts between dialogues and Marke's thought processes: While the dialogues are an expression of formal courtly manners through elaborate language, Marke's considerations are again and again characterized by a very modern use of language, for example anglicisms such as flirt .

Source fiction and historicization

Alvarez takes up topoi that can already be found in her Middle High German sources. This includes the topos of the invented sources as well as the topos of the locus amoenus . The latter is represented in Gottfried's architectural allegory of the Minnegrotte, whereas in Alvarez it is modernized and condensed into one scene: Markes and Brangaene's love-place is a place by the sea where they can spend a few hours of undisturbed togetherness.

In the context of the topos of invented sources, Alvarez plays with the fiction of the truthful by breaking the subjective narration of Mark with fictional testimonies ( chronicles , Minneieder , letters ) and raising the question of the one truth.

The use of real and possibly fictitious sources was necessary in the Middle Ages in order to increase the credibility of one's own work. To invent one's own was considered inadmissible. Alvarez's technique of inventing sources with the aim of objectifying one's own work is characterized by this tradition and at the same time places it under a critical and ironic view of the question of the degree of subjective conditionality and the - literary resp. fictional - manipulability of truth.

The use of - partly real, partly fictitious - historical sources primarily has the following functions:

Even the subtitle of the novel, The beautiful and sad life of Marke Herrscher zu Tintâgel tells of himself , implies a claim to authenticity.
  • Questioning the general and historical concept of truth.
The brand biography is juxtaposed - partly in addition, partly in contradiction - with the Cornwall Chronicle . Readers are forced to critically question their own conception of truth.
  • Questioning the truth claims of literature.
The only source of information for brands about Isolde are the Minnelongs , which extol their beauty and idealize them. In the course of an ironic demythologization and idealization, Alvarez contrasts this form of literary fiction with an ugly and stupid Isolde who gives the lie to the minne songs. This shows the author's critical and ironic approach to the concept of truth in literature, especially the medieval one: the latter is characterized by a transfiguration and exaggeration of the characters, mystification through magical elements, glorification of the values ​​represented by the protagonists and the patrons who the Authors paid for praise.

In addition, Alvarez uses the source fictions to allude to mediaeval specialist knowledge. For example, the Bishop of Salisbury's account books refer to the only source available for research on Walther von der Vogelweide . The same applies to the songs, some of which are provided with direct quotations from the templates, primarily from the arrangement by Gottfried von Strasbourg .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 6.
  2. ↑ Gottfried von Strasbourg: Tristan. Volume 2. Stuttgart: Reclam 2007, p. 128, v. 11986-11988.
  3. ^ Richard Wagner: Tristan and Isolde. Text book with variants of the score. Edited by Egon Voss . Stuttgart: Reclam 2003, p. 108.
  4. ↑ Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 475.
  5. ↑ Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 368
  6. ↑ Eilhart von Oberg: Tristrant [20. February 2010]
  7. ↑ See Richard Wagner: Tristan and Isolde. Text book with variants of the score. Edited by Egon Voss. Stuttgart: Reclam 2003, p. 108.
  8. ^ Richard Wagner: Tristan and Isolde. Text book with variants of the score. Edited by Egon Voss. Stuttgart: Reclam 2003, p. 58.
  9. ↑ Cf. Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 460.
  10. ↑ Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 387.
  11. ↑ Hans-Herbert Wintgens: Trivial literature for women. Analysis, didactics and methodology for conformity literature. Hohengehren: Schneider 1979, p. 46
  12. ↑ See Hans-Herbert Wintgens: Trivial literature for women. Analysis, didactics and methodology for conformity literature. Hohengehren: Schneider 1979, p. 73.
  13. ↑ Cf. Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 207 u. P. 281.
  14. ↑ Cf. Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 344.
  15. ↑ Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 361.
  16. ↑ Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 366.
  17. ↑ Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 476.
  18. ↑ Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 487.
  19. ↑ Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 487.
  20. ↑ Cf. Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 487.
  21. ↑ Gottfried von Strasbourg: Tristan. Volume 2. Stuttgart: Reclam 2007, p. 354, v. 15802.
  22. ↑ Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 268.
  23. ↑ See Gottfried von Straßburg: Tristan. Volume 1. Stuttgart: Reclam 2007, p. 22, v. 204-207.
  24. ↑ Viola Alvarez on December 16, 2009 in a reading at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz.
  25. ↑ Cf. Viola Alvarez: The King's Heart. Bergisch Gladbach: BLT 2005, p. 232.

Remarks

  1. ↑ The most famous example of medieval literary history for an invented source is Wolframs von Eschenbach Parzival . Wolfram invented a writer named Kyot to give credibility to his work.