The murder of the Commendatore

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The murder of the Commendatore ( Japanese 騎士 団 長 殺 し Kishidanchō Goroshi ) is a novel by Haruki Murakami . It was published in Japanese in February 2017 and in German translation by Ursula Gräfe in January and April 2018 .

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Part 1: An idea appears

The novel is written from the first person perspective of a painter who lives separately from his wife, who gives up his life in Tokyo and after a tour in a Peugeot 205 through Japan to Hokkaido to the house of the painter Tomohiko Amada, who now lives in the old people's home, moves into the country. There he becomes aware of the picture The Murder of Commendatore , the meaning of which he cannot decipher for the time being. The first-person narrator notes that Tomohiko Amada was an opera lover and had studied in Vienna in the 1930s, which could possibly help him interpret the picture. The first-person narrator earns his living as an art teacher for children, at the same time he is commissioned by a man from the neighborhood, Menshiki Wataru, a former IT entrepreneur who now leads a secluded life, to do a portrait. While he portrays Menshiki, who does not restrict the painter in terms of technique and style, Menshiki and the protagonist come closer. Menshiki tells the narrator that he may be the father of a daughter who lives with her deceased mother's family and asks him to paint her too. In flashbacks, the narrator recalls an affair during his tour of Japan. In addition, he uncovered the secret of the picture The murder of the Commendatore , which he connects with the experiences of the house owner in Vienna under National Socialist occupation and his involvement in a failed assassination attempt on an official.

Part 2: A metaphor changes

Marie, Menshiki's supposed daughter, can now be painted, whereby she and her aunt are invited to see him. She suspects that he is interested in the aunt because he is watching her house with binoculars. One day Marie disappears without a trace. In the meantime, the painter learns that Tomohiko Amada had a brother who was drafted to Nanjing during World War II and who then committed suicide. He goes to the old people's home with his son to visit Tomohiko. Although Tomohiko can no longer speak, the commendatore appears to the protagonist from the picture, who asks him to be stabbed to find out where Marie is. He does so and through a realm of metaphors he finds himself back in a locked pit in the garden of his house. There he is rescued by Menshiki and learns that Marie has returned home. The next time he portrays Marie, Marie tells that she was in Menshiki's house, saw old women's clothes in the closet, which probably belonged to her mother and came back a few days later. The Commendatore had shown himself to her too. They decide to keep their experiences to themselves. In the end, the protagonist returns to his old wife because she does not want to live with the child's possible father. In a flashback several years after the events, the painter realizes that he is now leading a happy life and that Tomohikos' house has now burned down.

reception

“Underneath, however, a debate unfolds about what art is and can do. Also because Murakami implants a classic, the Paragone: the competition of the arts during the Renaissance. So Murakami dissolves the genre boundaries in a fun and pleasurable way, lets the opera hero, statue, painting figure crawl across the book pages. You seldom see artists sketching and painting in novels in such a vivid manner. "

- Anne Haeming in: Der Spiegel . January 26, 2018

“As usual, this Murakami is also an international myth and brand potpourri. The food is largely Japanese. With the car brands, a certain age-mild tolerance for European bodies is noticeable compared to the heavily Toyota-heavy early work. The literary motifs are more or less recycled snippets from the Jena Romanticism, Greek antiquity, the Catholic world of fables and Viennese psychoanalysis. "

- Iris Radisch in: Die Zeit , May 29, 2018

literature

  • Haruki Murakami: The Assassination of the Commendatore. I. An idea appears. Translated from the Japanese by Ursula Gräfe. Cologne 2018, Dumont, ISBN 978-3-8321-9891-6
  • Haruki Murakami: The Assassination of the Commendatore. II. A metaphor changes. Translated from the Japanese by Ursula Gräfe. Cologne 2018, Dumont, ISBN 978-3-8321-9892-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anne Haeming: Haruki Murakami: "The murder of Commendatore" - criticism of the new novel. In: Spiegel Online . January 26, 2018, accessed April 13, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Iris Radisch: "The murder of Commendatore": In the silence of the forest. In: zeit.de . June 2, 2018, accessed April 13, 2020 .