Himmelpfortgasse (novel)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Himmelpfortgasse , the only novel by the Swiss writer and graphologist Max Pulver , was published in Munich in 1927 . He depicts the amour fou between a successful criminalist, husband and family man and a young artist, whose alert sensuality rivals the demands of her middle-class parents. The erotic ecstasies, fueled by repeated cocaine consumption , as well as the existential crises and mental breakdowns are described in an expressive language that gives the text a "freshness and immediacy that can still be felt by today's reader". This language, together with a number of important psychological and cultural-philosophical findings, which the relentless gaze into the depths of the human soul yields, make the long underestimated work one of the most remarkable novels of the twentieth century .

action

The protagonist, from whose perspective the plot is portrayed, is called Alexander Moenboom, is the son of Dutch parents, is in his thirties, lives with his wife Ruth and a child in Munich and can show his first professional successes as a freelance journalist and criminalist.

One day he meets Mariquita, a young Viennese painter, in a restaurant who is dining there with her cousin Lisbeth, a friend of Moenbooms. Immediately he is electrified; He is particularly fascinated by Mariquita's face, where he notices the bright red, slanted mouth that makes him think of a wound. The erotic tension rises as the three of them go to Mariquita's pension: the two visitors look at Mariquita's pictures while she changes clothes behind a screen. Moenboom's attention is torn between a sheet of paper that particularly appeals to him and the processes behind the screen that he imagines.

But the next day Mariquita has to travel back to Vienna and Moenboom's life finds its way back to everyday life. At least they stay in contact by letter, and Mariquita sends the sheet of paper with the drawing that made the strongest impression on Moenboom.

More than half a year has passed since the first encounter. Mariquita is pressured by her parents to marry a man she does not love. In order to escape this situation, she accepts an invitation from Moenboom and his wife that was given some time ago and announces her visit at short notice. The re-encounter renews the erotic tensions that are discharged on the living room sofa in a long, cocaine-fueled night of love, while Moenboom's wife remains in the marital bedroom. The discussion with her the next day causes Mariquita to leave again immediately.

Moenboom has to go to Berlin on business . He spends his free time there with friends, at whose get-togethers cocaine is regularly consumed. Then he received a call from Rotterdam : his mother, with whom he had a strained, never-resolved relationship, was dying. He goes to Holland with Ruth, hoping to find his mother still alive so that he can talk to her. But she is no longer alive when Moenboom arrives. Together with Ruth, he organizes the funeral, liquidation of the household and the distribution of the inheritance. In response to an urgent letter from Mariquita, he drives from Rotterdam directly to Vienna.

Mariquita's atelier on the top floor on Himmelpfortgasse becomes the scene of passionate encounters. The lovers can only meet in the afternoons because the parents of Mariquita want to have their daughter under control. Moenboom lives in the hotel. Towards the end of his stay in Vienna, Mariquita revealed that she would like to have a child with him. Moenboom does not reply. He has to go back to Munich, but promises to come back in 10 days.

After a brief, violent and agonizing argument with Ruth, which brought little more than a standstill, he goes back to Vienna. This time he is staying with a friend, Gaby, whom he has known for a long time.

Mariquita tries to brace the relationship socially. Moenboom is reluctant to visit her parents and her friend Toni. The middle-class milieu in Mariquita's parental home and her repeated desire for a child trigger defensive reflexes in him.

Mariquita opposes his idea of spending the Whitsun days for two in Venice . Instead, she wants to travel alone for a few days to relax. She writes that she went to the mountains, but Moenboom suspects her to be with her friend Toni and is stunned. He makes a plan to make her believe in the future that she will rule their relationship.

After the holidays, Moenboom is called on business for several days to do an assignment. During this time he will calm down a little inside.

Upon his return, Mariquita reveals to him that she has since married. Moenboom suffers a complete breakdown and has suicidal intentions. His girlfriend Gaby takes care of him, can prevent the worst and even notifies Ruth, who does not close herself to an external reconciliation.

On the face of it, they are living together again. But Moenboom's next adventures are already on the horizon.

shape

Himmelpfortgasse is a first-person story, written from the perspective of Alexander Moenboom. This not only gives the reader access to the world of feelings and sensations of the protagonist, he also has the opportunity to let his reflections flow in. It is part of the logic of first-person narrations that the protagonist must survive his adventures, however dangerous they may be, otherwise he would not be able to write the report that the reader is holding in his hands. In this case this logic is undermined by the dedication of the book: "In memory of my deceased friend Alexander Moenboom". The author Max Pulver fictitiously takes on the position of editor and lets his hero die after an adventure that has been overcome for the time being. Why and under what circumstances he dies remains open.

style

The dramatic nature of the plot corresponds to an expressionist language that largely shapes the character of the work. The most important element of the expressionist style of expression is the frequent omission of verbs (“telegram style”), which gives the text a breathless style. An example:

“I'm patting myself down. Home. Line girls from corners of the wall call after me in the snowstorm. Over. Stairs, threatening halls. Flashing red. Indent."

In general, shortening characterizes this style; Prefixes can be omitted: "Smoke from chimneys pollutes the sky ..." The adverb is integrated into the verb: "The iron door thuds into the lock behind us."

Charles Linsmayer points out, however, that the novel is not kept in this expressive tone throughout. Rather, the style constantly adapts to the state of mind of the protagonist and also knows sober, factual and ironic tones.

criticism

Max Pulver seems to have embarrassed most of the critics and reviewers with his novel, so that they passed over his work in silence. After all, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung not only brought an excerpt as a preprint, but also a detailed review in which Eduard Korrodi draws a mixed conclusion:

“What is the human outcome of this novel? That the beloved hires someone else to give her a child; that he has disenchanted himself from the poison by describing it. More would have been expected. Also a greater psychological yield after the hero became famous for his refinement. [...] in reality the reader is submissive to the story, it pulls him along because it is excellent in the individual scene, because it has a real talent and a dashing intellect behind it who can see through the den of hell. "

While many, especially in rural Switzerland, may have found powder crossing borders an embarrassment, conversely, in the metropolis of Berlin, people are ostentatiously bored:

“These people from the sphere of the international coffee houses, whose desires are looking for their objects on the outskirts of the suburbs, in the fairgrounds, with the Apaches - aren't they thoroughly over us? None of this touches us in our innermost being. Nevertheless, one reads eagerly, caught by a clever, intellectual superior, and often admires ingenuity in linguistic expression. "

The present pattern of criticism, that is, praise of the linguistic virtuosity with simultaneous devaluation of the plot and the content, lasted for decades. In 1968 Werner Günther spoke of "artistically interwoven unpleasures". Only Jan Haltmar in his dissertation from 1979 and Charles Linsmayer in the afterword to the new edition from 1980 found a more balanced and nuanced assessment.

interpretation

"Whoever recognizes himself recognizes the criminal in himself. And if he digs further - the animal."

It is not by chance that the main setting of the novel is Freud's Vienna , the birthplace of psychoanalysis . In this work, Pulver drills deep spiritual holes, and like Freud, he comes across the dark side of human existence. And, as in psychoanalysis, sleep and dreams play a key role: “Fall asleep and with a jolt you sink into the past. The dream is full of tigers and snakes, full of horror and murder. "This novel is essentially about self-encounter; and" Selbstbegegnung "was the title of Powder's first book publication, a volume of poetry from 1916. The novel takes the subject further, with others linguistic means and in increased radicality. Moenboom feels at the mercy of his instincts, but he is aware that not all people are shaped by the same instinctual structure: "Passion is nefarious like life itself. Blind force, narrow peak of ecstasy, falling into the wide trough of torment. How I envy the drive arms, which no stimulus confuses. ”Under the given circumstances it is impossible for Moenboom to live up to his responsibility. He stands between two women and cannot choose, is guilty of both: "Now my spurned conscience is breaking out of me like lightning: I can see what I have done. Where is help? May I betray Mariquita, etc. m to comfort Ruth? Kill one to save the other. ”The theme of conscience seems to be the secret core theme of the novel, which bears the motto“ The world is conscience ”. This theme not only overshadows the erotic, but also the familiar and the pecuniary.

If in psychoanalysis the dream interpretation is the ideal route to the unconscious, then in Himmelpfortgasse cocaine is the door opener to self-encounter:

“Cocaine releases the mind from its entanglement, relentlessly naked, the detached confronts himself; that is, what occurs from which almost all people flee, what society created, public opinion, the state, coexistence in every form: fear of meeting the individual, the lonely. "

Cocaine, it becomes clear in the Himmelpfortgasse , is not in the service of anesthesia, but conveys “a 'visionary clairvoyance' and an 'unheard of sensitivity of sensual observation'.” Moenboom describes in detail his experiences with cocaine, which he analyzed very systematically; and he also mentions the socially isolating effects and negative effects on physical health that eventually led him to give up consumption before meeting Mariquita. Only when he is with her - and often together with her - does he take the drug again. This gives the rapprochement a further dimension in addition to the sexual one, because the physical exposure in the act of love comes with the emotional one through the effects of cocaine:

“No torture can pull as much as a few pinches of this drug. [...] Like X-rays through skin and muscles, your gaze sticks to the innermost core of your being, digging for the most secret point of your weakness, turning over all urges, eating away at every concentration of form, triumphantly pulling the most vulnerable into the light. "

Not only self-encounter, but also an encounter with you, a potentiated erotic experience is presented here. But it is precisely the extreme of this experience that makes it clear that it can only exist in the moment, that it cannot be permanent. For Moenboom there is only the egomaniac love frenzy or the resignation, in which the plot seems to calm down at the end.

Mariquita, the most important figure in the novel after Moenboom, also encounters herself. In your case, when she sees her own naked body, she plays in a three-part mirror, in front of which she stands, seduced by a voyeur. This self-encounter, accompanied by fear and horror, is a key scene for the novel in several ways. Firstly, because it awakens Mariquita's sensuality, a process without which she would hardly have entered into a love affair like the one with Moenboom. On the other hand, because the clairvoyant Moenboom already suspects such a scene when they first meet and imagines what makes up a large part of the fascination that Mariquita exerts on him. In the later course, however, the bourgeois morality wins the upper hand for Mariquita. She marries a man for whom she has little passion. That is their form of resignation.

As merciless as Moenboom's analysis of the psychological underground is, as radical that of his economic basis. He explains what interests him about his job as a criminalist: not the “deviations of a criminal or pathological nature”, but “that mental layer where we are all criminals”. That he still has to deal with criminals in the legal sense in order to earn money is one of the basic contradictions of his existence:

“Preference leads me to the exceptions, which I fight against my better judgment in the service of society. So I am betraying my essential insight - that is, I have a job. Society demands this sacrifice; the stigma of social usefulness is to be able to betray one's basic insight. "

And those who, thanks to inherited property, can do without a job, i.e. “social usefulness”, are not really in a better position:

"Purity of conscience is the luxury of a pension-secured class whose moral perversion manifests itself in the happy forgetting of what their ancestors did - and directed to achieve."

The social condition of human existence is at the beginning of Moenboom's turmoil, a turmoil that pervades almost all areas of life: the family of origin (the unexplained relationship with the mother); one's own family (his propensity for promiscuity ); the national identity (living in Germany as a native Dutchman, nomadic through his work between Munich, Berlin and Vienna); the problematic professional identity ("I call myself a writer, but am actually a journalist, especially a reporter for criminal cases [...] So I'm a practical criminalist; I hardly know how I got there."). Max Powder's deep bores, Moenboom's self-encounter reveal elements of a human condition , which in its accentuation may be specific for its time ("The restless, whipped-up existence of Alexander Moenboom, his inner turmoil and uprooting [...] is a bleak reflection of the confused, hectic Post-war period in Europe. "), Which is of general relevance in the era of" transcendental homelessness ".

Max Pulver processed many autobiographical traits in Moenboom's character. Powder himself lived in Munich for a long time, was a foreigner there, not from Holland but from Switzerland, was a writer and psychologist, and like Moenboom, he must have had an almost clairvoyant ability to understand other people in their essence to recognize. In his memories of a European era , he describes a significant experience on his first visit to Vienna in 1913. At that time he was staying at the Hotel Klomser (like Moenboom on his first visit). During the night, Pulver awoke and had the impression of anxiety and distress that developed in the room. The next morning he learned from the waiter that it must be the exposed spy, Colonel Redl, who had committed suicide in this room under pressure from the Austrian General Staff. This reminiscence is an example of the extraordinary sensitivity powder that he shares with his protagonist. Incidentally, it cannot be a coincidence that Moenboom lives in the same hotel where Redl killed himself, in a work in which suicide is so important, but rather shows how ingeniously subliminal allusions are built into the novel. Korrodi recognized Powder's close, albeit problematic, relationship with Moenboom when he spoke of the “narrator in the novel” as a “dead friend” and “the poet's dead self”.

Whether there is a direct model for the Mariquita episode in Pulver's life no longer seems to be ascertainable, but it would make plausible why Pulver distanced himself from his work shortly after it was published: “Pulver had the crisis that [in the Himmelpfortgasse ] revealed unvarnished, overcome and wanted, all the more since he had meanwhile established himself as a bourgeois man of science, no longer wanted to be reminded of a book in which he had relentlessly revealed the most secret motivations and dispositions ”. The autobiographical core would at least explain where the "freshness and immediacy that today's reader can still feel" come from.

Linsmayer sees in the novel "the successful epic integration of significant psychological and cultural-philosophical insights (self-discovery of people, love and eroticism, drug addiction, suicide and society)" and mentions "as specifically literary plus points, the unobtrusive but surprisingly rich language, her admirable adaptability to the slightest nuances of content and to the mood of the first-person narrator ”. And he comes to the conclusion: “Max Pulver's novel 'Himmelpfortgasse', which the author himself considered his worst work in good agreement with practically all contemporary criticism, is in fact, as it is perhaps only today, after more than fifty years , can be estimated, not only his most important literary achievement, but one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. "

expenditure

  • Himmelpfortgasse . Kurt Wolff Verlag, Munich 1927, 327 pages.
  • Himmelpfortgasse. Orell Füssli Verlag, Zurich 1927, 327 pages (remaining edition taken over from Kurt Wolff Verlag with the publisher's information pasted over, published in the series “Im Strom der Zeit” and touted as “The novel of vice of our time”).
  • Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, ISBN 3-7160-1684-5
  • Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer. Ex Libris Verlag, Zurich 1981 (in the series “Spring of the Present. The Swiss Novel 1890–1950”).
  • Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1990 (Suhrkamp White Program Switzerland series), ISBN 3-518-40276-5

literature

  • Jan Haltmar: Max Pulver and his novel "Himmelpfortgasse". Juris Druck + Verlag, Zurich 1979, (Diss. University of Zurich, 1978), ISBN 3-260-04764-6
  • Charles Linsmayer: Afterword Max Pulver, Himmelpfortgasse. A novel. Arche-Verlag, Zurich 1980, pages 189-213.
  • Zygmunt Mielczarek: Eros and drug in Max Pulvers "Himmelpfortgasse" , in: Academic papers of College of Foreign Languages ​​/ Scientific contributions of the University of Foreign Languages, Literature and Linguistics / Literature and Linguistics, Vol. 1, edited by Wojciech Kalaga, Zygmunt Mielczarek and Tadeusz Rachwal, Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Lingwistycznej, Częstochowa, 2002, ISBN 83-917152-0-5 , pages 12-26
only slightly revised and supplemented again reprinted in:
  • Zygmunt Mielczarek, Sonderwege in der Literatur: Swiss Writers in Outsider Discourse (Supplements to Orbis linguarum, Volume 57), Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT, Wrocław and Neisse-Verlag, Dresden, 2007, 367 pages, ISBN 978-3-934038-91-2 , Pages 164-183

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Charles Linsmayer in the afterword to the edition in the Arche-Verlag from 1980, p. 203. (Max Pulver, Himmelpfortgasse. A novel, edited and provided with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer, Arche, Zurich, 1980)
  2. ^ Charles Linsmayer: Afterword Max Pulver, Himmelpfortgasse. A novel. Arche-Verlag, Zurich 1980, p. 212
  3. "The expressionistic force of the style corresponds to the hallucinatory whipping and the over-lucidity, ..." Werner Günther, poet of modern Switzerland, 3 volumes, Francke, Bern, Munich, 1963–1986, vol. 2 (1968), p 626
  4. Gertrud Hehle criticizes this telegram style in her dissertation: "In his novel 'Himmelpfortgasse' he even introduces a kind of telegram style that is not particularly sympathetic with its intentionality ...", Gertrud Hehle, Max Pulver's dramatic work. - Vienna Phil. Diss. 1938 [Masch.], P. 68, quoted from Jan Haltmar, Max Pulver and his novel "Himmelpfortgasse", Juris, Zurich, 1979, 106 p., Diss. University of Zurich, 1978, p. 9
  5. Max Pulver, Himmelpfortgasse. A novel, edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer, Arche, Zurich, 1980, p. 60
  6. Max Pulver, Himmelpfortgasse. A novel, edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer, Arche, Zurich, 1980, p. 18
  7. Max Pulver, Himmelpfortgasse. A novel, edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer, Arche, Zurich, 1980, p. 75
  8. Charles Linsmayer in the epilogue to the edition in the Arche-Verlag from 1980, p. 211. With this statement, Linsmayer also succeeds in remedying Werner Günther's arguments that the novel fades towards the end (Werner Günther, Dichter der neueren Schweiz, 3 Volumes, Francke, Bern, Munich, 1963–1986, Vol. 2 (1968), p. 625), as well as by Jan Haltmar, Pulver had “several difficulties in bringing the novel to an end” (Jan Haltmar: Max Pulver and his novel “Himmelpfortgasse.” Juris Druck + Verlag, Zurich 1979, (Diss. University of Zurich, 1978), p. 27).
  9. ^ Charles Linsmayer: Afterword Max Pulver, Himmelpfortgasse. A novel. Arche-Verlag, Zurich 1980, p. 190
  10. ^ Neue Zürcher Zeitung, March 13, 1927, literary supplement
  11. Eduard Korrodi, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, April 7, 1927, reprinted in: Eduard Korrodi, Selected Features, Edited by Helen Münch-Küng (Swiss Texts, New Volume 4), Bern, Stuttgart, Vienna 1995, pages 114–115
  12. ^ Literary review, supplement to the Vossische Zeitung from Sunday 25 December 1927
  13. Werner Günther, Poets of Modern Switzerland, 3 volumes, Francke, Bern, Munich, 1963–1986, Vol. 2 (1968), page 628.
  14. Jan Haltmar: Max Pulver and his novel "Himmelpfortgasse". Juris Druck + Verlag, Zurich 1979, (Diss. University of Zurich, 1978)
  15. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages
  16. Max Pulver, Himmelpfortgasse. A novel, edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer, Arche, Zurich, 1980, p. 96
  17. The term is mentioned explicitly: Max Pulver, Himmelpfortgasse. A novel, edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer, Arche, Zurich, 1980, p. 162
  18. Max Pulver, Himmelpfortgasse. A novel, edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer, Arche, Zurich, 1980, p. 138
  19. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, p. 95
  20. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, p. 95
  21. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, p. 6
  22. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, p. 31
  23. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, p. 206
  24. Max Pulver, Himmelpfortgasse. A novel, edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer, Arche, Zurich, 1980, p. 34
  25. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, p. 41
  26. "Their togetherness, which is characterized by stormy instinctual life, is based only on provisional and unstable things." Writes Zygmunt Mielczarek in his essay Eros and Drugs in Max Pulvers 'Himmelpfortgasse', in: Academic papers of College of Foreign Languages ​​/ Scientific contributions from the University of Foreign Languages, Literature and Linguistics / Literatur und Linguistik, Vol. 1, edited by Wojciech Kalaga, Zygmunt Mielczarek and Tadeusz Rachwal, Częstochowa: Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Lingwistycznej, 2002, ISBN 83-917152-0-5 , pages 12-26, here page 22
  27. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, pp. 42–45
  28. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, p. 15
  29. "Passion, Alexander. I've consumed myself. Now I need rest and protection. I can't take any more. ”Max Pulver, Himmelpfortgasse. A novel, edited and provided with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer, Arche, Zurich, 1980, p. 181 Zygmunt Mielczarek has worked out the antagonism of middle-class and sensuality in detail, cf. Mielczarek, Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages 23–24
  30. Max Pulver, Himmelpfortgasse. A novel, edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer, Arche, Zurich, 1980, p. 10
  31. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, p. 11
  32. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, p. 11
  33. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, p. 10
  34. Jan Haltmar: Max Pulver and his novel "Himmelpfortgasse". Juris Druck + Verlag, Zurich 1979, (Diss. University of Zurich, 1978), page 11
  35. The term comes from Georg Lukács (from The theory of the novel from 1916)
  36. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, page 198
  37. So writes Kurt Tucholsky 1931 Max powder, which he called "the great graphologist" that he "does not imply writings, but people, and [...] people not only suggested, but to them through the interpretation of a good piece can help ”. - Kurt Tucholsky: “Can you type -?” In: Vossische Zeitung, January 1, 1931, no. 1. (drawn as Peter Panter). Reprinted in: Kurt Tucholsky, Collected Works in Ten Volumes, Volume 9, Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1975, pp. 97–99
  38. ^ Max Pulver, Memories of a European Time, Orell Füssli, Zurich, 1953, pp. 33ff
  39. Eduard Korrodi, op. a. O.
  40. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, page 203
  41. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages
  42. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, page 204
  43. Himmelpfortgasse. Edited and with an afterword by Charles Linsmayer . Verlag die Arche, Zurich 1980, 216 pages, page 212