The wooden ship

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The wooden ship is a novel by Hans Henny Jahnn and the first volume in the trilogy Fluss ohne Ufer , the author's main work .

content

The “Lais”, a magnificent wooden ship whose destination remains a secret, is loaded with a mysterious and apparently dangerous cargo; the captain Waldemar Strunck, his daughter Ellena and her fiancé Gustav Anias Horn quarters themselves on board, while Gustav travels as a stowaway because he doesn't want to miss the proximity of Ellena. After Ellena's disappearance without a trace, the latter discovers secret passages and shafts. He is instructed by the captain to search for Ellena, with hours and days dwindling any confidence that she will be found alive. The ship's crew is seized with a feeling of threat. The supercargo Georg Lauffer, one of the shipowner's civil service and barely transparent head of transport, refuses to cooperate, so that the superstitious team, while a storm breaks out, mutinously enters the locked holds in search of Ellena and initially only finds empty boxes and believes to have discovered a hidden door. When the metal plate is broken open, however, water flows into the ship and sinks while the crew can escape into the boats. At the same time she sees with horror a sinking figurehead , whose lush female thighs clasp the stem; no one had seen her on the ship before.

Origin, reception and literary evaluation

"... the figurehead showed itself. All eyes were fixed on her [...] A picture like yellow marble [...] statue of a shimmering [...] goddess. " .

The novel, written between 1934 and 1947, is a prologue to “The Writing of Gustav Anias Horn after he was 49”, the main part of Jahnn's trilogy “A river without a bank”. The book was initially regarded as a German nautical novel and compared with the novels of the English-language writers Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville ; others saw it as a detective novel, Jochen Vogt interprets it as an "allegorical detective novel". However, one does not yet find out in this book who the perpetrator (the sailor Tutein, as it turns out in the following trilogy volume) is. The plot is enigmatic, the event unreal. The ship has labyrinthine spaces. People have fears and fantasies and feel powerless. Much, especially the figurehead, is to be interpreted as an allegory . In a letter to Werner Helwig , Jahnn writes that “the whole novel is only about this concept of time, namely the unchangeable fate that is heralded by all means” . Jahnn's style of language - he mostly uses main clauses - is rather conventional, but full of beautiful and unusual images. The open ending and the unanswered questions lead on to the main part, the two volumes The Writing of Gustav Anias Horn after he was 49 years old , in which the mysterious disappearance of Ellenas is explained and in which the fiancé Ellenas as protagonist Horn together with the murderer Tutein leads a guilty life together. Peter Suhrkamp did not want to publish Das Holzschiff in this unfinished form with S. Fischer , which is why Jahnn initially planned to add a tenth to the nine chapters of the book; it became much more, and in this way one of the most important works of German literature of the 20th century was created with the river without a bank .

The weekly newspaper Die Zeit has put Das Holzschiff on its list of the “50 most important books for a school library”.

Detlev Glanert composed an opera version of the wooden ship . It was premiered on October 9, 2010 in a production by Johann Kresnik in the Nuremberg State Theater.

linguistic style

What is remarkable about Jahnn's language is the description of the emotional state, which often replaces literal speech and actual action. These precisely described feelings are called up by conversations that are not in-depth, internal monologues or thought constructs, whereby the semantic role of the " patient " clearly predominates. Examples are:

“… So he gave hasty and superficial considerations to the best that touched no one. ... "

- Hans Henny Jahnn

“… The neighbors were more shocked than before. But they didn't reply. ... "

- Hans Henny Jahnn

“... A wild stream of words and parables. Gustav was stunned. He was unable to ponder how this encounter was going to end. ... "

- Hans Henny Jahnn

"... His voice became more and more animated to finally reach the height of pathetic power ..."

- Hans Henny Jahnn

“... A threatening glow went over Waldemar Strunck's face. It was seen that he had a great emotion. ... "

- Hans Henny Jahnn

Examples of the image-rich language are:

"... The hours were apparently poured into brittle molds ..."

- Hans Henny Jahnn

“... One was reminded of the gnarled, dark attic of an old warehouse, of mills that were ghostly desolate because of the sins of their owners. ... "

- Hans Henny Jahnn

“… His debauchery imagination had stopped the abuse of the shadowed heart. In any case, the internal wounds were hidden under good bandages. ... "

- Hans Henny Jahnn

Figures in the first part of the novel

Ellena is the female figure on board the ship and has to face the jealousies and infatuations of the crew.

Gustav Anias Horn is the main character and the fiancé Ellenas, who with the knowledge of the supercargo and the captain goes on board as a stowaway and is initially only tolerated because of Ellena's protests. After she disappears, Gustav is entrusted with the task of searching the ship for Ellena.

Waldemar Strunck is the captain and father of Ellenas.

Supercargo Georg Lauffer travels on behalf of the shipowner and as a civil servant and monitors the secret cargo, he is denounced as a murderer during the hopeless search for Ellena and believes he has everyone as an enemy.

Mention of the murderer and later companion Alfred Tutein:

"... A mouth hissed, whispered a word:" Danger ". The door closed again. It was the ordinary seaman. Alfred Tutein, eighteen years old. ... "p. 76 ibid.

"... Alfred Tutein, this ghostly, creeping youth, who tried to be found again and again, was just waiting to be spoken to ..." p. 164 ibid.

“… Alfred Tutein gave dark explanations, helpful lies and angry assurances from the cattle dealers and horse deceivers. Gossip, which, with its overabundance, its inaccuracy, and its tenacious frenzy, depicted the stubbornness of simple-minded people. ... "p. 166 ibid.

Quote

“As if it had come out of the fog, the beautiful ship suddenly became visible. With the broad yellow-brown bow articulated by black pitch joints and the rigid order of the three masts, the sweeping yards and the lines of the shrouds and rigging. The red sails were rolled up and tied to the logs. Two small tugs, moored behind and in front of the ship, brought it to the quay wall. "

- Hans Henny Jahnn

Work editions

German editions

Translations

  • 1966: Italian ( La nave di legno )
  • 1969: Polish ( Drewniany statek )
  • 1970: English ( The Ship )
  • 1974: Norwegian ( Treskipet )
  • 1993: French ( Le navire de bois ), ISBN 2-7143-0494-X .
  • 2013: Russian ( Деревянный корабль )

literature

  • Luise Rinser : Dream, Spook and Grief . In: Die neue Zeitung of May 21, 1949
  • Lothar Strehlow: Hans Henny Jahnn. The wooden ship . in: Spirit and Time. Bimonthly journal for art, literature and science. Darmstadt 1961. No. 1
  • Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.): Hans Henny Jahnn . Text + review 2/3. Munich 1980, ISBN 3-921402-78-6
  • Julia Genz: "Only the pointless is touched by the breath of the eternal." Melancholy in Hans Henny Jahnn's novel "Fluss ohne Ufer" . Ibidem, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-932602-35-8 .
  • Ulrich Greiner : You can't defy dreams . In: Die Zeit from April 16, 2003. No. 17
  • Nanna Hucke: "The Order of the Underworld". On the relationship between author, text and reader using the example of Hans Henny Jahnn's “River without Banks” and the interpretations of his interpreters . Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-86582-943-6 . (open access [1] ).
  • Jochen Vogt : Hans Henny Jahnn's trilogy of novels "River without a bank". Fink, Paderborn 1970 (2nd edition 1986), ISBN 3-7705-2366-0 , (At the same time dissertation at the University of Bochum 1968 under the title: Structure and Continuum ).

Individual evidence

  1. Quoted from: Das Holzschiff . 1959. p. 247
  2. Jochen Vogt : The four-dimensional labyrinth . In: Text + Criticism. Hans Henny Jahnn . No. 2/3. 1980 ISBN 3-921402-78-6
  3. Werner Helwig : Letters about a work . European Publishing House, Frankfurt / Main 1951
  4. Hans Mayer : attempt on Hans Henny Jahnn . Rimbaud, Aachen 1984. ISBN 3-89086-998-X
  5. Gerhard Koch: Murderous dreams, gently lifted. Detlef Glanert's opera “Das Holzschiff” . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of October 12, 2010
  6. The wooden ship The writing of Gustav Anias Horn. Hoffmann and Campe, 1st edition, 3rd volume in works in individual volumes. 1986 Hamburg. Page 25
  7. The wooden ship The writing of Gustav Anias Horn. Hoffmann and Campe, 1st edition, 3rd volume in works in individual volumes. 1986 Hamburg. Page 121
  8. The wooden ship The writing of Gustav Anias Horn. Hoffmann and Campe, 1st edition, 3rd volume in works in individual volumes. 1986 Hamburg. Page 161
  9. The wooden ship The writing of Gustav Anias Horn. Hoffmann and Campe, 1st edition, 3rd volume in works in individual volumes. 1986 Hamburg. Page 187
  10. Final paragraph in The Wooden Ship The Writing of Gustav Anias Horn. Hoffmann and Campe, 1st edition, 3rd volume in works in individual volumes. 1986 Hamburg. Page 217
  11. The wooden ship The writing of Gustav Anias Horn. Hoffmann and Campe, 1st edition, 3rd volume in works in individual volumes. 1986 Hamburg. Page 86
  12. Final paragraph in The Wooden Ship The Writing of Gustav Anias Horn. Hoffmann and Campe, 1st edition, 3rd volume in works in individual volumes. 1986 Hamburg. Page 190
  13. Final paragraph in The Wooden Ship The Writing of Gustav Anias Horn. Hoffmann and Campe, 1st edition, 3rd volume in works in individual volumes. 1986 Hamburg. Page 91
  14. ^ Text edition 1959, page 5

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