Molloy (novel)

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Molloy is a novel by the Irish writer Samuel Beckett . The author wrote the original in French , he himself worked on the English translation, the German translation was done by Erich Franzen .
The novel forms the first part of a trilogy that was continued with the volumes Malone dies and The Nameless . The works were created between 1946 and 1950, Molloy was first published in 1951 . This is Beckett's first novel to use the first person perspective .

action

The novel consists of two parts. In the first, the title character Molloy is himself the narrator and main character. The reader becomes a witness of his physical and mental decline. At the beginning, Molloy is in his deceased mother's room and, looking back, tells how he got there. Although the reader can follow his long path with numerous encounters, he will never know how Molloy ultimately achieved his goal. With the exception of a short introductory paragraph, the entire first part consists of a single paragraphless inner monologue by Molloy.

The main character of the second part of the novel is Jacques Moran, an agent who receives an order from a messenger to visit Molloy. After some preparatory work, he leaves with his son. With Moran, too, a physical and mental decline sets in with increasing duration, which shows clear parallels to Molloy's development.

language

The monologues of the main characters Molloy and Moran have a number of linguistic peculiarities.

Metalanguage

The narrator repeatedly reflects on his own linguistic means. Examples:

  • Crazy sentence, but that doesn't matter.
  • I don't feel like talking about it anymore.
  • This sentence is not clear, it does not express what I was hoping to say.
  • It's hard to express, hard for me
  • Should I describe the house? I do not think so.

doubt

The narrator often doubts his own statements, sometimes even contradicting them. Examples:

  • Perhaps he was the same man who had so politely offered to drive my son and me home in his car. I do not think so.
  • ... like the toes falling off my left foot - no, I'm wrong, it's the right one - ...
  • Then I went back into the house and wrote, “It's midnight. The rain lashes against the windows. ”It was not midnight. It did not rain.

Recall

Both parts of the novel are characterized by a reminiscent narrative style. Both Molloy and Moran begin their narrative from a supposedly safe place. Molloy is in his late mother's room, Moran at a desk. Yet both seem to have the task of remembering some events that happened before they reached their current whereabouts. The reader is repeatedly made aware that these are memories that are more or less correctly reproduced. Examples:

  • I may fantasize a little, I may decorate something, but on the whole it was like that. (Molloy)
  • I speak in the present tense, it is so easy to use the present tense when it comes to the past. Don't pay attention, it's the mythological present tense. (Molloy)
  • My report will be long. Maybe I won't get through it. (Moran)
  • And I would not be surprised if I should deviate from the exact and real sequence of events on the following pages of my report. (Moran)

German translation

Molloy was Beckett's only work to be translated into German by Erich Franzen. Most of the other works were translated by Elmar Tophoven . When Beckett and Tophoven were working through the translation manuscript for Waiting for Godot in 1953, Beckett asked Tophoven to read him from Erich Franzen's translation of Molloy . Over time, a procedure developed in which Beckett had the German translation text read to him while he read the French original at the same time. If Beckett noticed something, he would stop reading.

literature

  • Peter Brockmeier: Samuel Beckett . Stuttgart, Weimar 2001. Therein: Chapter 4.1 .: Molloy , pp. 89-98.
  • Hartmut Engelhardt, Dieter Mettler: Materials for Samuel Beckett's novels . Frankfurt am Main 1976. Therein: Georges Bataille : Das Schweigen Molloys , pp. 66–77.
  • Friedhelm Rathjen : Beckett for an introduction . Hamburg 1995. Molloy , pp. 83-90.
  • Norbert W. Schlinkert : Wanderer in Absurdistan: Novalis, Nietzsche, Beckett, Bernhard and all the rest. An investigation into the appearance of the absurd in prose . Würzburg 2005. Therein: Chapter 4.1 .: Samuel Beckett. The question of whether one is still alive , pp. 76–91.