The exchanged heads

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The swapped heads , subtitle: An Indian Legend , is the longest story by Thomas Mann . It first appeared in Stockholm in October 1940. The author began work on it on January 1, 1940 in Princeton and completed it on July 28, 1940 in California.

The story of Thomas Mann is based on the sixth story of the collection of 25 stories of a corpse ghost ( vetāla ) known as Vetālapañcaviṃśatikā , which in turn has come down to us in the Kathāsaritsāgara "Ocean of Tale Streams " collection (11th century ), which contains around 350 stories . The same story , originally written in Sanskrit , is also based on Goethe's parial legend.

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The eighteen-year-old, athletically well-formed but goat-nosed blacksmith Nanda and the three years older, spiritualized, narrow-nosed merchant Schridaman have lived in the small Indian temple village of Wohlfahrt der Kühe from childhood . Differing in mind and body, occupation and caste affiliation, they have nevertheless become "inseparable friends". They admire and mock each other and do a lot together - including a long walk across the country , on which the blacksmith Nanda negotiates a delivery of raw ore and the merchant Schridaman wants to sell his textiles.

When, after two days, they freshen up at the little river Goldfliege and take a rest in the secluded shade of the trees, they secretly witness how a graceful young girl suddenly appears on the lonely bank to do his bathing devotion there for a short time . She stands there stark naked , with the sweetest child's shoulders and blissfully curved hips, which resulted in a spacious stomach area, with virginally staring, budding breasts and a splendidly sweeping rear, tapering upwards to the narrowest, most delicate back, which appeared to be smoothly curved because of the liana arms raised and her hands clasped behind her neck so that her delicate armpits opened darkly. Such a charming body shape is fully confirmed by the loveliness of the head, especially by the eyes, which are long curved like lotus leaves . Schridaman is so enraptured by so much beauty that he, the otherwise eloquent, is literally speechless. Nanda is also, in his own way, pretty touched, but reacts a little more calmly, since he recognizes a familiar face in the beautiful woman: It is Sita (dt. The furrow ) from the village of Buckelstierheim , which he had a year earlier on the Sonnen- I rocked to the sun with his strong arms to help out .

After the unsuspecting Sita has dressed again and withdrew, the two friends separate for three days to go about their different business. When they meet again it turns out that Schridaman's longing for Sita has grown into a serious lovesickness. Full of desperation about this "illness to the point of death", in other words: the hopelessness of his hopes, he believes he has to die and wants to kill himself. But the down-to-earth Nanda laughs at him, calms him down and promises to help him find the bride. And he actually succeeds in successfully uniting the two.

Both enjoy the joys of marriage, and soon Sita is looking forward to the joys of motherhood. Despite the pregnancy, the couple travels to Buckelstierheim, accompanied by their mutual friend Nanda, because Sita’s parents have not seen their daughter for half a year. On the way, the sleepy Nanda accidentally distracts the ox cart from the path into the jungle. The three travelers get lost and stop in front of the rock temple of the unapproachable, dark world mother Durga . Schridaman makes Sita and Nanda wait on the cart, enters the sacrificial room of the sanctuary, grabs the battle sword lying ready there and beheads himself.

Outside, the two unsuspecting people wait in vain for Schridaman's return. Left alone, they hardly dare to look at each other, much less speak to each other. Finally, Nanda decides to check that everything is okay. When he discovers the gruesome bloodbath, he quickly realizes what a delicate situation he has suddenly found himself in: The people in the village will say that Nanda murdered Schridaman because he wanted his beautiful wife to be with him. So Nanda takes the sword and beheads herself too.

Sita persists further outside, complains that the men cannot be relied on, but ultimately cannot defend herself against the suspicion of something terrible . She gets off the ox cart and goes to the temple to get the men straight . A little later , when she was standing in front of the most horrible of the presents , she threw up her arms in horror , her eyes came out of their sockets, and from a swoon, she sank to the floor .

With consciousness again, Sita also recognizes her hopeless situation, stumbles outside, turns a liana into a noose and wants to hang herself on the next fig tree. This, however, thwarted the strict world mother Durga. Before the Goddess is ready to help solve the problem, Sita must confess all of her sins to the World Mother. She does that in great detail. At the latest on this occasion the reader will find out why Schridaman killed himself: Whenever Sita was in Schridaman's arms, her head committed adultery, so that she slurred the name Nandas in her lust because her lap was the muscular body of the goat-nosed one instead of the slender Schridaman's body Schmieds coveted.

Sita must, by divine instruction, put the four parts of her two husbands together. But in her cozyness , Sita makes Kuddel-Muddel : She fabricates a Schridaman with Nanda's perfect body and a Nanda with a Schridaman body. The new combination seems ideal. Both men are alive again and extremely satisfied with their new looks. But the next problem is coming up soon. Head or body - which of the two is the child's father? Who should share Sita's marriage camp in the future?

The judgment of the ascetic Kamadamana is required. He has retired to his hermitage in the holy Dankaka forest. His verdict is as expected. The one with the husband's head and the friend's body receives the beautifully limbed woman all around . Her (alleged) cosiness has given Sita the goal of her secret desires. But Nanda, who has always wanted to be a hermit, withdraws to a hermitage and places the throat of the robbers , the tiger canyon and the valley of the vipers between himself and the happy couple .

Sita's son Samadhi is born and grows up. However, the marriage is soon no longer as happy as it seems. Because Schridaman lives on his old life, which leads to the fact that he neglects his new body and makes it less and less attractive. Sita longs for Nanda again. In Schridaman's absence, one day she and her little son go looking for Nanda. He has withdrawn to a small natural paradise and has become a real Adonis through spiritual meditation and physical work. When Sita finally finds his hermitage, her long-repressed love can no longer stop. Her little son is playing samadhi in the meantime in the grass, very nearsighted as he is, he cannot see the love activity of the couple.

When Schridaman returns from his business and finds the house empty, he knows immediately. He carefully packs two swords and makes his way to Nanda. Once there, you choose the honorable solution: The men stick swords in each other's hearts and Sita lets herself be cremated alive with the corpses of her two husbands as a double widow. So she is united with them on the bed of embers of death . Later, an obelisk is erected to commemorate their sacrificial death , the ashes of the three lovers are combined in a clay jug and sunk in the Ganges. Samadhi becomes famous as the son of a Denkstein widow and enjoys helpful benevolence everywhere. He develops into a handsome young man. Even his nearsightedness is an advantage, since he focuses his interests more on the spiritual and not too much on the physical. He received an apprenticeship from a Brahmin, with whom he studied rhetoric, grammar, astronomy and the art of thinking, and finally achieved great prosperity as a reader of the King of Benares .

To the form

Similar to Thomas Mann's last novel, the Confessions of the impostor Felix Krull , this text (which was written ten years earlier) lives from its thoroughly ironic tone. Both the form of the “legend” and the choice of a fairytale-like faraway India as the scene of the event allow additional possibilities of fantastic humor and poetic exaggeration. If the narrator then claims at the height of the narrative that this story is not being exaggerated , he is only providing the most obvious example of the author's self-irony.

Another linguistic feature of this story is the recurring alternation in the use of parodistic legendary pathos on the one hand and travesty Bathos on the other. The comedy of this change is astonishing and convincing, especially in those passages in which the narrator suddenly slips from the subtle heights of flowery descriptions of ancient Indian myths into the flat levels of modern (often Bavarian) colloquial language (“Is that fun!” Or “It's over and over it is even ").

The manner in which the ascetic hermit Kamadamana reacts to the erotic report of the three lovers can be representative and exemplary for such and similarly paradoxical mixtures of styles. His (sometimes lyrically rhythmic) words, which barely leave out an intimate detail, not only reveal his denied but still lively interest in human sexual life, but also refer to the thematic quintessence and morality of the entire legend:

"Uf!" He said. “You three are right for me. I must have been prepared for a haze of life, but yours just smokes from every pore of palpability, and between my four fires in summer it is better to endure than in its bread. If it weren't for my ash make-up, you could see the red heat it kindled on my decently emaciated cheeks, or rather on the bones above, while listening ascetically. Oh, children, children! Like the ox turning the oil mill blindfolded, you are driven around the wheel of becoming, while you groan with fervor, pricked into the twitching flesh by the six millers of passions. Can't you stop? Do you have to eyes and lick and salivate, weak in your knees with desire at the sight of the deceptive object? Well, well, I know it! The love body, dewed with bitter lust, - gliding limbs under greasy silk skin, - the shoulders lovely dome, - sniffing nose, erring mouth, - the sweet breast, adorned with stars tenderly, - the sweat-soaked armpit beard, - you wandering restless hands, - supple back, breathing soft belly, beautiful hips and loins, - the poor pressure of joy, the thighs chest, - the rear flesh, cool double lust, - and, greedily upset by all, - the witness in a sultry, foul night, - that one feels full Delight shows - one and another fiddled to seventh heaven - and this and that and here and there - I know it! I know it ... "

Hannelore Schlaffer takes “brutalism” as a symptom for some novellas - including this one.

First edition from 1940 with the original cover

expenditure

  • Thomas Mann: The exchanged heads. An Indian legend. Bermann-Fischer Verlag, Stockholm 1940
  • Thomas Mann: The exchanged heads. In: The Deceived and Other Stories. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt 1994, ISBN 3-596-29442-8

literature

Footnotes

  1. ↑ See M. Winternitz, Geschichte der Indischen Litteratur, Vol. III: Leipzig 1920, pp. 334f.
  2. ↑ This stylistic device is reminiscent of the familiar passages in Thomas Mann's first novel Buddenbrooks , where Grünlich's graceful salon conversation tone is replaced by Permaneder's Bavarian curse: "Go to Deifi, Saulud'r dreckats!"
  3. ↑ Hannelore Schlaffer, p. 123 below