Yesterday's shadow

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Shadow of yesterday (English original title: Call For The Dead ) is the German translation of the 1961 debut novel by John le Carré . Here is George Smiley introduced the later master spy from le Carré's Karla trilogy. The German translation by Ortwin Much was published in 1963.

The beginnings of George Smileys

In Yesterday's Shadow , Smiley is not yet the genius spy of the other novels, but a low-ranking defense agent. The story begins with a "curriculum vitae," a short résumé of Smiley, from which we learn that he is "short, fat, and of a calm disposition," "seems to spend a lot of money on really miserable suits," "which appears its frame looked like the skin of a shriveled toad. " He can "show neither school, parents, regiment or occupation, nor wealth or poverty;" his wife, Lady Ann Sercomb, left him after two years for a Cuban racing driver.

Smiley cultivates a predilection for Germany and the “lesser-known German poets”, especially of the 17th century, but also older German literature such as the works of Grimmelshausen . The contemporary German writers and philosophers are also familiar to him. He quotes in English, for example, from Schiller's poems. German is his second mother tongue. He spent his childhood in Hamburg and knows the Black Forest well (from Smiley's People). He attended a modest middle school, a modest college in Oxford, and was questioned "on a beautiful morning in July, 1928, by the Examination Board of the Overseas Academic Research Committee" - to offer him a position in the Secret Service .

First he worked for two years as an English lecturer at a small German university, looking for potential agents. “In this role, Smiley was the international bought mercenary of his profession, immoral and with no motive other than personal gain.” When the Nazis take power in Germany, he begins “to hate the loudmouthed underhanded invasion of the new Germany, the pounding and roar, "then he has to watch the book burnings of 1937," and at the same time with the hatred he was overcome by the triumph that he knew his opponent. "

In 1939 he came to Sweden, then back to England in 1943, where he was supposed to train new people. After the end of the war came the great turning point and a difficult time. “ NATO and all the desperate measures the Americans envisaged completely changed the nature of Smiley's service ... the amateur inspiration of a handful of highly skilled, poorly paid men was the bustle, bureaucratism, and intrigue of a large ministerial section gone ... It was all a whole new world for Smiley. The corridors lit as bright as day, the smart young men. He felt homely and old-fashioned. ”After a few pages, he was already submitting his request for dismissal. At the end of the novel he is rehabilitated, but refuses a new position in the field of satellite espionage that has been offered to him. It will be reactivated two years later, as the story continues in le Carré's third novel The Spy Who Came Out of the Cold .

Content: The Samuel Fennan case

Smiley routinely investigates an anonymous lead that Samuel Fennan, a Foreign Office official , was a member of the Communist Party . After an interrogation, he assures Fennan that he is exonerated. However, Fennan then kills himself, and since there are doubts about this alleged suicide , Smiley goes to the investigation. After a conversation with Fennan's wife Elsa, Smiley saw some evidence of murder; he makes inquiries with police officer Mendel, but is called back by his superior. When he returns home, he notices that someone is in his apartment. While researching the owners of the cars that are parked in his street at the time, Smiley is beaten up and ends up in the hospital.

Mendel is the evidence of Elsa Fennans theater on the evening of the suicide of her husband after, encounters a mysterious stranger with whom she seems to meet there regularly and for Smiley everything seems slowly to espionage activities Fennans for DDR - secret out, although some Questions remain open.

During further research, Smiley comes across an old friend from Germany, Dieter Frey, whom he had recruited as a spy in Dresden during the Nazi era . Frey had proven to be an excellent agent and saboteur at the time , but now he obviously works for the GDR's secret service. Frey "was still the same improbable romantic with the charm of a charlatan ... relentlessly holding on to the goal, satanic in means, dark and fast as the gods of the north ... his cunning, his ideas, his strength and his dreams - everything was greater than life itself and not tempered by the moderate influence of experience. He was a man who only thought and acted in absolute terms, a man without patience or compromise. "

Smiley sets a trap for Frey in the theater, who falls for it, but kills Elsa Fennan in the process. While escaping, he falls into the Thames and drowns. As it quickly turns out, it was not Samuel Fennan who worked for the GDR, but his wife Elsa. The novel ends with a kind of short summary of the whole story that Smiley submits to his manager. Smiley emerges from the story with broken fingers, a racing headache and an excruciating feeling of guilt over Dieter Frey's death, but ultimately treats himself to a trip to Switzerland.

Topic: totalitarianism vs. freedom

In Shadows of Yesterday, Le Carré addresses the central political contrast of the 20th century between totalitarian ideologies - National Socialism and Communism - and the liberal , democratic societies of the West. Smiley stands for the idea of ​​freedom and individualism : He “hated this mass media , all the inconsiderate suggestive devices of the twentieth century. Everything he loved was the product of a pronounced individualism. So now he hated Dieter and what he stood for more than ever before. It was the unbearable presumption to put the crowd before the individual. When did mass philosophies ever bring blessings or knowledge? "

Frey is an almost prototypical victim of a totalitarian ideology who has turned from a pioneer into a fanatic. Smiley knew him as a fighter for freedom, now he has to fight the battle of opposites with him. Frey and Smiley “had come in from different hemispheres of the night, from different worlds in which one thought and acted differently. Dieter, the quick judge, the absolute, had fought to build a new world. Smiley, the thoroughly ponder, the Keeper, had fought to prevent him. ”And le Carré adds, with the humor of the British and the irony of the artist:“ Now who was the gentleman? ”

filming

The role of George Smiley had to be renamed Charles Dobbs for this film, as Paramount , which had produced The Spy Who Came in the Cold the year before , held the naming rights.

The film was nominated for five British Film Academy Awards in 1968 (Best Actor, Best Foreign Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay and Best British Film).

expenditure

The antiquated German translation from 1963 shows some curiosities. For example, a puzzle is still translated as "collapse game" or the typical Christmas play of British theater, the "pantomime", is mistaken for a pantomime .

  • 1963 German first edition, bound, German by Ortwin Much, Vienna / Hamburg: Zsolnay
  • 1965 paperback, Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt, rororo 798, ISBN 3-499-10789-9
  • 1983 Paperback, Bergisch Gladbach: Lübbe, Bastei-Lübbe 10332, ISBN 3-404-10332-7
  • 1989 paperback, Munich: Heyne, Heyne-Bücher 7921, ISBN 3-453-03630-1
  • 1995 New edition, bound, Vienna / Hamburg: Zsolnay, ISBN 3-552-04710-7
  • 1996 Paperback, Munich: Dt. Taschenbuch-Verlag, ISBN 3-423-12164-5
  • 2002 Taschenbuch, Munich: Ullstein-Taschenbuchverlag, List-Taschenbuch 60265, ISBN 3-548-60265-7
  • Bound 2007, Berlin: List-Verlag (as part of the Le Carré complete edition), ISBN 3-471-79569-3

as well as licensed editions at Bechtermünz-Verlag (2000) and Deutsche Buchgemeinschaft (1987)

literature

  • Helen S. Garson: Enter George Smiley: Le Carré's Call for the Dead. Harold Bloom (Ed.): John le Carré. Chelsea House, New York NY et al. 1987, ISBN 0-87754-703-3 , pp. 73-80.
  • Jost Hindersmann: The British espionage novel. From imperialism to the end of the cold war. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft WBG, Darmstadt 1995, ISBN 3-534-12763-3 (At the same time: University of Osnabrück , dissertation 1994: British spy novel and contemporary history. ).
  • Rudi Kost : About George Smiley. (Biographical sketches). Poller, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-87959-227-6
  • Ruth von Ledebur: decoys, sluts and ladies: women in English spy novels. In: Literature in Science and Education. 19, 1980 ISSN  0024-4643 pp. 284-300

Web links

References

  1. ^ All quotations from: Shadows from yesterday, German by Ortwin Much, Vienna / Hamburg: Zsolnay, 1963, p. 9ff.