Lucidor. Characters to an unwritten comedy

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Hugo von Hofmannsthal
* 1874, † 1929

Lucidor. Characters for an unwritten comedy is a story by Hugo von Hofmannsthal that appeared on March 22, 1910 in the daily newspaper Neue Freie Presse in Vienna. In 1927 the author made the libretto for Arabella based on Molière's comedy Le Dépit amoureux .

content

Shortly before 1880 in downtown Vienna: The family estate of the widow Frau von Murska in the Russian part of Poland is under fiduciary management. The widow has to take out a loan and lives with her two daughters in a small apartment in Vienna's Kärntnerstrasse . Frau von Murska would be relieved of her financial worries at one stroke if the grown daughter Arabella, a good-looking person, married her admirer, the wealthy Vladimir. Vladimir's parents, a Baltic countess and an Austrian officer, have died. The connection does not occur. The proud, dissatisfied, impatient Arabella feels drawn to Herr von Imfanger. Still, Vladimir does not give up.

Frau von Murska still has an iron in the fire. Vienna had been chosen by her as her new place of residence because of an old grumpy uncle. She is his nephew's widow. The old man lives on a whole floor in the Buquoyschen Palais on Wallnerstrasse. The old man's purse unfortunately turns out to be tightly tied for Frau von Murska. Necessity is the mother of invention. The mother dresses her 14-year-old daughter Lucile like a boy and names the child Lucidor. The fine Viennese society buys Murska from her younger daughter's trousers. The mother hopes that a boy will be more able to loosen up his stingy uncle's wallet than a girl. Because the uncle doesn't like women; neither old nor young. In the first attempt, Frau von Murska and her Lucidor fail with the hard-to-take uncle on Wallnerstrasse. The woman then wants to send two males to the old man. Vladimir has "some kind of family connection" to the miser. Frau von Murska arranges for Lucidor to be present when Wladimir visits his unreachable Arabella on Kärntnerstrasse. Little Lucidor - in character the complete opposite of the sister - has "nothing but heart". When Arabella gives the unhappy Vladimir more and more the cold shoulder, Lucidor finally interferes; plays the Postillon d'Amour on his own initiative. Lucidor writes the letters and forges Arabella's signature. Without Arabella's knowledge, Lucidor also receives the glowing answers from Wladimir's pen. Lucidor / Lucile is finally giving the amorous Wladimir one sweet night after the other in a darkened room of the apartment on Kärntnerstrasse.

When the loan is ruthlessly demanded, Ms. von Murska has to leave the lordly Viennese districts. Before that, she sends Lucidor to her hard-hearted uncle again. This put off the impoverished relatives.

Vladimir confronts Arabella. He wants to know why the beloved is so brittle during the day. Of course, Arabella doesn't know the answer and runs away from him. Somebody rushes towards him. “It's Lucidor, but again not Lucidor, but Lucile, a lovely girl bathed in tears, in an Arabellas morning suit, boyish short hair hidden under a thick silk scarf. It is his friend and confidante, and at the same time his mysterious friend, his lover, his wife. "

The narrator does not reveal the outcome of the love story.

Quote

  • "It is generally not given to people to see what is."

reception

  • In 1951, Hermann Broch discussed Hofmannsthal's “turning away from the epic” on the basis of this text.
  • Vladimir realizes with astonishment, “The Arabella of the day was negative, flirtatious, precise, self-assured, worldly and dry almost to the point of excess, the Arabella of the night, who wrote to her lover by a candle, was devoted, longing, almost without limits. Coincidentally or according to fate, this corresponded to a very secret split in Vladimir's being. ”Through the“ Arabella of the night ”, Vladimir became aware of the existence of his own“ day and night side ”.
  • Hofmannsthal later detailed Molière's material socially and mentally in the Arabella libretto. At the beginning of the 20th century, topics of androgynous content would have been well received by the public. The dual nature Lucidor / Lucile was created by the author according to the theory " The dissociation of a personality " of the Boston psychiatrist Morton Prince .

literature

  • Richard Alewyn : About Hugo von Hofmannsthal . (= Small Vandenhoeck series 57th special volume). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1958.
  • Gotthart Wunberg (Ed.): Hofmannsthal in the judgment of his critics . Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1972, DNB 720204291 .
  • Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1900–1918. From the turn of the century to the end of the First World War. Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9 .

First edition

  • Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Lucidor. Characters to an unwritten comedy. With original etchings by Karl Walser . Erich Reiss Verlag, Berlin 1919, DNB 870568566 .

Quoted text edition

  • Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Lucidor. Characters from an unwritten comedy (1909) . In: Bernd Schoeller in consultation with Rudolf Hirsch (Ed.): Hugo von Hofmannsthal, collected works in ten individual volumes . Volume: Stories. Made up conversations and letters. Travel . S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1986, ISBN 3-10-031547-2 , pp. 173-186.
  • Dieter Kaiser: Lucidor. Personnages d'une comédie à écrire. Diploma translation (10 DIN A4 pages) to obtain the academic degree of diploma translator, submitted in February 1964 at the Institute for Applied Linguistics at the University of Heidelberg.

Web links

Individual evidence

Source means the quoted text edition

  1. ↑ Le Dépit amoureux (French): love annoyance
  2. ↑ Source, p. 669, second entry
  3. ↑ Sprengel, p. 246, 9. Zvu
  4. ↑ Source, p. 186, 8. Zvo
  5. ↑ Source, p. 186, 10th Zvu
  6. ↑ Source, p. 176, 2. Zvo
  7. ↑ Hermann Broch in Wunberg (Ed.), P. 447 below
  8. ↑ Source, p. 180, 3rd Zvu
  9. ↑ Alewyn, p. 133, 4th Zvu to p. 134, 11th Zvo
  10. ↑ Sprengel, p. 246 below - 247 above