The third cop

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The third policeman (English original title: The Third Policeman ) is the second novel by the Irish writer Flann O'Brien (1911-1966). It was written from 1939 to 1940, but not published until 1967, after O'Brien's death. The novel is considered an example of the use of metafiction and an early example of the postmodern novel . The third policeman can be read as a detective novel and a science parody.

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The novel consists of twelve chapters and is set in rural Ireland. The first-person narrator remains without a name. He is a supporter of the (fictional) scientist and philosopher de Selby, whose theories are discussed again and again in the course of the book, both in the running text and in sometimes long footnotes . It deals, for example, with the theory that cyclists and bicycles exchange molecules when cycling and therefore take on the character of the other, and with "black light", which is responsible for the transition from day to night.

The first-person narrator lost a leg as a 16-year-old orphan in a boarding school. He is now wearing a wooden leg and is returning to his parents' house. He meets John Divney, who subsequently takes over the management of the first-person narrator's farm and pub, while he devotes himself to de Selby's writings. At the age of 30 he wrote a catalog raisonné on de Selby, but cannot publish it for lack of money. Divney knows that the old villager has Mather's money with him, whereupon he (Divney) plans to murder Mathers. One night the first-person narrator and Divney meet Mathers on the street, where Divney knocks him to the ground with a self-made bicycle pump. The first-person narrator kills Mathers with a spade; However, Divney disappeared with Mathers' cashbox and only returns later without her. The first-person narrator now stays by Divney's side, even in bed.

Three years later, Divney reveals that the cassette is under the floorboards in Mathers' house. He instructs the narrator to fetch her; but it has disappeared. Instead he meets Mathers. The soul of the first-person narrator, henceforth called Joe , is also in the room and henceforth speaks to the first-person narrator. Mathers reports from a nearby police station where police officers could help find the tape. There the narrator meets Sergeant Pluck and the sergeant MacCruiskeen. They speak largely non sequitur and express surreal theories about bicycles. They also report on the third police officer, Fox, who has been missing for 25 years. In the basement there is a complicated building called “Ewigkeit”, in which there are measuring devices. Pluck knows that the first-person narrator committed the murder, but does not arrest him because he is nameless and therefore cannot be hanged. However, a gallows is erected to execute the murderer. When the police officers have to deal with unusually high readings in the basement, the first-person narrator escapes on a bicycle and sees light in Mathers' house. There he meets Fox, who, however, has Mathers' facial features and maintains a secret police station in the house. It turns out that Fox manipulated the readings in the basement and so apparently saved the life of the first-person narrator. Fox had the cassette, which now contains an all-powerful substance called Omnium , brought to the narrator's house. When he finally arrives there, Divney is 16 years older, while the first-person narrator has only aged a few days. Divney reports that at the time, instead of the cassette, he placed a bomb under Mathers' floorboards, which killed the first-person narrator, and has a heart attack that appears to be killing him; the first-person narrator then leaves the house and comes to the police station. On the way he meets Divney, who accompanies him. In the police station he meets Pluck again, who is described in the same words as in the fourth chapter and - at the end of the book - also asks the same opening question: "Is it a bicycle?"

reception

“The third policeman reverses the narrative structure of O'Brien's first novel, Two Birds In Swimming. If the surprises are in a collage-like narrative process, here they are found under the cover of an orderly narrative process with linguistic wit, (Irish) humor, irony, parody as well as in satires, absurdities and surrealisms, by means of which O'Brien uses the scientific and intellectual folly of man exposed. "

- Kindler's New Literature Lexicon

"[The Third Policeman] will be rediscovered, and again, and again. There's no killing a piece of mythic power like that. - [The third cop] will be discovered again and again. Such a piece of mythical power cannot die. "

- Hugh Kenner

Edition history

O'Brien tried to publish the novel like his predecessor, On Swimming-Two-Birds at Longman's. However, the manuscript was rejected because it was "too unusual". O'Brien then kept it in a closet until his death, but claimed he destroyed it. He adopted elements of the novel, including the character de Selby, in his 1964 novel The Dalkey Archive (German title: From Dalkey's archives ).

The first edition was finally published posthumously in 1967 by MacGibbon & Kee in London. The first German-language edition, translated by Harry Rowohlt , was published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 1975 under the title The Third Policeman . In 1985 the book was published as a licensed edition of the same translation in the GDR by Verlag Volk und Welt .

Expenses (selection)

  • The Third Policeman. MacGibbon & Kee, London 1967.
  • The third cop. Translated by Harry Rowohlt . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1975, ISBN 3-518-01446-3 .
  • The third cop. Translated by Harry Rowohlt. People and World, Berlin 1985.
  • The third cop. Translated by Harry Rowohlt and Helmut Mennicken. Kein & Aber, Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-0369-5166-0 .

theatre

Opera

literature

  • Ralf Zimmermann: The disappearance of reality. About the possibilities and limits of creativity in Flann O'Brien's 'At Swim-Two-Birds' and 'The Third Policeman'. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1999.
  • Keith Hopper: Flann O'Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-Modernist. Cork University Press, Cork 1995, ISBN 978-1859180426 .
  • Anthony Cronin : No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien. Fromm, New York 1989, ISBN 978-0880641838 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Harald Martenstein: Sarcastic, Catholic, hard-drinking. In: Der Tagesspiegel on October 2, 2011
  2. ↑ quoted fromlesen.de , accessed on December 18, 2012
  3. ↑ Book review at postmodernmystery.com (English), accessed December 18, 2012
  4. ^ Report at dradio.de , accessed on January 4, 2013