Melück Maria Blainville, the house prophet from Arabia

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Achim von Arnim
(1781–1831)

Melück Maria Blainville, the house prophet from Arabia is a story by Achim von Arnim that appeared in the so-called collection of novels from 1812 in the Realschulbuchhandlung Berlin.

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Melück, the daughter of an emir , expelled from happy Arabia to Smyrna , arrives in the West as an orphan on a Turkish ship. Landed in Toulon , she was baptized in Marseille with the name Melück Maria Blainville. Her first name is Arabic , she got the second name after the mother of Jesus and the third from her confessor . The docile girl becomes an actress in Marseille. When the talented Melück recited from the “ Phaedra ” with “morning fire” in front of a company , she found her master in the reckless Count Saintree. The count, banished from court because of a love affair, from then on dispersed with Melück in Marseilles. The girl not only has to acknowledge the easy-going gentleman's superiority in recitation; she falls in love with him too. When Saintree is in Melück's apartment, he takes off his favorite blue silk skirt and puts the garment on a jointed doll . The doll crosses her arms over her chest and does not give away the item of clothing. The couple is amazed. The count stays overnight. Melück does not deny him anything. One month after the beginning of the liaison, Saintree's bride Mathilde reports that the king has forgiven him. However, the count was no longer tolerated at court. Saintree regrets his infidelity. He marries the gentle Mathilde and lives with her in Marseille. Melück desperate. She can no longer be without the Count. Mathilde trembles with jealousy when she learns of her husband's love affair. Meanwhile, Saintree is ailing, emaciated and complains of heart pain. A clever doctor, the Count's beloved schoolmate, has the explanation. Saintree fell into the hands of the heart-eating sorceress Melück. The helpful friend rushes to Melück. In the meantime, Melück's talent for painting has made the doll a true image of the Count. Melück intervenes. The terrible mannequin finally releases the blue skirt. Melück wants to be near Saintrees. However, the count cannot get his heart back. That is now in Melück. Saintree wears his blue skirt from now on day and night. So he'll get well again. Melück is moving. She lives with the count, manages his housekeeping and guides the servants with a “penetrating, flexible look”. Mathilde gives birth to her husband one child after the other. Each one has a “particular resemblance to” Melück. The Count's two wives are happy. “Melück often jokingly praised her happiness without having become a mother without the pain that had been associated with the joys of motherhood since the Fall, and Mathilde found the oriental eyes and long eyelashes of her children so charming that she forgot the mysterious in them, and instead forgot her friend learned to love more tenderly in her children. "

When the revolution reached the south of France, Melück predicted “the destruction of all nobility” and also its own end. Saintree ignores the warning. He cannot and does not want to leave his beloved home. So the prophecy is fulfilled. While the angry people take the castle, the count is killed and Melück is stabbed to death by a murder servant. Before that, Melück had hidden the pregnant Mathilde, disguised herself as the countess and - misunderstood - had been dragged to the place of execution. The doctor brings Mathilde "with her beautiful oriental children" to Switzerland. After the revolution, Mathilde got her goods back.

reception

  • On June 10, 1812, Görres wrote to Arnim, "The Arab woman is very good ...". In the same breath he criticizes the weakness of the narrative.
  • Varnhagen von Ense wrote in 1833: "The house prophet of Arabia ... gives some good insight into the effects of social and internal conditions."
  • Herwegh wrote on December 6, 1839, that the novella was "consistently repulsive". He also emphatically rejects an "ordinary doll" as the "bearer of fate".
  • The French Revolution made a deep impression on Arnim. The story would testify to this.
  • Arnim took up the subject matter of Count von Gleichen .
  • Moring, Riley, know Schulz and Schier, which does not open up the reader from the context: Melücks story is told on a boat traveling on the Rhine and at the end of the story at angle (Rheingau) invests in the place where the Günderode was stabbed to death on July 26, 1806.

literature

expenditure

Quoted text edition

  • Achim von Arnim: Melück Maria Blainville, the house prophet from Arabia. (An anecdote) . P. 164–195 in Alfred Schier (Ed.): Arnims works. Critically reviewed and explained edition. Second volume. Stories 428 pages, Fraktur. Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig and Vienna 1925. Text basis: Ludwig Achim's von Arnim all works. New edition. Volume 1 , pp. 189-238. Berlin 1853

Web links

Individual evidence

Source means the quoted text edition

  1. ^ Riley, p. 136, entry from 1812
  2. ↑ The collection of novels from 1812 still contains: Isabella of Egypt, Emperor Charles the Fifth's first childhood love , The three lovable sisters and the happy dyer and Angelica, the Genoese, and Cosmus, the rope jumper .
  3. ↑ Arabia felix for Yemen .
  4. ↑ Source, p. 185, 5. Zvo
  5. ↑ Moering, p. 1279, 5. Zvo
  6. ↑ Moering, p. 1285, 7. Zvo
  7. ↑ Moering, p. 1291, 14. Zvo
  8. ^ Vordtriede, p. 323, 10. Zvo
  9. ↑ Frenzel, pp. 299-302
  10. ↑ Schulz, p. 408, 3. Zvo
  11. ↑ Moering, p. 1313 entry 776.21-777.5
  12. ↑ Riley, pp. 98-99
  13. ↑ Schulz, p. 408, 12. Zvo
  14. ↑ Schier in der Quelle, p. 420
  15. ^ Riley, p. 99, 1st Zvu
  16. ↑ Schier in der Quelle, p. 420, 3rd Zvu