The boulder (Verne)
The Foundling is a novel by the French author Jules Verne . The novel was first published as a book in 1893 by the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel under the French title P'tit-Bonhomme , namely Volume I on October 2 and Volume II on November 20, 1893. A preliminary publication took place in the Magasin d'Éducation et de Récréation in volumes 57 and 58 from January 1 to December 15, 1893. The first German-language edition appeared in 1894 under the title Der Findling . The English title of the novel is Foundling Mick .
action
The action of the novel takes place in Ireland at the end of the 19th century . At that time Ireland was ruled by poverty, inhumanity and the arbitrariness of the landowners. He tells the story of a child abandoned by his mother who, after a youth marked by deprivation, slowly reached a better life. The period of growing up is a period of suffering that takes the child to different settings. The traveling paper theater showman Thornpipe gives his performances in a small town. But the audience quickly realizes that there is a secret behind the automatic movements of the dolls that must be hidden inside Thornpipe's car. As a result of the curious onlookers, a half-starved, about three-year-old boy, marked with whip marks, can be freed from the box under the car. This is called a foundling . Through his discovery he escapes the brutal showman. However, this does not save his future.
In a review, the beginning of the ordeal of Foundling is told. He was abandoned by his mother and came into the poorhouse of Donegal . From there it is "rented" to the drinker Hard in Rindock for care. For the first time in his life, he met his foster sister Sissy (actually Cecilie), a person who was friendly to him. Sissy is several years older than Foundling. For the first time in his life he received human warmth from her. When one of the three foster children dies from lack of help and emaciation , he is able to flee from the mega-store . Then he comes to the brutal showman Thornpipe. After his discovery, he ends up in the orphanage, the so-called Ragged School, in Galway . The children who live there vegetate and are only locked away from the public. They have to pay for their livelihood and food alone. It is difficult for the foundling who is encouraged to beg and steal to protect his own person and to maintain his self-respect. He suffers from the heartless director of the O 'Bodkin orphanage and the violent youth led by the stupid Carker. In the facility, however, he meets 16-year-old Grip as his friend and protector. After a drinking party, a fire breaks out that destroys the Ragged School. Grip saves foundling's life.
The extinguishing operation is observed by the passing actress Anna Walston. Findling takes this on as her personal "toy". She dresses him like a doll. He no longer has existential needs, but loses contact with his friend and lifesaver Grip. The actress presents Findling in the role of an orphan in a play that attracts the public. However, the four-year-old foundling cannot yet separate this spectacle from reality. This makes the idea a failure. In his poor boy costume, he leaves the theater to find his lost freedom on the street. Frozen and helpless, he is taken away by the McCarthy family, who are on a supply trip. Kerwan farm will be foundling's new home. The farmer couple Martin and Martine McCarthy, their sons, Pat the seaman and the farm workers Murdock and Sim and their grandmother are now also the von Findling family.
Findling returns the warmth shown by the members of his new "family". He helps them with light work, tends the sheep and keeps records of all activities and all countable things on the farm. As a reward for his work, he gets a pebble for every single day of his own choosing. He keeps the pebbles like treasure in a jar made of clay under his bed. At the age of seven, he is to become a godfather for the child Jenny. Before that he is baptized himself in order to meet the demands of the church. He was baptized with the name Edit, but it did not catch on. Even after that he is still called foundling by everyone.
After a little more than three years, the best time of his life up to that point ends. After a bad harvest and damage from the forces of nature, the McCarthy family can no longer pay the rent for the farm. Findling wants to use his own last "nest egg" from the neighboring village to get a healing tincture for the grandmother who is struggling for life. However, this dies before foundling returns. The family is evicted from the farm. The landlord's captors make the property uninhabitable. When Foundling comes back, he is stunned in front of the empty ruins of the farm. After searching for the McCarthys, he moves in the wrong direction and loses sight of them.
He makes a valuable find which he returns to its owner, Lord Piborne. This hires him as a "groom", a kind of lowly boy, at Trelingar Castle. There he suffers from the harassment of the administrator and his direct "master", the stupidly arrogant son of the house, Count Ashton. The friendship with Kat, the laundress and chambermaid at the castle, makes the time bearable for him. A change from his dreary everyday life is the excursion of the gentlemen to a large lake in Killarney . When conditions become unbearable for him, he leaves the castle and takes his savings with him.
He saves seven-year-old Bob's life on the way to Cork . He wanted to end his poor life in a river. The two team up and Foundling becomes Bob's protector.
Bob and Findling sell goods as peddlers in Cork. You no longer have to beg for it. Foundling meets Grip, his savior from Ragged School, again. He has become a seaman and is happy to meet the two boys. He advises them to go on to Dublin . He thinks they can do better business there than peddlers than in Cork. The two smart boys sell even more goods on the way. In Dublin they already have so much “share capital” that they can rent a shop from the old merchant O'Brien. They do successful business there under the name of Little Money - Little Boy & Co. The tide has finally turned for the better for Foundling. He can expand further.
He can get Kat into the shop as a housekeeper and when he meets Sissy again, she comes to him too. Foundling lets his friend Grip marry Sissy. With a clever commercial move, he can also acquire an entire shipload inexpensively, which should later bring him multiple proceeds from his work. During the transfer of the ship, he almost drowned with the entire cargo when the ship was already abandoned by the crew.
Foundling can locate the McCarthy farming family. In the meantime she tried unsuccessfully to emigrate to Australia and came back to Ireland with her last money. Foundling sends them back to their former farm. As a thank you for the good time he spent with them as a child, he pays them a pound for every pebble he received back then . This means that the family can now buy their own farm. For all main characters, their lives have changed for the better.
role models
Jules Verne was not only inspired by Charles Dickens , whom he admired all his life, but also by the authors Hector Malot and William Busnach . With the character of the actress Anna Walston, he explicitly referred to the French actress Sarah Bernhardt .
literature
- Heinrich Pleticha (ed.): Jules Verne manual . Deutscher Bücherbund / Bertelsmann, Stuttgart and Munich 1992.
- Volker Dehs and Ralf Junkerjürgen: Jules Verne . Voices and interpretations of his work. Fantastic Library Wetzlar, Wetzlar 2005.
- Volker Dehs: Jules Verne . A critical biography. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-538-07208-6 .
Web links
- "The Findling" as an e-book in HTML on zeno.org
- The boulder in Andreas Fehrmann's Jules Verne Collection