Twilight of the Gods (Élémir Bourges)

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Götterdämmerung is the most famous work by the French author Élémir Bourges . The novel, published in 1884 under the title Le Crépuscule des dieux , bears the subtitle “Contemporary Morals” ( Mœurs contemporaines ) and is a classic example of French decadence poetry and literary Wagnerism .

action

The main character is Duke Charles d'Este, who held a large festival in his residence in 1866, to which Richard Wagner was invited. But the festival ended abruptly: The Prussians fighting against Austria and its German allies marched in and drove the duke's family into exile in Paris. There the family leads a decadent and luxuriously splendid life. The Duke deals with the splendid furnishings of his new domicile and begins a love affair with the Italian diva Giulia Belcredi, a classic representative of the femme fatale type . This liaison heralds the downfall of the family. The duke's pale and blonde daughter, Claribel, who was only ten years old, dies a slow death from weakness - she corresponds to the type of femme fragile . Her brother Otto is a brawler who indulges in numerous debauches (sadism, homosexuality) and adds a "postponed" incest to these debauches as a coronation by cheating on his father with the Belcredi. The siblings Hans-Ulric and Christiane are connected by a spiritual elective affinity and, moreover, by an incestuous desire. When the two, spurred on by Belcredi, put the incest into practice, it comes to a catastrophe: Hans-Ulric shoots himself, Christiane goes to a monastery. The Duke's fifth child, Franz, falls prey to gambling and ends up in prison. Finally, the Belcredi and Otto plan an assassination attempt on the Duke in order to get at his fabulous fortune. But Arcangeli, the Duke's confidante, prevents the poisoning: the Duke shoots Otto, who ends up in the madhouse as a result of the wound, the Belcredi commits suicide. The novel ends with a visit by the lonely duke to the first performance of Wagner's tetralogy in Bayreuth . After looking around the audience and being shocked to find that the old aristocratic world is in decline, Charles d'Este dies following the last evening of the tetralogy, Götterdämmerung , while fulfilling his needs. None of his children are mentioned in his will; he bequeathed his immeasurable fortune to the city of Geneva, a reference to the real role model of the Duke: Charles II (Braunschweig) .

Decadence motifs

In terms of literary history, it is interesting that the novel was published two months before Joris-Karl Huysmans' novel Gegen den Strich (A Rebours) , which is still considered the "Bible of Decadence" . The novel contains numerous motifs of decadence such as femme fatale and femme fragile , sadism, the Wagner cult and aestheticism in the lush descriptions of the people and interiors. In addition, there is the late-era feeling and the depiction of the decline of a noble family.

reception

Bourges' novel inspired the French writer Jean Lorrain to write three sonnets dedicated to Élémir Bourges. Frère et soeur takes up the incest theme, Anémie refers to the figure of Claribel, Prince héritier to her brother Otto. Numerous writers, including Jean Cocteau , who described Götterdämmerung in 1923 as an "œuvre magnifique", appreciated the novel.

Erwin Koppen investigates a highly interesting question, namely whether Thomas Mann plagiarized the sibling incest described by Bourges in his novella Wälsungenblut in his fundamental study Decadent Wagnerism (1973).

The German translation of the novel was published by Manesse Verlag on the occasion of Richard Wagner's 200th birthday in 2013 and has received several reviews.

In his epilogue to the German translation of the novel, the Romanist Albert Gier comes to the following conclusion: " Götterdämmerung deserves a place next to the well-known Wagner novels and stories by Gabriele D'Annunzio , Marcel Proust or Thomas Mann."

literature

Text output

Secondary literature

  • Mario Praz : love, death and the devil. The black romance. Munich: dtv, 1963. (Italian original: La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica, Milano-Roma, 1930.)
  • Raymond Schwab: La Vie d'Elémir Bourges . Paris: Stock, 1948.
  • André Lebois: La Genèse du Crépuscule des Dieux . Paris: Le Cercle du Livre, 1954.
  • Erwin Koppen : Decadent Wagnerism. Studies on European fin de siècle literature . Berlin / New York: De Gruyter, 1973.
  • Hans Hinterhäuser : Fin de siècle. Figures and myths . Munich: Fink, 1977.
  • Wolfgang Rasch: The literary decadence around 1900 . Munich: Beck, 1986.
  • Ulrich Prill : "Aren't these signs of decadence?" : on the text constitution of the fin de siècle using the example of Elémir Bourges: Le crépuscule des dieux . Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1988
  • Alexandra Beilharz : The Décadence and Sade. Investigations into narrative texts of the French fin de siècle. Metzler, Stuttgart, 1997. 290 pp.
  • Alexandra Beilharz : "Elémir Bourges, Carlos Reyles et Robert Musil: la décadence entre refus et adaptation de la modernité" In: La main hâtive des révolutions. Esthétique et désenchantement en Europe de Leopardi à Heiner Müller. Edited by Jean Bessière and Stéphane Michaud. Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, 2001. pp. 55-76.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jean Lorrain : Modernities . Paris: Nouvelles Librairie parisienne. E. Giraud et Cie 1885.
  2. ^ Erwin Koppen : Dekadenter Wagnerismus (1973), p. 154.
  3. ↑ Thomas Laux: "Exquisite Decadence". NZZ, July 9, 2013, [1]
  4. ^ Gertrud Lehnert: Götterdämmerung , Deutschlandradio Kultur , May 16, 2013
  5. ↑ Tim Caspar Boehme: When gods dawn before them . Taz , May 18, 2013, p. 25
  6. ^ Albert Gier : Epilogue to Götterdämmerung . Manesse 2013, p. 470.