Ginevra (novella)
Ginevra is the title of a novella by Ferdinand von Saar , which first appeared in 1890.
content
After dinner for a dinner party, an old colonel tells one of his old love stories.
Internal narrative :
As a 20-year-old ensign , the future colonel met a lovely sixteen-year-old girl named Ginevra Maresch at a dance company in Leitmeritz . She lives with her mother, a born Italian, in a modest house on the outskirts of the city. The father, a former officer who said goodbye in order to be able to marry his beloved woman, died as a minor civil servant three years ago. The two young people fall in love. They swap rings and jewelry and the hours they spend together in their mother's house appear to both of them as a time of dreamlike happiness. Until, through the mediation of an uncle in Vienna, the narrator is suddenly promoted and transferred to the capital.
Of course, when parting, you swear eternal loyalty, and at first you exchange tender letters every week, but then the young lieutenant becomes adjutant of the battalion commander , and his wife, an urbane Polish countess, soon gains a captivating attraction for the still inexperienced young man. So Ginevra is more and more forgotten, the correspondence falls asleep, even a letter from Ginevra's mother remains unopened and is carelessly lost. Until one day Ginevra appears to him in mourning, demands her jewelry, which comes from her father, back, but keeps the ring as a reminder of "the happiest time" of her life.
Campaigns and fights distract the officer from the painfully shameful experience. He later learns that Ginevra has married a successful Trieste merchant. He believes he has seen them once in Vienna at his and an adult daughter's side.
“The story“ Ginevra ”... reflects the old theme of appearance and being against the background of the contemporary and moral history of the Biedermeier period. An out of date and shattering ideal of love is interwoven with symbolic references that range from medieval high love to the Italian Renaissance and Russian realism. ... "
literature
- Ferdinand von Saar / Karlheinz Rossbacher: Ginevra and other short stories . Ullstein Taschenbuchverlag, 1983. ISBN 978-3548301495
- Stefan Schröder (ed.): Ferdinand von Saar: Critical texts and interpretations. Volume 6: Ginevra. Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1996. ISBN 978-3-484-10734-2