The Junker of Ballantrae

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William Brassey Hole: Illustration for
The Master of Ballantrae . Cassell, London 1896:
During the crossing from Scotland to New York - Mr. Ephraim Mackellar wants to commit murder; wants to push the Junker of Ballantrae off the railing into the open sea.

The squire of Ballantrae ( Engl. The Master of Ballantrae ) is a historical adventure novel by the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson , who wrote in the winter of 1888 in Saranac, in the May 17, 1889 Waikiki was completed in the same year at Cassell in London appeared. The translation into German was brought out by Velhagen in Bielefeld in 1894 under the title Der Erbe von Ballantrae .

Stevenson describes in his with horror elements sparingly embellished Familienroman the struggle of warring aristocratic Scottish brothers James and Henry in the middle of the 18th century. The author balances on the borderline between realism and romance .

content

In the early summer of 1745 , Prince Charlie set sail from northern France and landed in Scotland. The Stuart wants to win back the Scottish and English crowns for his house. So he sets up an army to fight the English .

Old Scottish Lord Durrisdeer can't just put his hands on his lap. In order to keep the family property in any case, he has to send one of his two children - these are Henry Durie (born around 1726) and James Durie, Junker von Ballantrae (born around 1722, also known as Mr. Bally) - into this battle against the English. The lot falls on the Junker - that is the inheritance. James survived the Battle of Culloden in 1746 . The Jacobite managed to escape to France. James doesn't dare go back to the British Isles. He squeezes the brother financially for years. The Lord's Durrisdeer estate near the town of St. Bride on the banks of the Swift River does not yield the huge sums demanded from exile in Paris. Henry has to take out a loan in Edinburgh.

Before the Paris escapades I just mentioned, James had spent time in eastern North America and on the Coromandel Coast in French India. Everything had started on the run after the lost battle of Culloden: on the pirate ship of Captain Teach, the Junker had forced to howl with the wolves, even crossed the North Atlantic, had advanced from New York to the area north of Albany and had dubious business made with the dealer Mr. Jacob Chew. At home in Scotland the Junker had to leave his fiancée, the wealthy Alison Graeme, behind. The young lady, the owner of an estate in the province of New York , had meanwhile given in to the urging of the impoverished old Lord Durrisdeer and on June 1, 1748 married his well-behaved son Henry Durie. The marriage soon results in Katherine and much later in Alexander (born July 17, 1757).

The Junker finally returns to Durrisdeer with the help of pirates from Paris, settles in the country estate and sneaks the trust of Katherine. On February 27, 1757, a few months before Alexander was born, Henry intentionally hit his brother on the mouth. He then stabs his brother to death in the ensuing duel. He rams the sword up to the hilt against the breastbone . But the hero in Stevenson's horror story is not that easy to kill. The smugglers bring the "corpse" out of the country. Papers left behind reveal the former Jacobite as a spy of the English crown, but Mrs. Henry burns these documents, with which one could protect oneself from the extortion of the Junker.

It appears that Mr. Henry, who received a traumatic shock, possibly a stroke , in the incident , is no longer quite sane. Previously economical and hardworking, he becomes negligent in financial matters and tires quickly. He doesn't regret the duel, just regrets its failure. After the father dies, Henry becomes the new Lord Durrisdeer.

In the spring of 1764 the risen Junker returns to Durrisdeer for the second time, penniless, this time with the Indian Secundra Dass in his entourage. Allegedly, the faithful Indian companion, a goldsmith, is ready for any deed, including murder, for his master. The Lord wishes the brother to go to Hell and flees with the family before the unannounced visit to the secret travel destination New York. Brother James follows three weeks later, gifted with a detective instinct for probable escape directions. The reception overseas, however, is more than frosty. The brother locks his house from the newcomer. According to a certain merchant Mr. Jacob Chew from Albany, the Junker has been suspected of murder for years. James dispassionately makes it clear that the conspiratorial brother Henry holds his rightful place as lord. Lord Durrisdeer sits on the longer lever. He feeds his brother off with a hunger egg. Stevenson allows himself a comic dangling: From then on, the humiliated Junker earns his living as a tailor in New York.

The tailoring episode comes to an end when the presumed pirate Captain Harris and his gallows birds - Stevenson calls the criminals who failed in life "the dregs of colonial villainy" - in New York harbor. Soon the wintry journey will be in a boat up the Hudson towards the wilderness beyond Albany, i.e. into the Adirondacks . The Junker used to bury a treasure there. That should be lifted. The Junker suspects that Harris’s share in the treasure is just a bonus. The captain was certainly hired as his murderer by the brother. So the Junker decides to die. He apparently wants to evade his potential murderers through “death”. During the dangerous journey from time to time a member of the expedition - always in the morning - is found scalped and dead in the Indian area . The Junker falls ill. Before his death, he reveals the hiding place to the traveling merchant John Mountain. The Indian Secundra Dass buries his master. The experienced Stevenson reader suspects that the buried cannot be really dead. Lord Durrisdeer cannot believe his luck either. From Albany he sets out into the mountains to the shores of Lake Champlain . On the spot, he insists on the brother's exhumation . The Indian does this without being asked. When the uncovered "corpse" briefly opens its eyes, the rushing eyewitness Lord Durrisdeer falls to the ground. Death. The Junker killed the brother with this very last action. The Indian goldsmith committed a malpractice. He must have had an extremely painful experience. His trick with the happy resurrection of the seemingly buried dead only works in the warm Indian soil.

Alexander becomes Lord Durrisdeer.

shape

The frame narrative was written retrospectively and published posthumously for the first time in 1898 in the last volume of the Stevenson Complete Edition.

The storyline of the novel runs for twenty years. The first-person narrator is Mr. Ephraim Mackellar, manager of the Durrisdeer estate. In the style of a sovereign editor, this actually "homely" (according to Stevenson in the foreword) Magister of the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Edinburgh weaves reports from two gentlemen into his text when he was not there: When the Junker flees from Scotland to East North America Mackellar has an eyewitness, the Irish Colonel Francis Burke, tell the story. The colonel, bearer of the Order of St. Louis , is a bosom friend of the Junker. And when the Junker ventures into the Indian wilderness north of Albany towards the end of the novel to recover his treasure, the trader John Mountain, another eyewitness, has his say.

Mackellar understates the exuberance of narrative feelings - he calls himself a bad observer - and likes to anticipate. So he promises: "... as I will tell you soon." Or he suddenly introduces the Indian Secundra Dass and oracles that all final evil is rooted in the Indian's knowledge of English. Finally, the extremely talkative Mackellar reveals the end in the last New York episode: When Captain Harris berths in New York, the narrator chats about the imminent death of the two warring brothers in the early winter wilderness north of Albany.

The genre term "historical adventure novel" chosen in the article header is not meant to be derogatory. Dölvers works out the intellectual component of the text when he looks at "the irony of various overlapping performance perspectives" that "draw the reader into the riddle of evil". The text cannot be dismissed as a black and white painting. At first and for a long time it looks as if the Junker embodies evil and his brother embodies good. In the second half of the novel, the development goes in a different direction, but not necessarily, but accompanied by retreats. After Mr. Henry finally becomes Lord Durrisdeer, he neglects his wife. Lady Alison used to give her husband the cold shoulder and mourn the dearly beloved Junker. Because of this and because the new lord does not regret the unfortunate duel, Mackellar turns away from his master, but not without self-doubt, and instead to the lady, her daughter Katherine and James. It is true that he consistently describes the Junker as a “cunning devil”, but - on closer inspection - he identifies the adventurous flight to France as the cause of the Junker's “career” as a criminal. Already at the beginning of the novel, on Captain Teach's ship, you either become the pirate's quartermaster or go down the plank as a decent guy . When Mackellar accompanied the Junker to New York towards the end of the novel, twenty years later, he encouraged the adventurer; would like to see someone in him who has what it takes to be a good person. On the stormy sea voyage, Stevenson pushes the above-mentioned radical departure from black and white painting to extremes. Mackellar has Richardson's Clarissa in his luggage and turns into a villain; makes a murder attempt - wants to push the Junker over the railing. He's unlucky with the almost immortal hero. Wrong world: Now Stevenson is increasingly making the Junker appear as the reasonable; on the other hand Mackellar and his master as unreasonable at times. All in all: The Junker ultimately lives up to his role as the title figure in the eyes of the reader. He becomes lord (master, as the English title says) of Mackellars and Henrys. Reinbold, however, thinks the Junker is not developing. In addition, Reinbold states that Mackellar is turning away from his master because he is caught by the Junker's suggestion. Although the hero James rises in the reader's favor towards the end of the novel, he is always told by the moralist Mackellar that he is bad and his brother is good. The Junker does his best to torpedo the author's construction work, for example when he trumpets: "I have a royal being."

There is no lack of side stories that characterize the protagonist. A certain Jessie Broun is mentioned several times, whom the Junker is said to have treated badly earlier at Gut Durrisdeer.

Mr. Mackellar occasionally uses the Seemannssprache - for example: "... like ... the logger with back gebrasstem Jib lay waiting."

Historical and literary influences

Stevenson names two models for the text - first the fate of the Marquis of Tullibardine and second the story of a seemingly dead Indian fakir who survived buried.

In fact, the literary and historical influences on the work are very complex. For one, Stevenson read the ghost stories of Frederick Marryat at the time of its creation . On the other hand, the work is reminiscent of the warring sons of the 1st Duke of Atholl in the Jacobite Revolution 1745/46. Henry is an English royal name, while the name James refers to the House of Stuart . The red thread of the plot is based on Virgil's Aeneid, which the partisans of the Jacobites appropriated as an analogy to the fate of the Stuarts, whereby this claim does not serve to glorify the past, but to a questionable future through the intended re-establishment of the Scottish monarchy under Bonnie Prince Charlie - a master of deception whose behavior is copied by the master. He defines the world as the "playground of cutthroats and sleight of hand". The master describes himself as an Aeneas who fled from the smoking ruins of his fortune in India (= Troy ) and carried a second anchises with him, and Lord Durrisdeer also compares him to Aeneas. The Americans treat the master with hostility, the Indians and trappers seek his life - an analogy to the Scottish clans, who only stand for the English crown because they are paid for it. Stevenson takes the parody of the utopian (new) founding myth of the Stuarts to extremes by introducing a fake copy of the hero.

Testimonials from important authors on the novel

  • I read the "Junker von Ballantrae" (...) with great excitement. Above all, a dialogue of inspiring dramatic power is impressive. Thomas Mann
  • "The Junker of Ballantrae": strange book in which everything is excellent, but so heterogeneous that it appears as a sample map of everything in which Stevenson is able to shine. André Gide
  • (...) the extraordinary example of an adventure novel in which the reader's sympathy for the adventurer (...) has to be asserted with difficulty. As I said: an invention of the very first order. Bertolt Brecht
  • I would like to draw your attention to a little-known book that I read recently and that I consider to be more important than almost all great novels (...). It's the "Junker of Ballantrae" by Stevenson. Get this for yourself if you can. Walter benjamin

reception

  • In his meeting, LA Fiedler viewed the Junker as an isolated individual because he was living in exile. Dölvers sees the orphanage of the Junker as one of the main springs for his various adventure trips.
  • Stevenson uses the history mentioned in the head of the Contents section only as a slide. According to Wirzberger, the protagonists acted privately motivated. He sees the duel of the brothers as the climax of the novel.
  • Dölvers emphasizes "the linguistic complexity of this work". This also resulted in the constant reader interest in the novel up to our time. Stevenson was apprenticed to Maria Edgeworth as a young reader . In her Castle Rackrent from 1800, the manager Mackellar was trained in the manager Thady Quirk. Dölvers goes into the Scottish Presbyterianism and the limited horizons of the “oh so inadequate” narrator Mackellar. First, Mackellar accompanied the Junker to New York because he wanted to put a stop to the evil. Dölvers claims that the Junker's enemies in the North American wilderness are not scalped by the Indians at night, but by the Indian Secundra Dass.

Film adaptations

motion pictures
TV Movie

German-language literature

expenditure

  • The Junker of Ballantrae. Novel . Translator: Alphonse Neumann. Reiss Verlag, Berlin 1911, 349 pages, linen
  • The Junker of Ballantrae. Translator: Paul Baudisch, Munich 1924.
  • The Junker of Ballantrae. A winter march. Translated from the English by Curt Thesing . Buchenau & Reichert, Munich 1925. 352 pages
  • The Junker of Ballantrae . Peter J. Deftergaard Verlag, 1926. 272 ​​pages. fracture
  • The Junker of Ballantrae. A novel of adventurous fates. Original German translation by Ed. O. Paget. Gnadenfeld & Co., Berlin around 1930. 272 ​​pages
  • The Junker of Ballantrae. An adventure novel. Transferred by Heinrich Siemer. With drawings by Franz Danksin. German Book Association, Berlin 1933, 383 pages
  • The Junker of Ballantrae . Hesse & Becker Verlag, Leipzig around 1935, 348 pages, linen
  • The Junker of Ballantrae. A winter march. Translated from the English by Paul Baudisch and Curt Thesing . Cassianeum, Donauwörth 1949. 297 pages
  • The Junker of Ballantrae. Novel. Translated from the English by Lore Krüger . Structure Berlin 1959, 291 pages
  • Robert Louis Stevenson: The Junker of Ballantrae. Novel. Translated from the English by Arthur Nestmann and Gottheld Dehnert . Epilogue: Karl-Heinz Wirzberger . Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Leipzig 1963. 295 pages
  • The Junker of Ballantrae. Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1979 (detebe-Taschenbuch), ISBN 3-257-20703-4
  • The Junker of Ballantrae. Voltmedia, Paderborn 2005, 317 pages, ISBN 3-937229-47-7
  • The corpse robber . The Junker of Ballantrae. Translated from the English by Curt Thesing and Richard Mummendey . Audiobook (7 audio CDs). Speaker: Hans Helmut Dickow and Gert Westphal . Produced by NDR in 1984 and 1986. Grosser & Stein publishing house, Pforzheim 2007. ISBN 978-3-86735-252-9
  • The Master of Ballantrae. A winter story. Translation and epilogue: Melanie Walz. Hamburg 2010. (Based on the Penguin edition London 1996, edited by Adrian Poole.)

Secondary literature

  • Horst Dölvers: The narrator Robert Louis Stevenson. Interpretations. Francke Verlag, Bern 1969, without ISBN, 200 pages.
  • Michael Reinbold: Robert Louis Stevenson. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1995, ISBN 3-499-50488-X .

Web links

Wikisource: The Master of Ballantrae  - Sources and full texts (English)
Commons : The Master of Ballantrae  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Other titles in German-language editions: Der Erbe von Ballantrae , Der Herr von Ballantrae and Die feindlichen Brüder .
  2. ↑ Stevenson doesn’t work out the Parisian and Indian episodes narrative at all, but during his last stay as a tailor in New York he lets the Junker sum up that he had lost fortune three times in one fell swoop; twice in Paris and once in India. Guilty parties are also shown: Prince Charlie in Paris and General Clive in India .
  3. ↑ Some facts in Mr. Mackellar's family history are a bit contradicting each other. For example, when he lets the colonel speak, he dates Alison's wedding (unchallenged by Mackellar) to November 1747 (edition used, p. 71, 2nd Zvu).
  4. ↑ Dölvers speaks of the “breaking up of the Durrisdeer house” (Dölvers, p. 165, 12. Zvo).
  5. ↑ In addition, Stevenson said, “the older brother is an incubus ” (Stevenson, quoted in Dölvers, p. 141, 8. Zvo). Dölvers' comment: “No doubt for Mackellar: the Junker is in league with Satan” (p. 160, 14th Zvu).
  6. ↑ Reinbold aptly formulates that good annihilates itself in the fight against evil (Reinbold, p. 102, 1. Zvo).
  7. ↑ Edition used.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ engl. William Hole
  2. ↑ engl. Saranac Lake, New York
  3. ↑ Wirzberger, p. 277 Mitte and Reinbold, p. 98, 5th Zvu
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 5
  5. ↑ engl. Cassell
  6. ↑ Reinbold, p. 152, 3. Zvo
  7. ↑ see Dölvers, p. 156, 11. Zvo
  8. ↑ Dölvers, p. 159, 3rd Zvu
  9. ↑ Dölvers, p. 170, 7. Zvo
  10. ↑ engl. Jacobite rising of 1745
  11. ↑ Dölvers, p. 141, 6. Zvo
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 80, 9. Zvo and 19. Zvo
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 223, 2nd Zvu and p. 164, 14th Zvu
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 89, 11. Zvu
  15. ↑ Edition used, p. 150, 4th Zvu
  16. ↑ see also Dölvers, p. 158, 15. Zvo
  17. ↑ Dölvers, p. 170, 6th Zvu
  18. ↑ see also Wirzberger, p. 277, 7th Zvu
  19. ↑ Dölvers, p. 156, 16. Zvu
  20. ↑ Dölvers, p. 156, 11. Zvu
  21. ↑ Edition used, p. 203, 12. Zvo
  22. ↑ Dölvers, p. 164, 17th Zvu
  23. ↑ Dölvers, p. 165, 17th Zvu
  24. ↑ Reinbold, p. 102, 5. Zvo
  25. ↑ Reinbold, p. 102, 7. Zvo
  26. ↑ Edition used, p. 78, 15. Zvu
  27. ↑ engl. William Murray, Marquess of Tullibardine
  28. ↑ Stevenson, quoted in Reinbold, p. 100, 16. Zvo
  29. ↑ Edition used, p. 207, 3rd Zvu
  30. ^ Adrian Pool: Introduction to the Penguin pocket edition The Master of Ballantrae. London 1996.
  31. ↑ Melanie Walz: Doppelganger, Wechselbälger. Epilogue to: The Master von Ballantrae , Hamburg edition 2010, esp. Pp. 343–346.
  32. ↑ LA Fiedler anno 1961 in Victorian literature cited in Dölvers, p. 138, 4. Zvo and p. 187, footnote 3
  33. ↑ Dölvers, p. 162, 18. Zvu
  34. ↑ Wirzberger, p. 280 below
  35. ↑ Wirzberger, p. 282, 9. Zvu
  36. ^ Dölvers, p. 155, 9. Zvo
  37. ↑ engl. Castle Rackrent (German: my high-born rule )
  38. ↑ Dölvers, p. 159, 4th Zvu
  39. ↑ Dölvers, p. 161
  40. ↑ Dölvers, p. 162, 10. Zvo
  41. ↑ Dölvers, p. 164, 10th Zvu
  42. ↑ Dölvers, p. 166, 4. Zvo
  43. ↑ Dölvers, p. 170, 7th Zvu
  44. ↑ engl. The Master of Ballantrae
  45. ↑ The privateer in the IMDb
  46. ↑ engl. Beatrice Campbell
  47. ↑ engl. Leonard Maguire
  48. ↑ engl. Paul Kermack
  49. ↑ engl. Phil McCall
  50. ↑ The Master of Ballantrae TV 1962
  51. ↑ El señor de Osanto TV 1974
  52. ↑ engl. Brigit Forsyth
  53. ↑ The Master of Ballantrae TV 1975
  54. ↑ Ital. Il signore di Ballantrae
  55. ↑ Italian Giuseppe Pambieri
  56. ^ Italian Gino La Monica
  57. ↑ Ital. Mita Medici
  58. ^ Italian Giancarlo Zanetti
  59. ↑ engl. Pavel Douglas