The last adventure

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The last adventure is a 1953 short story by Heimito von Doderer . It is set during the reign of Emperor Charles IV , between 1355 and 1378. A terminus post quem can be found in a conversation between Ruy de Fanez and his second squire, the Englishman Patrik. When the very accurate young man with the longbow declared that the English archers had "recently defeated the knights of the King of France in a great battle", Ruy added the date of the Battle of Crécy : August 26, 1346. Blind John of Luxembourg , King of Bohemia, fell in this battle; his son is now wearing the imperial crown.

action

The Spanish knight Ruy de Fanez, accompanied by his squire Gauvain and two servants, rides through a forest that people have avoided for many years because a lindworm is said to live in it. The widowed Duchess Lidoine, who lives in the huge Montefal Castle, made crossing the forest a condition of the man who intends to woo her. Ruy meets the dragon and is able to cut off a horn, which he, however, exhausted by the fear of death, leaves in the forest. He reached the duchy unscathed, but could not make up his mind to woo the duchess. Another knight manages to cross the forest: Gamuret, known as the Fronauer. He also met the lindworm and escaped a threatening situation by a happy coincidence. He found the severed horn of the dragon and can confirm Ruy's story. Since life at the court of Ruy and the Fronauer is not comfortable, they agree not to woo the Duchess. Instead, they support Gauvain's advertising, who has now been knighted. Ruy, who gave Gauvain his sword, receives a new sword from the Duchess with a piece of the dragon's horn in the pommel and leaves the Duchy with a new squire. After a short stay in a larger city, where they take part in a festival, Ruy's expedition moves back into the forest. On a solo exploratory ride, Ruy suddenly sees - in an apparition - the minstrel, from whose song he learned about the Duchess and the Lindworm. Witnesses of another apparition, a colorful procession of the spirits of knights and ladies from an earlier time, who follow Ruy riding through the forest, are the animals of the forest and the squire. Back in the open country, they come to a village that is just being haunted by a band of robbers . In battle, Ruy defeats and drives away the robbers, but is mortally wounded.

expenditure

  • Heimito von Doderer: The Last Adventure . With an autobiographical afterword. Reclam, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-15-007806-7 .
  • Heimito von Doderer: The Last Adventure . A "knight novel". Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-596-10711-3 .
  • Heimito von Doderer: The Last Adventure . In: Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler (Ed.): The stories. CH Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-39898-7 .
  • Heimito von Doderer: The Last Adventure . (Library of Narrators, Volume 113). Steidl, Göttingen 1998, ISBN 3-88243-559-3 .
  • Heimito von Doderer: The Last Adventure . (Series textura). CH Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-64488-7 .

literature

  • Eva Gruber: Heimito from Doderer's 'The Last Adventure'. Examination of the content and form of the versions from 1922 and 1936 . Phil. Dipl. Vienna 1989, without ISBN.
  • Veronika Bernard: The dragon's eye. Heimito von Doderer's story The Last Adventure - a critical cultural-historical panopticon? In: Gerald Sommer / Kai Luehrs-Kaiser (eds.): "Shots into the Dark". To Heimito von Doderer's short prose. (= Writings of the Heimito von Doderer Society, Volume 2). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2001, ISBN 3-8260-2076-6 , pp. 121-130.
  • Martin Mosebach: The writer in the dragon forest . In: Gerald Sommer / Kai Luehrs-Kaiser (eds.): "Shots into the Dark". To Heimito von Doderer's short prose. (= Writings of the Heimito von Doderer Society, Volume 2). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2001, ISBN 3-8260-2076-6 , pp. 111-120.