Falesa beach

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The beach of Falesa ( Engl. The Beach of Falesá ) is a narrative of the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson , the 1892 in the Illustrated London News it and in the collection Iceland Nights' Entertainments appeared. The author wrote the story, which is about 1868 on a South Sea island, in the last years of his life in Samoa .

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A South Seas wedding

The first-person narrator - that is the Briton John Wiltshire - had already been living on the equator for four years when he took over the copra trade on the South Sea island of Falesa for his employer . Wiltshire calls the locals either natives or Kanaks .

On the beach, Wiltshire, who introduces himself to the reader as a “poor trader”, is greeted by the English-speaking Chinese Case. Case says Wiltshire needs a woman. Said and done. The Chinese arranged the wedding with the pretty Uma, a young, poor Tongan woman with a long face and high forehead. The "wedding" is a farce. The "chaplain", that is the negro John Blackamoar, issues a document to the bride. It's a good thing she can't read it. Because according to the letters of the document, the “husband” can chase the “wife” to the devil at any time. Uma is devoted to her husband: “I belong to you like a pig!” She exclaims.

The spell

After Wiltshire was ignored by all the islanders, the self-confident English asked the chiefs to clarify. Case, who is a dealer himself, interprets. His conclusion, the locals don't like the newcomer. Better go today than tomorrow.

Uma had already had two suitors before Wiltshire. Case had been turned down by her. After the second suitor, a little chief, had left Uma, she was unanimously avoided by the villagers.

The missionary

Mr. Tarleton, the good spirit in the story, visits Falesa now and then. The clergyman intervenes to regulate and inform. Uma hands over her “marriage certificate” to the missionary and, at the urgent request of Wiltshire, is properly married to her husband. In addition, Wiltshire is put into the picture by Tarleton: Case is his mortal enemy, because he had already expelled Wiltshire's predecessor or probably killed. Case has the chiefs behind him and is the master of the village by means of lazy magic. Tarleton fears copra dealer Case will be the next dealer to eliminate Wiltshire.

Devil's work

Indeed - Case wants to kill Wiltshire. The English take up the fight against Case. He locates Case's cult site in the interior of the island.

Night in the bush

Thereupon Wiltshire destroys the "nightmares". After Case shot him with his Winchester , he stabs the mortal enemy. From then on, Wiltshire's copra business was thriving on Falesa. Although the Englishman feels at home with his Uma on the island, he is happy when his company moves him elsewhere.

Self-testimony

The author calls the text "an extreme piece of realism in which nothing is toned down or colored" and "the first realistic South Sea story ... with real South Sea color and details of life there."

ethnology

A "British subject" looks back several years narrating. Worth mentioning or considering what Stevenson reports at the beginning of the 1890s about regions of the world that are still remote from a European point of view:

  • Chinese and negroes are also considered whites on Falesa. The Europeans among this globally defined group of whites are Baptists . The converted chiefs are also Protestants . Catholics were a minority.
  • The locals are always in the mood for fun, even during a funeral. They also sang - clapping their hands - together in the big house of the village until late in the evening.

From the point of view of the 21st century, some fragments of thought of the first-person narrator bear the stigma of racism or touch this label:

  • Wiltshire is trading copra on Falesa because he wants to open an inn in England. After giving birth to hybrids with Uma, he prefers to stay in the South Seas. But there too, the marriage of the daughters will be problematic. Because his girls shouldn't marry a Kanak and he doesn't know where to get the whites from.
  • After Case of Wiltshire is stabbed to death, the thief John Blackamoar has to leave the island and is consumed by people of his own color during "a kind of moonlight dance".

reception

  • Dölvers writes about how Stevenson conjures up horror and quotes the passage in this context: “It is said that people are afraid to be alone. Not at all! What worries you ... is ... that you can't make out anything in particular ... "Then he discusses Wiltshire's" lust for killing "using the text passage:" With that I gave him the cold steel as deep as I could. His body jumped under me like a sprung sofa; he gave a terrible long groan and then lay still. "
  • Werner Schuster on August 9, 2010 with dog ears. The online book magazine .
  • Tobias Lehmkuhl on November 15, 2010 in Uncredited Adventurers on Deutschlandradio Kultur .

filming

German-language literature

expenditure

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

Wikisource: The Beach of Falesá  - Sources and full texts (English)

Remarks

  1. ↑ Polynesia probably hits more precisely than the South Seas ( South Pacific ), because Uma speaks Polynesian (edition used, p. 370, 6. Zvu) and Wiltshire calls the islanders Polynesians (edition used, p. 422, 13. Zvo).
  2. ↑ Falesa: Stevenson invented the name of the island (see for example The Beach of Falesá ).
  3. ↑ Edition used.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinbold, p. 153, 14th Zvu
  2. ↑ engl. Island Nights' Entertainments
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 365, 17. Zvo
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 380, 18. Zvo
  5. ↑ Stevenson, cited in Dölvers, p. 153, 8th Zvu and p. 188, footnote 39
  6. ↑ Edition used, 464, 2nd Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, 463, 12. Zvo
  8. ↑ Dölvers, p. 121, 3. Zvo
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 383, 7th Zvo
  10. ↑ Dölvers, p. 154, 13th Zvu
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 459, 15. Zvu
  12. ↑ engl. The Beach of Falesa
  13. ↑ engl. Robert Stevens
  14. ↑ engl. Russell Collins
  15. ↑ engl. Dylan Thomas
  16. ↑ engl. Alan Sharp