The lonely (Paul Heyse)

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Paul Heyse on a painting by Adolph Menzel from 1853

Die Einsamen is a novella by the German Nobel Prize winner for literature Paul Heyse from 1857.

The novella has been translated into Italian (I Solitarii, 1863), French (Les solitaires, 1864), Danish (De Ensomme, 1873) and Polish (Samotni, 1923).

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In spring in the countryside on the Sorrento coast: Tommaso, the 30-year-old brother of the beautiful Teresa, bought the water mill in the wild gorge below Deserta almost four years ago. Before that, Tommaso had seven fishermen under himself in Naples; had gone out in three boats. With the proceeds he could very well have bought an estate. But after the boat accident in which his young friend Nino was killed while fishing off Puzzuoli, Tommaso wanted solitude. Actually, Nino, the child of poor fishermen, performed as a singer during his lifetime.

The Neapolitan Lucia, the young widow of Nino's uncle, has been busy in Carotta and takes the opportunity to visit Tommaso in the mill. Lucia misses Tommaso's replies to her mail over the past four years. Tommaso confesses that he burned all the letters unread. Lucia doesn't understand. But Tommaso understands: Lucia wants to say with her visit that she is now free and that nobody “stands between the two of us”. During Nino's uncle's lifetime, Tommaso could have had any of the wives of Naples, but he had only wanted the married Lucia. An even bigger obstacle than the uncle on Tommaso's way to Lucia had been Nino. Tommaso had wanted to break the friendship with Nino because Nino had guarded Lucia's threshold and had thwarted all Tommaso's advances.

Lucia still doesn't understand why she and Tommaso can't become a couple. Tommaso has to come out with the language. During the boating accident when Nino went overboard, the drowning man had put his hand out of the water. Tommaso hadn't helped.

Lucia drives back to Naples from Carotta.

literature

expenditure

  • Die Einsamen S. 83–121 in: Paul Heyse: The girl from Treppi. Italian love stories. With an afterword by Gotthard Erler . Illustrations: Wolfgang Würfel . 512 pages. Book publisher der Morgen, Berlin 1965

Secondary literature

  • Werner Martin (Ed.): Paul Heyse. A bibliography of his works. With an introduction by Prof. Dr. Norbert Miller . 187 pages. Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim 1978 (typewriter font), ISBN 3-487-06573-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin, p. 22