Abundance of life

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Ludwig Tieck
* 1773 † 1853

The Abundance of Life is a novella by Ludwig Tieck , written before September 1837 in the “Urania. Paperback to the year 1839 ” appeared.

The young couple Clara and Heinrich Brand, who are in love, have become penniless, starve themselves through a severe winter and cut themselves off. In the early spring, deliverance from the evil draws near.

prehistory

Clara, daughter of a wealthy, influential noble ambassador, loves the aspiring diplomat Heinrich Brand. Finally the girl runs away with the young commoner. The couple are getting married. The newly wed refugees do not have the blessing of Clara's father. On the contrary, they have to hide from the old envoy's inquiries and do not rent a very comfortable room from the landlord Emmerich's upstairs. Heinrich can no longer do the job from his hiding place. A chaucer issue must be sold for below value. The bibliophile treasure was given to Heinrich by his rich college friend Andreas Vandelmeer. Andreas later went to the East Indies . Heinrich had given the friend part of the capital he had inherited from his parents. Andreas wanted to speculate with the money.

To make matters worse, Heinrich had also given his manuscript, a “wonderful poem”, to a “reckless bookseller”. He had run away with this single copy. When Heinrich's cash ran out, the old, discreet Christine was the only support left for the young couple. Christine, once Clara's nurse, had escaped voluntarily.

action

The action begins when the couple's distress is greatest. The money has run out and the winter is proving to be unusually tough. The landlord Emmerich is outside for a cure against his Podagra . Heinrich, alone at home with Clara, gradually crushes and burns the massive oak stairs that lead up to the young couple's floor. Deprived of access, Heinrich has to pull up the water bucket etc. with a rope. Christine assists from below. This is the way to overwinter. In late winter, when spring is about to approach, the landlord comes back from the cure and immediately calls the police. Heinrich is said to be imprisoned for unauthorized "use of stairs". At first, the young couple cannot be reached by the advancing state power. In addition, Heinrich behaves insolently from above. The rebellious, jobless diplomat speaks boldly and cheekily. But his delaying tactic works. Andreas comes back from East India via London - with the newly acquired Chaucer edition in his luggage. All misery has an end. Thanks to the East Indian speculation, Heinrich suddenly became wealthy. Everything, really everything, turns out to be good. Clara's father forgives the daughter. Heinrich finances the construction of the new staircase at Emmerich - albeit under a strict premise: it has to be “a large, stone staircase”, ie a non-combustible one. However, the landlord Emmerich had a wooden one built. Three years after this overall happy turning point, Heinrich's manuscript has become a “popular book”.

shape

The prehistory is brought into the novella by Heinrich leafing through his diary and reading from it to Clara. The couple makes a virtue out of their need. Even poverty has a sunny side to it. Heinrich and Clara feed on bread and water. Both live - always cheerful and in love, the purest lovebirds - seemingly carefree into the day. Never say a bad word.

interpretation

Pöschel names dissertations and more recent interpretations of the abundance of life and goes into detail on the allegorical and poetic content of the novella. References to Shakespeare's Macbeth and especially to Jean Paul's Siebenkäs are investigated. But Goethe's Götz and Chaucer's Canterbury stories are also discussed in connection with the novella. In particular, Heinrich's dream, in which his person is auctioned, is examined in relation to a fact: the citizen Heinrich kidnaps and marries a noblewoman.

Self-testimony

  • Tieck considers the novella to be one of his “most successful little works”.

reception

  • Hesse took the novella into his "Library of World Literature" .
  • The title of the novella could refer to a line from the Hölderlin poem "Rousseau" :
"The abundance of life, the infinite,"
  • Gebhardt points out the fairytale quality of the material.
  • Schöll “enchants and amuses this blissful elevation above materiality”, just as “the stairs are gradually brought up the stairs”.
  • Hebbel noted the novella on February 16, 1839 in his diary: The "pure human being" can "always maintain his independence".
  • Minor calls the novella a "lovely mischievous piece".
  • Elke Heidenreich sums up: "The poetry of the idyll, in which love, happiness and humor make everyday life unreal, is contrasted with the state of a society that threatens to oppress the individual in its material narrowness and rational one-sidedness."

literature

source
  • Gotthold Ludwig Klee (ed.): Tiecks works. Third volume. Abundance of life. Pp. 45–106 in Meyer's classic editions. Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig and Vienna 1892. Critically reviewed and explained edition. 474 pages
expenditure
  • Ludwig Tieck: The Abundance of Life. In: German Novellenschatz . Edited by Paul Heyse and Hermann Kurz. Vol. 3. 2nd ed. Berlin, [1910], pp. 1-86. In: Weitin, Thomas (Ed.): Fully digitized corpus. The German Novellenschatz . Darmstadt / Konstanz, 2016 ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • Ludwig Tieck: The Abundance of Life. Leipzig Island 1913. 69 pages. Island Library 33
  • Ludwig Tieck: The Abundance of Life. With illustrations by Luigi Malipiero. Karl Voegels Verlag Berlin around 1930. Terra books No. 30. 64 pages
  • Ludwig Tieck: The Abundance of Life. Alfred Scherz Bern 1945. 77 pages. Parnassus Library No. 39, gold stamping on the book cover
  • Ludwig Tieck: The Abundance of Life. With illustrations by Wolfgang Felten. Rütten & Loening Potsdam around 1949. 94 pages.
  • Ludwig Tieck: The Abundance of Life. Philipp Reclam 1986. Reclam's Universal Library 1925, ISBN 978-3-15-001925-2
  • Ludwig Tieck: The Abundance of Life. Hamburg reading books No. 59, 1986, ISBN 978-3-87291-058-5
  • The abundance of life in the Gutenberg-DE project
  • The text at Zeno.org: The Abundance of Life
  • Ludwig Tieck: The Abundance of Life. GRIOT Hörbuch Verlag GmbH. Speaker: Heiner Heusinger. 1st edition: August 25, 2008, ISBN 978-3-941234-06-2
Secondary literature
  • Hermann Hesse: A library of world literature . Reclam's Universal Library No. 7003. Leipzig 1957. [53 pages. With an afterword by the author from December 1948.]
  • Uwe Schweikert (ed.): Poets about their poems: Ludwig Tieck . Volume 9/2, Munich 1971, p. 65.
  • Roger Paulin: Ludwig Tieck . Stuttgart: JB Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung 1987. Series: Metzler Collection; M 185, 133 pages, ISBN 3-476-10185-1 .
  • Gerhard Schulz : The German literature between the French Revolution and the restoration. Part 2. The Age of the Napoleonic Wars and the Restoration: 1806–1830. Munich: CH Beck Verlag 1989. 912 pages, ISBN 3-406-09399-X , p. 519.
  • Hannelore Schlaffer : Poetics of the Novella. Metzler, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-476-00957-2 .
  • Burkhard Pöschel: “At the center of the most wonderful events”. Attempts on the literary confrontation with social modernity in Ludwig Tieck's late narrative work. Pp. 91-130. Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag 1994. 261 pages, ISBN 3-925670-99-8 .
  • Armin Gebhardt: Ludwig Tieck. Life and complete works of the “King of Romanticism” pp. 263–264. Marburg: Tectum Verlag 1997. 354 pages. ISBN 3-8288-9001-6 .
  • Lutz Hagestedt: Similarity and Difference. Aspects of the conception of reality in Ludwig Tieck's late novels and short stories. Munich: Belleville Verlag 1997. 346 pages. ISBN 3-923646-66-6 .
  • Elke Heidenreich : [Work article] The abundance of life. In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon . Edited by Heinz Ludwig Arnold . 3rd, completely revised edition. 18 vols. Metzler, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-04000-8 , vol. 16, pp. 268f.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Source, p. 47 below
  2. ↑ cited in Paulin, p. 92, 4th reference from: Urania, pp. 1–66
  3. ↑ Hannelore Schlaffer, p. 112
  4. ^ Pöschel, p. 91
  5. ↑ Pöschel, p. 94
  6. ↑ a b Pöschel, p. 96
  7. ↑ Pöschel, p. 106
  8. ↑ Pöschel, p. 121, 12. Zvo
  9. ↑ Source, p. 65, 2. Zvo, p. 105, 20. Zvo
  10. ↑ Schulz, p. 511, 6th Zvu
  11. ↑ Schweikert, quoted in Pöschel, p. 91, 4. Zvo
  12. ↑ Hesse, p. 31, 2nd Zvu
  13. ↑ Pöschel, p. 130 below
  14. ↑ The wording of the poem at textlog.de: "Rousseau"
  15. ↑ Gebhardt, p. 263, 2nd Zvu
  16. ↑ Source, p. 48, 10. Zvo
  17. ↑ quoted in Klee in der Quelle, p. 48, 12. Zvo
  18. ↑ quoted in Klee in der Quelle, p. 48, 18. Zvo
  19. ↑ quoted in Klee in der Quelle, p. 50, 14. Zvo
  20. ↑ Elke Heidenreich: [Work article] Des life abundance. In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon . Edited by Heinz Ludwig Arnold . 3rd, completely revised edition. 18 vols. Metzler, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-04000-8 , vol. 16, pp. 268f., Here 269.