The suicide club

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Title page of the New York edition
(see also under web links from 1896)

The Suicide Club ( Engl. The Suicide Club ) is a narrative of the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson , 1878 in London Magazine and in 1882 the first volume of the collection New Arabian Nights at Chatto & Windus published in London.

shape

The text consists of the three stories listed below, which are linked - also chronologically - via three characters. There are Prince Florizel of Bohemia and his young stable master Colonel Geraldine, as well as the anonymous president of the suicide club. The reader should memorize Stevenson's description of the latter in the first story: "The President was a man of about his early or mid-fifties, tall, badly demeaned, had scruffy sideburns ..." Because only in these few characteristics is the fiend when he appears in the second story and is up to mischief again. Even more detective skills are needed to recognize the colonel's anonymous younger brother at the beginning of the second story. Because there the only characteristics of this murder victim are blond hair, young and pretty.

content

The story of the young man with the cream cake

The prince would like to experience a new adventure every evening with the colonel in the wake. During one of their forays into London restaurants, the two gentlemen met a suicidal young man in an oyster bar near Leicester Square , who was distributing cream cakes among the guests for his last money . After some back and forth, the young man introduces her to his club. After examining the prince and colonel's fatigue, the president of the club appoints them full members. The game - more precisely, the card game - begins. All around the gaming table are young men - with one exception: Mr. Bartholomäus Malthus is a serene gentleman. The president shuffles the cards and deals all round. Who ace of spades reveals, is the next victim and who cross - ace reveals is his killer. The young man with the cream cake reveals the ace of clubs and Mr. Malthus the ace of spades.

The next morning it's in the newspaper. Mr. Malthus, with a friend, threw himself to his death on the way home from a party over the parapet in Trafalgar Square .

The prince is forcibly prevented by the colonel from continuing to play the cards and finally approves of the courageous intervention of his subordinate. The heir to the Bohemian throne takes action. He breathes new life into the surviving young members of the club and sends the president of the club on a dangerous journey. The destination is the continent . If the president survives the pistol duel against the colonel's younger brother on the way, the prince will send a new opponent.

The story of the doctor and the Saratoga suitcase

The tourist Mr. Silas Q. Scuddamore from Bangor wants to experience the Paris Carnival and has rented a guest house in the Latin Quarter . In the house he made the acquaintance of the old English doctor Dr. Noel, spies on his roommate Madame Zéphyrine and falls in love with the beautiful child. This sly woman is used by the president of the suicide club for a macabre game. Madame Zéphyrine gives her “lover” high hopes and lures him out of the pension. During his absence, the President can deposit the younger Geraldine's body in Scuddamore's bed or - the text does not make it that clear - have it deposited. With the best will in the world, the reader does not look behind the scenes. Is Dr. Noel in cahoots with the president? Is the old doctor even a possible murderer? In any case, he “helps” Scuddamore with the removal of the body. In the tourist's Saratoga suitcase, the gruesome cargo in the prince's luggage arrives from Paris to London.

In the hall of a Paris ballroom , both the prince and his stable master's brother had experienced the carnival at the same time. The Bohemian heir to the throne is all the more appalled when he finds the corpse of his stable master's brother in Scuddamore's trunk in London. The sender is the wicked president of the suicide club.

The adventure with the two-wheeled carriages

The mists are clearing. The President has amassed "an enormous fortune" through the assassinations of suicidal men that have been instigated for years. So it has to be judged. The prince stages this in one of the several lordly London estates of the monster. For the duel on a sword, Florizel von Böhmen has his equestrian Colonel Geraldine select the two seconds in an idiosyncratic way. In two-wheeled carriages , a number of lonely London strollers, primarily officers of strong character, are transported to the location of the duel at a rapid pace, and the colonel sifts through them with the exception of two soldiers. Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich and Major O'Rooke, who were victorious against the warlike Indian hill tribes, remain.

Stevenson gives the scene a surprising twist. Old Dr. Noel turns out to be one of the prince's friends. This leads the bohemian sword fencer to his wicked duel partner. The president does not survive the duel. The prince has avenged the murder of the younger Geraldine.

The reader's doubts about the role of Dr. Noel in the Paris episode had been fully justified. Because before the doctor takes care of the body of the president, he asks: "... let me go and bury my oldest friend."

reception

In the chapter News from the Arabian Nights of his book, Dölvers goes into more detail on the suicide club and the diamond of the rajah - that is, on the content of the first volume of the New Arabian Nights collection . At the end of the chapter, Dölvers sums up that the two texts are more than entertaining prose and also more than parodies of the detective novel. Distance from contemporaries, as Stevenson considers it in the context, is one of the means of investigating and even interpreting social processes.

Film adaptations

German-language literature

expenditure

  • Robert Louis Stevenson: The Suicide Club and Other Stories. Modern fairy tales from a thousand and one nights. Translator and editor: Marguerite and Curt Thesing . Buchenau & Reichert, Munich around 1925. 251 pages
  • Robert Louis Stevenson: The Suicide Club . Georg Müller, Munich 1926, 198 pages (two-mark books, vol. 47)
  • Robert Louis Stevenson: The Suicide Club . Pp. 5-97. (Translator: Elfriede Mund) in Robert Louis Stevenson: The Suicide Club. New stories from the Arabian Nights. With wood engravings by Karl Georg Hirsch . ( The suicide club. The diamond of the rajah ) Afterword by Günter Gentsch. Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1968, 200 pages, Insel-Bücherei 859
  • Robert Louis Stevenson: The Suicide Club . Audiobook (2 audio CDs, 151 min). Speaker: Andreas Petri . Director: Frank Brother . Argon, Berlin 2006. ISBN 3-86610-019-1
  • Robert Louis Stevenson: The Suicide Club, pp. 93–166 in Robert Louis Stevenson: The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and other short stories , 202 pages. marixverlag, Wiesbaden 2015. ISBN 978-3-7374-0993-3

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

  • The text online in the Gutenberg-DE project

in English

Remarks

  1. ↑ The title New Arabian Nights ( New Stories from One Thousand and One Nights ) of the collection has already been glossed over by contemporary critics. There is no echo of oriental fairy tales (Reinbold, p. 66, 13. Zvo). This is not changed by insertions that are trying hard and misplaced at the end of each story, such as "Here (my Arabic author notes) ..." (see for example the edition used, p. 73, 4th Zvo or also p. 97, 8th Zvo) the least.
  2. ↑ See also Florizel in Shakespeare's Winter Tale .
  3. ↑ Edition used.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ engl. The London Magazine
  2. ↑ engl. New Arabian Nights
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 20, 3. Zvo
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 46, 9. Zvo
  5. ↑ engl. Oyster bar
  6. ↑ engl. Saratoga suitcase
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 96, 13. Zvu
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 97, 6. Zvo
  9. ↑ Dölvers, pp. 33-53
  10. ↑ Dölvers, p. 53, 12th Zvu
  11. ↑ engl. Barry O'Moore
  12. ↑ engl. Charles Craig
  13. ↑ The Suicide Club in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  14. ↑ The mysterious club in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  15. ↑ engl. Elisabeth Risdon
  16. ↑ engl. Fred Groves
  17. ↑ The Suicide Club in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  18. ↑ uncanny stories in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  19. ↑ uncanny stories in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  20. ↑ engl. J. Walter Ruben
  21. ↑ Trouble for Two in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  22. ↑ engl. Carlos Hugo Christensen
  23. ↑ engl. Carlos Cores
  24. ↑ span. Judith Sulian
  25. ↑ engl. Guillermo Battaglia
  26. ↑ La dama de la muerte in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  27. ↑ engl. Robert Stevens
  28. ↑ engl. Ralph Clanton
  29. ↑ engl. Donald Buka
  30. ↑ The Suicide Club in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  31. ↑ engl. Dennis Vance
  32. ↑ engl. Thomas Heathcote
  33. ↑ The Suicide Club in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  34. ↑ engl. Dan Tobin
  35. ↑ The Suicide Club in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  36. ^ Spanish Chela Bon
  37. ↑ Curse of the Stone Hand in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  38. ↑ engl. Ronald Adam
  39. ↑ The Suicide Club in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  40. ^ Spanish Rogelio A. González
  41. ^ Spanish Enrique Guzmán
  42. ^ Spanish Pilar Bayona
  43. ^ Spanish Enrique Rocha
  44. ↑ El club de los suicidas in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  45. ↑ Russian Клуб самоубийц, или Приключения титулованной особы
  46. ↑ Russian Evgeny Tatarsky
  47. ↑ Russian Oleg Dal
  48. ↑ Клуб самоубийц in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  49. ↑ engl. Lenny Henry
  50. ↑ Death or Joker in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  51. ↑ The Suicide Club in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  52. ↑ Bankrotári in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  53. ^ Spanish Roberto Santiago
  54. ↑ Spanish Fernando Tejero
  55. ^ Spanish Luis Callejo
  56. ↑ El club de los suicidas in the Internet Movie Database (English)