Beginning of Spring (novel)
Springtime is a novel by the British writer Penelope Fitzgerald , published in 1988, about the crisis of marriage and meaning of a British print shop owner in pre-revolutionary Moscow. In the English original, the title is The Beginning of Spring .
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Moscow , 1913. The British print shop owner Frank Reid is leaving his wife Nellie at the beginning of spring without notice or explanation and now has to organize care for his three children, ten-year-old Dolly, nine-year-old Ben and three-year-old Annushka. The curators, the family of a business friend, prove to be unsuitable: the first visit ends in disaster when the birth present for the eldest son, a bear cub, is made drunk by the son, the apartment has to be ransacked and shot. Miss Kinsman, an English governess stranded in Moscow and recommended to Frank by the wife of the English chaplain, also does not meet his expectations.
He prefers Lisa Ivanova, a simple country girl who is recommended to him as a social case by his chief accountant, Selwyn Crane. Lisa's simple beauty arouses sensations that initially disturb the withdrawn Englishman. The children, however, immediately take Lisa into their hearts, and Frank himself quickly gets used to the silent young woman, who seems to be so deeply at ease that her inner peace soon has a calming effect on the whole household.
Other men are not blind to Lisa's merits either. The student Volodya breaks into the print shop, ostensibly to print revolutionary writings, but actually, as he later admits, out of hatred for Frank, whom he suspects of stalking Lisa, who is in vain. Nellie's brother Charlie is also extremely impressed by Lisa during his visit to Moscow and even offers to take her and the children to England to relieve Frank - an offer that both the children and Lisa refuse to Frank's relief. Finally, Frank can no longer deny his feelings for Lisa and is heard by her.
The next day Lisa travels with the children to the family's dacha , while Frank stays behind in Moscow. When Dolly caught Lisa leaving the dacha at night, she took the child with her to meet mysterious figures in a clearing in the forest. Her disguise as a harmless nanny has thus been exposed. She puts the children on the next train to Moscow and escapes to Berlin herself .
In Moscow, Selwyn Frank is now confessing his part in Nellie's sudden disappearance: Last summer at the dacha they had come closer to each other through the mutual admiration of Tolstoy and were planning to start a new life together in harmony with nature. At the last moment, however, Selwyn had scruples. Through his correspondence with Miss Kinsman, who has since found accommodation in a settlement of Tolstoy supporters in England, he learned that Nellie is currently staying there too.
Frank picks up his children from the train station. Spring has now finally arrived in Moscow and the Reid household is in the process of completing the ritual spring cleaning - just in time for the return of Nellie, who can now hope for some understanding from her husband, who has meanwhile gone astray herself.
characters
Frank Reid : A Brit in Moscow who took over his father's printing shop there. He was born in Russia, grew up there and, apart from his studies in England, spent most of his life there, but with all the affection and appreciation of his Russian friends, business partners and servants he is still regarded as the "Englishman", perhaps also because he embodies the British ideal of the "stiff upper lip" almost perfectly. By nature stoic and reserved, he always keeps a cool head in crisis situations, but seems to be at a loss for his own emotions in quiet moments. Women, their actions and motivations, as well as the feelings they trigger in him - the sudden departure of his wife, his feelings for the new nanny - are a mystery to him.
Nellie Reid: Frank Reid's wife. At the beginning of the novel, she leaves her husband to return to England. Your motifs remain in the dark for the time being. In the memories of her husband, she appears as a headstrong, pragmatic, determined woman who is not particularly attached to her family of origin and hometown, who views compromises and conventions critically, and prefers to take her fate into her own hands. For example, she insists on sexual intercourse before the wedding because she does not want to have the feeling in front of the altar that the assembled wedding party has their crucial knowledge ahead of them. Frank realizes too late that she has since abandoned this sober, purposeful approach to the subject of love and sexuality - perhaps through the influence of Russian culture and way of life - and is longing for a deeper relationship.
Selwyn Crane: Frank Reid's eccentric chief accountant. Like his employer, he is of British descent, but is more Russian than the native Russians. He likes to wear Russian peasant clothes, weaves his own sandals, in which he walks through the country every summer, and writes poems about birches, which he publishes himself. As a passionate admirer of Tolstoy, he makes every effort to implement his spiritual ideals of utopian Christianity in his everyday life, including through charitable engagement. His intercession for the orphaned peasant girl Lisa Ivanova, whom he placed as a new nanny with Frank Reid, is, however, not exclusively due to Christian charity, especially with regard to Selwyn's own part in the Reid marital crisis.
Lisa Ivanova: A young woman from the country whom Frank Reid hires to look after his children at the request of his accountant. With her cheerful serenity, the silent beauty exerts a strong attraction on her new employer. Her silence also gives her an aura of mystery, which intensifies this attraction. After a nightly meeting with mysterious figures in a forest clearing, to which she is accompanied by Frank's daughter Dolly, one thing is certain: Lisa Ivanova is not the harmless farmer's daughter she claims to be. But who exactly she really is - dryad , witch , Duchoborze or Bolshevik - remains a secret that she takes with her on her escape to Berlin.
worldview
Fitzgerald's historical novel is set in Moscow in 1913, but also reflects the zeitgeist of the year it was written in 1988. In both 1913 and 1988, Russia was on the threshold of a new era - the Communist Bolsheviks take power in the course of the October Revolution , or Gorbachev's opening, restructuring and Modernization of the Soviet Union within the framework of perestroika . In her more or less restlessly searching characters, often torn between contradicting longings, Fitzgerald embodies the spirit of optimism, but also the uncertainty of such historical moments.
One of these figures is Moscow itself, anthropomorphized by Fitzgerald . Fitzgerald's portrayal of Moscow is ambivalent: the bureaucracy is rigid and corrupt, the buildings have fallen into disrepair, the weather is gray, wet and cold for most of the year. But the dilapidated wooden houses with their overgrown gardens also have something picturesque about them; Evidence of a glorious history is omnipresent, and the population opposes the banality of everyday life with humor and passion. Like Moscow itself, the characters in the novel are also full of contradictions: rebellious, yet submissive, lustful, ascetic, corrupt, but also deeply moral.
Fitzgerald uses common stereotypes about Russia, some with a long tradition. The portrayal of the Russian mentality as extraordinarily soulful, passionate and melancholy goes back to 19th century Russian literature. At this time, not only aristocrats, but also members of the middle class in Russia received higher education for the first time. These new members of the Russian intelligentsia rebelled against the arrogance of the ruling class, which was always trying to differentiate itself from the rest of the population by giving preference to (Western) European cultural goods and manners, in which they believe the lack of such cosmopolitanism Badges of honor of Russian authenticity raised. The mystical spirituality of the Russian Orthodox Church was opposed to the Western European ideal of rationality and enlightenment , and was used as evidence of the moral superiority of the common people over the aristocracy.
Religious motifs run through the whole novel. The action takes place mainly in the Lent and reached Easter its dramatic climax. Frank Reid supports the cultivation of religious customs in his company and his household, such as the blessing of the company's own icon or daily grace, but hardly seems to take an inner part in them. When Dolly tells him about a teacher who speaks in class about the non-existence of God and the insignificance of religion, he is mainly disturbed by the break with convention, although he basically shares this view. Like love, religion is an issue on which Frank avoids exploring his own feelings too thoroughly. ("[...] he had developed the habit of not asking himself what he was thinking", p. 90 / [....] he had fallen into the habit of not asking himself what he thought ".) The opposite position embodies Selwyn Crane, who exerts a strong attraction on Frank's wife Nelly through his lived spirituality and striving for a return to nature. Frank also develops a need for a higher meaning and chooses a strategy similar to that of his wife to satisfy it - a romance with the mysterious, nature-loving Lisa Ivanova, who, like Selwyn Crane, represents a counterpoint to Frank's soulless materialism and whose description in the novel is religious Symbolism is charged. For example, in the passage in which Lisa washes Dolly's feet with her scarf after the nightly meeting in Wald, parallels to the Last Supper, when Jesus washes the apostles' feet. Lisa statement about Dolly "If she remembers it, she'll understand in time what she has seen", p. 174, reminds of Jesus' words to Peter : “You don't know what I'm doing now; but you will find out afterwards ”(John 13). Like Jesus and Lisa, Fitzgerald also refuses to immediately clear up all secrets in her novel and demands trust that deeper meaning will reveal itself in good time.
shape
For her novel Springtime, Fitzgerald uses a personal narrative perspective , predominantly from Frank Reid's point of view. Frank is the only character whose thoughts are shared. Events when he is not present are reported by an omniscient narrator . Only the stay at the dacha and the nightly meeting in the birch forest are described from Dolly's perspective.
Typical for Fitzgerald is the stylistic device of understatement and the generally sparing use of language. In her novel Spring Beginning, too , the essentials often remain unsaid, merely hinted at, or ignored or not understood. It is telling, for example, that Frank confesses his love to his lover, who as a simple peasant girl with no higher education in all probability only speaks Russian, in English - between the door and the hinge, so that he cannot even be sure whether she heard his utterance acoustically . He is no longer given the opportunity to be clearer. The failure of understanding at the crucial moment intensifies the tragedy of his loss.
This minimalism extends to the explanation of causal relationships between the action and motivation of the characters. Since neither the central reflector figure, Frank, nor the omniscient narrator, who also step in at times, tend to speculate about the deeper motivations of others or to evaluate their behavior, it is largely up to the readers themselves to make assumptions in this regard and to make appropriate judgments. Even if revelations in the last chapters provide possible explanations for some puzzling events, the novel ultimately raises more questions than it answers.
Position in literary history
Victorian authors such as Edward Burne-Jones , William Morris , William De Morgan and Gerard Manley Hopkins were important literary influences for Fitzgerald . Fitzgerald liked to choose past eras, especially the years before the First World War, as the framework for her novels - the social pressures to which the individual is exposed were a preferred topic, which she found to be more difficult to deal with in the context of a less restrictive social order. Christopher Knight sees an echo of this Victorian spirit in the portrayal of the Reid's marriage and compares Nellie Reid to Ibsen's Nora Helm . Both figures share a desire to break out of an institution that is perceived as cramping. But while Nora finally seeks her luck in self-employment, Nellie returns to her husband at the end of the novel.
Fitzgerald's work was also shaped by her lifelong love for Russian literature. Hermione Lee sees parallels to Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev with regard to the integration of supernatural aspects and mythological references. Even in her novel Spring Beginnings, Fitzgerald does not value a complete rational explanation of all events - Lisa's mystery is preserved until the end. The mysterious figures she meets in the birch forest can just as easily be interpreted as nature spirits, as Duchoborzen or Bolsheviks .
A central Intertextual reference in early long beginning is repeated with respect to Tolstoi , mainly through the description of a passionate Tolstoy admirer in the figure of Selwyn Crane, but also references to Tolstoy novel resurrection . As with Tolstoy, with Fitzgerald, too, a man from a higher social class sees his previous life called into question by an encounter with a young woman from a humble background in the days before Easter.
Robert Plunkett compares Fitzgerald to EM Forster because of their ability to credibly portray characters from another culture. However, he attests to her greater optimism with regard to the possibility of an intercultural encounter at eye level - while with Forster the attempt to cross cultural barriers usually leads to initially comical and later disastrous results, with Fitzgerald the assimilation of the British family into Russian culture seems largely successful .
reception
Springtime received mostly positive reviews, including from the Daily Telegraph , Times Literary Supplement, and Guardian . In the London Review of Books , Jan Morris is particularly impressed by the richness of detail in the descriptions of everyday Russian life and praises the virtuoso narrative technique, which illuminates an action that often takes place mainly between the lines with moments of comedy.
Fitzgerald, who had already received the Man Booker Prize in 1979 for her novel Offshore, was nominated again for the beginning of spring, but this time lost to Peter Carey's Oscar and Luscinda .
In 2014, Spring was selected by Robert McCrum for his list of the Top 100 English-Language Novels , compiled for The Guardian .
literature
Text output
- Penelope Fitzgerald: The beginning of spring . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig 1991 (first edition: Collins, 1988).
Secondary literature
- Christopher J. Knight: Penelope Fitzgerald and the Consolation of Fiction . Taylor & Francis, 2016.
- Peter Wolfe: "Degrees of Exile". Understanding Penelope Fitzgerald. University of South Carolina Press, 2004.
- Hermione Lee: "The Beginning of Spring". In: Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life. Random House, 2013.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Alexander Martin: Review of Moscow as City and Metaphor . In: Reviews in History . review no.1178, 2011 ( history.ac.uk ).
- ↑ a b c Christopher J. Knight: Penelope Fitzgerald and the Consolation of Fiction . Taylor & Francis, 2016, pp. 195 .
- ↑ a b c David Deavel: The Power of Words Unspoken . In: National Review . January 25, 2016, Issue, 2016 ( nationalreview.com ).
- ^ Robert Plunket: Dear, Slovenly Mother Moscow . In: The New York Times . May 7, 1989 ( nytimes.com ).
- ↑ a b c Robert McCrum: The 100 best novels: No 95 - The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald (1988) . In: The Guardian . July 13, 2015 ( theguardian.com ).