Mistler's farewell

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mistler's Farewell (English original title: Mistler's Exit ) is a novel by the American writer Louis Begley . It was published in 1998 by the New York publisher Alfred A. Knopf . In the same year the Suhrkamp Verlag published the German translation by Christa Krüger. After a cancer diagnosis, a successful American businessman travels to Venice to say goodbye.

content

Titian, around 1550: Martyrdom of St. Laurence

Thomas Hooker Mistler III is at the peak of his career in his early 60s. Thirty years ago he founded Mistler, Berry & Lovett and, after his partners left, made it one of the most successful New York advertising agencies , primarily through his personal commitment . The industry leader Omnium submits a generous purchase offer and above all wants to acquire the company founder himself and his so-called "Mistler Element". He was diagnosed with liver cancer in an incurable stage. His life expectancy is no more than half a year. Mistler, who has always considered himself a happy person, is surprised that the diagnosis only evokes a feeling of relief and liberation in him. He doesn't let his family or business partners know about the illness and goes on a short trip to Venice, which he spends as a business trip.

In the beloved lagoon city, Mistler does not find the peace and quiet she had hoped for. Instead, he is already waiting at the Hotel Lina Verano, the lover of a business partner who is hoping to get jobs as a photographer from Mistler's advertising agency. Although he does not find the young woman particularly attractive, he sleeps with her. In the church I Gesuiti his inexplicably depressed mood for Lina discharges while contemplating the martyrdom of St. Lawrence of Titian . Mistler identifies himself with Laurentius , who has been martyred to the greater glory of God. He sees illness as a prejudice before the last judgment and people as actors without free will in a deterministic play. Confused by his blasphemous speeches, the devout Lina leaves Mistler. In a suicide note, she doubts his affection for women and his interest in sex.

Even without Lina, Mistler's stay is overshadowed by dreams and memories of his past life. He remembers his parents' broken marriage, which his father pretended to maintain while he secretly met a lover whom his son admired. Mistler never wanted to live like this, but his own marriage to Clara was distant and devoid of passion from the start. After his first novel, received lukewarm, Mistler gave up his literary ambitions early on. His father's contempt for the advertising industry drove his son into this profession, and with his company he believed he had to make amends for his father's bankruptcy through no fault of his own. He threw his fellow student and co-founder Peter Berry out of the company after he cheated on Clara. Mistler, on the other hand, had an affair with Peter's wife's cousin. In a letter to his son Sam, he explains his illness to him, admits his mistakes and hopes for a clarifying conversation between father and son.

Unexpectedly, he meets the homosexual writer Barney Fine in Venice. The former fellow student has none of the distinguished formality of Mistler, but he follows that literary vocation that Mistler gave up so early, and is admired and supported by him. Barney is also the first to reveal his fatal illness to Mistler. Mistler recognizes his childhood sweetheart Bella in his girlfriend Bunny Cutler, who rejected him because he was too serious for her. Well, after more than half a lifetime, there is finally intimacy between the two. He gives her a precious candelabra , she gives him a strand of hair, and they arrange to return at the end of summer, even if he is already seriously ill by then. Before leaving, Mistler, a former rower, buys a black-painted rowing boat so that he can row out into the open sea from Venice.

interpretation

The relationship between Mistler's farewell and Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice has been highlighted by many reviewers . For example, Jack Miles headlined “Death in Venice” in the New York Times and Susanne Beyer “Half dead in Venice” in Spiegel . Begley himself confessed that when he wrote the novel he naturally thought of his great predecessor and that Thomas Mistler geared Thomas Mistler to Gustav von Aschenbach : “In his own way, he worked just as hard on an illusionism of his own as Aschenbach and, like the latter, stuck to a form of Apollonian Discipline that was suitable to give him brilliant success in his field of work. ”In the allusions to death in Venice , Christa Krüger sees a“ self-irony that is similar to Mann's procedure. ” Ulrich Greiner rates Thomas Mann's willful evocation and grief more important Gondolas as confident and willing to take risks. For Thomas E. Schmidt, in any case, “Venice, which is thrown out of memory, would have to be declared a literary restricted area for a long time if it weren't for authors like Louis Begley who made it a place of ironic, albeit sad, camouflage.”

Mistler's departure also refers to Begley's earlier works, in which Schmidt recognizes a “poetics of aging”. Mistler's late encounter with his college lover, too late, according to Schmidt, could come under the title of the novel The Man Who Was Late . However, contrary to what his protagonist Ben believed, Mistler's privileges do not help him to lead a happy life, but rather stand in the way. Christa Krüger is reminded of Schmidt , the retired lawyer who, like Mistler, has an affair with a young woman who, however, is far more welcome to him. Schmidt and Mistler belong to the upper class, both believe they can look back on a happy life, are men of strong discipline and suffer from alienation from their children. In contrast to Schmidt, whose life takes an unexpectedly happy turn after a serious accident, Mistler's death is mapped out, which is why Krüger describes Mistler's departure as a "gloomy counterpart" to Schmidt . While Schmidt, Ben and Max (in How Max it saw ), according to Ulrich Greiner, only understand late or never that they are assholes, Mistler is said several times to the face: "You are and will remain an ass!" An assessment that Kurt Scheel himself like to connect.

For Christa Krüger, Mistler's farewell shows the price that power costs and the damage it causes in the lives of those in power. Mistler must compulsively wield power that disparages and humiliates others as well as himself. He can only imagine happiness at the side of a woman, but he has felt neither love nor respect for his own wife and his affairs were mainly about humiliating others or himself. In the end, he realizes that his work is “just another form of emptiness [...], a structured form of emptiness”. According to Heller McAlpin, this emptiness is more frightening than death. For Ulrich Greiner, the theme of all of Begley's novels is the “missed life”, in which an external law stands in the way of the internal law and forces an alienated way of life. In lies in times of war these were the Nuremberg Race Laws , in Mistler's farewell the law of success. Kurt Scheel describes Mistler's farewell as a “cautionary tale”, a chilling example of the possibility of one's own life, Susanne Beyer as a passionate appeal to “betray everything - just not life itself.” In Mistler's planned death trip, with which this “ habitual stoic ”still wants to dispose of his death, for Thomas E. Schmidt in the end it stands“ a little illusion-preserving lie, in the boat the farewell becomes a mythical symbol ”.

reception

For Thomas E. Schmidt, Mistler's farewell is “Louis Begley's best novel”, which combines “the knowledge of a 'hand oracle' of today's USA with the dissecting psychology of the European narrative tradition”. Ulrich Greiner also reads “a moving, masterful novel”, which “touches the deepest things lightly to the point of the seemingly banal”, in short: “an important work”. Kurt Scheel calls it a “masterpiece” and “great literature”. For Susanne Beyer it is “a typical Begley: profoundly elegant gentlemanly prose, touching to the last page.” Heller McAlpin reads an astonishingly sobering portrait of a deep loneliness. According to Jack Miles, the novel takes Begley's noteworthy work to new heights of darkness.

In 2005, the NDR produced a radio play by Irene Schuck . The roles were spoken by Christoph Bantzer , Angelika Thomas , Werner Wölbern , Edda Pastor , Alexander Scala , Anne Weber , Marlen Diekhoff and Friedhelm Ptok .

expenditure

  • Louis Begley: Mistler's Exit . Alfred Knopf, New York 1998, ISBN 0-375-40262-4 .
  • Louis Begley: Mistler's Farewell . Translated from the English by Christa Krüger. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-518-41000-8 .

literature

  • Christa Krüger: Louis Begley. Life work effect . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-18236-9 , pp. 99-103.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Jack Miles : Death in Venice . In: The New York Times, September 20, 1998.
  2. ↑ a b c Susanne Beyer: Half dead in Venice . In: Der Spiegel from October 5, 1998.
  3. ↑ Christa Krüger: Louis Begley. Life work effect . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-18236-9 , pp. 101-102.
  4. ↑ a b c d Ulrich Greiner : In the middle of life . In: Die Zeit from November 19, 1998.
  5. ↑ a b c d Thomas E. Schmidt : An American hand oracle . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of October 6, 1998.
  6. ↑ Christa Krüger: Louis Begley. Life work effect . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-18236-9 , pp. 99-101.
  7. ^ A b c Kurt Scheel : Louis Begley: Mistlers Abschied . In: Die Welt from May 20, 2000.
  8. ↑ Christa Krüger: Louis Begley. Life work effect . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-18236-9 , pp. 99, 102-103.
  9. ↑ a b Heller McAlpin: An Emptiness Worse Than Death . In: Los Angeles Times, October 19, 1998.
  10. ↑ Cf. Cautionary tale in the English Wikipedia .
  11. ↑ Mistler's farewell in the HörDat audio game database .