The return of the Virgin Mary
The Return of the Virgin Mary (Icelandic original title: Endurkoma Maríu ) is a novel by the Icelandic author Bjarni Bjarnason . It is about the supposed return of the Virgin Mary and her relationship with Michael von Blomsterfeld, the grandson of a theology professor who foresaw her return.
The novel was published in Iceland in 1996 by Ormstunga in Reykjavík and was published in 2012 in a translation by Tina Flecken in Germany by Tropen Verlag, which is part of Klett-Cotta Verlag .
General and formal structure
The novel is divided into 14 untitled chapters numbered in Roman numerals. Most of the book is reproduced from the perspective of the protagonist Michael von Blomsterfeld as a first-person narrator , who reproduces the concrete actions as well as his thoughts and memories. In some introductory chapters he takes on the role of the narrator observing. The story takes place as a single narrative thread in the chronological order of the events and is kept in the past tense. At the end of the story, the narrator describes himself in the present tense as he flips through the text he has just finished, using a sentence from the first chapter in which he is already writing with a golden rain pen.
action
The prophecy of the return of the Virgin Mary
In the first chapter of the novel, the narrator describes the story of Johannes von Blomsterfeld, the grandfather of the first-person narrator and at the same time well-known theologian, who writes down his dreams of the return of the Virgin Mary and publishes it as a prophecy. He is accused of heresy and sentenced for this.
"Then she will appear, which is the heart of the Bible, although there are few words about her."
His writings are confiscated and Professor von Blomsterfeld then withdraws from research and consequently refuses to read any books. He finances private tutors for his grandson Michael, and Samuel, a teacher of circus tricks, impresses the most. Johannes von Blomsterfeld dies when Michael is 17 years old. He goes to the circus of his teacher and friend Samuel and only comes back to his grandfather's estate seven years later to sell it and thus finance the circus. On this return he finds the manuscript of the "Return of the Virgin Mary" in his grandfather's bedroom.
The life of Mary
Maria grew up with her father and his household helper Judith. With the onset of puberty , she realizes that she no longer has a reflection and at first does not dare to tell her father this. He explains the missing reflection to her by saying that she is the most beautiful woman in the whole world and therefore no mirror can reflect this:
“Because mirror images are always an inverted image of what is not even and even. But the perfect form cannot have an inverted picture. Your forms are perfect, and if you saw your image in the mirror, it would not be a reflection, but an imitation. "
Shortly afterwards her father dies. Maria went to university and finished her doctoral thesis at the age of 21, but the text and all written documents from and about her disappeared shortly afterwards. For her two-day Rigorosum , she is the most gifted student at the university with the help of her professor Dr. Peter, despite the lack of evidence of her exams and doctoral thesis, was admitted and interviewed orally about the entire subject matter of the course. It passes the interviews on the first day and on the second day Bishop Jean Sebastian takes part, who also initiated the trial against Johannes von Blomsterfeld. He asks her about the lost evidence of her studies and the scholarships she had received, and asks the question whether she regards this as a miracle and whether she would see herself as the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary. She answers him with a parable and leaves the questioning.
Maria and Michael
The actual plot of the novel begins with the fourth chapter and the first meeting of Michael von Blomsterfeld with Maria on a platform, where she sits on the floor in transparent clothes and surrounded by men. He gets her out of the situation and offers her to support him as an assistant for his circus act. This consists of a mechanical magic box and the performances are very successful at first. However, the box goes up on fire after a few appearances, after Maria's clown costume becomes transparent again and Michael made mistakes due to the distraction during operation. The two argue, but then develop a new program in which Maria incorporate her "mirror trick" and Michael a knife thrower number. At the introduction, Michael is approached by a young girl named Salome. Afterwards Maria tells Michael her story and he reads a newspaper report that she is wanted as a scholarship fraudster. They decide to go to Maria's father's house and meet Judith, his housekeeper. She later approaches Michael and tells him about Maria's father and how he used her as a whore. She wants him to sleep with her too, which he clearly refuses. The following day Michael teaches Maria to play chess, but loses on the first game. In the evening Maria wants to seduce him, but shortly before he can get into bed with her, a shadow appears and an invisible male figure lies down with Maria in bed and sleeps with her. Michael only sees the bedspread that wraps around a tall man. He pulls Maria out of bed and throws a cupboard door at the figure, which however finds no resistance. Shortly afterwards, the figure disappears through the window, where only a pigeon is visible. Immediately afterwards, Maria begs Michael to take her as a woman and sleep with her, but when he touches her and she hugs him, she feels like dead meat to him.
“Have mercy, Michael, come, I am yours, I am your slave, see what I have to give you, touch me here, release me. I want you all Let me serve you, Michael, tell me what to do. "
He escapes from the room and meets Judith on the stairs, who also wants to seduce him. After escaping from the house, he wanders through the city at night and finally meets the girl Salome, who is traveling alone. Later he calls Bishop Jean Sebastian and gives Maria's father the address. He retires to his grandfather's house, Margret's housekeeper, but learns about the nightly murder of the young girl Salome and that he is suspected of being a perpetrator. Without saying goodbye, he leaves the house again and flees to a boarding house, where he begins to read his grandfather's prophecies and compare them with Maria. Through the news he learns of the arrest of Mary and the religious community of the Children of Mary , which Dr. Peter and sees Mary as her Redeemer. To find out where Maria is, Michael gets in touch with Dr. Peter opens up and asks him, then gives him an address for a hotel across from his pension and notices that shortly afterwards several men are looking for him in the house across the street. About some statements by Dr. Peter concludes Michael that Maria is in a castle north of the city and he goes in search of her. He identifies a state-owned castle in a village as the place where Maria is being held and rents a hotel on the top floor of the local hotel, from where he watches the castle. He discovers Mary in one of the towers and can communicate with her through light signals. He develops a plan how he can free her with the help of a wire rope stretched from his room across the village square to the tower. He balances over the rope and takes her out of the room, then he takes her in his arms and wants to carry her back. Halfway through, at a height of 25 meters, Maria begins to seduce him and undress, after which they have sex on the rope for the first time . They leave the village the next day and rent an apartment in the city. Here Mary tells him how Jean Sebastian had tried to prove that she was no longer a virgin and accordingly could not be the Virgin Mary either. Michael and Maria have a lot of sex in the following years and Michael builds a sex aid of infinity that should give them an ultimate climax through simultaneous anal stimulation during intercourse .
“When the orgasm finally came, it was not like the promise of a wonderful journey that one had been cheated on, but a way out of the realm of bliss, and if we hadn't found that way out in the end, we would have each other Eternity lost in the realm of bliss. Would have died. After orgasm, we felt not nearly as if we were left in the world by a passing angel, but like new creatures in a new world with a new life beginning. We saw everything with new eyes that look deeper. "
After a while, Michael turns to his foster mother and asks her for money. She gives him a letter from the Vatican and when he reads the letter, he finds a promise to rehabilitate his grandfather and test Mary's real existence. It also contains an invitation to a meeting the following day. Michael tells Maria about the letter and she asks him not to go to the meeting. Out of curiosity, however, he goes to the meeting point in disguise and sees the same men there who called him after he called Dr. Peter were looking for; he returns to Maria and gives her the money. She asks him to donate a tenth of the money to children's aid and he goes shopping to make food. While he is in the store, he is overcome by the certainty that the letter was a trap to find Maria. He drops the shopping and hurries back to the apartment. On the way there he notices a black limousine and recognizes Jean Sebastian in the back seat. He kicks in the window and tries to break into the car, in which Maria is tied up and pleadingly saying goodbye to him, but is held back and pushed back into the street as the car drives away.
The negotiation
In order to find Maria again, Michael decides to face the police and visits Judith to question her about the night in which the girl Salome was killed. He then stays with Judith overnight and turns himself in to the police the next day. He is charged with the murder of Salome and the illegal freeing of Mary from the castle. With the help of a journalist, he publicized the activities of Bishop Jean Sebastian and urged the members of the Children of Mary community to no longer cover the bishop. At the trial, the murder charges will be dropped first for lack of evidence. At the trial to free Mary, Jean Sebastian appears in the courtroom and the prosecutor asks Michael about the freeing of Maria, which he denies. He applied for a witness questioning from Jean Sebastian, who presented a video film of the liberation on the tightrope as evidence. Only Michael can be seen on the film, who undresses in the middle of the rope, gets an erection and has an ejaculation , whereby the sperm remains in the air in front of the penis. Jean Sebastian cannot explain the disappearance of Maria on the videotape.
When Michael asks the bishop about the virginity examinations on Maria, he claims that Maria just disappeared in the end and could only be seen in the mirror. Michael collapses after this statement and realizes that he will never see Maria again and that he himself is to blame. After Michael asks the bishop's chauffeur and shows that Maria was in great danger of abuse while in captivity, he asks for Jean Sebastian again. This, however, had the morning after the first survey killed , making it no longer available. At the end of the hearing, the lawsuit for the illegal liberation of Maria against Michael is dismissed due to formal errors.
At the end of the novel, Michael returns to Blomsterfeld and to his foster mother. Shortly afterwards, he begins to write down his and Maria's story.
reception
The novel was published under the name Endurkoma Maríu in 1996 by Ormstunga in Reykjavík and was nominated in the same year for the Icelandic Literature Prize ( isl. Íslensku bókmenntaverðlaunin ) in the fiction category. The prize was won by Böðvar Guðmundsson for Lífsins tré , other nominees were Guðmundur Andri Thorsson with Íslandsförin , Gyrðir Elíasson with Indíánasumar and Vigdís Grímsdóttir with Z ástarsaga .
In 2012 it was published in a translation by Tina Flecken in Germany at Tropen Verlag, which is part of Klett-Cotta Verlag.
expenditure
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Endurkoma Maríu. Ormstunga, Reykjavík 1996
- German: The return of the Virgin Mary. (German translation by Tina Flecken ), Tropen Verlag, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-608-50122-3
supporting documents
- ↑ Íslensku bókmenntaverðlaunin Prize winner on the website of the "Association of Icelandic Publishers" (Icelandic)
- ↑ The Return of the Virgin Mary on the website of Klett-Cotta Verlag.