God rides a bicycle

God Rides a Bicycle or The Wonderful World of My Father is a novel by the Dutch writer Maarten 't Hart . The original edition appeared in 1979 under the title De aansprekers. Roman van vader en zoon published by Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam. The German translation by Marianne Holberg was published by Arche Verlag in 2000 . The autobiographical novel is a tribute to the father Paulus (“Pau”) 't Hart and deals with his death and the knowledge of his own mortality: “As long as he was not dead, I couldn't die, but if he died, I was then it's your turn. "

action

On the quay wall

The novel begins with a visit by the first-person narrator Maarten to his mother in Maassluis at the turn of the year after the father's death. During a walk on the harbor quay, Maarten's carelessness slips on the frozen pavement and slowly moves towards the ice-cold water. He cannot believe that this is supposed to be the end of it, but at the same time he cannot do anything about the fact that he is inexorably moving towards the quay wall and that every effort only accelerates the movement. Only a duckdalbe stops the movement towards the water. Maarten uses cross beams to get to safety. On the pavement he starts sliding again, this time in the direction of the houses, but as before, Maarten cannot control the movement himself.

Visiting time

Maarten is surprised by his father's illness during a short vacation with his wife: He is informed by telephone about an upcoming gastric operation on his father and complications. During a visit to the hospital bed, there is a conversation with the father and the bed neighbor Thijs Loosjes, one of the typical, eccentric 't-Hart characters: Although already old, Thijs has been permanently engaged to Jannetje for decades because he believes that this will avoid death to be able to, “because fiancés don't die”. During a subsequent walk, Maarten also tries to find reasons why his father cannot die yet.

Furrowed ways

On the day of the operation, Maarten goes to the cemetery where his father worked as a cemetery gardener for years. The cemetery paths are still marked by the furrows that his father dug extremely conscientiously on Saturdays, but without any meaning: all over the cemetery Maarten discovers signs of transience on graves and gravestones. He witnesses how a bird catcher goes about his work without being driven away by the cemetery gardener (only police officers put an end to his activities). From midday on, Maarten tried to get information about the course of the operation, but was only put off by everyone and finally referred to the family doctor in the evening. The father himself feels bad after the operation.

The dark evenings

Within ten days, however, Pau recovered significantly. Maarten went to the family doctor and found out that her father had pancreatic cancer. The operation was carried out so quickly because the doctors couldn't do anything else. There is still half a year of life left for the father. Sitting in the dark room in the evening, Maarten thinks about his experiences of death and dying and struggles with whether he should tell his father the truth about his illness.

In the house for the bier

Maarten doesn't want to tell his father about cancer for the time being. For this he is now beginning intensely to experience the last time with his father. At the beginning of spring he visits his father in the cemetery to relive this moment one more time. In the conversation with the father in the house with the bier, the unpleasant experiences of childhood emerge: the beating by the father, which he regrets. At the same time, the relationship of trust with the father is also expressed, namely in the picture of sitting in front of the father on the bicycle. The memory of this scene runs like a red thread through the entire story (the scene itself is told in the chapter "Enoch") and is closely related to the book title.

The incident and the dream

Not being able to talk to anyone about the impending death of the father gives rise to anger in Maarten that spreads to everyone “who was older than my father would ever be”. After a morning with numerous angry encounters with older men, he finally bumped into a man on his bike, causing him to fall. Maarte's wife feels the anger, but attributes this to overwork and urges Maarten to continue the vacation in the Swiss Binntal. On the first night of vacation, Maarten dreams of his father walking through a poppy field without making any progress. Maarten recognizes his own powerlessness in not being able to help his father. During a walk in the mountains, he and his wife Hanneke discover tracks in the snow that suddenly stop and don't lead back.

The heavenly magazine

The discovery of the mysterious footprints reminds Maarten of the time when he first left his parents to live and study with his mother's brother in Leiden. He was homesick for home, especially after his father's digger stories. During a visit to his home, the father had told of a man who had chosen his grave and then wanted to kill himself, but was stopped by Pau with the request to wait until spring because the ground was still too frozen. The man had addressed Pau as a bitter corpse ("Aanspreker" (original title)), which the latter rejected with the reference that he was a grave maker. Maarten also discovered her father's pride in this position in the episode when Maarten was supposed to get Pau's uncle to read an interpretation of the Bible for the Bible study. It was about the question of where the naked Jesus got his clothes from after his resurrection (answer of the uncle: from the heavenly clothes magazine). Pau delivers the address, but finally corrects it: In his opinion, Jesus used the tomb-maker 's clothes, which is why Mary Magdalene mistook him for the gardener. From this, Pau proudly deduces that Jesus was not too bad to wear the clothes of Pau's profession. When Maarten later discovers footprints on the quay that lead to the water, but not back again, he believes the man nevertheless committed suicide. Pau, however, thinks he was able to dissuade the man from his death wish. When the man reappears later, but realizes that Pau has been holding him off for a long time and the frost has long since risen, he actually hangs himself up. There is no answer for the footprint to the quay.

The helicopter

Maarten found an answer when he observed divers in the Binntal during the rescue of a dead boy: A helicopter sets the diver down on a meadow with the help of a rope ladder. Conversely, Maarten imagines that he too could have come on board the helicopter. So it could have been with the disappearing footprints. While the stone knockers in the Binntal take a break in search of fossils in order to take a closer look at the dead boy, Maarten prefers to run away and avoid meeting the dead boy.

The eviction

The event in the Binntal brings another memory to Maarten's memory: when he was a child with his father and the stonemason Ai van Leeuwen and was there for the first time to clear a grave. Little Maarten encounters the normality with which the men do their work and their natural way of dealing with the perishable remains with irritation and fascination. The child cannot even imagine rotting in a grave. He prefers the religious idea that Jesus returns to earth beforehand and lifts him up to heaven on a cloud. When the grave is finally opened, Maarten hopes that there is nothing in it, but the father presses a bone into his hand. Maarten is shocked.

The escape before October 3rd

On the day before the memory of Leiden's liberation, Maarten, having returned from the Binntal, goes to see his father to finally talk to him about his illness - allegedly to flee from the festivities. The discovery of newly hatched little owls and the appearance of an undertaker who wants to propose a deal to Pau prevent the conversation. Even later in the evening, when the family is at table, Maarten ultimately avoids the conversation, although there is an opportunity to do so.

Enoch

Maarten's earliest memory of death relates to the death of neighbor Kraan. Even then, little Maarten fled by going to his father in the garden a little further away. His mother had instructed him not to allow himself to be spoken to on the way and not to allow friends and acquaintances to take him on the bike. An older cyclist speaks to him on the way and wants to take him with him, but Maarten refuses. During the journey Maarten's thoughts revolve around love for God and love for the Father. He remembers the Old Testament figure of Enoch (Gen 5:24), of whom it is said that he did not die but was taken into heaven by God because he loved God: if the man on the bicycle had been God , then Maarten would have denied God himself by refusing to go with him. A little further on, Maarten sees the man on the bike again, apparently looking for Maarten. The boy hides and finally arrives safely at his father's place. He takes him on the handlebars of the bike in front of him and drives back with him. Maarten realizes that he has decided against God and for his father.

The display

The rapid recovery process of his father made Maarten doubt the doctor's diagnosis again and again, but when he is called on the phone from an event, he realizes what it is about: his father has come back to the hospital. He had a heart attack and was reanimated. Maarten rushes to the hospital and stays there during the night, although he shouldn't stay with the father himself so that he can recover. Maarten is not sure whether rapid death from a heart attack should not be preferred to painful death from pancreatic cancer. During the night he is called to the father again. He is in agony and eventually dies.

interpretation

Maarten 't Hart's novel is an autobiographical appraisal of dealing with the death of one's father and reflecting on one's own mortality. Death, dying, transitoriness are the recurring themes that are associated with different personal experiences. In the Dutch original, the book is called “A Novel by Father and Son”, but formally it appears less as a novel than as a longer story . As in most of 't Hart's texts, it is also about a critical examination of the Calvinism of the parents' generation.

The German title God drives a bicycle refers to a motif that runs through the entire story: the memory of Maarten sitting on the handlebars in front of his father. The individual references to this scene come together in the chapter "Enoch", in which Maarten 't Hart describes a childhood scene: on the way to his father's garden he is approached by a stranger on a bicycle, but he is speaking to him, alluding to child abduction and child abuse to take away. The first-person narrator wonders whether God, if he can be everything, could not also be a stranger on a bicycle. In the decision against God on a bicycle, the narrator sees a first crack in his children's faith. After the German title, the chapter becomes the key chapter for the entire novel.

Closely related to this is the recurring motif of the rapture: the Maarten child cannot imagine his own death. In his religious world of ideas, death is replaced by an immediate rapture into heaven when Jesus returns to earth, which is still to be expected during his lifetime. God on the bike (= the stranger) might want to take the child with him; it would be a special variant of the rapture. The motif also appears in the footprints that suddenly disappear in the snow and on the quay: the mysterious stranger is carried away into the air, if not in a cloud, at least like a diver who grabs the rope ladder of a helicopter in the meadow and is taken off this is pulled up.

The original Dutch title, on the other hand, shows a different trace: “De aansprekers” (the Claimants, the Leichenbitter ) refers, on the one hand, to the father's occupation himself. Although he rejects the title “Leichenbitter” because he digs graves and does not deliver news of death and asks for funeral and funeral feasts, but Aansprekers means his profession. At the same time, the son also rejects the task of delivering the news of his death, namely the news of his father's fatal illness. Both father and son are Aansprekers and each reject the title in their own way and do not want to take on the task. The German subtitle "The miraculous world of my father" abolishes the relationship between father and son and only emphasizes the described world of fatherly Calvinism.

criticism

Reviews for the work authored among others Dieter Borchmeyer in the period of 13 June 2001, Hermann Wallmann in the Frankfurter Rundschau on 18 January 2001, Sabine Doering in the FAZ of 25 November 2000 and Volker Mühleis in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on October 7 2000.

Doering particularly emphasized the influence of 't Harts from Calvinism , which can be found in many of his books and can be seen particularly clearly in these childhood memories. She also saw connections between 't Hart's childhood book and the trend of the 1970s to deal with the generation of fathers: “The late translation of the book sharpens the eye for historical connections [...] The weird“ Grabmacher ”[...] has nothing to do with it those fathers who were accused of being politically guilty by their writing sons and daughters, but with his father book Maarten 't Hart also attempted to ascertain his own origin and existence. A case of added love , too. ”Borchmeyer, on the other hand, puts the novel more in the tradition of the realistic narrative of the 19th century:“ A memory book full of love, but just as weird, strange and shaded by black humor, like the author's father was . "

Text output

• Maarten 't Hart: God rides a bicycle . Arche, Zurich 2000, ISBN 3-7160-2272-1
• Maarten 't Hart: God rides a bicycle . Piper, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-492-23404-6
• Maarten 't Hart: God rides a bicycle . Gruner and Jahr, Hamburg 2006 (Brigitte-Edition Vol. 22), ISBN 3-570-19534-1

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/3553.html , accessed on April 7, 2009
2. ↑ http://www.buecher.de/shop/Buecher/Gott-faehrt-Fahrrad-oder-Die-wunderliche-Welt-meines-Vaters/Hart-Maarten-t/products_products/content/prod_id/09005053/ , accessed on April 7, 2009
3. ↑ Dieter Borchmeyer: Die more beautifully, lie more comfortably . In: The time . No. 25/2001 ( online ).