The laughing girl
The laughing girl is a radio play by Günter Eich , which was broadcast on July 15, 1956 by NDR under the direction of Klaus Stieringer .
background
In 1956 Günter Eich wrote ten radio plays for NDR - adaptations of fantastic stories from world literature. All ten were broadcast in the same year. "The Laughing Girl" - after Pu Sung-Lin - is the fifth work in this series. The Mongolian Pooh writes about an Asian myth . A fox fairy and a man make a man.
content
Lo Tien scholar Wang Fu tells a story from his youth. At the age of 17 he was taken to a lantern festival by his cousin Wu and there he met a girl whom he lost sight of. Then he became lovesick. In the end, his mother could no longer see the suffering and asked cousin Wu for help. He went in search of the beautiful child in the direction of the West Mountains. Wu finds nothing, but on his return whispers to the sick man that he had found the girl in the mountains. She was still single, but Wang's cousin. Wang registers all the details of the narrative and literally comes to life. Finally, Wu has to admit that he didn't find the girl at all. Wang then gets up from the sickbed, sets off for the West Mountains and actually finds the girl. It's called Ying Ning, lives with his foster mother, and is one year younger than Wang. There is one quality that Ying cannot suppress - her sudden laughter. It's her way.
When Wang's mother lets search for the son, the boy returns home with his bride. The mother is amazed and only agrees to the marriage after a long period of hesitation. Wang's mother suspects that Ying is a ghost, especially since cousin Wu claims that his uncle was bewitched by a vixen and that their two children are called Ying Ning.
Of course, Ying disturbs his own wedding ceremony with constant laughter. But whatever happens, Wang is always happy in marriage.
Once the neighbor's son had his eye on Wang's young wife. When the neighbor's son approaches Ying at dusk, he touches a rotten tree in the garden - instead of the beautiful woman - and is stung by a scorpion from a knothole in the trunk. The neighbors accuse Ying of witchcraft and complain. However, the procedure is put down.
Ying now confesses to Wang that as the daughter of a vixen she is a sorceress after all. Since the neighbors complained, she couldn't laugh anymore. After a year, Ying gives birth to a son who is soon laughing. Wang is happy because Ying's little family has still been laughing.
fairy tale
Two fairy tales are inserted into the radio play.
Wang Fu tells of old Wang who waters the flowers on his terrace and is disturbed by a manure carrier. Wang pushes the manure carrier off the terrace. The latter does not survive the fall. After nine years the birth of a child is imminent in the neighborhood of the rich Li family. Then the manure carrier appears, goes into the house of the Li family and is reborn as little Li. After another seven years - the ancient Wang still tends his flowers on the terrace - little Li’s favorite pigeons fly away, settle down on the terrace railing and do not come back to luring little Li either. The seven-year-old throws a stone at his pigeons and accidentally hits the flower lover. Wang's descendants discover the old man's body and claim that he slipped and fell. The old man is buried.
Ying's foster mother talks about the spendthrift Du Tschun. When he has to starve himself again, he receives a huge gift of money from an old man. You are doing good works with it. After a year he has to appear before the noble donor. The old man promises you immortality if he silently endures all the coming trials. That would almost have been successful if it hadn't been for the terrible test with his son. When the beloved boy is slain with a stone in front of You, he cannot remain silent and remains mortal.
Productions
- July 15, 1956, NDR.
- April 17, 1974, WDR and hr , directed by Heinz Wilhelm Schwarz . Herbert Hoffmann spoke with Wang Fu, Maria Krasna with his mother, Sabine Postel with Ying Ning, Änne Nau with her foster mother and Hans-Christian Rudolph with his cousin Wu.
reception
- Wagner quotes a summary of the content by Heinz Schwitzke from March 3, 1973.
- Alber works out the character of Ying's laugh: It doesn't follow any rule. Furthermore, Günter Eich's later writing philosophy “from seriousness to nonsense” is pointed out in this context: The irrationality that is increasingly emerging in the world must somehow also be reflected in literary terms.
literature
Used edition
- Günter Eich: The laughing girl. Na Pu Sung-Lin (1956) . Pp. 245–267 in: Karl Karst (Ed.): Günter Eich. The radio plays 2. in: Collected works in four volumes. Revised edition. Volume III . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1991, without ISBN
Secondary literature
- Sabine Alber: The place in free fall. Günter Eich's moles in the context of the entire work. Dissertation. Technische Universität Berlin 1992. Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1992 (European university publications. Series I, German language and literature, vol. 1329), ISBN 3-631-45070-2
- Hans-Ulrich Wagner: Günter Eich and the radio. Essay and documentation. Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam 1999, ISBN 3-932981-46-4 (publications of the German Broadcasting Archive ; Vol. 27)
Remarks
- ↑ Karst (p. 763, penultimate entry vu) gives Hans Rosenhauer as the director .
- ↑ The remaining nine radio plays based on: Rudyard Kipling : The Most Beautiful Story of the World , Wilhelm von Scholz : Antwerpener Sage , Nikolai Gogol : The Nose , Friedrich Gerstäcker : Germelshausen , Tania Blixen : The Flood of Norderney , Pierre Boulle : One Night Without End , Antonio de Zunzunegui : The wonderful rifle and Don Lukas and the unsaleable , Wilhelm Hauff : The young Englishman and Marcel Aymé : The seven miles boots (Karst, p. 763, 4. Zvo).
- ↑ See also The Raven and The Kind Magician in: Richard Wilhelm : Chines Volksmärchen (Alber, p. 120, footnote 2).
Web links
- The factory at HörDat .
- Reference to audio book published by WorldCat in Cologne in 1973 .