Selina or The Other Life

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In his novel Selina or Das Andere Leben, published in 2005, Walter Kappacher tells the attempt by the Salzburg high school teacher Stefan to give his life the "long-awaited turn" in a secluded Italian region with cultural tradition, to reorient it and to reflect on existential questions: Connected to this phase of self-reflection are the daily routines of a simple life, the renovation of an old farmhouse and the maintenance of the site, the acquaintance with rural society, creative and contemplative pursuits and the hope of finding soulmate friends who are interested in literature and art.

Action overview

The Pratomagno Mountains from the Arno Valley look like a border wall. Heinrich Seiffert and Stefan have withdrawn to this region of Valdarno, which is remote for tourism in comparison to western Chianti Tuscany, with oak and chestnut forests and terraced olive, vineyards and vegetable gardens that are partially overgrown in between.

The reasons for Stefan's departure and the one-year release from his professional duties are dissatisfaction with his work as a teacher and the alienation from his friend and colleague Monika Schneider, who is twelve years older than him. He is around 40 years old, is considered an eccentric at school and at this point cannot imagine teaching students until he retires. In the middle of his life he asks himself questions about the fulfillment of meaning and about a new beginning as a writer in a different environment. The trigger for his decision to take a period of reflection at a distance from his home, family and friends was the chance encounter with Heinrich Seiffert, who was well-read in ancient literature and who had lived in a small village in the hills of the Pratomagno Mountains between Florence and Arezzo for seventeen years lives and makes him the offer to convert a threatened from decay farmhouse on his property as a summer vacation home. The main plot accompanies the protagonist from May to September 1987 and is developed in small chapters, each containing individual situations and experiences, essentially chronologically, only interrupted by a few retrospectives: For example, the first drive to Moro, the visit with Mario to his sister Eva in Arezzo, the brief relationship with Loretta, Heinrich's visit with Selina and her husband in Moro, the bus excursion with the mayor to Lake Trasimeno . These stations are framed by two sections in which Stefan addresses Heinrich (penultimate part) and his niece Selina (1st part) in the first person. The last chapter refers to the background text: Jean Paul's novel fragment Selina , published in 1827, or about immortality .

Longing for Italy

The Piazza Grande in Francesco Petrarca's birth town Arezzo is a popular destination for Stefans. Here he buys two chairs at the antique market to furnish the holiday home, which Loretta transports for him to Mora in her Renault. The Salzburg teacher's Tuscany experiment begins with Heinrich Seiffert's acquaintance at the train station.

"... if I had come to Italy for the first time twenty to twenty-five years ago and then more often, I would have become something too."

- Adalbert Stifter

Heinrich Seiffert reads as an expert on ancient literature and cultural history a. a. Horace , Virgil , Lucretius and writes a Petrarch study. His friend and colleague professore Alberto is President of the Societa Francesco Petrarca in Arezzo, where Seiffert used to give a lecture every year. It was above all this poet who, with the cultivation of Roman republican literature and its moral values ​​of self-responsible people, contributed to the ancient ideal of life and culture of the Renaissance , which he linked with Christian revelation. Since the time of the Renaissance there has been a renewed interest in ancient art and philosophy in Europe and has chosen them as a model for the new individualistic and cosmopolitan image of man. The educational trips of German poets such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe and painters as well as the Grand Tour of the young nobles refer to this . Many development novels z. B. from the classical and romantic periods take up the motif of longing for Italy and create the schemes of an ideal natural-cultural landscape (Arcadia): E.g. Mignon's song in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's theatrical broadcast , Ludwig Tieck's Franz Sternbald's walks . or Joseph von Eichendorff's marble picture In this tradition stand the advantages of traveling to Italy for personality development and Stefan's longing to “approach the myth of Italy”, which was formulated as the first motto of Kappacher's novel in Adalbert Stifter's words, although before 1985 the country was only south of him Appeared charming from Rome. Seiffert gives him cultural and historical information and travel tips (including the birthplaces of the Renaissance painters Fra Angelico , Leonardo da Vinci , Michelangelo ) and lends him books ( Seneca ). Following the suggestions of his mentor, Stefan makes excursions to the historical centers, for example visiting an Etruscan exhibition and the Galleria Nationale in Perugia , the house where Raphael was born in Urbino , the Palazzo Pitti in Florence and sketching the works of art that were impressive to him, but also the museums that bothers him Atmosphere: "Cords were stretched two meters from the pictures". The main focus of his descriptions, however, is directed towards the current intermingling of the cityscape and the noisy life outside the museums and churches: “Next to the entrance to Raphael's birthplace [...] a handcrafted tile sign: Tattoo Center ”.

The simple life

Center of the self-reflection of the protagonists in the Tuscany is a simple, active lifestyle: his daily routine on the town on a wild terraced mountainside former small estate Mora, two and a half kilometers from Gello Biscardo removed, added from z. Some tasks developed spontaneously and leads to a completely different, stretched sense of time: He repairs the roof, mends the brickwork, whitewashes the walls, paints the new shutters, furnishes the apartment, cuts the brambles around the olive trees and on the steeply sloping driveway to Plot of land, discusses remedial measures with Mario, gets water from the Bona well, talks to the Ferrettis and Marinis, who cultivate their terraced olive and vineyards and occasionally give him zucchini, buys food and newspapers in San Giustino Valdarno and Castiglion Fibocchi , looks at the Bookstore displays, explores the region - the reader can follow the routes with Google maps - the medieval settlement centers with the uniform development zones and industrial areas on the main roads, prepares his meals mostly with bread, salami, tomatoes and sheep's cheese, visits Heinrich Seiffert in Pontenano, reads the a borrowed books, takes care of his niece Selina, whose marriage to Erich is in crisis, during her visit to the uncle and falls in love with her. From the very beginning, Stefan has wanted to share the simple life in Mora with a woman who has interests similar to his. Apparently Monika would not be ready for this, Loretta leaves it in an intoxicated state for one night. He could best imagine living together with Selina, although she said negatively on her first visit in July: "Nothing for me!" On the one hand, Stefan needs people around him with whom he shares his experience, and without the neighbors he could be lonely not bear on Mora. On the other hand, the friendly invitations and frequent evening visits from the villagers to assess the progress of the renovation keep him from his goals: writing a Pompeii novel or the script for his half-brother Franz's film about Mozart's Italian trip, reading the letters Pliny ' , the novels Pratolini and Paveses , the Kleist letters and the cosmic experience of the starry sky spanning nature.

Tuscan impressions

Antonio Ferretti drives with Stefan to the pilgrimage site of La Verna in Casentino and shows him the cave in the rock of the table mountain Monte Penna, where, according to tradition, Francis of Assisi spoke to the birds in 1224 and was stigmatized.

On his excursions, he observes the living and working world of the residents and collects impressions like snapshots in a row: men sitting on chairs in front of the houses reading the newspaper, girls and boys fooling past, whose faces remind him of portrayals of Piero della Francesca , an old woman who “Goes peddling a basket full of dried herbs” and is thrown from the tourist office, “stirs up dust that, mixed with exhaust gases, slowly lays on the tables” of the tourists when they order in the café want to “add that little bit of what has been learned” to the Piazza della Repubblica and whose accent reminds him of his own. In reflective moments he fears that he is even just a "gawker" like the tourists with their sparse Italian language skills and that he really has no business here, and realizes that you have to live with people in a community. In Gello Biscardi the integration is beginning to succeed and he gratefully registers that the residents no longer treat him as a stranger as in the previous year and let him participate: He is invited by the neighbors in Gello like the Marinis for an espresso or a glass of wine, and talks with them them in its simple Italian, participates in religious festivals, e.g. B. attended the confirmation of Mario's son Gianni and accompanied Antonio Feretti to the pilgrimage site of St. Francis of Assisi, La Verna. The focus of neighborly contacts is Mario, who has taken over the main work on the house renovation and introduces him to his relatives, u. a. with his brother-in-law Vittorio. He wrote poetry in his youth and built a small library as an autodidact, which Stefan is interested in. In general, it is a helpful and hospitable company, despite many family and financial problems: after the death of his wife Francesca in February, Mario has to look after the three children Gianni, Davide and Lena. Daniela and Maurizio are unemployed or at risk of it and live in a small space with their parents Vittorio and Eva in a community apartment. Loretta receives social assistance for herself and her son Enzo because her husband Tommaso is in jail for fraud.

Jean Paul's thoughts on the immortality of the soul

"An eternal being watching a being pondering over its destruction."

- JEAN PAUL

Not only the title variation, the motto “An eternal being watching a being pondering about its annihilation” and the last chapter refer to Jean Paul's novels Das Kampaner Tal (1797) and the unfinished sequel Selina or about immortality ; Both works are also explicitly incorporated into the plot and serve as personal and thematic reference texts: First, Selina's mother raved about Jean Paul and therefore gave her daughter the name of the eponymous heroine. Secondly, the person constellation with the mentoring role of Heinrich (= Jean Paul) and the affinity between Stefan and Selina (= Karlson and Gione), who does not want to separate from her husband Erich (= Gione's bridegroom and consort Wilhelmi), reminds of the in Campanian society based in the Pyrenees in the first Jean Paul novel, although the emotional love for Gione is captured by Karlson's friendship with Wilhelmi, on whose wedding day the main story takes place, and incorporated into their mutual understanding.

Seiffert and Stefan refer to the second Jean Paul novel several times with regard to the extended discussion compared to the Kampaner Valley : 30 years later the two-generation society meets again in Selina or about immortality , this time in Germany. The two befriended families Karlson and Wilhelmi who are interested in literature, art, philosophy and religion live in an idyllic Arcadian park landscape. You invited Jean Paul to take up the earlier exchange of views. While the conversations in the Kampaner Valley are included in a hike by the wedding party through the valley to the place of the festival, in Selina the discussions between the author and Karlson's son Alexander about immortality of the soul and the "belief in annihilation" without heaven and hell are argued: Both try to present their views in long theoretical deductions, including theological, philosophical, psychological and scientific hypotheses of the time: characteristics and properties of souls, transmigration of souls, relationship between sleep, dream and age, relationship between body and mind, structure of the brain, instincts in animals and People, the unconscious and magnetism . The background to these intensive discussions is the great concern about Karlson's second son Henrion, who is fighting for the freedom of the country in front of the Napoli di Romania fortress in Greece. Selina, Wilhelmi's daughter and Gione, who has since passed away, is connected to him. Both are “noble souls” and firmly believe in immortality. Henrion's letters to Selina and her visions are testimony to this: she sees the seriously wounded friend on the sick bed before the letters confirming her pictures arrive. The earthly development of noble souls culminates in the magnetism long-distance conversation of both.

Alexander takes on the role of advocatus diaboli in the debate, while in the Kampaner Valley his father, in his mourning over the alleged death of Gione, formulates corresponding thoughts of the "annihilation" of life. Alex argues that the visible disintegration of the human body and mind stands in contrast to the idea of ​​a refinement in a second eternal life and speaks more for a "double destruction". In contrast to the thesis that creation has purpose and goal, he asks whether “the Infinite has purposes at all” and whether we know it so well. His conversation parts are, however, much smaller than those of the dominant opponent and are used for verbose replies and deductions that are carried by the wish and hope that life is not finite: the heart says "You cannot perish", that matter is only the skin of the actual inner life, only the body is perishable, but not mind or soul and “the immense realm of the unconscious”, we are “drives and sighs for a higher world, for a higher love, the ideas of the Godhead and of morality ”and that could not be a delusion. Almost all Campanians turn against the "annihilation belief" in the finite physical and spiritual life in an "empty space" with the full rhetorical power of their faith and hope: In view of the "immense world hell full of human torments" the "human eye [ ...] look beyond the globe ”. Because man cannot bear the thought of ultimate annihilation. From this the demand is derived in both novels that a creator should not end the earthly happiness and suffering of people with their annihilation, but must continue or compensate for it in the second life: “The immortal spirit” cannot “look down on the silent sphere "And look at the" melted and smoky "" shadows and dreams and wax figures "of the" fire site ". "... the stung worm [may] curl up and say against the Creator: 'You were not allowed to make me suffer'". The fullness of the beauty of the world must have a higher goal, which cannot be achieved if the "eternally sowing and never reaping lonely world spirit" sees only one "eternity mourn the other".

Jean Paul's holistic romantic conception of the world includes all of nature, which is the first world in the second globe of the universe to be completed as a "rising island of bliss". This cosmic belief works back on the attitude to life: “Blessed” is “whoever has organically connected and permeated his world with the second: the desert of life shows him the cooling stars larger and more sparkling over the hot grains of sand of the day Every night. ”The view of the world becomes a different one:“ How completely different does a spirit look at the blossoming nature that believes it continues to blossom with it and behind it. ”Despite the skepticism of some members, the Campanian society likes his remarks heard, they refer to the desire to meet Gione and Henrion again.

Heinrich Seiffert's conversation with Stefan about death

Heinrich Seiffert describes Stefan the view from his tower-shaped house in Pontenano down into the Arno valley of the Casentino. In a later conversation on Mora he mused: "... it is really nice to sit here, you might think there was still an Arcadia."

In the last part of Kappacher's Selina in Pontenano, the central existential conversation with Stefan about the question of what could happen to people after death, similar to Jean Paul (Henrion) , develops in the examination of both novels, which Heinrich Seiffert knows well. from a life-threatening threat. The trigger is a print of Giorgione's “The Three Ages of Man”, which Stefan brought as a gift from Florence: Seiffert identifies himself with the depicted old man under the impression of his increasingly emerging illness and presents his reflections on the unthinkability of God to them Stefan agrees in principle: The religions only reflect people's fears, but the universe is radically alien to people, but they have an inkling that “something exists above our consciousness, something unimaginable ...”. Stefan too is not familiar with the idea of ​​a reunion with the dead, “with long-lost beloved souls” and he doesn't believe that in another world “one can go on forever as before”. In this context, Seiffert describes Selina as a "strange text" that he wants to talk to Stefan about, i. This means that he has not yet come to a conclusion with his considerations. What irritates him about Jean Paul’s ideas is the derivation of immortality as the goal of creation from the fundamental beauty and harmony of nature, because during his visit with Selina and Erich he laments the nihilism of traditional modernity. In Mora, for a moment, one can see some sense in the beauty of nature, but this Arcadia is only a mirage. In conversation with Stefan in Pontenano, he refers to Hölderlin , to whom he attributes the greatest antennas for the supernatural, in particular to his Hyperion . This remark probably relates to Hyperion's ambivalent attitude: his euphoric hopes and disappointed crashes when his attempts at nature-mysticism seem in vain to be one with all that is living and with the indestructible beauty of nature and thereby to fix it: “Have plenty of empty words the whimsical [d. H. the people] made ”.

Cosmic nature experience

The harmony mentioned by Seiffert, but also the doubt about it, Stefan experiences in Mora. When he sits alone in front of the house, he feels in mystical harmony with the microcosm of nature, comparable to Jean Paul's Arcadian Pyrenees Valley, the "temple of nature": he listens to the chirping of the cicadas, the bumblebees, watches a grass snake, which he grants her right to live in caves in the house wall and asks herself: “How many people do you know who you could sit here with without disturbing the mood? Would he ever get tired of lingering here, to experience the change of light, color, sound? ”He keeps discovering“ never seen ”, believes he understands the essence of the olive trees. They "seemed to be communicating to him" without his being able to translate it into words. He calls them his "company here" and is convinced that "they perceive [him] in their own way". And over this little world he looks at the night sky and the constellations in the firmament and sees "how the weak moonlight bathed the meadow in a fairytale twilight blue". He then has the euphoric feeling that the stars are in lively motion, guided by “some divine power”. In his Jean Paul reading he can discover similar sensations, as the following examples show: “as if the earthly burden falls from the pressed breast, as if the earth gives us ripe from its mother's arm into the father's arms of infinite genius”, “under the infinite canopy of the throne "," She [Gione on her Montgolfière flight] went up, lonely as a heavenly woman, under the stars "," My longing for the stars "," The starry sky lifts, grasping almighty, my heart the most, looks so serious and monstrous he down. "

The macrocosm experienced in this way gives Stefan the certainty of a “being” in whose spirit man has some share now and after his death, until that “night of horror” when he was seized by the existential fear of total loneliness. He now has the idea that the suns and planets are dead matter in the depths of space and that he is the only person in the world, surrounded by "unimaginable abysses of space and time", threatened by "no longer being []. "The" absolute destruction of himself. "Corresponding fears can be found in Karlson's" Lament without Consolation "after the alleged death of Gione, or in Jean Paul's mental game about imagining immortality without it. That night a few days before Heinrich's death, he seeks help in a prayer in front of an art print of the Madonna Spinellos in protective cloak . In the second summer he also feels threats in the surrounding nature: the black viper rising up against him, noises in the night, and he wonders whether "the world is just kind to him in the light of the sun". "The basic trust of the first nights was [...] no longer given". At such moments his feeling of living in harmony with the animals and plants seems to him to be imaginary. In the last chapter, Stefan reflects on these experiences in connection with his Selina reading, which similarly irritated Seiffert, but also fascinated him. He interprets the controversial discussion between Jean Paul and Alexander as a self-talk by the author with assigned roles, in which Stefan recognizes his own existential questions, about which he would have liked to exchange ideas with Heinrich Seiffert. He still feels middle-aged and can accept the thought of mortality, but the subject will probably continue to accompany him.

Stefan's experiences

Stefan's expectations that he attached to his stay in Moro were only partially fulfilled: It was a time of reflection and new cultural and human experiences. However, there was no professional or personal reorientation: his brother's film project failed and he made little headway with the Pompeii novel, because the maintenance of the property took up his energy and used up his savings. After his year off he will probably have to work as a teacher again and could only go to Mora during the holidays. Especially with Seiffert's death in August, the question of whether to continue the Italian experiment next year is open: Selina needs time to think about her relationship with Erich, although she talks about spending the next summer in Pontenano and being in contact with Stefan before she leaves stay, but he depends on her initiative and hopes that Heinrich's possessions will not be sold and that everything can be reconsidered over winter and next year.

Individual evidence

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