The fiery angel (novel)
The fiery angel ( Russian Огненный ангел , wiss. Transliteration Ognennyj Angel ) is a historical novel published in 1908 by the Russian symbolist poet Valeri Jakowlewitsch Brjussow . It addresses magic and belief in witches in the age of the Reformation . Since the reality of the events described is deliberately left in the dark, the novel can be assigned to the realm of the fantastic ; At the same time, however, it is also interpreted as a novel about the triangle between Brjussow, Andrei Bely and the poet Nina Petrowskaya .
action
The elaborate title in the style of the 16th century prepares the reader for what awaits him:
" The fiery angel or a true story, in which the devil is reported, who appeared more than once to a virgin in the form of a light spirit and led her to various sinful acts, of the anti-god occupation with magic, astrology, Kabbalistic and Necromancy, of the condemnation of that virgin under the presidency of His Eminence the Archbishop of Trier, as well as of the meetings and conversations with the knight and threefold Doctor Agrippa von Nettesheim and with Doctor Faust; written by an eyewitness "
Ruprecht, a former student of the University of Cologne from Losheim in Moselle Franconia , returned to Germany from America in 1534 after spending the last ten years as a mercenary and adventurer. At a hostel he meets a young woman named Renata who appears to be obsessed . Renata tells Ruprecht about her visionary childhood sweetheart , an angel named Madiel. This left Renata in the lurch after she had tried to seduce him, but announced that she would meet her in fleshly form. Renata believed she recognized this in a Count Heinrich, to whose castle she moved and with whom she lived for two years. But then Heinrich disappeared without a trace, and since then Renata has been wandering around looking for him. Ruprecht, who instantly falls in love with Renata, offers her his help. Together they settle in Cologne and try to determine Heinrich's whereabouts with the help of magical means. Ruprecht applies a witch's ointment and finds himself on a witch's sabbath , but the information given by the devil figure who is revered there as "Master Leonhardt" does not help him. Likewise, the necromancy that the couple undertakes lead to no tangible result. In his perplexity, Ruprecht sought out Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim , who lived in Bonn , but had to be instructed by him that the true magic was the search for the "hidden world secret", while natural and ceremonial magic merely represented forms of decay. Johannes Weyer , Agrippa's pupil, explains to Ruprecht his views on witches: They are afflicted with " melancholy " and require medical treatment. The use of the witch's ointment has no real consequences, but only causes imaginations.
Returning from Agrippa, Ruprecht is surprised by Renata with the news that she had met Count Heinrich in the city and had been rejected by him. She now confides in him what the real reason for the separation was: Heinrich, as the grandmaster of a secret society, had taken a vow of chastity and was seduced by Renata into breaking it. Renata orders Ruprecht to challenge Heinrich to a duel and to kill him, and gives herself to him physically for the first time.
As soon as the duel has been successfully initiated, Renata changes her mind and makes Ruprecht promise that he will not hurt Heinrich in the duel. Ruprecht sticks to it and is badly wounded. Renata nurses him back to health, and the two now live together as happy lovers for a while, until their changeable temperament becomes noticeable again and she suffers new attacks of obsession. Madiel appears again and challenges her to lead a holy life. Torn between this appeal and her sexual passion for Ruprecht, she leaves him one day without notice.
It was only the warning that the forbidden things the couple had dealt with had attracted attention that ripped Ruprecht out of the lethargy into which he had fallen after the separation. On the same day he made the acquaintance of Johann Georg Faust and his companion Johann Müllin, who called himself Mephistopheles . He leaves the city with them, and after a few days they are invited to his home by the Count von Wellen, whose castle they are passing by. The count, a humanist , asks Faust and his companion to give them a taste of their magic, but secretly with the intention of setting a trap for them. In an act of necromancy, the two conjure up Helena . When the count's cousin tries to grab the figure and the previously dark room is surprisingly lit, the figure disappears and the unmasking fails.
Ruprecht, who has noticed that he has aroused Mephistopheles' displeasure, gratefully accepts the Count's invitation to work for him as a scribe and lets his previous companions on their way. After a few weeks stay at the castle, the Archbishop of Trier announces himself . There has been a case of heresy in a nearby monastery .
Ruprecht and the count accompany the archbishop's entourage, and Ruprecht soon finds out, to his horror, that the center of the action is his former lover, who has gone to the monastery as a novice and apparently infected the other nuns with her obsession. As with the possessed of Loudun , there are now shocking scenes in the presence of the archbishop. Renata is put in a dungeon and subjected to an inquisition trial. She immediately admits to be in league with the devil and to have taken part in witches' sabbaths. However, this is not enough for the inquisitor , and he orders them to be tortured in order to find out who was responsible among the remaining nuns and to expand the witch trial .
Ruprecht, who had been looking for a way to save Renata the whole time, found an ally in the Count, who was appalled by the incidents. With his help, Ruprecht manages to get into the dungeon the following night, where he finds Renata dying.
Impact history
The novel first appeared in 17 sequels between January 1907 and August 1908 in Wesy magazine . In 1908 the Scorpion publishing house published the magazine text unchanged as a book, followed in 1909 by a second, stylistically revised edition with cultural-historical notes.
The translation into the German language took place in 1910 by Reinhold von Walter. The novel was also translated into Latvian (1908), Czech (1913 and 1925), Spanish (1922), Bulgarian (1929) and English (1930).
Sergei Prokofjew used the material for his opera Der feurige Engel , which he completed in 1927, but which only premiered after his death in 1954. Many of the themes and motifs of this opera were incorporated into his 3rd symphony, which he composed shortly afterwards .
Liliana Kern's biography about Bryusov's muse Nina Petrowskaya, published in 2006, is also entitled The Fiery Angel.
Quote
“The book is about people who are engulfed in the vortex of their own fantasies and whose fantasies take on a strange reality due to the unconscious forces that were in motion. For a writer from the pre-Freudian era […] this examination of the psychology of the abnormal is a remarkably convincing tour de force. As a poet, Bryusov had a vague idea of the strange truth about witches: that the powers of the human mind are far greater than we think and that they can be set free by symbols . "
expenditure
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Огненный ангел. . Scorpion, Moscow 1908
- 2nd revised edition ibid. 1909; Reprinted with an introduction by Brigitte Flickinger: W. Fink, Munich 1971
- German
- Valerius Brjussoff: The fiery angel. Tale from the sixteenth century. From the Russian by Reinhold von Walter. Hyperion, Munich 1910
- Valery Bryusov: The fiery angel. Historical novel. Rütten and Loening, Berlin 1981
- Valery Bryusov: The fiery angel. Novel. DuMont, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-7701-2540-1
Web links
- Review ( Memento from December 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) by Florian Kuhrt
Footnotes
- ↑ Liliana Kern: The fiery angel. The life of Nina Petrowskaya. Berliner Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-8333-0359-X