Shame (novel)

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Schande (2000) (English: Disgrace , 1999) is a novel by JM Coetzee , for which he was awarded the Booker Prize in 1999. The title of the novel cannot be translated unambiguously into German, as disgrace not only means “ shame ” but also “in favor ”. The content justifies both readings: David, the protagonist, has fallen out of favor, but his daughter Lucy has been raped, ie "desecrated".

Robert McCrum has included the work in his list of the 100 best English-language novels compiled for the Guardian .

content

As is often the case with Coetzee, the text deals with South Africa in the post-apartheid era. In contrast to other novels, the author apparently renounces utopias, although in the names of the main characters David, Lucy and Petrus he makes allusions to a future-oriented background (see personal names).

The main character is the white, 52-year-old literature professor David Lurie. He lives and works in Cape Town, is twice divorced, the only daughter, Lucy, leads her own life. He considers his students to be stupid or disinterested, and his own academic ability to be limited. When Lurie thinks about the future, he sees himself as a lonely old man who spends the day dusk in the evening so he can finally cook his soup and go to sleep. The arrangement with the perceived senselessness of his existence includes the relationship with the student Melanie, as it fills the empty time and dispels his fear of old age. The relationship becomes known and a case of sexual harassment is initiated against Lurie. Psychological terror begins. His car tires are stabbed, the organization “Women Against Rape” holds a twenty-four hour vigil, a leaflet threatened him: “Your days are over, Casanova”. It is not enough for the commission of inquiry that it plead guilty to violating the statute. He should make a confession, show “repentance”, “counsel” and receive therapy, and the discrimination commissioner Dr. Farodia Rassool wants the affair to be part of the long history of oppression of women. More than the affair itself, Lurie is resented for refusing to politicize, psychologize, ideologize, that is, to give meaning afterwards, and to insist on its unintentional banality and the pure distraction character. The admission of the meaninglessness of his existence also calls into question the reasons for existence that the others claim for themselves, because it deprives them of the opportunity to renew and renew them through his submission - which is to be staged as a struggle against the reactionary remnants in society to confirm. Lurie has to retire from university. Melanie, in whose interest this is officially done, is only the pretext in the proceedings to get the machine going. Her jealous friend had informed her father and the university administration.

David Lurie moves in with his homosexual daughter Lucy, who runs a small farm on her own in the Eastern Cape Province . To pass the time, he helps a friend of his daughter's in her "animal clinic" - she puts dogs to sleep to save them from their misery. David begins to recognize the dignity of animals and appears to repent through his work of burning the carcasses.

When the farm is attacked by three presumably (only in context) black men and Lucy is brutally raped, David cannot help her; he barely gets away with his life himself. In relation to the police, Lucy reduced the crime to a robbery - with the not absurd but hardly exhaustive justification that the perpetrators would remain undetectable "in the state in which the police are" anyway. She makes more decisions that amaze David. She hands over her farm to her neighbor and plans to join his family, although there is evidence that he was privy to the crime and knows the perpetrators. Lucy, who in an almost clichéd way combines the attributes of the modern, independent, emancipated young woman, thus negates everything that had made her life up to that point and identified her as a member of western civilization. It does a complete regression to an atavistic way of life. It's not just resignation that drives them. Of course she cannot and does not want to escape the realization that her civilized, privileged, European (“white”) existence in South Africa is over. For her there is a historical logic and justice in this - a view that her father shares. When David returns to Cape Town after several weeks and finds his house broken into and looted, he regards it as a “reparation” that blacks are entitled to for the suffering of apartheid. Lucy emphatically rejects his assumption that the daughter's decisions are driven by historical guilt complexes. Nor does it assume that it can regain security, dignity and self-determination by not only suffering an unstoppable development, but by affirming it and actively participating in it. She knows that the rapists were concerned with submission and submission, and admits that she is afraid of their return. Nevertheless, she rejects David's proposal to move to the Netherlands or at least to Cape Town. She seeks protection from her neighbor. Her actions appear even more confused to David when Lucy, who has become pregnant through rape, tries to carry the child to term. Their simple reason is: "I am a woman, David."

Person constellation

Rather, she is really hopeful, would like to give birth to her child in the society of the black neighbors and be active in their midst and work the country with them. Because it is “about a good starting point for a new beginning”, namely “starting from the bottom: (...) without papers, without weapons, without possessions, without rights, without dignity” (p. 266).

subjects

In addition to the described conflicts between blacks and whites and between men and women, the novel also deals with the relationship between humans and animals. Since he has nothing else to do, David helps a friend out in her veterinary clinic and slowly discovers compassion. (He with her and she with him and he with the animals, etc.)

Another major topic is the importance of art for the individual and the world. When David is expelled from the university's teaching and research machinery, he begins to be creative himself. In the course of the novel he worked progressively on an opera about Lord Byron , the romantic poet. Whether this represents a maturing of the protagonist, or whether he always just bizarre manner of crazy is, the novel leaves.

Coetzee ties these complex threads together into a superficially simple story. His language is clear, concise and almost cold, but entirely appropriate to the protagonist David Lurie. Because David, although a communication scientist, no longer trusts the language (pp. 8, 9, 152, 168). Rather, his aim would be that from his experiments with opera "somewhere out of the chaos of sounds a single authentic note of eternal longing will arise like a bird" (p. 277). Especially in relation to blacks, English seems completely inadequate to him: “He is more and more convinced that English is an unsuitable medium for truth in South Africa” (p. 152).

Personal names

Coetzee has shifted the utopian potential into the meaning of the names of the main characters, which is intended to indicate very indirectly but clearly a new beginning in South African society, which emerges most clearly in Lucy and Petrus and from which David Lurie feels excluded: “Apparently a curtain has fallen between Lucy's generation and mine. I didn't even notice when it fell ”(p. 272).

David can be recognized with some traits of character and action in the person of the biblical King David . Coetzee gives his fictional character its adulterous and violent traits, but much more that of the psalmist David with the harp. With David Lurie, it is his daughter's 7-string toy banjo that he uses when composing his planned chamber opera. Lurie elicits a plink plank from her (p. 277). But he is also the future “grandfather. A Joseph. Who would have thought that! ”(P. 281). As Joseph, who according to Christian belief was not involved in the creation of Jesus, he follows the medieval image of David as the ancestor of Christ.

Lucy's name is obviously based on Lucia, which means "shining" from Latin. Lucia is a historically transmitted saint. According to the legend, she is said to have vowed virginity and put in a house of bliss as punishment for it, but instead died as a martyr. In Dante's "Inferno" of the Divine Comedy , Lucia is the bearer of heavenly light. - David sees his daughter after the rape in a vision surrounded by a "white circle of light" (p. 134 f.). She tends to believe that "the drive is a burden that we could easily do without" (p. 118). During her pregnancy he sees her in the soft September sunlight, a little sunburned, and "suddenly she looks like life in bloom" (p. 283).

In this context, Peter is the apostle figure who reaches furthest into the future. In the Gospel of Mark ( Mk 14.66–72  EU ) it is also written how he denied Jesus three times when he needed his help. In Matthew ( Mt 16 : 16-19  EU ) he is then depicted as the rock on which Jesus wants to build his church. - As a character in a novel, he would be the one who, as an immediate neighbor, should be able to protect Lucy and David from the rapists. He would be needed three times: Both Lucy and David Lurie call for him in dire need, but he does not answer (p. 120 and 121). Even as a witness he is “nowhere to be seen” (p. 140). David rates him as follows:

“What he likes about Peter is his face, face, and hands. If there is such a thing as honest hard work, then Peter is marked by it. A man full of patience and energy who will not let himself get down. A farmer, a paysan, a farmer. A plan-maker and schemer and definitely a liar, like farmers everywhere. Honest work and honest peasant smarts ”(p. 152 f.).

translation

The German edition was published in the translation by Reinhild Böhnke (S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2000, ISBN 3-10-010815-9 and Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 978-3-596-50951-5 )

Movie

The film adaptation by Australian director Steve Jacobs, with Anna Maria Monticelli as producer and John Malkovich in the lead role, won the "International Critics Award" at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival . The film was awarded the “Black Pearl” at the “International Middle East Film Festival” in Abu Dhabi . The German premiere was on September 17, 2009 at the Munich Film Festival .

theatre

At the Münchner Kammerspiele 2013 Schande was shown on stage with Lorna Ishema , director: Luk Perceval from Belgium, where the piece was played back in 2011.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ It is quoted from the 2000 edition.
  2. ↑ King David in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
  3. ↑ See the time. The lexicon in 20 volumes. Zeitverlag, Hamburg 2005, vol. 3, p. 261.
  4. ↑ Saint Lucia in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
  5. ↑ Luk Perceval's "Schande": The Burden of the Sex Drive Der Spiegel -online - Kultur, December 23, 2013