Experience of the Marshal of Bassompierre
The experience of Marshal von Bassompierre is a story by Hugo von Hofmannsthal , which was published in the autumn of 1900 in the Viennese weekly “ Die Zeit ” .
Bassompierre loses his beloved to the plague.
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content
When the first-person narrator - that's Marshal von Bassompierre - rides from Fontainebleau to Paris in late winter , he meets a beautiful young shopkeeper on the way. The “very pretty” woman steps out of her shop and greets him invitingly. The marshal returned the greeting and arranged a tête-à-tête in a matchmaker's room . When he enters, the beautiful woman of about twenty is already sitting on the bed. The busy servant of the king lies down with her and falls fast asleep. When he woke up at night, the shopkeeper was standing at the window. After the night of love, both have the longing for a next rendezvous. The second night should not be spent under the roof of the matchmaker, but with an aunt of the beautiful shopkeeper. Time and place are agreed. Bassompierre can hardly wait for the agreed meeting in a few days.
At court, meanwhile, he has to talk to courtiers about all sorts of things - including the rampant plague and the "straw fire that one has to burn in the dead room to consume the poisonous fumes". Bassompierre sends his servant out to explore the grocer's shop. The scout reports that the shopkeeper is not in sight, but the shopkeeper is. The marshal convinced himself. "Dull angry jealousy" overcomes him when he sees with his own eyes that the alleged shopkeeper is a distinguished gentleman - probably the one he once had to guard in the service of the king at Château Blois . When the longed-for evening approaches, Bassompierre wants to enter the aunt's room, but a man's voice answers his knock. The Marshal retreats cautiously, but sees fire inside. Bed straw is burned. There are two naked corpses in the room. It is suggested to the reader that one of the two plague victims could be the shopkeeper.
shape
The fire - as Sprengel also emphasizes in his brief discussion - plays a special role in the story. Not only the bed straw of the plague sufferers who have died is burned. Hofmannsthal succeeds in creating an original representation of the nude with the help of the fire glow . The beautiful shopkeeper throws a log into the fireplace beforehand. The fire, fanned by the largest of the logs, flares up and its glow casts the shadow of the couple holding each other on the wall.
reception
- Although von Schaukal dismissed the text in 1929 as “artificial”, Walter H. Perl included it in 1935 as “philosophically thought-out and artistically pictorial prose”.
- In 1951 Broch reminded the characters' wisdom of "banners and arias".
- Hofmannsthal only mentions his sources in the book edition: “M. de Bassompierre, Journal de ma vie, Cologne 1663. - Goethe , conversations of German emigrants ”. The comment by Karl Kraus : "What uneducated people call plagiarism here is in truth a quotation."
- With Goethe - as Sprengel finds - the plague death of the beloved does not emerge quite as clearly from the text as with Hofmannsthal.
- Rinkenberger and Scheffer examine the relationship between Goethe and Hofmannsthal using the example of the two aforementioned Bassompierre texts by the poets.
literature
- Gotthart Wunberg (Ed.): Hofmannsthal in the judgment of his critics . Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1972 (without ISBN, 612 pages)
- Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1870–1900. From the founding of the empire to the turn of the century . 825 pages. CH Beck , Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-44104-1
- Norman Rinkenberger, Katrin Scheffer: Goethe and Hofmannsthal. Facets of analogous poetry or where do you hide the depth? 199 pages. Tectum Verlag in June 2005, ISBN 978-3-8288-8850-0
First edition
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal: The fairy tale of the 672nd night and other stories . 123 pages. Wiener Verlag, Vienna and Leipzig 1905. With illustrations by Walter Hampel. Content: " The fairy tale of the 672nd night ". " Equestrian History ". “Experience of the Marshal of Bassompierre”. " A letter ".
expenditure
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Experience of Marshal von Bassompierre and other stories . 63 pages. The Little Books of the Ark - Volume 111/112. Verlag der Arche, Zurich 1950
Quoted text edition
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Experience of Marshal von Bassompierre (1900) . P. 132–142 in: Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke in ten individual volumes, ed. by Bernd Schoeller in consultation with Rudolf Hirsch , S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1949 (edition from 1986), volume stories. Made up conversations and letters. Travel . 694 pages, ISBN 3-10-031547-2
annotation
- ↑ The short text appeared in book form in 1905 in the volume “The fairy tale of the 672nd night and other stories” published by Wiener Verlag (quoted text edition, p. 668, first entry).
Web links
- Experience of the Marshal of Bassompierre at Zeno.org .
- The text at Gutenberg.DE
- The text at Doktus.de
See also
- Goethe's text at Zeno.org
Individual evidence
Source means the quoted text edition