Amateurs of life
Dilettanten des Lebens is a novel with autobiographical features that the German writer Clara Viebig wrote in her early creative phase.
The novel is about a love marriage between two unfit artists against the will of their families. The plot ends with the death of the young painter. His wife renounces her aspired singing career and returns to her family in anticipation of the birth of her child.
The action takes place around the turn of the century (1900) in different locations ( Trier , Berlin , Posener Land ).
action
The budding singer Lena Langen is in Trier with her brother Fritz to process a disappointing love experience. The siblings are on good terms with each other, which arouses the jealousy of Amalie, the brother's wife. Because of the resulting quarrels, Lena leaves her brother's house to travel back to Berlin to see her mother. The children Walter and Lora mourn the loss of the fun-loving young woman.
On the trip Lena made the acquaintance of the painter Richard Bredenhofer, a “dilettante in all arts”. They both enjoy each other, but when they arrive in Berlin they part ways at first.
Lena insists on continuing the training she has begun with vocal professor Demel, although she knows that her talents will hardly be enough for a great career. Especially in the competition with the more talented singer Krotoschinska, she is behind, although that competitor does not shy away from making concessions to the teacher if it is only useful for her advancement. In this sense, Professor Demel makes unmistakable hints to the indignant Lena: “'Anyone who goes public and wants to achieve something, who -' He smiled again, the same, unpleasant smile, [...] now he took her hand and patted it . [...] He was not interested in her singing, [...] only the other one! "
Lena and Richard meet again at a singing evening in the salon of the enthusiastic patron of the arts Leopold Reuter. Her performance of Schumann songs, which he accompanies on the piano, triggers an intimate relationship. They both decide to get married.
This announcement provokes the resistance of the relatives on both sides, especially the siblings of the lovers, who both entered into their marriages not least for pecuniary reasons. Richard's sister Susanne Allenstein, who lives in a wealthy situation with her husband, a doctor, is particularly appalled because she wants to arrange a marriage for her brother with the wealthy Irene Reichenbach. Uncle Hermann, the unmarried landowner from the Posenen region, from whom Richard has received generous financial support so far, is also against this marriage. Only Lena's mother and Richard's aunt Hannchen, who lost her bridegroom in the war, understand the young lovers' decision.
Despite unsecured financial and professional circumstances, the wedding takes place. The families grudgingly come to an agreement and initially even provide financial help. Uncle Hermann, on the other hand, turns away from his nephew, disappointed, as announced.
Such a start is a burden for the young marriage. In addition, the young artists are not very fit for life. Lena is neither able to run a household herself nor to stand up to the lavish housemaid. In addition, the young couple's professional dreams do not come true and they are confronted with financial problems.
At an invitation from the patron Reuter, Lena realizes that the music business is largely based on clever arrangement and lies. She learns that “Signora Periccioni”, a famous opera singer, is nothing more than a Viennese laundress who is skilfully managed by her sponsor, Signor Lavallo: “And the romantic story was in the Berlin newspapers long before the diva arrived of an impoverished old Italian princely family whose only remaining offspring is that singer [...] “Of course, the diva bought this support through concessions to her companion.
Lena is disappointed. Ultimately, your voice turns out to be too weak for big performances. Richard describes the alternatives of working in a music school or going on a concert tour through Russia as "weirdos". He demands that she stay with him as 'his wife', because he himself wants to create wealth for the young family by selling his works.
Richard is convinced that one of his paintings, on which he depicted the rocks of Gerolstein at sunset, will sell well thanks to the protection of the art patron Reuter. When there was still no buyer, he destroyed the picture.
The situation comes to a head when Lena is hopeful. She travels to Uncle Hermann and asks him for money, but the rumbling old man drives the young woman away. Later, however, he transfers a thousand marks to the couple. For the time being, Lena is returning with a hundred marks that the well-meaning aunt Hannchen gave her.
When Richard suddenly becomes seriously ill, his family gathers by his bed. Any healing comes too late for him and the young man dies. Now the family is ready to take care of Lena and the unborn child. However, she renounces help and goes to her brother Fritz in Trier. The siblings are reconciled, and through her love for her child, Lena draws hope of leading a meaningful further life even without an artistic career.
Biographical and historical references
“Dilettantes des Lebens” is the second of Clara Viebig's autobiographical novels. In “ Rhineland Daughters ” (1897) she had shown the limited possibilities of life for young women outside of marriage. One of the themes of “life's amateurs” is competition among singers; in the follow-up novel " Es lebe die Kunst " (1899, later published under the title "Elisabeth Reinharz 'Ehe"), she portrays the merciless competition among writers who mercilessly exclude any newcomer who is outside of the respective power group of artists.
Clara Viebig recognizes "that fame and success are meaningless for those who really create artistically, and that art means liberation and peace." She stands up for the artists who "have nothing to do with the satisfied, self-satisfied bon vivants", but have to pay for their independence through poverty and exclusion.
All three novels represent a stage in Clara Viebig's own life, which, however, she designed with artistic freedom. After the death of her father, she moved to Berlin in the hope of becoming a concert and oratorio singer. She attended “the university and became a member of its à capella choir [sic].” She continues: “ I owe a lot of artistic inspiration to my teachers Adolf Schulze and Max Stange , but above all the realization that my vocal resources were not enough . ”Nevertheless, she considers her unsuccessful occupation with music to be significant in terms of her ability as a writer:“ Had my ear not been sharpened and trained for rhythm and harmony, who knows if I would have ever learned the word after sound and value to weigh the movement according to melody and time. "
Subjects of the piece
In addition to the love story about two strangers who marry and fail against the will of their families, the book deals in particular with the rules of the art business, in which merciless competition takes place.
Talent does not always decide whether a young artist can make the stony path to fame. Protection, ingratiating yourself or being accommodating will determine your later career. The women who dared to take this step around 1900 found it particularly difficult to establish themselves in this field, as they wanted to penetrate “an art scene dominated by men”.
Another criterion that can contribute to the failure of an artist is reflected in the attitude of the art patron Reuter: the false consent of people who pursue other, selfish goals. Reuter, the man with an “enthusiastic disposition”, surrounds himself with artists who contribute to increasing his own reputation. He values high-quality entertainment, but he is ultimately indifferent to the fate of the artists. Richard Bredenhofer, hungry for recognition, eagerly soaks up Reuter's praise, only to fail all the more thoroughly afterwards. The patron not only misjudged the chances of selling his picture, but Richard is ultimately left with the costs of the unsuccessful exhibition of his picture.
Interpretations
In early reviews, the novel initially received little praise. For Sascha Wingenroth, the autobiographical novels of Clara Viebig are works in which “her art fails completely”. The artist's worldview “does not start from the personality”, but “the I” is “completely absorbed in nature.” For this reason, she cannot write good texts where she subjectively experiences and shapes. Gottlieb Scheuffler also rated the “amateurs of life” as “a falling debut [...] an entertainment novel”.
The “ Children of the Eifel ”, with whom Clara Viebig made a name for herself as a writer who works naturally, use such evaluations as a yardstick . Such an assessment, however, fails to recognize the independence of these works, which are a continuation of the social and artist novels at the turn of the century and "tie in with the genre of the 'Berlin novel' of the Fontane era."
In this early work, Clara Viebig created a passage in an effective way: It is the reproduction of the thoughts of a person in despair, illness or confusion. Richard Bredenhofer is in deep depression shortly before he destroys his picture. He only sees the misery he and his young wife are in and gets into a state of anxiety:
"He suddenly felt so miserable, deprived of all strength, tired to die."
Everything disgusted him, everything grinned at him; the gray day outside, the pale light that fell on the floor in here and tried to paint a pale curl in the corner of the blank canvas on the easel. The studies and sketches grinned on the colorless walls; had they had tongues, they would have stuck them out.
And in that corner - there - there - something stood and looked at him from wide, empty eye sockets - it was a look that freezes the blood and yet, with a tremendous feeling of fear, makes the heart beat faster.
"Debt - debt," it said, grinning too. And then it came nearer and crept into the man's clothes and crept into every fold of his soul.
This change from authorial to personal narrative situation, in which the thoughts are also reproduced in experienced speech, enables an impressive understanding of the protagonist's feelings. Similar scenes can be found in different forms in later novels such as The Passion or The Golden Mountains .
Editions and translations
The novel “Dilettanten des Lebens” was published in advance in the years 1897/1898 as a sequel in Velhagen & Klasings monthly books. 1898 followed by a book publication in the publishing house Ullstein , 1899 republishing serialized in the newspaper supplement " The New World " and in the same year, finally, a book published in Berliner Verlag Fontane & Co . Ullstein and Fontane published eight more editions by 1915, before the public initially lost interest in the novel during the First World War. In 1929, however, there were four editions at Verlag Martin Maschler and another edition at Ullstein.
The work receives a lot of attention abroad. Translations are carried out into Swedish, Russian, and also into Dutch, Czech, Norwegian, French and Italian. A transfer is also made in braille.
- around 1904: Dilletanty (Russian ›Dilettanten‹), St. Petersburg: Russkoe Bogatstvo [120 p.],
- 1905: Diletanty žizni (Russian ›Dilettantenleben‹), trans. v. EG Arronet, St. Peterburg, Volf [163 p.],
- 1905: Luchtkasteelen (Dutch. ›Castles in the air‹) translated by v. Josephine Lulofs, Utrecht: De Haan [p.],
- 1911: Diletanty žizni (Russian ›Dilettantenleben‹), trans. v. SV Jawlenskoy, Moscow: Verbickoj [171 p.],
- 1913: Diletanti života (Czech. ›Dilettantenleben‹) trans. v. Olga Fastrová, Prague: Alois Hynek [247 p.],
- 1917: Livets dilettanter (Swedish. ›Dilettantisches Leben‹), trans. v. S. Gustafsson, Stockholm: Holmquist [175 p.], (Text version under https://archive.org/details/dilettantendesle00vieb )
- 1918: Livets dilettanter (norwegian. ›Life of dilettantes‹), trans. v. Hanna Dahl, Kristiania: Wahl [190 p.],
- 1926: Les dilettantes de la vie (French, ›The Dilettantes of Life‹), transl. v. Henri Simondet, Paris: Payot [318 pp.],
- 1930: Dilettanti della vita (Italian: ›Dilettantes of Life‹), trans. v. Ada Sestan, Bologna: Cappelli [302 pp.].
Individual evidence
- ^ Viebig, Clara: Dilettanten des Lebens , Berlin: F. Fontane Co, 1899, pp. 50–51.
- ^ Viebig, Clara: Dilettanten des Lebens , Berlin: F. Fontane Co, 1899, p. 219.
- ^ Viebig, Clara: Dilettanten des Lebens , Berlin: F. Fontane Co, 1899, p. 219.
- ↑ Viebig, Clara: Clara Viebig about self (Esquisse autobiographique) , in: Aretz, Christel (ed.): Clara Viebig - Mein Leben , Hontheim: Mosel-Eifel-Verlag 2002, pp. 85-100, here p. 87 -88.
- ^ Düsel, Friedrich: Clara Viebig , in: Westermanns Monatshefte, Jg. 1920, Vol. 128, Issue 767, p. 542.
- ↑ Viebig, Clara: From my workshop , in: St. Galler Tageblatt of July 15, 1930.
- ↑ Viebig, Clara: From the path of my youth , in: o. Ed .: When our great poets were still little girls , Leipzig: Moeser, pp. 85–118.
- ^ Gelhaus, Hermann : poet of social pity: Clara Viebig , in: Tebben, Karin (ed.): German-speaking writers des fin de siècle , Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1999, pp. 330–350, here p. 334.
- ^ Viebig, Clara: Dilettanten des Lebens , Berlin: F. Fontane Co, 1899, p. 212.
- ↑ cf. Viebig, Clara: Dilettanten des Lebens , Berlin: F. Fontane Co, 1899, p. 230.
- ↑ Wingenroth, Sascha: Clara Viebig and the women's novel of German naturalism , Endingen: Wild 1936, p. 39.
- ↑ Scheuffler, Gottfried: Clara Viebig. Time and Century , Erfurt: Max Beute 1927, p. 37.
- ^ Neuhaus, Volker : Roman. A crash course , Cologne: Dumont 2008, p. 129; see. also Litzmann, Berthold: Clara Viebig , in: Das literäre Echo 1900, pp. 303-312, here p. 307.
- ^ Viebig, Clara: Dilettanten des Lebens , Berlin: F. Fontane Co, 1899, pp. 230-231.
- ^ Viebig, Clara: Dilettanten des Lebens , Berlin: F. Fontane Co, 1899.
- ↑ 1903: På gungande Grund . Konstnärsroman (Swedish. ›On wavering ground. Artist novel‹), trans. v. Andrea Hedberg, Stockholm: Fritze [271 p.]