The Prince of Thebes

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The Prince of Thebes is a story book by Else Lasker-Schüler that was published in the summer of 1914 by the Verlag der Weiße Bücher in Leipzig.

shape

In the Nights of Tino of Baghdad , published in 1907, the author's second volume of prose, the first-person narrator Tino is omnipresent as such or at least as a “princess”; or the reader can imagine their presence. The more recent literary historiography is largely unanimous, from 1910 Else Lasker-Schüler gradually turned away from the female narrative position and allowed Jussuf - who can roughly be taken as the biblical Joseph - to have his say. In the present rather archaic story book, Yusuf, the eponymous Prince of Thebes , only appears in the story Abigail the Third and dies at the end of this manageable episode. Logically, in the last three stories of the book below, at most the dead prince is mentioned.

The first story - The Sheik - and the last - The Crusader - each address the atonement between the religions , among other things , and thus make the rest of the mostly gruesome and terrible events a little bit more bearable.

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The Sheik

Two men stand for the reconciliation of two religions: the Jewish sultan Mschattre-Zimt and the Sheik , who is a Muslim , the chief priest of all mosques in Baghdad and the narrator's great-grandfather. Then the round of inhumane brutality begins:

Tschandragupta

The heather Tschandragupta kills his 70-year-old father, the chief Tschandragupta, because the tribal custom wants it that way. The new chief loves the daughter of the Jew Melech. Both son Tschandragupta emerged from the connection. Although the Gentile girls love the adolescent, he goes to the Jews in Jericho and falls in love with Schlôme, the Jewish high priest's only child. Since the young Tschandragupta is not an envoy from Jehovah, the two do not become a couple. Schlôme anoints himself as a bride and is devoured by the lover. It is as if Tschandragupta were getting pregnant with Schlôme.

The dervish

The dervish is dancing. “The prayer ticket of the Koran hovers over Cairo .” “Christian dogs flee when stones are thrown .” “Countless bodies throw themselves under the hooves of countless animal legs .” The narrator from Baghdad - she has been an orphan for seven years - wears the shabby, blood-stained shepherd's skirt Jussufs, soaks the dromedaries and camels . You have blood on your face. Young saints are scourged.

A letter from my cousin Shalome

The narrator, a princess from Baghdad, watches in the Constantinople harem of her great-uncle how her old aunt presents the eunuch's whip to her bare buttocks on all sides, screams under the blows and shows her teeth. The princess' cousins ​​look on enviously and bare their breasts. The princess takes off on all fours.

The fakir

The narrator, the girl from Baghdad, is invited to the court of her maternal uncle, the Emir of Afghanistan , for the first time . The emir is looking for wealthy sons-in-law for his three daughters. These marriageable cousins ​​are favored by the narrator, but are under the spell of the fakir . This is the Emir's wife's brother. He is carrying a snake bag. The narrator is actually fond of the young hasha-nid. However, this son of the chief of a wild tribe is dying and the narrator falls for the fakir. At night, when the snake charmers sneak up on it, it initially roars in shock, but later it utters a “roar of joy” in its immediate vicinity. As soon as the fakir doodles and then approaches, the three cousins ​​and the narrator secretly absorb his scent and “their bodies open like brown and yellow roses”. Schalôme, one of the three cousins, has already after a series of such nights with the Fakir the chorea .

The Book of the Three Abigails

The Melech Abigail the first Prince of Thebes, will not be born. The future young ruler lives in the womb for twenty years. Abigail murders his mother with a powerful kick to the heart, is born and ascends the throne. As a late-born he shuns daylight, is always looking for the touch of walls and crawls into the body of every virgin. The king dies after a fire in his palace. The 60-year-old Arion-Ichtiosaur, a cousin of the deceased, ascends the throne as Abigail the Second. It builds on hatred , greed and resentment . All three kept his people awake. The ruler passes the time with mathematics and astronomy . Yusuf, son of the high priest, stabs the astronomer and is crowned King Abigail the Third. The new 17-year-old head also serves as high priest. Yusuf turns out to be an extraordinary warrior. He drives out the enemy without bloodshed. Yusuf rules carefree. Once, when he accidentally signs his own death warrant, those who are loyal to him save him from execution. Yusuf succumbs to a wound after hunting a tiger.

Singa, the mother of the dead Melech the third , an incident from the life of Abigail the lover

Singa, the mother of the deceased, sacrificedly mourns her beloved son for three years. Residents, especially marriageable girls, cannot include them in their grief, despite great efforts.

The crusader

Ten thousand Christians stand before Jerusalem. Ichneumon von Üsküb, the narrator's cousin - that is the princess of Baghdad - fails before the enemy. The princess wants to hit the "Christian dogs" right away. At her side are Muslims from Mecca and Medina , people from Yemen , Tyris , Nineveh , Bedouins , Egyptians , Philistines , Edomites , Amonites , Hittites , Chaldeans , Saduccas , Judeans and descendants of David , Levites , Jehovah priests and Talmud scholars from Damascus . During the armed conflict, the enemy split Ichneumon from Üsküb's buttocks.

Allah's warrior wins. The young Emperor Conradin surrenders. Conradin dies. His mother makes a pilgrimage. The princess is reconciled with the mourner.

reception

  • March 21, 1915: Max Herrmann-Neiße : Meeting in the Zurich Mistral , accessed from Karl Jürgen Skrodzki.
  • The introduced Orient appears to Bänsch as an attached tinsel.
  • According to Feßmann, Prince Marc ben Ruben von Cana from the story “Abigail the Third” can only mean Franz Marc . The occidental crusader could stand for Gottfried Benn . The latter had turned Else Lasker-Schüler away. Incidentally, in the story of the crusaders, the woman as a military leader proves to be stronger than all men. The mighty Yusuf, who came to power as Abigail the Third through regicide, is no longer the demolished shepherd from Dervish .
  • Abigail the Third flocked to artists.
  • Sprengel addresses the "murderous ritual" in Dervish : Believers let themselves be trampled to death by horsemen - probably borrowed from Georg Ebers . The 23 sons of the great-grandfather in The Sheik are colored autobiographically; taken up again by the author in 1932 in Arthur Aronymus. My father's story .
  • Bischoff discusses the first story - The Sheik - in detail.
  • Reinartz's summary applies to the present book: Else Lasker-Schüler “adopted not only mystical Judaism but also elements of Christian and Muslim traditions”.

Adaptation

literature

Text output

First edition
  • The Prince of Thebes. A story book. With 25 illustrations based on drawings by the author and 3 color pictures by Franz Marc . 98 pages. White Books Publishing House, Leipzig 1914
Other issues
  • The Prince of Thebes. A story book. With 13 illustrations based on drawings by the author. Paul Cassirer , Berlin 1920. 86 pages
  • The Prince of Thebes. A story book. With drawings by the author and pictures by Franz Marc. 102 pages. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996 (Library Suhrkamp Vol. 1226), ISBN 3-518-22226-0
  • The Prince of Thebes. A story book. P. 91–133 in Else Lasker-Schüler: The Prince of Thebes and other prose . dtv 10644, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-423-10644-1 (edition used)

Secondary literature

  • Dieter Bänsch : Else Lasker-Schüler. To criticize an established image. Diss. University of Marburg 1969. 271 pages
  • Meike Feßmann : pawns. Else Lasker-Schüler's first-person figurations as a game with the author's role. A contribution to the poetology of the modern author. (Diss. FU Berlin 1991) M & P, Publishing House for Science and Research, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-476-45019-8 (Licensor: Metzler, Stuttgart 1992)
  • Doerte Bischoff: Suspended Creation. Figures of sovereignty and ethics of difference in Else Lasker-Schüler's prose. (Diss. Uni Tübingen 1999) Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-484-15095-5
  • Sigrid Bauschinger : Else Lasker-Schüler. Biography. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 3777, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006 (Licensor: Wallstein, Göttingen 2004), ISBN 3-518-45777-2
  • 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
  • Kerstin Decker : My heart - nobody. The life of the Else Lasker students. Propylaea, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-549-07355-1

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ The publishing house of the white books existed in Leipzig in 1914 - the year the book was published. See also under The White Leaves .
  2. ↑ Before that, in the third story - The Dervish - it is only mentioned that the narrator from Baghdad wears Yusuf's shepherd's coat soiled with lamb's blood. (edition used, p. 101, 4th Zvu)
  3. ↑ Maybe Else Lasker-Schüler means the king of Jerusalem Konradin . But he was beheaded in Naples (his mother was Elisabeth of Bavaria ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Decker, pp. 263,3. Zvo
  2. ↑ Feßmann, p. 238, middle and also from p. 234
  3. ↑ Feßmann, p. 237, 19. Zvo
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 105, 15. Zvo
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 102, 9. Zvu
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 102, 5th Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 109, 12. Zvo
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 110, 8. Zvo
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 108, 8th Zvu
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 130, 5. Zvo
  11. ↑ Bänsch, p. 209, 12. Zvo
  12. ↑ Feßmann, from p. 234
  13. ↑ Bauschinger, p. 236, middle
  14. ↑ Sprengel, pp. 405-406
  15. ↑ Bischoff, pp. 370-408
  16. ↑ Reinartz, see under web links