The Aspern Fonts
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The Aspern Writings is a novel by Henry James . It is about the unsuccessful hunt for the private legacy of a famous writer. The setting is Venice .
The English-language original edition was first published under the title The Aspern Papers from March to May 1888 in the journal Atlantic Monthly ; The New York Complete Edition of James' Works was published between 1907 and 1918 and is based on revisions made by the writer between 1906 and 1910. Among other things, he changed the name of one of the main characters in the Aspern writings from Tita to Tina. Translations into German have appeared under the titles Aspern's Nachlass and Die Aspern-Schriften . The novel was also adapted for the stage and filmed several times.
content
A nameless, ageless and faceless first-person narrator, American, literary scholar and editor, together with his partner John Cumnor, was looking for testimonies to the romantic poet Jeffrey Aspern, whose works they had already published. Aspern, to whom you ascribe approximately the rank of Shakespeare , was active around 1820, died young and must once have enjoyed unusual successes with many women or have had great difficulty in evading them, if necessary while maintaining the politeness. The first-person narrator feels reminded of Orpheus among the maenads when he reads the correspondence that has already come into his hands . In retrospect, he is extremely astonished not to have found out sooner that one of the muses who are particularly important and who have left their mark on Aspern's literary production is still alive: Juliana Bordereau, who has settled in Venice with a niece or great-niece and has been leading a very secluded life there for several years.
Henry James gives himself and the reader the pleasure of demonstrating in a kind of chamber play in nine chapters how the hero, who in his admiration for Aspern is quite prepared to use very unfair methods to get at the letters and other papers that the old lady still owns, according to his assumption, fails grandly.
Inquiries by letter from Cumnor, who is currently in London , only led to an abrupt refusal, which was written down in a few lines by the niece's hand. But even this rejection confirms the first-person narrator in his assumption that documents from the time of the relationship between "Juliana" and Aspern must still be available. Because, he argues to his maternal American friend Mrs. Perst, if it weren't for that, the lady wouldn't have the confidential phrase “Mr. Aspern ”used in her letter.
Mrs. Perst, who has been living in Venice for a number of years and doing good there, especially among her compatriots, has once called at the Bordereau house, but was briefly dispatched by her niece, Miss Tina. At least she knows the palazzo in which the two women lead their secluded lives and has also made the first-person narrator a suggestion on how to establish contact: He should rent the spacious building and thus ultimately win the trust of the women . At the beginning of the story, around the beginning of May, she also drove with her protégé in her gondola near the palazzo, and in the gondola this reveals itself: “I can only get to my prey if I dispel their suspicions, and I can only dispel their suspicions by using clever tricks. Hypocrisy, duplicity is my only chance. I'm sorry, but there is no wickedness I would not commit for Jeffrey Aspern's sake. ”He's already got business cards with a false name and is ready to court the old lady's niece, Mrs. Perst commented with the words that he should rather wait until he gets to see this niece.
When the first-person narrator looks at the palazzo, the decisive idea comes to him: unlike most other buildings in Venice, the two ladies' residence has a garden. This garden serves as a pretext for his rental request, with which he falls into the house of the Lady Bordereau.
This is done in the second chapter. The first-person narrator is let in by the maid Olimpia, to whom he hands a few lines in Italian to their masters, in which he asks for a short interview. In fact, Miss Tina met him in the large hall on the first floor of the palazzo. “Her face wasn't young, but it looked open; it had no freshness, but it was clear. She had big eyes that weren't shiny, luscious hair that wasn't styled, and long, delicate hands that - possibly - weren't clean. She wrestled these long limbs almost convulsively [...] “Miss Tina treats the visitor as if he had the power to take away her beloved, albeit neglected, garden. However, the first-person narrator promises to disturb as little as possible as a house and garden companion and, moreover, to have a sea of flowers planted. After Miss Tina mentioned the very limited financial resources that are available to her and her aunt and which are transferred through a lawyer from America, he says that it would be economically very unwise to forego such a rental. “I realized immediately that no one had spoken to the good lady in such a way - with a humorous determination that did not preclude compassion, which was based on it. She could easily have told me that she found my sympathy outrageous, but luckily that didn't cross her mind. I left her with the understanding that she wanted to put the question to her aunt [...] "
Mrs. Perst puts a damper on him when he triumphs over it: “You imagine that you made such a deep impression on the woman within five minutes [...] If you actually get in there, you will be Credit victory. "The first-person narrator actually counts this as a success, but adds that this applies" only to the editor of the work, not to the man for whom personal conquests were not part of his practice. "
The next day he paid his respects to Juliana Bordereau and was very excited because he still believed he could feel the aura of the poet he idolized around the centenary.
In the third chapter she speaks for the first time and surprises her visitor with her objectivity and her negotiating skills. She rents some of the rooms in the palazzo to him for twenty times the usual price for three months without his even having seen the rooms, and he has to promise to deliver the money - in gold - the next day. She refuses to give him a handshake to close this deal. He will never be allowed to touch the old lady at all, which would be important to him, since she once touched Aspern. But the maximum she will allow many weeks later will be for him to push her wheelchair around the room. At least, before he leaves the house, Miss Tina shows him the neglected rooms on the second floor where he will live and explains to him that the high rental income is intended for her, Tina, because her aunt is expecting her to die soon.
By the time Mrs. Prest left for summer retreat - it is now mid-June - the narrator, as he mentions at the beginning of the fourth chapter, had not made any progress in relation to the two women at Bordereau. Nevertheless, he is not dissatisfied: “I foresaw that I had a summer ahead of me that corresponded entirely to my literary heart, and despite everything my sense of playing with my possibilities was much more pronounced than my sense of being played with me could [...] “He enjoys life in summery Venice with the feeling that he has conjured up the genius of Aspern and connected himself to the generations of artists who have created beauty in the past. The garden, which he claims to love so much, is finally developing as it should when midsummer approaches: "I would rush against the old ladies with lilies - I would bomb their fortress with roses." He spends a lot Time to imagine the fate of the young Juliana Bordereau and ponder Aspern, who had close ties with Europe, but who was ultimately one of the first American writers. His esteem for Aspern is based on the fact that “at a time when our country of origin was naked, raw and provincial [...], he had found ways and means to live and write like one of the first; to be free and generous and utterly fearless; to feel, understand and express everything. "
It gets very hot. It's hard to bear in the evening in the Palazzo, especially since you can't light a lamp without attracting flocks of insects. The first-person narrator gets used to spending his evenings on St. Mark's Square in Café Florian . In the middle of July, it is reported at the beginning of the fifth chapter, he comes home earlier than usual for once and meets poor Miss Tina, as he usually calls his niece, in the garden. For weeks he has given both women large bouquets of flowers every day. Now he explains to the niece that these flowers were not only intended for the old aunt, he stays with her in the garden until after midnight and questions her, but is also questioned by Miss Tina. When he finally finds out that he is interested in material on Aspern, she leaves him with a cry of horror and is no longer seen for the next fourteen days. The first-person narrator, whose patience is gradually overworked, stops the flower greetings for the two ladies after a few days.
As a result, at the next meeting, at the beginning of the sixth chapter, his niece tells him that her aunt is expecting his visit. Now that the broadcasts have been canceled, she thanks her for the flowers for the first time and has the first-person narrator promise to give her flowers again from now on. She also suggests that he take Miss Tina with him on trips around Venice. A few days later he actually rides through Venice in his gondola with Miss Tina. In the Piazza San Marco she explains to him that her aunt fears that he may leave. This brings the conversation back to the reasons he has to stay in Venice and in the old palazzo. He expresses concern to Miss Tina that her aunt might destroy the documents that are so important to him before she dies, and receives a promise from her that she will do what she can to help him.
In his impatience and restlessness, a few days later, at the beginning of the seventh chapter, he reports to the two women and meets Juliana Bordereau, who otherwise never leaves her living room, at a window in the room. She starts the conversation by asking if he would like to rent his room for another six months. As every time the former girlfriend of the adored poet shows herself so materialistically, the first-person narrator is uncomfortably touched. This time she also wants to know why he does not have the financial means to extend the lease on the previous terms, and asks why the books he is writing are selling so badly. There is an allusive exchange of words about the nature of his writings and his rummaging around in the past. After persistent negotiations for a further lease, the “clever old witch” lets the first-person narrator see a portrait of Aspern's youth under the pretext that she wants to sell it, and explains that her father once painted it. The narrator pretends to recognize the depicted face, but as if he cannot remember the name. But even this trick doesn't work: Juliana Bordereau does not pronounce the name of her - presumed - former lover. The first-person narrator finally explains that he would like to buy the picture himself, whereupon she first replies roughly and then unexpectedly brings the conversation to Miss Tina, who shortly afterwards enters the hall and complains that her aunt is overexerting herself. The first-person narrator is allowed to push the old lady into her parlor and looks around curiously. In the shabby ambience, an Empire secretary draws his eyes. Before she says goodbye to the narrator, Juliana Bordereau names an exorbitantly high price for the portrait of Aspern that she wants to sell.
A few hours later, at the beginning of the eighth chapter, Miss Tina appears in the narrator's premises, disturbed: she had sent for a doctor because her aunt had suffered a faint attack, but the maid was apparently following her through half of Venice. The narrator then sends his servant to fetch a doctor and rushes with Miss Tina to the old lady. Again he looks around their premises and makes assumptions about where Aspern's legacy might be. Since the doctor who arrives doesn't seem to agree with his presence, he goes out into the garden, but explains that he will come back later and ask how Juliana Bordereau is doing. Later he meets Miss Tina in the hall and learns that the aunt is better again, but that the doctor wants to come and see again. Again he presses Miss Tina with questions about the documents. Eventually he reveals his true identity. The doctor interrupts the scene, the first-person narrator leaves the house and takes a walk through Venice, again with the announcement that he will appear again later and inquire. But when he returns at night, everything seems to be asleep. The first-person narrator enters the room and looks at the secretary. He is about to try to open it because he had the thought that Miss Tina might have unlocked the furniture for him when he is surprised by Juliana Bordereau, who has got out of her bed, now for the first time hers with one Umbrella or veil can see protected eyes and calls him a villain before she passes out into the arms of her niece.
The next morning and at the beginning of the last chapter, autumn has now come, the first-person narrator leaves Venice and embarks on a short journey, but announces that he will return soon. Contrary to what was thought, the old lady did not succumb to her shock at night. The narrator visits Treviso , Bassano and Castelfranco without noticing anything of the sights there. When he returns from the trip, he learns from his servant that Juliana Bordereau has since died and is buried. Now he has a remorse that he did not help the unworldly Miss Tina and seeks her immediately. "She had always looked as if she were in mourning [...] That is why she didn't look any different in her current dress than usual," he states, but notices a little later that she no longer looks so unattractive.
Finally, Miss Tina explains that she actually found the documents he was looking for, but had to promise her aunt not to let anyone see them or, in fact, to destroy them. She laboriously tries to make it clear to him that the situation would be different if he were not a stranger but a relative. When the first-person narrator realizes that she is proposing to him, he leaves her, disturbed. He finds himself on the Campo dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo , where Verrocchio's equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni stands. He has a silent conversation with this statue, as if she could give him valuable instruction. But of course the statue looks silently over him. The next day it suddenly occurs to him that his hasty retreat has put the papers in extreme danger, and he rushes to Miss Tina. But she says goodbye to him forever and tells him that she burned all of the Aspern writings in the kitchen at night.
From a distance he sends her the alleged profit from the sale of the picture she has given him, but in fact he hangs it over his desk and admits this to Mrs. Perst, who he meets in London in the autumn.
composition
According to Bettina Blumenberg , the story is laid out like a play, a chamber play in three acts with an epilogue , symmetrically structured with its three protagonists and the three secondary characters and the unity of time, space and place. Blumenberg points to James' artful handling of tense, his light dramaturgy and other tricks and finally states: “James has developed a literary technique of the highest artistry that has to be called indirect. Metaphors , improper speech in images, contribute to the indirectness as well as the transfer of narrative responsibility to the protagonist, who always communicates the events to us readers, fools us into something, maybe even lies. Who knows, whether out of cunning, naivety, good-naturedness or deviousness, his point of view does not always correspond to that of the reader. But at the moment of his lie he is overwhelmed by the progress of the event and has to correct himself, which he justifies with the surprising reactions of his opponents. To the amusement of the reader, he asks his questions with certain expectations that are almost always disappointed, he lays the trail for certain encounters that then do not take place. His refinement suddenly turns against his own plan [...] A first-person narrator who reveals himself to gradual self-disclosure in permanent self-refutation. "
Real role models of the main characters
Henry James began writing the story in Palazzo Barbaro in 1887 after recalling an anecdote he heard in Florence and played there in 1879. Claire Clairmont , the half-sister of Percy B. Shelley , who had a daughter Allegra with Lord Byron , lived in Florence with a niece in old age. A Shelley admirer named Silsbee used the trick of approaching her as a lodger to get his hands on Shelley's literary legacy. After her aunt died, the niece also offered him the papers, but just like Miss Tina in James' novel on condition that he marry her, whereupon Silsbee fled.
James' poet Aspern seems to be a mixture of Shelley, Byron and Alexander S. Pushkin , whose story Queen of Spades probably inspired him. Henry James did not know the two women and was therefore free to design them. According to his statements, Silsbee did not leave any traces in the novel as a person.
The archetype of Mrs. Perst is said to have been Katherine Bronson .
Location
The Palazzo Soranzo Cappello is hidden behind the two ladies' palazzo . Other parts of the plot take place on St. Mark's Square, which is overcrowded by tourists, and secondary scenes also take place on the Lido, which, however, is hardly described. The first-person narrator, who usually travels with his gondola, gets lost hopelessly when he is on foot in Venice.
Literary allusions and the role of the works of art mentioned
Elizabeth Lowry points to a quote from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice : “The Aspern Papers is haunted by the specter of past and future consummations, both achieved and desired, sexual and literary: Juliana's passionate love affair with Aspern; the narrator's longed-for acquisition of the papers; Miss Tina's awkward erotic bid at snaring the narrator for herself. In spite of the urgency of his wish to possess the letters, however, he fails at the crucial moment. He can rifle her aunt's desk but he can't bring himself to rifle her, and he is left with an aching awareness that he has been too caught up in his "stratagems and spoils" - the phrase is a quotation from The Merchant of Venice - to anticipate her disappointment. The allusion to The Merchant is deliberately placed. Shakespeare warns us that "The man that hath no music in himself, / Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, / Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils." This lover of letters has "no music in himself": as a literary ravisher, he is impotent. ”Lowry connects this literary reference to the passage in which the narrator looks up at the Colleoni statue: it sees it as“ potent image of triumphant masculinity ”and says that the statue, if it could speak, would at best tell the desperate literature lover:“ Sorry, old chap - you just don't have the balls. ”For his part, Colleoni had three of them, like his coat of arms and the grave decorations in the Cappella Colleoni in Bergamo testify, and Henry James, an intimate connoisseur of art and the history of the Renaissance, was certainly familiar with this fact. Lowry tries to draw parallels between the nameless first-person narrator and its inventor, and says that there is “an intriguing possibility that the narrator's sense of emasculation in The Aspern Papers, when confronted by the statue of Colleoni, might have been rooted in feelings that were personal and immediate to his creator. ”Because it cannot be ruled out that an injury that James suffered in his youth and mentioned in his autobiographical writings affected the corresponding parts of the body and thus influenced his entire life. Yes, maybe that's why the solitary Henry James sought consolation in lush Venice.
Bettina Blumenberg, who extensively points out the fact that the descriptions or non-descriptions of the people involved are referenced, has also devoted herself to the role of the works of art in James' novel. The Colleoni statue is just one of several. First of all, the Aspern portrait that Mr. Bordereau painted many years ago plays an important role. The first-person narrator delves into his sight several times and maintains just as mute dialogue with the picture as he did with the Colleoni statue at the end, but in contrast to this, the young Aspern seems to answer him on the miniature. Blumenberg especially emphasizes that there is “only one” in this story who is “worthy of a pictorial description, a young man with a remarkably beautiful face in a green coat with a high collar and a leather-brown waistcoat, about twenty-five years old Jeffrey Aspern. And that's long dead, the existence of letters, paintings, longing figures. Flirting with the undead is the culmination of the homoerotic game of hide-and-seek. ”Against this background, it becomes clear that all women in the novel can at best assume mother roles for the first-person narrator, which he starves to death as erotic creatures on the outstretched arm, which is why he does miss the conventional male role.
In addition to the fictional portrait and the Colleoni statue, there are other references to works of art in James' novel. When the first-person narrator leaves Venice for a few days, he travels to several places whose names he mentions, but which he cannot remember afterwards. Blumenberg explains that the reader is now called upon to imagine what he may have seen on the way. She sees parallels to Jeffrey Aspern and his estate in the works and fates of the quattrocentrist Giorgione , who was born in Castelfranco and spent part of his life. Many works are attributed to Giorgione, but there is no reliable evidence that they really came from him, and they are often difficult to interpret, such as the thunderstorm that is in Venice. This correlates with the inaccurate information about Aspern, whose works are never mentioned by name. Blumenberg points to two works of art that Henry James might have had in mind when he let his narrator travel: an Artes Liberales frieze in the Casa Marta-Pellizzari , which was still ascribed to Giorgione in James' time, and a self-reference of the male The main character as well as the author can represent, and the Madonna in the cathedral of Castelfranco , which offers a different allusion : “the woman removed from the world, sublime, belonging to the divine sphere, an unreachable, untouchable”. Blumenberg refers to another picture of Giorgione's woman, a nude that is in Venice, was extremely beautiful, but was so battered that its beauty can only be guessed at in a copy. The once divine Juliana is also largely destroyed by the age when the first-person narrator meets her.
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Of course, Blumenberg also goes into the equestrian statue of Colleoni and also that of Marcus Aurelius , which is also mentioned in the scene of desperation. But she does not count their testicles, but states: “Both statues are related to the narrator and his cunning game, so he seeks advice from them, the general and the stoic , for his own approach. But he doesn't want to hear anything of their wisdom, but initiation into their lists. This is an absurd exaggeration of his self-assessment, his self-misunderstanding, to think that he has all the strategic strings in his hands and only needs to pull the right one. The relation to one's own actions is presumptuous . He also wants to be on such a pedestal [...] And the leitmotif comes into effect again: The hero does not seek advice from a human friend [...], but communicates with a statue [...] But the statue remains mute as stubborn. Again, art has to replace life. ”According to Blumenberg, the missed life or the opportunities not seized is the main subject of the book.
reception
On the occasion of the new translation by Bettina Blumenberg, Rolf Vollmann described the novel - or the “long short story”, as the work is called in the nomenclature of James research - as a boon. There is "something incredibly spellbinding about the way James creates situations that we say to ourselves that they almost shouldn't exist," he wrote in Die Zeit . “What could scare us readers as soon as we see this coming (we are depraved), and also scare him, the young man, is, in the way that James reports about it, a beautiful, touchingly forbidden and enchanting one Process. "Reporting is actually a wrong word for this type of narration, but" on the other hand: What else does James seem to be doing? He leaves me in a state of vorproustscher , vorjoycescher (to name the other monster of modernity) innocence. But I know both of them, only after they do I now read James - and I am still intact, as I can see, and see that at least in literature there is no progress. "
Hansjörg Graf saw generic elements of the crime story and the ghost story in the enigmatic text, Kristina Maidt-Zinke was enthusiastic about James' comedic talent, with which the scenes between the cunning acting first-person narrator and his no less cunning antagonists are designed and the reader between them Let perspective and confusion oscillate. She explained in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that the book was a small, dazzling "treasure".
Individual evidence
- ^ Henry James, Die Aspern-Schriften , translated by Bettina Blumenberg, Munich, 5th edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-423-13337-1 , p. 16. The other quotations from the novel also come from this edition.
- ^ The Aspern Writings , p. 24
- ↑ The Aspern Writings , p. 30
- ↑ The Aspern Writings , p. 30
- ↑ The Aspern Writings , p. 31
- ^ The Aspern Writings , p. 54
- ^ The Aspern Writings , p. 58
- ↑ The Aspern Writings , p. 64 f.
- ^ The Aspern Writings , p. 117
- ^ The Aspern Writings , p. 154
- ↑ Bettina Blumenberg, Venice can be very cold. Epilogue to Henry James' ‹Aspern-Schriften› , in: Henry James, Die Aspern-Schriften , translated by Bettina Blumenberg , Munich, 5th edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-423-13337-1 , pp. 183–203, here p. 194
- ↑ a b Bettina Blumenberg, Venice can be very cold. Epilogue to Henry James' ‹Aspern-Schriften› , in: Henry James, Die Aspern-Schriften , translated by Bettina Blumenberg , Munich, 5th edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-423-13337-1 , pp. 183–203
- ↑ a b Elizabeth Lowry, Open wounds , Oct. 4, 2008, at www.theguardian.com
- ↑ Bettina Blumenberg, Venice can be very cold. Epilogue to Henry James' ‹Aspern-Schriften› , in: Henry James, Die Aspern-Schriften , translated by Bettina Blumenberg , Munich, 5th edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-423-13337-1 , pp. 183–203, here p. 197 f.
- ↑ Bettina Blumenberg, Venice can be very cold. Epilogue to Henry James' ‹Aspern-Schriften› , in: Henry James, Die Aspern-Schriften , translated by Bettina Blumenberg , Munich, 5th edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-423-13337-1 , pp. 183–203, here p. 201
- ↑ Bettina Blumenberg, Venice can be very cold. Epilogue to Henry James' ‹Aspern-Schriften› , in: Henry James, Die Aspern-Schriften , translated by Bettina Blumenberg , Munich, 5th edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-423-13337-1 , pp. 183–203, here p. 202 f.
- ↑ Rolf Vollmann, What a treat! "The Aspern Writings" by Henry James in a new translation , in: Die Zeit , January 22, 2004 ( online )
- ↑ Review notes on www.perlentaucher.de