The son (Schnitzler)

The son is an early story by Arthur Schnitzler . It was written in the summer of 1889 and appeared in January 1892 as Schnitzler's first contribution in the literary magazine Freie Bühne for the struggle for development of the time at S. Fischer in Berlin . At a later point in time, Schnitzler took up the story again and worked it out into his last novel, Therese .

content

The son grew up without a father. The mother, Miss Martha Eberlein, abandoned by the son's father, raised the boy alone. The son had survived the mother's attempt to suffocate on the first night of his life. Since then, the mother has taken a reproach in the son's expression as an occasion to tolerate any rebelliousness of her offspring. That recklessness culminates in an attempted murder of the finally grown son. He hits his mother's temple with an ax, seriously injures the faithful and is imprisoned. Before the mother dies of the ax attack, she asks her doctor privately to free the son. Because he is innocent. The doctor wants to ask for leniency for the mother-murderer before the court.

style

To build up the dynamic narrative tension: As soon as the son can speak, the mother waits for the reproach that she wants to see in his eyes to be articulated. But there is no verbal charge. The mother can only atone for her guilt by pampering the un-good; every nastiness looks after him. The son does n't want to know anything about such ape love . When things get too colorful for him, the silent man finally strikes.

reception

• According to Perlmann, the novel is a criminal case in which it is not a detective inspector but the narrating doctor who analyzes the murder case in a legible manner. The medical conscience decision - to appeal to the court - paves the way for the "path to social law".
• Peter Sprengel quotes the programmatic closing sentence of the text: "... it is far from clear enough how little we are allowed to want and how much we have to" (edition used, p. 17, 2nd Zvu) and names the first publisher - S. Fischer's house newspaper Neue Rundschau - "Central Organ of German Naturalism ". Sprengel is alluding to the philosophical basis of the text; to the determinism inherent in naturalism , which is shown in the son in the “doubt about the autonomy of the individual”: the son cannot help but kill. It is completely structured by its first experience.
• Le Rider notes that the Oedipal son received bad reviews. As an example, he cites the work “Schnitzler and characterology. From Empire to Third Reich ”(Schnitzler and character studies . From the Empire to the Third Reich ) by Katherine Arens from 1986, who saw Weininger's gender and character as a model for the textual determination of fate in people.
• According to Imke Meyer, the first-person narrator, i.e. the doctor treating the dying woman, vacillates between danger and desire. On the one hand, the doctor is afraid that the patient will be infected. On the other hand, he would like to experience first-hand the feeling they have been living out for years.
• Iain Bamforth translated the text into English in 2007 for the British Journal of General Practice (BJGP) monthly medical journal .
• For Stefan Scherer, the question of guilt at least on a narrative level affirms: "Unconscious impulses arise at the moment of the very first perception."

Web links

• The text
  • online in the Gutenberg-DE project
  • online at Zeno.org

Remarks

1. ↑ Schnitzler wrote to Hofmannsthal in 1898 : “The old sketch of my son turns into something in me that could almost be a novel.” (Schnitzler quoted in Michael Scheffel, p. 158, 9th Zvu)
2. ↑ Contagion is meant figuratively - for example in the sense of contagion with the mental defect of the patient addressed in the story.

literature

First printing

• The son. From a doctor's papers. In: Free Stage for the Struggle for Development of Time, vol. 3, no. 1, January 1, 1892, pp. 89–94.

expenditure

• The son. From a doctor's papers. P. 10–17 in Arthur Schnitzler: Game at Dawn. Stories. Afterword by Eduard Zak and Rudolf Walbiner . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1982 (1st edition, edition used)

Secondary literature

• Michaela L. Perlmann: Arthur Schnitzler. Metzler Collection, Vol. 239. Stuttgart 1987. 195 pages, ISBN 3-476-10239-4
• Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1870–1900. From the founding of the empire to the turn of the century . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-44104-1
• Jacques Le Rider : Arthur Schnitzler or The Vienna Belle Époque . Translated from the French by Christian Winterhalter. Passagen Verlag Vienna 2007. ISBN 978-3-85165-767-8
• Imke Meyer: Masculinity and Melodrama. Arthur Schnitzler's narrative writings. Königshausen & Neumann publishing house, Würzburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8260-4050-4
• Michael Scheffel : Arthur Schnitzler. Stories and novels. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-503-15585-9
• Stefan Scherer : Transitions of Viennese Modernism: Schnitzler's Prose of the 1880s. P. 9–25 in: Wolfgang Lukas (Ed.), Michael Scheffel (Ed.): Textschicksale. Arthur Schnitzler's work in the context of modernity. Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-05-006470-3

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Reinhard Urbach: Schnitzler commentary on the narrative works and dramatic writings. Munich: Winkler-Verlag 1974, p. 94.
2. ↑ Perlmann, p. 125, 14th Zvu
3. ^ Sprengel, p. 284, 19th Zvu
4. ^ Sprengel, p. 284, 3rd Zvu
5. ↑ eng. Katherine Arens , in Le Rider, p. 207, footnote 37
6. ↑ Le Rider, p. 90
7. ↑ Imke Meyer, p. 148, 11. Zvo
8. ↑ Biographical entry Iain Bamforth at literature.britishcouncil.org (English)
9. ↑ eng. The Son by Arthur Schnitzler , PMC 2084126 (free full text)
10. ↑ Scherer, p. 20, 4. Zvo