Mirror, the kitten
Spiegel, das Kitten (subtitle: A fairy tale ) is a novella by the Swiss poet Gottfried Keller . It forms the end of the first volume of the collection of novels published in 1856, The People of Seldwyla . With it, the realist Keller continued the tradition of animal fables and the classic - romantic art fairy tale . His cat Spiegel, so called because of his shiny fur, is polite and urbane like Puss in Boots , tendsto philosophical contemplationlike the cat Murr and, like Reineke Fuchs, has the gift ofsaving his headby telling lies and cleverly engineered intrigues . He desperately needs this; because in order not to starve to death, he concludes a terrible contract with the Seldwyler city sorcerer Pineiss: Pineiss, who needs the pain (the fat) of cats for his witchcraft, undertakes to feed mirrors out. In return, Spiegel has to be slaughtered as soon as he's fat enough. But the clever tomcat squirms out, and in the end Pineiss is the smeared one: Spiegel arranges for him a beautiful young wife with a rich dowry, but who turns out to be a hideous old witch on the wedding night; where, according to the narrator, the saying comes from: "He bought the cat's pain" if someone made a bad deal. - The novella is one of Keller's best-known stories, is distributed in many, often illustrated, individual editions and has been adapted musically and literarily several times.
content
Bad contract
Spiegel lives according to the principle that everything has its measure and its time, nutrition, hunting and love. As a real gentleman , he enjoys a decent and carefree existence with an unmarried older lady. But when she dies, the heirs throw him on the street. There, with the shine of his fur, his morale dwindled: “He became leaner and tousled from day to day, at the same time greedy, creeping and cowardly; all his courage, his petite cat dignity, his reason and philosophy were gone. "
Half starved, the cat gets involved with people he would otherwise have avoided, such as the city warlock. "Herr Pineiss was a can-do, who did a hundred jobs, cured people, got rid of bugs, pulled out teeth and lent money at interest; [...] he did ten thousand legal things in broad daylight for moderate wages and some illegal ones only in the dark and out of private passion. ”He also knows how to cook, and his mouth is watering when Pineiss describes the delicious dishes that he is will enjoy with him as soon as a proper sales contract is concluded. Because the Schmer has to be assigned to Pineiss “by contract and voluntarily by the good gentlemen cats, otherwise it is ineffective”. Spiegel signs with his claw after he has negotiated a short period of life - beyond the state of corpulence until the next full moon.
So he moves into the sorcerer's house, where the everyday artist sets up a little land of milk and honey for him , with roasted birds on branches, spiked mice in holes in the ground and boiled fish in streams made of milk. The good food also brings back his spirits and sense of dignity, so that he asks himself: “Is it possible to conclude a miserable and cowardly contract than to let your life go on for a while and then lose it at this price? He gives himself the answer practically by avoiding the Pineisssche Schlaraffenland from now on, submitting himself to the exertions of the hunt and remaining slim and supple.
Spiegel tries to wriggle out
The sorcerer notices and confronts him: “Why are you straining yourself and not getting fat?” “Oh, Mr. Pineiss!” Said Spiegel, “because I feel better this way! Shall I not spend my short term in the way that is most convenient for me? "" How! "Cried Pineiss," you should live in such a way that you become fat and round, and not chase yourself off! But I can see where you're going! You think you are aping me and stopping me from letting you run around in this middle state for eternity? ”When he examines the mirror and grabs his stomach and receives a strong scratch, he exclaims angrily:“ Is that how we stand together, you beast? ”And explains the hangover for slaughter. There are still five days until the full moon.
With gloomy thoughts, Spiegel climbs onto the moonlit roof of the sorcerer's house. There, his mood soon brightened. Because on the ridge of the neighboring roof, a snow-white she-cat appears, meowing longingly. “As a real Don Juan, ” he immediately begins to ardently court her. For five days and nights he enjoyed the favor of the beautiful “and more than once rolled over high roofs in a violent game of minnesia or in a fight with his rivals and fell on the street; but only to get up, shake his fur and start the wild chase of his passion anew. ”When the moon is full, he proudly steps before his executioner, disheveled and leaner than ever. Pineiss, beside himself with anger, locks him in a goose stable in order to fatten him artfully.
Again the sorcerer forgets that good food also strengthens the mental powers, and indeed his prisoner uses the time behind bars to calmly think up a story. When he has gained weight again, Pineiss happily sharpened his knife and took it out of the cage. Spiegel, apparently resigned to fate, slips into the role of the poor sinner and accuses himself of having done a great injustice through neglect of duty and thus deserving death. Pineiss listens to the confession with suspicion without making any sense of it - no wonder, because Spiegel tries to confuse him and to provoke his greed and lust. First he mentions a treasure of ten thousand gold gold from the property of his late mistress. Then he changes the subject and paints the virtues of a good wife for the bachelor Pineiss: "knows about the body, careful in the spirit, acceptable of morals, faithful from the heart, economical in administration, but wasteful in the care of her husband". In between he asks him if he might not be interested in getting married. Pineiss is bursting with curiosity and, under threat of torture, orders him to express himself more clearly.
Spiegel's story
Spiegel has been waiting for this moment and begins to tell:
- His blessed mistress was a beautiful and wealthy young lady, courted by many, but suspicious of everyone. She had imagined that everyone only wanted her wealth, that no one wanted her to be a wife just because of her beauty and good morals. In order to ease the agony of choice, she decided to put the unselfishness and selflessness of her suitors to the test, for example by inducing them to make large donations for charitable purposes. But in vain; because now the honest applicants had withdrawn and soon they were only surrounded by cunning marriage speculators.
- Desperate - according to Spiegel - she closed her house and fled via the Gotthard to Milan , where she really fell in love for the first time, with a young compatriot who worked there as a silk merchant. She showed her pleasure to this beautiful and rich young man and sincere person so clearly that he was inflamed with deep love for her. Delighted, she enjoyed the feeling of finally being loved for her own sake.
- But no sooner had he gathered his courage and confessed his love to her, than she was overcome by the old distrust. To test his selflessness, she hid her heart and pretended to love someone else. To this, she told the young man, she was engaged and the wedding was already scheduled; but there has recently been an obstacle that has caused her great grief: “Your bridegroom is a merchant, but as poor as a mouse; therefore they had come up with the plan that he should establish a deal with the bride's means. ”These same means were missing now that she could not access her property because of a legal process. Her fiancé has also already entered into liabilities of ten thousand gold gold. So his merchant honor, their marriage and thus their whole happiness in life are at stake.
- The young man turned pale and believed her every word. Then he sadly hurried to the trading center, sold the business he had just established, returned to her and offered her the redeemed ten thousand gold florins. She thanked him profusely, but stated that she would only accept the sacrifice if he swore to her in his eternal bliss to attend her wedding as a guest of honor and most loyal friend. He begged her to relieve him of this, but she insisted, even refusing his gold, so that he finally consented. Then she went home delighted, decorated her house and could hardly wait for the day when her loved one was to arrive.
- But he stayed away. Because he had had his last piece of silk made into a war dress, had gone among the rice walkers and was fatally wounded in the battle of Pavia . Dying he sent her the message: “Don't pray for me, dearest lady, because I can and will never be saved without you, be it here or there, so live happily and be greeted!” When she heard this, she was For many days from the pain, as if mad, cried and screamed, kissed and caressed the gold pieces, "as if the lost lover were there". Then she gathered up the treasure, threw it into the well behind her house, and cursed it so that no one else should ever own it.
At this point the sorcerer would like to know whether the fine money is still in the well. Spiegel replies in the affirmative, "'because only I can bring it out and have not yet done it up to the hour!" said Pineiss, 'I completely forgot about your story! You can't tell bad stories, you sapper solder! And it has become quite a desire for a female who would have been so taken for me; but it should be very beautiful! But now quickly tell us how the matter is actually connected! '”Spiegel concludes:
- On her deathbed, the young lady regretted the curse and ordered that the gold should belong to a beautiful, modest, but unfavorable virgin who, because of her poverty, had no prospect of getting an intelligent, legal and handsome man to whom she was out of pure love get married. He had asked him, Spiegel, to bring such a couple together so that the bride could surprise the groom on the wedding morning with a dowry of ten thousand gold gold.
The contract is canceled
Immediately, Pineiss lets Spiegel lead him to the fountain, but puts a noose around his neck so that he cannot escape. And really, in the light of a lantern the gold sparkles below. He just shouldn't think that he can just pull it up, Spiegel warns the sorcerer, “you would inevitably be turned your neck; because it is not very safe in the well ”. But the female in prospect now attracts them even more than the gold. “'There is now the treasure!' said Pineiss, scratching his ears, 'and here is the man too; all that's missing is the beautiful woman! ' ,How?' said Spiegel. 'I mean, the only thing missing is the one who is to receive the ten thousand as a dowry to surprise me with on the morning of the wedding' ". He is mistaken, says Spiegel, he has already scouted the woman, only there is a lack of suitors, "because nowadays beauty has to be gilded on top like Christmas nuts". Then he eloquently and knowledgeably describes the luxury which dowry hunters enjoy with married women. Pineiss's mouth is watering so much now that he can hardly hold himself back. Angrily he tugs at the noose: “Enough, you chatterbox! Tell me immediately where she is that you know about ”. Spiegel gives him to understand in cold blood that the trade goes through his hand alone.
"" I can see that you want to cancel our contract and salvage your head! "-" Does that seem so uneven and unnatural to you? "-" You end up cheating on me and lying to me like a rogue! "-" This is also possible! " said Spiegel. - "I tell you: do not deceive me!" Cried Pineiss imperiously. - “Well, I'm not cheating on you like that!” Said Spiegel. - "If you do it!" - "So do it." - "Don't torment me, little mirror!" Said Pineiss almost tearfully. "
It doesn't take long persuasion before the sorcerer does as Spiegel said. He loosens the noose, takes out the contract and places it on the edge of the well. “No sooner was the paper there than it snapped open mirror and devoured it; and although he had to choke violently from it, it still seemed to him the best and most prosperous food that he had ever enjoyed ”. Then he said goodbye - Pineiss would hear from him and should in the meantime get ready to be really in love. As he leaves, Spiegel is pleased “about the stupidity of the wizard, who believed he could cheat himself and the whole world, since he did not want to marry the hoped-for bride unselfishly out of mere love for beauty, but knew the circumstance with the ten thousand gold gold beforehand. "
Pineiss has a witch to wife
Opposite the sorcerer's house, an old beghine lives behind a cleanly whitewashed facade . Her window curtains, her breast cloth and her hood, under which a long sharp nose and a pointed chin protrude, are also white. If she shows herself in the alley, the children run away in fear. Since she goes to church three times a day, she has a reputation for great piety, “but even the priests preferred to communicate with her in writing rather than verbally, and whenever she confessed, the pastor would shoot out of the confessional so dripping with sweat as if he were coming out of one Oven is coming ”. Otherwise she leaves people alone; only occasionally does she cast angry looks at the sorcerer; he fears them like fire.
On the dark back of their house, which only cats and birds can see, there is a huge, sooty chimney from which a witch sometimes blows into the air at night, “young and beautiful and stark naked, like God made women and the devil She likes to see her. ”That is where Spiegel goes to find an old friend, an owl who does the watch and weather duty for the pilot. He told the owl, what happened and what he intended: "The man has his wife and gold florins have!" - "Are you, the rogue still doing good out of his mind, which you wanted to pull the coat?" The good deeds will be keep within limits, replies Spiegel, because the gold is an inherited unjust good, which his former mistress - a simple person and never in love with her life - sank into the well for fear of misfortune and cursed it. As for the wife, however, he wanted to pair Pineiss with the witch. Has the owl never thought of breaking out of its spell and being free again?
The owl has thought of this very well and already knows the means of catching the witch. It lies in the nearby forest, a snipe twine that fulfills certain magical conditions. She'll be flying there in a moment, while Spiegel keeps watch for her. She returns with the twine and the animals stretch it over the opening of the chimney. “You should see,” whispered the owl, “how skillfully it knows how to whisper up the chimney without blackening its bare shoulders!” - A voice from below asks whether the air is clear. “All in,” calls the owl, and the witch drives up right into the net. She rages and wriggles in it and only quiets down when Spiegel gives her the choice: "Would you rather be roasted under the chairmanship of Mr. Pineiss or roast him by marrying him?" She opts for the second and swears by it the strongest formulas that can bind a witch. Then the owl sits on the broomstick and the mirror on the bundle of brushwood and the witch drives them to the well to fetch the gold.
In the morning, Spiegel leads Mr. Pineiss, dressed up as a bridegroom, to the city gate, where a weeping beauty is sitting under a tree. Her robe was so scanty and torn that, regardless of how she behaved ashamed, the snow-white body always shimmered through here and there. Pineiss, carried away by his advertisement, dries her tears, thanks him in a sweet voice for his generosity and vows eternal loyalty. The wedding ceremony is performed by a hermit, only mirrors and the owl are invited to the wedding supper, because Pineiss, filled with envy and jealousy, does not allow anyone to see his beautiful young wife. A vessel with the gold pieces is on the wedding table. Pineiss digs in it, then tries again to kiss the bride. Smiling, she fends off: not in front of witnesses and only at night she wants to do it. When it got dark, the guests said goodbye, Pineiss shone their light on the front door, thanks Spiegel and called him an excellent and polite man . But when he returns to the room, his neighbor, the old beguin, is sitting at the table and greets him with an evil look. Horror seizes him, he leans against the wall, trembling. The latter, however, got up, approached him and drove him to the wedding chamber, where she tortured him with infernal arts like no mortal has ever seen.
In addition to the mockery of the Seldwyler, the sorcerer has to endure a wife from now on who has discovered all his secrets and has completely mastered him. He had to do witchcraft from morning to evening, whatever the case, and when Spiegel passed by and saw it, he said in a friendly manner: "Always hardworking, hardworking, Mr. Pineiss?"
About the work
Origin and background
“Just as the abandoned kitten Spiegel, in his dire need, entered into a life-threatening contract with the Seldwyler city sorcerer Pineiss, so in the spring of 1850 the thirty-year-old poet Gottfried Keller from Zurich, who until then had only appeared with a volume of poetry, embarked on a highly risky contractual adventure overturned. In order to force himself to carry out his long-planned, but almost only in his head novel The Green Heinrich and to get some funding for it, he had offered the book to a Braunschweig publisher as a basically finished work. The publisher quickly took action, and now Keller found himself in the unfortunate and fatal situation of his later invented cat hero Spiegel, which was fatal for both contract partners: He should give something that he did not own. "
The publisher, Eduard Vieweg , deserves the credit of having squeezed the autobiographical novel out of its author with nerve-wracking effort. Keller proved himself as a person and a writer by withstanding the pressure. In 1850 he could not have foreseen what grief he was facing. The Green Henry grew while working far beyond the planned scope. In the same proportion, Keller's demands on the quality of his writing and his dissatisfaction with what was already written grew. In addition to the painful preoccupation with oneself, there was external misery. The meager advances he received forced him to go into debt, even though he lived anything but a life of plenty in the expensive city. Nevertheless, he fulfilled his contractual obligation in full and delivered the publisher - against his suspicious expectations - the 1700 pages of the novel, albeit at long intervals and with frequent non-compliance with promises made, which appeared to the successful major publisher and previously dashing NCO Vieweg as an unforgivable breach of word. Vieweg considered the life story of green Heinrich to be a masterpiece. Nonetheless, he dumped the basement with beginner fees. The struggle over delivery dates, advances and fee calculations lasted five years, probably the most bitter in the history of German literature. During this time, as by-products of Green Heinrich , several novels were written, initially only in Keller's head; for the publisher had taken him on his word of honor not to write anything else before the end of the novel. "But I played a joke with my Vieweg and, without writing anything else, concocted a well-ordered and organized production series," said Keller in 1854 to a friend. When the novel was finally finished in the spring of 1855, he put what had been elaborated on paper in a few months: the first part of the people of Seldwyla , published in Braunschweig at the beginning of 1856 - by Vieweg.
Keller's fairy tale of mirrors and the owl is an Eulenspiegelei . The jester Till cheated his fellow citizens by taking their idioms literally, baking owls and monkeys; the poet Gottfried played a trick on his publisher by concocting a story, ostensibly only to explain the origin of a phrase. But with subtle, typically Keller-like humor , he coined a parable of the antagonism between author and publisher: just as the starved cat sells his life to the sorcerer, the poor author sells his life story to the publisher. In the parable he plays the inglorious role of the fooled fool Pineiss. The ingenious animal is vastly superior to the sorcerer. It knows him better than he does himself and tells him the story of the great misfortune that his mistress allegedly caused through avarice with her person and her wealth. But as expected, the miser does not see his likeness in the moral mirror held up, but only the gold and the virgin and wants to own both immediately. He also gets it right, only that the virgin turns out to be an old witch on the wedding night.
Keller dealt with Spiegel, the kitten, according to traditional poets and artists, by satirizing a client whom he felt disgusted by . Considering that Vieweg had not exposed him publicly, such as - as threatened - through a lawsuit, he did so privately and so discreetly that no contemporary reader could notice. Rather, the mockery seemed to fall back on the author himself when Richard Wagner , who liked the story exceptionally well, addressed a letter with a wink to: "Herr Gottfried Keller City Warlock in Hottingen". It is not known whether Vieweg understood who was meant by Pineiss. Although he never accepted Keller's suggestion to publish a separate illustrated print of the fairy tale, in 1856 he concluded a new contract with him on the second part of the people of Seldwyla . Keller solved this in 1873 against repayment of the advance payment received including interest. The new version of Green Heinrich was published by Goeschen-Verlag in 1879/80 , after Keller von Vieweg's successor bought back the remaining copies of the first version and burned them in the stove in his study.
History of literature and philosophy
Spiegel, the kitten can be understood and enjoyed as a poetic invention without knowing the biographical background, as if any resemblance to real people were purely coincidental. This was what Keller wrote to Friedrich Theodor Vischer : “This fairy tale is entirely made up in terms of material and has no other basis than the proverb 'Buy the pain from the cat', which my mother used to need from an unprofitable purchase at the market. Neither she nor I knew where the saying came from, and I wrote the composition about it without anything being read or heard. ”The remark“ without anything being read aloud ”is to be taken cum grano salis . Because Spiegel obviously owes its saving idea to the story of lies with which Reineke salvaged himself from the gallows (in the fourth song of Goethe's Reineke Fuchs ). The position of the story at the end of the volume can be understood as an homage to Goethe, who also concluded his conversations with German emigrants with a fairy tale. In addition, the story contains other literary references. Keller's Berlin reading encompassed a broad spectrum of European narrative literature. The exact style studies he undertook on the Decamerone are testified by the strict, old Italian form of short stories that he knew how to give the internal narrative . Spiegel is stylized as “honnête homme” according to the ideal of the Enlightenment , and the whole story breathes the spirit of this era: contempt for superstition , ridicule of witchcraft and magic beings, funniest when describing the deceitful circumstances through which the snipe thread gets its power . The author uses the form and material elements of magical fairy tales and romantic stories for the purpose of parody . The fabula docet is also entirely in the spirit of the materialists of the 18th century and his Heidelberg teacher Ludwig Feuerbach : If a living being gifted with reason takes the basis of its nutrition, it loses its dignity and its reason; give it back to it, and if it is sufficient, it will win it back. - "The story of the cat is an amusingly formulated philosophical lesson about the material conditioning of everything spiritual, a highly cryptic and unromantic fairy tale."
Adaptations
- Paul Burkhard : Spiegel, the kitten . Game opera based on Keller's novella. First performance in 1956 at the Theater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich. New version by Mathias Spohr in 1990 in the Zurich Opera House .
- Ludwig Detsinyi (under the pseudonym David Martin): Spiegel the cat: A story-poem . Based on a tale by Gottfried Keller (1961). Cassell, London 1969, ISBN 0-304-93495-X (UK licensed edition)
- Walter Moers : The terrifying master . A culinary fairy tale from Zamonia by Gofid Letterkerl. Newly told by Hildegunst von Mythenmetz . Piper-Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-492-04937-5
- Doris Lecher : Spiegel, the kitten. Based on the novel of the same name by Gottfried Keller. Illustrated and retold by Doris Lecher. NordSüd Verlag, Zurich 2015, ISBN 978-3-314-10287-5
- Frank Klaffke: Schnute the kitten, interactive children's theater based on Keller's novella, world premiere at Theater Sturmvogel , Reutlingen 2005, 1st prize children's theater week in Rechberghausen 2015
literature
Text output:
- Mirror, the kitten. A fairy tale. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1961. With an afterword by Hans Richter. Illustrated by Peter Schnürpel .
- Mirror, the kitten. Reclam, Ditzingen 1986, ISBN 978-3-15-007709-2 . Paperback.
- Mirror, the kitten. A fairy tale. Insel, Frankfurt 2001, ISBN 978-3-458-34468-1 . Paperback.
- Mirror, the kitten. A fairy tale from Seldwyla. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2007, ISBN 978-3-8370-0243-0 . Paperback.
Representations:
- Franz Leppmann: Mirror the kitten. In: Franz Leppmann (ed.): Kater Murr and his clan. Beck Verlag, Munich 1908; Pp. 78-86.
- Hans Richter: Gottfried Keller's early novels. Rütten and Loening, Berlin 1960.
- Therese Müller-Nussmüller: Mirror the Kitten: Interpretation. Dissertation. Basel 1972.
Web link
Individual evidence
- ↑ In italics : Quote from Gottfried Keller: Complete works. Volume 7, ed. by Jonas Fränkel , Rentsch-Verlag, Erlenbach-Zurich and Munich 1927, pp. 323–375.
- ^ Richter in the epilogue to his text edition by Spiegel das Kitten , Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1966, p. 79. See also Walter Muschg : “Outline of a Gottfried-Keller-Portrait”, in: Gestalten undfiguren , Bern and Munich 1968, p. 171.
- ↑ See Jonas Fränkel : Gottfried Keller's letters to Vieweg , Corona Verlag, Zurich and Leipzig 1938, pp. 15 and 116. - Vieweg's letters to Keller are partially published in: Carl Helbling: Gottfried Keller. Collected letters , Bern 1950–54, Volume 3.2, pp. 9–164. Four unpublished letters from Vieweg can be found in the selection that Walter Morgentaler offers, see Gottfried Keller Briefe .
- ↑ Keller to Vieweg, February 14, 1852, Collected Letters , Volume 3.2., P. 54.
- ↑ Keller to Ferdinand Freiligrath , late 1954, Collected Letters , Volume 1, p. 257.
- ↑ Similarly, the painter Wilhelm von Kaulbach, whose illustrations for Goethe's Reineke Fuchs Keller admired, had ridiculed his politically less daring publisher: In the final vignette of Cotta's magnificent edition from 1846, his publisher's emblem, the griffin ( cf.Reineke Fuchs # Der Reineke- Wilhelm von Kaulbach's cycle ).
- ↑ Vieweg to Keller, October 23, 1854, Collected Letters Volume 3.2, p. 92.
- ↑ Jakob Baechtold : Gottfried Keller's life, his letters and diaries , 3 volumes, Berlin 1894-97, volume 2, p. 400, note 1.
- ↑ Keller to Vieweg, February 16, 1856, Collected Letters , Volume 3.2, p. 131.
- ↑ June 29, 1875, Collected Letters , Volume 3.1, p. 139.
- ^ Hans Richter: Gottfried Keller's early novellas , Rütten and Loening, Berlin 1960, p. 182 f.
- ↑ Hans Richter in the afterword to the text edition of the Aufbau-Verlag, p. 81. Richter describes Keller's relationship to philosophical materialism in detail in his work on the early novels, p. 176–180.