Marthe and her watch

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Marthe and her watch is the first published story by Theodor Storm . It appeared in 1848 in the Volksbuch on the leap year 1848 for Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg , edited by Karl Biernatzki . In 1851 a modified version followed in the volume Summer Stories and Songs .

content

Marthe is an elderly single lady. She lives alone in the house where she grew up, as her parents and brothers have long since passed away, and her sisters left their parents' home after their wedding. She lives a modest and withdrawn life and subsists on a small pension and renting out a room. She does her tenants a lot of good because she has no one else to look after and would otherwise find her existence pointless.

Marthe spends a lot of time reading and thinking and has acquired a comparatively high level of (also aesthetic) education for her class. She is particularly fond of Eduard Mörike's novel painter Nolten , and in her imagination the fates of the characters in this novel are detached from the will of the poet. The old furniture in Marthe's room and other items that she has been used to since childhood are a substitute for human society - they seem to speak to her and influence her thoughts and actions. This is especially true of her spinning wheel, her carved armchair and an old, artfully decorated support clock that her father bought many years ago at a flea market. It no longer runs reliably, sometimes strikes the wrong hour, sometimes not at all, and its ticking seems to get louder and quieter. Through these irregularities, the watch “communicates” with Marthe, triggers memories of the past, but also brings her back to the present by ticking loudly.

One Christmas Eve, Marthe is invited to join her and her family by her sister Hanne, the only relative living in the same town. However, she prefers to stay at home alone: ​​it is as if the clock ticked her asking for it. She remembers a Christmas party of her childhood: the father in his armchair, the mother baking apple pie, the good children and the calm, well-behaved and cheerful atmosphere. Then she thinks of another Christmas Eve when her mother passed away that night and she was left alone in the house.

teller

The first-person narrator is a former tenant of the room in Marthe's house. Looking back, he tells from a distance of many years, has not heard from Marthe for a long time and does not know whether she is still alive. But he hopes that his story will fall into her hands and that she will remember him. Despite his position as a first-person narrator, he also reproduces Marthe's thoughts and memories in the manner of an authorial narrator.

reception

Marthe and her watch received little attention from literary studies . In his analysis of the narrative, Gunter Hertling depicts the Stutzuhr as a “leitmotif, namely a visible and audible symbol of dwindling time” and compares its reference to the past with the lamp in Eduard Mörike's poem Auf einer Lampe . For him, the story is primarily about the psychological design of the interrelationship between Marthe and her watch: Marthe lets herself be guided by the watch, but also enjoys its “company”, which makes her otherwise miserable life bearable. Hertling thus rejects the interpretation of David Jackson, who judges the watch more negatively: As a substitute for a patriarchal father who prevented Marthes from developing freely.

Marthe's phantasies, the connection of the fictional with the actual, predicts Storm's later novels, according to Hertling.

Web links

Wikisource: Marthe and her clock  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ GH Hertling: Theodor Storm's first novella "Marthe and her clock" (1847) . In: Studia theodisca XX (2013) pp. 5–21.