My heart so white

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The novel My Heart So White by Javier Marías was published in 1992 by Editorial Anagrama Barcelona under the title Corazón tan blanco . The German translation by Elke Wehr was published by Klett-Cotta in 1996 . The title is a quote from Shakespeare's Macbeth (2nd act, 2nd scene).

content

The book begins with an impressively portrayed scene. The family is gathered at dinner when the young Teresa gets up from the table, goes into the bathroom and shoots herself there. She is the aunt of Juan, the narrator in the novel, who was not yet born at the time, but in the course of the book finds out the exact circumstances of that incident.

Juan's father Ranz was married to Teresa. In order to be able to marry her, Ranz killed his first wife. After Ranz had told Teresa about the murder, which he disguised as an accident, at the end of their honeymoon, Teresa blamed herself for the death of this woman and could not withstand it. All she had said was the possibility of her death at Ranz. The descriptions of Ranz and Teresa refer to Shakespeare's Macbeth , from which the author often quotes. Lady Macbeth instigated her husband to murder Duncan and she, too, commits suicide plagued by conscience.

Juan, an interpreter who recently married Luisa, has a special sense of language and its power. Again and again he has to listen to words and conversations, fascinated by their dynamism and the expression of life that takes place in them. Language is the theme of this novel. Juan reflects on them in the course of the plot. It is a tool that can cause a lot of damage, as the events surrounding Ranz make clear. It is clarified which effects expressed thoughts, inner desires and secrets can achieve. A secondary theme is the young marriage of Juan and Luisa. “What now?” Is the question that Juan asks.

reception

My heart so white was discussed in June 1996 on the television program The literary quartet . Here the book received a euphoric criticism by Marcel Reich-Ranicki , who called Marías “one of the greatest writers in the world living at the moment” and the novel a “brilliant book” that hit him more deeply than any book in years. His hymn of praise culminated in the words: “This is a masterpiece, a very great masterpiece. It should land at number 1 on the bestseller list, because there is no comparable masterpiece to be had. ”The initial circulation of 5,000 copies rose to 115,000 copies sold one month after it was broadcast on television. The author felt “pleasantly shocked” by the sudden success, as if he had drawn “the main prize in the lottery”. The total German circulation rose to 1.5 million by 2006/2007.

Hellmuth Karasek judged in the mirror : "The power of language over reality, the falsification of reality through the word - a falsification that leads to the horrors of truth - that is the grandiose and ingeniously varied theme of My Heart So White ." A novel about "deadly obsessions" exerts an "intellectually flashing and at the same time gloomy stimulus". The threads of the supposedly unconnected chapters weave into a dense network full of “atmospheric density” and “psychological filigree sharpness”. In July 1996 the novel reached number 1 on the SWR best list .

In 1997 the novel received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award .

Book editions

literature

  • Jens Jessen : My heart is so white. Javier Marías plays entertainingly and masterfully with literature, in: Die Zeit No. 34, August 16, 2012, p. 48.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Javier Marías: My heart is so white at Klett-Cotta Verlag .
  2. ^ "The Literary Quartet" - the longstanding literary talk show on ZDF . In the series: Tele-Visions. TV history of Germany in West and East . Download from the Federal Agency for Civic Education .
  3. ^ Reich-Ranicki as lottery fairy . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1996, pp. 176 ( online ).
  4. ↑ Reiner Traub: Bluebeard's Silence (afterword). In: Javier Marías: My heart so white , licensed edition by Spiegel-Verlag, Hamburg 2006/2007, p. 375.
  5. ↑ Hellmuth Karasek: Cold embers of whisperings . In: Der Spiegel . No. 24 , 1996, pp. 195 ff . ( online ).