Pierre or the ambiguities
Pierre or the ambiguities ( English Pierre: or, The Ambiguities ) is the seventh novel by Herman Melville and was written in 1852 immediately after his successful work Moby-Dick . The work can be read as a psychological or sentimental novel, even as a horror novel. It is thus in line with the psychological-analytical novels by Charles Brockden Brown and Nathaniel Hawthorne . It is the only novel by Melville in which he chooses the American mainland as the setting and places female protagonists at the center of the action.
content
The protagonist of the novel, Pierre, grows up sheltered with his wealthy, widowed mother in New York State. As befits his status, he becomes engaged to Lucy Tartan, the daughter of a distinguished New York family. A little later he meets Isabel Banford, who claims that she is the illegitimate daughter of his father, whom he had previously only seen as a radiantly virtuous role model. Pierre's mother fears a family scandal and turns against Isabel. Pierre then fled to New York with Isabel, where he tried unsuccessfully as a writer. The two live together as a couple and pretend to be married. With the theme of incest , Melville challenges Puritan America. The novel ends tragically.
language
The linguistic style of the novel is considered to be rich in imperfections and bumps. The sentences are often long and confused and grammatically extravagant. At times the style appears hectic to fleeting, at other times there are sequences with agonizing insistence. Again and again neologisms and repetitive word mannerisms can be found. Especially in the first third of the novel, the style can also be described as pathetic to the limit of satire. The book reaches a climax in terms of linguistic imagination in a dream sequence, the so-called “Enceladus dream”.
reception
"'Melville has gone mad', judged his contemporaries."
At the time, the work was seen as sentimental kitsch. Today, the novel is considered a work that was far ahead of its time and one of the first to describe the problems of a fatherless society.
In his review, Klaus Modick describes the work as a "barely encrypted self-portrait": Melville gave an insight into his own life, into his own work. The novel is difficult to read and understand, it provides more questions than answers. Modick quotes the English writer DH Lawrence as saying that Melville was with his masterpiece Moby-Dick following Pierre "gone half overboard".
As the essence of the novel, Niels Werber identified the paradox that “[t] he germ cell and reproductive institution of society” is threatened by “what it presupposes: sexuality”. Melville expresses this in clauses. He closed his review with the words: "In the puritanical USA he made no friends with his ambiguities."
The film Pola X is based on the work of Melville.
expenditure
The original appeared in 1852 under the English title Pierre: or, The Ambiguities in New York by Harper & Brothers. The German first edition took place in 1965 under the title Pierre or Im Kampf mit der Sphinx in Claassen-Verlag . The novel was published as an e-book under the short title Pierre . In 2002 a German edition was published, translated by Christa Schuenke , which was also offered in paperback the following year.
- Herman Melville: Pierre or The Ambiguities . Ed .: Daniel Göske. Hanser, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-446-17121-5 (740 pages).
Web links
- Review notes on Pierre or The Ambiguities at perlentaucher.de
- Ulrich Greiner : Northwest Passage. How Herman Melville explores new countries in his novel "Pierre" and is almost lost in them. In: The time. January 9, 2003, p. 37 , accessed June 18, 2017 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Leviathan is not the biggest fish. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 21, 2002, accessed on May 25, 2015 (review of the 2002 edition by Hanser-Verlag).
- ↑ Kindler's literature dictionary in dtv . tape 9 . Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-423-05999-0 , pp. 7516 .
- ↑ Kindler's literature dictionary in dtv . tape 9 . Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-423-05999-0 , pp. 7516-7517 .
- ↑ Ortrud Gutjahr: Kulturtheorie . Königshausen & Neumann , Würzburg 2005, ISBN 978-3-8260-3067-3 , p. 127-133 .
- ^ Klaus Modick : Pierre or the ambiguities. Deutschlandfunk, January 11, 2003, accessed June 3, 2015 .
- ↑ Niels Werber: Fall on solid ground. Herman Melville goes ashore with the newly translated family novel "Pierre". And behold, the laws of the sea rule there too . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . No. 21/2003 , January 25, 2003, literature, p. 12 .