Leaf storm

Leaf Storm (Original title: La Hojarasca ) is the first novel of the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez . It was published in 1955 and, like the author's main work, Hundred Years of Solitude is set in the fictional city of Macondo. During the brief economic boom at the beginning of the 20th century. Many strangers came to the village with the "leaf storm", who confused people's lives. The German translation by Curt Meyer-Clason was published in 1975.

overview

As described in the foreword, the action takes place during a brief economic boom in the fictional city of Macondo, brought about by the banana company. By building a railway line, the agricultural products of the plantations could easily be transported away. New jobs were created and people had money to consume, which started the economic cycle. This development is expressed metaphorically by the “leaf storm”: “motley, disheveled, swept up, from the human and material waste of the other villages, the result of a civil war that seemed increasingly distant and unlikely. [...] He poisoned everything with his multicolored smell, smell of human vapors and hidden death. [...] And mixed with the human leaf storm, carried away in its impetuous strength, came the garbage from shops, hospitals, entertainment salons, power stations, garbage from single women and men who tied their mules to a hotel post and their only luggage was one Bring a wooden chest or a bundle of clothes and after a few months had their own house, two concubines and the military rank they owed them because they had participated too late in the war. ”At the time the novel was set in 1928, the banana society had already emigrated and drained Fields and people left without work and prospects. They alone have no strength to rebuild. “The leaf storm brought everything with it, it took everything with it.” At the end, Isabel looks at her house: “Shaken by the invisible breath of destruction, it too stands on the eve of a tacit, final collapse. All of Macondo is in this condition. [...] We are tied to this clod by a room full of chests in which the grandparents 'household utensils and clothes are still kept [...] and my parents' horse blankets when they rode into Macondo on the run from the great war. "( Kp. 11)

Three storytellers, the old Colonel of the Republic, his daughter Isabel, who is about 30 years old, and her son, who is barely eleven years old, are waiting in a half-hour external act on Wednesday, September 28, 1928, for permission to bury the corpse of the doctor, who hanged himself in his house. During this time they remember the stories of Macondo, the family of the colonel and his daughter, and those of the doctor. This inner plot is the focus of the novel, in the course of which a mosaic-like picture emerges from the different perspectives: with two strangers in the center, who intervene in the lives of the colonel's family, the maid Meme and Isabel.

→ Chapter overview

Motto : Quote from Sophocles ' Antigone , who buried her brother against the orders of the regent. Preface (1909): With the construction of the railroad by the banana company, the leaf storm came to Macondo. 1 coffin of the corpse (narrator: the boy) - fear of social repression (Isabel) - the dead man's room (the boy) - attempt by the mayor to prevent the burial (colonel) 2 memories of Meme (Isabel) - negotiation with the mayor about the release of the corpse (Colonel) - visit to Memes shop, her memory of the arrival of the Colonel in Macondo and of Isabel's mother (Isabel) 3 Arrival of the priest "The Dog" and the doctor in Macondo (Colonel) 4 bird hunting with his friend Abraham (the boy) - the doctor in the colonel's house (colonel) 5 Different rhythms of inner and outer time (Isabel) - smells (The boy) 6 The Doctor's Practice and its Closure by the Authority (Colonel) - Engagement to Martin (Isabel) 7 The Doctor and the Barber's Daughter (Colonel) - Adelaida laments the Doctor's ingratitude towards her family (Isabel) 8 Marriage with Martin (Isabel) - Conversation with the doctor about life with and without God (Colonel) 9 Financial Support for Martin and the Doctor Moving Out and Memes from the House (Colonel) 10 the disabled Lucrecia (The Boy) - Conversation with the doctor about memes after the house search (Colonel) - Martin's son (Isabel) 11 Adelaide's refusal to come to the funeral (Colonel) - Doctor's last visit to the sick Colonel (Isabel) - Doctor's refusal to treat the wounded after a robbery on Macondo (Colonel) - Mayor's burial permit and look at that before the collapse standing Macondo (Isabel) - The coffin is carried outside (The boy)

action

End of the 19th century After a long wandering through the country devastated by the civil war, the colonel of the republic, who gained renown in the '85 war, and his wife, suffering from her pregnancy, settle in peaceful Macondo. The woman dies giving birth to her daughter Isabel (1898). The following year, Colonel Adelaida (Kp. 2) marries, who is raising the child together with the guajiro foster child and maid Meme. The estate is worked by four farm workers.

In 1903 a stranger, the doctor, came to the Colonel with a letter of recommendation from the Chief Army Administrator Aureliano Buendia (Cp. 3) and, out of a sense of duty, he took the guest into his house for eight years. The doctor is a strange, inaccessible person who eats a vegetarian diet, does not pay attention to his appearance and wanders restlessly around the room at night as if he had to deal with his difficult past. He is considered rude for stalking women with lustful looks and is rejected by Adelaida for his unadjusted, harsh behavior. The Colonel does not know his name or his biography, but in the 11th Kp. He remembers the appearance of an enigmatic military man, called the Duke of Malborough, in the 1885 war in a seriously ill condition. He feels a kinship with the guest, feels closely connected to his irrevocable desolation, the "labyrinthine loneliness" and the "tortured indifference with which he witnesses the spectacle of life [-]" and has the desire to protect him. While the colonel hopes for the salvation of souls in the Christian faith, the doctor is evidently agnostic . He withdraws in resignation from the overwhelming power of nature and history and in the end feels all action to be senseless (Chapter 8). Because he is the only one in the village who can provide medical care for the residents, he sets up a practice in the colonel's house and earns a lot of money with it, which he puts in a drawer. The rest of the way he says he'll give memes on their journey later. Four years after his arrival, a medical advice service is set up in the settlement, which is prospering from the construction of a railway line. Now you ask the doctor about his diploma, he does not present any and does not receive a license for his practice (cp. 6). From now on he no longer treats the sick, not even Meme and the Colonel, which Adelaida reproaches him for. Later he gave the reason for his lack of empathy that he was unable to help as a doctor (cp. 10). The doctor's behavior changes after a while: dressed neatly and scented, he goes to the hairdresser's shop every day to talk to customers, allegedly he is interested in the daughter who is “bewitched” in her room by her invisible lover. Then he starts a relationship with memes. The colonel admonishes him not to live in an illegal sexual relationship with the girl and to violate religious and social rules and expels him from his house (Chapter 9). Both leave the colonel's family and move into the corner house, where shortly afterwards Meme opens a general store, does sewing work for her neighbors and grows vegetables in the courtyard. A doctor interrupts one pregnancy, and Meme refuses to give an abortion in the event of a second pregnancy. The doctor cannot remember the fate of the child when the colonel asked.

In February 1915, a young man named Martin, admired by the girls in the village, went to Macondo for a few days for a funeral service and saw Isabel there. He tells her that he would like to live forever in Macondo and advises her to act according to a horoscope: "Count seven stars and you will dream of me" (chap. 6). She is also thinking about getting married and thinking of an apartment in the room that the doctor has abandoned. This has been locked by her stepmother for fear of the magic of the room triggered by the immoral doctor and should never be used again. Martin returns in July and agrees the engagement and wedding date with the colonel. The bride follows the father's decision and everything happens according to social conventions. The two only meet with Adelaida on walks through the plantations or at dinner. When the groom is away, Isabel sets up the trousseau with her stepmother, sews her wedding dress and is then married in December to a man she doesn't really know and who doesn't seem real to her. Two years after the wedding (1919), he set off on a trip to tackle a project that he had discussed with his father-in-law and financed with bonds. He promises to catch up with his wife and son, but Isabel hears no more from him (Chapters 6 and 7). Her child reminds her in his development, in his "absent facial expression that doesn't seem to ask anything", in his "lost, cold indifference" more and more of his father and she fears: "My whole Sacrifice for this son will be in vain [...] In vain I will ask God to make him a person of flesh and blood who has substance, weight and color like men. But all this is in vain as long as he has the germ of his father in his blood. "(Cp. 10)

After six years of cohabitation, Meme disappears from the village in 1917, the year Isabel was married. The last time she talked to Isabel, she looked unhappy. There are rumors that the doctor killed and buried her. The garden is then dug up to no avail. The doctor sits apathetically in his room and tells the Colonel that Meme has packed her suitcase and left it (cp. 10). A year later (1918) the doctor refused to treat soldiers wounded in the civil war on the grounds that he could not help them. The colonel and the priest “The Dog” prevent the excited crowd from setting fire to his house. Since then he has been excluded from the village community and lives despised and isolated like a corpse alone in the house. After his suicide, the mayor tries to prevent his funeral and is said to rot in the house. However, the colonel feels it is his Christian duty to bury him. He also feels obliged to the doctor because he visited him after his stroke (1925) and encouraged him not to die as the doctors predicted, but his leg would remain lame. Adelaida and Isabel fear that their family will be ostracized by the population by protecting the doctor and his burial. But the Colonel replies: “In any case, what happens had to happen.” The mayor finally brings him the burial permit. When four farm workers open the heavy rusted gate by force and carry the coffin outside, there is no crowd of people protesting and the mayor says reassuringly: “Don't worry, Colonel. […] I even believe that there is nobody in the village who remembers it. "(Cp. 11)

style

A supporting story tells how the colonel sits with his daughter and grandson for half an hour in the dead man's room and waits for the burial permit. The three first-person narrators (the old man, the daughter and the grandson) remember the events in Macondo from this time frame. In this way, the reader learns step by step from different perspectives how the current situation came about and what life situations the characters are in. In the manner typical of Márquez and his Magical Realism , realistic and surreal, almost fairy-tale-like plot elements mix, without a clear line between the two can be drawn.

reception

When the German translation of "La Hojarasca" appeared in 1975, the author was already famous worldwide for "Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967, German 1970) and literary criticism praised "Laubsturm" as an ingenious early work that was the nucleus of the great Macondo Romans show all the important characteristics: the setting and its atmosphere, the typical staff, the prophecies and omens of magical realism, the characteristic mosaic technique of the memories told from different perspectives. Confirmation of this assessment was seen in the assessment of the author, who spent seven years looking for a publisher for the publication, that his first work was the most sincere and spontaneous of his works.

"'Laubsturm' is to 'Hundred Years of Solitude' like ' Portrait of the Artist ' is to ' Ulysses '. A novel, quite independent, succinct and brilliant, on the way to mastery" ( Frankfurter Rundschau )

Text output

Gabriel García Márquez: "Leaf storm". Translated from the Spanish by Curt Meyer-Clason. Frankfurt / M .: Fischer 2004. ( ISBN 3-596-16261-0 )

References and comments

1. ↑ Gabriel García Márquez: "Leaf Storm". Kiepenheuer & Witsch Cologne 1975.
2. ↑ The times given by the first-person narrators sometimes diverge.
3. ↑ Holger Christmann: "Almost as beautiful as a novel: Memoirs by Gabriel García Márquez". FAZ. net. January 30, 2001.
4. ^ Rubén Pelayo: "Gabriel García Márquez. A critical companion ". Greenwood Press, Westport 2001, p. 28.