Sky over the desert
Heaven over the desert (English original title: The Sheltering Sky ) is a 1949 novel by the American writer Paul Bowles . The main themes of the novel, which is ostensibly designed as a travel story , are self-search , alienation and loneliness . There are strong existentialist echoes. Because of its subject matter, the book has been compared many times with Hemingway's Fiesta (1926). Bowles was close to the Beat Generation , which is also expressed in the novel, but was not one of them.
action
For a brief description of the plot, see the article Sky Over the Desert (film) .
Book 1: Chapters 1-3
The location of the action is initially an unmarked North African port city (presumably Oran ; but Tangier could also be meant), the time is the author's presence. Porter ("Port") Moresby, a wealthy American intellectual, is someone who does not endure any activity or place for long periods of time. That is why he has been traveling constantly for years: as a young man in Europe and during the war in South America. He is traveling in the company of his wife Katherine ("Kit"), and his friend Tunner is also on this trip for the first time. The trip takes the three to North Africa because ship passages to other destinations were not available. Even the first impressions of North Africa are repulsive; Port is tempted to turn around right away, but had been very committed to Kit and Tunner for this trip, so that he doesn't want to lose face.
Book 1: Chapters 4-8
Port's first attempt at immersing itself in the local culture is already under an unfortunate omen. An Arab named Smaïl (the name alludes to the first-person narrator in Moby Dick ) leads him into the tent of the beautiful prostitute Marhnia at night. Smaïl acts as interpreter and, at Marhnia's request, recites the legend “Tea in the Sahara” for Port: Three sisters are waiting for a Targi , whom they all three love, to return to them, but they wait in vain and die of thirst in the desert . While he is sleeping with Marhnia, she steals his wallet; he notices this and can take her back, but then, because the girl sounds the alarm, hastily flees.
Port returns to the hotel, where in the meantime more English speakers have gathered, whose company he now prefers to the locals - although it is of dubious quality - the Lyles, mother and son.
Book 1: Chapters 9-13
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The Lyles have a car and offer the Moresbys to take them to Boussif (Ain Boucif, Province of Medea ). Since there is not enough space for three additional passengers and their luggage and Kit, whom Lyles abhorred from the first encounter, only Port accepts the offer. Kit and Tunner travel by train. Tunner uses this opportunity to make Kit drunk to the point of unconsciousness with champagne and to go to bed with her after arriving at the hotel.
In Aïn Boucif, Kit and Port, who have the opportunity to be alone for the first time, go on a bike excursion into the desert plain. Here, in the beauty of the endless landscape, Port has an important insight into himself, but from which Kit remains excluded; she realizes that she will never be able to participate in Port's reflection on the infinite, and she is shocked. They return to the hotel, and later that evening Port rides a second bike into the desert without Kit knowing.
Book 1: Chapters 14-17
A few days later, Port, Kit and Tunner take the night bus to Ain Krorfa (Ain Chouhada, Djelfa province ). The city is plagued by flies and the hotel beds by bedbugs, so that the stay proves to be unbearable. The next bus to the south doesn't leave for four days. Tunner really wants to get rid of Port now. When the Lyles surprisingly arrive in Aïn Krorfa, Port uses the situation to arrange a ride with the Lyles to Messad (Messaâd, Djelfa province) for Tunner. Tunner expects to meet the Moresby's later in Bou Noura. For himself and Kit, Port arranges a tea invitation to the house of the Arab merchant Abdeslam ben Hadj Chaoui, at which the two parties remain strangers.
A hotel employee, Mohammed, leads Port to a local brothel, although Port is now feeling ill. He desires a blind girl who dances there; Before Mohammed can arrange a night of love with her for Port, however, she disappears.
Book 2: Chapters 18-20
In Bou Noura (Bounoura, Ghardaia province ), Port visits the commandant of the military post, Lieutenant d'Armagnac, to report the loss of his passport. The reader will not know on what occasion Port lost the passport. Port himself charges the pensioner Abdelkader (a personal friend of the lieutenant) as a thief; in Ain Krorfa, Eric Lyle had also sniffed around Port's room. The lieutenant suspects that a stolen passport would most likely turn up at the Foreign Legion in Messad. The document is actually found there and the lieutenant, who knows about Tunneler's stay in Messad, suggests sending Tunner as a messenger. Port, who is dreading meeting Tunner again, books seats for himself and Kit on the next bus to El Ga'a.
Book 2: Chapter 21
Port becomes seriously ill on the bus ride. It is later revealed that he has typhoid . Neither Kit nor himself really care about medical care and later the reader learns that Port had also refused to get vaccinated beforehand. After arriving in El Ga'a (Hassi Gara, Ghardaia province), a young Arab fellow traveler helps Kit to orientate himself in the city. There is a hotel, but because meningitis is rampant in El Ga'a , Kit is turned away there. She decides to leave the place again immediately, and the young Arab arranges a lift for her on a truck to Sba.
Book 2: Chapters 22-25
In Sba ( In Salah ), Kit and Port are accepted in the sickroom of the French military post. The commandant, Captain Broussard, helps with blankets, food and quinine , but is very suspicious and reserved towards the newcomers, especially since Port cannot prove his identity. Finally, Tunner also shows up. Port dies after weeks of torture. Kit flees to Daoud Zozeph, a poor Jewish merchant, but also fled from there in the middle of the night. They are pushed further and further south, into the interior of the Sahara , which had also been Port's travel route on the projection line. Meanwhile, Tunner returns to Bou Noura and meets the Lyles there one last time.
Book 3: Chapters 25-27
In the desert, Kit joins a Tuareg caravan . Both leaders rape her, but an intimate and erotic relationship develops between her and the younger of the two, Belqassim. Kit's sexuality, which she had completely lost in marriage, is revived. Bequassim masks her as a young man ("Ali") and, after arriving in his hometown of Tessalit, locks her in a secluded room of the large house in which he lives with three of his four wives. The women soon discover that the stranger they brought with them is actually a woman, and they would have tolerated Kit if Belquassim had only not taken their jewelry away and given it to Kit. Belquassim's interest in Kit is gradually waning, especially as she is also resisting his efforts to be fed fat, in keeping with the culture's ideal of beauty. When the women finally make an attempt to gradually poison them, Kit understands that it is time to flee the house.
When she in Suq steals buttermilk, it is picked up by a Malian soldiers Amar who drew them up in his apartment. She also has a love affair with Amar. When the authorities learn of her reappearance, efforts are made to “rescue” Kit. She is flown out to Oran via Adrar , with the aim of bringing her back to the USA in the end. However, Kit goes underground again.
people
port
The identity of the male main character's name with the capital Papua New Guinea is certainly intended by the author and an expression of his dry humor.
"Traveler" vs. "Tourist"
Port describes itself as a "traveler"; Unlike a "tourist", a traveler does not follow a travel plan, but is not bound by time, does not think about going home, does not shy away from inconveniences, speaks the local language and strives for immersion in the foreign culture. Aldous Huxley prominently made this distinction between travelers and tourists in his collection of essays Along the Road (1925). Port takes great credit for his travel philosophy, and for all their disgust for their vulgarity, the Lyles irresistibly attract him because they are quintessential tourists to whom he feels vastly superior with his delicacy. In fact, however, its capacity to enjoy the wonders and beauties of North Africa is similarly limited as that of the Lyles. The first hotel room already alienates him:
"But how difficult it was to accept the high, narrow room with its beamed ceiling, the huge apathetic designs stenciled in indifferent colors around the walls, the closed window of red and orange glass. He yawned: there was no air in the room. "
The impressions he and Kit encounter in North Africa are consistently bizarre and nightmarish.
Self-search
None of the participants could say what this trip is actually about. Port claims to want to escape the upheavals that civilization in the western world has suffered since the end of World War II and hopes to find “gems of wisdom” among the North Africans.
Unlike in the novels z. B. by Lawrence Durrell , the reader does not feel any fascination or even interest in the strange surroundings in the characters or in the (personal) narrator . Port is not looking for external impressions, but tries to fathom what is inside. Even in the desert near Aïn Boucif, where he finally spends time alone with Kit in a wonderful landscape, he remains turned inward:
"They sat down on the rocks side by side, facing the vastness below. She linked her arm through his and rested her head against his shoulder. He only stared straight before him, sighed, and finally shook his head slowly. "
The sight of the vastness of the landscape touches him, but does not lead him to Kit, but only to thinking and to a clear view of the meaninglessness of life and the meaningless end to which his life is boiling:
"" You know, "said Port, and his voice sounded unreal, as voices are likely to do after a long pause in an utterly silent spot," the sky here's very strange. I often have the sensation when I look at it that it's a solid thing up there, protecting us from what's behind. "
Kit shuddered slightly as she said: “From what's behind?”
"Yes."
"But what is behind?" Her voice was very small.
“Nothing, I suppose. Just darkness. Absolute night— ”“
Marriage problems
The Moresbys travel with far too much luggage, literally and figuratively: they have been married for 12 years but have lost each other emotionally and sexually. They sleep in separate rooms.
The novel implies that Port finds another motive for the trip in an attempt to revive his run-down marriage by changing the environment. Perhaps that is why Tunner was invited by Port to travel with him on the spur of the moment, to make him feel tingly jealous; when it turns out that Kit Tunner doesn't like it at all, his presence becomes completely superfluous. In the course of the plot, Port taps from one misjudgment (including himself) into the next. This also affects ports selection of prostitutes. Marhnia fascinates him because he initially believes he wants a woman who is independent and strong:
"Once inside the tent, she stood quite still, looking at Port with something of the expression, he thought, the young bull often wears as he takes the first few steps into the glare of the arena."
However, the fact that Marhnia later puts him to flight and he runs in fear for his life teaches him better. The next prostitute he tries to find seems to be the exact opposite of Marhnia: a blind woman, and Port imagines herself passing by in gratitude for his attention. The fact that he cannot have her then gives him the feeling that he has not been deprived of a pleasure, but of love itself.
Unrelatedness
Port belongs to the Lost Generation and is existentially depressed:
"He was somewhere, he had come back through vast regions from nowhere; there was the certitude of an infinite sadness at the core of his consciousness, but the sadness was reassuring, because it alone was familiar. He needed no further consolation. In utter comfort, utter relaxation he lay absolutely still for a while, and then sank into one of the light momentary sleeps that occur after a long, profound one. "
He is a lonely person for whom it is fundamentally impossible to enter into a warm relationship with other people. As a result, he is not afraid to manipulate others, for example when he sends Tunner to Messad with the Lyles under the false promise that he will meet him again later in Bou Noura. The reader does not find out whether Eric Lyle or Abdelkader Port stole the passport or whether Port lost the document during his escape from the tent of the prostitute Marhnia.
It has been assumed that the novel appeals to its readers so strongly because they - although Port and Kit are not very sympathetic - can understand the inner conflicts of the two main characters so well.
Kit
Kit is a bundle of nerves that Port's relentless activism quietly endures. She loves her husband but also feels intimidated by him.
"And now for so long there had been no love, no possibility of it. But in spite of her willingness to become whatever he wanted her to become, she could not change that much: the terror was always there inside her ready to take command. It was useless to pretend otherwise. And just as she was unable to shake off the dread that was always with her, he was unable to break out of the cage into which he had shut himself, the cage he had built long ago to save himself from love. "
The further the journey away from the world she knows, the higher her level of fear rises. She feels that putting on make-up is a protection against an environment that is hostile to her.
After Port's death, Kit tries at all costs to avoid the murderous trap he fell into because of his lack of relationships:
"Life was suddenly there, she was in it, not looking through the window at it."
Her liberation begins with her literally stepping into the cold water. In the final chapters, she discards all outer layers of culture. The apparent lack of will with which she indulges herself in any men in the third book has often been interpreted as a sign of madness.
Tunner
Tunner is younger than Port and, as Kit says, “amazingly handsome”. He is always in a good mood and a connoisseur with no particular character or even intellectual depth. He joins Port because he admires its intellectuality; he also hopes to have an affair with Kit. Kit is bored with him and at first she feels a certain aversion to him; since there is nothing intimidating about him - unlike Port - she temporarily accepts his closeness.
Mrs. Lyle
The Briton Mrs. Lyle travels North Africa as a photographer and author of travel literature. She does not speak the national languages and is obsessed with prejudice against the French, Jews and Arabs in ways that are both repulsive and comical. Port believes that sharing derogatory value judgments is the only form of communication she has ever known and considers her pitifully lonely. The reader soon wonders if Mrs. Lyle is even able to appreciate and enjoy the beauties of the land.
Eric Lyle
Eric Lyle is a spoiled young man who shares his mother's stupidity and cultural bias. Port even suspects that a large part of Eric's travel stories are pure lies. In the course of the plot it turns out for Port and Kit that there is an incestuous relationship between the Lyles .
Creation and publication
Paul Bowles (1910–1999) lived in Tangier from 1947 and kept this residence until his death. In the first few years he shared a rented house there with Djuna Barnes . Bowles, who traveled extensively in North Africa, began work on the novel in Fez in 1948 and completed it while touring Morocco and Algeria. Bowles was a notorious consumer of hashish and it is said that he enjoyed it while writing. Many readers, including Bowles' wife Jane, saw strong similarities between Port and Kit on the one hand and the Bowles couple on the other. The publisher Doubleday, to which Bowles submitted the finished work first, declined. The novel was published in November 1949 by New Directions. In Great Britain it had appeared a month earlier.
The publication came as a surprise because the public only knew Bowles as a composer until then.
criticism
An enthusiastic review was written by Tennessee Williams in December 1949 , who was fascinated by Bowles' "Allegory of the Spiritual Adventure Journey of the Self-Conscious Man into the Experience of Modernity".
Norman Mailer emphasized the groundbreaking subject matter of the novel:
"Paul Bowles opened the world of hip. He let in the murder, the drugs, the incest, the death of the Square [...] the call of the orgy, the end of civilization. "
The novel was included in Joachim Kaiser's book of 1000 books and in 2005 also in the Time selection of the best 100 English-language novels from 1923 to 2005 .
In 2014, Jim Booth complained that the novel, as well as it was written, lacked what it takes to achieve true literary greatness, because the characters (like Jay Gatsby, for example ) do not strive for high things, but merely serve their whims as they do come straight, in a hedonistic, self-destructive way.
Although Skies Over the Desert is more popular, The Spider's House (1955) is considered to be the author's most mature work, with fewer novice mistakes.
reception
The book was on the New York Times bestseller list for ten weeks after it was published. The paperback edition sold 200,000 copies in the first year.
The British band The Police released a song written by Sting in 1983 , Tea in the Sahara . It is part of the Synchronicity album .
Director Bernardo Bertolucci adapted the novel as a film in 1990 with John Malkovich , Debra Winger and Campbell Scott in the leading roles ( Heaven over the desert ).
Expenses (selection)
- The Sheltering Sky . John Lehmann, London 1949.
- The Sheltering Sky . New Directions, New York 1949.
- Under himlens dække . Gyldendal, København 1950.
- Un thé au Sahara . France loisirs, Paris 1952.
- Sky over the desert . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1952.
- Sky over the desert . Goldmann, 2000, ISBN 978-3-442-30909-2 (Hardcover).
- The Sheltering Sky . Ecco, 2005, ISBN 978-0-06-083482-1 .
- The Sheltering Sky . Audible, 2012 (audio book, unabridged version, 10:30 hours, read by Jennifer Connelly ).
literature
- John W. Aldridge: After the Lost Generation: A Critical Study of the Writers of Two Wars . Ayer, North Stratford, NH 1990 (chapter "Paul Bowles: the Canceled Sky", first edition 1951).
Web links
- The Sheltering Sky. Accessed January 8, 2018 (online version).
- The Sheltering Sky Map. Retrieved on January 5, 2018 (representation of the [reconstructed] travel route on a map).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises. Retrieved January 5, 2018 .
- ^ Tangier, Morocco. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 11, 2018 ; accessed on January 5, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Port Moresby's just desert. Retrieved January 4, 2018 .
- ↑ a b c William Gibson: Why Does Paul Bowles' 70-Year-Old Existential Masterpiece Continue to Test Our Limits? February 9, 2016, accessed January 9, 2018 .
- ↑ a b c d e Nature’s Revelations. Retrieved January 8, 2018 .
- ↑ a b c d Port's isolation. Retrieved January 5, 2018 .
- ↑ Tim Weed: A Riveting Ugliness: Point of View and Character Sympathy in Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on January 9, 2018 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ The Sheltering Sky, p. 235
- ↑ Anatole Broyard: The Man Who Discovered Alienation. In: The New York Times. August 6, 1989. Retrieved January 5, 2018 . Lynne Tillman: Motion Sickness . Red Lemonade, Brooklyn, NY 2011, ISBN 978-1-935869-07-8 , pp. 122 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ^ A b Gary Pulsifer: Paul Bowles. November 19, 1999, accessed January 9, 2018 .
- ^ Sian Cain: The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles - a cautionary tale for tourists. In: The Guardian datum = 2015-08-28. Retrieved January 5, 2018 .
- ^ A b Dwight Garner: Trusting in the Sheltering Sky, Even When It Scorched. In: The New York Times. August 30, 2009. Retrieved January 9, 2018 .
- ↑ The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles. Retrieved January 9, 2018 .
- ^ Tennessee Williams: An Allegory of Man and His Sahara. In: The New York Times. December 4, 1949. Retrieved January 9, 2018 .
- ^ Norman Mailer: Advertisements for Myself . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England 1992, ISBN 0-674-00590-2 , pp. 648 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ Jim Booth: Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky and the Issue of Near-Greatness. In: The New Southern Gentleman. March 15, 2014, accessed January 5, 2018 .
- ^ Tad Fried: Years in the desert. In: The New Yorker. January 15, 2001, accessed January 9, 2018 .
