The wedding knell

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The Wedding-Knell is a short story published in 1835 by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne . There are two translations into German: Die Totenhochzeit (German by Franz Blei , 1922) and Die Hochzeitstotenglocke (Hannelore Neves, 1977)

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The story is introduced by a first-person narrator who states that the following events were described to him by his grandmother, who was there herself as a young girl; but after the first few paragraphs it takes a back seat.

A memorable wedding was about to take place in an old church in New York: the bride and groom were both 65 years old, but had known each other for over 40 years. In the meantime the bride had married twice rich in the same church and is now widowed twice. The bridegroom, a Mr. Ellenwood, however, had always remained a bachelor. He is known to be a quirky contemporary; the narrator notes that his quirks have their origins in “feelings that always preoccupied themselves for lack of better nourishment.” The bride and her colorfully dressed entourage arrive first at the church. But as soon as she steps over the threshold, "the heavy bell in the tower roared above her and let its deepest death-bell ring."

The wedding party is a little unsettled, but the bride continues to the altar, and the bell continues to ring "with the same painful regularity as if a corpse were on its way to the grave." Finally, a hearse drives into the churchyard. He is accompanied by a funeral procession that makes its way into the church: several old and frail couples enter one behind the other, dressed all in black and with an expression of deepest sadness. As they approach, the bride recognizes "in each of them some trait of a former friend, long forgotten, but now returning, like from their old graves". Finally another figure enters: it is her bridegroom, clad in his mortuary shirt. “Come on, bride,” he says to her, “the hearse is ready. The gravedigger is waiting for us at the entrance to the crypt. Let's get married; and then into our coffins! ”But, as now becomes clear, it is by no means a ghost procession. Rather, the groom staged the spectacle, bribed the sexton and ordered the mourners, all out of bitterness that his childhood sweetheart had preferred others to him twice: “But after forty years […] you call me to the altar. I am here at your request. But other husbands have rejoiced in your youth, your beauty, your warmth of heart, everything that could be called your life. What is left for me but your old age and your death? "

Moved by such openness, the bride grasps “the relentless lesson of the day” and says, “Yes! Let us marry at the gate of the tomb! My life has passed in emptiness and vanity. But at its end I feel a real feeling now. It made me back to what I was in my youth; it made me worthy of you. Time no longer counts for both of us. Let us marry for eternity! "The priest then performs the wedding ceremony, and since" the married couple of eternity, cold hand in cold hand, withdrew, the roaring organ drowned out the death bell in solemn triumph. "

Work context

The Wedding-Knell first appeared in The Token and Atlantic Souvenir for 1836; the title page of this volume shows the year 1836, but it is certain that it was available before Christmas 1835. Between 1831 and 1838 the token , a kind of literary almanac, was the keenest taker of Hawthorne's short stories, so The Maypole of Merry Mount and The Minister's Black Veil were also published in 1836 . The fact that they came from a pen was initially unknown to the public, as Hawthorne always published his stories anonymously at the time. The Wedding-Knell is at least provided with the note that the story is by the same author as Sights from a Steeple , which was published in the previous edition. In the spring of 1837 Hawthorne published The Wedding-Knell again in his first collection of short stories, Twice-Told Tales , which was also drawn by name, and thus publicly identified himself as the author of this and other stories.

Unlike many of Hawthorne's other stories from this period, there is little evidence in The Wedding-Knell that the story was originally part of one of his ultimately unpublished narrative cycles; but it is conceivable that it was initially intended for The Story Teller (created 1832–1834). It is, however, one of only four stories by Hawthorne of which a manuscript has survived; it is now owned by the New York Public Library . This is the manuscript that Hawthorne sent to Samuel Griswold Goodrich , the publisher of the token . There is also an editorial note from Goodrich that this story should be printed “after Dante's Beatrice”; so it is no coincidence that the story in the token follows an essay about Dante's childhood sweetheart Beatrice Portinari .

There are striking parallels to the other two stories of Hawthorne, which appeared in the Token in 1836 : Both of them effectively emphasize the contrast between the colorful dress of a party and the strict, gray or black robes of the Puritans . In The Minister's Black Veil , one of Hawthorne's most famous works, Pastor Hooper always wears a black veil over his face, which leads to numerous rumors of serious sins and secret vices. In one passage the narrator of this story seems to make direct reference to The Wedding-Knell , because when Hooper appears with his veil for the first time, to the horror of his community, the occasion is a wedding:

" If ever another wedding were so dismal, it was that famous one where they tolled the wedding knell. "

"If ever a wedding was more gruesome, it was the famous one where the death bell was rung."

Hawthorne seems to have been deeply preoccupied with the image of a cheerful party in mourning; as Lea Newman shows, it can be found in two entries in Hawthorne's private notebooks ( American Notebooks ). The first is dated to autumn 1835, the other to October 25th, 1836, so both are dated to a later date than the story.

Interpretations

Contemporary criticism received the story benevolently. Henry Chorley praised them in his review of the token in the Athenaeum in 1837 as did Edgar Allan Poe in his review of the Twice-Told Tales in Graham's Magazine in 1842 . However, recent literary scholarship and criticism has largely ignored history. Lea Newman attributes this disregard or contempt to the fact that Hawthorne makes too ample use of the horror literature from the prop room, which is not compatible with the maudlin conclusion, and describes the story itself as a failure.

The few available works on the narrative are mostly mere source research. The influence of Bürgers Lenore (1773; “After midnight bury the body / With sound and sang and lament! / Now I am taking my young wife home / With me, to the bridal feast! / Come, sexton, here! Come with him Chorus / And gargle the bride's song for me! / Come, Pfaff ', and say the blessing / Before we go to bed! ”And so on). It is unclear, however, whether Hawthorne knew Bürger's ballad himself or just one of the innumerable adaptations of the material in contemporary English and American horror literature. John Homan also believes there are references to Cotton Mathers' treatise Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion (1692).

It has also been suggested that Hawthorne's narrative influenced later works, such as Poe's The Masque of the Red Death (1842) and Mary Wilkins Freeman's short story The Three Old Sisters and the Old Beau (1900).

literature

expenditure

The first edition can be found in:

In the authoritative edition of the works, the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Ohio State University Press, Columbus OH 1962ff.), The Wedding-Knell can be found in Volume IX ( Twice-Told Tales , edited by Fredson Bowers and J. Donald Crowley) 1974), pp. 27-36. 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 two translations into German:

  • The wedding of the dead . German by Franz Blei . In Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Wedding of the Dead . Südbayerische Verlagsanstalt, Munich / Pullach 1922 ( digitized for the Gutenberg-DE project )
    • also in: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Forces of Evil: Eerie Tales . German by Franz Blei. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-423-14300-4 .
  • The wedding death knell . 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 3-538-06068-1

Secondary literature

  • Walter Evans: Poe's 'The Masque of the Red Death' and Hawthorne's 'The Wedding Knell' . In: Poe Studies / Dark Romanticism 10, 1977. pp. 42-43.
  • Noro Hiroshi: The Wedding Knellの <永遠> の 結婚 の 真相: A Study of N. Hawthorne's 'The Wedding Knell' . In: The Academic Reports (Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Polytechnic) 23: 2, 2000. pp. 34-41. (Japanese)
  • John Homan, Jr .: Hawthorne's 'The Wedding Knell' and Cotton Mather . In: Emerson Society Quarterly 43: 2, 1966. pp. 66-7.
  • Lea Bertani Vozar Newman : A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne . GK Hall, Boston 1979.

Web links

Wikisource: The Wedding Knell  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ All quotations below based on the translation by Hannelore Neves, but adapted to the new German spelling.
  2. ^ 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 , pp. 158ff.
  3. ^ Seymour L. Gross and Alfred J. Levy: Some Remarks on the Extant Manuscripts of Hawthorne's Short Stories . In: Studies in Bibliography 14, 1961. pp. 254-257
  4. ↑ John D. Gordan: Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Years of Fulfillment, 1804-1853 . In: Bulletin of the New York Public Library 59, 1955. p. 162.
  5. ^ Lea Bertani Vozar Newman: A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne , p. 320.
  6. ^ Lea Bertani Vozar Newman: A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne , p. 320.
  7. ↑ Anonymous [attributed to Henry F. Chorley]: Review of the token for the year 1836, in: Athenaeum of November 7, 1835, pp. 830–831.
  8. ↑ Edgar Allan Poe: Review of the Twice-Told Tales in Graham's Magazine 20: 5, May 1842. pp. 298-300.
  9. ^ Lea Bertani Vozar Newman: A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne , p. 322.
  10. ↑ Jane Lundblad: Nathaniel Hawthorne and European Literary Tradition . From. Lundequistska bokhandeln, Uppsala and Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass. 1947. pp. 97-98.
  11. ↑ John Homan, Jr .: Hawthorne's 'The Wedding Knell' and Cotton Mather , pp. 92ff.
  12. ^ Walter Evans, Poe's 'The Masque of the Red Death' and Hawthorne's 'The Wedding Knell' . P. 42ff.
  13. ^ Susan Allen Toth: Mary Wilkins Freeman's Parable of Wasted Life . In: American Literature 42: 4, 1971. pp. 564-567.