Novellas about Claudia

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Novellas about Claudia is a novel by Arnold Zweig , with which he made his literary debut in 1912.

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The postal package

After a performance by Götz von Berlichingen , the penniless private lecturer Dr. Walter Rohme brings his beloved Claudia Eggeling home and senses that the time has come for a declaration of love or a breakup. His problem is not only the stark difference in the financial circumstances - Claudia is a wealthy heiress and owner of a villa with several servants - but also knowing that she is unattractive. In Claudia's car, a conversation develops about the play just seen, whereby Rohme identifies with the “unmanly” Weislingen, then he has to put up with accusations that he only reluctantly accepted an invitation to Eggeling's box. At dinner for two, Rohme thinks it is necessary to tell Claudia the story of the task of sending a mail package, during which he behaved particularly awkwardly and clumsily. After this story he has the feeling that he has finally opened her eyes to his inferiority , but in truth it was only because of this that she became aware of his lovable character and her affection for him.

The thirteenth leaf

Already engaged, Claudia (the first-person narrator of this novella) and Walter visit their mutual friend Klaus Manth, a painter whose etched cycle “The artist and his life” means a lot to Claudia, especially the thirteenth sheet - the goddess Aphrodite is floating above a wreath of naked, loving people. On the way to Manth's home, there was talk of another masterpiece by the artist, a portrait of his teacher von Nottebohm, whom for unknown reasons he never visited again after completing the picture. The two soon notice that Manth is upset, and when Claudia mentions the ingenious portfolio, the painter bursts out: he shows his original version of the thirteenth sheet, on which the crucified Christ can be seen instead of Aphrodite, and which he, on the advice of a powerful one Art publisher and finally his teacher, but mainly for commercial reasons, changed accordingly. Manth regrets this decision to this day. Claudia's favorite work has become removed from her and “new strangers” through this confession - you don't bother anyone with your intimate life.

The star

Walter is the first-person narrator. The sonata of his late friend Oswald Saach is dedicated to him and is now performed by Claudia (piano), the poet Alexander Sirmisch (cello) and Walter (violin) with Claudia's mother and Klaus Manth as the audience. Saach's suicide because of a broken relationship with a wife and mother is not understood by anyone, and one is only too willing to blame the lady for the musician's desperate step when Claudia pretends to have information that reveals the character of the dead person to let another light shine. The uncertainty lets Walter suspect the worst: a relationship between Oswald and his music student Claudia. Her report, however, refers to Oswald's mistress, a Lisbeth Olsen, who at the time brought about an end as a girl after an affair with Oswald because of moral concerns. Both suffered from this separation. However, during a nocturnal debate in the park, the superstitious Saach sees a falling star, and what he immediately wishes for is fame, not love. Ever since Saach made this admission to Claudia, she had doubts about the honesty of his artistry.

The album

Claudia and Walter are on their honeymoon, and Claudia's mother Eva Eggeling is alone in the apartment that she shared with Claudia until recently. The sudden loneliness makes her think about God and the meaning of life. She realizes that memories make her forget the pain of separation and reaches for the photo album. Starting from the back with the newer recordings, she flips through the album, sees her daughter playing tennis, on horseback and in the car, as a high school graduate, and through Claudia's pictures of children she arrives at photos of herself. These documents from her past life make her think of her own death . Sirmisch's visit distracts her for a short time, but her reaction to his thoughtless comment about the album lying on the table shows him how things are with the old lady.

The chaste night

At the hotel, Walter promises his nervous young wife to just lie next to her for the following nights to give her time to get used to the new situation. While Claudia is getting ready for the night, he waits in the anteroom, and when he finally gets to bed, too, he tells her to distract her how he spent a night in a mountain hut with a fellow student and in bed with her like brother and sister slept. Claudia feels spurned, and when he leans over her to comfort her, "she spreads her arms apart and collapses over him like a wave when he falls on her".

The passion

Walter and Claudia attend a performance of the St. Matthew Passion . Deeply moved, Walter, who knows the work by heart, follows the dramatic and musical sequence and hopes that after the end of the first part of the Passion the audience will not start to applaud immediately, but will keep at least a few seconds of silence. To his surprise, there is no applause at all, the audience quietly left and seized the hall. Only now does Walter discover that Claudia fell asleep. He renounces the second part and goes back to the hotel with his wife. Claudia senses Walter's irritability and disappointment on the way home. Only in the room does Walter understand the reason for Claudia's tiredness, "the inaccessible secret ... that takes place in the sleeping woman inside".

The sonatina

One day back at home, Walter asks Claudia to play Schubert's Sonatinas op. 137 with him. He already practiced this work as a teenager and he feels compelled to share the memories that arise with his wife. Like a confessor, he first confides in her minor transgressions and finally also his homoerotic experiences in the swimming pool with a peer. Shocked, Claudia turns away from him, locks herself in her room and needs some time to process what she has heard. She feels that she is the one who is about to put up a wall between herself and Walter. When she unlocks her door, she finds Walter lying on the doorstep. They forgive one another, knowing that "today is just a beginning".

shape

Novellas about Claudia consists of a cycle of seven novellas that deal with the engagement and marriage of Claudia and Walter. The episodes are reported from different perspectives. The first episode, Das Postpaket , in particular, has a distinct novella character. Nevertheless, the novellas in their entirety approach the chapters of a “continuous novel of the soul”, which follows the development of the relationship between the two protagonists. Therefore, it was stories about Claudia soon after publication as a novel classified.

Web links

literature

  • Gabriella Rácz: "Artful masquerade". Modernity and epigonality in Arnold Zweig's "Die Novellen um Claudia", investigations into the narrative structure . Veszprém 2005, ISBN 963-9495-69-7 .
  • Gabriella Rácz: "Revoked ten times and yet not forced out of action". Integration of art quotations as intertextual signs in Arnold Zweig's "The Novellas about Claudia". In: German Didactics and German Literature Studies in East Central Europe. Edition Praesens , Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-7069-0173-0 , pp. 111-120.
  • Gabriella Rácz: Quoted worlds and told world. Art quotes and plot structure in Arnold Zweig's "The Novellas about Claudia". In: Yearbook of Hungarian German Studies. 2001, pp. 33-46.
  • Birgit Lönne: The "Novellas about Claudia" (1912). On intention and poetics. In: Arnold Zweig: Psyche, Politics and Literature. Lang, Berlin et al. 1993, ISBN 3-261-04548-5 , pp. 19-31.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the section: Peter Sprengel: History of German-language literature, 1900–1918 . CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9 , p. 173.