Dance of the Blessed Spirits
Dance of the Blessed Spirits. Fifteen Tales (in the original Dance of the Happy Shades , 1968) is Alice Munro's first collection of short stories . Thematically it is about growing up in adverse circumstances.
Acclaimed enthusiastically by critics, the volume was awarded the highest Canadian literary prize, the Governor General's Award for Fiction , in 1968 . In a German translation by Heidi Zerning, the collection was first published by Dörlemann Verlag in Zurich in 2010 and has a volume of 378 pages with illustrations. The second edition in 2013 was published as a licensed edition by S. Fischer in Frankfurt am Main.
The tape's fifteen short stories take place in the 1930s to 1950s. It is mainly told from the perspective of girls and young women who are realists and can observe closely. Truths that are too simple turn out to be cruel contradictions that make the cosmos appear puzzling and full of fragile realities of life. The stories mostly take place in everyday provincial and economic narrowness, but when life has suddenly changed, there is sometimes freedom.
In the first story, "Walker Brothers Cowboy", parts of the story are not told, writes Judith Maclean Miller in her analysis (2002). There is thoughtful silence here and there that appear to be significant pauses. In this silence there are hints of infidelity or at least of dissatisfaction. The story addresses the way in which something is not brought up.
Works included
- The Walker Brothers Cowboy (Walker Brothers Cowboy), p. 7
- The Shining Houses, p. 37
- Images, p. 57
- Thanks for the Ride, p. 81
- The Office, p. 105
- A glass of medicine (An Ounce of Cure), p. 131
- The Time of Death, p. 155
- Day of the Butterfly, p. 173
- When Myra, the outsider in the class, no longer comes to class because of illness, she becomes more interesting for her classmates. A hospital visit with gifts is staged as an early birthday party. Myra's objection that it wasn't her birthday until July is ignored by the teacher who leads the hospital visit and who had previously told the others in the class to try to be nicer to Myra. Helen, the first-person narrator, had tried out on her way to school at her request to see how it would feel for her to contact Myra. In a cookie jar from which Helen Myra offers something, there is a small piece of jewelry in the shape of a butterfly that she gives her. Myra hadn't been to class the day or week after. When the students have already left the hospital room at the end of the visiting hours, Myra calls Helen back and asks her to take some of the many presents with her. The work was first published under the title "Goodbye Myra" (1956).
- Boys and girls (Boys and Girls), p 191
- Postcard, p. 221
- Red Dress - 1946 (Red Dress - 1946), p. 253
- Sunday Afternoon, p. 277
- A Trip to the Coast, p. 295
- The Peace of Utrecht, p. 323
- Dance of the Happy Shades, p. 359
literature
- Judith Maclean Miller, Deconstructing Silence: The Mystery of Alice Munro, in: The Antigonish Review , 129 (2002), pp. 43-52. (To "Walker Brothers Cowboy")
Web links
- Alice Munro: Dance of the Happy Shades , mookseandgripes.com . A series of readings about the works in the volume Dance of the Happy Shades , in English, which ran from February 1, 2013 to April 11, 2013.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sylvia Staude, "Dance of the Blessed Spirits." Alice Munro's early stories , fr-online.de , June 8, 2010, last accessed on November 13, 2013.
- ↑ Gabriele von Arnim, Between Hope and Hopelessness. Alice Munro: "Dance of the blessed spirits", Dörlemann Verlag, Zurich 2010, 384 pages , dradio.de , March 24, 2010, last accessed on November 13, 2013.
- ^ Judith Maclean Miller, Deconstructing Silence: The Mystery of Alice Munro, in: The Antigonish Review , 129 (2002), pp. 43-52.
- ↑ See also [: en: List of short stories by Alice Munro] in the English language Wikipedia