The Soldiers of Fortune (Novella)

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Joseph von Eichendorff

The Knight of Fortune is a novella by Joseph von Eichendorff , which appeared in the second year of the “Rhenish Yearbook for Art and Poetry” in Cologne towards the end of 1840 as the last story published during the author's lifetime.

The vagabond clarinet prefers his freedom to a stately existence.

content

1. Suppius and clarinet

Anno 1648 in Halle and a little further down the hall : The postillon whips Mr. Clarinet off the traveling coach. The stowaway falls into a blooming garden. In it he steals a bottle of wine and a cake from the table from a party, stows them in his coat bag and flees. Clarinet is followed by the cake owners as far as Halle. There the persecutors receive a beating from the eternal student Suppius. The bully had thought the clarinet was a fellow student in need. The cake thief is a wandering musician. No matter, the saved gives Suppius of his stolen property. The friendship is sealed.

2. The serenades

When the student's secret lover is apparently kidnapped, the two new friends pursue the fiends. The night journey goes in a boat down the Saale to a town. The pursuers can do little in the dark and spend the night in a stretched-out traveling coach. When the sleepers wake up, the vehicle - drawn by four magnificent horses - is already on its way. During an armed robbery by bush thieves, the coachman saved himself by jumping from the box into the bushes. But the horses run away.

3. The sound of the forest

An old puppeteer moves with his son Seppi and daughter Denkeli through the war- ravaged villages. Denkeli is not afraid of the mercenaries passing by. On the contrary: “The Siglhupfer is there,” she enthuses. The girl means her lover. When the three stop in front of a neglected castle, Denkeli thinks he recognizes her Siglhupfer standing on the balcony. Denkeli asks the castle staff and gets the answer: "This is the Rittmeister von Klarinett, the bridegroom of the gracious lady."

4. The enchanted castle

Before the gracious Fraulein Euphrosyne, Suppius and clarinet pretend to be passing nobles. Surprisingly, her stately carriage without a driver was stopped on its wild ride through a pillar in the castle courtyard. The two friends are never embarrassed. Not even in that case. They were attacked by robbers in the forest. Clarinet knows a little about the area and tells the young lady the legend of Count Gerold's enchanted castle. A little later clarinet recognizes the Count's coat of arms above the door. Miss Euphrosyne falls in love with the clarinet. Friend Suppius also thinks he has a chance with the young lady and is considering hiring the clarinet as bandmaster in the event of the marriage. But Euphrosyne confesses her love for the clarinet.

5. Fortuna's squire

The above-mentioned bush thieves turn out to be scattered mercenaries who continue the war a little on their own. Eichendorff lets you speak for everyone: "We fertilized the fields with blood for the lazy farmers, ... the world will still suffocate with boredom." So the incorrigible yesterday want to take the castle and already have suppius and clarinet as those in the carriage escaped "noblemen" recognized. When they discuss the intended attack with the puppeteer, Denkeli - listening in close to his father - worries for the life of her Siglhupfer. The girl wants to warn the lover; save him. So Denkeli rushes forward.

6. Much Ado About Nothing

The marriage of the clarinet / Siglhupfer to Fraulein Euphrosyne is imminent. After a brief reflection, however, the clarinet disdains the “castle, three hamlets, four ponds and fat carp and subjects and a four-poster bed”. With his Denkeli he goes off and on. He remains “blissfully lost in the woods from now on.” “Count Gerold's richly dressed hunters” thwart the mercenary's plan. The mercenaries recognize “the great Sinka” in the gracious Fraulein Euphrosyne. That was the beautiful sutler in the regiment of " holk 'rule hunters". The count moves into his castle with his daughter, the young countess. Suppius can hardly believe his own eyes - the young countess is indeed his beloved from Halle. Suppius, the eternal student, is still "making his fortune".

Quotes

  • "Sleep secretly tries death and dream eternity."
  • "Nothing [is] more boring than happiness."

reception

Contemporaries

  • On December 5, 1840, Ludolf Wienbarg praised the “healthy German”, the “clearest language tones” in the Hamburg “Literary and Critical Papers of the Börsen-Halle” and sees “a poet star blinking and sparkling” in the novella.
  • In its meeting of December 1840, a reviewer called "FWD" discovered in the of August Lewald published Stuttgart magazine "Europe. Chronicle of the educated world “self-irony as the essence of romanticism. Such novellas could “never have a rounded, necessary conclusion”. Eichendorff hates the sun. The story plays “during twilight or at night”.
  • In a review in December 1840 in the Hamburg Telegraph for Germany , which is attributed to Karl Gutzkow , the author discusses the detailed description of the “romantic vagabond life” and regrets that the brilliant fireworks are dazzling but not warm.

Statements from the 20th century

  • Robert Mühlher sees the text as a farce "of the ridiculous effort" of the two vagabonds to "smuggle themselves into world happiness".
  • Josef Kunz remarks that Denkeli saves the clarinet from a boring life in the aristocratic world into “the infinity of longing”.
  • The good life in the castle was over for Suppius when the real count arrived. Reality turns out to be stronger than fantasy. Eichendorff managed the "realistic resolution" of the "romantic confusion ".
  • Schulz aptly characterizes the text as "a joke game in memory of the good-for-nothing , but without his inner unity". Kremer, who also measures the good for nothing in his judgment, also criticizes the anachronistic tendency.
  • According to Schiwy, the portrayal of Germany destroyed in the Thirty Years' War reflects the disorientation within Prussian society at the end of the 1830s.
  • Schillbach and Schultz also see a connection to the “good for nothing” . The hunt of the student Suppius for happiness, that is, for a woman who now and then appears “like a phantom”, is among other things a “symbol of poetry”.

Web links

literature

  • Ansgar Hillach, Klaus-Dieter Krabiel: Eichendorff comment. Volume I. On the seals. 230 pages. Winkler, Munich 1971
  • Helmut Koopmann : Joseph von Eichendorff. P. 505-531 in Benno von Wiese (ed.): German poets of the romantic. Your life and work. 659 pages. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1983 (2nd edition), ISBN 3-503-01664-3
  • 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. 912 pages. Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-09399-X
  • Günther Schiwy : Eichendorff. The poet in his time. A biography. 734 pages. 54 illustrations. CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46673-7
  • Detlev Kremer: Romanticism. Textbook German Studies. 342 pages. Metzler Stuttgart 2007 (3rd edition), ISBN 978-3-476-02176-2
  • Otto Eberhardt: "The Soldiers of Fortune". Phases and developments in the history of modern German drama, especially with regard to popular theater in Austria . In: Otto Eberhardt: Figurae. Roles and names of the people in Eichendorff's narrative . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-8260-4439-7 , pp. 398-462

expenditure

  • Joseph von Eichendorff: The Soldiers of Fortune . In: German Novellenschatz . Edited by Paul Heyse and Hermann Kurz. Vol. 3. 2nd ed. Berlin, [1910], pp. 87–159. In: Weitin, Thomas (Ed.): Fully digitized corpus. The German Novellenschatz . Darmstadt / Konstanz, 2016. ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff: The soldiers of fortune. With 6 hand-signed coppers by Ferdinand Staeger . 150 pages. Hermann A. Wiechmann, Munich 1920
  • Joseph von Eichendorff: The Soldiers of Fortune - Narrative with 31 drawings by Hans Meid . 82 pages. German Book Association Berlin 1928.
  • Arno Lubos (ed.): Joseph von Eichendorff: Die Glücksritter . 51 pages. Bergstadtverlag Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, Würzburg 1960 (1st edition), ISBN 978-3-87057-034-7

Quoted text edition

  • The adventurers. Novelle p. 509–558 in: Brigitte Schillbach, Hartwig Schultz (Ed.): Poets and their journeymen. Stories II. In Wolfgang Frühwald (Ed.), Brigitte Schillbach (Ed.), Hartwig Schultz (Ed.): Joseph von Eichendorff. Works in five volumes. Volume 3. 904 pages. Linen. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993 (1st edition), ISBN 3-618-60130-1

Individual evidence

Source means the quoted text edition

  1. ^ Editors: Freiligrath , Matzerath and Simrock
  2. Source, p. 855
  3. Source, p. 544, 7. Zvo
  4. Albert Schumann:  Suppius, Christoph Eusebius . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 37, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1894, pp. 782-785.
  5. Source, p. 528, 17. Zvo
  6. Source, p. 543, 16. Zvo
  7. Ludolf Wienbarg cited in the source, p. 865 middle
  8. from "Europa" quoted in the source, pp. 866–867
  9. The Hamburg “Telegraph”, quoted in the source, p. 867 below
  10. Robert Mühlher's essay Dichterglück from 1959, quoted in Hillach and Krabiel, p. 162, 9. Zvo
  11. Josef Kunz quoted in Hillach and Krabiel, S. 162, 14. ZVO
  12. Koopmann, p. 523, 23. Zvo
  13. Schulz, p. 500, 17. Zvo
  14. ^ Kremer, p. 187, 9. Zvo
  15. Schiwy, p. 547, 6. Zvo
  16. Source, p. 868, 5th Zvu - p. 869, 10th Zvo