Skylla (Peter Schneider)
Skylla is a novel by Peter Schneider from 2005.
The first-person narrator is the wealthy Berlin lawyer Leo Brenner, who married the divorced Polish archeology student Lucynna. The young woman leaves her new husband alone with their toddler in Lazio, southern Italy . As a layman, Brenner worked his way into his wife's writings. Finally, father and daughter find the runaway on Capri and save her at the last second from the death jump from the Salto di Tiberio. Peter Schneider then offers the reader a happy ending.
history
Lützeler provides details on the historical background: Peter Schneider does not write about Homer's Scylla and Charybdis , but about Virgil's Scylla from the third book of the " Aeneid " and about Glaukos and the nymph Scylla from Ovid's " Metamorphoses ". The location of the action - on the seaside between Rome and Naples - remains anonymous, but it can only be Sperlonga . The Grotto of Tiberius , mentioned several times, suggests this. Schneider was inspired - according to Lützeler - by a group of sculptures from the Rhodian workshop of Athanadoros , Hagesandros and Polydoros , which shows Scylla fighting Odysseus and his team. Peter Schneider read the book of the same name by Andreae and Conticello about the Skylla group. This publication also mentions the paintings on the motif "Glaukos and Scylla" by Bartholomäus Spranger from 1581 and by Salvator Rosa from 1663.
action
The action takes place around 1988: Leo and Lucynna Brenner feel oppressed by the masses of German vacationers during a trip through Tuscany, move south and get stuck with their almost three-year-old daughter Lara between Rome and Naples. They decide to build a house on the hill "castelluccio" - directly above the Grotto of Tiberius - and ignore the warning from the locals that there is a curse on the hill in the wild maquis .
Lucynna, a student of archeology, had divorced her much older husband, archeology professor Robert Bouchard, with the help of divorce lawyer Leo Brenner. Brenner only found out about the reason for the divorce from Bouchard after his wife ran away. Off Alexandria , the underwater archaeologist Lucynna single-handedly found an ancient ship of the Trihemiolia type thirty meters long. The husband had not mentioned his own wife in his sensational publication on the find. The marriage was irreversibly broken after the professor raped his wife.
During the excavation work on the Brenner couple's construction site, Lucynna came across a mosaic. This is, as it were, the two-dimensional image of the Scylla group that Dr. Stamegna at the foot of the castelluccio hill - obviously flawed - composed of copied fragments of the shattered original. The doctor is missing the main thing: Scylla. The sea monster can be seen in full splendor on Lucynna's mosaic. Only a few minor things are missing from the ancient work of art. This time Leo Brenner's wife doesn't want to repeat her trihemiolia mistake. She shares the find with her husband, but otherwise keeps it secret. Nevertheless, Paul Stirlitz's mosaic is stolen. The client is presumably Prof. Bouchard. Because this is the Skylla Group in Rome with greater success than its competitor Dr. Stamegna in the province together.
Stirlitz had to be disguised Baumensch, speak German as a helper home builder on the Apennine peninsula, at Leo Brenner as an alleged comrade of the turbulent West Berlin 1960s crept in. The old fighter had taken Brenner's incendiary speech "Sprengt Springer !" Too literally at the time and had taken on himself with an explosive attack in the unintended direction, for which he would now like to make Brenner jointly responsible after twenty years. The blackmail attempt fails.
Lucynna is literally thrown off track by the theft, as her second career attempt as an archaeologist has failed. The first-person narrator registers with astonishment that the behavior of women has changed fundamentally during sexual encounters: Brenner is led by Lucylla, who soon behaves like the dogs that have grown together with the abdomen of the Scylla, in the area of the left collarbone and in the left hip bitten. When the woman has left her toddler and the man, Brenner, initially confused, looks for the reason in Lucynna's possible search for another archaeological rarity. In this regard, he finds a reference to the “Salto di Tiberio” in their writings. To save his wife, he goes to Capri with Lara.
shape
The novel is not well formed.
- Constructedness
Sometimes the plot appears to be a ridiculous construction; For example, as a father and daughter on the Capri cliff called Salto di Tiberio, they were just able to prevent the somersault of their mother.
- divergence
The first-person narrator reports lengthy, well-known things - for example his nerve-wracking dealings with Italian architects and building contractors. Their behavior reminds the German reader unpleasantly of the corresponding craftsmanship customs of such people north of the Alps. The redundant side stories - causing lyrical confusion - are actually many in this novel, for example that of the scheming Sejan during the reign of Tiberius.
- horizon
The Brenner couple's archeology dialogues are structured in a teacher-student way. The naturally limited horizon of a first-person narrator is always straightened out by the know-it-all Lucynna. After all, she knows much better about archaeological matters than her amateur husband or the normal reader. But since most things remain nebulous, a new uncertainty arises every time. Why, for example, did Prof. Bouchard complete the stolen mosaic with the figure of Odysseus and have it brought back to the castelluccio hill? Lucynna speculates that a scientist cannot help it. He must do what is necessary - no matter what the cost.
reception
In 2011, Lützeler considers the novel "to be a multi-layered book in which several storylines are artfully linked". The text is "one of the most remarkable literary-mythological experiments in contemporary German-language literature". Peter Schneider uses the style element repetition when it comes to the fight of Odysseus against Scylla. Prof. Bouchard and Lucynna fight this fight again: The young Polish woman does not see Odysseus, but Scylla in the center of the fighting. For Lucynna's inexplicable behavior after the mosaic theft, Lützeler plausibly notes that the woman is eating her frustration into herself.
literature
Used edition
- Peter Schneider: Scylla. Rowohlt Taschenbuch 24080, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2006 (1st edition in 2005 in Berlin), ISBN 978-3-499-24080-5
Secondary literature
- Bernard Andreae , Baldassare Conticello: Skylla and Charybdis. To the Skylla group from Sperlonga . 76 pages with illustrations, Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-515-05115-5
- Paul Michael Lützeler : The monstrous and the uncanny: Peter Schneider's novel »Skylla« . P. 157–168 in Paul Michael Lützeler (ed.), Jennifer M. Kapczynski (ed.): The ethics of literature. German authors of the present. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2011. ISBN 978-3-8353-0865-7
Remarks
- ↑ Lützeler (p. 168, 8. Zvu) puts into perspective, however, that the couple had not yet survived the "ultimate test" at the end of the novel.
- ↑ Lützeler expresses such a view regarding Lucynna's behavior after her mosaic was stolen. Brenner can't believe his wife's disappearance. But this - according to Lützeler - has to research further (Lützeler, p. 165, 7th delivery). In that case, the young woman follows the trail of Tiberius to Capri.
Individual evidence
- ^ Italian Salto di Tiberio
- ↑ Lützeler, p. 158, 12. Zvo
- ↑ Virgil writes "Scylla"
- ↑ Latin: metamorphoses
- ↑ Lützeler, p. 164, 24. Zvo
- ↑ Lützeler, footnote 6
- ↑ see also Lützeler, p. 164, 3. Zvo
- ↑ engl. Trihemiolia ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Trihemiolia
- ↑ Lützeler, pp. 157-168
- ↑ Lützeler, p. 163, 5th Zvu
- ↑ Lützeler, p. 168, 2nd Zvu
- ^ Lützeler, p. 166, 6th Zvu
- ↑ Lützeler, p. 167, 16. Zvo
