Dead Bruges
The Dead Bruges (French Bruges-la-Morte ) is a symbolist novel by the Belgian writer Georges Rodenbach . It first appeared in 1892 as a serial novel in the magazine Le Figaro and in the same year in book form, supplemented by photographs of the city of Bruges . The novel was first translated into German in 1903 .
Dead Bruges tells the story of the grieving widower Hugues Viane, who settled in Bruges and there succumbed to an obsession with an opera actress who resembles his late wife. The book is the most famous literary description of old Bruges frozen in insignificance, once the richest trading city in Northern Europe.
content
Hugues Viane moves to Bruges after the death of his beloved wife. Inconsolable as he is, he has chosen this city, which in its sadness resembles his state of mind, at the same time he associates dead Bruges with his dead wife. He lives withdrawn in a house on a canal, the only person he has contact with is his old housemaid Barbe.
Hugues has set up a reliquary for the deceased in his living room : several portraits of her hang on the walls, and on the silent piano lies her long, blond braid, which he saved from the grave, under a crystal lid.
Every late afternoon he wanders through the rainy streets, along the misty canals and gray houses of Bruges. Occasionally he goes to church, hoping to see his wife again after death. That is the only reason why he does not kill himself in his grief: the Catholic faith forbids him to commit suicide.
One evening, when he emerged from church, he could hardly believe his eyes: he saw a woman who was exactly like his wife. He pursues her for a while, but then loses her. A week later he sees her again and goes after her again. He learns that her name is Jane Scott, that she is a dancer and that her troupe comes from Lille twice a week to give guest performances in the Bruges theater.
After a few weeks he speaks to her and meets with her regularly from then on. The resemblance to his wife is a miracle for him, he sees his dead wife returned and therefore does not have the feeling that he is cheating on his lover with Jane. He persuades Jane to give up dancing and move to Bruges, where he visits her every evening from then on. The city of Bruges adapts to his changed mental attitude, appears happier and more colorful.
But over time, the relationship between the two is no longer as happy as it was at the beginning. Hugues doesn't love Jane at all, only what she represents for him: his wife. All over Bruges people are already talking about the widower and his liaison. The very pious barbel lets her friends in the monastery convince her that Hugues will have to quit as soon as he brings the woman home with him. And Jane herself has some secret affairs in Bruges. Hugues begins to spy on them.
He is also discovering more and more disturbing differences to his wife: Jane's long blond hair is only colored, she uses bright make-up, lets herself go and tends to argue. A sermon in the church about death opens Hugues' eyes: he develops terrible feelings of guilt towards his wife and fears that he will never see her again in death. The attempt to fuse Jane and his wife by putting on one of the other's dresses fails.
Yet Hugues believes he loves Jane and wants to keep her in Bruges at all costs. She agrees, convinced that Hugues will die soon anyway and that she will receive his rich inheritance. She invites Hugues to take part in the holy blood procession that goes past his house, whereupon the old barbel quits immediately. Jane is amused in the living room by the portraits of the woman who resembles her. For fun, she grabs the braid in the crystal coffin and puts it around her neck. How insane Hugues begins a chase through the living room. In his frenzy he grabs Jane and pulls the braid around her neck until he has strangled her.
background
Dead Bruges and symbolism
Rodenbach's short novel is an important document of French-language symbolism . The aim of this art movement of the late 19th century was to depict without showing. The recipient has to recognize the symbol that the artist wants to represent from the many and often unambiguous descriptions.
There are other signs typical of symbolism in the text:
- the idealization of women and the exclusivity of the one great love
- the morbid atmosphere created by an irrational veneration of the dead
- the association of the dead woman with the dead city
- the subliminal spirituality
interpretation
In the foreword to Das tote Bruges , Rodenbach already makes an important interpretation clear: "The city as the main character, connected with the emotional states that advises, dissuades, stimulates action".
Hugues Viane, the sad widower, recognizes the city in Bruges, which resembles his infinite sadness and melancholy, represents his interior externally: through deserted streets, gloomy canals, silent house facades and the ever-present fog and drizzle. When Hugues meets Jane, the city changes with his state of mind; it becomes brighter, sunnier, friendlier, more open. But with the problems in the relationship, the dark melancholy returns to Bruges.
A similar change is described in the chapter in which Hugue's housekeeper Barbe attends a party in the beguinage : on her way to the monastery in the morning, she perceives the bright sun and the green of nature; in the evening, after being told that she could not possibly serve a man who lives in sin with a dancer, she returns home through “dead streets”.
Photographs and illustration of the first edition
Rodenbach illustrated the first edition of his novel with 35 photographs of Bruges city views, in order to convey the atmosphere of the city to the reader immediately not only linguistically but also visually, as he explained in a "preliminary remark" before the novel. The photos (and the introduction) were often reduced or omitted entirely in later editions.
The painter Fernand Khnopff , a personal friend of Rodenbach from the young Belgian artist scene, illustrated the frontispiece for the first edition of the novel, which also inspired him to create a series of drawings that he made in the following years.
German translations
Friedrich von Oppeln-Bronikowski got the first translation into German in 1903, in which he Germanized the name of the protagonist Hugues Viane to Hugo. Later translations were done in 2003 by Dirk Hemjeoltmanns and in 2005 by Reinhard Kiefer .
Aftermath
Rodenbach later worked the plot of the novel into a drama, Le Voile (1894). The composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold used the book as a template for his opera Die tote Stadt in 1920 . Arthur Schnitzler processed the material for his story The Next (1899). The novel also influenced subsequent authors such as WG Sebald .
Elisabeth Bronfen discussed Rodenbach's novel in connection with the detective novel D'entre les morts (dt. Resurrected from the dead ) (1954) by the authors Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac as well as its film adaptation Vertigo - From the realm of the dead (1958) by Alfred Hitchcock . In her essay Remembered Love? Astrid Lange-Kirchheim speculates about Schnitzler's Die next and Hitchcock's Vertigo , also about Boileau's and Narcejac's possible knowledge of Rodenbach's novel.
expenditure
- First published as a serial in Le Figaro, Paris, February 4-14, 1892
- First edition as a book with a note from the author and 35 illustrations: Bruges-la-Morte. Marpon & Flammarion, Paris 1892. Reprints a. a .: Flammarion, Paris 1904; Actes Sud, Arles 1994, ISBN 2-86869-358-X
- Dead Bruges. Translation by Friedrich von Oppeln-Bronikowski. Bard, Berlin 1903.
- Dead Bruges. (Compilation with 19 other short stories by the author.) Translation by Oppeln-Bronikowski. Festa, Allmersbach 2003, ISBN 3-935822-64-2
- Bruges dead city . Translation by Dirk Hemjeoltmanns. Manholt Verlag, Bremen 2003, ISBN 978-3-924903-04-6 .
- Dead Bruges. Translation by Dirk Hemjeoltmanns. With 17 of the original illustrations and an afterword by Rainer Moritz. Reclam, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-15-020220-3
- Bruges - The Dead . Translation by Reinhard Kiefer in collaboration with Ulrich Prill and an afterword by Bernhard Albers. Rimbaud Verlag, Aachen 2005, ISBN 978-3-89086-915-5 .
- In his native Belgium and the Netherlands, the French novel about the Flemish city of Bruges was first published in 1978 in a Dutch translation by Marjolijn Jacobs and Jolijn Tevel under the title Brugge-de-dode and in the second edition of the Netherlands as Brugge, the silent .
literature
- Paul Gorceix: Réalités flamandes et symbolisme fantastique: Bruges-la-Morte et le Carillonneur de Georges Rodenbach. Lettres Modernes, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-256-90448-2
- Paul Gorceix: “Bruges-la-Morte”, un roman symbolist. In: L'information littéraire 37, 1985, pp. 205-210. (French)
- Lynne Pudles: Fernand Khnopff, Georges Rodenbach, and Bruges, the Dead City. In: The Art Bulletin , Vol. 74, No. 4 (Dec. 1992), pp. 637-654.
Web links
- Digitization of the French-language original on Archive.org , accessed on December 18, 2011.
- Digitization of the Figaro from February 4, 1892
- German translation for the Gutenberg project .
- Short review of the new edition in Die Zeit No. 12, March 16, 2006, accessed on December 18, 2011.
proof
- ^ A b Afterword by Rainer Moritz in the new German edition, Manholt, Bremen 2003.
- ↑ Lynne Pudles: Fernand Khnopff, Georges Rodenbach, and Bruges, the Dead City, in The Art Bulletin, Vol. 74, No. 4, December 1992, New York 1992.
- ↑ Thomas von Steinaecker: Between black death and white eternity - To gray on the illustrations of WG Sebalds, in Sigurd Martin / Ingo Wintermeyer (eds.): Shifting stations of remembrance - To the work of WG Sebalds, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007.
- ^ Elisabeth Bronfen: Only about her corpse - death, femininity and aesthetics, Kunstmann, Munich 1994.
- ↑ Astrid Lange-Kirchheim: Erinnerte Liebe ?, in Wolfram Mauser and Joachim Pfeiffer (eds.): Erinnern, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2004.