Novel of a desolation

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The novel of a desolation , original Danish title: Hærværk , is a novel by Tom Kristensen published in Denmark in 1930 . It was not until 62 years later that the novel was published in German in 1992 by Volk und Welt .

The novel is about the alcoholic Ole Jastrau, who is employed as a literary critic for the newspaper "Das Tageblatt" ("Dagbladet").

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"Fear the soul and do not worship it, / because it is like a vice."

- Motto of the novel of a desolation

The novel begins with Ole Jstrau, who lives with his wife and son in an apartment on Istedgade on Vesterbro ( Copenhagen ), is prevented from reading by a friend from the past, the communist Sanders, and his friend, the poet Steffensen .

The two seek asylum in Jastrau's apartment because the police are looking for them as communists. It is election night and if the Social Democrats win the election, an amnesty will be pronounced for wanted communists. During the visit, the two mock Jastrau because he has become bourgeois and sedate, and remind him of his socialist past as an experimental poet.

Jastrau's wife Johanne is dissatisfied with the situation and decides to spend the night with her son with her parents. Jastrau, on the other hand, fled to the editorial office and the nearby bar (Bar des Artistes), where he got drunk. Here he also learns from Arne Vuldum, the newspaper's critic for foreign literature, that the poet Steffensen's real name is Stefani and is the son of the pharmacist HC Stefani, who wrote a book about which Jastrau has just written a review.

The next morning the Social Democrats won the election and the two fugitives can leave the apartment. Before that, Jastrau had read some of the poems that Steffensen had written over the course of the night. Here he reads u. a. these sentences, which, apart from the fact that they gave the novel its title, are indicative of the feelings that Jastrau and the poet both share.

"Men are not afraid of problems in the long run
and in the synergy of problems and problems.
Jeg has long mod ski catastrophes
and mod hærværk and pludselig død. "

“My fear needs redemption in longing
in visions of horror and need.
I long for ship disasters
after devastation and sudden death. "

The visit of the two aroused a guilty conscience in Jastrau. He soon begins to think that he has betrayed his revolutionary and brazen youth as a poet. He decides, at the beginning unconsciously, later consciously, to go "to the dogs", i. H. drink yourself to death. The whole thing doesn't get any better when Steffensen shows up and wants to stay the night, angry that the poems he wrote and which Jastrau gave to the daily newspaper for publication were printed with the name Stefani underneath. Jastrau soon learns that a venereal disease flourishes in the Stefani family, which is shared by both the son and the father and spread through debauchery of both. Steffensen is in Copenhagen with the housekeeper of the family he may or may not have infected with the disease. Obviously, Steffensen also intends to drink himself to death, and he and Jastrau will soon end up in a destructive spiral of drinking and doing nothing.

When they finally decide to respond in their constant decline, it does so in the form of an unsuccessful revolt against the condescending Sanders and the communist outlook for which he stands, and in the form of devastation against the Catholic Church for which Vuldum tried, Jastrau to be interested.

The novel continues with a vivid description of Jastrau's descent, which burns down many bridges behind it. The climax is when he sees his own apartment go up in flames while visiting a whore who happens to have a courtyard apartment across from his own.

Finally, one of the editors at Tageblatt, the conservative Kryger, offered him a trip to Germany. A badly hidden attempt to pull Jastrau out of his negative self-destruction. The novel ends ambiguously as it does not reveal whether he accepts the offer or goes down while drinking in Copenhagen.

"Novel of Desolation" as a novel of the clef

Tom Kristensen was in the 1920s, employees at the newspaper policies have been indicated and it is that the novel is in fact a roman à clef , the real events and people portrays during the election of the 1929th Contemporaries also testified that many of the characters in the novel are portrayals of real people, and the reception of the book when it came out in 1930 included a great deal of annoyance at what was exposed.

It was said that the Tageblatt was Politiken, Vuldum was literary critic Kai Friis Møller and editor Iversen was Henrik Cavling . The Bar des Artistes would be the bar in the Hotel Kong Frederik on the Town Hall Square in Copenhagen, Tom Kristensen's drinking problems would be correct, etc. Tom Kristensen himself admits in an interview that these people agree, but Steffensen and the Stefani family and the plot of the book itself are fiction - a psychological description of a man's struggle to make the connection between past and present.

expenditure

  • Hærværk. Gyldendal, København 1930. First edition
  • Novel of a desolation. From the Danish by Gisela Perlet. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-353-00855-1 .

filming

The novel of a desolation was filmed in 1977 under the Danish original title Hærværk by Ole Roos with Ole Ernst in the leading role.

literature

  • Martin Abraham: Tom Kristensen's "Hærværk" as a drinking novel. Kiel, 1998, (Master's thesis). ( Online in Google Book Search)
  • Aage Jørgensen (Ed.): Omkring Hærværk. Hans Reitzels Forlag, Copenhagen, 1969.
  • Marianne Barlyng, Søren Schou (ed.): Københavner Romaner. Borgen, Copenhagen 1996.
  • Byram, Michael: The reality of Tom Kristensens Hærværk. In: Scandinavica , XV, 1976, pp. 29-37.
  • Lars Handesten: Alligevel så elsker vi byen - Tolv kapitler af København's literary history. CA Reitzel, Copenhagen 1996. ISBN 9788774219873
  • Mogens Bjerring Hansen: Person and vision - “Hærværk” and dens forudsætninger. , GMT, 1972. ISBN 87-87392-23-2
  • May Schack: Hærværk. In: Critique , 93, 1990, pp. 36-44.
  • Anika Hillmann: The big city in Scandinavian literature. Analyzed using the novels Hærværk, Rand, Röda Rummet, Sult and Stuk. Diplomica Verlag, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8428-9778-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Aage Jørgensen: Omkring Hærværk, 1969, pp. 20-74.
  2. ^ In: Politiken , April 3, 1960.
  3. ↑ Hærværk. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Review: Børge Gedsø Madsen: Jørgensen, Aage: Omkring Hærværk . In: Scandinavian Studies , Volume 42, No. 2 (May 1970) (pp. 211-212) ( JSTOR Stable Url , English, accessed May 15, 2013.)