David Golder

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David Golder is a novel by Irène Némirovsky , published in France in 1929 , which introduces the main character of the same name, a Jewish businessman active in the international oil business and who has become rich, in the last phase of his life in the 1920s. When he went from Paris to Moscow for the sake of his daughter's financial security for a final deal for a US-based company, he died on a ship after a successful negotiation on the return voyage across the Black Sea. - The novel, which was translated into German and English in 1930, brought the breakthrough for the author, who has been stateless but in good circumstances in France since 1919 , after two smaller literary works.

content

The novel begins with a conversation between Golder and his business friend Simon Marcus, with whom he has been running Golder & Marcus, based in New York, London, Paris and Berlin for 26 years. Marcus ran and lost risky banking business on his own account. To save himself, he would like to buy gold shares from Golder, which he acquired in 1920 for oil production in the Caucasus and which have lost almost all of their value due to the Soviet nationalization of the oil fields in 1926. Marcus hopes for small speculative profits. Golder, who could actually use the money, rejects the offer in the expectation that the shares can gain in value again through the acquisition of concessions by foreign buyers, and assumes that Marcus also knows this. This commits suicide.

After Marcus' funeral, which not only shows Golder the loneliness of his business friend, but even more his own, he travels by night train to Biarritz , where he especially wants to see his 18-year-old daughter Joyce again. While driving, he had a heart attack that made the 68-year-old fear for his life for the first time. In Biarritz, he not only meets his wife Gloria and Joyce, but also the swarm "Geschmeiß" of the "glamorous" bathing city world, which the two women gather for their entertainment on the representative property. In his eyes “pimps, scroungers, old cocottes; a pack of greedy dogs ”, all of whom live on the money he has earned (p. 242 f.). Among them Hoyos, “the beautiful adventurer” of Latin American origin, who has been his wife's lover for decades, and Alec, an impoverished prince, friend of Joyce and at the same time gigolo of an older lady. In these domestic circumstances he experiences an even greater isolation, especially since Joyce, apart from the fact that she delights him with her youthfulness and beauty, does not seem to value any other connection to him than he experiences with his wife, whose most important welcome question stereotypically “How do the shops go? ”reads (p. 243, 255): He feels like“ a machine for making money ”(p. 239) for those close to him, including the“ Rolls-Royce ”and the“ Hispano-Suiza ” by Gloria or the “ Bugatti ” for Joyce, before he “dies” after his work is done (p. 327). He cannot even sleep in his own room because his wife uses it elsewhere. Since his daughter has been putting on make-up and adorning herself with jewels (p. 248 f.), He can also see her become a “whore”, a “slut” (p. 298, 327). In an outburst of hatred and anger, his wife tells him that Joyce is not his biological daughter at all, but that it comes from her relationship with Hoyos. After she left Russia 48 years ago out of wretched poverty accompanied by Golders on the emigrant deck of a ship, her love for him, who restlessly struggled to get on, quickly cooled in her new life.

After another severe heart attack, which the doctor diagnosed as life-threatening angina pectoris , Golder's business on the stock exchange collapsed. He sells the property in Biarritz and returns to his Paris apartment. His wife, who has created her own values ​​in gold and jewels, dissolves the household and sells the valuable furniture, leaving Golder alone in the empty apartment, in which only mirrors are hanging. When his daughter comes to him to ask for money because her mother gives her nothing and they do not marry the rich, much older man who cares for her and whom she calls "the old pig" (p. 366) would like to win against biology the fatherly feelings in Golder (p. 371). His pride tells him to protect his daughter so that she can lead an independent life. For this purpose, he goes on a final business trip to Moscow, which an old business partner from the USA had previously suggested to him in vain. If he successfully acquires the concession for the exploitation of Caucasian oil fields in the name of his Jewish client for his US oil company with the Soviet Russian negotiators, he can increase the value of the shares denied to Marcus at the beginning of the act. In a three-day session, he successfully graduated. On the return journey, which takes him to the starting point of his present life on the Black Sea, he dies, but on board the ship he is able to win a young Jewish emigrant as messenger for his American partner and his Paris notary, so that he can secure the future of his daughter secured white.

Narrative means

The novel is written in an experienced speech , which allows the author to change perspective and flashbacks from the point of view of the respective person, so that the reader can understand the events primarily from Golder's point of view, but also from Glorias, Joyce 'or Hoyos' .

With repetition, Némirovsky draws attention to the things that are important to her. The word “tired”, when Simon Marcus mentions it to explain his suicide while dying - “Tired ... I was ... tired” (p. 224) - becomes a constant companion in Golder's self-observation: “'Tired' , thought Golder, suddenly feeling his age like a heavy exhaustion. 'Yes' ”(ibid). Even during his morning stroll in a cedar avenue on his property in Biarritz: “In his old gray overcoat, with a woolen scarf around his neck and a worn hat on his head, he now had a strange resemblance to a Jewish second-hand seller from a Ukrainian village. Sometimes while walking he would pull his shoulder up with a mechanical, tired gesture, as if he were lifting a heavy bale of cloth or a sack of scrap iron on his back ”(p. 302). - Or the question from business life, which penetrates into married life and friendships, "What do you do / how do you do business?" - Or the constant complaint of men about the perceived constant need for money and their wives' willingness to spend, for the satisfaction of which they deprive themselves of their family life and are only on business trips, although they can live out all their greed and passion just like in the casino. - Golder's willingness to break out in curses, anger and hatred can also be expected at any time, mostly in silence to others, loudly towards himself and the family, who will pay him back in the same coin. - Another repeated motif is the mirror, in which Golder, his wife Gloria or Joyce repeatedly come across their self-image or look for it there for make-up (pp. 213, 253 ff., 273, 346 f., 358 f.) . (This mirror motif is a reminder of the author's childhood reading of Oscar Wilde's “ The Portrait of Dorian Gray ”.)

subjects

Family life

The theme of the dissatisfied wife is an old motif that sets the tone in the fairy tale Vom Fischer und seine Frau, collected by the Brothers Grimm . Here it is embedded in the modern working and business world of the better society, in which the men who are absent from home go about their jobs and leave their wives behind as “green widows” in the upper and upper middle class quarters that have now become “ gated communities ” . There they then lead a life that Némirovsky got to know in her well-to-do but loveless parental home in the form of her mother and what she most specifically portrays in her novella “Der Ball” (1930, 2005). The motive of dissatisfaction is heightened in the novel by an unsatisfied, longing desire for love, as Joyce expresses most clearly when she says to her lover, whose gigolo role she knows, “Oh, Alec, I love love .. . ”(P. 343). This long-term desire for love overwhelms the reliability of any relationship. Golder draws the consequence for himself very late and at the price of his final loneliness that he terminates the financial supply base for Gloria with his business ruin and his renouncement of further activities.

Némirovsky thus thematizes for the capitalism-oriented upper class what Richard Sennett now defines as a characteristic of the living conditions of all those working in the culture of contemporary capitalism . He states that they have to adapt to the conditions of the world of work without taking private matters into account, so that capitalist society more and more consumes its own reproductive conditions in the family area and nothing remains binding apart from a representative shell. Ernest Gellner analyzes something similar for the socialization conditions of nation-state societies, which amount to individual atomization, mobility and the willingness of the individual to provide personal performance regardless of context.

Characteristics of the main characters as Jews

In Némirovsky's portrayal there is an echo of the Americanisms that are spreading with the world society under American domination, when John Tübingen as Golder's senior partner for his last deal curses in English (p. 363) or Joyce tenderly "dearest dad", "Daddy darling" or "poor old dad" (pp. 239, 267). In the figures of the older generation, however, the social problems reflected in them are personalized in such a way that they appear to be the result of the character traits of the people involved and not of their socialization. She identifies these character traits with what corresponds to the widespread anti-Semitic and xenophobic clichés of the 1920s and 1930s that she found in French society. The Némirovsky biographers Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Lienhardt see this as a means for the author to reflect herself as a so-called Jew in the perception of others and to become aware of her role as stateless exiles. The fact that she wanted to gain a foothold in French society and relied on assimilation showed her whole literary endeavor. As a member of the next generation, the author does not seem to see Joyce anymore because there are no allusions to anything Jewish about her; Rather, Joyce seems to belong to another world because of her “blonde skin” (p. 248). Philipponnat and Lienhardt see less of a Jewish character in the way people are identified than of the fact that “their eccentricities [...] are due to the effects of economic, ideological and racist violence”. David Golder describes himself as follows, not without satisfaction: “When you said 'David Golder' in London, in Paris, in New York, it was the name of a die-hard old Jew who had been hated and feared all his life who had destroyed all who would harm him ”(p. 333). Before that, however, something completely different appears: “Yet at the age of forty he was already old and cold as a dead man! That was Gloria's fault, she had always loathed, despised, repulsed him ... her laugh ... because he was ugly, clumsy, clumsy ... And in the beginning, when they were poor, this fear of having a child. 'David, be careful, David be careful, if you make me a child, I will kill myself' ”(p. 329). In his illness he finally has a “hauntingly pale face” (p. 359), and he no longer even eats gefilte fish , although he is outside in a restaurant in the Jewish Marais district of Paris with the “tenderly” mentioned “filthy Jewish gurgles” outside (P. 355) feels as if he is in “animal warmth as he had never felt it before” and he has the feeling that “in a dream he has returned to his village” (p. 357 f.).

John Tübingen as a representative of Puritanism or "Protestant ethics"

John Tübingen remains a marginal figure in the action, but plays an introductory and final role. He appears less as a person of the novel's plot, but rather long-term, representing the principle, successful business practices in appearance, the Max Weber in his key text from 1904 The Protestant Ethic and the "spirit" of capitalism has analyzed scientifically. Between Golder and his partner Marcus, Tübingen, in the form of "Tübingen-Petroleum" (p. 206), was the decisive factor in not letting Marcus resell the company's shares, which at that time were quite worthless, in order to save him. For a reason that is not understandable for Golder himself, he wants to keep the shares and only sell them when the "Tübingen" has acquired the concession for the exploitation of the Kaukausus oil fields, for which there are no concrete indications yet. When Golder has already finished his business life, Tübingen appears for the first time in person with a surprise "Hello" in Golder's empty apartment. In his case, Némirovsky refrains from being characterized as a Jew, as is the case with the other representatives of the older generation, namely Golder, Gloria, Fischl, who cares for Joyce in Biarritz, Marcus and his widow or Golder's old Parisian acquaintance Soifer: “His long skull was strangely shaped so that the forehead appeared disproportionately high and bright. A puritan face, pale, with compressed lips ”(p. 360). When he explains to Golder why he is still doing business at the age of 76, he outlines his future-oriented action, which is not about quick speculative profit, but about one linked to the name Tübingen for ninety-nine years and himself and his children and grandchildren enduring concession: "The built, created, lasting cause ..." (p. 364). What reminds him of Jewish things is limited to the Old Testament sentence of Job “The Lord gave it, the Lord took it. May the name of the Lord be hallowed ", with which he comments " in the expressionless, quick tone of the Puritan who was nurtured from childhood on the texts of the Scriptures "(p. 364), Golder's insight that he, Golder, could not take his money to the grave. - How important the appearance of Tübingen is, Némirovsky expresses with the abrupt and for the reader hardly comprehensible change of the scene in which Joyce reports to Golder's door with “It's me” (p. 365) after the unmentioned departure of Tübingen to stimulate him for the business that Tübingen Golder unsuccessfully proposed. While he was still dying on the return journey, Golder passed on Tübingen's address in the Paris “Hotel Continental” to the young Jewish emigrant (p. 403) and, with his hard-won negotiation success - short-term over the now increased share value - for Joyce's life security, long-term above all but in the sense of "Protestant ethics", as Max Weber sees it as most powerful in the USA, worked for the concession for ninety-nine years of Tübingen, which has long been assimilated in the USA.

reception

Némirovsky had initially submitted the manuscript of her novel anonymously to the publisher of Bernard Grasset. The publisher made her seek out and immediately released her book, which immediately associated with the Black Friday on 25 October 1929 and the following Great Depression has become such a huge success that in 1930 appeared in all European countries and in Japan translations. It was also edited for the stage. In France it was valued and praised above all by anti-Bolshevik or anti-Semitic writers such as Robert Brasillach , Paul Morand and Jean-Pierre Maxence. Irène Némirovsky protested against the accusation of supposedly anti-Semitic writing: “What would François Mauriac say if all the citizens of the Landes department , suddenly upset against him, accused him of drawing them with such violent colors? (...) Why do the French Israelites want to recognize themselves in 'David Golder'? The disparity is the same. ”On November 30, 1930, the New York Times wrote about the novel:“ 'David Golder' is a moving and powerful piece of work. A filthy tragedy that will make us doubt the worth of human existence for the thousandth time. The reader is left with the impression that this is the work of a woman who has the strength of a Balzac or Dostoevsky and is able to an unusual degree to arouse pity and horror. "

In Germany, S. Fischer in Berlin in 1930 published six editions in a translation by Magda Kahn. Since then the writer has been forgotten. “The Other Library” published two novels in one volume, namely Der Fall Kurilow (1933) and David Golder , even before Némirovsky's rediscovery in 1995 with the first edition of Suite française in 2004 . 1997 the paperback edition took place at Fischer. Both editions have since been out of print, so discussions about David Golder are being held abroad. In the USA in 2007, after the great success of Suite française, a new translation by David Golder , about Ruth Franklin, based on information from the 2006 biography of Jonathan Weiss criticized by Philipponnat and Lienhardt for misleading information, was published on January 30, 2008 under the Headline "Scandale française" in " The New Republic " sparked a heated controversy because the novel allegedly showed obvious anti-Semitism and "Jewish self-hatred".

filming

In 1930 the French filmmaker Julien Duvivier filmed the novel with Harry Baur in the title role. In 1950 there was an American remake under the title My Daughter Joy , where the fictional character David Golder became the film character George Constantin and Joyce became a Georgette Constantin.

Remarks

  1. ↑ It is quoted from the 1995 edition, which was published as the 121st volume in the series “The Other Library” edited by Hans Magnus Enzensberger .
  2. ↑ Richard Sennett, The Flexible Person. The culture of the new capitalism , Berlin (Berlin Verlag) 1998. ISBN 3-8270-0031-9 .
  3. ↑ Ernest Gellner, Nationalism. Culture and Power , Berlin (Siedler) 1997, pp. 53–57.
  4. ↑ In Némirovsky's novel Le maître des âmes , the son of the main character, the doctor Dario Asfar, whose father was a Greek street vendor in a Black Sea port in the Crimea and who escaped with his wife from their family as a juvenile vagabond, escapes poverty to France has undertaken to understand his father all the contempt he feels for his life and his machinations to get rich. Dario Asfar replies: "Fool," he said more quietly. “Who did I want to get rich for? For your mother and for you. To give you a better life than mine! So that you do not know hunger, temptation and misery; for you and for your children, when the time comes, for you, so that you can experience a hundred times the joy you give me today. So that you can be honorable, generous, distinguished, good, blameless, as if you were born in one of the families where honor is hereditary! ”( Le maître des âmes , p. 266; based on the 1939 magazine version Les échelles du Levant [= The Ladders of the Levant , that is, the countries around the eastern Mediterranean] published in 2006 as Denoël Folio paperback no. 4477).
  5. ↑ See foreword by the Némirovsky biographers Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Lienhardt on Le maître des âmes , pp. 11–28; here p. 23.
  6. ↑ Némirovsky does not attach importance to a “shining forehead”, but to dark, shining eyes in the people who are characterized as “Jewish” or - synonymously - “oriental”.
  7. ↑ Cf. Mikaël Demets on Irène Némirovsky as an author who has become a classic.
  8. ↑ See Philipponnat / Lienhardt [2006], pp. 16-18.
  9. ↑ Olivier Philipponnat, Patrick Lienhardt: La vie d'Irène Némirovsky. Paris (Grasset-Denoël) 2007, p. 189, ISBN 2-246-68721-7 .
  10. ↑ Quoted in Erin Durant: Writing in the Dark: The Story of Irene Nemirovsky. September 2005 .
  11. ↑ See Thomas Laux: Money, greed, faded youth. , A new edition has been announced by the btb publishing house for December 2008: ISBN 978-3-442-73509-9 .
  12. ↑ Jonathan Weiss: Irene Nemirovsky. Her Life And Works. Stanford University Press (United States) 2006, ISBN 978-0-8047-5481-1
  13. ↑ See R. Franklin on Némirowsky. - Answer from Philipponnat / Lienhardt on March 28, 2008  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - On dealing with the Jewish share of responsibility for anti-Semitism, Hannah Arendt's explanations in her work are elements and origins of total domination. Anti-Semitism, imperialism, total rule (Munich (Piper) 2001, pp. 36–43) are very informative. - On “Jewish self-hatred” cf. Theodor Lessing : The Jewish self-hatred. With a foreword by Boris Groys. Matthes & Seitz Verlag, Munich 2004. ISBN 3-88221-347-7 . In addition the review Axel Schmitt: A Psychography of Aryan Minded Jewish Intellectuals. On a new edition of Theodor Lessing's work "The Jewish self-hatred"@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.tnr.com  
  14. ^ Film David Golder in The Internet Movie Database (IMDb).
  15. ^ Film My Daughter Joy in The Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

literature

  • The Kurilov case. and David Golder. Two novels. Translated from the French by Dora Winkler, Frankfurt a. M. (Eichborn) 1995. ISBN 3-8218-4121-4 .
  • David Golder. Frankfurt a. M. (Fischer) 1997. ISBN 3-5961-3383-1 .
  • David Golder. Munich (btb) 2008. ISBN 3-4427-3509-2 .
  • David Golder. (From Franz. Von Magda Kahn.) Roman. 1-6 S. Fischer: Berlin 1930

Secondary literature

  • Martina Stemberger: Irène Némirovsky. Phantasmagorias of Strangeness. Würzburg (Königshausen & Neumann) 2006. ISBN 978-3-8260-3313-1 .