Flee my friend!

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Flee my friend! is the 1998 novel by Ralf Rothmann .

title

The title of the novel goes back to the Song of Solomon . The "Song of Songs" from the Bible describes the love encounter between two people ( Solomon and Sulamith ). Motifs from the Song of Songs can also be found in the novel, such as the friend's futile waiting at the beloved's door, the description of the woman's body, love without barriers.

content

“Flee, my friend!” Is set in Berlin . The narrator and central figure is the 20-year-old Louis Blaul, known as Lolly. As the son of the 1970s generation, he grew up with his grandparents in a colliery colony in the Ruhr area , " where every day was as gray as the next and no evening went by without family drama or drunkenness, hardly a night without a fight " (Chapter 1). But despite this negative label, the Ruhr area remains more positive for the narrator than cold, devious Berlin:

“ The Ruhr area is the heart of the nation, folks. Pots.
Here, on the other hand, you always get something choked in from behind, the crooked way, here they are cowardly, loud and cowardly [...] "(Chapter 1)

His mother Mary met his father Martin at an anti-nuclear demonstration. The mother was and is anything but political, rather esoteric and funky. Caught as a drug courier, she spent Lolly's childhood in prison and psychiatric hospital and has little interest in the family afterwards. The father as a counter figure has established himself with his own advertising agency, which is why the family is sarcastically called “uncle sales”.

Lolly denies her parents' hopes, drops out of school and makes ends meet as a laborer in a run-down printing company.

“ But I think you should only do things that parents don't understand. "(Chapter 3)

This doesn't seem to bother the freaky mother, she only appears now and then in men's lives and disappears again just as quickly. Lolly's relationship with her has an erotic undertone.

“ She smelled of wine and smoke and violet perfume and had stoned pupils, and she was not entitled to a kiss like that. In a flash, as if she had suspected that I was going to open the door, she grabbed my hair, huddled against me and, her eyes almost closed, snapped at my mouth. She sucked in her lower lip a little, making a small, pleasant sound, and of course I should have pushed it away immediately; but there was something authoritarian about that tenderness, like apricots, and I felt the edges of my heart melt. "(Chapter 4)

At a chaotic New Year's Eve party, Lolly met his first great love when he was 20, chubby Vanina, who attracted him tremendously even though she didn't conform to any common ideal of beauty. A romantic love affair develops. Rothmann ironizes this love by allowing intimate encounters between the two of them to take place in two shared flats for women who have no respect for intimate life. Especially the beautiful Mara, daughter of rich parents, makes fun of going to Vanina's room when Lolly and Vanina are together.

There follows a longer flashback that describes the mother's development into a drug courier. Narrator Lolly claims to have obtained this knowledge from his mother's diaries. When she discovers her pregnancy in Spain, a strange couple takes care of her, apparently swimming in money. The two see the harmless pregnant woman as the ideal courier for 13 kilograms of heroin. On her return from Mexico, the naive Mary is arrested anyway and ends up in the mills of justice and psychiatry. Lolly is taken away from her immediately after the birth and comes to live with the grandparents.

After the long excursus, the narrator continues his account of the conversation with his mother in Kosta's apartment. Lolly complains more and more vehemently about his desire for family, asks what is wrong with it.

“ Mary looked at the ceiling. It looked resigned, deeply bored. - 'What are the times when parents have to tell their children that they are stuffy ... What is wrong with such a life? Everything, man! This is the worst, the saddest thing in the world! ' - She held the glass to her mouth and mumbled: '... without soul, without love' ”(Ka. 18)

Nevertheless, she begins to understand Lolly's real concern: he is ashamed of his love. In the conversation, Lolly realizes that Vanina is ashamed of her "squashed" figure. Lolly's shame and cowardice undermine his happiness. Finally he lets himself be seduced by the beautiful Mara, Vanina's roommate. The relationship with Vanina falls apart.

There is a final discussion between Lolly and his mother. She exposes Lolly's game of hide-and-seek behind cowardice and shame as hidden self-love, as a form of arrogance.

“ Because there are no weak people at all, there are only cowardly and courageous people, and if you cannot stand by your fat little girl, if the appreciative or contemptuous look of some dull cheek is more important to you than the love of this woman, then get away from her and don't always offend her with your doubts and self-doubt, Lolly. Then let yourself be shown your luck on TV. "(Chapter 23)

subjects

The core theme of the novel is Lolly's first great love for a chubby woman, whom he finds very erotic. At the same time he is ashamed of her appearance. Rothmann moves here in the literary tradition of Fontane's chess von Wuthenow . Lolly's development consists primarily of finding the courage and self-confidence to stand by yourself and your girlfriend. In this respect, the text can be understood as a modern form of the educational novel.

Another narrative thread revolves around the lonely old women in Berlin . Lolly's neighbor, Aunt Wool, loses her grip on life when her children take away the beloved cat Mimmmi. Vanina and Lolly take care of the old woman lovingly, even if they find the whole house dirty, when Aunt Wool has not made it to the outside toilet. In the end, Lolly gives his old neighbor four little cats.

Some critics relate the sarcastic portrayal of Lolly's parents to the failure of the 68ers. The novel, however, refers precisely to the generation that followed, to those who were born too late for the revolt and who grew up in the 1970s, i.e. precisely the Rothmann generation .

“ Well, if there is a generation that has got nothing, absolutely nothing, not even something as simple as a family life, it must be that of my parents. No generation of this century has had so many hopes and opportunities - and none has wasted so many. And if she ever goes down in the history books, then at most as 'the melancholy': At first too young for the political revolution (...), then too dubious as hippies to really let the pig go and Jimi Hendrix and Brian Jones into nirvana and finally too old to take part in the last great ape dance of the era, punk. "(Chapter 10)

Rothmann introduces religious aspects into the novel through the figure of Kosta, a Greek Orthodox friend of Lolly's . The apartment of the mostly absent Kosta becomes a refuge for Lolly and his mother Mary. Kosta plans to become a monk in a monastery and his apartment is full of icons. Critics criticized the fact that the figure of Kosta was not sufficiently involved in the novel. In fact, he's mostly absent, but his door is always open. But Lolly's mother also represents religious positions, mostly a mixture of esoteric and East Asian thoughts, but always ironic with "cool" sayings:

“ 'Woman is the strength of man', that already said ... Wait a minute, who said that. Some wise fire eater. A girl who likes you only appears to be a girl who likes you. In truth it embodies the purest and most passionate form of divine love that can be bestowed on you on earth. Amen. And I want fries. With mayo. "(Chapter 10)

The novel also develops the refutation of a hypothesis that Lolly formulates several times at the beginning of the novel: The rich and beautiful are also the good guys.

" Beautiful equals noble, because I am unteachable. "(Chapter 5)

The novel refutes this kitsch worldview through the negative figure of the beautiful Mara, through Kosta's religious arguments and through the life-wise judgment of the common people. Narrator Lolly discovers the fixation of even the brightest on outward appearances. Thomas Mann appears to him as a prototype of the writer who communicates negative judgments about people about physical defects. Lolly refers to Mann's description of a woman in a train compartment:

" She was evidently not the most beautiful, not in terms of his aesthetics, and renounced every meter in the speech, and the old man couldn't get upset enough about how disgusting he found her, her and her short, fat legs with which she was Compartment stomped around. He also found her short and thick fingers bad, but most disgusting were the legs, short and thick, he bit himself there, growling, the bourgeois humanist, his wrinkled face was clearly visible. And then he got out, straightened his cuffs, and wrote an essay on the 'nobility of spirit'. The ass. "(Chapter 20)

Rothmann sums up the criticism of Thomas Mann in one of his typical anecdotes. Out of disgust with her husband, Lolly lets the literary scholar Mara drag the complete edition up the stairs alone, and she lets out a “clear noise”.

“ At least I owe that to the work of the modern classic: To have seen a farting woman for the first time. "(Chapter 20)

Literary form

First of all, the relaxed tone of the novel catches the eye. The perspective of the young narrator is also implemented here in language. The novel makes an effort to use witty formulations and poetic images. Rothmann experiments with forms of oral storytelling. The text suggests that these are tape recordings of an oral report:

“ Test, one, two. I think I have a measly voice. Not adult or male at all. Kind of thin. When I turn on the voice recorder, someone else speaks. At least that sounds like it. - But I haven't had a handwriting either, never had it. What I write down in the morning looks at me with strange eyes in the evening. That's why I find writing so caustic. "(Statement by the narrator Lolly, Chapter 1)
“ Well, I imagine writing to be insane. To fumble with the sentences and the grammar ... It would be really too slow for me. "(Chapter 5)

Another aspect is the large number of small episodes with which Rothmann conveys zeitgeist and atmosphere. There is, for example, the reaction of the waiting community at the supermarket checkout to a shoplifter caught or the description of the hollow mesh of an in-restaurant.

reception

The novel was not always positively received by critics. The FAZ especially criticizes the detailed flashback to the mother's drug career, whose story remains "a foreign body in the novel":

“ Neither prison nor drugs nor psychiatry could harm Mary, this high priestess of spontaneity. Pure and innocent like the Virgin Mary, who gave her her name, she emerged from all the hardships of this world, protected by her two saints, the good powers eros and obstinacy. With his novel, Rothmann has erected a monument to this constantly stoned and penetratingly worldly savior, at the base of which the author and his hero kneel together. A special feature: the cross-eyed look that comes with anyone who tries to stare at a woman's halo and anklet at the same time. "(Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 3, 1998, No. 255 / page L5)

Despite some critical remarks, Tobias Heyl from the Viennese city newspaper Falter can see something positive about the figure of the mother:

“ That Mary, a mother who should actually call the youth welfare office on the scene, can in the end comfort her son over severe lovesickness, that she has the wisdom that her Louis urgently needs to get on her own feet, that both of them So narratives lead to a soulful finale, which is a bit cheesy indeed. On the other hand, neither the characters nor the readers of a book of such emotional intensity deserved a bad ending. Anything else would be a dull social analysis. Rothmann, however, demonstrates how far narration can be superior to simple description and evaluation. His novel explains nothing. But he focuses on those shifts that are worth observing. "(Wiener Stadtzeitung Falter)

Stefanie Hauck convinces the novel with "self-ironic nuances":

" The title 'Flee, my friend!' is borrowed from a verse from the Song of Songs. Both the novel and the biblical model have in common the delicate poetry in which the longing for sincerity and love is expressed. Ralf Rothmann succeeds in portraying his young, lovable protagonist in a credible way. It is not so much Louis 'biography - or that of his parents - that is able to cast a spell over the reader, but rather it is Louis' refreshingly original trains of thought and his recurring self-deprecating undertones that make the novel an experience. "(Literaturkritik.de, December 12, 1999)

Web links

text

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wiener Stadtzeitung Falter . Viennese city newspaper Falter. Retrieved on April 8, 2019  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.falter.at