Rumo & The Miracles in the Dark

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Rumo and His Miraculous Adventures is a fantasy - novel by Walter Moers , published in April of 2003. It is the author's third novel in the Zamonien series and describes the adventures of the Wolpertinger Rumo, who, after childhood as a prisoner of the Devil's Rock Cyclops, found his way to the city of the Wolpertinger and to his great love Rala. When all Wolpertingers are kidnapped into the lower world, Rumo proves himself to be a true hero who, after numerous adventures and battles, can free Rala and the Wolperting from the captivity of the evil inhabitants of the lower world city of Hel.

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Part I: "Obenwelt"

The Wolpertinger Rumo is kidnapped at puppy age together with its owners, friendly Fhernhach gnomes, by devil's rock cyclops and imprisoned on their devil's rock floating in the sea. This happens exactly on the day on which three important developments in the life of the Wolpertinger begin: First of all, his first tooth grows (the dentition later becomes Rumo's most important weapon). Then Rumo walks on two legs for the first time and thus becomes an upright Wolpertinger who, in contrast to the wild Wolpertinger, can develop skills such as speaking, reading and writing. Finally, Rumo smells the silver thread for the first time (Wolpertingers also perceive olfactory stimuli visually ).

As it turns out after the kidnapping, Rumo and the Fhernhachenzwerge are now part of the pantry of the Teufelsfels Cyclops, who feed on all Zamonian creatures and prefer to eat them alive. During the time of his captivity, Rumo made the acquaintance of the shark maggot Volzotan Smeik. Smeik teaches him to speak and gives him extensive theoretical combat knowledge, also in the hope that Rumo, as a growing Wolpertinger, will be able to defeat the Devil's Rock Cyclops one day and set them all free.

Smeik's plan works: Rumo actually succeeds in defeating the Devil's Rock Cyclops in a spectacular battle. It turns out that Rumo is a combative natural talent. All the prisoners of the Devil's Rock Cyclops, including Rumo and Smeik, manage to escape ashore from the Devil's Rock.

After their escape, Rumo and Smeik wander through Zamonia - initially together, later separately. While Smeik travels to the city of Nebelheim, Rumo follows his silver thread and reaches the city of Wolperting, the home of all Wolperting people who walk upright. There he finds the origin of the silver thread in the form of Rala from Wolpertingen. Rumo learns that every Wolpertinger follows a silver thread that leads him to Wolperting and to his great love. Rumo becomes part of the society in Wolperting: He goes to school, learns to read, write and fight there. He also found that he was very good at carpentry. However, he does not succeed in confessing his love to Rala, and he also does not realize that Rala has long been in love with him.

When Rumo is out and about in the dangerous Nurnenwald to get a piece of the precious wood from the Nurnenwald oak and to carve a box out of it as a present for Rala, all Wolpertingers disappear from the city. All that remains is a large hole in the ground, which turns out to be the entrance to the world below. Rumo follows the silver thread, the weather of Rala, into the lower world with the firm intention to save Rala and the Wolpertinger.

Part II: "Below World"

In the lower world, Rumo first encounters the subterranean oil lake, on which eerie creatures, the dead Yeti, are traveling with their boats. Rumo manages to persuade the leader of the Yeti, Storr the Reaper, to take him across to the other bank. Rumo also learns from Storr that the Wolpertingans were kidnapped as prisoners in the lower world town of Hel.

The lower world is its own cosmos, the capital of which is Hel. It is ruled by a self-loving tyrant named Gaunab and is inhabited by the fair-skinned slipways. In addition, Hel is the gathering point for all scum from the upper world. Relatively newcomers are the copper guys, an army of machine people, with their leader General Ticktack. The only seemingly idyllic Wolperting turns out to be a city of traps built by the inhabitants of the below world: an empty city that only serves to gradually fill itself with residents who are then forcibly recruited as gladiators for deadly fighting games in the Theater of the Beautiful Deaths.

Rumo meets Ukobach, a Hellinger, and Ribesehl, a homunculus and friend of Ukobach, on his way to Hel. Rumo gets the two of them to show him a way into town. When he gets there, he manages to free the Wolpertinger. Rumo also finds his friend Smeik among the prisoners, who, after a trip to the city of Nebelheim, another city of traps, also ended up as a prisoner in Hel. The Wolpertinger start a liberation struggle against the Hellinger and the Army of the Copper Guys, surprisingly supported by Storr the Reaper and his Yetis, who suddenly appear in the city. After Rumo can wrest his heart, which is made of Zamonin, from General Ticktack, the general and his army of copper guys are defeated.

The Wolpertinger and their friends flee from Hel towards the upper world, with the ruler Gaunab and his eerie monsters, the Vrahoks, close on their heels. They finally manage to leave the lower world, because Storr the reaper and his yetis sacrifice themselves and bring the oil lake cave to collapse; all Wolpertinger pursuers are buried under the collapsing cave. The city of Hel is also depopulated by an insidious plague that an alchemist actually developed as a weapon for General Ticktack.

The Wolpertinger move back into their empty city and Rumo and Rala finally find each other.

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Motifs and literary allusions

Walter Moers used a multitude of motifs and literary allusions in his novel:

The silver thread stands for the great love that Rumo first perceived at the beginning of the novel and which from now on - like the blue flower of romanticism - drives the action forward in many places.

To design the lower world, Moers makes use of numerous myths, for example Nordic and Greek mythology . Thus, Rumo's descent in secondary literature has been compared with Orpheus ' descent into the underworld, among other things . Some authors also compare Moers' representation of the underworld with representations of Christian penal hell . Other authors point out that for such an analogy between the underworld and punishment hell the Christian conceptions of the afterlife are missing in Moers' novels, and rather draw parallels between the world below and journeys from the Greek mythology.

The numerous fighting scenes are also reminiscent of the colportage novels of the 19th century such as the novels by Karl May and the adventure novels in the style of Alexandre Dumas. Especially in fencing matches, such as the fight in the fencing garden of Wolpertinger fencing instructor Uschan de Lucca, Moers plays with clichés from classic coat-and-epee films.

Anagrams

As in the previous novel Ensel und Krete and later even more so in The City of Dreaming Books and Der Schrecksenmeister , Moers uses anagrams with which he alludes to literary models or mythological models: Hel is not under the world ash Yggdrasil from Nordic mythology, but under the Nurnenwald oak Yggdra Sil, surrounded by dangerous "Nurnen". Despite the similarity of names between “Nurnen” and the Norns from Nordic mythology, the Nurnen in Rumo are not goddesses of fate. This role is more likely to be played by the terrors Noppes Pa, Popsipil and Chch, whom Rumo meets at the Wolperting fair.

Plot structure

The research emphasizes that the novel follows a classic heroic story in structure and plot, even if the novel contains many humorous interludes. This also fits the cover text and the beginning of the first chapter, both of which indicate that Rumo has what it takes to be the greatest hero of Zamonia.

There are also many elements from the medieval Arthurian novel . The plot is divided into two parts, which is reminiscent of the Arthurian double path: The first part (Obenwelt) is about the protagonist finding his home in order to acquire his education and his equipment as a hero. In the second part (lower world) this home is taken from him and a crisis arises. Rumo has to prove himself as a hero and it is only in this way that he finds what defines his real destiny. With the element of the "silver thread" a love story is also woven into it.

Position in literary history

Classification in the work of the author

Rumo & Die Wunder im Dunkeln is the third novel by Walter Moers, which is set in Zamonia , and follows on from The 13½ Lives of Captain Blaubär and Ensel and Krete . Moers plays with different literary genres in his Zamonienromanen: After Die 13½ Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär initially followed the pattern of an educational novel and Ensel and Krete a fairy tale parody, Rumo is now followed by a heroic story. Rumo and the supporting character Volzotan Smeik have already played a supporting role in The 13½ Lives of Captain Blaubär , but they were rather dodgy characters there.

Literary role models and literary genre

The classification of Rumo & The Miracles in the Dark into a literary genre is not entirely clear. In the press and in literary research, the novel is often referred to as children's and youth literature or as a fantasy novel. Moers himself does not regard fantasy authors like Tolkien as his role models, but rather refers in interviews to older classics such as adventure and horror novels by Edgar Allan Poe , Mary Shelley , Bram Stoker or Jules Verne . He also stresses that he sees young people as possible readers of his novels, but not as his main audience. If you look at the sometimes bloodthirsty plot in Rumo & Die Wunder im Dunkeln , its classification as a children's book has already been questioned in reviews.

Moers himself described the book as an adventure novel . In fact, many reminiscences of the adventure genre of different eras can be discovered in it, such as medieval Aventiure journeys and heroic epics as well as classics such as Alexandre Dumas , Jules Verne and Karl May .

reception

Rumo and The Miracles in the Dark was a commercial success; the novel climbed to number 3 on the Spiegel bestseller list . The novel has been translated into a variety of languages ​​including English, Finnish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Slovak, Czech, Korean, Thai, and Taiwanese. An audio book with the unabridged text has also been published by HörbucHHamburg , read by Dirk Bach .

See also

literature

Text output

  • Rumo & The Miracles in the Dark . Piper, Munich 2003, ISBN 3492045480 . Hardback edition
  • Rumo & The Miracles in the Dark . Piper, Munich 2004, ISBN 3492241778 . Paperback
  • Rumo & The Miracles in the Dark . Albrecht Knaus Verlag (August 28, 2017), ISBN 3813507955 . Hardback edition

Audio book

  • Rumo & The Miracles in the Dark . Audiobook Hamburg, 2004, ISBN 3899031725 .

Secondary literature

  • Maren J. Conrad: »Blood! Blood! Blood! «The Arthurian epic as heroic inheritance of taciturn Wolpertinger. In: Gerrit Lembke (Ed.): Walter Moers' Zamonien-Romane. Surveying a fictional continent. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89971-906-2 , pp. 235-259.
  • Mario Fesler: The Zamonien novels by Walter Moers as a contemporary representative of the fantasy genre (master's thesis). GRIN-Verlag, Norderstedt 2007, ISBN 978-3638950923 .
  • Markwart Herzog: From Narnia via Hogwarts and Zamonia to Fowl Manor. Underworld journeys in contemporary fantastic children's and youth literature . In: Markwart Herzog (Hrsg.): Hell trips. History and topicality of a myth . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3170193345 , pp. 213-243.
  • Katja Pawlik: Zamonic Talks with the Dead - About the comedy of the “last questions” . In: Hajo Diekmannshenke / Stefan Neuhaus / Uta Schaffers (eds.): The comic in culture . Tectum, Marburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-8288-3663-1 , pp. 345-357.
  • Katja Pawlik: From Atlantis to Zamonia, from Menippos to Moers: Walter Moers' Zamonia novels in the context of Menippi satire . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8260-5899-8 .
  • Mareike Wegner: "Knowledge is night!" Parodic procedures in Walter Moers' Zamonien novels and in "Wilde Reise durch die Nacht" . Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2016, ISBN 978-3-8498-1137-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Matthias Heine: The novel Rumo - Here is beautiful torture. In: Welt (Online), April 12, 2003, accessed August 26, 2018.
  2. ↑ Markwart Herzog: From Narnia via Hogwarts and Zamonia to Fowl Manor. Underworld journeys in contemporary fantastic children's and youth literature. In: Markwart Herzog (Hrsg.): Hell trips. History and topicality of a myth. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3170193345 , p. 222.
  3. ↑ Katja Pawlik: From Atlantis to Zamonien, from Menippos to Moers: Walter Moers' Zamonia novels in the context of Menippi satire . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8260-5899-8 , p. 304 .
  4. ^ Eva Oppermann: Walter Moers' Zamonische novels in comparison with classical English nonsense . In: Gerrit Lembke (Ed.): Walter Moers' Zamonien-Romane. Surveying a fictional continent . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89971-906-2 , p. 125 .
  5. ↑ Katja Pawlik: From Atlantis to Zamonien, from Menippos to Moers: Walter Moers' Zamonia novels in the context of Menippi satire . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8260-5899-8 , p. 313 .
  6. ↑ Mareike Wegner: "Knowledge is Night!" Parodic procedures in Walter Moers' Zamonien novels and in "Wilde Reise durch die Nacht" . Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2016, ISBN 978-3-8498-1137-2 , p. 100 .
  7. ↑ Maren J. Conrad: »Blood! Blood! Blood! «The Arthurian epic as heroic inheritance of taciturn Wolpertinger . In: Gerrit Lembke (Ed.): Walter Moers' Zamonien-Romane. Surveying a fictional continent . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89971-906-2 , p. 235-259 .
  8. ↑ Mareike Wegner: "Knowledge is Night!" Parodic procedures in Walter Moers' Zamonien novels and in "Wilde Reise durch die Nacht" . Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2016, ISBN 978-3-8498-1137-2 , p. 101 .
  9. ↑ Matthias Heine: The novel Rumo - Here is beautiful torture. In: Welt (Online), April 12, 2003, accessed August 26, 2018.
  10. ↑ Mario Fesler: The Zamonien novels by Walter Moers as a contemporary representative of the fantasy genre . Königshausen & Neumann, Norderstedt 2007.
  11. ↑ Katja Pawlik: From Atlantis to Zamonien, from Menippos to Moers: Walter Moers' Zamonia novels in the context of Menippi satire . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8260-5899-8 , p. 23, 31-34 .
  12. ↑ Interview im Falter, edition 17/03 of April 23, 2003 ( Memento of January 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  13. ↑ Der Spiegel 19/2003
  14. ↑ Gerrit Lembke: "This is where the story begins." Moers' Zamonien novels. Surveying a fictional continent . In: Gerrit Lembke (Ed.): Walter Moers' Zamonien-Romane. Surveying a fictional continent . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89971-906-2 , p. 40 .