The heretic of Soana

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The Heretic von Soana is a novella by the German Nobel Prize winner for literature Gerhart Hauptmann , which was written from 1911 and appeared in the Neue Rundschau in January 1918 .

The 25 year old ascetic priest Francesco Vela “from a good family” disregards celibacy and enjoys a midsummer night of love with the 15 year old goatherd Agata in Italian Switzerland at the foot of Monte Generoso near Lake Lugano . "Man and woman are under the dictation" of the "deity Eros ...".

Gerhart Hauptmann on a painting by Lovis Corinth from 1900

Emergence

Soana can be taken as Rovio , because from 1897 to 1901 Gerhart Hauptmann spent a few spring weeks in this village above Mendrisio every year. From Rovio, the author climbed Monte Generoso . In Rovio he was also told - during the second ascent of the mountain on May 6, 1897 - the story of a farmer who had lived in disgrace on the alp . Before the above mentioned start of the paperwork in 1911 in the Villa San Martino in Portofino , two sketches were made in 1897 and 1899. After the author had left it behind from 1912 to 1916, the text was not completed until 1917.

Working titles were The Demon of Soana , The Temptation and Fall of Francesco Velas, and The Syrian Goddess .

The text can also be read as a homage to Vincenzo Vela : Francesco inspects the famous uncle's studio in his hometown.

Frame narration

The “editor” of the text visits the well-educated mountain shepherd Ludovico, known by the locals as the heretic , on the alp in his stone hut. Ludovico tells the visitor a story he wrote himself - see below under Internal Narration .

Then the editor comments on the story: It is a true story. Of course, the names are made up.

Internal narration

After his ordination, Francesco from Ligornetto was given the parish of Soana, a three- hour walk away, as his first place of work. After a good month, the young man has his sheep under control; more than that - he is widely regarded as something of a saint. In March, a certain Luchino Scarabota enters his parsonage and wants to send a few of his seven children to the new pastor's church school. Francesco doesn't know the man who mostly only makes rough, vertigo-like sounds. But he is from Soana, the petitioner asserts.

The next day the pastor visits Sindaco Sor Domenico and asks about the overgrown stranger. Yes, there is a shepherd. Luchino Scarabota lives in the Alpe Santa Croce (Heiligkreuz) high up on the mountain, where he and his biological sister have many children.

Francesco asks his bishop the next step in dealing with this incestuous case. The church does not give up. At the end of March, shortly before Easter, Francesco checks that everything is going on on behalf of his bishop. When he climbs up the narrow footpath covered with budding daffodils at the waterfall of the Savaglia river, together with someone who knows the area under the occasional thunder, he feels sublime - large and tiny - small at the same time in the midst of wild nature. Turning his gaze away from Capolago below, Francesco finally sees a few filthy, matted children's heads upstairs. In his primitive stone dwelling, Luchino Scarabota receives the clergyman who has sent his companion back, crawling and submissive. Confused, the visitor cannot turn his gaze from a hideous carving. The image of this harmless god of procreation confuses Francesco. Then the pale sinner, Luchino Scarabota's filth-staring sister, appears and picks up the notebook. Your moronic brother is completely innocent. Occasionally she sold herself to this or that mountain hiker passing by. No midwife has ever stood by her. Many children died young and she had to bury them in the Generoso dump. Francesco demands the separation of the "couple". Impossible - so the woman parried quickly. The dependent Luchino would then follow her like a poor dog. Agata, a fully developed nanny of unusual beauty, enters the hut. This daughter of the couple disturbs Francesco afterwards in his laborious pastoral work with sweet singing. The priest ends the visit and arranges a service with the hut residents for the beginning of May in the remote mountain chapel of St. Agata. Outside in the cold mountain air, he meets the beautiful, very young goatherd once again.

Back in the valley of Soana, Francesco's calm is gone. The horrific carved satyr symbol including the image of the fruit of sin - meaning Agata - put the cleric in a state of obsession. When Francesco undertakes the second ascent, the Scarabotas have already gathered in the mountain chapel, but Agata is missing. The priest breaks off the service without concentrating, wanders around outside and meets Agata below the summit. Francesco, contemplating the beauties, must recognize that he has "fallen hopelessly to life and death" in this body.

Once in the valley, it is impossible for the young clergyman to “tear the fetters that are forcibly pulling him to the alp”. During his next entry into the mountains, he meets the laughing, intermittently breathing Agata rider on a billy goat. Because Agata can neither read nor write, Francesco quotes her to his school in Soana.

Francesco confesses in a kind of hide-and-seek game at the Arciprete in Arogno .

When the ragged Agata entered Soana as instructed, the ostracized woman is almost stoned to death in the street by a crowd of children. The priest is overcome by “the fear of the inevitable fall into the crime of mortal sin” and at the same time he wants to “roar with unrestrained joy”. Agata knows that she was conceived in incest. Francesco shares this suffering and misery and accompanies Agata home. On the secret path through the sultry summer night, the intimately strolling couple does not get up to the alp, but "the heavy, almost intoxicated walk of lovers" leads down a rarely used footpath into the deep Savaglia Gorge. There in the remote hut next to the waterfall, Agata loses her innocence. Gerhart Hauptmann describes “the delicious miracle of the world hour”: “He [Francesco] no longer felt like a person of any time ... The nocturnal world around him was just as timeless ... Nobody out there could harm him ... His superiors had become the lower ones ... No other man lived besides himself in the fullness of sinless creation. "As a priest, Francesco no longer talks about creation, but actively participates in it in silence:" ... he burrowed himself into the core of the world ... ".

reception

Contemporaries
  • 1918, The Protestant pastor Hermann Curt Wehrhahn railed after the text appeared: "There is no way down deeper into the dirt."
  • 1918, Thomas Mann at first disconcerted how the Christian Gerhart Hauptmann could deal with Christ "in such a humorous way" , but later compares the text appreciatively with death in Venice .
  • 1918, Walther Rathenau raves about his refreshment in a letter to the author. Alma Mahler also praises Mahler in high notes and receives a gallant reply from Gerhart Hauptmann.
  • May 1919, the evangelical weekly magazine Licht und Leben attacks the alleged profit-making of S. Fischer Verlag with the help of the above-mentioned conviction of Hermann Curt Wehrhahn .
Newer
  • May 22, 1967, Wolfgang Hildesheimer said in the Spiegel about Hauptmann's great stories that the protagonist in the heretic of Soana was only a sinner.
  • 1984, Sprengel: Gertrud von Rüdiger (see below) described the framework narrative as a “hidden final chapter” in the sense: Although it is not admitted at any point in the text, but rather denied, “nobody has yet doubted the identity of Francesco and Ludovico . "Sprengel names the following work:
    • 1920, Gertrud von Rüdiger: Art form of Gerhart Hauptmann's 'Heretic of Soana'.
    • 1938, Franz Rauhut : Zola - Captain - Pirandello . The relationship between three seals.
    • 1957, Gottfried Fischer: Narrative forms in the works of Gerhart Hauptmann. With special consideration of the time and space design.
    • 1964, Wolfgang Grothe : Gerhart Hauptmann's novella 'Der Ketzer von Soana'. An ancient litter.
    • 1969, Dietrich Meinert: Shepherd and priest in Gerhart Hauptmann's poetry.
    • 1972, Wolfgang Otto Dill: Structural conception of the Dionysian as polarity inherent in life .
    • 1973, Manfred Schunicht: The 'second reality'. On the stories of Gerhart Hauptmann.
    • 1974, Frederick A. Klemm: Hauptmann's Diary and the 'Ketzer' . (English)
    • 1978, Ralph Ley: The Shattering of the Construct: Gerhart Hauptmann and His "Heretic". (English)
    • 1979, Rolf-Dieter Koll: Gerhart Hauptmann's 'Heretic of Soana'. A study on the problem of speech quality.
    • 1981, Roy C. Cowen: Hauptmann commentary on the non-dramatic work .
  • 1995, Leppmann is reminded of Daphnis and Chloe des Longos from Lesbos while reading it . Gerhart Hauptmann was surprised by the success of the text in June 1918. Leppmann finds a reason. After the war , the reader was sorely in need of distraction from hunger, street fighting, Soviet republic and inflation .
  • 1998, Marx regrets the lack of any "critical perspective". If only the “editor” in the frame narration could have distanced himself from the internal narrator.
  • 2004, Sprengel: The author celebrates the "divinity of sexuality". Bölsches monism à la Love life in nature shines through.

literature

expenditure

First edition:
  • The heretic of Soana. S. Fischer, Berlin 1918
Output used:
  • The heretic of Soana. Pp. 65–132 in Gerhard Stenzel (Ed.): Gerhart Hauptmann's works in two volumes. Volume II. 1072 pages. Verlag Das Bergland-Buch, Salzburg 1956 (thin print)

Secondary literature

  • Gerhard Stenzel (Ed.): Gerhart Hauptmann's works in two volumes. Volume II. 1072 pages. Verlag Das Bergland-Buch, Salzburg 1956 (thin print), p. 10, 4. Zvo overview
  • The heretic of Soana . P. 210–220 in Peter Sprengel : Gerhart Hauptmann. Epoch - work - effect. 298 pages. CH Beck, Munich 1984 (Beck's elementary books), ISBN 3-406-30238-6 .
  • Thurit Kriener: Gerhart Hauptmann's novella 'Der Ketzer von Soana'. An investigation into the genesis of the work and literary influences on the basis of the estate. In: Thurit Kriener, Gabriella Rovagnati: Dionysian Perspectives. Gerhart Hauptmann's novella “The Heretic of Soana” and his correspondence with Rudolf Pannwitz . Berlin 2005, pp. 15–114.
  • Wolfgang Leppmann : Gerhart Hauptmann. A biography. Ullstein, Berlin 1996 (Ullstein-Buch 35608), 415 pages, ISBN 3-548-35608-7 (identical text with ISBN 3-549-05469-6 , Propylaen, Berlin 1995, subtitled with Die Biographie )
  • The heretic of Soana . P. 297–303 in: Friedhelm Marx : Gerhart Hauptmann . Reclam, Stuttgart 1998 (RUB 17608, Literature Studies series). 403 pages, ISBN 3-15-017608-5
  • Peter Sprengel: History of German-Language Literature 1900–1918. From the turn of the century to the end of the First World War. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9 .
  • Peter Sprengel: Gerhart Hauptmann. Bourgeoisie and big dream. A biography. 848 pages. CH Beck, Munich 2012 (1st edition), ISBN 978-3-406-64045-2

Web links

Remarks

  1. Francesco's uncle Vincenzo Vela died about ten years ago (edition used, p. 95 below).
  2. Gerhart Hauptmann read the shepherd's novel in 1905 (Marx, p. 300 above).

Individual evidence

  1. Marx, p. 303, 11. Zvo
  2. Sprengel anno 2012, p. 506, middle
  3. Sprengel anno 2012, p. 506, 6th Zvu
  4. Sprengel anno 2012, p. 300 below
  5. Sprengel anno 2012, p. 443
  6. Marx, p. 299 above
  7. Sprengel anno 1984, p. 211 middle and Sprengel anno 2012, p. 443, 10th Zvu
  8. ^ Marx, p. 299, 10. Zvo
  9. Edition used, p. 95
  10. Edition used, p. 104, 15. Zvo
  11. Edition used, p. 124, 5. Zvo
  12. Edition used, p. 127, 16. Zvu
  13. Hermann Curt Wehrhahn quoted in Sprengel anno 2012, p. 507, 3. Zvo (Wehrhahn, Hermann Curt: Das Evangelium Gerhart Hauptmanns . In: Evangelical Truth. Hannoversche Halbmontatsschrift für religious and cultural questions of the present. February 1918, p. 126)
  14. Thomas Mann, quoted in Leppmann, p. 267, 19. Zvo
  15. Sprengel anno 2012, p. 507, 16. Zvu
  16. Sprengel anno 2012, p. 507, 14th Zvu
  17. Sprengel anno 2012, p. 507, 11. Zvu
  18. Sprengel anno 2012, p. 507, 10. Zvo
  19. Sprengel anno 1984, p. 218 middle; see also Sprengel anno 2012, p. 506, 6th Zvu
  20. Gertrud von Rüdiger in Sprengel in 1984, p. 210
  21. Franz Rauhut in Sprengel anno 1984, p. 210; see also Marx, p. 302 above
  22. Gottfried Fischer in Sprengel anno 1984, p. 210 and p. 286
  23. Wolfgang Grothe in Sprengel anno 1984, p. 210
  24. Dietrich Meinert in Sprengel anno 1984, p. 210
  25. Wolfgang Otto Dill in Sprengel anno 1984, p. 210 and p. 286
  26. Manfred Schunicht in Sprengel anno 1984, p. 210
  27. Frederick A. Klemm in Sprengel anno 1984, p. 210
  28. Ralph Ley in Sprengel anno 1984, p. 210
  29. Rolf-Dieter Koll in Sprengel in 1984, p. 210
  30. ^ Roy C. Cowen in Sprengel anno 1984, p. 210 and p. 284
  31. Sprengel anno 2012, p. 508, 2nd Zvo
  32. Leppmann, p. 267 below to p. 269 above
  33. Marx, p. 303 middle
  34. online Bölsche anno 1898 in the DTA
  35. Sprengel anno 2004, p. 376 above
  36. The Heretic by Soana S. Fischer, Berlin 1918 (published Christmas 1917)
  37. ^ Entry in the DDB