A burned out case
A burned case (original title: A burnt-out case ) is a novel by Graham Greene , which was published in 1960, the Swedish edition was published two months before the English. The first German-language edition (translated by Lida Winiewicz) appeared in 1961 under the title A burned out case by Paul Zsolnay Verlag . A new translation by Dietlind Kaiser was published by Zsolnay in 1997 under the same title.
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The novel takes place in the last few years of the Belgian Congo colony . Somewhere on a tributary of the Congo , the steamship of a Catholic order, which operates a mission station with an attached leprosy hospital in the jungle , carries a strange passenger, a man named Querry, who is absolutely silent about the motives for his journey. The fathers in the mission give him hospitality, but otherwise do not take care of him because their everyday life on the ward is challenging enough. The only one who realizes that it is a question of a person in an existential life crisis is the atheistic doctor of the leprosy station Dr. Colin. He finds out that the visitor is a famous architect who specialized in modern Catholic church construction. However, the failure of his artistic ideas as well as a few other events in his life made him lose his faith, and without faith he could no longer believe in the meaning of his work. So he literally doesn't know what to do with himself and flees to a part of the world that he hopes no one will know about and that will not respond to his previous life. Dr. Colin, however, persuades him to help with a very mundane project: a new hospital is to be built on the site of the leprosy station. Eventually Querry agrees, and the work seems to be doing him well.
The colony is not quite as secluded as Querry had hoped it would be, and so there are some people who recognize him and project their hopes and wishes onto him, the newcomer. In the mission, for example, Father Thomas, who is plagued by doubts about his faith, does not realize that Querry is far beyond this stage, since his loss of faith is deep and genuine. Rather, he falsely sees Querry and his flight from the world as a role model and is increasingly getting on his nerves.
A similar candidate is a man named Rycker, who runs an oil plantation a few days' journey from the mission. Rycker considers himself a devout Catholic, but is not even taken fully by the Fathers in this regard. He is also driven by the ambition to want to be an important person, and the famous architect seems to him to be a very suitable vehicle for this. So he literally forced his friendship on Querry and did not notice how much he despised him.
Rycker's wife Marie also longs for Querry's friendship, but for a different reason: She feels in the completely wrong place in the colony, and her husband (who she only married so that she would “save him from the heat” like he did Querry frankly told) has no understanding for his wife.
And then there is Querry's local servant, a man named Deo Gratias. He is a former patient at the leprosy ward, a "burned-out case" that leprosy largely disfigured before it could be cured, and to whom Querry is grateful that he has met him without prejudice. Querry also saves his life once when Deo Gratias gets into a ditch in the jungle that he cannot get out of on his own.
For some time, these discrepancies seem to have no effect on Querry's life and his newfound courage to work, until an English sensational reporter named Parkinson suddenly appears, who expects a "story" from the star architect, tired of civilization. In direct confrontation, Querry proves to be superior, and Parkinson even seems to have a cynical respect for him, but nevertheless sticks to his project of a series of articles. When Rycker then tells the reporter a lot of bogus nonsense about Querry in his urge for validity, which is also published, Querry sets out to bring Rycker to account. However, he finds Rycker sick and his wife in deep despair - she thinks she is pregnant, but her husband does not want any children. Querry finally agrees to accompany her into town so that she can be examined by a doctor.
On this trip Querry met Marie Rycker for the first time, but thought she was young, naive and inexperienced. In the evening in the hotel he tells her - wrapped in the shape of a fable - the story of his life; However, she does not understand him and writes only one sentence in her diary about this conversation: "Spent the night with Q.!" When her husband, who has recovered from his illness, shows up in town and reads this sentence, he wants to confront Querry, but he just leaves him there.
Querry returns to the leprosy ward and celebrates the topping-out ceremony for the new hospital with the Fathers; Marie Rycker suddenly appears and tells the Fathers that she is actually pregnant and that the child is from Querry. In doing so, she has made it impossible for his hosts, but before they can decide what to do now, Rycker appears and shoots Querry.
In the final scene of the novel, Dr. Colin and the superior of the Fathers at Querry's grave on the fact that the wishes of all concerned had been fulfilled in a strange way.
reception
On the one hand, the book was praised as the "existentially thrilling" novel by Graham Greene; On the other hand, it was also criticized that the choice of a church architect as an example of artistic world fame did not appear credible. It is one of the few works by Greene that has not been made into a film or published in any other way. Although the producer and director Otto Preminger had secured the film rights early on, a corresponding project failed in the preparatory phase.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Ulrich Greiwe: Graham Greene and the wealth of life. dtv, Munich, 2004, pp. 46–49
- ↑ Ulrich Greiwe: Graham Greene and the wealth of life . dtv, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-24417-8 , p. 74 .