The Seven Vagabonds

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The Seven Vagabonds , German The Seven Vagabonds , is a story published in 1832 by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne .

Your first-person narrator, a young wanderer, is surprised by a summer rain and seeks refuge in a puppeteer's caravan . Little by little a fortune teller , a gypsy girl , and other traveling people join them. The narrator is very fond of this company and wants to join it as a wandering storyteller, but after only a short time all seven “ vagabonds ” go their ways again. The Seven Vagabonds was probably not originally conceived as a stand-alone work, but part of the framework story of a planned narrative cycle, which Hawthorne ultimately did not continue. The Seven Vagbonds occupies a marginal position in the canon of Hawthorne's stories and has so far only been given a detailed analysis by a few literary scholars. Michael J. Colacurcio registered a research desideratum in 1984 that the story had so far been “underinterpreted”. In 2000, Helmut Schwarztraub described it as “generally underestimated with regard to its poetological substance”. All of the present works have in common that they concentrate on poetological aspects, in particular on the construction of the narrator figure and its statements on the essence of storytelling. Often it is also read as an autobiographical document by the self-doubted budding writer Nathaniel Hawthorne.

content

The first-person narrator is an eighteen-year-old wanderer with no specific destination. One summer afternoon (but “in the spring of my life”) he comes to a crossroads. Straight ahead is Boston , on the left a road leads to the sea, on the right one to Stamford and on to Canada. He is undecided which way to take, and when dark clouds rise, he first seeks refuge in a strange vehicle on the side of the road, the showroom of a traveling puppeteer. For a "small silver coin" he is admitted and honored with a short but impressive performance of the puppet theater. A third figure makes himself noticeable in the car, a flying bookseller and at the same time a poet, who has rented a corner of the car and immediately offers the young wanderer a volume of his own works. Little by little the car fills up with more and more “travelers” who are looking for a dry place: a gypsy with a violin and a peep box , his dancing girl, a card reader and an Indian with a bow and arrow who shoots at fairs earned his bread on coins.

Each of the “vagabonds” shows a taste of their skills, and it turns out that they are all on their way to a camp meeting in Stamford (one of the large open air events of one of the various revival movements that took place in the early 19th century). It often attracted thousands of believers in the United States in the 19th century); there they want to provide paid entertainment on the fringes of the action. The narrator is ecstatic about his companions and wants to join them, but they ask him what art he intends to use to earn a living. He then announces that he wants to make a living as a storyteller, and immediately begins to invent a story in his mind, if only because he believes that he will have to prove his ability soon.

When the rain stops, the seven make their way to Stamford together. After a short wandering they met a Methodist preacher who told them that the camp meeting had been broken off. The group has lost its common goal and immediately dissolves. The narrator joins the Indian and sets off with him to the coast.

Work context

The Seven Vagabonds first appeared in late 1832 in the literary almanac The Token for 1833; the title page of the volume shows the year 1833, but it is certain that it was available in bookshops before Christmas 1832. Like all of his works up to the publication of the first volume of the Twice-Told Tales in 1837, Hawthorne published this story anonymously at first; However, it is provided with a note that it is by the same author as the story The Gentle Boy , which appeared in the Token in the previous year . In 1842 Hawthorne finally took it on in the second volume of the Twice-Told Tales . For this final version , he deleted a short passage in which the gypsy girl climbs a ladder and reveals more than just her ankles, which clearly embarrasses the narrator. This deletion may be due to Hawthorne's engagement to Sophia Peabody in 1839.

The thematic and narrative structure of the story, as well as parallels to other works by Hawthorne from this period, suggest that it was not originally conceived as an independent work, but was part, possibly the beginning, of a larger planned work that Hawthorne ultimately abandoned. It is likely that it was part of the framework narrative of a narrative cycle, in which self-contained short internal narratives were embedded. Such an internal narrative may have directly followed The Seven Vagabonds , because the first-person narrator announces towards the end of the narrative that he is concocting a story that he ultimately does not tell.

Hawthorne had previously written two narrative cycles at the beginning of his literary career, Seven Tales of My Native Land (around 1826-27) and Provincial Tales (around 1828-1830), but for neither of them found a publisher. He finally destroyed the manuscripts except for a few individual stories, which he later, removed from their work context, published in various publications such as the Token . The same happened to his next collection, the title of which is known, even if it has not been published any more than the two before and is lost today, namely The Story Teller (completed in 1834). It is conceivable, but unlikely because of the publication date, that The Seven Vagabonds was part of the final version of the Story Teller . According to Alfred Weber , it could also be a mere preliminary study that does not necessarily point to a planned completion, but it is more likely that it represents a ultimately rejected “first attempt” by the Story Teller . Nelson F. Adkins suspects that Hawthorne edited The Seven Vagabonds again for the individual publication in the token and gave the narrative a new ending.

In any case, it shows noticeable thematic overlaps with a number of separately published texts by Hawthorne from this period, namely the story The Canterbury Pilgrims (1832) and the beginning of the framework narrative of the Story Teller , which Hawthorne published in November 1834 (also anonymously) as Passages from a Relinquished Work ("Passages from an abandoned work") published. In the latter, the first-person narrator (called " Oberon ," after the character in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night 's Dream ) reports that the idea of ​​earning his living as a storyteller came to him when he sought refuge from a rain shower in a showroom a year or two earlier where several funny "vagabonds" cavorted. The narrator of the Storyteller therefore feels a storyteller called, he also takes on his journey soon accompanied, as the narrator of The Seven Vagabonds he describes his journey as a "pilgrimage" ( pilgrimage ), and both are getting ready the "miracle der Welt "( wonders of the world ) to discover. The story The Canterbury Pilgrims , which ultimately also appeared in the 1833 volume of the token , also has a young first-person narrator who comes across six coincidental companions who have been referred to as “pilgrims”. The recurrence of the “magic” number seven in both stories suggests that it was just as important in the first draft of the Story Teller as it was in the lost Seven Tales of My Native Land .

Interpretations

Literature as a calling and profession

Weber sees the narrator as the prototype of the romantic dreamer. The dream of a “free life” beyond social constraints, as embodied by the vagabonds and ultimately by the narrator himself, finds a contemporary equivalent in German literature, for example in Eichendorff's novella From the life of a good-for-nothing (1826). With Hawthorne, however, some specifically American elements can be identified, in particular the figure of the Indian, who, as a symbol of an original, natural life apart from civilization, has almost become a leitmotif of American national romanticism, for example in James Fenimore Cooper's leather-stocking novels (1827-1841 ). Edwin S. Fusell, for example, sees the admiring description of the Indian in The Seven Vagabonds as representing the free pioneering spirit and therefore a representative American hero. He interprets Hawthorne's preference for remote corners of New England such as the White Mountains or the remote crossroads in The Seven Vagabonds as Hawthorne's equivalent or replacement for the American myth of the West, if not of the “ Wild West ”. Hawthorne also alludes to the blessings of American democracy; At one point he describes the vagabonds as a “parliament” of “free spirits.” After a kind of parliamentary debate, he himself is accepted into this society, mainly at the advocacy of the young gypsy.

The narrator's decision to become a storyteller is due, on the one hand, to the conception of the story as a framework for a narrative cycle; this construction has a tradition that goes back far beyond Romanticism - as Luther S. Luedtke emphasizes, the narrator takes the storytellers of the Orient ( Oriental travelers ) as a model, which suggests the stories from the Arabian Nights ; the pilgrim motif and the title of the related story The Canterbury Pilgrims refer to Hawthorne 's preoccupation with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (around 1390). On the other hand, in his decision, the narrator formulates a justification for the narrative itself, a romantic poetology . As a qualification for storytelling as a profession, he cites a knowledge of human nature and empathy (“If there is one ability that I have to a more perfect degree than most people, it is that I can put myself mentally into situations that are my own are strange, and recognize their comforts with a serene eye ”). Added to this is the romantic wanderlust and the longing for a carefree life from the constraints of everyday life and society, and the narrator realizes that, contrary to expectations, this may also be possible in his home country New England . This thought is expressed in a vision-like passage that Weber describes as the "intellectual key" of the narrative:

" I saw mankind, in this weary old age of the world, either enduring a sluggish existence amid the smoke and dust of cities, or, if they breathed a purer air, still lying down at night with no hope but to wear out to- morrow, and all the to-morrows which make up life, among the same dull scenes and in the same wretched toilet, that had darkened the sunshine of to-day. But there were some, full of the primeval instinct, who preserved the freshness of youth to their latest years by the continual excitement of new objects, new pursuits, and new associates; and cared little, though their birth place might have been here in New England, if the grave should close over them in Central Asia. "

“I saw mankind in this arduous old age of the world either dragging itself along in the dust and smoke of the cities or - even if it breathed purer air - still lying down in the evening with no better hope than getting through the morning, everyone Mornings that make life together, in the same dull surroundings, the same desperate drudgery that darkened today's sunlight. But there were some who, from the fullness of an original instinct, preserved the freshness of youth up to the last few years, through the constant suggestion of new objects, new goals, new companions, who, although born in New England, cared little about it took care if the grave in Central Asia should close over them. "

Helmut Schwarztraub however directs attention to the fact that the story is a retrospective reflection of the narrator on his younger self, in which “the personal problem of the life decision appears to have long been overcome.” Ultimately, the narrator does not get to Stamford, the goal that for his utopian dream of a free vagabond life, but to Boston, to the "distant city". The end therefore marks the "awakening from a beautiful illusion," which gives way to the bitter realization that free life is only a dream and that even being a writer requires a compromise with disdainful reality.

If equating the narrator with the author is highly problematic, especially in Hawthorne exegesis (the term The Hawthorne Question has been specially established for this problem ), at least in the case of The Seven Vagabonds all commentators also assume autobiographical references. Austin Warren, for example, specifically considers the story to be a basically realistic “memento” of a trip that Hawthorne took in the summer of 1830, and puts it in a row not with other stories from Hawthorne, but with passages from Hawthorne's private diaries and notebooks. Nina Baym sees it as an expression of the alienation from society that Hawthorne may have felt as a budding writer.

Literature as the devil's work

For reasons of mentality and the history of the spirit, New England seemed to Hawthorne an extremely unfavorable place to begin a literary career, especially one so romantic. The Puritans who settled the country in the 17th and 18th centuries were skeptical to hostile towards art, especially literature, exceptions were only made for religious edification literature (such as Michael Wigglesworth's The Day of Doom ). The Puritan hostility to fiction had complex theological reasons; it was not only considered useless, but fundamentally sinful, as a distraction from the truth of the Holy Scriptures , and consequently as idolatry, if not as the work of the devil , the “father of lies” ( Joh 8.44  EU ). In the New England Primer (around 1690), which was reprinted a million times, the devil lures a young man tellingly with the promise to make him an “artist” of devilish treacheries if he writes his soul to him ( If thou wilt but be ruled by me / An artist thou shalt quickly be ) - it is no coincidence that this primer also has Hawthorne's flying bookseller in its range. The narrator's decision to make his way through as a wandering storyteller appears to be nothing less than a pact with the devil . The fortune-teller himself claims to be familiar with the devil and has, the narrator imagines, that because of this he has gifts that may well be of use to a writer:

" ... so I fancied that he was fitted to pursue and take delight in his way of life, by some of the mental and moral characteristics, the lighter and possess more comic ones, of the Devil in popular stories. Among them might be reckoned a love of deception for its own sake, a shrewd eye and keen relish for human weakness and ridiculous infirmity, and the talent of petty fraud […] And then what an inexhaustible field of enjoyment, both as enabling him to discern so much folly and achieve such quantities of minor mischief, was opened to his sneering spirit by his pretensions to prophetic knowledge. All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of, though I had little sympathy with it. Perhaps had I been then inclined to admit it, I might have found that the roving life was more proper to him than to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I had compared the poor man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in "wandering up and down upon the earth"; ... "

“… So I imagined that in his way of life he would particularly enjoy having some of the spiritual and moral characteristics of the devil in popular stories, rather the lighter and more comical features. To this one would like to include the preference for deception for its own sake, a keen eye and a profound pleasure in human weaknesses and ridiculous infirmities […] It was all a kind of happiness that I could imagine, even if I had little sympathy for it . If I had been inclined to admit that at the time, I might have found that the wandering life suited him better than one of his companions; for Satan, with whom I have compared the poor man, has always enjoyed 'walking up and down on earth' since the time of Job; "

Here, and already in the title of the story, the Old Testament motif of Cain is heard , with which the word vagabond ( vagabond ) has been linked in English since the King James Bible , in which God condemns Cain to eternal wandering with these words: a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth ( Gen 4,12  KJV ; ESV : "You shall be unsteady and fleeting on earth").

The notion of the devil as the actual muse of literature can be found in many other stories by Hawthorne, such as An Old Woman's Tale (1830), and most clearly in The Devil in Manuscript (1835). Here, on the one hand, an ironic intention is clear, a parody of the New England belief in the devil, which is turned in an ironic inversion against the Puritan hostility to fiction. Colacurcio, for example, argues that a text like The Seven Vagabonds , which explicitly refers to the satirical tradition of Cervantes , Swift and others, can hardly be understood otherwise, but on the other hand he argues that Hawthorne has certain "theological scruples" here with regard to literature formulated in general and his own literary vocation in particular. According to Helmut Schwarztauber, the story not only shows the diabolical in the literary act of creation itself, it is also inherent in the romantic utopia of existence of the writer, which, although it harbors the hope of self-fulfillment, at the same time also the danger of failure and self-destruction.

In the course of the narrative itself, given the allusions to the devil, it turns out to be telling irony that the vagabonds set out on a Methodist tented mission, or, as the narrator puts it, “we must do our duty to these poor souls at Stamford “( We must be doing our duty by these poor souls at Stamford ). At one point he feels “as if all the vagabonds were all over New England in Stamford” ( I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were converging to the camp meeting ) - although he initially meant his six companions , but Colacurcio points out that the sentence also implies that the pious in Stamford and other camp meetings have now also adopted a vagabond way of life; the mobility is therefore fundamental to modern society, is old certainties, and can no longer seem so outrageous as before, a literary life. After all, even the mounted Methodist preacher who appears towards the end of the story is an itinerant preacher, so Colacurcio muses that he and not the narrator is actually the seventh vagabond.

literature

expenditure

The first edition can be found in:

The main edition of the work, the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Ohio State University Press, Columbus OH 1962ff.), Contains The Seven Vagabonds in Volume IX ( Twice-Told Tales , 1974) edited by Fredson Bowers and J. Donald Crowley ), Pp. 350-369. Some of the numerous anthologies of Hawthorne's short stories contain the narrative; A popular reading edition based on the Centenary Edition is:

There are three translations into German:

  • The seven vagabonds . German by Friedrich Minckwitz. In: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Gray Protector and Other Tales . Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Weimar 1970.
  • The seven vagabonds . German by Hannelore Neves. In: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Heavenly Railroad. Stories, sketches, forewords, reviews . With an afterword and comments by Hans-Joachim Lang . Winkler, Munich 1977. ISBN 3-53806068-1
  • The seven vagabonds . German by Lore Krüger . in: Nathaniel Hawthorne: Mr. Higginbotham's Doom. Selected stories . Edited by Heinz Förster. Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1979.

Secondary literature

  • Michael J. Colacurcio : The Province of Piety: Moral History in Hawthorne's Early Tales. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1984. Reprint: Duke University Press, Durham NC 1996. ISBN 0822315726
  • James Duban : The Triumph of Infidelity in Hawthorne's 'The Story Teller' . In: Studies in American Fiction 7: 1, 1979. pp. 49-60.
  • James Janssen: Hawthorne's Seventh Vagabond: The Outselling Bard . In: Emerson Society Quarterly 62, 1971. pp. 22-28.
  • Lea Bertani Vozar Newman : A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne . GK Hall, Boston 1979.
  • Helmut Schwarztraub: Fiction of Fiction. Justification and preservation of narration through theoretical self-reflection in the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe . Universitätsverlag C. Winter, Heidelberg 2000. (= English Research 281; At the same time, Habil. -schrift, Erfurt University of Education, 1996/97) ISBN 3-8253-1042-6
  • Alfred Weber : The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthorne. "The Story Teller" and other early works . Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1973. ISBN 3-5030-0714-8

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety , p. 499.
  2. ↑ Helmut Schwarztraub: Fiktion der Fiktion , p. 635, note 7.
  3. ↑ Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety , pp. 496-497.
  4. ↑ All quotations below based on the translation by Hannelore Neves, but adapted to the new German spelling.
  5. ↑ Which of the different places of this name is meant is unclear, s. Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthornes , p. 132, note 9.
  6. ↑ The word Gypsy (English gypsy though) does not fall, but it is read on the description of the two that the two belong to the so called time ethnic group, s. Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthornes , p. 132.
  7. ↑ Lea Bertani Vozar Newman: A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne , p. 282. The deleted passage reads: I hardly know how to hint, that, as the brevity of her gown displayed rather more than her ankles, I could not help wishing that I had stood at a little distance without, when she stepped up the ladder into the wagon. (Quoted from the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne , Vol. IX, p. 630.)
  8. ^ Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthornes , pp. 134-135.
  9. ^ Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthornes , p. 135.
  10. ^ Nelson F. Adkins: The Early Projected Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne . In: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 39, 1945. p. 134.
  11. ↑ The idea of ​​becoming a wandering story-teller had been suggested, a year or two before, by an encounter with several merry vagabonds in a showman's wagon, where they and I had sheltered ourselves during a summer shower. Quoted in: Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthornes , p. 132.
  12. ^ Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthornes , p. 135.
  13. ^ Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthornes , pp. 138-141.
  14. ^ Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthornes , p. 133.
  15. ^ Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthornes , p. 133.
  16. ^ Edwin S. Fussell: Frontier: American Literature and the American West . Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1965. pp. 70-78.
  17. ^ Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthornes , p. 134.
  18. ^ Luther S. Luedtke: Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Romance of the Orient . Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis 1989. ISBN 0253336139 , pp. 107-109.
  19. ^ Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthornes , p. 140.
  20. ^ Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthornes , p. 133.
  21. ↑ Helmut Schwarztraub: Fiktion der Fiktion , pp. 130-131.
  22. ↑ Helmut Schwarztraub: Fiktion der Fiktion , pp. 137-138.
  23. ↑ Notes on The Seven Vagabonds in: Nathaniel Hawthorne: Representative Selections . Edited by Austin Warren. American Book Co., New York and Cincinnati 1934. pp. 358-359.
  24. ^ Nina Baym: The Shape of Hawthorne's Career . Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY 1976. p. 50.
  25. ↑ James Duban: The Triumph of Infidelity in Hawthorne's 'The Story Teller' , p. 53.
  26. ↑ Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety , p. 498.
  27. ↑ James Duban: The Triumph of Infidelity in Hawthorne's 'The Story Teller' , p. 58.
  28. ↑ Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety , p. 501.
  29. ↑ Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety , p. 498.
  30. ↑ Helmut Schwarztraub: Fiktion der Fiktion , p. 139.
  31. ↑ Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety , p. 500.
  32. ↑ Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety , p. 499.