Peter Camenzind
Peter Camenzind is the first novel by Hermann Hesse . It was published by S. Fischer Verlag in 1904 and made the author known.
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Summary
In Peter Camenzind , Hesse describes from a first-person perspective the life of a man who was born in a small village in the mountains. This Peter Camenzind is characterized by his exuberant love for nature. That's why he spends a lot of time mountaineering and observing nature.
The story is about the inner change of the protagonist who, in addition to his father's choice of career and life, discovers his love for intellectual activity and education. From then on he set himself the goal of an urban lifestyle that would lead him to cities and their educated circles. A short time later he was working as a freelance writer, mostly summarizing historical events.
But in the end he has to realize that he has always remained the “farmer boy” from Nimikon, despite his cosmopolitan appearance and education. He notices that in the city he encounters his "original sins" which he tried to deny in his home village and from which he fled (for example drinking). When he returned to his village to take care of his father, he understood that he had followed his childhood dream of becoming a poet. But he doesn't know whether he is a poet or whether he will ever become one. All the more he remembers the many people he got to know and love on his travels, and he knows that all poetry could not outweigh these experiences and memories.
people
Peter Camenzind
Peter Camenzind is the main character of the story and first-person narrator . He is a poor farmer's son who is neglected by his parents during his childhood. In nature (mountains, lake, storm, sun, but especially in the clouds) he sees his teacher and friend who is loyal and honest to him. Hesse tells the boy's development: his school days, during which he did not find any real friends, his decision to become a writer, the death of his mother, the studies and the resulting contacts of the (feeling failed) writer, his hopeless love affairs and finally the return to his homeland.
Konrad Camenzind
Konrad Camenzind is Peter Camenzind's uncle . He carried out numerous ambitious (mainly manual) projects and found an admirer in his brother-in-law (Peter Camenzind's father). However, the relationship between the two is anything but problem-free, as Peter's father disdains his brother-in-law when he fails.
father and mother
Peter Camenzind's father chastises his son through the use of physical violence throughout his childhood. As a result, the later relationship is very distant.
Rösi Girtanner
Rösi Girtanner is the protagonist's first secret love .
Richard
Richard is a talented musician (pianist) who lived in the same house as Peter Camenzind during his studies in Zurich . Camenzind is initially too shy to speak to the handsome young man from his neighborhood, but then a close friendship develops that connects the two for a long time. A short time after Richard wistfully left his friend and companion after completing his studies, he drowns.
Erminia Aglietti
She is a successful painter, with whom Peter Camenzind got to know through his friend Richard. The protagonist falls in love with her and wants to make her a declaration of love, but first learns that she is already in a relationship.
Elisabeth
Peter Camenzind met her in the house of an artist friend and after several meetings he got into conversation with her for the first time. He is increasingly taken with her beauty and wants to take her as his wife, but he hesitates too long and she becomes engaged to another man. The protagonist cannot get over this "loss" until the end of the story.
Annunziata Nardini
Ms. Nardini, a stout 34-year-old widow, is Peter Camenzind's landlady in Assisi . Through her he finds contact with the residents in northern Italy and he learns to appreciate their temperament and their cheerfulness, so that when he leaves he for the first time has the feeling of leaving loved ones.
The carpenter and his family
When Camenzind needed a new box for his many books, he made the acquaintance of a carpenter, who was taken with Camenzind's closeness to the common people and the craftsmen. Peter Camenzind was soon accepted into the carpenter's family. There he made contact with the disabled Boppi, a brother of the carpenter's wife.
Boppi
At first in disgust, Peter Camenzind then becomes friends with the carpenter's family's new resident. He pities him, but soon realizes that he knows life (and above all love) - despite his handicap - much better than he does. He even seems to be better at observing. An intimate friendship develops until Boppi dies.
Individual chapters
First chapter
Peter Camenzind had a difficult childhood because both parents were too busy to look after him. Little Peter finds a special friend in nature who is supposed to educate and teach him throughout his childhood. In addition to the mountains, the lake, the storm and the sun, it is especially the clouds that are close to the protagonist because of their beauty. He identifies with the diverse, beautiful, fast-moving "heavenly creatures" because they are alien everywhere. Peter Camenzind only came out of his home village of Nimikon, which is located in a narrow valley, when he was at school when he climbed the Sennalpstock. At the top of the mountain he is impressed by the vastness of the world (not to say “surprised”).
Camenzind is actually indifferent to the school and the teachers, only the fact that the teachers are in possession of the science inspires awe in the young, strong-willed student. The great desire to find a true friend does not come true during school time. Feeling lonely, Peter Camenzind flees into literature and begins to write short poems himself.
second chapter
His first love for Rösi Girtanner changes him from child to youth .
When his mother is dying one night, the protagonist sits by her bed and in this way makes his first acquaintance with death and dying. This experience strengthens Camenzind immensely and even gives him courage, while on the other hand he misses his mother. The father is angry with his son because he did not wake him up the night his mother died. Camenzind flees to another world by consuming alcohol and finally travels to Zurich to study philology.
third chapter
In Zurich , Peter Camenzind made friends with the pianist Richard, who was about the same age . This cheerful, somewhat childishly naive artist enables Camenzind to make contact with various artists and celebrities. In this way he met the painter Erminia Aglietti, with whom he soon fell in love , while he was already celebrating his first successes as a feature writer and increasingly feeling called to be a poet. He wants to confess his love to her in a romantic atmosphere, but learns shortly beforehand that she already loves another man.
Chapter Four
Camenzind falls deeply into alcohol again.
He decides to drop out of his philology studies and begins to make a name for himself as a writer. As Richard's departure - he has finished his studies - approaches, the two undertake a final trip to northern Italy . Camenzind immediately feels at home in the southern European countries. After they return to Switzerland and Richard leaves, the protagonist learns that his friend drowned. Only now does he realize the deep meaning of this friendship and curses God .
Fifth chapter
Plagued by thoughts of suicide , he seeks a doctor who introduces him to the house of an artist friend he knows as therapy so that Camenzind seeks contact with other people. The protagonist begins to look back melancholy on what he has experienced and asks himself what he has actually made all of this for. Finding no real meaning in life, Camenzind spends his time in pubs drinking wine, becomes melancholy and sick, finally also conceited and mocking.
His love for the young Elisabeth, whom he met in the artist house, gives Camenzind the joy of life back. When he found out that other artists were talking about his relationship with her, he was disgusted by the superficiality of his fellow human beings and he again sought refuge in nature. There he feels the need to express its beauty in poetic words. The "wordless, constant, passionless love" for nature makes Camenzind happy again. However, this love of nature contrasts with his drunkenness and anti-sociality, and he cannot completely avoid people.
Sixth chapter
Suddenly stricken with the desire to marry and longing for a “love marriage”, he decides to marry Elisabeth. When he learns that it has now been taken, Peter Camenzind travels in despair to his father's home in Nimikon am Sennalpstock. For the second time, together with his father, he visits the local tavern he once hated and remembers what he had experienced. He wishes to die because life is not worth living, but he no longer seems to want to end life itself.
Camenzind then takes another trip to Italy , especially to Assisi , and he is once again taken with the Italian temperament. When he left Italy, he had the first feeling of leaving loved ones and leaving home. He seems to be taking something with him from the “cozy, warm folk life of the south” to Switzerland - more precisely to Basel . He visits the married Elisabeth and is happy.
Seventh chapter
Then, purely by chance, he made the acquaintance of a carpenter who was impressed by his closeness to the common people and the craftsmen. He was soon accepted into the carpenter's family. One day he met the physically disabled Boppi there, and this encounter should change the rest of his life. At first pitying the handicapped in disgust, Peter Camenzind realizes that he lives much more intensely than he does and is even able to observe the nature he loves more closely.
Eighth chapter
Peter Camenzind is torn between his new friend Boppi and the carpenter, who faces the disabled person with incomprehension and disgust, so that he fears that he will soon lose one of the two as a friend. To prevent this, Camenzind and Boppi set up their own household.
They go on excursions to the zoological garden together and enjoy the closeness and affection for one another. Even Camenzind's love for Elisabeth, which has not yet been extinguished, becomes less important. After Boppi's death, Peter wants to travel to Italy again, but he is called to Nimikon beforehand because his father is ill. In his home village, however, he cannot write what his most intimate wish would be, and so he works as a craftsman to repair his run-down parental home. Since he succeeded in soliciting damage payments from the federal government and the canton through newspaper articles for the place, which was badly devastated by an unusually heavy snowmelt, Peter Camenzind achieved a reputation in his home town and was accepted into the community .
He sums up life and his current situation and thus finds his joy in life again. In addition, he is given the prospect of owning the local inn. It remains to be seen whether he will still realize his poetry.
Emergence
Hermann Hesse lived in Basel from 1899. In August 1900 he began his first studies with Peter Camenzind . In 1901 he made his first trip to Italy. In early 1902 he began to write the book. At the end of 1902 he got in touch with S. Fischer Verlag in Berlin through the initiative of the Swiss writer Paul Ilg . Samuel Fischer encouraged Hesse to give him work.
In April 1903, Hesse went on his second trip to Italy with his girlfriend Maria Bernoulli , whom he married in August that year. By May 1903 he had finished the manuscript for Peter Camenzind and got in touch with the S. Fischer Verlag. The contract was signed in June.
publication
The text was preprinted from October to December 1903 in the Neue Deutschen Rundschau . The first edition of the book was published in January 1904, dedicated to Hesse's friend Ludwig Finckh .
reception
Hesse's first major work was received differently by his contemporaries.
Richard Schaukal , 1904:
- [...] This book with the promising beginning (childhood) is neither a novel, as one assumes, nor, as one is soon tempted to assume, a self-biography. Here is good material, the best a poet can have, his own life, rich in internal and external experiences, downright butchered, with a bravura reminiscent of the dilettante, unspoken waste and at the risk of downright impoverishment . Hesse insisted on getting rid of his experience, and so he prematurely shook it out like a potato sack in this book, which was bad from an artistic point of view. What is communicated there could be extremely affecting, but that would have to be done completely differently. […] Two or three episodes are very nice: the death of the mother […], the first attempt by the young Peter Camenzind to drink under the guidance of his father […]. But such brilliant games are hardly followed by background tracks, sober reports, written on as if by a self-bored reporter, wastelands that one is inclined to skip over.
Fritz Marti , 1904:
- [...] “Peter Camenzind” is actually less of a novel than a life picture lovingly executed in the form of an autobiography and as such basically just the vessel for the poet's own personal confessions. […] In general, the book contains an astonishing abundance of sharp observations and subtle remarks about nature and man, which amply compensates for the lack of a greater external plot. The value of the book lies less in the composition than in these details, but above all in the noble, painterly and sculptural style that is downright magnificent. [...]
Hugo Ball , 1927:
- In the "Camenzind" there is no more pietism , no parental home with commandments and teaching; the pura natura rules here. Here is a work that proceeds from the maxim that education can only begin when there is no more education .
Wolfgang Joho , 1952:
- [...] The linguistic mastery, beauty and simplicity of "Camenzind" can serve as a model for our writers today, who are often less careful with their mother tongue, as can the unreserved honesty with which Hesse gets to the bottom of the problems of his time . […] The value of Hesse's “Peter Camenzind” is mainly based […] on the fact that the book also has something positive to say to us people of another generation and a completely different world situation. Hesse places his hero, whose life story is told in first person form, at the beginning of the twentieth century [...].
classification
This first novella with autobiographical traits contains a number of themes that would later determine Hesse's work, such as the individual's search for spiritual and physical identity under the setbacks of nature and modern civilization . Peter Camenzind is an educational novel in the atypical sense, which has parallels to Der Grüne Heinrich von Gottfried Keller .
Peter Camenzind is reminiscent of Hesse's later protagonists such as Siddhartha , Goldmund or Harry Haller from Der Steppenwolf . Like them, he suffers and undertakes some intellectual, physical and spiritual journeys, during which he gets to know various landscapes in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and France. In one of the last stages of his life, when he was exclusively caring for the disabled, his actions resembled Saint Francis of Assisi , whose work Hesse also used essayistically in his study Francis of Assisi .
In literary studies , Hesse's first work is received differently. While the ingenuity of Hesse and his entire life's work is essentially beyond question, the scientific assessment of "Peter Camenzind" turns out to be very contrary. On the one hand, referred to as 'The Beginning of the Modern Educational Novel' and 'The Beginning of Hesse's Mastery', some writers also expressly criticize Hesse's 'self-love and personality cult', which comes to the fore in this story.
Biographical references
There are parallels to Hesse's life:
- Peter Camenzind is particularly drawn to the beauty of nature and spends a lot of time climbing mountains and watching the passing clouds (Hesse is an admirer of nature).
- As a toddler he was physically punished by his father and therefore had a distant relationship with him.
- He lost his mother very early (Hesse's mother had died in 1902).
- He travels to Northern Italy (Hesse travels to Italy in 1901 and 1903).
- He wishes for death several times and even considers putting an end to his life himself (Hesse tried to commit suicide in June 1892).
- He maintains contact with a family of carpenters (Hesse has always dealt with craftsmen. He completed a year-long mechanic apprenticeship).
- He wanted to become a writer and poet from an early age, but was kept from doing so for a long time by events in his environment (it was already clear to Hesse as a 13-year-old that he wanted to become a poet [“either a poet or nothing”], but prevented his parents from expressing his talent until he was of legal age )
Book editions
- Peter Camenzind . Fischer, Berlin 1904.
- Peter Camenzind . Suhrkamp, Berlin 1950.
- Peter Camenzind. Story (= Suhrkamp Taschenbuch. Vol. 161). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-518-36661-0 .
- Peter Camenzind. Roman (= Library Suhrkamp . Volume 1345). With an afterword by Siegfried Unseld . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-518-22345-3 .
- Peter Camenzind (= Suhrkamp BasisBibliothek. Volume 83). With a comment ed. v. Heribert Kuhn. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-18883-5 .
literature
- Martin Pfeifer: Materials Hermann Hesse - "Peter Camenzind" . Klett, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-12-356300-6 .
- Reiner Poppe: Peter Camenzind. Under the wheel. Knulp (= King's Explanations and Materials. Volume 17). 8th, revised edition. Bange, Hollfeld 1999, ISBN 3-8044-1621-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Martin Pfeifer : Hermann Hesse: Peter Camenzind, Unterm Rad , Knulp . König's explanations and materials, C. Bange Verlag , Holfeld 1978, ISBN (1993) 3-8044-0206-2
- ^ Richard Schaukal: A new book by Hermann Hesse , 1904
- ↑ Fritz Marti: Promising sample of a strong talent , 1904
- ^ Hugo Ball: Hermann Hesse. His life and his work . S. Fischer, Berlin 1927. ( online at Projekt Gutenberg )
- ↑ Wolfgang Joho: Peter Camenzind and we , 1952