The painter and the girl

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Rembrandt drew Elsje Christaens at the Calvary in the IJsselmeer north of Amsterdam: “The painter stared at the tied and nailed child for a while [...] holding on to everything [...] the inevitable ax. […] The little face […] reflected youth, pain, incomprehension. And a touch of outrage ”.

The painter and the girl (OT: De schilder en het meisje ) is the title of a novel by the Dutch writer Margriet de Moor, published in 2010 .

Course of action

The novel takes place in Amsterdam on Saturday, May 3, 1664, the day of the execution of eighteen-year-old Elsje Christiaens. The reader follows the stories of the protagonists in two storylines that are initially separate and then more and more interwoven: firstly, the last few weeks in the life of the Danish girl, who at the end is drawn dead on a stake by an unnamed painter, and secondly, the daily routine faded-in memoirs of the 57-year-old artist, who can be identified as Rembrandt through a biographical comparison and the descriptions of the drawings and paintings . However, the lack of naming gives the author a lot of leeway for the fictional plot.

Elsje Christiaen's trip to Holland

Elsje's story begins on a December day in the house of her stepfather, a Dutch farmer who immigrated to Denmark (Kp. 4), three weeks after her stepsister Sarah-Dina left Jutland for Amsterdam without saying goodbye and found five thalers under her mattress. She takes this as a message to follow her and not to marry Ragnar, who is courting her. At the age of four, Else Christians, with a Danish name, came to this house with her mother and after her death was taken care of by Sara-Dina, who was ten years her senior. The separation is announced when she falls in love with a friend of her brother, a Dutch boatman, at the beginning of May and dreams of a job in Amsterdam ("The city is madness, absolute madness, little one"), but at the same time jealously observes. how the beautiful seventeen-year-old sister is courted by the son of a wealthy family (cp. 5). Elsje suffers from the alienation: "Ragnar will certainly no longer succeed in pushing himself between the two sisters."

Rembrandt's etching of Amsterdam

Elsje waits until the shipping route from the East to the North Sea is free of ice again, and on March 6, 1664 begins a trip with the "Dorothe" from Aarhus via Korsör , where the seaman Niels Eilschov has to unload a load of tree trunks, to Amsterdam ( Chap. 8). However, pack ice and wind make landing at the first stage destination impossible. They are stranded off the island of Sprov in the Great Belt between Nyborg and Korsör and are brought ashore by Zibrandt Backer (cp. 9). Trein Jansdogter from Hollanderby on the island of Amak, south of Copenhagen (Kp. 12), also stays in the only farm . She is on her way across the island of Funen to her niece in Ribe on the west coast of Jutland with a farmhand and sleigh and takes Elsje with her. Elsje is celebrating her eighteenth birthday during an overnight stay in Assens on the Little Belt in the mayor's house and will receive a pair of reindeer skin boots as a present, which she will still wear on the stake. You travel on to Ribe and Elsje goes to Amsterdam on an ox transport ship owned by the Enkhuizer seaman Jan de Veth, which transports Danish slaughter cattle to Holland (Kp. 16, 17).

The search for the sister in Amsterdam

There she arrives on April 13th and stays in a hostel (cp. 20). It is a "casual house" with tenants, boarders, mostly immigrants looking for work, and prostitutes. For a week (p. 21) Elsje roams the city in the hope of finding a new home with her sister in the anonymity of the city. When she runs out of money, the landlady suggests that she pay the rent through prostitution and sets her the next day as an appointment.

She is now looking for a job and receives an address from an agent and the advice: “Don't let yourself be beaten. That is not allowed here! ”On the way to the house of her new employer, Elsje believes she has recognized Sarah-Dina in a woman and follows her. In this passage, in which the dreams and hopes of the uprooted girl become clear, the tense changes to visualize the events in the narrative or historical present : “Elsje thinks it's wonderful to follow the pattern that she has been protecting and protecting her whole girl's life en passant has messed everything up completely. First love, idyll between a stupid little step sister and a big stepsister, love pain, incomprehension, guilt. Guilt is something that you have, regardless of what you have done or what you feel, it is there, on your own, and you know that ... ”When she recognized the error, she got lost and did not try more to achieve the goal, but returns to the hostel disappointed.

The next morning (item 22) the “sleep woman” (“The physiognomy of the sleep woman, on the other hand, could no longer be called a human face now and on the following days”) furiously demands her money and attacks Elsje with a broom. She seizes an ax that happens to be lying on the ground, kills the screaming landlady with several blows and pushes her into the cellar. The girl then breaks open the travel boxes of some of the tenants, randomly packs items of clothing into a suitcase, is surprised by neighbors who have rushed to the house and escapes from the house. She jumps into the Damrak , but is pulled out of the water by a boatman and handed over to the police.

Paths of the painter through the city

The conspiracy ( Batavian Rebellion ) of Iulius Civilis (1661/62) was intended for the interior decoration of the Amsterdam Paleis op de Dam .

The painter leaves his house on Rozengracht (Kp. 1) around ten o'clock in the morning in order to order paint in Warmoesstraat for the picture of a couple he is working on. He met crowds of people on the way and learned that an 18-year-old girl was being executed on the Dam at eleven o'clock . This news haunts him all day. At the same time, his way through the city is laden with memories:

In the town hall (Kp. 2) he had to endure a shameful situation a year and nine months ago when the city's art committee rejected a monumental commissioned image, which he then cut up and reduced to the core of the scene.

The books in the window of an antiquarian bookshop (Kp. 3), in which he bought petrified animals and sculptures as a regular guest, remind him of the question about divine creation after the severe death of his partner Ricky. In a conversation with his son, he summed up the thesis of a Jewish scholar “God be the sum of all that exists and happens”, including suffering.

Light and shadow

In Kp. 6 the painter speaks to the pharmacist and paint manufacturer about the causes of the plague and mentally combines the work on the picture of the lovers, for which his companion was the model, with their illness in mid-June of last year. The main topic of this chapter is followed by a dialogue about colors and light, with three main focuses:

  • “ABOUT THE VALUE OF THE SUN” The pharmacist looks back on the discussion between the older master painter Samuel, who refers to the protagonist as a role model, with a young colleague about the difference between the sun and the room light. The “dreamer” wants to paint the sun, which the master warns him about: “The sun is something forbidden in creation. A very big taboo, also for us. Just as your eye lenses are no match for it, so are your colors. [...] Never let the light in the house exceed that of the outside! "
  • “ABOUT THE LIGHT ON WOMEN'S SKIN” In this context, the painter remembers a conversation with his student Samuel in his studio, when he was admiring one of his “most intimate works”, the painting of a half-bared young woman in an alcove, on the easel: “ How do you do that?"
  • "ABOUT THE LIGHT OF THE SHADOWS" The painter explained to Samuel the connection between light and dark: "Light is where the painter puts it". In an interior scene, it is important to know about indirect lighting. He demonstrates this to the student with some of his work:

  • Young Woman in Bed (1647)

  • Self-Portrait (1629)

  • The money changer or the rich fool (1627)

  • Self-portrait with a dead bittern (1639)

  • Captain Frans Banningh gives his lieutenant the order for the civil company to be deployed (Night Watch, 1642)

Eleven strikes of the bell tear the protagonist from his thoughts. At this point the girl is taken from the town hall to the place of execution.

Memories of Ricky

The Jewish Bride (1665-69)

After ordering the paint, the painter went to an inn on the Oude Eylandsgracht and met Minna Cloeck (Kp. 10). Years ago he argued with her husband about a portrait that he refused to accept because of the lack of resemblance. The artist's financial and social problems at the time are faded into her mind: The painter is on the verge of being talked about because of his illegitimate relationship with his companion and housekeeper, which, as a colleague Cloecks said, he did not paint appropriately as the goddess Juno with crown and scepter came. Minna is also well informed about the course of the bankruptcy “Cessio bonorum” on July 25th in his former house in the Breestraat from the secretary friend of the municipal bankruptcy administration chamber, Franz Bruyningh. She also knows about Elsje's interrogations (Kp. 11) on April 28th and 29th as well as on May 1st, during which her husband was one of the nine lay judges: The girl gave information about the dispute with the landlady and the deed trigger blow with the broom. The verdict was that they "had to choke on the stake until death supervened that you had to put the murder weapon several blows to the head and that not to trust her body to the earth, but to a post on the Galgenfeld Volewijk on display is to be placed in order to be consumed by the air and the birds in the course of the seasons . "

On his way back (Chapter 13), the protagonist develops ideas against the background of memories of the epidemic of last year, the plague rooms, the physical and psychological breakdown of the sick lover and the hair of the dead that was made into wigs in a junk shop to change the image of the couple out of their painful experiences. The narrator switches on van Gogh's remarks on the painting “The Jewish Bride” : “To be able to paint like this one must have died more than once.”

  • Ricky as the goddess Juno (1662–65)

  • Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels (1655): Hendrickje with fur

  • Hendrickje bathing (1654)

  • Bathsheba with letter from King David (1654)

  • Portrait of Saskias van Uylenburgh , Rembrandt's first wife

  • Rembrandt and Saskia in the parable of the prodigal son. (1635/36)

The painter comes back to the house on Rozengracht around one o'clock (Kp. 14) and compares it with the building in Breestraat, which he bought in the fourth year of his first marriage and which had to be sold after 20 years due to financial problems. He remembers how Ricky showed her then eight-year-old stepson, who never met his mother, a portrait of this beautiful woman, who in her will made it difficult for her husband to remarry because of the condition, in this case the son's inheritance immediately to pay off. Therefore he was criticized by the pastor for his "extramarital sex life [s]" with his maid (Chapter 15). The painter associates this situation with his design of the Old Testament situation of King David and his lover Bathsheba , for whom Ricky was his model: “He painted her face differently from her real face anyway, and he changed her gaze to thoughtful, into a a little-very-very-worried. She was holding a letter. A king invited her to his bed. ”Shortly thereafter, Ricky fell ill from a flea bite on the neck, and the plague took its course within a week: fever, swelling, treatment with perspiration and pulp on the bumps, which were cut open by a plague master , Shortness of breath, ranting and death. The 15th chapter is framed by three picture descriptions, next to the pair of lovers, which recur as a leitmotif, this time with the accentuation of a question, whether "happiness is above all something in the past?" Are the following:

  • The angel prevents the sacrifice of Isaac . (1635): “That […] Isaac looked very much like his son, but was older than he is now, about six or seven years of life, which the boy would in reality no longer be granted, was his never noticed "

  • The slaughtered ox (1643): “The creature hung upside down expressed nothing other than its futile, enormous will to live. The painter created the picture with short, maddening strokes. "

The intimacy of the drawing

While the body of the dead girl is being rowed onto a sloop in the direction of the IJsselmeer after the execution , the artist looks at his picture of the lovers in the studio (Kp. 18) and remembers his conversations with Titian , who inspired him to perform the lying act of Danaë , the a man, as the narrator fades in, attacked the Leningrad Hermitage in 1985 with a knife and acid. He discusses the question with the Italian model: should a picture be drawn up immediately with color or first drawn? Does a good picture need proximity or distance? The Dutchman thinks that there is “nothing more intimate”, nothing of “greater closeness” than the drawing, e.g. B. his Ricky sketches.

  • The girl in the "thousandfold light of God in love"

  • Inspiration for the painter: Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538)

  • "His girl, who had just become a mother, sat slumped and thought of something serious"

  • "And shortly afterwards a second [drawing], completely carefree now, the afternoon light on her healthy face."

  • “[There is] absolutely nothing more intimate than the drawing. There is no closer proximity. "

  • "The painter [...] involuntarily observed, as he was used to, the facial features of his son and traced them in his mind"

  • "This father had often portrayed his son and used him as a model for various figures"

The execution of the girl

The protagonist's son has meanwhile returned home (Kp. 19) and describes from his perspective how the girl, dressed in a dark red skirt, a purple jacket and a white bonnet, stands “all alone in front of the mayor” in the courtroom, as she later (Kp 25) leaves the town hall through a side door, defends himself against the executioners, scratches the face of the jailer's son Simon and screams. She has to be dragged to the scaffold, where the executioner Chris Jansz from Haarlem strangles her with a rope. Elsje's fate has "nested itself in his head" through the son's story. With his eyes, "[the] painter [...] begins to really see the girl in front of him for the first time." That means that he sees her through the shock in the suddenly naive-childish eyes of his son. “In the studio he packs up the drawing materials: he wants to paint the dead woman on the stake.

Inserted into this report are situations that the painter's son cannot follow. These events are presented partly neutrally, partly from the point of view of the audience, Elsjes or the executioner: the waiting in the dungeon and the ceremony in the courtroom with the reading of the incident and the pronouncement of the verdict by the city secretary. The pastor's attempt to persuade the “child of death” to repent of the deed (cp. 23) in order to save his soul in a prayer round is also shown, but the “rebellious girl” refuses. That is why it remains with the judgment of the display on the pole: executioners row the corpse to the gallows field (Kp. 27) and tie it to a pole.

Volewijk

In the afternoon the painter goes to the jetties of the Nieuwe Waal on the IJsselmeer quay (Kp. 26) and has a ferryman transfer him to Volewijk to the Kalvarienberg . Here he once skated along the peninsula with his first wife, the “little red one”, in winter: held hands in the same rhythm of movement (body 28). He thinks of the children who died during their nine years of marriage and their lung disease, which weakened them after the birth of their son. He has repeatedly sketched this area, which he is now traveling through by boat:

  • Landscape with a tower

  • Landscape with a boat

  • House with wooden fence, surrounded by trees

  • Pen drawing by Schellingwou.

The painting

This time too he wants to “paint [the] reality. Accept nature as the only true teacher of beauty. But - what is the nature of death? ”He reflects. Arrived at the gallows bottom (Kp. 29) he draws (“He and the girl”) with pen, pen and ink brush in several sketches the dead person on the pole: “Drawing is the calm of his thoughts. [...] He represented everything exactly according to reality. [...] but whether it is possible to research death, he did not worry for a second. His understanding at that moment was purely technical in nature. He was already standing up. The drawing was ready. Did she make something of the hidden death itself, something tiny, perhaps visible beyond its strict limits? "

  • Girl with dead peacock

  • "With a flat brush he carefully gives volume to the wrinkles around Elsje's stomach and legs, the underside of her arm and the side of her face, playing with light and dark."

  • "And at that moment did not think, at least not consciously, of the other executed man who had employed him more than thirty years ago"

Classification and analysis

Historical context

The action takes place in an era known as the Golden Age (Dutch: de Gouden Eeuw) of Dutch history because of the economic and cultural boom in the 17th century , in which the Republic of the Seven United Provinces (Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden) is one of the leading Was world trading powers, with Amsterdam as its center.

  • Map of Amsterdam ( Willem and Joan Blaeu ) from 1649.

  • "In my ear the [...] words about what was about to happen here [...] in the life of an eighteen-year-old girl [...] when the bells began to ring [...] soon drowned out by the heavy roar of the Westerkerk ", the grave church of Rembrandt, Hendrickjes and Titus'.

  • The royal palace, built as a town hall ( Stadhuis ) in the Dutch-Classicist style from 1648 to 1665, on the then execution site Dam (painting by Gerrit Adriaenszoon Berckheyde , 1638–1698).

  • Citizens' Hall ( Burgerzaal ) of the Palais. Elsje is interrogated in the two-story courtroom.

  • The painter asked, "why the bells of the Oude Kerk were silent [...]. The eleven strikes [...], if today's execution is to begin, will perhaps be more than enough." (Saskias van Uylenburgh grave church)

classification

De Moors The painter and the girl can, as the title suggests, be assigned to the group of " artist novels ": The framework story takes place in 1664: it is the time after a plague epidemic. The life of the people in the affluent trading city has normalized and the artist starts to work again after the death of his partner. But his activities are overlaid with painful memories. In a typical family constellation, a personal and social portrait of the Rembrandt period in Holland is created .

The role of the narrator

The narrator of the novel has the information level of an Amsterdam citizen at the beginning of the 21st century: He knows the biographies of the historical persons who serve as a template, the urban development and the changes in buildings in modern times, art-historical insights into Rembrandt's paintings and the history of their creation from the sketch to the picture as well as influences, for example by Titian, and the artist's reception, e.g. B. by Vincent van Gogh, whose praise of the "Jewish bride" is the motto of the novel, and the destruction of one of his paintings by the acid attack in the Leningrad Hermitage ... the plot is prepared and commented from today's perspective: “So it came about that from now on it was to be called Elsje […] but also a few hundred years later […] in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York . There you should write: Elsje Christiaens hanging in the gibbet. . ”The narrator also names typical situations (“ A father and a son ”), arranges a new scene in an authorial manner (“ It's still the third of May ”),“ Meanwhile, the young Dane's trip to Amsterdam receives an extra portion Space and time that don't matter. Those who are eighteen have enough breath. "Switches to a later time (" Very many years later [...] a painter colleague [...] should remark something appropriate [...] he is writing a letter to his sister [...] Van Gogh " ) and guides the reader through the novel: “Now it's the turn of the sleeping house and the sleeping woman again. The events follow one another, means the cadence of the life story, but in reality most events coincide, even if not necessarily at the same speed. ”Often the narrator signals his level of knowledge through predictions: anticipation of the son's death, the girl's refusal to accept hers Confess guilt ("The stubborn thing would say no"), look ahead to their futile efforts in Amsterdam ("And the [sister] would not be able to find her there, in that city.")

But he also points out his limited knowledge: e.g. B. through assumptions, which he partially connects with those of the protagonist, when his reflections can no longer be separated from the inner monologue or the spoken speech of the protagonists: “Not yet, not yet! As long as you live, what is the limit of life? ”(Inner monologue),“ O almighty Jesus, where did she go so quickly ?! ”(Experienced speech). The narrator thinks about the motives of the people (“Assuming that there is some dream behind the trip”) and about the connections: “The girl who heard more than once about the fast, hot plague, but she didn't hear a second with the powerful female figure of her sister. ”The social financial differences between the destitute immigrant and the business in the merchant's exchange is demonstrated by the following authorial consideration:“ Strange? It is strange that a poor girl who is ignorant of reading and writing is on a walkway where a collection of Dürers , Dycks and Flincks for a murderous fortune is passed into Sicilian hands "

From this position of the narrator, the reader becomes aware of the character and scope of the fictional plot: It is a thought experiment within a fixed framework: city, living conditions, social structures, biographies, pictures.

structure

The structure is based on the type " Mrs. Dalloway ": The external main story takes place on a day on which one accompanies the main character on their way and through their remembered reviews and reflections as well as conversations an insight into their life and that of their family before the social one Background of their time. Virginia Woolf's heroine Clarissa Dalloway walks through the London borough of Westminster in June 1923. The painter roams through Amsterdam in 1664. However, while the wife of Member of Parliament Richard learns of the counterworld of Septimus Warren Smith, who was confused by the war trauma of the First World War , and his suicide only through a conversation with her "upper class" evening party, the author presents the Danish girl in a separate storyline in terms of both time and space . On the day of the execution, both threads are more and more interwoven: from morning on, the artist takes an increasing interest in Elsje's fate by expanding his information desk, which reminds him of the death of his two young women. This association culminates in the drawing of the dead on the stake.

Narrative form

The two Denmark and Amsterdam lines generally follow the paths of the main characters and, until they merge, are essentially developed from the perspectives of the protagonists in personal narrative form and told in the tense of the past tense . The reader sees their activities from their point of view, experiences their reflections, follows the statements of those present in the scene, partly in dialogue form or incorporated verbatim speech, as well as their perceptible reactions and follows those discovered by the painter during the hike through the city and shown as retrospectives Key situations: typical moments that bundle the stages of the artist's biography.

The connection between two scenes is partly connected with the change of narrative form: end of the 6th chapter. the painter hears eleven bells (Er-form). This is followed by a sentence from an impersonal perspective ("if you [...] imagine what happens to the law a few hundred meters"). In the next section the reader sees from a poly-perspective, i.e. H. from different perspectives, the scene on the place of execution (alternating with the eyes of the girl and the audience, supplemented by a narrator's comment: “At that time the town hall did not have a carillon”).

Assemblies

The author often uses the assembly technique in her novel : The stories are not told chronologically without gaps, but Elsje's journey (Kp. 4-5, 8-9, 12, 16-17) and the painter's walk through the city (Kp. 1- 3, 6, 7, 10-11, 13-15) alternate with each other in the sequence, whereby the Amsterdam plot includes the murder case from the beginning (e.g. Kp. 11) and this from Kp. 18, through the Concentration on one place of action, focused.

De Moor often fades information into the main story, e.g. B. on the history of the city, the social order, the judiciary, the plague, the manufacture of paint and the artist's history based on the Rembrandt biography and his pictures:

  • partially, in traditional form, through integration into the speeches and thoughts of the characters (Samuel or Tizian conversation about painting techniques) or in a flowing transition to the action,
  • partly as a section separated from the scene, but in a situational and thematic connection with it, for example in the descriptions of the plague: Thus follows the information section at the beginning of the 6th chapter. (“There are also people who suspect that the plague is an infectious disease”) a short dialogue between the painter and the pharmacist.
  • as a narrator lecture z. B. on the structural changes in the northern part of the city, the Rembrandt reception, the acid attack in the Leningrad Hermitage or the manufacture of paint in a paint mill.
  • as sentences incorporated into the plot: E.g. van Gogh's evaluation inserted into the painter's thoughts on the painting “The Jewish Bride”: “To be able to paint like this, one must have died more than once.”
  • or as a “distillate from a few remarks” compiled by the narrator from the conversation between the painter and the pharmacist about light.

The journey through Jutland (chapter 12) combines foresight (in the subjunctive form ) of the landlady's demand that Elsje should work off her debts as a prostitute, with the scene (in the past tense) that takes place in the attic of the hostel in Amsterdam and in the context of the 21st Cps. fits. Other montages have a thematic correlation: Elsje's sea voyage in the 8th cp. Is contrasted by looking back at the visit of the prince's secretary in the Leiden studio with the painter's failure to travel: the guest advises the artist to visit Italy to study the masterpieces of Raphael , Michelangelo 's Titian in the original. Another example can be found in Chapter 3: The fleeing girl's jump into the canal is faded in when the painter passes this point and looks into the water of the Damrak.

Since the events are reproduced from the point of view of various informants, linked to their feelings and memories, a fragmentary, mosaic-like picture is obtained.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Margriet De Moort: The painter and the girl. German translation by Helga van Beuningen . Carl Hanser, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-446-23638-7 , p. 297. This edition is cited.
  2. ↑ De Moor, p. 33.
  3. ^ De Moor, p. 46.
  4. ^ De Moor, p. 224.
  5. ^ De Moor, p. 229.
  6. ^ De Moor, p. 231.
  7. ↑ De Moor, p. 22.
  8. ↑ De Moor, p. 61 ff.
  9. ↑ De Moor, p. 62.
  10. ↑ De Moor, p. 64 ff.
  11. ↑ De Moor, p. 66.
  12. ↑ De Moor, p. 68 ff.
  13. ↑ De Moor, p. 69.
  14. ↑ De Moor, p. 68.
  15. ^ De Moor, p. 116.
  16. ^ De Moor, p. 137.
  17. ^ De Moor, p. 161.
  18. ↑ a b De Moor, p. 162.
  19. ↑ a b De Moor, p. 150.
  20. ^ De Moor, p. 169.
  21. ^ De Moor, p. 198.
  22. ↑ De Moor, p. 196.
  23. ↑ a b De Moor, p. 200.
  24. ↑ De Moor, p. 199.
  25. ↑ a b c De Moor, p. 205.
  26. ^ De Moor, p. 256.
  27. ^ De Moor, p. 203.
  28. ↑ a b De Moor, p. 272.
  29. ^ De Moor, p. 296.
  30. ↑ De Moor, p. 297 ff.
  31. ↑ De Moor, p. 300.
  32. ^ De Moor, p. 9.
  33. ^ De Moor, p. 59.
  34. ^ De Moor, p. 269.
  35. ^ De Moor, p. 47.
  36. ↑ De Moor, p. 201.
  37. ↑ De Moor, p. 170.
  38. ↑ De Moor, p. 50.
  39. ^ De Moor, p. 225.
  40. ↑ De Moor, p. 11.
  41. ^ De Moor, p. 121.
  42. ↑ a b De Moor, p. 227.
  43. ↑ De Moor, p. 79.
  44. ^ De Moor, p. 229.
  45. ↑ De Moor, p. 70.
  46. ↑ De Moor, p. 71.
  47. ↑ De Moor, p. 52.
  48. ↑ De Moor, p. 49.
  49. ^ De Moor, p. 137.
  50. ↑ De Moor, p. 61.

Web links

Commons : Rembrandt  - album with pictures, videos and audio files