The donkey
The Eselin is a novella by the German Nobel Prize winner for literature Paul Heyse , which appeared in the July issue of the magazine Nord und Süd in Breslau in 1880 .
content
A few years after the Franco-German War on the Saxon border with Bohemia : As a 24-year-old, the first-person narrator Eugen had to end his military career after being wounded in the war and is now curing his wounds as a civilian on his brother-in-law's estate Border mountains. When the hunter Eugen descended through the forest to the neighboring Bohemian town in the spring, he was attracted by the cry of a donkey. In front of a remote, dilapidated forest house, he met 50-year-old Lise Lamitz. Lise had served in a count's house in Prague and had been impregnated by the son of the house when she was thirty. Financially quite decently settled, Lise had been dismissed from the rulership and bought the forest cottage. Only in the first few years did the young Count occasionally support her.
Now, twenty years later, it is the same with Lise's moronic only daughter, Hana. In the little house, Hana breastfeeds her baby Marie. The child has Hana von Franz, the son of the judge down in town. During conception the donkey Minka intervened and was stabbed in the neck by Franz.
All summer long, Eugen cured himself in a seaside resort. In the following autumn - again as a guest at his sister's - the hunter Eugen met his friend Lise Lamitz again near her house with his rifle shouldered; this time on a steep slope directly above a deep black forest pond near the alders. Hana went into the water with little Marie because Franz is wedding the daughter of the wealthy brewer down in town. Hana had expected Franz every evening during his lifetime. But he hadn't come. The donkey Minka drags herself to the pond. At the request of Lise Lamitz, the hunter Eugen shoots the still rather wounded animal. Minka sinks down to Hana and Marie. Lise Lamitz thanks. Eugene goes to the town.
The next day he learns that Lise Lamitz set a fire in her house that night and burned herself in it.
Words
Paul Heyse sprinkles - distancing himself with fine mockery - sparingly educational language:
- "Your other toilet seemed soigniert enough to be."
- "In this attitude she could have served a painter as a model ..."
Used edition
- Die Eselin pp. 185–213 in: Paul Heyse: Andrea Delfin and other short stories . bb series No. 167. 213 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1966 (1st edition)
Web links
- The text
- online in the Internet Archive (pp. 1–22 in Paul Lindau (Ed.): Nord und Süd , Breslau, July 1880)
- online in the Internet archive (pp. 164–195 in Paul Heyse, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 8: Novellen IX. Wilhelm Hertz , Berlin 1885)
- Entries in WorldCat