The immoralist

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Immoralist ( French: L'Immoraliste ) is a novel by André Gide , which, finished on November 25, 1901, was published in 1902 in the literary magazine Mercure de France in Paris.

The wealthy paleographer Michel confesses to three old friends three months after the death of his wife Marceline from the last three years of his marriage.

time and place

In the 90s of the 19th century: Michel and Marceline travel to Algeria ( Biskra , Touggourt ( Wargla province )), southern Italy ( Naples , Paestum , Amalfi , Ravello , Sorrento ), to Normandy (near Pont-l'Évêque ), to Paris ( Passy ) and Eastern Switzerland ( Sankt Moritz ).

action

Michel's marriage of convenience with Marceline, who was four years his junior, was sealed on Michel's father's deathbed. Michel's mother, who had bequeathed lands in Normandy to her son, had died years earlier. Marceline, an orphan like Michel, willingly follows her husband on his travels. Michel, a manuscript scholar like his father, had already emerged early with his “Essay on the Phrygian Cults” - albeit under the fictitious authorship of his father at the time. The specialist colleagues knew, of course, and accepted the junior into their circles.

So Michel travels carefree with Marceline to the Algerian Biskra. But one concern arises along the way. Michel's health is weak. He suffers from consumption . It appears that the marriage has not yet been consummated. The couple look after Kabyle children. The boy Moktir, a little thief, becomes Michel's favorite.

Thanks to Marceline's self-sacrificing care, Michel can slowly recover to the point where he even desires his graceful, "very pretty" wife. Marceline becomes pregnant by Michel in Sorrento. Michel leads Marceline to Normandy on his estate La Morinière. There he joins young men and boys again. First he learns about agriculture from Charles, the matter-of-fact, ambitious son of his incompetent administrator Bocage. Then he poaches with the boy Bute on their own property. Charles learns about the wire loops laid in the Gutswald and reproaches Michel. Unmoved, the landlord replies to the manager's son that he wants to sell the property.

In between, Michel works in Paris as a manuscript expert. At one of his lectures he meets the dispossessed Ménalque. This is an old friend who had followed Michel's footsteps to Biskra, traveled from there and brought Moktir's stolen goods - a pair of scissors - from Michel's possession. Ménalque Michels insistently brings up the customs of North Africa. Michel preferred to spend time there with boys than with his wife. Michel, although blushing, feels magically attracted by Ménalque, who loves “the daring life”. When Michel spends a whole night with him, Marceline has a miscarriage. The woman then gets an embolism and then she breaks out in consumption. A stay in the high mountains brings relief to Marceline. But Michel doesn't last long even in comfortable St. Moritz. He neglects his historical studies and turns to psychology. Decent, respectable people have become anathema to him. Michel loves Marceline ardently, but he persuades her to leave the regions of clear mountain air and visit Italy, which is inhospitable in winter. Michel leaves his sick wife alone in the hotel room and wanders around for hours in southern Italian cities; seeks the company of bad people. On their travels, the couple returned to Biskra via Tunis. Moktir was in prison.

The seriously ill Marceline doesn't get the desert climate at all. She dies in Touggourt and is buried in El Kantara. It was only for the sake of decency that Michel had endured it in the last days of his life by his wife's bed. Then in the evening he had to roam through this “bizarre country”.

Michel, who is now feeling perfectly healthy again, is looking for the meaning of his life. He would like power of shame, but cannot yet distinguish. He plans a new beginning, gets involved with a prostitute , but then prefers her brother, a boy.

Quotes

  • You can't be sincere and seem at the same time.
  • Ménalque: You think you have and you become possessed.
  • From the complete oblivion of yesterday I create the novelty of every hour.
  • Joy is like the manna of the desert, which perishes from one day to the next.

Testimonials

Gide wrote to Scheffer that it was only because he was not Michel that he had met his story in the novel.

reception

Discussion after the publication of the first German-language edition

In his note after the publication of the translation of the novel into German by Felix Paul Greve , Hesse initially criticized the translator's error-free, but somewhat unsuccessful work on the “noble” text and then went into more detail on the changes in Michel's worldview, all of them initiated by the fate of his imposed wife Marceline.

Recent meetings

The work is Gide's first "realistic" story. Michel urges "the gentle and pious Marceline to share his anarchist life". Krebber praises the "immoralist"; praises "its bold but restrained drama, the fiery purity of its lines."

title

The word morality is in the title. You have to look for it in the text. After Krebber, Gide opens a series of works with the novel, above which the "triad of morality, psychology and art " sounds. And Lang admires Ménalques “clairvoyant moral dynamism”.

composition

Martin gives an example of the well-being of the work. At the end of the novel, Marceline dies in Algeria in the place where at the beginning of the novel Michel had learned to appreciate "the delicious riches of life and health" while recovering from the same illness.

Morphology: Michel tells his story to the three silently listening friends. The latter, in turn, is framed: One of the friends gives the story to a president in writing. The letter writer also tells the reader how the three friends listen in silence.

Germaine Brée symbolically interprets Michel's turn to the various boys in the novel. The encounters described stand for turning points in Michel's development. For example, Moktir stands for Michel's "uprising" against morality.

philosophy

Krebber thinks that the novel is “strongly drawn by Nietzsche .” Because before the novel was written, Gide fell under the “spell” of this philosopher. In the context of the second half of the novel, the increasing “enhancement of life and adoration of life” of the protagonist Michel is unmistakable. When asked whether the text was “dependent” on the ideas of the German philosopher, Gide answered in the negative. But Lang is absolutely certain - the work is "a Nietzschean novel". For example, he relates Nietzsche's aphorism “The property possesses” to Ménalque's statement about property (see above under “Quotations”). Lang admits, however, that Gide “interpreted Nietzsche critically” in the novel.

Theis points out the obvious. The paleographer Michel's turning away from his science, as described in the novel, illustrates thoughts from Nietzsche's work “ On the benefits and disadvantages of history for life ”. Martin emphasizes Ménalque's philosophical speeches; discusses Ménalque's pioneering role “on the way to liberation” Michels.

Autobiography

Lang and Martin read autobiographical information from the novel.

The narrow gate

Michel is compared with Alissa Bucolin several times in the literature. Lang and Theis contrast Michel's egotistical greed for life with Alissa's limitless self-sacrifice in “following Christ”. But Gide had let neither one nor the other urge completely control him in his life.

German editions

source
  • Raimund Theis (Ed.), Peter Schnyder (Ed.): André Gide: Der Immoralist . Translated from the French by Gisela Schlientz. Pp. 363-481. The basis of the translation was the above. Original edition from 1902. With an afterword by Raimund Theis: “To The Immoralist ”. Pp. 561-574. Collected works in twelve volumes. Volume VII / 1, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt Stuttgart 1991. 587 pages, ISBN 3-421-06467-9
German-language first edition
  • André Gide: The Immoralist. Novel. German translation by Felix Paul Greve approved by the author and reviewed by him. JCC Bruns, Minden 1905. 191 pages, paperback
Secondary literature
  • Renée Lang: André Gide and the German spirit (French: André Gide et la Pensée Allemande ). Translation: Friedrich Hagen . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt Stuttgart 1953. 266 pages
  • Günter Krebber: Studies on the aesthetics and criticism of André Gides . Cologne Romanistic works. New episode. Issue 13. Geneva and Paris 1959. 171 pages
  • Claude Martin: André Gide . Translated from the French by Ingeborg Esterer. Rowohlt 1963 (July 1987 edition). 176 pages, ISBN 3-499-50089-2
  • Volker Michels (Ed.): Hermann Hesse. The world in book I. Reviews and essays from the years 1900-1910. In: Hermann Hesse. All works in 20 volumes, vol. 16. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988 (2002 edition), 646 pages, without ISBN

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Theis in the epilogue, source, p. 561, 7. Zvo
  2. ↑ Source, p. 6.
  3. ↑ Source, p. 426, 1. Zvo
  4. ↑ Source, p. 440, 15. Zvo
  5. ↑ Source, p. 441, 1. Zvo
  6. ↑ Source, p. 441, 13. Zvu
  7. ↑ Theis in the afterword, source, p. 565, 4th Zvu
  8. ↑ Hesse on July 18, 1905 in the " Münchner Zeitung ", quoted in Michels, pp. 212-214.
  9. ^ Theis in the epilogue, source, p. 561, 9. Zvo
  10. ^ Lang, p. 198, 14. Zvo
  11. ↑ Krebber, p. 70, 5. Zvo
  12. ↑ Source, p. 464, 8th Zvu
  13. ↑ Krebber, p. 54, 14. Zvo
  14. ↑ Lang, p. 208, 17th issue
  15. ↑ Martin, p. 77, 7. Zvo
  16. ↑ Source, pp. 367-369.
  17. ↑ Source, pp. 479-481.
  18. ↑ Germaine Brée, quoted by Theis in the afterword, source, pp. 570 below - 571 above
  19. ↑ Krebber, p. 65, 25. Zvo
  20. ↑ Krebber, p. 33, 18. Zvu
  21. ↑ Lang, p. 104 below to 105 above
  22. ↑ Lang, p. 123 below
  23. ↑ Because Nietzsche calls himself an immoralist several times, e. B: "I am the first immoralist" in Ecce Homo , Why I am a destiny
  24. ↑ Human, All Too Human II. First section: Mixed opinions and sayings, Aphorism 317
  25. ↑ Lang, p. 126, 16. Zvo
  26. ^ Theis in the epilogue, source, p. 573 below
  27. ↑ Martin, p. 77, 23rd Zvu
  28. ↑ Lang, p. 123, 3. Zvo
  29. ↑ Martin, p. 74 above
  30. ^ Lang, p. 130, 3rd Zvu
  31. ^ Theis in the epilogue, source, p. 566 middle
  32. ↑ Source, p. 6