Three women from Haiti

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Three women from Haiti is the title of a volume of short stories by the writer Anna Seghers that was published in 1980. The fictional stories of the Haitians Toaliina, Claudine and Luisa are told in connection with three events in the history of Haiti from the beginning of the colonial era to the end of the Duvalier dictatorship .

overview

The three stories about the fate of the revolutionaries Toaliina, Claudine and Luisa take place in different times and refer to historical events : 1. The beginning of the Spanish conquest in the 15th century. 2. The uprisings following the French Revolution led by   Toussaint in the end 18th century 3. The Duvalier dictatorship in the 1970s.

First story The hiding place

The story of Toaliina is clad in the historical framework of the time of Columbus. Christopher Columbus has been commissioned to bring twelve graceful young dancers to Queen Isabella on his third return trip from Haiti to Spain . The beautiful Haitian women are said to be educated at their court and then given to deserving nobles. When the admiral's ship leaves, the girls jump into the sea. Apparently the chief's brother, who distrusts the Spaniards, warned the girls about the crossing when he visited on board. Most are captured again, brought to Spain and given away or enslaved there as planned.

Toaliina, the most beautiful of them, reaches the bank and is awaited by an old woman who hides her in her cave. She is the mother of Tschanangi, who as a friend of the chief's brother has chosen a hiding place where Toaliina is safe from persecution. Despite her longing for the sea, she will spend her life here: Tschanangi and she fall in love and have children together. The old woman dies. Tschanangi never comes back from his excursions to the cave. His friend explains Toaliina his absence. He was captured and has to work in a gold mine. He flees to a western mountain range, where the chief Bujarda rules. He fights the Spaniards, is wounded and nursed to health by a woman with whom he then lives. Meanwhile, his friend becomes Toaliina's second husband and she in turn gives birth to two children, who leave the cave over time and whose fate is uncertain. While searching for food, the man is discovered and tortured by guards, but he does not reveal the hiding place in which his wife remains alone. One day a storm wave tears away the coastal mountains with the cave and Toaliina claws at a boulder. With the sentences: “[S] he felt that the sea helped her, with which she was familiar from an early age. She knew her escape was a success. ”The story ends.

While Toaliina's life in the cave is separated from the world, the historical events of that time are shown in contrast: Columbus' deposition as governor, his pardon and further trips. The resistance of the Haitians against the Spanish troops when they realize that they are not gods, but want to steal their gold. The information of Queen Isabella through her church officials that human trafficking and slavery are compatible with scriptures. Funeral ceremonies and weddings alternate at the Spanish court. A Spanish-Dutch power arises.

Second story The key

The framework story set in France encloses an internal narrative. In the first part, a group of Haitian workers build a new road in the French Jura mountains . Among them is the black Amédée who wears a cord with a key around his neck. At the time of the French Revolution, he and his wife Claudine came to France by ship. Upon their arrival they learned of Napoleon's coup d'état , which ended Toussaint's rule in Haiti and imprisoned the revolutionary leader in the Joux fortress . Amédée then tried to get a job in road construction so that he could always see the fortress with his idol's cell. He understands the flashing light in Toussaint's room as a sign that Touissaint gives him, his loyal follower, and has no inkling that it is the guards' lamps that are searching the room.

The conclusion of the framework takes place after Toussaint's death. He dies at the end of winter and is buried in the fortress. Worldwide people mourn the revolutionary. The “Black Club” is collecting money for a memorial. Toussaint's son has the body transported to Bordeaux and buried in the city's cemetery. Amédée and Claudine follow him to visit his grave and find like-minded people in the city who give them accommodation and work. Amédée is still experiencing Napoleon's defeat in Russia. He is buried near his guide. When they wanted to take the key from his chest, Claudine said: "Amédée should carry it until the resurrection of all slaves in the world."

In the middle section, Claudine tells her friend Sophie the story of the key in her accommodation in the Jura: In Haiti she was a slave in the house of the Evremont family. Because she broke a vase, she was locked up as a punishment in a walled prison, a little room next to the drawing room with a lattice door. On that day a French commissioner landed to expropriate the property of the nobles and give rule to the people. As a result, the Africans refused to work on the coffee plantations. When the news reached the Evremonts, panic broke out and they fled to the coast while the blacks ransacked the house and set it on fire. Nobody heard Claudine's screams, only Amédée took care of her, got the key from the guard and freed her. The revolution spread. The leader Toussaint rode with his troops from one estate to another and the workers moved into the houses of their masters. Among his followers were Claudine and Amédée, who wore the key around their neck and told the story of Claudine's Toussaint's liberation.

Third story The separation

The story takes place during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier , known as Bébé Doc, who secured the power of the president with his militia, Tonton Macoute , who secured the power of the president through arrests and torture and with their image of being connected to voodoo forces. An underground network of opposition has formed against the rule. Christobal, the friend of the main character, is one of them, as is the black waiter Juan, who is where the information comes together in a café across from the African museum, and his daughter Susanna. After his friend Paolo has been arrested, Christobal manages to leave the country before his arrest and to flee to Cuba via Mexico and Florida to study there and return after two years as a teacher. Luisa, employed by the merchant Lopez, has said goodbye to him on the quay in San Anton and her friend, the teacher Sophia, predicts that she will not see him again and warns her for her and his protection: “Even if you have him see somewhere, you haven't seen him. "

Years later Luisa overhears a conversation between Lopez and Christobal in the next room from her workplace and learns that her boyfriend is married to Mania, a beautiful woman from a wealthy family, and can thus support the party and his "tormented country". B. through a new library. Soon after, the secret police searched many buildings in the city and destroyed the library. Luisa is arrested, tortured and thrown into a cell on the San Jago peninsula in front of the library while she is secretly observing Christobal and Mania, but she does not reveal Christobal. Thanks to its connections with a ship, the latter can leave the country and travel to France. While cleaning the latrine, Luisa learns from a fellow prisoner the rumor of the impending death of the dictator. There is a riot. Insurgents blow up the prison gates and free the prisoners, but Luisa is first locked in a secret cell by the guards for fear of betraying her, disfigured by beatings.

Christobal and Juan, who have returned from Paris, march through the city with the demonstrators and celebrate the liberation. Juan reminds him of Luisa, whom he hardly remembers. When he talks about her imprisonment, Christobal's conscience gets in touch. They search the prison and discover the dead and maimed. Juan recognizes Luisa by her fingers and brings her to his hut. There she takes care of Susanna and Christobal takes care of her. Life in Haiti is calming down again, future political developments are open. Christobal becomes headmaster. Until recently, you can borrow banned books from the library. Luisa is recovering and can help a little Juan's wife around the house, but she is a nursing case and her face remains contorted. When she notices that Christobal and Susanna like each other, she tells them that she will remain a "battered, crushed creature", but one cannot live without joy and Christobal and Susanna need each other. “It would be very lucky for [she], [she] could stay near [her]." Luisa explains to Juan, who was initially against his daughter becoming Christobal's wife: "There is a joy that comes out of the human being penetrates outside, so she can excite him and make him happy. ”When Luisa finally died of the consequences of the torture,“ [she] got a proud funeral procession, in which all who had shared their thoughts and those who had participated took part Go along with these thoughts began to germinate. "

reception

The reviewers noted the changes in content and form in the last work of the author compared to the earlier stories: When the revolutionary theme was accentuated, women stand as victims of tyranny, as pillars of revolutionary consciousness and as symbols of the “resurrection of all slaves in the world " downtown. Described are v. a. their harsh bitter fates, which Seghers stylized as saints legends in Diersen's opinion: Toaliina's survival in the cave hermitage, Claudine's adoration of the revolutionary leader and her care for the reliquary grave, triumph of love and the renouncing selflessness of Luisa, whose sad fate through the “proud funeral procession “Ends conciliatory. In this context, the question is also asked whether the author, with her extremely concentrated, difficult-to-access texts, “has exceeded the trend towards scarcity that has been observed for a long time, where one can understand”. Here the literary critics and readers are divided. While Kaufmann z. B. contradicts this assessment, Zehl even diagnoses some masochistic traits, v. a. in "The Separation".

A main topic of literary studies is the classification of the volume of narrations in the author's entire work, e. B. with reference to the "Caribbean stories", and the question of continuity or break. There are different interpretations of this in research:

Wagner writes that in the three stories the rescuing and comforting elements of the author's earlier novels take a back seat, but that they can be integrated seamlessly into the world and revolutionary picture, with the order of precedence: first comes movement, then people. On the other hand, according to Hilzinger Segher's oeuvre, it is a chronicle of failed struggles for a better life due to the inherent problems of the concept of revolution and its implementation. Schrade also sees the author's grappling with the failure of the revolution as the main theme of the three stories. Seghers connects the revolutionary topic with the new question of what becomes of a person who can no longer communicate with his own kind. The answer of the stories is extremely consistent: This is followed by complete isolation and loneliness as well as the loss of identity. Toallina is sinking to an almost animal level in nature. “This is what the real fate of a person who is revered as a freedom fighter in the history of his people looks like in this story.” In the second and third stories, Schrade sees the leveling of individuality. Claudine shows, like her husband, a naive, unreflective attachment to a leader figure. From this the reader could draw the conclusion, although not explicitly stated in the text, that the alienation of human relationships is the prerequisite for successful revolutionary activity. Luisa's physical, individual self-abandonment for the happiness of others and the joy in it demonstrate that the pursuit of freedom and justice only has a chance of realization if individual people set their desire for happiness aside against their very own nature.

In contrast to this interpretation, Kaufmann attributes a confident attitude towards the “crushing violence of history” to the female figures.

Albrecht would like to solve his interpretation from the question of one last disillusioning message from the author and concentrates on a precise text analysis. After that he does not see a fundamental reassessment of the revolutionary attitude in the "Three Women from Haiti". In the second story, the protagonists keep the idea of ​​the revolution and the last story ends with a hope for the “germinating thoughts” of people who have not yet joined the movement. The portrayed fates of women are not Segher's last word; she was already working on another book during this publication. In the entire work of the author there were similar motifs with a dialectic of narrowness - space, security - imprisonment, forgetting - remembering. He interprets the harshness and melancholy of the portrayal in a biographical context. They indicated changes in the poetic subject. Seghers have worked into the stories very personal things, the feelings of an old person, his life balance, the failure of hopes, e.g. B. the allusion to her traffic accident in Mexico in 1943 and her long hospital stay in the Luisa story.

literature

  • Friedrich Albrecht: "Efforts: Works on the work of Anna Seghers 1965-2004". Peter Lang, European Science Publishing House, Bern a. a. 2005.
  • Inge Diersen: “The angels always stay out at the end (Heiner Müller). On the subject of the lost revolution in Anna Seghers ”. In: Argonaut ship yearbook of the Anna Seghers Society Berlin and Mainz 2/1993. Weimar and Mainz p. 52 ff.
  • Sonja Hilzinger: “If there is no more future, the past has been in vain. Anna Seghers and the two German dictatorships ”. In: Günther Rüther (Ed.): “Literature in the dictatorship. Panes in National Socialism and GDR Socialism ”. Paderborn u. a. 1997, p. 197.
  • Sonja Hilzinger: “Anna Seghers. With 12 illustrations. ”Series literature studies. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, RUB 17623, ISBN 3-15-017623-9
  • Eva Kaufmann: "Anna Seghers Three Women from Haiti". In: Weimar Contributions. Berlin 11/1980 p. 151 ff.
  • Werner Lüder: "Anna Segher's Three Women from Haiti". In: Weimar Contributions Berlin 2/1983, p. 313 ff.
  • Andreas Schrade: "Anna Seghers". Metzler, Stuttgart 1993 (Metzler Collection, Vol. 275 (Authors)), ISBN 3-476-10275-0
  • Frank Wagner: “Self-assertion and its historical measure. On the occasion of the stories 'Three women from Haiti by Anna Seghers' ”. In: Zeitschrift für Germanistik (Leipzig) 1/1981, pp. 37–47.
  • Frank Wagner: “'... the course towards reality'. The epic work of Anna Seghers ”. Berlin 1978, 1981
  • Christiane Zehl Romero: "Anna Seghers with self-testimonies and picture documents presented by Christiane Zehl Romero". Reinbek near Hamburg 1993, p. 130.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anna Seghers: "Three women from Haiti". Construction of the publishing house in Berlin and Weimar 1950.
  2. ↑ Segher's source is the historical story by Heinrich Hubert Houben : “Christoph Columbus. The Tragedy of an Explorer ”. Wegweiser-Verlag Berlin 1932.
  3. ↑ November 1500
  4. ↑ April 7, 1803
  5. ↑ 1812
  6. ↑ 1789
  7. ↑ 1971 he followed his father in the presidency.
  8. ↑ In reality, the dictator was only disempowered in 1986.
  9. ↑ Inge Diersen: “The angels always stay out at the end (Heiner Müller). On the subject of the lost revolution in Anna Seghers ”. In: Argonaut ship, yearbook of the Anna Seghers Society Berlin and Mainz 2/1993. Weimar and Mainz p. 52 ff.
  10. ^ Eva Kaufmann: "Anna Segher's Three Women from Haiti". In: Weimar Contributions. Berlin 11/1980 p. 151 ff.
  11. ^ Christiane Zehl Romero: "Anna Seghers with self-testimonies and picture documents presented by Christiane Zehl Romero". Reinbek near Hamburg 1993, p. 130.
  12. ↑ Frank Wagner: “... the course towards reality. The epic work of Anna Seghers ”. Berlin 1978, 1981. Ders: “Self-assertion and its historical measure. On the occasion of the stories Three Women from Haiti by Anna Seghers ”. In: Zeitschrift für Germanistik (Leipzig) 1/1981, pp. 37–47.
  13. ↑ Sonja Hilzinger: “If there is no more future, the past has been in vain. Anna Seghers and the two German dictatorships ”. In: Günther Rüther (Ed.): “Literature in the dictatorship. Panes in National Socialism and GDR Socialism ”. Paderborn u. a. 1997, p. 197.
  14. ↑ Andreas Schrade: "Three women from Haiti - Last questions from a revolutionary". In: Andreas Schrade: "Anna Seghers". Metzler Collection JB Metzler Stuttgart 1993, Kp. 17. S. 152 ff.
  15. ^ Eva Kaufmann: "Anna Segher's Three Women from Haiti". In: Weimar Contributions. Berlin 11/1980 p. 151 ff.
  16. ^ Friedrich Albrecht: "Efforts: Works on the work of Anna Seghers 1965-2004". Peter Lang, European Science Publishing House, Bern a. a. 2005.