Red Leaves
Red Leaves is the original American title of a short story by William Faulkner , which in its German translation has the title Rotes Laub .
publication
It was first published on October 25, 1930 in the Saturday Evening Post . It was one of the first stories Faulkner could sell to a major magazine; In 1931 Rotes Laub was reprinted in the short story collection Thesis 13 . In general, the present short story is one of Faulkner's most frequently printed or even read at English / American universities.
action
The story is about events among the American Indians , so Red Leaves is a common name in the USA, especially for the Chickasaw tribe . The main feature of the plot is that the chief Issetibbeha has died and, according to custom, his horse, dog and personal servant are buried with him. Due to the rapprochement with the white population in their region, the Indians have had black slaves as house servants for some time now, who obviously have a different attitude towards them. The story begins when two elderly Indians go to the black huts. The older of them - Three Basket - is already firmly assuming that the slave to be fetched has escaped because he does not want to die. The slave of the previous chief Doom would have run away at that time too. You find yourself confirmed in the black settlement. The escape of the slave and the hunt for him by the Indians are now illuminated from several narrative perspectives. Flashbacks and reflections of one's own action also play a central role in this description. What is particularly striking is the listlessness of the new chief, Moketubbe, who obviously tries to evade the duties or even the burden of his new office. Towards the end the slave is seized without much resistance and handed over to his fate.
Effect and comment
Edmond Loris described Rotes Laub in A Reader's Guide to William Faulkner: The Short Stories as the vision of the unstoppable, brutal model of nature that determines that everything that lives must die .
In Faulkner and the Mississippi Indians , author Elmo Howell argues that red foliage is not an accurate representation of Chickasaw Indian life; Faulkner apparently did not even seek to do this. Contrary to what is described in the short story, cannibalistic acts were never observed within this tribe.
Alleged influence of Hemingway on Faulkner in this story
The story is said that Faulkner at the transcript of Ernest Hemingway's bullfighting - Essay Death in the Afternoon of being inspired; in fact, Faulkner's short story Rotes Laub was published as early as 1930, while Hemingway's nonfiction book did not appear until 1932. Furthermore, there was no known correspondence between Faulkner and Hemingway. According to some sources, Faulkner should have valued Hemingway as a writer, but this did not seem to be based on reciprocity. When Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954 , he noticed that authors such as Mark Twain , Henry James , Bernard Berenson or Carl Sandburg deserved the prize more than Sinclair Lewis (first US Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1930) or William Faulkner (winner for 1949). Furthermore, Faulkner's and Hemingway's literary styles were very different. An exchange between the two writers can therefore be ruled out.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ McFarland, Dorothy Tuck (1964). Crowell's Handbook of Faulkner. Crowell. p. 174.
- ^ Volpe, Edmond Loris (2004). A Reader's Guide to William Faulkner: The Short Stories. Syracuse University Press. p. 138. ISBN 0-8156-3047-6 .
- ↑ Ernest Hemingway. Collected Works, Volume 10, Reports, page 516