Pippo Spano

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Pippo Spano is a novella by Heinrich Mann - written in Florence in spring 1903 - published in December 1904 in the collection of flutes and daggers at Albert Langen's in Munich.

The writer Mario Malvolto wants to be as brave as his idol, Pippo Spano, the Turkish conqueror. The fashion writer is decried as a murderer.

time and place

The action can be set in the immediate vicinity of Florence at the turn of the 20th century.

action

Andrea del Castagno around 1450:
The Condottiere Pippo Spano,
fresco , Uffizi Gallery , Florence

On a moonlit night, Malvolto lets himself be driven from Florence to the nearby town of Settignano through a landscape in which “the flowering trees float in the pale light”. When he got home, the man of letters had a conversation with Pippo Spano, more precisely with the portrait of Condottiere on the wall above the desk. The writer scolds himself a neurasthenic who, in his compulsion to be great, needs a conscience like the mercenary leader in the portrait on the wall. Malvolto's claim is no small. Art should "create a second, more powerful life for the inadequate late-born". In his “melancholy pride”, however, he feels that his work was not created through force, but merely through the “will to it”. Malvolto asks impatiently about the wages: What good is fame, "if it does not earn love". Meant is the love for the beautiful 17-year-old Contessina Gemma Cantoggi from Florence. The young girl comes to see the writer in Settignano. It worships him. He, for whom “the world is only material from which to form sentences”, sleeps with her again and again. One reason: the mean Malvolto, himself weak, "has to" penetrate "beautiful, strong people" - like Gemma or Pippo Spano. After the enjoyment, however, he would like to “be rid of the girl soon”. But it's not quite that far yet. While Malvolto waits for Gemma, the scribe has to admit his inexplicable writing inhibitions. Although he feels that Gemma has made a person out of him, although he has the greatest thoughts - the artist is forcing himself on the world with debauchery, "the name of art" - but the half-finished manuscript in the desk drawer remains untouched. The nerve-wracking wait is over. Gemma is coming back. The very young woman who first adores the artist in Malvolto urges him to continue writing. Nothing clever comes of it. Malvolto burns his manuscript and puts Gemma in the picture. There is only love between the two "and then death comes". Because strong people, to whom Malvolto would like to count himself alongside Gemma and Pippo Spano, die “all at once”.

Gemma picks up the terrible thought of death. At the last meeting - under the portrait of Pippo Spanos - she opens up to Malvolto: “Dear, we have to die.” The external reason: Gemma was photographed naked on Malvolto's terrace. The photographic work of the voyeuristic onlookers found sales in Florence. Malvolto initially made a few excuses, but then stabbed Gemma in a horrible bloodlust "before she expected it". When the dying Gemma looks to ask that Malvolto lay hands on him, as announced, the coward thinks: 'What is the fate of this dying man to do with me!' and hesitates until Gemma screams "Murderer!" and dies.

Malvolto's realization comes too late. He wanted to “die like the strong: all at once” and must now count himself among the weak. His assignment of blame fits in with this. Pippo Spano on the wall, a strong man, seduced Malvolto, the “stuck comedian”.

Quote

Malvolto to Pippo Spano: Great works of art only have such brilliant highs because they have such terrifying lows .

shape

The reader has to be careful. Whenever verbatim speech is written in single quotes, Malvolto thinks. Or the man of letters speaks of the case with Pippo Spano, who looks down more or less indifferently from the portrait or answers from time to time - of course only in his mind.

Self-testimony

  • I wrote “Pippo Spano” in Florence in 1903 in a lovely springtime when I was living on Lungaro delle Grazie, in the middle of the best of Florence.

accusation

In 1917, the amendment in Munich triggered a procedure for “disseminating lewd writings”. The author escaped conviction due to the statute of limitations.

reception

  • In March 1916, Rilke was full of praise in a letter to Lou Albert-Lasard - admired the author's “extraordinarily mastered art” and even placed him above Flaubert .
  • Paul Block discusses the novella on May 14, 1917 in the Berliner Tageblatt .
  • For a long time Heinrich Mann considered the novella to be his most important.
  • In the novella, Nietzsche's conceptual world haunted .
  • Malvolto is "a weak character who seeks to play his part in strength".
  • The man of letters Malvolto is Heinrich Mann's answer to “Nietzsche's skeptical view of the artist as a comedian”.
  • Several reviewers highlight Gemma's natural freshness. So was z. B. “the nanny [Gemma] in the literature of the fin de siècle conceded an innocent sexual force of nature”.
  • Koopmann points to one of the author's talents - the ability to dramatic storytelling; that is, the presentation of real life without unnecessary accessories.
  • Gemma from speaking - says Heide Eilert - soon as the marble statue , the Aphrodite - Persephone , the Venus Libidina . The actually weak Malvolto, how he “adores” the “power” of Pippo Spanos, reminds us of both d'Annunzio and Nietzsche's image of the artist as a “vampire”. It looks as if Pippo, looking down from his portrait on the wall, is following all of Malvolto's activities with irony. The text can be read as Heinrich Mann's analysis of Renaissanceism . In his work The Renaissance Cult around 1900 and its Overcoming , Walther Rehm turned the tables in 1929; So it is precisely in this regard that he has been cleverly profiled as a Heinrich Mann opponent.

literature

swell

  • Heinrich Mann: Artist novels. Illustrations Bert Heller . Selection and epilogue Helga Bemmann . Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1961, pp. 29–86.

First edition

  • Heinrich Mann: Flutes and Daggers . Novellas. Albert Langen, Munich 1905. (Contents: Pippo Spano , Fulvia. Three-minute novel and a corridor in front of the gate )

expenditure

  • Heinrich Mann: Artist novels. Pippo Spano - actress - The Branzilla . (= Reclams Universal Library. 8381). Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-15-008381-8 .
  • Pippo Spano. In: Flutes and Daggers. Novellas. (= Heinrich Mann. Study edition in individual volumes). Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-596-25931-2 , pp. 9–58.

Secondary literature

  • Klaus Schröter : Heinrich Mann . Reinbek near Hamburg 1967, ISBN 3-499-50125-2 .
  • Sigrid Anger (Ed.): Heinrich Mann. 1871-1950. Work and life in documents and images. Montage-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1977.
  • Volker Ebersbach: Heinrich Mann. Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig 1978, pp. 115-117.
  • Rolf Füllmann: Heinrich Mann's 'Pippo Spano': the Renaissance image as an icon of a failed self-technique. In: Ders .: The novella of the neo-renaissance between 'Gründerzeit' and 'Untergang' (1870-1945): reflections in the rear-view mirror . Tectum, Marburg 2016, pp. 310–328. ISBN 978-3-8288-3700-3 ( content )
  • Helmut Koopmann In: Gunter E. Grimm , Frank Rainer Max (Hrsg.): German poets. Life and work of German-speaking authors . Volume 7: From the beginning to the middle of the 20th century . Reclam, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-15-008617-5 .
  • Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1900–1918. Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9 , p. 364.
  • Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German authors A - Z. Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 , pp. 333-334.
  • Hans Richard Brittnacher: The Poet as Condottiere? Heinrich Mann's farewell to the Renaissance. In: Walter Delabar, Walter Fähnders (ed.): Heinrich Mann (1871–1950) . (= Memoria. Volume 4). Weidler, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89693-437-6 , pp. 61-76.
  • Ludwig Marcuse : Condottiere and tribune of the people . In: The time . No. 44/1963. (Review)

annotation

  1. ↑ Pippo Spano is one of the names by which Philippo Scolari is known in Italy .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anger p. 101.
  2. ↑ Sprengel, p. 333, 9. Zvu
  3. ↑ Bemmann in the afterword of the source, p. 161, 5th Zvu
  4. ↑ Source, p. 40, 4th Zvu
  5. ↑ From a letter of April 20, 1948 to Karl Lemke, quoted in Schröter, p. 54, 11. Zvo
  6. ↑ Anger, p. 183, 4th Zvu
  7. ↑ Rilke, quoted in the 2011 edition (Peter-Paul Schneider (Hrsg.)), P. 134, subsection 13
  8. ^ Paul Block in the NDB
  9. ↑ 2011 edition (Peter-Paul Schneider (Ed.)), P. 146, last entry
  10. ↑ Anger, p. 546, 10th Zvu
  11. ↑ Bemmann in the afterword of the source, p. 162, 4. Zvo
  12. ↑ Quoted in Ebersbach, p. 115, 5th Zvu
  13. ↑ Sprengel, p. 333, 15. Zvu
  14. ↑ Brittnacher, p. 71, 11. Zvo
  15. ↑ Koopmann, p. 33 below
  16. ↑ Heide Eilert in the afterword of the 2011 edition (Peter-Paul Schneider (Ed.)), Pp. 97–110.
  17. ↑ Eilert, p. 102, 13. Zvu
  18. ↑ Eilert, p. 99, 5. Zvo and p. 101, 16. Zvu
  19. ↑ Eilert, p. 99, 12. Zvu
  20. ↑ Eilert, p. 99, 4th Zvu
  21. ↑ Walther Rehm at leo-bw.de
  22. ^ Eilert, p. 100, 10. Zvo to 12. Zvu