Long shadows

This article describes the short story. For Peter Maffay's album, see Lange Schatten (album) .

Lange Schatten is a short story by Marie Luise Kaschnitz from 1960 . It is about a pubescent girl named Rosie who, while on holiday in Italy with her family, finds that it is more helpful to follow her parents' advice than to ignore it carelessly.

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Bored and exasperated from vacationing with her parents, Rosie decides to go for a walk alone. She tells her father that she is going to buy postcards. This instructs them not to speak to anyone and to hurry up. On her way everything seems big and strange to her, and she believes that everything belongs only to her.

There is no one to be seen on the streets, only a small dog to whom she throws a piece of her bun. A boy behind a window makes faces. The dog runs after her. The local boy also appears on the street and absolutely wants to show her the area. Dog and boy accompany them.

After a short time their euphoria disappears. What previously seemed so beautiful to her has now lost its shine because the surroundings now seem like a kitschy postcard to her. Rosie wants the boy to go home, but he doesn't want to and instead pleads with her to hug and kiss him. The girl is pretty frightened by this and shrinks back fearfully.

She tries to persuade the boy, but the boy makes no move to stop and demonstratively undresses in front of her. The naked boy now seems like a wild animal, like a wolf. Suddenly she forgets her fear because she remembers how her father once explained to her how you can defend yourself against animals. Therefore, she fixes the young Italian with a rigid, deep look until he turns away, ashamed, and runs away.

Rosie starts the way back relieved and notices that the sun is already sloping and therefore both Rosie and the boy cast long shadows.

Interpretation approach to long shadows

The short story "Long Shadows" by Marie Luise Kaschnitz is told from the perspective of the protagonist.

Conflicts of growing up

The Italian sun casts “long shadows” on the life and well-being of the teenage girl who feels misunderstood and repulsed. She feels a rising desire for freedom and wants to get away from her parents to go her own way.

On a lonely walk through the hot, empty streets of an unnamed city, she is overcome by an intoxicating feeling of freedom, which is, however, immediately overshadowed by the horror and the attempt to escape from the instinctive approaches of a precocious twelve-year-old on a sunlit mountain.

The two teenagers, both of whom are in puberty, encounter new and unfamiliar feelings. Rosie feels a longing for freedom and wants to break away from his parents, but is also afraid of the naked boy, whose body and desires are still unknown to her, and of his approaches.

The boy, in turn, experiences desire and pleads with Rosie if she can kiss or hug her. But he also experiences a shame in front of his own instinctual approaches. So the defense on the part of Rosie, who is afraid of the naked boy, stands against the desire of the boy who wants to touch Rosie so badly.

"You don't understand it, you just think, Rosie's look must have been terrible, something of a primal force must have been in him, the primal power of defense, as well as the primal power of desire in the pleading and stammering and in the boy's last wild gesture . "

The relationship with the parents

Though inwardly revolting against her parents, Rosie ultimately follows her father's advice to ward off the pushy boy:

“You can defend yourself against animals, Rosie's own narrow-chested father did that once, but Rosie was still little then, she forgot it, but now it comes back to her. No, child, not a stone, you just have to look dogs very firmly in the eyes, so, let him come up, very rigidly in the eye, you see, he is trembling, he presses against the ground, he runs away. "

Despite Rosie's initial decision to go her own way from now on, she finds her way back to her parents as she realizes that her father's advice was very helpful.

Mythological symbolism

The author also uses a mythological allegory in her short story by comparing the relationship between Rosie and the boy with Pan's reenactments on the nymph :

"Pan sneaks after the nymph, but Rosie only sees the boy, the twelve-year-old, there he is again, God knows, she is very angry. He comes down the rock stairs silently on dust-gray feet ... "

Alluding to Greek mythology, the author draws a parallel to Pan and a nymph to symbolize Rosie as a nymph who is in the first phase of her life as a woman. She is a “virgin”, not necessarily a girl anymore, but also not yet a mother. The Italian boy is related to the shepherd god Pan, whose wooing the nymph refused.

“He followed this nymph like a shadow, crawled after her through brush and thorns and couldn't get enough of her. Whenever she saw him, however, she shrank back in horror and ran away. " (The legends of Olympus, the gods)

The boy pursues Rosie like Pan the nymphs, but she spurns his love. Like Syrinx , one of the nymphs who turns into a reed while fleeing Pan, Rosie protects herself by penetrating the naked boy with a deep look that acts like a weapon.

See also: Pan (mythology) , nymph

literature

Defense of the Future, German Stories, Marcel Reich-Ranicki , 1960–1980

The sagas of Olympus, Alexandru Mitru, first volume, ION Creanga Verlag Bucharest

interpretation

• Asta-Maria Bachmann, in: Classic German short stories. Interpretations, ed. by Werner Bellmann . Stuttgart: Reclam, 2004, pp. 232-239.