Stiller (Max Frisch)

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Dust jacket of the first edition of the novel 1954

Stiller is a novel by the Swiss writer Max Frisch published in 1954. He helped the author to his literary breakthrough, as a result of which Frisch could give up his job as an architect and devote himself entirely to his work as a writer. The theme of the novel, the question of identity , is one of Max Frisch's central themes. The three novels Stiller , Homo faber and Mein Name sei Gantenbein make up his main prose work.

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“I'm not quiet!” With these words, the first-person narrator , who has an American passport in the name of James Larkin White, defends himself against his arrest on entry into Switzerland. There he is believed to be the missing Swiss sculptor Anatol Ludwig Stiller, an identity that White persistently denies, even though acquaintances and friends identify him as the very same Stiller. What specifically is against Stiller remains nebulous. But the mere fact of his hiding arouses speculation about possible espionage activity. White's consistent refusal to be the Stiller recognized in him further stokes suspicions, as does his criticism of Switzerland that he has expressed aloud. So White remains in custody for the time being in a Zurich prison, where only his guard Knobel is willing to accept him as who White is posing as. The guard eagerly listens to the wild adventure stories of his inmate from Mexico, which are becoming more and more colorful and contradictory and result in several murders that White claims to have committed overseas, including the murder of his wife.

Stiller's wife Julika Stiller-Tschudy, a former ballet dancer who now runs a dance school, travels from Paris , and she too recognizes her husband in the prisoner. From her point of view, he learns of Stiller's difficult relationship with Julika, two people who seemed tied to each other more because of their fears of not being able to satisfy other partners than because of their open willingness to accept and love each other. Stiller saw his failure in the Spanish Civil War as the beginning of all problems , in which he volunteered on the part of the International Brigades less out of political idealism than out of life weariness. The longer Julika and Stiller's marriage lasted, the more his egocentricity and her inability to respond to him became apparent. Eventually Julika had to give up her beloved ballet because of a tuberculosis disease and retire to Davos for a cure , while Stiller, who felt he was permanently in the wrong towards his wife, fled into an affair. When this broke up, Stiller also left his sick wife and remained missing from then on.

According to Julika's story, White cannot understand this stiller either. And like Stiller once, he feels more and more attracted to the beautiful, distant Julika. In the open air he tries to get closer to her as a stranger and not as her resurfaced husband, but she and everyone else rejects Stiller's identity. His lawyer, the good Dr. Bohnenblust, try by all means to prove to him that he is who he doesn't want to be. In this situation, of all people, the public prosecutor becomes his closest confidante and soon becomes his friend Rolf. It turns out that Rolf is also linked to Stiller's earlier existence, because it was his wife Sibylle with whom Stiller once had an affair, which almost caused the young marriage between Rolf and Sibylle to fail. Rolf, who had always seen himself as a tolerant person, also tried to be tolerant towards his wife and, precisely because of his apparent lack of emotion about their relationship, drove her deeper and deeper into Stiller's arms. However, because of his guilty feelings towards his sick wife, the latter shied away from the ultimate consequence, which in the daydreams of Sibylle and Stiller would have meant a trip to Paris together. Only when he had to go to Paris for work anyway and thus could show Julika an inviolable alibi, Stiller was ready for the trip, which Sibylle refused. She withdrew from both men, tried to distance herself for a few months in the US, but ended up going back to her husband Rolf.

Dr. Bohnenblust plans to entice his client to “confess” that he is Stiller with a local appointment in Stiller's studio, also in the interests of poor Julika, for whom the lawyer repeatedly takes a position against his client. He even uses Stiller's frail father to lure his client out of his reserve. However, this only succeeds in so far as he ravages the studio with Stiller's old works of art in a fit of rage. Julika's refusal to answer his question as to whether she loves him becomes the trigger for his frenzy. Her participation in his lawyer's farce makes him feel betrayed by her. Back in prison, Stiller confesses his story for the first time: After the failed affair with Sibylle and his break with Julika, he traveled to America as a stowaway. He had tried to kill himself there, but was only grazed by a shot. After a near-death experience , he decided to start a new life. But at the trial the facts are clear: Stiller is sentenced to his old life again, namely to be Stiller.

In the afterword, Rolf, the public prosecutor, reports on Stiller's further life. After the trial, he and Julika settled in a run-down chalet in Glion near Lake Geneva , where Stiller discovered pottery and Julika works as a teacher of rhythmic gymnastics . Rolf visits him there twice. During the first visit, he noticed that Stiller's marriage was still in crisis. Julika tells him under the cloak of secrecy that her illness has broken out again and that she must be operated on as soon as possible, while Stiller praises Julika's supposed health. For a long time, the correspondence between Rolf and Stiller did not mention the operation, but when Rolf and Sibylle wanted to visit the Stillers at Easter, Julika had just had part of her lungs removed and Stiller was beside himself with fear. One long night he talks to Rolf about his desperate relationship with Julika, who was never able to return his love. He accuses himself of having ruined Julika and fears that she will die. In the morning he is unable to visit his wife in the hospital. When Rolf and Sibylle take on this task, Julika is already dead. On her dead face, Rolf recognizes Stiller's description, and the assumption arises in him that Stiller only ever saw Julika as dead. Stiller receives the news of his wife's death in a composed and absent-minded manner. He rarely reports to Rolf after their funeral and from then on lives alone in Glion.

Structure and style

The novel consists of the seven books with Stiller's notes in prison and the prosecutor's afterword . The novel therefore has two storytellers . Stiller can be viewed as a novel with a first-person narrator suffering from a dissociative identity disorder , even if the main character, Stiller, never officially says I - neither in the second part, where a secondary character (Rolf) edits the text, nor in the first part of the Romans where the first-person narrator coincides with the main character, but who, as is well known, does not want to be. The title character appears throughout in the Er form. A Stiller never writes about himself in the diary, so that in Stiller's notes only Stiller's silence is actually told - as a resistance to telling oneself. This is one of the ironies of the text.

Stiller turns out to be anything but an Olympic narrator. The entries in his diary seem disorganized and erratic. Stiller tells complex stories, mixes places and times without any recognizable logic. Rolf, on the other hand, stands out for its clarity and order. His narrative style is one-dimensional and ordered chronologically.

The present tense, which is widely used, has an alienating effect on the diary form - diaries are mostly written in past tenses. Overall, it seems worthwhile to take a closer look at the changes in tense within the narrative structure.

Stiller's seven books are structured as follows:

  • In issues I, III, V and VII Stiller reports like a diary about what he experienced during his imprisonment and what thoughts he had about it.
  • Booklets II, IV and VI reflect in a protocol what Julika, Rolf and Sibylle tell him.

It is the prosecutor who publishes Stiller's notes after he had sent them to him in the winter before Julika's death. The epilogue continues the series of volumes II, IV and VI and its author gives it a certain protocol character. Rolf appears in the epilogue as Stiller's friend and no longer takes on the role of representative of society.

Narrative situation

In Stiller's notes in prison , the same ego speaks throughout that emphasizes in its first sentence: I am not Stiller! Since the first part of the novel is already titled as Stiller's Notes in Prison , the narrator's ego appears to be split from the outset: into White's pretended (fictitious) me and Stiller's hidden (latent) me. It also happens that White (who has only existed in this form for two years, i.e. since the suicide attempt) is unable to write down his life. Stiller's latent ego would have a life story, but White can only report about it in the Er form.

Both the entries about life in pre-trial detention and the transcripts of Julika, Rolf's and Sibylle's stories are shaped by the perspective of someone else's gaze.

In this way there is an alienation effect: The illusion is destroyed that the story told really happened. The effect here is the polyp perspective - that is, the accumulation of perspectives in which certain episodes appear. Stiller's love affair with Sibylle is presented from the perspective of Julika, Rolf and Sibylle. In addition, the note-taker had also witnessed the story himself, so that his perspective also flows into the text.

In the prosecutor's afterword, a peripheral ego is the narrator; Rolf is only at the edge of what he reports.

Chronology of the novel

Stiller's records in prison cover a period of about ten weeks in autumn 1952, the prosecutor's afterword tells of the following two and a half years until Julika's death on Easter 1955. What is striking here is the different scale with which the story is told: Stiller tells greatly enlarged, so to speak in slow motion, while Rolf tells in fast motion. This is due to the fact that the first part is laid out as a diary, which reproduces the inside view of the person concerned (Stiller / White), while the second part is told from the outside: the public prosecutor reports on another life.

The following units of time and action can be reconstructed within the novel:

before 1945: history and marriage with Julika

  • 1936: Stiller as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War in the fight against the fascists
  • 1937: first meeting with Julika
  • 1938: Stiller / Julika married

1945: First main story (marriage crisis)

  • Summer 1945: Julika in Davos / Stiller's love affair with Sibylle
  • August 1945: Stiller's first visit to Davos
  • September 1945: The Jesuit dies; Rolf becomes a public prosecutor; Sibylle has Stiller's child aborted
  • November 1945: Stiller separates from Julika and Sibylle
  • December 1945: Sibylle travels to the USA

1946–1952: Stiller in America

  • Early 1946: Stiller in New York
  • 1946–1952: Stiller lives in the USA and Mexico
  • January 18, 1946. Smyrnow Affair
  • 1950: Stiller attempted suicide in Mexico

1952: prison

  • Autumn 1952: Stiller's arrest and remand

1952–1955: The new life

  • Winter 1952/53: Stiller and Julika in Territet
  • February 1953: Rolf and Sibylles visit Territet
  • Summer 1953: move to the chalet in Glion
  • October 1954: Rolf visits Glion
  • [Autumn 1954: publication by Stiller ]
  • Winter 54/55: Stiller sends Rolf his notes
  • March 1955: Operation Julikas, Rolf and Sibylle visit Glion together
  • Easter Monday: Julika's death
  • after spring 1955: composition of the epilogue

Possibilities of interpretation

Central themes of the novel:

  • lived life (I) versus externally given roles and clichés (portrait),
  • unavoidable repetitions of living in what has already been experienced or said,
  • Probation in relationships or in alleged acts,
  • Irony of self-failure and self-conviction,
  • Tellability or non-tellability of life and greed for stories,
  • the “unspeakable” that can only be paraphrased.

The fatal outcome of the novel seems inevitable: Julika, who dies on Easter, pays with her death that she cannot accept and love Stiller as transformed. She cannot free him from the image she has made of him - that means she is on the side of society and not that of her husband.

“The final loneliness that falls upon Stiller, of which the final sentence of the afterword speaks, is, like his silence, the straightforward consequence of the decision made earlier; Julika's betrayal is the periphery of a tragedy that draws both of them into catastrophe. The outcome confirms that the dreams during Stiller's pre-trial detention, which knew something of a mutual crucifixion, foretold the truth. "

- Naumann, p. 162

The problem of identity dealt with in the form of a diary in this work also plays a key role in Frisch's other novels.

Parable stories

There are three smaller stories within the prison records:

  • the story of Isidore the pharmacist;
  • the fairy tale of Rip Van Winkle ;
  • the cave story of the real James Larkin White.

The purpose of these stories and fairy tales is to point out your own situation like a parable. Stiller / White cannot simply express his truth in words, so he expresses it as an expanded comparison. Stiller would like to express his unique existence indirectly and on a trial basis. With the stories that he tells, he tries to preserve intact the vision of a new self and to forestall the attempts of society, which wishes to recapture its permanent image of the lost fellow citizen.

Frisch's spiritual roots

An abundance of intertextual references can be found in Stiller . The philosophy of the Dane Sören Kierkegaard should occupy a special position here . Frisch puts two mottos in front of his novel, which come from the writing Entweder - Oder (1843).

In addition to Kierkegaard, there are references to the Bible, Goethe , Thomas Mann , CG Jung , Ludwig Klages , Albin Zollinger , Ernst Jünger , Theodor Fontane , Leo Tolstoy , Bertolt Brecht and Luigi Pirandello .

History of origin

In early 1953, Frisch came up with the idea of ​​Stiller and used manuscripts that he had written in the USA and Mexico in 1951–1952. Frisch completed the Stiller near Glion in the spring of 1954 . The work was first published in the same year by Suhrkamp-Verlag. The famous first sentence “I am not quieter!” Is only inserted in the correction of the flags. The still uncorrected typescript, the fresh to the Suhrkamp publishing house sends is in the Museum of Modern Literature seen in a permanent exhibition.

There are several preliminary stages of Stiller's work, the influence of which can be seen in the novel: Frisch's novel Die Schwierigen or J'adore ce qui me brûle , the diary 1946–1949 and several travelogues from the USA and Mexico can be mentioned at this point .

Impact history

Stiller was Frisch's breakthrough as a novelist. The work has been translated into several foreign languages ​​and has been awarded literary prizes such as the Grand Schiller Prize of the Swiss Schiller Foundation or the Wilhelm Raabe Prize .

Stiller was included in the ZEIT library of 100 books .

Others

Stiller was the first novel by Suhrkamp Verlag to reach a circulation of millions. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the first edition, Suhrkamp-Verlag published an edition in September 2004, the appearance of which is based on that of the original 1954 edition. Rainer Werner Fassbinder took over the name of the protagonist for his film adaptation of Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye in the two-part television film Welt am Draht .

expenditure

  • Max Frisch: Stiller . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1954 (first edition).
  • Max Frisch: Stiller . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1973, ISBN 3-518-36605-X (Suhrkamp paperback).
  • Max Frisch: Stiller . In: Collected works in chronological order. Third volume . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-518-06533-5 , pp. 359-780.
  • Max Frisch: Stiller . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-518-41661-8 (as part of the first edition).

literature

  • Walter Schmitz (ed.): Materials on Max Frisch "Stiller" . 2 volumes. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-518-06919-5
  • Helmut Naumann: Max Frisch's “Stiller” or the problem of communication . Schäuble, Rheinfelden / Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-87718-802-8
  • Jürgen H. Petersen: Max Frisch: Stiller . Basics and thoughts on understanding narrative literature. Diesterweg, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-425-06173-9
  • Paola Albarella: novel of transition. Max Frisch's Stiller and the art of novels around the middle of the century . Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2478-8
  • Franziska Schößler and Eva Schwab: Max Frisch Stiller. A novel . Oldenbourg Interpretations Volume 103, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-01414-5
  • Daniel Rothenbühler: Max Frisch: Stiller. King's Explanations and Materials (Vol. 356). Hollfeld: Bange Verlag 2004. ISBN 978-3-8044-1813-4
  • Melanie Rohner: Confessions of color. Postcolonial perspectives on Max Frisch's “Stiller” and “Homo faber”. Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-8498-1063-4 .
  • Anita Gröger: 'Told doubts about memory'. A narrative figure in the German-language novel of the post-war period (1954–1976). Ergon-Verlag, Würzburg, 2016. ISBN 978-3-95650-149-4 .
  • Bernhard Lang: Religion and Literature in Three Millennia. Hundert Bücher , Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-79227-3 , pp. 456-463.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. See Albarella, p. 82 ff.
  2. See also Rothenbühler, p. 46 ff.
  3. See Rothenbühler, p. 29.
  4. See Chapter 4 in Beatrice von Matt, Mein Name ist Frisch, Munich, [Zurich]: Nagel & Kimche, 2011
  5. See Rothenbühler, p. 30.