The lost lover

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The Lost Beloved is an episode novel by the German-Bohemian writer Johannes Urzidil , whose main theme is the hometown of Prague and the memory of her. It was created in 1954/1955 in American exile and was published in 1956.

Emergence

Shortly after the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Johannes Urzidil emigrated from Prague via Italy to England and in 1941 to the USA. After his naturalization as an American citizen in 1946, he published his strongly autobiographical childhood and youth memories of what he saw as his hometown Prague, which he had lost forever.

structure

Although labeled as a novel, the work can at best be viewed as an episode novel or a collection of closely related narratives. The connecting element of all eleven episodes is the autobiographical element, even if a first-person narrator does not report to the reader in all stories. In the first episode, Games and Tears , which tells of early childhood, the narrator is simply introduced as The Boy . In the following stories, the author finally switches to the literary "I", whereas Urzidil ​​in the last episode The Strangers calls the narrator again only as "The Stranger" and thus again creates distance. The eleven stories span a period from around 1894 (the boy is around eight years old in the first episode) to 1941 (the last episode takes place in exile in England in Oakley) and depicts essential experiences in Urzidil's life.

content

As Otto F. Beer notes in the short essay Farewell to Prague , Urzidil's stories are not only about the city of Prague, which stands for the loss of both homeland and childhood, but also always about girls and women who are the narrators also loses; be it through misfortune or death, as in the stories Games and Tears , Dienstmann Kubat , Grenzland or The Foreigners ; be it through own fault as in Repetent Bäumel . At the same time, looking back from exile, the image of a Prague is drawn, which changed fundamentally after the First World War, but which finally goes under with the occupation by Germany in 1939 and the expulsion of the German-speaking Prague residents after 1945. With humorous echoes like in the school story Repetent Bäumel ; Above all, however, with a very lyrical language that is reminiscent of Urzidil's role model Adalbert Stifter , Urzidil ​​paints a melancholy, very wistful, but nevertheless very realistic picture of life in a multiethnic city. The title The Lost Beloved is therefore to be understood quite ambiguously and refers both to the lost Prague and to the narrator's actual, human lovers.

reception

Although Johannes Urzidil, like Max Brod and Franz Werfel, belonged to the Prague circle around Franz Kafka , his works are much less read today. The lost lover was reissued on the occasion of Urzidil's centenary in 1996. Some of his works now serve more as reminder literature for lovers of the interwar period. His stories and poems continue to appear frequently in anthologies; independent new editions of his works are becoming increasingly rare.

expenditure

  • The lost lover . Stories. Langen Müller, Munich 1956.
  • The lost lover . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-548-20190-3 .
  • The lost lover. A Prague novel , Langen Müller, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7844-2581-X .

Translations

The lost beloved was translated into the following languages:

  • into French:
  • Prague. La bien-aimée perdue. Trans. V. Jacques Legrand. Desjonquères. Paris 1990, ISBN 2-904227-42-3 .
  • into Italian:
  • L'amata perduta. Trans. V. Renata Colorni, Vittoria Ruberl and Sergio Solmi. Adelphi, Milan 1982, ²1990, ³1994. (= Biblioteca Adelphi. 124.) ISBN 88-459-0516-0 .
  • mostly into Czech (both books contain other stories from The Lost Beloved , in addition to other Urzidil ​​texts ):
  • Hry a slzy. Trans. V. František Marek. Preface v. Jiři Veselý. Odeon, Prague 1985, ²1988. (= Světová četba. 539.)
  • Kde údolí končí. Trans. V. Anna Nováková u. Jindřich Buben. Argo, Prague 1996, ISBN 80-85794-63-2 .
  • contains two stories (Grenzland and Where the valley ends) in English:
  • The Last Bell. Trans. V. David Burnett. London, Pushkin Press 2017, (= Pushkin Collection), ISBN 978-1-78227-239-7 .

literature

  • Hartmut Binder : Evidence and what is told. Johannes Urzidils Repetent Bäumel . In: Johann Lachinger, Aldemar Schiffkorn u. Walter Zettl (ed.): Johannes Urzidil ​​and the Prague Circle. Lectures of the Roman Johannes Urzidil ​​Symposium 1984. Adalbert Stifter Institute of the Province of Upper Austria, Linz 1986, ISBN 3-900424-04-7 . (= Series of publications by the Adalbert Stifter Institute of the Province of Upper Austria. 36.) pp. 65–90.
  • Filip Charvát: LOVE or axes? A perspective view of the aesthetic character of Johannes Urzidil's novel The Lost Beloved. In: Steffen Höhne, Klaus Johann and Mirek Němec (eds.): Johannes Urzidil ​​(1896-1970). A “behind the world” writer between Bohemia and New York. Böhlau, Cologne, Weimar a. Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-20917-9 . (= Intellectual Prague in the 19th and 20th centuries. 4.) pp. 476–487.
  • Giuseppe Farese: Johannes Urzidil ​​- a writer of memory. Trans. V. Edith Zettl. In: Johann Lachinger, Aldemar Schiffkorn u. Walter Zettl (ed.): Johannes Urzidil ​​and the Prague Circle. Lectures of the Roman Johannes Urzidil ​​Symposium 1984. Adalbert Stifter Institute of the Province of Upper Austria, Linz 1986, ISBN 3-900424-04-7 . (= Series of publications by the Adalbert Stifter Institute of the Province of Upper Austria. 36.) P. 12–20.
  • Ingeborg Fiala: The Prague tales in Johannes Urzidil's late work. The hometown as a lost lover. In: Hartmut Binder (ed.): Franz Kafka and the Prague German literature. Interpretations and effects. Cultural Foundation of the German Expellees, Bonn 1988, ISBN 3-88557-071-8 . Pp. 143-150.
  • Ingeborg Fiala-Fürst: Urzidil ​​like Rothacker like Watzlik? Johannes Urzidil ​​as Grenzland poet. In: Steffen Höhne, Klaus Johann and Mirek Němec (eds.): Johannes Urzidil ​​(1896-1970). A “behind the world” writer between Bohemia and New York. Böhlau, Cologne, Weimar a. Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-20917-9 . (= Intellectual Prague in the 19th and 20th centuries. 4.) pp. 489–498.
  • Oskar Holl: Afterword. In: Johannes Urzidil: The lost beloved. Stories. Langen Müller, Munich n.d. [1964.] OS [p. 361-373.]
  • Klaus Johann u. Vera Schneider (ed.): HinterNational - Johannes Urzidil. A reader. With a CD with audio documents. German Cultural Forum for Eastern Europe, Potsdam 2010, ISBN 978-3-936168-55-6 . On the genesis and reception history of Die verlorene Geliebte pp. 43, 55 f., 253 f. (Quotes from reviews) u. 317; also contains the story A Last Service from The Lost Beloved .
  • Gerhard Trapp: Chronicle and Menetekel. On Johannes Urzidil's stories from the Bohemian Forest. In: Quarterly publication of the Adalbert Stifter Institute of the State of Upper Austria. Volume 41, 1992. No. 1/2. Pp. 51-62.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Johannes Urzidil, Die verlorene Geliebte, Langen Müller, Munich 1996, p. 347 ff.
  2. Otto F. Beer, Farewell to Prague , in: Johannes Urzidil, Die verlorene Geliebte, Langen Müller, Munich 1996, p. 343 ff.
  3. The bibliographical information follows: Klaus Johann: Bibliography of the independent publications of Johannes Urzidils. Own works, translations, arrangements, editing, Urzidil ​​anthologies. In: Steffen Höhne, Klaus Johann and Mirek Němec (eds.): Johannes Urzidil ​​(1896-1970). A “behind the world” writer between Bohemia and New York. Böhlau, Cologne, Weimar a. Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-20917-9 . (= Intellectual Prague in the 19th and 20th centuries. 4.) pp. 569–577. P. 572 and 576.
  4. Johannes Urzidil ​​(1896–1970) - a “behind the world” author from Bohemia. In: zeilenweit.de. Klaus Johann, Vera Schneider, accessed on March 28, 2018 (table of contents, index, reviews and further information on the Urzidil ​​reading book).