Julia, or the paintings

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

" Julia, or the paintings " (subtitle: Scenes from the Novecento ) is an unfinished novel by the German writer Arno Schmidt . The first edition was published posthumously in 1983 as a fragment from the estate in DIN A3 format as a typescript , published by the Arno Schmidt Foundation , in the Haffmans Verlag .

Emergence

Schmidt began collecting material in 1976; the beginning of the writing is to be dated to the early morning of February 10, 1979. The last line was written on May 30th of the same year. On the morning of May 31, 1979, Schmidt suffered a stroke, from the consequences of which he died on June 3, 1979. The last sentence he typed, the motto of his life, as it were, is:

"> Eat hard work a virtue? </ (Would you have to put another question first):" Is hard work a simple (vital) necessity for people and animals? "

- Julia, or the paintings : Bargfelder Edition, p. 141

action

The action takes place in a place called a kind of Bückeburg in the “Fürstenhof” and is only described for a few days. Heiko Postma saw it as a return to the beginnings of Schmidt's Fouqué research, because Schmidt was stationed here as a young officer and pulled the Undine out of the water of the Steinhuder Meer . It's summer holiday mood - as it often happens with the author, for example in his seascape with Pocahontas - and the year is 1979. The story arc was originally supposed to run until late autumn 1990.

The novel, designed in dialogue form , is only about a third completed and can no longer be completely reconstructed from the existing material.

One storyline that emerges is the love story about a girl that the aging, heart disease Leonhard Jhering sees in a “mediocre” painting by Jan Mytens (1614–1670) in the castle. In Jhering many of the author's features were incorporated as alter ego ; the name is marked as a pseudonym in the attached list of persons (Jhering has the same birthday, but is 110 years older than Schmidt and has the same authoring). All persons on the list get their characteristics from the information they have read. In Jhering everything (im) possible, especially volume 3 of the Pfennig = magazine from 1835 is listed. The aging writer (65 or "Herr von '64,000 Tag''n") stays in the Hotel Fürstenhof together with the Kühne family - father Karl, mother Hedwig and son Nino. Also in the party are the theologizing teacher Ekkehard Rauch, who is very educated, and the feminist secretary Sheila Wangel, who is given striking reptilian attributes. It is z. B. had breakfast in a cultivated atmosphere and took a boat trip on the Steinhuder Meer. Nino, very enthusiastic about his pocket calculator, calculates logarithms - the old quirk of the author who initially regarded the table he created as his life's work. During free time, the castle is visited among other things. There is a meeting with the castle guide (75), who is titled as "Castellan". Its reading is given with Lorber . In the castle, Jhering meets the title character Julia, who can be seen in the form of a 10-year-old girl in a painting of the "four Orange sisters". In the course of the action, this leaves its image and is invisibly present.

At the end of the book, Jhering should disappear back into the picture with her and show himself immortalized there with her as a painting. A reversal of the thesis presented in Tina or about immortality , that those who leave traces on earth cannot finally die. In front of the castle you meet a 15-year-old, known as "1001" lover of the fairy tale collection of Arabian Nights . This gives the author the opportunity to comment extensively on the various editions and translations of the fairy tale collection. In the book, the author has given his reading community further literary responses, including Lovecraft - he , too, influenced by the Arabian Nights - but also the completely forgotten Thesmar .

reception

A turning point in the appreciation of Schmidt's late work was initiated by Stefan Voigt. His thesis of the turning point of the early work as an attempt to describe the real, towards the free construction of the real that only has to meet literary criteria, has opened up a broad view of the work.

literature

  • Note box 1 1984.
  • Note box 4 1986.
  • Note box 6 1988.

Web link

  • Alexis Eideneier: deception, lie, illusion. Review of Stefan Voigt: In the process of dissolution. Cognitive models in Arno Schmidt's late work. Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 1999, ISBN 3-89528-239-1 . on: literaturkritik.de