Hamlet or The Long Night comes to an end

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Hamlet or The long night comes to an end is the last novel by the German writer Alfred Döblin and was published in 1956 by Rütten & Loening Verlag in the German Democratic Republic . After Döblin was rejected by several West German publishers, the poet and editor-in-chief of the magazine Sinn und Form, Peter Huchel , convinced him of a publication in the GDR. Döblin had to change the final chapter for publication by the East Berlin publishing house. The writer did not live to see the novel appear in 1957 at Langen Müller Verlag in West Germany .

Döblin tells of the homecoming of the wounded English soldier Edward Allison and his attempt to find out the causes of the Second World War in his closer social environment. When Gordon Allison, a formerly successful writer, feels strongly oppressed by his son's tenacity, he suggests that he tell each other stories in the circle of family and relatives and friends in order to distract Edward at least briefly. Based on Giovanni Boccaccio's epoch-making work Decamerone , the Allisons and their friends tell each other fairy tales, classics such as King Lear , Hamlet , the crusader Jaufré Rudel's love journey to his Countess of Tripoli, and ancient myths, ultimately exposing their own life lies .

Emergence

Alfred Döblin began the novel in 1945 in exile in America and finished it in Baden-Baden in 1946 . As with his previous short story in November 1918 , Döblin had considerable difficulties getting the finished manuscript into a West German publisher. Ten years later, the Germanist Hans Mayer , Peter Huchel , accompanied by Eberhard Meckel and his son Christoph , visited the writer , who had Parkinson's disease, in the Kurhaus Höchenschwand and won him over for a publication in the GDR. Doblin, who hadn't expected his last novel to appear during his lifetime, agreed. Then preprints of the novel were published in Huchel's magazine Sinn und Form .

Text output

  • Alfred Döblin: Hamlet or The Long Night comes to an end . Rütten & Loening, 1956 (first edition).
  • Alfred Döblin: Hamlet or The Long Night comes to an end . Walter, Breisgau 1983, ISBN 978-3-530-16631-6 .
  • Alfred Döblin: Hamlet or The Long Night comes to an end . dtv, Munich 2000, ISBN 978-3-423-12737-0 .
  • Alfred Döblin: Hamlet or The Long Night comes to an end . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-10-015552-8 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Anthony W. Riley: For the controversial conclusion of Alfred Döblin's "Hamlet or The Long Night Comes to an End" . In: Richard Büchner (Hrsg.): Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, p. 335.