Gabriela like cinnamon and cloves

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Gabriela like cinnamon and cloves ( Portuguese : Gabriela, Cravo e Canela ) is a novel by the Brazilian writer Jorge Amado , which Companhia das Letras published in São Paulo in 1958 . The translation into German by Gerhard Lazarus and Ernst-August Nicklas was published in Berlin in 1962.

The world bestseller was sold in 62 editions on all continents within 25 years with a total of almost one million copies.

Tempting for the mulatto Gabriela, that clove-scented woman with the cinnamon- colored skin, is the sexual bondage, which is called marriage: wearing a wedding ring - how wonderful. The everyday marriage, however, looks different than dreamed up. So Gabriela throws off the marriage yoke and has the old freedom again. Thus the attempt to bring up the husband failed. Gabriela does not rise into the better circles . Jorge Amado writes: “Gabriela is good, generous, impulsive and pure. You can list their good and bad qualities, you cannot explain them. She does what she enjoys; she refuses to do what she does not enjoy. "

content

Ilhéus

Despite having a local pilot on board, the Ita runs aground in the port entrance of Ilhéus . Among the passengers is the young cocoa exporter Mundinho Falcão. In the months that followed in 1925, he had the silted up fairway dredged. Thus, at the end of the novel, for the first time in the history of the city, part of the high-yielding cocoa harvest from the plantations of the Ilhéus province can be shipped to Europe with a larger freighter . Before the port can be reached by large ships, the stranger Mundinho must of course fight against the long-established colonels. The latter are large landowners who, weapon in hand, had already decided to divide up the fertile land in their favor at the turn of the century. At the head of the cocoa colonels is the 83-year-old Ramiro Bastos; Senator for the State of Bahia . He and his followers, for example Colonel Amâncio Leal, favor Bahia , the state capital of the same name, as the port of cocoa export overseas. Also because the newcomer Mundinho is socially committed in Ilhéus, voters drop out of Senator Ramiro's party in the course of 1925 and want to vote for Mundinho's party. Senator Ramiro and Colonel Leal cannot come to terms with this fatal development and fall back into a quarter of a century old practices: when Colonel Aristóteles Pires, the prefect from neighboring Itabuna , breaks away from Senator Ramiro, Colonel Leal assassins the renegade . Aristóteles survived a lung bullet .

Cover story

The Syrian- born Mr Nacib Aschar Saad, known as the Arab or the unconcerned Turk , a sturdy 33-year-old man with a head like a bull, owner of the Vesuvius bar in Ilhéus, keeps out of the battle between the two parties mentioned above as a restaurateur out. When the cook ran away, after a desperate search in the former slave market, he found a new cook - beautiful 21-year-old Gabriela. Together with a mulatto, that is the young farmer Clemente, and a black man, that is the gunslinger Fagundes, and her uncle, she fled the Sertão from the drought to Ilhéus. The uncle, who had deflowered Gabriela years ago , had died on the march through the semi-desert. Before his death Fagundes had carried it. Gabriela and Clemente had made love on the way that night. Clemente and Fagundes are staying with Colonel Melk Tavares, a retainer of the Senator, as plantation workers.

Nacib and his customers are extremely satisfied with Gabriela's cooking skills. When wealthy customers want to poach the cook, Nacib doesn't know what else to do - he woos Gabriela. The bride can hardly read. She has neither brought papers from the Sertão nor does she know her family name. Notary Tonico Bastos, one of the old senator's sons - a vicious forger and philanderer, married to a handsome rich woman - produces a birth certificate .

It’s getting married. When Nacib catches his wife red-handed with the notary, he beats her up and chases her away. The bar owner is again without a cook. A suitable substitute cannot be found anywhere.

The protagonists of the novel actually find a way out of every tricky situation. In that case, the problem will be solved very easily. The couple was not married at all because of the forgery of documents . Gabriela, no longer married, continues to work in Nacib's service.

When Fagundes, the assassin of the prefect of Itabuna, is hunted in Ilhéus, Gabriela saves his life out of gratitude.

Happy end

Senator Ramiro, Mundinho's adversary, dies in bed at night. The path for the cocoa exporter to the top of the political landscape in Ilhéus is clear. Colonel Leal takes Mundinho's side.

Gabriela takes turns with the men of her choice; also with her ex- husband Nacib. For his part, the bar owner also has several lovers.

It looks like Mundinho and Jerusa - the very young granddaughter of the late senator - will become a couple.

shape

In the four chapters of the novel, the two main plots outlined above are sometimes drowned in the chaos of innumerable side stories: Colonel Jesuino Mendonca shoots his wife Dona Sinhàzinha and her lover Osmundo. The dentist Dr. Osmundo Pimentel from Bahia is twelve years younger than his lover. The novelty in Ilhéus: The shooter is sentenced. As a contrast to this: First, the horned Nacib only beats Gabriela and then occasionally disapproves of her half-heartedly. And secondly, Colonel Coriolano Ribeiro leaves his concubine Gloria and her beau, the senior teacher Josué, scot-free

Jorge Amado likes to joke. For example, some planters donate the fresh air whore Gloria a new house in the middle of the city. Or the Dr. Argileu Palmeira, who manages a balancing act: marketing poetry. Sometimes the joke tends to be ironic: Senator Ramiro appreciates Gabriela because she saves Fagundes, but doesn't see why the woman is acting like this, but mistakenly thinks she is one of the dwindling supporters by his side.

Strong women dominate weak men: Malvina, the daughter of Colonel Melk Tavares, dares - lays flowers on the coffin of the adulteress Sinhàzinha, confesses to her lover, the engineer Dr. Rômulo Vieira. This explores the sanded fairway before the dredging work. Vieira works for the Ministry of Transport and is married to a mentally ill person. When the cowardly engineer is intimidated by Malvina's father, Malvina regrets her love and defies her father. Nacib rises to become the fourth clerk of the commercial association. Gabriela - completely unimpressed by this - does not let her fickle husband Nacib raise her to be a fine bourgeois woman, but goes on with her usual life.

Jorge Amado repeats himself. For example, a clear fact is constantly being stated: Nacib has no cook again. Or: Dr. Vieiras is insane. Some parts of the plot appear drawn out by the hair. When, for example, Fagundes flees from his persecutors, who want to kill him, he ends up in the garden of the potential lifesaver Gabriela. He had carried her half-thirsty uncle from the Sertão.

Some characters are explicitly announced as significant, but remain pale. Meant is, for example, the legendary ancestress Ofenísia from the sunken world of the ultra-romanticism of a Pedro de Calasan.

As a black and white painter, Jorge Amado cannot be disparaged. For example, the old cocoa colonels are not across the board the bad guys and the followers of Mundinho are the good guys. The versatility of the old guard is demonstrated in the form of Colonel Leal. The colonel is influenced by his son Berto, a student at the Technical University of São Paulo.

The novel conveys contemporary history: women in Brazil do not have the right to vote in 1925 (for comparison: in Germany women vote from January 1919 ).

Self-testimony

"With Gabriela I tried to depict the change in society by means of a love story."

reception

  • Pablo Neruda praises the book as “a masterpiece exuberant with sensuality and happiness”.
  • Gabriela like cinnamon and cloves mark a course corrector. Jorge Amado has since turned his back on socialist realism , but has by no means turned away from realism . In a picaresque manner, the epic lecture is loosened up by poetic passages:
You are like the scent of cloves
and dark-skinned like Zimmet.
From far, far away I came
to see you, Gabriela.

The work received five awards in Brazil in 1959:

  • Prêmio Machado de Assis, Instituto Nacional do Livro, Rio de Janeiro
  • Prêmio Jabuti , Câmara Brasileira do Livro , São Paulo
  • Prêmio Paula Brito, Rio de Janeiro
  • Prêmio Luísa Cláudia de Sousa, PEN Clube do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro
  • Prêmio Carmem Dolores Barbosa, São Paulo

Film adaptations

TV

In Portuguese

motion pictures

German-language literature

First editions

GDR

  • Jorge Amado: Gabriela. Novel. Translated into German by Gerhard Lazarus and Ernst-August Nicklas. Adaptation of the verses by Alfred Antkowiak . Volk und Welt, Berlin 1962. 492 pages (used edition).

FRG

  • Jorge Amado: Gabriela, like cinnamon and cloves. Novel. Translated from the Portuguese by Gerhard Lazarus and Ernst-August Nicklas. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1963. 461 pages

Secondary literature

  • Erhard Engler : Jorge Amado. The magician from Bahia . edition text + criticism. Pp. 150–153 (series of writing elsewhere , ed. Renate Oesterhelt) Munich 1992, 180 pages, ISBN 3-88377-410-3

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Engler, p. 169, first entry
  2. ↑ Engler, p. 120, 11. Zvu
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 433, 8. Zvu
  4. ↑ Engler, p. 125, 3rd Zvu
  5. ↑ engl. Pedro de Calasans
  6. ↑ Jorge Amado, quoted in Engler, p. 127, 2nd Zvu
  7. ^ Pablo Neruda, quoted in Engler, p. 115, 2. Zvo
  8. ↑ Engler, p. 118 middle
  9. ↑ Engler, p. 124 below
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 7, last stanza
  11. ↑ Engler, p. 123 below
  12. ↑ see also TV series 1960 in the IMDb
  13. ↑ see also TV series 1975 in the IMDb
  14. ↑ see also TV series 2012 in the IMDb
  15. ↑ see also Anexo: Elenco de Gabriela (2012)
  16. ↑ engl. Gabriela (1983 film)
  17. ↑ TV series 1983 in the IMDb