Hesperus or 45 dog post days

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Jean Paul (1763–1825), author of the book Hesperus or 45 Hundposttage

Hesperus or 45 Hundposttage is a novel by Jean Paul that was published by Karl Matzdorff in Berlin in 1795. An expanded edition was published three years later, and a third edition in 1819. The original title was Hesperus, or 45 Hundposttage. A biography of Jean Paul.

In the novel, consisting of “four booklets”, Jean Paul tells the love story of Viktor and Klotilde . The action runs from April 30, 1792 to October 31, 1793. Hesperus is the morning and evening star Venus . For Viktor, Hesperus is also his clotilde.

A number in round brackets indicates the page in the source. The spelling “dog [s] posttage” is not uniform in the literature.

action

Dog mail

The author, Berg-Hauptmann Jean Paul (32), lives on the equator on the island of St. Johannis in the East Indian waters, which are completely surrounded by the principality of Scheerau (31). For 45 days a dog named Spitzius Hofmann brings him mail. In the papers the biographical miner is asked by a certain Knef to process the material into a biography of the doctor Viktor. Jean Paul complies with the request, but does not know how the story will continue while writing, as he has to wait for the next dog mail.

The order

In the manageable small German state, Prince January rules the subjects in the residential city of Flachsenfingen - called by some as Little Vienna - as well as in the villages of St. Lüne and Maienthal . The blind English Lord Horion , intimate of the prince, is supposed to look for the five sons of the prince and bring them over. Years ago he was supposed to have fetched the boys from France, but at the time had three of them kidnapped to England and educated in Eaton .

Victor, the hero of the novel, the novel coming to the beginning, from Goettingen, in Maienthal arrives , is presented as a skilled, successful eye surgeon. He makes the blind lord see through a star stitch. He also alleviates the Prince's foot gout and treats Princess Agnola's eye inflammation.

Amounted to

Viktor spent his youth together with Flamin in the house of court chaplain Peter Eymann in the village of St. Lüne. The chaplain sometimes acts impulsively. So he occasionally throws mice to death in the house with his Bible. Flamin became a lawyer and is said to be the son of the chaplain. Flamin is directed by the court squire Matthieu von Schleunes, a libertine . Flamin loves Clotilde. The beautiful girl is said to be the daughter of the Lord Chamberlain, Le Baut . When Viktor met Klotilde, he was very impressed by her, but he held back because he didn't want to spoil it with his friend. Jean Paul describes Viktor's love as follows: A man can sit cold and sighless in his book dust for twenty-six years; but once he has breathed the ether of love, he has to go out into the air of heaven and constantly snap at it (153). Love scenes are beautiful landscape paintings for Jean Paul .

On the 12th Hundposttag, Jean Paul pours the reader pure wine: Readers cannot be deceived enough, and a clever author will gladly guide them by his arm into martens, wolf pits and bouncing threads (164). And then Viktor learns from his alleged father Lord Horion under the seal of secrecy: Flamin is Klotilden's brother and the prince's son (162). So the lord only has to take care of four sons of the monarch. Lord Horion says to Viktor: Three other children are still living in England in January, only the fourth on the seven islands is invisible (162).

Death of the lord

The three Englishmen, also called the triplets, meet in St. Lüne. The biographical miner Jean Paul turns out to be the fourth son of the monarch. Suddenly this one is aristocratic and is written from (650). The "riddles" about the five sons of the ruler are solved and Lord Horion gives himself up on the island of the union .

Subplots

The love triangle Viktor - Klotilde - Flamin

Viktor, Klotilde and Flamin are the good and noble ones. Only Matthieu is the biggest villain .

When Viktor learns that the lovers Klotilde and Flamin are siblings, there is still an obstacle to his love for Klotilde. Viktor has to keep his knowledge a secret. He swore that to the lord. Viktor keeps vows. In addition, the lord soon says goodbye to the novel and is only found dead at the very end. All of this may be partly to blame that Viktor keeps his distance from Klotilde, although he loves her dearly. In the long run, this fact does not remain hidden from Flamin, Viktor's best friend from childhood and youth. Flamin, the kind-hearted, cannot help it, he generously leaves his beloved to his friend. But the idyll hoped for by the reader is destroyed by Matthieu.

Clotilde, who rises to be a lady-in-waiting, finds the service at the court oppressive. Because the prince liked Clotilde, Matthieu wooed her. But Le Baut did not give Clotilde. Matthieu incites Flamin so that Flamin looks at his faithful Viktor more insidiously and opaque every day and forces him to duel with pistols. Neither of the two childhood friends is hit.

Matthieu doesn't give up and persuades Flamin to duel with Le Baut . Not Flamin, but Matthieu kills the Lord Chamberlain Le Baut. The killer leaves the country. Flamin takes the blame and is incarcerated as a murderer. The court chaplain and Clotilde travel to London to see Klotildes and Flamin's mother, the lady. Clotilde hopes to meet Lord Horion at the lady's. The lord should tell the prince that Flamin is his son and thus save Klotilden's brother. At home Viktor goes to the prince and asks for Flamin's life. Viktor achieves nothing. All he had to do was tell the prince that Flamin is the prince's son. But Viktor has to keep his oath. He says to himself: The downfall of a virtue is a greater evil than the downfall of a person (606).

When the lady from London arrives at the Flachsenfingen residence to save her son Flamin, the court squire Matthieu comes before her. He returns from exile and reveals the secret of Flamin's ancestry to the prince. Matthieu also uses this appearance at the prince to intrigue against Lord Horion. Matthieu has his knowledge from the time of a tendril he forged back when Lord Horion was still blind. Matthieu brings Flamin out of the dungeon. At the end of the novel, the reader learns that there were three other people who knew where Flamin was from: The Lady, Emanuel and Klotilde. A confusing fact - Jean Paul initially portrayed Flamin and Klotilde as lovers. Has the reader been betrayed by the author again? Yes and no. Jean Paul repeatedly distracts the reader from logical breaks, for example with the subsequent explanation of his novel: The Lord passed Viktor off as his son because a capable doctor could "act" better on Prince January than his blind son Julius. This is not the only explanation of the basic questions. For the completely incomprehensible removal of the prince's sons from court by the lord, Jean Paul pulls just as “plausible” explanations up his sleeve.

The reader gets his happy ending . The noble Flamin will make his way to court, and Viktor, who has sunk into the bourgeoisie, will be more than compensated with Clotilde. But the author's name is Jean Paul. He doesn't give the reader a pillow to rest, but on the 39th Hundposttag he reminds him that Viktor has finally lost four people: Emanuel (see below), Flamin has become an enemy, the Lord a stranger and Klotilde a stranger (581). The remaining five items of mail, delivered by the dog Spitzius Hofmann, cannot shake that too much either.

Emanuel's death

Klotilde's East Indian teacher Emanuel dies almost throughout the entire novel. The day of his death will be announced to the reader in good time: This is St. John's Day 1793, i.e. June 21, the longest day of the year. The prediction comes true, of course, like most Jean Paul predictions. Viktor, looking for his teacher Dahore from England, was told by Emanuel in the Maienthal Abbey where Clotilde was educated that he didn't need to look any longer because he had Dahore before him too. Dahore / Emanuel holds tight to his heart the two great truths (God and immortality), which support the universe like two pillars. Emanuel meditates and makes astronomical observations. Emanuel dies several times. At least that's how it appears the first time you read it. Since this is hardly possible, successive dying must be postulated in retrospect. Again Jean Paul played with the reader. Viktor only said that Emanuel was dead. The Indian teacher with lung disease continues to die; spits copious amounts of blood on his long linen robe several times.

Against Emanuel and the blind Julius, such important figures as Prince January and Lord Horion appear as staffage. Emanuel is the caregiver for Viktor and Klotilde. The two protagonists find refuge, protection and consolation at Emanuel. While Jean Paul created Hesperus as Viktor's biography, his actual narrative center repeatedly points to Emanuel, that is to say to the "subplot". To explore the inside of the novel means to put yourself in the world of the saint named Emanuel. Besides our world, there is a second one that Emanuel crosses over by slowly but irrevocably dying on Midsummer's day at sunset. The novel can also be read as Jean Paul's Astronomy and Cosmography . Emanuel's death is described as the passage of his spirit into the second world, consisting of the sun, moon and stars.

The study of the blind Julius is also important for the understanding of Hesperus : Julius lay in the flowering grass, washed over by the waves, and held a cherry branch full of open honey cups in his hand. While Emanuel strives more into the cosmos, Julius embodies exactly the opposite of the decadent nobility - the striving back to nature . Viktor has a lot in common with Julius: Viktor prefers to meet children. But he avoids people . Viktor is without selfishness (125).

Jacobins, Republicans, Conquerors

The narrated period (April 30, 1792 to October 31, 1793) is a revolutionary one : Marie Antoinette , Queen of France, is guillotined on October 16, 1793 .

Jean Paul does not appear in the Hesperus as a revolutionary, although he writes about Jacobins , republicans, and conquerors . France is far. The Hesperus acts in Germany. With Jean Paul, the bourgeoisie are not as morbid as the nobles, but the monarchist relations of rule are not seriously called into question. Jean Paul only talks wittily about the revolution and also makes fun of the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy when, for example, he names himself Jean Paul von January , the legitimate son of a ruling German prince.

Viktor is disappointed with Prince January. The princely face embarrassed the hero, not because it impressed, but because it let it stay (118). Jean Paul portrays the ruler as a fool who wants to make Flachsenfingen a Free State and the President of Congress in it. But there is his camarilla with the well- worn German parade larvae , which every Republican immediately scolds for a Jacobin or at least a Frenchman in disguise . Matthieu considers the British who enter Flachsenfingen to be messengers of French propaganda . A British man is said to have blown up the powder tower .

Viktor, who is first introduced to the reader as the son of a lord, feels uncomfortable at court in Flachsenfingen. The courtiers, who ape everything from princes , are repugnant to him. Viktor is not bored; only a throne occupant can prescribe a hundred court festivals against this nervous consumption, society cavaliers, entire countries and human blood (101). Viktor often saddened that he could so little use his noble powers for mankind that his dreams of preventing evil through the prince, of doing good, remained feverish dreams (305). So in the end Viktor is glad that he is really the son of a commoner. Jean Paul's view on this - directed against the nobility: I find that an educated pastor's son is basically better than a completely uneducated prince (648).

Jean Paul

To the dissatisfaction of the reader, Jean Paul always interferes in the plot of the novel, promising that I'll be back to the story in three minutes (103) and then talk the already extremely confused plot to death. These interferences are less a subplot than intended destruction - a Jeanpaulian “interpretation” of romanticism: Obviously, distance to rationalism and proximity to mysticism is sought. The game with identities and other narrative-theoretical preservation variables dominates in the novel and was already mentioned above with the Dahore / Emanuel identity. For example, the whereabouts of the narrator Jean Paul is ambiguous at times. The novel builder Jean Paul writes on his island St. Johannis in the East Indian waters and at the same time in the Voigtland courtyard , which he quickly denies as a place of action. The reader's confusion appears as a program.

Some things seem foolish: Clotilde looks at Viktor at an angle of forty-five degrees to the horizontal (86).

characters

  • January (also: Jenner), ruling prince in Flachsenfingen
  • Agnola, the princess
  • The Lady, Klotildes and Flamin's mother
  • Lord Horion, English counselor to the prince
  • Court chaplain (also: pastor) Peter Eymann
  • The court chaplain (also: pastor), Eymann's wife
  • Viktor Sebastian (also: Bastian, also: Horion), doctor of medicine, supposedly the son of the lord. It turns out Viktor is the son of the Eymann couple.
  • Flamin , allegedly the son of the Eymann couple. Lawyer, a practicing lawyer , Councilor . It turns out Flamin is the son of the January regent.
  • Matthieu von Schleunes (also: the Evangelist Matthäus, also: Matz), court squire, doctor of medicine, son of the Minister von Schleunes
  • Chamberlain Le Baut, the lord's hereditary enemy
  • Klotilde von Le Baut, allegedly daughter of the Lord Chamberlain. It turns out Clotilde is Flamin's sister.
  • Emanuel (also Dahore), astronomical teacher Klotildes and Viktors
  • Julius, the beautiful blind man , supposedly the son of Pastor Eymann. It turns out Julius is the Lord's son.

Minor characters

  • Jean Paul (also: Monsieur), biographical mining captain , the author of this novel
  • Knef (also Palindrom : Dr. Fenk), correspondent Jean Pauls, signatory of the Hundpost

Quotes

  • Emanuel writes Clotilde in the register: Here, a person has three and a half minutes to smile - one to sigh - and half to love; because in the middle of this minute he dies (68).
  • We respect a story that was once ours, far too little, and yet the drops of time through which we swim only become a rainbow of enjoyment in the distance of memory (75).
  • Every great head goes into the earth with a whole library of unprinted thoughts (119).
  • A hated and hated bridegroom often becomes a beloved husband (155).
  • How can great writers manage that their invisible spirit seizes us and holds us fast in their works, without our being able to specify the words and passages with which they do it (183).
  • God is eternity. Everything infinite and incomprehensible in man is his reflection (359).
  • Most follies are committed among people who are not respected (374).

The love story: Viktor and Klotilde

  • He went - almost too brave and too close - through an arcade and pressed his face deep through the leaves to finally see Clotilde in the distant green shimmer ... Oh, he saw her too! - But too lovely, too heavenly! For the first time he saw her mouth surrounded by a sweet harmonic pain with an unspeakable, touching smile (261).
  • When he came home: Clotilden's voice, which among all its riding styles he could hardly forget, spoke incessantly and like the echo of a mourning song in his soul (317).
  • Viktor tried to shout out and numb his disunited unhappy heart (318).
  • Viktor could not love anyone whom Clotilde did not love (324).
  • Viktor had so much to say to her and so few minutes more to it; At the same time, joy and awe did not make him dumb - for the figure that says to him: I am yours is sacred to the loving heart .
  • Isn't the hiding of love the most beautiful way of discovering it? (445)
  • The merging of looks, the trembling of souls threw the realm of a long sky into the narrow moment. - And they saw that they had found each other and that they had loved each other and that they earned themselves. As he walked on, Viktor could only say: "O, would you like to be as unspeakably happy as I am today." (496)
  • Klotilde and Viktor walked closer and warmer to each other under the narrow parasol that they both built against the fleeting rain (500).

poetry

In his eulogy for Jean Paul in 1896 , Stefan George celebrates the poet as someone who enlivens speech with unexpected shine and lights and highlights six passages from Hesperus as evidence .

  • I was leaning against the fifth pillar on the top step of a Greek temple, the white floor of which surrounded the tops of tumbling poplars - and the tops of oaks and chestnuts ran like fruit hedges and railing trees around the high temple and only reached up to the people inside the heart (642).
  • Oh, if an earthly person had walked through the Elysium in a dream, if large, unknown flowers had fallen over him, if a blessed would have handed him one of these flowers with the words: 'Remember these when you wake up, that you did not dream!' how would he languish for the Elysian land whenever he looked at the flower (438).
  • Light pearls of snow sank down before us like sparks; - we looked up, and three golden-green birds of paradise swayed above and ceaselessly moved about in a small circle one behind the other, and the falling pearls were out of their eyes or their eyes themselves (439).
  • Thus the slurping death tongue of an organ tremulant began to address the human sigh through the desolate silence, and the wavering sound wound too deeply into a soft heart (160).
  • He never saw such a pure snow of the eyeball around the blue opening in the sky, which went far into the more beautiful soul, and when it cast its eye into the garden, the large, enveloping eyelid with its trembling eyelashes stood as beautifully over it as a lily over one Source (493).
  • He didn't cry, but could no longer speak; their two hearts rested together, and the night silently enveloped their mute love and their great thoughts (178).

Testimonials

  • Goebel quotes from a letter from Jean Paul of May 22, 1795: My Hesperus would make me better if I read him .
  • Günter de Bruyn quotes a note from 1813 from the poet's thought booklet: Because I had never seen almost all of the most beautiful scenes in Hesperus, I got too lyrical and expansive .

reception

  • Sprengel quotes a review of Hesperus by Friedrich Jacobs from the year it was published in 1795. In it the reviewer praises the poetic and in the same breath criticizes the emotions that seem to have been sought . And there is almost too much weeping in this book. Jacobs also notes that the author shouldn't have interfered and should have written chapters instead of the silly dog ​​post days.
  • Günter de Bruyn deals with Hesperus in the light of the French Revolution .
  • Günter de Bruyn quotes Alexander Herzen , who wrote to his bride in 1837: Our love, the pure, holy one, is described in his [Jean Pauls] Hesperus.
  • In Sprengel's register, 2. Jean Paul's works , numerous references to the reception of Hesperus are noted.
  • Martin Walser wrote in 1974: About " Wilhelm Meister " and "Hesperus" . Walser's thesis is: Both books are directed against each other, ...
  • According to Schulz, Viktor Sebastian is - as the two first names say - victor and martyr at the same time.
  • Ortheil takes his reader into the poet's workshop. Both want to see how something big is created .
  • Ueding points out that Jean Paul became famous through his Hesperus , but could not repeat the success.
  • According to Berhorst, Jean Paul succeeded in humorous passages by pretending that Hesperus was a work of history and not a novel.

literature

swell

  • Jean Paul: Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog Posting Days. A biography . Verlag Gustav Hempel, Berlin (without specifying the year of publication, with a preface to the third edition of January 1, 1819), printed by BG Teubner, Leipzig. 652 pages.

expenditure

  • RO Walks (ed.), Ernst Förster (ed.): Jean Paul's all works. Berlin 1826 ff.
  • Hempel edition: Jean Paul's works. 60 parts. Berlin 1868.
  • Eduard Berend (Ed.): Jean Pauls Complete Works. Historical-critical edition. Weimar 1927.
  • Norbert Miller (Ed.): Jean Paul: Works . Hanser, Munich 1959.
  • Jean Paul, Hesperus or 45 dog post days. Edition of the printed versions from 1795, 1798 and 1819 in synoptic representation. Edited by Barbara Hunfeld. In: Jean Paul, Works. Edited by Helmut Pfotenhauer and Barbara Hunfeld . 3 vol. I, 1-3. Tübingen 2009.

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefan George, quoted in Sprengel, p. 218
  2. ↑ Goebel, p. 46
  3. ↑ de Bruyn, p. 138
  4. ↑ Sprengel, p. 4
  5. ↑ de Bruyn, p. 140
  6. ^ Sprengel, p. 395
  7. ↑ Walser cited in Sprengel, p. 304
  8. ↑ Schulz, p. 340
  9. ↑ Ortheil, p. 50
  10. ↑ Ueding, p. 85
  11. ↑ Berhorst, p. 248