Joe and the girl on the lotus
Joe and the girl on the lotus flower is a fragment of a novel by Brigitte Reimann from 1957, which was published posthumously in Berlin in 2003.
The writer Joe helps the painter Maria to overcome a deep-seated sexual trauma that her former school friend and first love Hans had inflicted on her three years earlier. On the occasion of a small private reunion party, Hans had made the 19-year-old drunk and attacked her.
content
Miss Maria D. did not graduate from the art college in Berlin for nothing. She doesn’t know whether she’s talented, but at least the 22-year-old narrator can make a living from selling her works. With her friend, Saint George - that is the sculptor Georg R. - she does not get along. So Maria leaves her small town and is accepted into a rest home for painters and writers. In these venerable walls, she meets the 35-year-old novelist Walter Z., a former miner. She names him Joe after the apostle John . This educated man wants to gather for his next book in the cultivated property on the lake close to the border to the west . On long walks through the park, he teaches Maria Marxist aesthetics. The young painter pretends to be ignorant, but knows everything from her studies. Joe wears a wedding ring. He loves his two children and the wife. When he also wants to own Maria, it doesn't seem to work. A gray man behind Joe's back is watching. Maria and Joe want to avoid each other. Mary asks Saint George in a letter. The shy, work-obsessed sculptor leaves the studio and rushes over. Instead of comforting Maria, he befriends Joe. After all, he is drawing Maria’s head, so that he can initially form the image in clay at home. When Maria notices desire in the eyes of Saint George, his days in the artist rest home are numbered. This dreaded expression reminds Maria too much of Hans.
Maria gives herself to Joe. It seems to her as if her beloved is radiating a mild light that illuminates her search.
shape
The title lotus flower and its relation to Mary are mentioned once in the text. Maria is called Maja by Joe, the writer-poet. He says: “Maja, the girl on the lotus flower” and nothing more.
Maria talks about what happened in the past and is committed to the future. She doesn't want to give up her Joe, because life is inconceivable without him.
The style element repetition is used - artfully interwoven. There is, for example, the gray man - a symbol of Mary's vile first love, Hans. When he looks over Joe's shoulder for the first time at the beginning of reading while attempting sexual intercourse, the reader has no idea what it might be about. The reader and Joe just think this woman belongs on the psychiatrist's couch; this woman has a complex . At the later second mention of the gray man, the reader still cannot establish the connection between the gray man and Hans. But the solution is not too long in coming.
In some respects the fragment makes an unfinished impression - how could it be otherwise. The sentimentalities, which are seldom eye-catching, should not be discussed further. The constant you / she change in the salutation between Maria and Joe does not always seem appropriate. The fact of sexual intercourse should also be mentioned. On the one hand, the reader believes in various passages of the text that this intercourse is carried out several times (for example, Maria writes: “When he hugged me ...” and “We didn't sleep together that night ...”). On the other hand, Maria weighs down afterwards - “our affection was platonic”. The lovers only find each other towards the end of the text. In other words: the contradicting speech of the first-person narrator should not be weighed in gold.
interpretation
Using the example of a well-laced lady, the widow L., a class-conscious, seemingly resolute literary critic, it is shown that healthy women need a man. Otherwise, she'll get hysterical . This aging, loving home dweller is in love with Joe but can't get him. The very young Maria has much better cards with the 35-year-old. The healing of her above-mentioned trauma goes through Mary with awake senses. It's so easy: Joe takes possession of her. Maria rears up against it only briefly and then lets it happen; thinks "Joe is only a man too ..."
Brigitte Reimann paints an accurate picture of life in the GDR writers' home. You drive Wartburg , wear national prizes , play ping-pong , occasionally show off your in-depth knowledge and act affable. Some sociable cultural workers occasionally make noise into the night and now and then like to drink over their thirst.
reception
According to Bonner, around 1957 the first-person narrative technique practiced by the author, presented with the technique of the stream of consciousness , was downright out of place. Brigitte Reimann also wrote against a male-dominated GDR literature . Bonner praises the author for the questions she asked in the text. Others, such as Fühmann , would have noted down unpleasant questions, but would have preferred to erase them later.
literature
Text output
- Used edition
- Joe and the girl on the lotus. Little novel. P. 7–133 in: “Brigitte Reimann: The girl on the lotus flower. Two unfinished novels. ”(Also contains: When it is time to speak , afterword by Withold Bonner, documents on the history of the publication and an editorial note) Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2005 (first printing 2003). ISBN 3-7466-2139-9
Individual evidence
- ^ Editorial note in the edition used, p. 236, 15. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 122, 17th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 133, 3rd Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 122, 2. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 66, 16. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 14, 12. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 68, 3. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, pp. 89 to 91
- ↑ see for example the edition used, pp. 93, 17. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 14
- ↑ Edition used, p. 74, 11. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 103, 3rd Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 122
- ↑ Edition used, p. 118, 19. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 116, 9. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 112, 5. Zvo
- ↑ Bonner in the afterword of the edition used, p. 223 above
- ↑ Bonner in the afterword of the edition used, p. 226 above
- ↑ Bonner in the afterword of the edition used, p. 227 below and p. 228 above