Stone Age (Anna Seghers)

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Stone Age is a short story by Anna Seghers that was preprinted in the summer of 1975 and was published in book form in Berlin in 1977 together with the story Re- Encounter.

With the stylistic device of repetition, Anna Seghers comes back to a statement by US General Curtis E. LeMay and warns: The inhuman doer kills himself.

background

The subject of America - with the USA , Colombia and Brazil - is not out of thin air. Anna Seghers lived in exile in Mexico from 1941 to 1947. She had previously been refused entry to the USA.

content

After two years of fighting in the jungle in Vietnam , young Gary was sent home wounded with a small settlement; Far too little money for a soldier who helped his general bombard Vietnam back into the Stone Age. Since he extorted a large amount of money in an air piracy case at home in a learned guerrilla manner , the warrior has been on the run from the US law enforcement agency.

Speaking Spanish, Gary embarks as José Hernández - Gary has Spanish ancestors - for Colombia. After transferring the loot to various Colombian financial institutions in Bogotá without being disturbed, an odyssey through the country begins, which ends with Gary's accidental death in a high mountainous stone desert - in other words, in the Stone Age. Gary succumbs to his pathological paranoia . Hilzinger writes: "This is how the order of the American general ... is ultimately fulfilled on the former soldier himself."

Whether it is the delicate beauty Eliza who lives happily with Gary or whether he establishes himself as the supervisor of the Ranchero González - every time the refugee thinks: "Now they are on my trail." His stay is no longer there. We continue eastwards towards Brazil. Gary wants to get rid of the past, "the old and the youngest". And once in a lifetime Gary wants to see the Amazon . On the way in the undergrowth, visiting the "natives", the soldiers benefit from the Vietnam jungle practice. Unfortunately America turns out to be a village. The US anthropologist Tom Hilsom is doing research there among the indigenous peoples. Gary blabbles himself; speaks English. Is Hilsom one of Gary's pursuers? The suspicious soldier has to leave the pile dwelling settlement. He turns away from the Magdalena River ; march up into the mountains. Behind a high plateau he wants to calmly continue his life without coercion, without orders. Exhausted breathing in the thin air, Gary misses the high mountain path and falls into the icy stone world; becomes prey of a swarming swarm of vultures. People from the Ranchero Bastista Gómez recover the remains of the body. Gómez demands the dead man's money from his subordinates.

Hilsom, having returned to the States, crossed out all entries in his notebook about José Hernández, the Spaniard who spoke English without an accent, while he was recording his South American experiences. Anna Seghers writes: "He wanted to be alone, thought Hilsom, should he."

Others

The fact that the main character Gary acts as an air pirate after the combat mission in Vietnam alludes to the Vietnam War itself. Members of the United States Air Force who participated in the attacks on North Vietnam were commonly referred to as "air pirates" in socialist rhetoric . On the other hand, shot down American aircraft crews in North Vietnamese prisoners of war were sometimes tortured and forced to sign confessions according to which they were "air pirates".

Gary's plane hijacking itself seems to be based on the DB Cooper case . He hijacked a passenger plane on a domestic flight in the United States in November 1971 and, after receiving a ransom, jumped out of the plane with a parachute. Since Cooper is considered missing after this act, the case caused a huge sensation and motivated a number of free riders to do similar acts.

reception

  • Inge Diersen emphasizes "the beautiful, bold, relentless narrative" as "the most important of the late work - a story without a message, without light ... as a consequence of a life that was fundamentally wrong".
  • According to Neugebauer, the text is divided into three parts: happy escape, continued escape with a fatal end and erasing the traces of Gary's life. The stylistic device repetition is addressed in the article header. Neugebauer points to another repetition. When the air pirate Gary jumps off with the prey, the parachute opens. Irony of fate: while Gary falls in the high mountains, he thinks: "The parachute, damn it, won't open."
  • Hilzinger quotes Marion Brandt: “Preliminary versions of Anna Seghers' story Stone Age . Description and comment on a possible interpretation ”.

literature

expenditure

Secondary literature

  • Heinz Neugebauer: Anna Seghers. Life and work. With illustrations (research assistant: Irmgard Neugebauer, editorial deadline September 20, 1977). 238 pages. Series “Writers of the Present” (Ed. Kurt Böttcher). People and Knowledge, Berlin 1980, without ISBN
  • Kurt Batt : Anna Seghers. Trial over development and works. With illustrations. 283 pages. Reclam, Leipzig 1973 (2nd edition 1980). Licensor: Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main ( Röderberg-Taschenbuch Vol. 15), ISBN 3-87682-470-2
  • Andreas Schrade: Anna Seghers . Metzler, Stuttgart 1993 (Metzler Collection, Vol. 275 (Authors)), ISBN 3-476-10275-0
  • Sonja Hilzinger: Anna Seghers. With 12 illustrations. Series of Literature Studies. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, RUB 17623, ISBN 3-15-017623-9
  • Josefina Sandoval: México in Anna Seghers' life and work. 1940-1947 . Scientific publishing house Berlin, 2001 (Diss. FU Berlin ). ISBN 3-932089-67-7

Remarks

  1. ↑ See also attacks by the United States Air Force on North Vietnam .
  2. ↑ Gary moves through Colombia sometime after 1972. Because he mentions a newspaper report about the reconstruction of the Hanoi Long-Biên-Bridge (edition used, p. 408, 3. Zvo).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anna Seghers: Erzählungen 1963-1977, p. 658
  2. ^ Schrade, p. 150, 9. Zvu
  3. ^ Batt, pp. 144-160
  4. ↑ Sandoval, pp. 36-39
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 392, 3rd Zvu
  6. ^ Schrade, p. 150, 17th Zvu
  7. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 142, 12. Zvu
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 398, 20. Zvo
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 408, 4th Zvu
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 434, 11. Zvo
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 438, 6. Zvo
  12. ↑ see, for example, Neues Deutschland , June 9, 1966: 1100. US air pirate destroyed , accessed on May 21, 2015
  13. ^ Karl Grobe: Lessons from Vietnam , accessed on May 21, 2015
  14. ↑ Inge Diersen, quoted in Hilzinger, p. 144, 2. Zvo and p. 216, 5th painting from
  15. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 210, 4th Zvu
  16. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 210, 1st Zvu
  17. ↑ Edition used, p. 437, 16. Zvo
  18. ↑ quoted in Hilzinger, p. 215, 5th entry vu