The blue flower

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The blue flower (original title The Blue Flower ) is the last novel in the life's work of the British writer Penelope Fitzgerald . The novel was published in Great Britain in 1995 and in German in 1999 in a translation by Christa Krüger by Insel-Verlag.

The blue flower addresses the tragic love affair between Sophie von Kühn and Friedrich von Hardenberg, who later became known as the early romantic writer and poet Novalis . The title alludes to the symbol of Romanticism, the blue flower , which Novalis was the first to use in his fragment of the novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen . The theme of the blue flower, which can never be found, runs thematically through the book. Penelope Fitzgerald once said of this symbol that it symbolizes what you want from life. Even if there is no way to achieve this, one should never give up.

The novel is now regarded as a classic of 20th century literature and as the masterpiece in the work of Penelope Fitzgerald. In 1997, Penelope received him as the first non-American female writer to receive the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction . In 2015, 82 international literary critics and scholars voted him on the shortlist of the hundred most important British novels .

action

The novel is set between 1790 and 1797. Friedrich von Hardenberg began studying law in Jena in 1790 , which he continued in Leipzig and Wittenberg and completed in June 1794.

In October 1794, Friedrich von Hardenberg was not accepted into the civil service as planned, but initially hired in Tennstedt as an actuary with the district administrator Celestine August Just , who not only became his superior, but also his friend. During this time, on November 17, 1794, twelve-year-old Sophie and 22-year-old Friedrich von Hardenberg met for the first time. Hardenberg informed his brother Erasmus in a letter about this encounter that a "quarter of an hour" had decided his life.

On March 15, 1795, her thirteenth birthday, the two became engaged. In November 1795 Sophie fell seriously ill, but apparently recovered. In January 1796, Novalis became an accessist at the Salinendirektion in Weißenfels an der Saale . A little later, Sophie von Kühn fell seriously ill again. Between May and July 1796, she underwent three major operations, all of which were performed without anesthesia, but ultimately failed to save her life. The novel ends abruptly with a short letter from Hardenberg to his brother, in which he admits that he could not have stayed until Sophie's end.

Narrative

Penelope Fitzgerald tells this life and love story in 55 short chapters, which, according to Alan Hollinghurst, also reflects the fragmentary nature of Hardenberg's own literary work. Hollinghurst refers to what, in his opinion, was moving treatment of Sophie's end of life. There is no dramatic death scene, only Hardenberg's brief admission to his brother that he did not stay.

Fitzgerald herself described her last novel as a "kind of novel". In fact, it is at the same time the exact description of an era, a biography of Hardenberg and a novel. Hollinghurst judges that this mixture has an almost poetic quality. Michael Hoffmann also comes to the conclusion that these short, almost impressionistic episodes give the reader a more precise picture of the living conditions than a detailed, continuous narrative.

Hermione Lee points out that Fitzgerald foregoes any explanations in her novel. Fitzgerald took the view that explanations that were too extensive were an insult to the reader. Fitzgerald therefore confronts the reader directly with the life and worldview of their protagonists; The first scene depicts two young men striding through the courtyard of a family mansion while it is the annual laundry day there.

Classification in the complete work

Penelope Fitzgerald turned to writing very late in her life. Her first work was published when she was 59 years old. Her first two works were biographies, which were followed by a crime story she wrote to cheer up her critically ill husband. This was followed by four short novels, all of which were ultimately shaped by the experiences of her life and which established her reputation as a writer. Der Buchladen (Original title: The Bookshop). published in 1978, but only published in German in 2000, is about a small bookshop in a fictional small town. Fitzgerald himself worked for a while in a small bookstore in Southwold , Suffolk . Her next novel, Offshore, tells of a young woman who, after separating from her husband, lives in very limited financial circumstances with her daughters on a houseboat. This also draws on a personal experience Fitzgeralds, who lived for a time on a houseboat and was impoverished after the failure of her husband's professional career. Fitzgerald won the Booker Prize for this novel in 1979 . Her next two novels Human Voices and At Freddies deal with her experiences during the Second World War and her work as a teacher in a drama school.

After At Freddies , Penelope Fitzgerald turned to historical novels, of which The Blue Flower is the last and lies in a period of time furthest from Fitzgerald's personal life experience. The novel Innocence, which has not been translated into German, is set in Italy in the 1950s and is a love story between the daughter of an impoverished Italian aristocratic family and a doctor committed to the communist party. Springtime , which appeared in German in 1991 and was published in Great Britain as early as 1988, takes place in pre-revolutionary Russia in 1913. The Angel's Gate , published in Great Britain in 1990 and in Germany in 1994, takes place in 1912. It is the love story between a physicist and his nurse . This was the last historical novel before Fitzgerald wrote her last work The Blue Flower .

expenditure

  • The blue flower. 1995.
    • The blue flower. German by Christa Krüger. Insel, Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig 1999, ISBN 3-458-16940-7 .

literature

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Single receipts

  1. ↑ a b c Hermione Lee: Book of a lifetime: The Blue Flower, By Penelope Fitzgerald . In: The Independent. November 1, 2013, accessed February 7, 2016.
  2. ↑ The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? In: The Guardian. December 8, 2015, accessed January 31, 2016.
  3. ^ A b c Allan Hollinghurst: The Victory of Penelope Fitzgerald. In: The New York Review of Books. accessed on February 4, 2016.
  4. ^ Michael Hoffmann: Nonsense is Only Another Language. In: The New York Times. April 13, 1997, accessed February 4, 2016.