Jarmila (novella)

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Jarmila. A love story from Bohemia is a novella by Ernst Weiß , probably written in Paris in 1937 and published posthumously in 1998.

Ernst Weiß tells of the unfortunate love of the Bohemian watchmaker Bedřich for the desirable Jarmila. In the novella, the narrator pays his homage one last time to his beautiful, distant home.

A number in round brackets indicates the page in the source.

action

On a business trip to his beloved Bohemia, the Paris-based narrator meets the Bohemian toy dealer and watchmaker Bedřich Kohoutek (73) in Prague . The street vendor Bedřich makes several free and unsuccessful attempts to repair the narrator's stubborn new French pocket watch in a Prague restaurant. The two men get closer and Bedřich tells the narrator the story of his love for Jarmila, an unhappily married Bohemian young woman. Bedřich names Jarmila's husband Bombardon after the mighty French horn (24) . This is a Bohemian farmer who doesn't make his living from agriculture but from goose feathers. Bombardon stores the down in a small barn near the farmhouse, the secret love nest of Jarmila and Bedřich. The relationship is not without consequences. Jarmila gives birth to the boy Jaroslaus. When Jarmila von Bedřich again becomes pregnant in the down, Bombardon reconstructs that love camp into a deadly trap for his wife. He has the threshing floor laid out with stone slabs . The down, filled in sacks, is deposited in a corner of the warehouse. The heavy trap door (64) above in the ceiling, through which the warehouse can also be reached, is redesigned in a brittle, lightweight construction. The barn door is locked. When the lovers want to meet in the camp at the agreed signal, Jarmila promptly falls into the trap. The pregnant woman breaks through the ceiling and dies after falling on the stone threshing floor. Before the rendezvous, Bedřich had set a fire on the haystack next to the house to distract Bombardon . Two slumbering tramps perish in it.

The devious Bombardon, Jaroslaus' legal father , gets away with it. Bedřich, the scoundrel and murder journeyman (63), has been in prison for five years. Jaroslaus grows up with Bombardon and his second wife. After his release from prison, Bedřich wants to emigrate to America with Jaroslaus. He kidnaps the little boy. On the journey to the port, father and son stop by the first-person narrator in Paris. Jaroslaus, who does not want to emigrate, prevents the crossing with his foxious cunning. The boy betrays his biological father to the beloved stepparents and the Paris police. Bedřich is arrested and allowed to take the narrator's broken watch with him. In prison, Bedřich cuts his wrists with a sharp clock spring .

shape

The story of böhm traveling narrator frames the love story Bedřich. The finale with the two protagonists takes place in Paris.

Edition

In the afterword of the source (85 to 104), Fliegler writes about the fate of the manuscript mentioned by Eduard Wondrák and Mona Wollheim, but believed to be lost: The typewriter script of what is probably a third version of the novella was found in the Prague Památník Národního Písemnictví with the note Ernst White, Paris, 9 ème , 16, rue Baudin, Hotel d'Albret . Weiß lived in the hotel in the first half of 1937.

reception

  • Stefan Zweig describes the novella as one of the author's strongest ( Fliegler , 85).
  • In his epilogue, Fliegler goes into the rich symbolism in the novella. The special role of the goose feather and also of the spiral spring (93) in the pocket watch is discussed in the text. Finally, Fliegler expresses a more general finding. The protagonist, shaped by a great narrator, retains the reader's favor even if he commits a crime (103).

literature

source
  • Ernst Weiss: Jarmila. A love story from Bohemia . Epilogue Dominique Fliegler. Vitalis Verlag, Prague 1998 ISBN 80-85938-37-5
expenditure
Secondary literature