Moloch. The life of the Moravagine

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The Petersburg Bloody Sunday (1905), here in an illustration by an unknown artist, is the escalation of events and ideas that are described in the novel.

Moloch. The life of Moravagine is a surrealist novel of the French-speaking Swiss writer Blaise Cendrars , the first time in 1926 in Paris under the name Moravagine published by Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle was published. Cendrars dedicated the work to his publisher, the dedication is preceded by a quote from Sixtine, roman de la vie cérébrale by Remy de Gourmont : « ... I will show how this soft crackling inside, that nothing seems, means everything; how a brain, isolated from the world, creates a world of its own from the bacillary reaction of a single sensation that is always the same and deformed from the start ... » The novel, which broke the rule of probability, was Cendrar's second world success after Gold in 1925.

The novel describes the life of Moravagine, the last offspring of the Hungarian royal family. Raymond La Science, a young psychiatrist and intradiegetic first-person narrator, reports on the adventures he went through with him and describes his terrorist lifestyle, with terrorist in this historical meaning being synonymous with anarchist , this way of life is associated with sexually abnormal behavior. The action takes place in different corners of the world: From Moravagine's birthplace in Hungary to a psychiatric clinic in Switzerland to Germany and on to revolutionary Russia, then it goes over Great Britain and the Atlantic to North and South America and finally to France in the first World War.

According to Rudolf Wittkopf, the novel explores the world of the demonic and communicates with evil. Wittkopf locates it literarily in the thinking of the Comte de Lautréamont and his holiness of crime , in the Matinée d'ivresse - the drunken morning - by Arthur Rimbaud , and in Novalis ' denial of the Enlightenment . The psychoanalysis offer one the narrator clean bill of health , as they speak in the analysis of criminal motives of innocence. In 2006 the novel was included in the Swiss Library series of Das Magazin .

action

The story begins with a frame narration . Blaise Cendrars states that he received the manuscripts for the novel from a now dead Spanish prisoner, whose real name he does not want to give. The unknown Spanish prisoner named R. wrote a letter to Blaise Cendrars, which Blaise Cendrars in turn submitted to the readers of the book. In it, R. thanks for the alleged requests and efforts that Cendrars is said to have made to speed up the execution of R. R. reveals that he murdered the King of Spain and speaks verbatim about a Spanish clergyman who keeps him company in his last few hours in his cell in the fortress of Montjuïc in Barcelona. Cendrars, who is in Paris, now states that he currently does not have the time to sort through all of Moravagine's manuscripts received from R., because he, Blaise Cendrars, still has to “go astray through the world” Countries, Books and People ”. For the time being, he could only publish this short introduction, namely this novel: Moloch. The life of the Moravagine.

The main story begins in the Waldensee sanatorium near Bern (probably an allusion to the Waldau Clinic in Bern). The narrator works there as an assistant to Dr. Stone and meets Moravagine this way. They become friends and Moravagine tells him about his youth as the last descendant of the King of Hungary, and how he was powerlessly held in Fejervar Castle and married to Rita at an early age. Moravagine was so obsessed with Rita that on one of her infrequent visits and the announcement that she was leaving, he slit her stomach open. At the age of eighteen he was taken to the Pressburg prison and spent ten years there until he was secretly taken to the madhouse Waldensee in Switzerland. The narrator helps Moravagine escape from Waldensee. Together they get to Berlin via Basel. There Moravagine attends music lectures at the university in order to get closer to the original rhythm and now also talks about the time he spent in Pressburg. When Moravagine kills too many women in Berlin, they both have to flee again. This time they go to Moscow , where they meet a group of revolutionaries and even get involved in the 1905 revolution . They travel on a secret mission to Warsaw , Kronstadt , Tver , Sebastopol , Saint Petersburg , Ufa , Yekaterinoslav , Lugowsk, Rostov , Tbilisi and Baku , with Moravagine spending his considerable fortune on weapons arsenals, forged papers and the like. This group also includes Masha, with whom Moravagine begins a sado-masochistic relationship. He becomes pregnant, but Moravagine doesn't really care. When the revolution fails, the narrator and Moravagine flee in a freight train, where they find Mascha, hung up, with a slashed stomach and a hanging fetus. Then they make a crossing from London via Liverpool to New York, where they meet an orangutan named Olympio and spend their time with him. In the United States they meet Lathuille, who offers himself as a guide and promises them a gold mine and a diamond field. When they are pursued by the Indians, they help him and he then invites them to his wedding in New Orleans. The future family of Lathuille wants to take the two prisoners and this time it is Lathuille who helps them to escape. Lathuille accompanies them on a ship, which they drop off at the Orinoco estuary in a small folding boat. After a few weeks they are attacked by Indians who kill Lathuille. Because of his apothecary box, the narrator is believed by the Indians to be a magician and Moravagine to be the savior, who is sacrificed after a month of royal life. Raymond gets malaria. Moravagine manages to escape with his delirious friend. Many women of the Indian tribe have followed them and every night he kills one of them for his amusement under the pretext that he is a god. Back in Paris, Moravagine begins flying. He wants to fly around the world in his plane, but the outbreak of the First World War comes before him. Moravagine volunteers as an aviator, the narrator goes to the infantry and they are separated from each other. The narrator loses a leg in the war and is taken to the island of Sainte-Marguerite for recreation every Thursday, along with other amputees and wounded . There's a neurology clinic on the island that he starts to visit every Thursday, and he sees Moravagine again, pumped full of morphine and dying, eaten away by madness. His only friend cannot be with him in his last hour. He leaves Raymond his collected works, which deal with the future, more precisely: humanity in 2013. He speaks of life on Mars and the 99-year war. On his tombstone it says: "Here lies a stranger".

chapter

introduction

The spirit of an era

• Waldensee Sanatorium
• An international sanatorium
• Index cards and files

Moravagine's life, idiot

• Origin and childhood
• The escape
• Masquerades
• Arrival in Berlin
• Cosmogony of his mind
• Jack, the belly slitter
• Arrival in Russia
• Masha
• The crossing across the Atlantic
• Forays through America
• The blue indians
• Return to Paris
• Aviation
• war
• The island of Sainte-Marguerite
• morphine
• The planet Mars
• The iron mask

Moravagine's manuscripts

• The year 2013
• The end of the world
• The only word in Martian language
• An unpublished page from Moravagine
• Moravagine's signature
• The portrait of Moravagine
• Drawing by Conrad Moricand
• epitaph

Pro Domo

people

Moravagine

Moravagine is "small, dark-haired, rachitic spindly" when he meets Raymond la Science for the first time, but who is quickly taken over by his deep and calm voice. Moravigine lacks the ability to limit his passion or to put a stop to his uncontrolled and pure instinct and lust-obedience behavior or at least to set limits. That this is intentional can also be seen in its name, which combines the two opposites: Mora - la mort - death, dying, the end and le vagin - the vagina - that which gives birth, brings life and lust. His childhood was formative for him. The mechanism of everything fascinates him incredibly. He seeks life everywhere, the drive, he is fascinated by the disciplined soldiers and their standing at attention in the castle of his childhood. An instinct in him replaces the sense of what is right, acceptable, or morally correct. In his world there is only his own feeling; that of another is nonexistent. Raymond compliments him and in a way belongs to him. Moravagine manages to win Raymond la Science for himself and infect him with his being. Aside from his murderous disposition, Moravagine also has another side. He suffers from his futility and despair and from not finding the answer to his great question about the reason for his existence. He combines all of this and is therefore not just a Moloch, an all-devouring monster, but simply very human, even if that is a disturbing thought.

Raymond la Science

The person Raymond la Science actually existed and around 1900 was a member of an illegal French anarchist group called the Bonnot Gang, which made itself known mainly through theft and chaos. Raymond la Science was guillotined in 1913. There is a reference to this in the book itself ( "We arrived in Paris just as the Bonnot affair was just ending" ). It can be assumed that Cendrars consciously chose this name. Now this is just an alias for R., the actual narrator.

He comes from a good family and completed a degree in psychiatry in Paris in 1900 before joining the Waldensee clinic as an ambitious young man. His professional interest is in hysteria , but he harbors a strong grudge against the professional world, as he proclaims: “But I had planned on the following: I wanted to write a terrible indictment against the psychiatrists, determine their psychology, define their conscience, which has been trained by their profession , destroy their power and deliver them up for public persecution. ” He, who reveals himself as a revolutionary, lets himself be dragged along by Moravagine, has dedicated his whole life to him and would be willing to do anything for him. ( "I'm mindless. Now if he said I should kill myself: I took my revolver out of my pocket and put a bullet in my mouth." ) He's more or less giving up everything to set Moravagine free first and then him to accompany him to study. Unlike Moravagine, he feels a lot for his friend. He is under no illusions about him and his limited ability to love, but he does care about him.

Masha Uptschak

Mascha is a roughly 35 to 38 year old Lithuanian Jew who studied mathematics in Germany. The narrator describes her as "tall, stately [with] ample bosom, and the belly and bottom were quite large". In addition to keeping Moravagine busy with her political views and gross demeanor, she is also the reason for Raymond's extensive philosophical reflections on women and their guilt for all evils in the world, from which he comes to the following conclusion : “Woman is strong, she is more stable in life, she has several erotogenic centers, she knows how to suffer much better, she is more resilient, her libido gives her weight, she is the stronger. The man is her slave, he surrenders, rolls at her feet, obeys her blindly. He succumbs. - The woman is a masochist. The only principle of life is masochism , and masochism is a principle of death. That's why existence is idiocy, pointless, completely pointless, life has no purpose at all. "

Olympio

During their crossing across the Atlantic, Moravagine and Raymond la Science encounter a monkey. The orangutan Olympio is tall and red-haired, but contrary to the usual expectations of a monkey, he has all the characteristics of a human: He has two wardrobe trunks with a “suit collection and his underwear” . He is an accomplished tennis player, golfer, rider, rower, swimmer and vain journeyman, and has a “valet who does his hair and perfumes”. He spends the late morning in the bar, dressed extravagantly and by “a first-class tailor” , leaning on a stick with an amber knob, ordering cocktails and smoking big cigars. At lunchtime he dines in the restaurant the human way, with spoon, knife and fork, and then reads the newspaper. Later he changes clothes for five o'clock tea. Champagne shouldn't be missing in the evening. When it comes to liquor, confidential talks with gentlemen take place. However, the monkey also cultivates its exuberant side, because its mischievous nature comes to the fore in the presence of children. Moravagine takes a liking to him. Common activities are: swimming, running, cycling and roller skating, tennis, golf, jumping into the air, knocking over furniture, running after each other, cutting everything down.

Champcommunal and Cendrars

In Paris they meet another weird guy, the inventor Champcommunal, who is the reason for Moravagine's passion for flying. The appearance of his assistant, Blaise Cendrars, surprised and pricked up your ears. Later, Cendrars and Raymond meet again in the hospital after they have both lost a limb. Cendrar's appearance in the story is autobiographical, as he lost an arm in the war. Also the tired and sometimes bitter language that Raymond chooses in this part is in a strange way more realistic than the story before. Cendrars must have made friends with Raymond during this time, as he will be the one to whom all of his documents and Moravagine's manuscripts will be sent.

The original rhythm

When the two were in Germany, Moravagine began studying music at Berlin University, as music was very important to him. In Berlin he devotes himself entirely to rhythm, the original rhythm, which should explain everything and give the world a meaning. But he doesn't find it and looks for a way out so as not to perish at this emptiness and senselessness. So he starts killing young girls. This fills him with life again, heals him and lets him come back to his senses. The fact that music is supposed to provide an answer to these questions doesn't even seem that far-fetched.

Principle of expediency

The chapter "Forays through America" ​​is a theoretic digression in the novel, in which the narrator treats philosophical thoughts and the principle of expediency , which determines all of North America. Key words are the stock corporation , the plastic , the wheel . Everything is aligned to it, everything is subject to its law and everything flows into one another and forms a great one. Raymond speaks of a phenomenon that we now call globalization, and how it affects everything, how different cultures blend together, how raw materials and finished products from all over the world come together and make up the whole life and thought of this new world. The machinery of the whole thing (“And the wheel turns.”) Fascinates him as much as Moravagine is fascinated by a simple pipe or the toilet flush. There are some parallels to the original rhythm or the search for it: the whole world seems to live in one pulse.

Origin of the text

In Pro Domo , Blaise Cendrars describes how Moloch. The life of Moravagine came into being. The idea was suddenly in his head in November 1912 and he never let go, although he didn't think about it for a long time. During the war he thought of nothing but Moravagine. He was with him day and night. But he had to postpone the book he wanted to write indefinitely. On July 31, 1917, he began to write, he began again, alternately wrote a final or an opening chapter. In February 1926 he finished work on his book. To this he says: “And now sponge it, I had just typed the last point and that had to be watered, devil again! Moravagine was dead. Dead and buried. "

expenditure

• Moravagine. Grasset, Paris 1926.
• Moravagine: Novel. Translated by Lissy Rademacher. Georg Müller, Munich 1928.
• Moravagine: Novel. Suivi de “Pro domo”: Comment j'ai ecrit “Moravagine”. Un inedit et une postface. Grasset, Paris 1957.
• Moloch. The life of the Moravagine. From d. Franz von Lotte Frauendienst. Afterword Rudolf Wittkopf . Rauch, Düsseldorf 1961.
• Moloch. The life of the Moravagine. From d. Franz von Lotte Frauendienst. Die Arche, Zurich 1975, ISBN 3-7160-2055-9 .
• Moravagine. Monster novel. Based on the translation by Lissy Rademacher, commented and supplemented by Stefan Zweifel . The Other Library , Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8477-0352-5 .

literature

• Stephen Kyrk Bellstrom: Blaise Cendrars' Moravagine: image, theme and symbol. Dissertation. Univ. of Kentucky, Ann Arbor, Mich. 1974.
• Jean-Carlo Flückiger: Sous le signe de Moravagine. Lettres Modernes Minard, Paris 2006 ISSN  0035-2136 .
• Oxana Khlopina: Moravagine. Blaise Cendrars' shadow. Translation from French by Barbara Traber. Stämpfli, Bern 2014, ISBN 978-3-7272-1424-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ina Hartwig : The carpet fire maker as an artist. Review. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . July 10, 2014, p. 13.