Cows in half mourning (narration)

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Kühe in Halbtrauer is a short story by the German writer Arno Schmidt (1914–1979), which first appeared in 1961 in the student magazine before being part of the volume Kühe in Halbtrauer in 1964 .

content

The story deals with the events of two days that two people in their mid-fifties, Otje and Carlos, spend in a newly built holiday “hut” on the Lüneburg Heath . On the first day, after a dairy breakfast in the countryside, the two men hike to the neighboring village to rent a circular saw. In the evening they visit the village inn. On the second day the circular saw is delivered with which tree roots, railway sleepers and the wood of a broken field shed are chopped up into heating material for contemplative winter evenings by the fireplace. Otje and Carlos become almost deaf from the machine noise and can only communicate using sign language. The story closes with the arrival of their wives.

Themes and motifs

Information board for the district of Celle in Bargfeld, on the road to the bathing pond

The rural surroundings of the little hut are described extensively with fields, sparse forest, ditches and sandy dirt roads. It is the landscape into which the author moved a few years before he wrote the story. This retreat to the heath, more precisely to Bargfeld , should help him to concentrate on his literary work undisturbed. Further motifs are the description of the rural population when visiting the restaurant, the memories of war and imprisonment, the resistance against "immoral authorities", furthermore the topic of aging with aspects of resignation, decreasing mental and physical elasticity and increasing impotence.

As in all rural narratives , several references are made to Karl May . The morning call to the milk breakfast inviting “Come; our morning will be white! ”comes from May's travel story Im Lande des Mahdi , and in the village inn a guest claims that he went to sea with his brother Karl May. Central are the circular saw and the wood, which is shredded with sweat-inducing effort. The loss of hearing, a variation on the impotence theme, means that the two protagonists use sign language to communicate. It is used to convey sexual innuendos:

". . . we didn't hear a word anymore. / : >>WHAT IS IT ? ! ‹‹. / Until he finally took gestures to help. The tips of the little fingers hooked into the corners of his mouth and quickly pulled him wide several times:! (Also pointed after the ocher disappearing:!) - Oh. Yes; guaranteed. But - and I raised my left fist where I let my little finger stick out limply; and snapped several times sadly with the index finger of the right hand: …… And one more thing, blatantly resigned, shaking his head at it: ›› We can't do it anymore, Otje. ‹‹ - He too understood; and lowered his broad forehead sadly over the saw blade. "

- Arno Schmidt: Rural stories . Bargfeld edition, group of works 1, vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, p. 348.

The theme of resistance runs through the narrative as a leitmotif . Already in the first sentence it is present in the rebellion of the neighboring children who violate the prohibitions of their parents by using the sign language. Cost and tax-reducing behavior means resistance to the state (the "black" mason, the use of the thinnest letter paper to save postage). Henry David Thoreau is mentioned, the forefather of civil disobedience. The July 20 , the Symboltags of resistance is called multiple times. The resistance is dealt with in detail in the story from the Second World War: A data troop leader in the artillery receives the order to fire 200 rounds at the city of Vechta and circumvents the order by calculating a wrong target point. The two men are happy that, for reasons of age, they are no longer confronted with such situations and that they are released from their duty to resist.

people

For strategic narrative reasons, the author has two people act, Otje and Carlos, with Carlos acting as the narrator. The fact that they are to be thought of as a unit results from the designation “semi-aged”), which suggests the “full circle” in which both figures are to be united. The women of the two are present several times in the conversations and mental games of the men, but appear specifically at the end of the story. ("The ladies still in Hanover, who came with a taxi full of pillows and blankets, as a precaution only in three days"). The owner of the saw remains anonymous; a composite substitute name serves as a personal description. ("Colorless & gray the mechanic. Uncomfortably long face, (a so-called <objective>; that is: like Gay-Lyssac & Fischer-Tropsch together...").

Reception and interpretations

Gabriele Wolff called the story an “amusing sparkling piece”, “which lives entirely from the tension between the funny text surface and the resigned, biting world attitude of the hero.” However, it only becomes a work of art “through the double bottom, Arno Schmidt has moved in. Because below the fable a second story is told, “which is about resistance.

In 1982 Ulrich Goerdten regarded the text as "four-instance prose" using a term introduced and explained by Schmidt himself. Schmidt explains the facts in Zettel's Traum (1970) as follows:

“... that a work of art - (say what: 'n book'!) - would basically be a 'quartet'; (For my part also n tetralogue; between the 4 instances)…? : 'I understand: ›DoppelDuett‹ would be even more precise; 2 pairs on each side: the dull = lustgurrglnde ubw & the poisonich = magistrale ÜI? -: contra a, having to observe (& react) the outside world, weak but art-minded, self; from 50 relieved = united with a sovereign = witty = smileDän 4th instance ... "

According to Goerdten, these four influences on the design of the narrative text can be recognized after careful analysis, although they are fused into a solid unit in the surface text. Since this approach is based on psychoanalytic theories, the term resistance is also interpreted from the perspective of psychoanalysis and a further level of meaning in the narrative is opened up. This arises when the issues of old age resignation and resistance are brought together with Schmidt's own statements in Zettel's dream . In Freud's concept of resistance is forces of the ego and the superego, which prevent the awareness of repressed soul content. This resistance decreases (according to Schmidt) with age: “as the glands shrivel, the drive strength decreases; (...) As a result of the ever decreasing hormone intoxication, one crawls into a clearer mind ”. This means that the past reactivates and that the unconscious becomes more readily available to the conscious mind. The description of the sawing of the “boards, laths, stands”, heavily underlaid with homoerotic allusions, the discussions about the “Culisse” and more, suggest that Arno Schmidt made prosapractical experiments with the “Etyms” theoretically discussed in Zettel's dream . Like sign language, etymal language conveys hidden and forbidden content.

Ralf Georg Czapla , while looking for mythological allusions in the rural stories in the background, identified the ancient reports of the idyllic conditions in the mythical land of Arcadia .

expenditure

Text contained in:

  • Ernst-Peter Wieckenberg (Ed.): The world tells . GB Fischer, Frankfurt 1966, pp. 28-40.
  • Arno Schmidt: windmills. 16 pieces of prose . Edited by Karsten Diettrich. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1974.
  • Arno Schmidt: tails. Five stories . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1976.
  • Windmills. Stories (= Reclams Universal Library , No. 8600). Reclam, Stuttgart 1989.

Sound carrier

Quotable edition

  • Arno Schmidt: Rural narratives . Bargfelder Edition, Werkgruppe 1, Vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, pp. 337–349 (also published as a study edition, there volume 3.2, also pp. 337–349).
  • Cows in half mourning. 1. Draft 7/21/61 . In: Text + Criticism , Heft 20 / 20a, Arno Schmidt. 4th edition, revised 1986, pp. 4-6.

literature

  • Ulrich Goerdten: Sign language, root wood and resistance. Arno Schmidt's story 'Kühe in Halbtrauer' read as four-instance prose . In: Ulrich Goerdten: Arno Schmidts Rural stories. Six interpretations . Bangert & Metzler, Wiesenbach 2011, pp. 41–65. First in: protocols . Jugend und Volk , Vienna and Munich 1982, No. 1, pp. 61–80
  • Ralf Georg Czapla : The heath village as a solipo refuge . In: Ralf Georg Czapla: Myth, Sex and Dream Game. Arno Schmidt's prose cycle cows in half mourning (= literature and media studies , volume 15). Igel, Paderborn 1993, pp. 142-161.
  • Friedhelm Rathjen : Double half mourning. A comparison of the original and final version of the story »Cows in Half Mourning« . In: Bargfelder Bote , Lfg. 125, 1988
  • Gabriele Wolff: Two older men at the circular saw . In: Federwelt - magazine for authors , No. 62, February / March 2007, Uschtrin Verlag, Munich, pp. 22–25 ( online ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arno Schmidt: Rural stories . Bargfeld edition, group of works 1, vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, p. 338.
  2. ^ Arno Schmidt: Rural stories . Bargfeld edition, group of works 1, vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, p. 338.
  3. ^ Karl May's works . Edited by Hermann Wiedenroth. Digital edition from Directmedia Verlag, Berlin 2004, p. 48.023.
  4. ^ Arno Schmidt: Rural stories . Bargfeld edition, group of works 1, vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, p. 339.
  5. ^ Arno Schmidt: Rural stories . Bargfeld edition, group of works 1, vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, p. 339.
  6. ^ Arno Schmidt: Rural stories . Bargfelder edition, group of works 1, vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, p. 341.
  7. ↑ Gabriele Wolff: Two older men at the circular saw . In: Federwelt - Journal for Authors , No. 62, February / March 2007, Uschtrin Verlag, Munich, pp. 22-25.
  8. ↑ Ulrich Goerdten: Sign language, root wood and resistance. Arno Schmidt's story 'Kühe in Halbtrauer' read as four-instance prose . In: Ulrich Goerdten: Arno Schmidts Rural stories. Six interpretations . Bangert & Metzler, Wiesenbach 2011, pp. 41–65.
  9. ^ Arno Schmidt: Zettel's dream. Bargfeld edition. Work group IV: The late work: Volume 1, Suhrkamp Verlag 2010, p. 987.
  10. ^ Arno Schmidt: Zettel's dream . Bargfeld edition. Work group IV: The late work: Volume 1, Suhrkamp Verlag 2010, p. 985
  11. ^ Arno Schmidt: Rural stories . Bargfeld edition, group of works 1, vol. 3. Haffmans, Zurich 1987, p. 340.