The catch shot

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The catch shot (original title: Le Coup de Grâce ) is a novel that Marguerite Yourcenar wrote in Sorrento in 1938 and published in 1939; it appeared in German in 1968 in a translation by Richard Moering. For a definition of the term, see also catch shot .

action

The corps commander Erich von Lhomond was wounded in the Spanish Civil War , is recovering from it in Italy and reports on his memories from the time after the First World War .

In 1919 the world war in the Baltic states turned into the Russian civil war . Erich von Lhomond, Prussian officer and now leader of a free corps , quartered himself and his White Guards in Kratovice, in the decaying castle of his childhood friend Konrad von Reval and his sister Sophie. A triangular relationship develops between those uprooted by the war, in which Sophie is repeatedly rejected by Erich and does not manage to make him jealous or interested in herself through indiscriminate sexual adventures and superficial relationships with others. Because Erich feels drawn to Sophie's brother Konrad, although there is no physical sexuality in the novel either between Sophie and Erich or between Erich and Konrad. Only after Sophie has finally left the castle does Erich start looking for her, but gives up when he learns that she has joined the student Grigori Loew and thus the Red Guards .

Months later, Erich and Sophie face each other again. Konrad fell in battle, Erich and his men surrounded a squad of Red Guards and forced them to surrender - including Sophie. The civil war is at a stage in which prisoners are no longer being taken, Sophie and her fellow combatants are shot after a brief interrogation, with Sophie expressing her last wish to get the fatal bullet from Erich ...

background

With the aristocratic backdrop, the Baltic scenery, the homoerotic theme and the name Konrad, the writer takes up impressions and suggestions of the married couple Jeanne de Vietinghoff and Conrad von Vietinghoff (noble family) , who were friends with Yourcenar's parents. She used the two as a source of inspiration and varied these themes in several of her works. But since it is about literature and not historical representations, "The Fang Shot" ultimately has nothing to do with the two named people. As one of Yourcenar's strengths, this short novel characterizes the only subtly hinted at, mostly unspoken relationship between people and their mysterious and tragic attraction. A connection to the Vietinghoffs can only be seen in the dedication to such sublime feelings.

filming

The short novel was filmed in 1976 under the same title Der Fangschuß by Volker Schlöndorff with Margarethe von Trotta and Matthias Habich in the leading roles. From a long letter from Marguerite Yourcenar to Volker Schlöndorff it emerges that she was not happy with the type of film adaptation and the accents.

literature

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