My Oedipus Complex

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Antoine-Denis Chaudet: Oedipus as a Child from 1801 (Paris, Louvre)

My Oedipus Complex (German: Mein Oedipus Complex in the translation by Elisabeth Schnack 1958) is a short story by the Irish writer Frank O'Connor , which was first published in December 1950 in Today's Woman and in 1952 in the short story collection The Stories of Frank O'Connor has been recorded. The story thematizes the conflictual development in the relationship between the five-year-old protagonist and his father, with whom the boy has to painfully share his mother's attention and affection after his return home from the First World War .

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The five-year-old first-person narrator Larry briefly presents the prehistory of the story, which contains the seeds of the subsequent conflict. Larry lives alone with his mother; the father only returns home from the war for brief visits. For the child protagonist, these guest visits from the father are as mysterious as “ Saint Nicholas ” (p. 7) and at the same time interesting and pleasant, as the father has strange habits such as smoking or shaving and smells “so beautiful” (p. 7). However, everyday life with its daily recurring habits and rituals takes place exclusively between mother and son. The boy feels that he is in a relationship with his mother that is similar to that of a spouse . He plans joint ventures, thinks about how the home could be made more beautiful, savored the morning and evening cuddling and telling stories in his mother's bed and thinks “about the baby thing” . He wonders whether the time has not come for the family to grow, although the mother is of the opinion that the family's financial means are not sufficient (p. 7 f.). Despite his privileges in dealing with his mother alone, the boy prays for his father so that he can come home safe from the war (p. 8).

When the father finally returns home one morning, the narrator realizes that the new situation seriously endangers his familiar relationship with his mother. The narrator realizes that he is wrong if he puts the father on the same level as "boring visitors" : Now he no longer enjoys the mother's unreserved attention; he has to be silent while she talks to the father (p. 8 f.); her repeated remarks, “I'm talking to Daddy” become “terrible words” for the five-year-old (p. 9). The afternoon walk with his father instead of with his mother, as before, bores him, because the father does not look after him intensively and pursue his own interests. Even in the evening his mother has no more time for him; he also has to be quiet when the father reads the newspaper (p. 9f.). The boy soon realizes that his father has become a rival for him in courting his mother's attention; he wishes his prayer had never been fulfilled and wonders what he can do to send his father back to war as soon as possible (p. 9). In the unabridged version of the original English text, Larry expresses this wish to his mother as well. It says: "'Mummy,' I said that night [...], 'do you think if I prayed hard God would send Daddy back to the war?'" (P. 2; correspondingly German: "'Mammi,' I said that evening […], 'do you think, if I really pray seriously, that God will send Daddy back to war?' " ). In Schnack's German translation, this passage, which is quite significant for the message of the story, is omitted (cf. German text, p. 9 f.).

When Larry wants to go to his mother's bed early the next morning as usual, he realizes that the father is taking up more space than he thinks he is entitled to and tries unsuccessfully with a few kicks to get the father to move to the side; for the narrator it is no longer “comfortable” in the maternal bed; His attempts to start a conversation with his mother are immediately stopped by the mother with the stereotypical admonition: "Quiet, child [...] don't wake Daddy" (p. 10 f.). But the father wakes up and is clearly angry; there is a depressed mood; even the mother is angry with Larry (p. 11). When the father fetches a cup of tea for his mother, the five-year-old is outraged because he is not brought his own cup of tea to bed afterwards and is supposed to drink from his mother's saucer: “I didn't want to drink from her saucer. I wanted to be treated as an equal in my own home and have a cup to myself ” (p. 11).

The crisis worsened the following day. After the boy had waited what he saw as an endlessly long time to fulfill his mother's promise not to disturb his father, he finally went to bed with his mother. She tries again to silence him, but the narrator deliberately wants to bring about the long overdue decision between his own claims and those of his father.

As he describes, he understands very well what it is about. He wanted to talk, the father wanted to sleep; the question is therefore whose house it actually is. So he firmly insists on his mother's traditional rights: "" Mommy, I would think it would be healthier if father also had his own bed to sleep in! "" (P. 12). When his mother does not respond, he angrily wakes his father with a “knuff” (p. 12; in the original: “a kick” , p. 4) and throws a screaming scene. He then receives a beating from his angry father. The boy feels that the beating itself is “not bad at all” ; however, what drives him “completely crazy” is “the injustice of being hit by a stranger who has snuck into [his] home and mother's bed” (p. 13).

After the conflict escalated , little changes in the situation between father and son in the near future ; Larry experiences living together as "the purest hell" ; the dealings between him and his father remain hostile (in the English original: "Father and I were enemies, open and avowed" , p. 5); the abbreviated German translation “cool and polite” at this point does not adequately reflect the symbolic state of war experienced by the first-person narrator in the house (p. 13). The father succeeds more and more in expanding his supremacy in the family and in winning the mother's affection more and more.

How this is possible for him remains a mystery to the child-like narrator, despite his careful observations of paternal behavior. At first he assumes that it has something to do with his father reading the newspaper, smoking a pipe and sipping his tea; but his own attempts to imitate his father's behavior in order to regain his mother's favor are completely ignored by the latter (p. 13 f.). So he finally suspects that the father's gaining of maternal affection and love must have something to do with adulthood :

“I still couldn't understand why mother was so fond of him. He was less nice than me in every way. He often used ugly words, and he didn't always drink his tea quietly. For a while I thought her love was because she was interested in newspapers. So I made up news and pretended to read it to her. But it didn't make much impression on her. I put his pipe in my mouth and wandered around the house. I even sipped while drinking tea, but she forbade me. The only way out seemed to be to grow very quickly and then take it away from him ” (p. 13).

For the time being, the childish first-person narrator can only wait and see; on occasion, however, he announces the continuation of the only postponed fight to the father by informing him with contempt that he will marry his mother later and that he will also “have a lot of babies” with her (p. 13 f .; in the English original it says here: "'It'll be very nice', I said confidently. 'Because we're going to have lots and lots of babies'" , p. 6).

From this announcement by the narrator, however, a twofold irony arises in the plot of the short story . When a baby actually arrives in the family soon afterwards, Larry loses the mother's attention even more, who now belongs entirely to little 'Sonny'. On the other hand, he gains a new relationship with his father, who apparently also disapproves of the fuss about the newcomer and also has to suffer from it (p. 14f.). The solidarity of the "disenfranchised" is finally strengthened when the father is driven out of the bed one night by the blaring baby and angrily has to seek refuge in Larry's bed.

Although Larry is initially disappointed that it is not his mother but his father who came to bed with him at night, he now notices a fundamental similarity between himself and his father: Just as he himself “saw through [the father] Baby without further ado. [...] Now it was his turn. First he had chased me out of the big bed, and now he had been chased away himself. Mother cared about no one more than the disgusting baby, and Father and I suffered from it ” (p. 15).

This new insight creates closeness to my father: “I was very generous at the age of five; Vengeance just wasn't my thing. So I patted him gently, saying how mommy: "Yes, yes, yes, Daddy '!" (Page 15). Larry asks his father to hug him and “he did it as best he could. He was nothing but bone, the man, but at least it was better than nothing. I snuggled up and fell asleep ” (p. 15).

At Christmas, the first-person narrator finally reports, the father “made an effort and bought me a fantastically beautiful train. For since that night the bitter feelings between us were over ” (p. 15).

Interpretative approach

My Oedipus complex gains its special charm and its special message through the means of expression of irony. Except in the development of the plot, where the boy's prayers or wishes - at the beginning the father's return from the war, in the end the next generation of the family - are fulfilled, but at the same time the fulfillment of the wishes causes the exact opposite of what was hoped for or expected , O'Connor mainly uses irony in the narrative situation . As Borgmeier shows in his interpretation of the short story, there is almost always “a comical disproportion [sic] between the experiencing and narrating self . While the protagonist's perceptions and experiences in the story remain restricted to the limited and egocentric experience of a five-year-old, the child's events, emotional reactions and thought processes are reproduced in the manner of an adult. The vocabulary , style and expression of the narrated are in ironic contrast to the content and the directly reproduced dialogue . "

A characteristic example is the place when the mother admonishes Larry for the first time not to be quiet and not to wake the father:

"Quiet, child," she whispered, "don't wake Daddy!"

That was something completely new! ” (In the original: “ […] a new development which threatened me ” , meaning “ a new threatening development ” , shortened in the German translation).

“If I wasn't allowed to tell any more in the morning, how should I put my head in order?

"Why?" I asked.

"Daddy is tired!"

That's not a reason! I thought ” (in the English original further: “ I was sickened by the sentimentality of her 'poor Daddy' ” , p. 3, in German: “ I was sick of the sentimentality of your 'poor daddy' ” ; in German. Shortened translation) "and continued:" Mommy, do you know where I want to go with you today? "

“No, my child,” she sighed “ (p. 10 f.).

At this point O'Connor creates the impression for the reader, as throughout the entire short story, that the thoughts of the child are reproduced in the adult language. This impression is created not only by the increased degree of abstraction ( "a new development" , "a quite inadequate reason" in the original text), but also by casually inserted colloquial expressions such as "sickened" or "that sort of gush" (cf. original text P. 3). Through this form of awareness of the child's thinking, which occurs gradually, the protagonist appears to a certain extent as a precocious character. With this ironic combination of child-like restricted, direct expression content and fully developed Reasoning instruments located O'Connor My Oedipus Complex in an intermediate region of the short story in which avoids the opposite poles of aspect poor finishing and simplicity and realistic further abstraction in the same manner.

O'Connor's short story deals with the authentic , lively world of experience and experience of the five-year-old child with the abstract overview of an adult. This ironic contrast is reinforced by the fact that the children's experiences in this short story mainly touch an area that is usually assigned to the adult world, namely the aspect of sexuality .

It is not just by chance that O'Connor's short story is set to a large extent in his mother's bed. The marriage bed, or "big bed" , as it is called in the original text, forms the essential setting of My Oedipus Complex and at the same time embodies the central trigger of the father-son conflict, the affection and love of the mother. The big bed is introduced in the second paragraph of the story and indicates the central conflict of the short story in a preparatory way. If the father is still a welcome guest for the boy during his short stays at home in the First World War, the space in the mother's bed is already too tight; the protagonist has to squeeze between his mother and his father in the early hours of the morning ( “I actually liked his short visits, although it was very uncomfortably close between him and his mother when I climbed into the big bed early in the morning” , p. 7).

One of Larry's rituals is to get into his mother's bed as the normal start of the day; Here he finds, as Borgmeier writes in his interpretation, "the partner to exchange ideas, who gives him warmth and security, and next to her he usually falls asleep again". The child protagonist describes his usual beginning of the day in the first part of the short story as follows:

“After that (i.e. after waking up) I went to my mother's bedroom, climbed into bed with her, and told her my plans. In the meantime I was almost frozen to an icicle from the cold (in the original: "petrified [= petrified] in my nightshirt" , p. 2). As soon as I was thawed again, I fell asleep over my chat [...] ” (p. 8).

The traditional place in the mother's bed is threatened by the father after his return. On the second morning, Larry noticed: The father "took up more space than usual and I was not at all comfortable" (p. 10). The "bed community" means more to the boy than it initially seems; he would like to sleep completely with his mother, as the reader learns later, when the childish narrator is annoyed because “a stranger” can easily share the bed with his mother all night (p. 11). The boy's behavior in this scene resembles, as Borgmeier writes, that of "a rejected lover":

“And everything was so unfair! Whenever I said to mother that it was unnecessary to have two beds and that we could sleep in one bed all night, she replied that it was healthier in two beds. And now this man came here, this stranger, and slept in her bed all night without thinking in the least about her health! ” (P. 11).

Interestingly, the pseudo arguments, which are not completely unusual in love relationships, are also exchanged in My Oedipus Complex . Just like the boy, who puts forward the argument of the economy of housekeeping, the mother argues with the aspect of health as the supposed reason. Larry, in turn, will later use exactly this argumentation for his goals and purposes, just before the escalation of the conflict with his father, to drive him out of his mother's bed with an obviously diplomatic justification: “Mommy, I find it healthier when father also has its own bed to sleep in! ” (p. 12).

Despite all childlike innocence , Larry's relationship with his mother is unmistakably sexual. In addition to the bed problem, there is the further problem of the “thing with the baby” (in the original text: that little matter of the baby ), about which the narrator “always disagreed with mother” (cf. p. 9 f. ). The sexual references are also emphasized at other places in the story. Larry doesn't like the anxious expression on his mother's face in a conversation with his father, as it affects the mother's good looks in his perception:

“[Father] spoke very seriously to my mother, who looked worried. Of course I didn't like the fact that [sic] she looked worried, because she wasn't so beautiful then ” (p. 8).

Likewise, after the beating he received from his father, Larry feels "the glee of the offended lover at the mother's pain," as Borgmeier puts it.

For the protagonist, the father becomes a real rival or rival , whom he experiences at the same time as an enemy (see p. 10), but also in his methods of winning the mother’s favor (see the quite comical imitation of the Newspaper reading, pipe smoking and sipping tea drinking, p. 13).

Despite the conspicuous sexual references in this short story by O'Connor, the narrative is not to be understood as an exemplary case study for Freud's Oedipus complex . The “ abnormality implied in the title stands in ironic contrast to the sensible voice of the narrating self and to the healthy domesticity of the depicted family, whose 'normal' family life is temporarily out of balance only through an external influence, through the war-related absence of the father is brought. "

Symbolic and stylistic means

The overarching theme in My Oedipus Complex , as in most of O'Connor's short stories, is the relationship of the individual to the community in which he is, and human contact and relationship to the wider environment. The five-year-old protagonist initially lives in harmony with his family environment: dissonances only occur when the boy is confronted with a radical change or narrowing of his living environment due to the return of his father, which he comes to terms with at the end of the short story can.

The change in the boy's environment is reflected in the short story in the variously varied beginning of the day. Although O'Connor takes a clear position against the symbolic short story in his literary theoretical statements , here he uses sustainable symbolism that comes to bear unobtrusively on its strong real basis.

Larry's relationship to his environment is expressed in his view from the attic window , his emotional world of experience and his attitude to life through the symbolic comparison and the relationship to the sun. At the beginning of the short story, the beginning of the day is in harmony with the sun: "I always woke with the first light, and, with all the responsibilities of the previous day melted, feeling myself rather like the sun, ready to illumine and rejoice ..." (Original P. 1; German: " I woke up at the first light of day, my head was bursting with the responsibilities of the last day, and felt pretty much like the sun, ready to shine and be happy ..." ) Later this harmony clouded, and shortly before the climax of the father-son conflict it says in the original text: “I didn't feel in the least like the sun” (p. 4; in the German translation this text passage is also missing; cf. Text p. 12). The morning view from the skylight in its original form corresponds, as Borgmeier explains in his interpretation of the symbolism in My Oedipus Complex , “to the world of the child; the narrower living space, the own side of the valley, is bathed in the light of knowledge and familiarity, although it also offers strange, unfamiliar aspects; the distance appears dark from afar ”.

In the original text, the narrator describes the view from the roof window as follows:

"The window overlooked the front gardens of the terrace behind ours, beyond these it looked over a deep valley to the tall red brick houses terraced up the opposite hillside, which were all still in shadow, while those at our side were all lit up, though with long strange shadows that made them seem unfamiliar, rigid and painted ” (original text p. 1, German: analogously: “ The window was oriented towards the front gardens of the terrace behind ours; beyond these gardens one saw a deep valley to the tall red brick houses on the opposite side of the hill, all still in shadow, while those on our side were all illuminated, though with long strange shadows that made them appear unfamiliar, rigid and painted ” ; in translation from Schnack this passage is also missing).

After the father's return home and the incipient tension in the father-son relationship, the first-person narrator symbolically expresses his changed life situation in the now depressing outside world at the beginning of the day: “[...] I played - for hours, it seemed to me. Then I got the chair and looked out the attic window, also for hours. It was boring and it was cold ” (p. 12). The unabridged original text reads afterwards: “Dawn was just breaking, with a guilty air that made me feel I had caught it in the act” (p. 3): “The day just started at dawn, with a guilty air, and I felt like I caught him red-handed ” ). Immediately before the open outbreak of the dispute between father and son, when the view is mentioned, the first-person narrator no longer portrays the picture (cf. German text p. 12, original text p. 4).

Another, symbolically significant sign from the real everyday world of the child's first-person narrator, which is comparable in its function to the above-mentioned marriage bed, is shown in the unabridged original version of My Oedipus Complex in the father's souvenir box.

During the father's absence, the boy can rummage in the box to his heart's content with his mother's permission (cf. original text p. 1); its dominance in the house is still unchallenged. After the argument with his father, Larry finds Larry again with his souvenirs or treasures and makes him a “terrible scene” ( “a terrible scene” , p. 5); This time, however, the mother demonstratively takes the side of the father and his rights: “Mother got up and took the box from me. 'You mustn't play with Daddy's toys unless he let's you, Larry,' she said severely. 'Daddy doesn't play with yours' ” (p. 5): “ Mother got up and took the box away from me.' You mustn't play with Daddy’s toys if he doesn't let you, Larry, ”she said strict. 'Daddy doesn't play with yours either' " ).

Striking here in the original text of My Oedipus Complex are the words of the mother: "Daddy's toys" . With this expression, she symbolically prepares the eventual defeat of the father or the rapprochement between father and son at the end of the story by placing the two on a common childlike level with her choice of words. This level of comical equality points to the balance and the common horizon of experience between father and son at the end, when Larry describes his feelings in the English version: “I couldn't help feeling sorry for Father. I had been through it all myself ... " (p. 6; Eng. Analogously: " I couldn't help feeling sorry for my father. I had lived through it all myself ... " ).

My Oedipus Complex accordingly proves, as Borgmeier summarizes in his analysis of the original English version, “as a carefully constructed work of art, and the impression of lightness that is typical for O'Connor [...] and is produced by the lack of spectacular stylistic devices and techniques turns out to be deceptive out".

The structure of the narrative is similar to the structure of the classical drama : After exposing the prehistory or initial situation, the action steers towards the crisis in several scenes, which culminates in the open confrontation between father and son and the physical violence of the father; at the same time, the classic form introduces the peripetia , which ultimately leads to conflict resolution and reconciliation between the adversaries . The times of day set in the individual scenes form “in these dramatic lines [a] corresponding formal bracket for the event; at first the action takes place primarily in the morning [...], after the climax, however, in the evening and finally even at night ”.

In My Oedipus Complex , as in other short stories by O'Connor, the prehistory is reported entirely by the first-person narrator, in accordance with his reluctance to formal dramatic exposition, which has been theoretically demonstrated several times.

Impact history

Along with The Genius , The Study of History and First Confessions, My Oedipus Complex belongs to the group of childhood stories in O'Connor's short prose, each of which focuses on a little boy who has drastic, fearful experiences in the encounter with someone he or she is unfamiliar with incomprehensible world of adults.

In his investigation of O'Connor's short stories, Kosok even goes so far as to classify My Oedipus Complex in the series of Irish stories of initiation , which depict the “terrifying, frightening, but ultimately also liberating confrontation of adolescents [...] with the strange rites , realities ' of the adult world " broach .

According to O'Connor's short story concept, the moment of "intense awareness of human loneliness" is created at a central point . According to O'Connor, this is exactly what distinguishes the genre of the short story from that of the novel ; his theoretical conception, which also finds its literary expression in My Oedipus Complex , is close to the literary theoretical ideas of James Joyce , who, as a characteristic feature of the short story, the moment of Insight or enlightenment, the so-called epiphany ( Eng . Epiphany , i.e. an unexpected experience or an unexpected experience), defines.

According to Kosok, Frank O'Connor has helped build the literary status and high standing of the short story in the Irish storytelling tradition with short stories like My Oedipus Complex . With “a technique of the narrative perspective that is sophisticated down to the last [sic] (especially in the invention of complex first-person narrators), […] the processes of suggestion and suggestion , reduction and concentration ”, reading these stories requires the reader “in principle the same Willingness to cooperate intensively like reading poetry . "

Thematically , My Oedipus Complex also prepares the way for the more recent Irish short stories by raising the problem of interpersonal sexuality, which O'Connor unmistakably, albeit indirectly or implicitly, treats in this narrative despite the threat of censorship by the Catholic Church , which are characterized by a "new openness in questions of sexuality" in contrast to the prevailing moral code of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

O'Connor uses a suggestion technique in the narrative design of this topic of the sexual, which is also used in his other short stories, through which the connections in the depicted situation only gradually become clear for the reader, so that when he rereads the text he becomes aware of the a completely new perspective developed within a complete narrative context.

Autobiographical background and meaning

O'Connor's place of birth: Cork, Ireland around 1900

The protagonist and first-person narrator in My Oedipus Complex is understood by some interpreters as Frank O'Connor (or Michael O'Donovan , as his real name was) in various literary or critical interpretations of this story . For example, Elisabeth Schnack writes in a short biography of Frank O'Connor that his children's stories, which also include My Oedipus Complex , “have autobiographical [sic] traits” and a lot about his lonely, self-reliant childhood in one marked by poverty betrayed Irish family.

The basic situation and various details in My Oedipus Complex correspond well to the image that the author describes of his own childhood in An Only Child . He presents himself as “the classic example of a mother boy” and reports on his jealousy of his father, who was also absent for a long time. Like Larry in the short story, the young Michael O'Donovan alias Frank O'Connor knew his father, who, like Larry's father, took part in the First World War, only from short visits where he always brought all sorts of odds and ends. Michael O'Donovan also experienced the time alone with his mother at home, undisturbed by his father, as the happiest time of his childhood.

The daily routine in childhood, which O'Connor describes in his autobiography, shows parallels to the short story in every detail: At the beginning of the day, for example, Frank O'Connor also had the view from the attic window of the city and its charming surroundings They often went for walks in the afternoons when they went shopping with their mother. Likewise, the description of O'Connor's father in terms of his person and appearance agrees in many details with Larry's father; the correspondences go down to the choice of words.

Although there are clear autobiographical correspondences between the author's childhood and that of Larry in My Oedipus Complex , the first-person narrator in this short story cannot simply be equated with the author, as Borgmeier rightly emphasizes in his analysis. “ My Oedipus Complex is not a fragment from the author's life story, but an independent work that is determined by the subject of the father-son conflict and not by the objective of biographical documentation. O'Connor [...] uses his childhood experiences only as material; the few but significant discrepancies highlight why O'Connor is doing it in the short story. "

While O'Connor's father was an uninhibited drinker who brought the family to the brink of ruin, Larry's father is earnestly trying to find work to support the family (see text p. 12); the great poverty from which O'Connor's family suffered is also not reflected in the story; instead of a meager Christmas present as in O'Connor's childhood, Larry receives “a fantastically beautiful train” from his father for Christmas (p. 15). Borgmeier also points out another important difference: “Instead of the mostly serious tone of the autobiographical [sic] reporter, the cheerful irony of the philosopher prevails [in the short story] . O'Connor does not want to record unique, individual living conditions, but rather depict the essence of human relationships, the role-related conflict between (returning) father and son, in a special case. "

My Oedipus Complex is, as Borgmeier further explains, “first and foremost a literary work of art”, a formed linguistic statement in the sense of O'Connor's short story conception, which regards the short story as an art form as sophisticated as the sonnet . In this way, the representation of Larry's childhood life story is brought into a formally closed form that corresponds to O'Connor's literary theoretical concept. Larry, the only child, ends up having a brother who, in My Oedipus Complex, enables the final irony that the intruder, the father, is in turn ousted by the intruder Baby. As shown above, O'Connor also uses the stylistic device of irony in other essential passages of the short story, for example when Larry's prayer that the father may return home healthy from the war, is fulfilled, but is turned into the exact opposite of what was desired.

Others

The impression of lightness that is typical of O'Connor's short prose, which should not be confused with the non-binding superficiality of the narrative design or even the meaning of his short stories , is, as the author himself credibly describes, the result of a lengthy and painstaking creative process . In the foreword to the 1952 edition of his collected short stories, O'Connor wrote: “Some of the stories had been rewritten twenty, thirty, even fifty times, though a few perfect things like 'My Oedipus Complex' […] remain more or less what they were when first they came into my head " (Eng. analogously: " Some of my stories had been rewritten twenty, thirty, even fifty times, although some perfect things like 'My Oedipus Complex' more or less remained that way, what they were when they first came into my head. " )

Secondary literature

  • Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 274-284
  • Heinz Kosok: History of Anglo-Irish Literature. Ernst Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-503-03004-2 , pp. 193-195

expenditure

My Oedipus Complex was first published in Today's Woman in 1952 in the anthology The Stories of Frank O'Connor by New York Knopf Verlag and in 1953 by Hamish Hamilton Verlag in London. My Oedipus Complex and Other Stories was also published in 1963 in the My Oedipus Complex and Other Stories collection as a paperback by the English publisher Penguin , Harmondsworth. This anthology has been reprinted several times by various publishers, most recently in 1999 by the British Longman Verlag. Probably 1950 according to the information in WorldCat Frank O'Connor published under the title Frank O'Connor Reading his Complete Short Story My Oedipus Complex in New York Caedmon Verlag also an audio version of the story on LP and audio cassette. The German translation by Elisabeth Schnack was first published in 1958 in the Zurich Diogenes Verlag in the Und fritags Fisch collection and in 1976 in the same publisher in the Mein Oedipus Complex · Collected Stories II , ISBN 3-257-20352-7 , albeit in an abridged version Version published in which, above all, several text passages that are significant for the deeper symbolic and atmospheric message of the story are omitted (see the text interpretation above).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the information in the section "Expenses".
  2. ↑ Text documents on My Oedipus Complex refer to the translation by Elisabeth Schnack in the Frank O'Connor Collection: My Oedipus Complex · Collected Stories II , ISBN 3-257-20352-7 .
  3. ↑ See the online edition of the original English text listed under web links on: The International Child and Youth Care Network , p. 2f.
  4. ↑ This key passage in the original version is also omitted in the German translation by Schnack. In the English original it says: “I understood it only too well. I wanted to talk, he wanted to sleep - whose house was it, anyway? ” . See original text, p. 4.
  5. ↑ Cf. also the experience of the narrator in the quarrel scene: "He [the father] looked at me like a giant who wanted to murder me" (p. 13).
  6. ↑ The German translation by Elisabeth Schnack "(...) and we will have children too" (p. 14) does not adequately reproduce the original at this point.
  7. ↑ See Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex . In: Karl Heinz Göller , Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 279. See in the German text p. 14f.
  8. ^ Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex . In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 279f.
  9. ↑ On this interpretation, see in detail the explanations by Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex . In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 279ff. See also the references to the thematization of the sexual in O'Connor's short prose in Heinz Kosok: History of Anglo-Irish Literature . Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 190, ISBN 3-503-03004-2 , pp. 193f. Also in the same: The Irish Short Story . In: Arno Löffler and Eberhard Späth (eds.): History of the English short story . Francke Verlag, Tübingen and Basel 2005, ISBN 3-8252-2662-X , p. 260.
  10. ^ Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex . In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 280f.
  11. ^ Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 281.
  12. ↑ See also Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 281.
  13. ↑ See Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 281f. See also the text passage in the original on p. 5, which is unfortunately omitted in the German translation: “And there stood Mother in her nightdress, looking as if her heart was broken between us. I hoped she felt as she looked. It seemed to me that she deserved it all. "
  14. ↑ On this interpretation, see Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 281. In his remarks on My Oedipus Complex, Kosok points to the comical means that O'Connor uses in this short story “to avert the uncanny and threatening” . See Heinz Kosok: History of Anglo-Irish Literature . Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 190, ISBN 3-503-03004-2 , p. 194.
  15. ^ Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex . In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 281. Borgmeier here follows the interpretation of Hall and Langland in: J. B. Hall and J. Langland: The Short Story . New York 1956, p. 218.
  16. ↑ See Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 281.
  17. ↑ Cf. Frank O'Connor: The short story . In: Irish Masters of Narration . Selected and translated by Elisabeth Schnack. Walter Dorn Publishing House. Bremen-Horn 1955, pp. 177-184, here pp. 180f.
  18. ↑ In the translation by Elizabeth Schnack, this entry passage is transmitted very freely; the symbolic comparison with the sun, which is significant for the statement of the story, is omitted. See German text edition, p. 7
  19. ↑ See Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 282f.
  20. ↑ See in detail Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor • My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 283.
  21. ↑ See also Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor • My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 283.
  22. ^ Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor • My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 283f.
  23. ^ Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor • My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 28277.
  24. ↑ See Frank O'Connor: The lonely Voice. A Study of the Short Story . Macmillan Verlag London 1963, p. 218. See also Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor • My Oedipus Complex . In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 277f.
  25. ↑ Heinz Kosok: History of Anglo-Irish literature . Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 190, ISBN 3-503-03004-2 , pp. 193f.
  26. ↑ See Frank O'Connor: The lonely Voice. A Study of the Short Story . Macmillan Verlag London 1963, p. 19.
  27. ↑ Heinz Kosok: History of Anglo-Irish literature . Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 190, ISBN 3-503-03004-2 , p. 194.
  28. ↑ See more precisely Heinz Kosok: The Irish short story . In: Arno Löffler and Eberhard Späth (eds.): History of the English short story . Francke Verlag, Tübingen and Basel 2005, ISBN 3-8252-2662-X , p. 268f and p. 55ff. on the terms of the literary market in Ireland, which was decisively determined by the indirect but effective censorship of the Catholic Church.
  29. ↑ See also Heinz Kosok on O'Connor's hinting technique: The Irish Short Story . In: Arno Löffler and Eberhard Späth (eds.): History of the English short story . Francke Verlag, Tübingen and Basel 2005, ISBN 3-8252-2662-X , pp. 259f.
  30. ↑ See the information in George Brandon Saul: A Consideration of Frank O'Connors Short Stories . In: Colby Library Quarterly , Volume 6, Article 3, December 1963, p. 329. (see web link below)
  31. ↑ Elisabeth Schnack (ed.): Irish masters of the story . Walter Dorn Verlag, Bremen-Horn 1955, pp. 206f.
  32. ↑ See Frank O'Connor: An Only Child . Knopf Verlag New York 1961, pp. 20, 38, 153 and p. 148.
  33. ↑ See Frank O'Connor: An Only Child . Knopf Verlag New York 1961, pp. 120f., 15, 4, 156, 23 and p. 25. See also the remarks by Raimund Borgmeier on these and other clear matches: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 274ff
  34. ^ Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , p. 276
  35. ^ Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 276f.
  36. ↑ See also Raimund Borgmeier: Frank O'Connor · My Oedipus Complex. In: Karl Heinz Göller, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): The English short story. August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 277f.
  37. ^ Preface to: The stories of Frank O'Connor. Knopf Verlag, New York 1952. Quoted from: George Brandon Saul: A Consideration of Frank O'Connors Short Stories . In: Colby Library Quarterly , Volume 6, Article 3, December 1963, p. 341. (see web link)