Therese. Chronicle of a woman's life

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Therese. Chronicle of a Women's Life is the second and last novel by Arthur Schnitzler , which was published by S. Fischer in Berlin in 1928. It deals with the harsh fate of Therese Fabiani, who, as a single mother, experienced slow social decline in the middle-class world of the Viennese fin-de-siècle . While she mostly earns her meager livelihood as an educator in upper-class houses, her illegitimate child grows up far from her in the country.

time and place

The novel is set in Salzburg , as well as in Vienna and the surrounding area, in the period from about 1885 to 1913. Schnitzler even gives Therese's postal address: Vienna, Wagnergasse 74, second floor.

content

After the father, a lieutenant colonel with Italian roots, was retired early, the Fabiani family moved to Salzburg. Therese meets Alfred Nüllheim, a schoolmate of Therese's brother Karl, who becomes her first love. This soon moved to Vienna to medicine to study, but ask before Therese, to wait for him to marry him after graduation. Therese's father soon falls ill and is hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic, where he dies a short time later. The mother, descended from the old but impoverished Croatian nobility, then earns a living by writing kitschy feuilleton novels . In order to have a secure existence, she wants to couple her daughter to an old count, which Therese refuses. When Therese falls in love with a young lieutenant and enters into a love affair with him, Alfred finds out at his place of study. He insulted his girlfriend in a letter. Soon the lieutenant turns out to be an unfaithful companion.

Disgusted by these experiences, Therese leaves Salzburg to stand on her own two feet in Vienna. In the metropolis she takes on changing positions as governess . There are times when Therese is considering making a meager income by selling her body , but she doesn't actually do it. Therese becomes pregnant by a lover, Kasimir Tobisch, a poor flautist from German Bohemia. The latter leaves her alone and the young, single mother has no choice but to take care of her newborn baby in the countryside with farmers while she earns her living by looking after other children. Sometimes Therese escapes from the position after the master of the house tries to get closer, sometimes there are disputes with the mistresses. Meanwhile, Franz, the son, visited by Therese occasionally, grew up in the country. The young mother, now 27 years old, leads one after the other further love relationships in search of some recognition and affection. When Therese is expecting her second child from an “affected” ministerial councilor, she has it aborted because she cannot pay for another child. Sometimes Therese meets Alfred in Vienna. When Franz was nine years old, she confessed to her childhood friend that she was the mother of a son. But Alfred has long known about it. A love relationship develops between Therese and Alfred, but it does not last and turns into a friendship.

Therese hardly receives any support from her mother. Therese's efforts to work as a teacher in an educational institution fail. She did not take the required exams. When Franz's behavior in school and with the foster parents gives cause for complaint on several occasions, Therese always looks for the guilt in herself and the lack of attention she has shown him. She never "stood faithfully to him". Therese now gives private lessons and takes Franz with her, but cannot cope with the adolescent. After he blew his mother up after an argument, she becomes afraid of her own son. This fear remains. Franz does not come home for days and behaves like a lounging good-for-nothing in every respect.

This is not the only stroke of fate for Therese. Alfred marries the daughter of a Tübingen professor. Now 33 years old, Therese feels how little life has to offer her. Franz, who belongs to a gang of thieves, has to pick her up at the police station. Therese blames herself for her son's unstoppable descent into crime . Franz demands money from her several times. If he does not receive it, he searches the apartment for it - sometimes with success. Even while Franz is serving a prison sentence of several months, Therese has no peace from him. The convict sends his buddies into the house with demands. After his release, Franz also wants to extort money from his uncle Karl, who plays an important role in the German national party . The uncle blames Therese for it.

After all, a way out of misery seems to be emerging for Therese. A wealthy man, the divorced father of one of her students, wants to marry her. However, he dies before the wedding. Therese inherits only a small amount and not what she would have been entitled to as a widow.

Franz almost kills his mother while trying to take money away from her by force. She tries to atone for him on his deathbed by telling Alfred that when the child was born she briefly wanted to suffocate it and that she has now only received justice for it. However, the court does not accept this as an attenuating circumstance. Franz is sentenced to twelve years in heavy prison.

shape

Schnitzler is more clever about calling the "master of the inner monologue ." The narrator not only delves into Therese's thoughts and ideas, but goes even further. When there are many white lies of Theresa that the narrator reproduces, the reader is taken aback and asks himself: Is that the truth? Schnitzler's trick: as the narrative continues, the untruth comes to light. The author even participates in this confusion. For example he writes about Therese: "But she didn't love it [her child]." The rest of the novel is then, among other things, the story of a mother's love.

The author comments subjectively at individual points.

Self-testimony

  • Schnitzler is critical: The novel lacks "inner necessity".

reception

  • Hofmannsthal wrote to Schnitzler on July 10, 1928: "The great story of Therese's life, however, particularly captivated and occupied me ... By telling this story: the life of a Viennese governess - a whole world was portrayed ... But your preference is particularly big, to give a substance the rhythm, whereby it becomes poetry, here. "
  • By providing insights into Austrian society before the First World War, the novel also paints a picture of the downfall of an era.
  • Disillusionment novel: The condemnation of the novel as an artless, naive chronicle must be reconsidered.
  • Therese passes on her bad experiences with people to her son. Without condescension and without glossing over, Schnitzler describes the misfortune of a young woman from her point of view.
  • Therese is "a real, serious woman's novel ".
  • The novel is a "cross section through old Habsburg Austria".
  • In places Therese expresses herself anti-Semitically.
  • Le Rider calls Schnitzler a "double of Freud ". His discussion of the work is correspondingly. The syndrome of the "unwelcome child" is examined psychoanalytically . In addition, a social decline is described. Therese ends up in middle-class circles from which she remains excluded. Schnitzler turns out to be a sociologist of downtown Vienna. The reader does not encounter any sentiment, because Schnitzler relentlessly points out Therese's weaknesses. The novel was not a success with the audience because it was dominated by hopelessness. What wonder? The post-war period would have darkened Schnitzler's "worldview".
  • Arnold gives further leading works: Sigrid Schmid-Bortenschlager (Paris 1983), Zdenko Skreb (1984), Konstanze Fliedl (1989), Heidi Margrit Müller (Munich 1991), Amy Colin (1992) and David Low (1992). Perlmann calls Elsbeth Dangel's work: "Repetition as fate" (1985).

Web links

literature

First edition
  • Arthur Schnitzler: Therese - Chronicle of a woman's life. S. Fischer Verlag Berlin 1928. 391 pages. linen
expenditure
Secondary literature

Working studies

  • Elsbeth Dangel-Pelloquin: Repetition as Fate. Arthur Schnitzler's novel “Therese. Chronicle of a woman's life ”. Fink, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-7705-2331-8 (dissertation University of Frankfurt am Main 1983, 243 pages).
  • Melissa de Bruyker: The resonant silence: the rhetoric of the narrated world in Kafka's Der Verschollene, Schnitzler's Therese and Walser's robber novel, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8260-3689-7 (Dissertation University of Gent 2006, 377 Pages).
  • Adelheid Koch: Between tradition and modernity: Guy de Maupassant and Arthur Schnitzler. A comparative analysis of the novels “Une vie” and “Therese. Chronicle of a Women's Life ”(Diploma thesis University of Graz 1988, 359 pages).
  • Maya Kündig: Arthur Schnitzler's “Therese”. Narrative analysis and interpretation. Lang, Bern 1991. (Dissertation, University of Zurich )

General classifications

  • Hartmut Scheible : Arthur Schnitzler. rowohlt's monographs. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg, February 1976 (December 1990 edition). 160 pages, ISBN 3-499-50235-6
  • Michaela L. Perlmann: Arthur Schnitzler. Metzler Collection, Vol. 239. Stuttgart 1987. 195 pages, ISBN 3-476-10239-4
  • Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Arthur Schnitzler. Publisher edition text + kritik, magazine for literature, issue 138/139, April 1998, 174 pages, ISBN 3-88377-577-0
  • Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Arthur Schnitzler: The way into the open. Novel. With an afterword by Michael Scheffel . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999 (2nd edition 2004). 398 pages, ISBN 3-10-073555-2
  • Giuseppe Farese: Arthur Schnitzler. A life in Vienna. 1862-1931. Translated from the Italian by Karin Krieger . CH Beck Munich 1999. 360 pages, ISBN 3-406-45292-2 . Original: Arthur Schnitzler. Una vita a Vienna. 1862-1931. Mondadori Milan 1997
  • Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German Authors A - Z . S. 555, right column, 2nd Zvu Stuttgart 2004. 698 pages, ISBN 3-520-83704-8
  • Jacques Le Rider : Arthur Schnitzler or The Vienna Belle Époque . Translated from the French by Christian Winterhalter. Passagen Verlag Vienna 2007. 242 pages, ISBN 978-3-85165-767-8

Audio book

Individual evidence

  1. Klüger in the afterword of the source, p. 308, 13. Zvo
  2. Source, p. 247, 4th Zvu
  3. Source, p. 305, 8. Zvo
  4. Source, p. 110, 9. Zvo
  5. For example Source, p. 257, 6th Zvu
  6. Schnitzler, quoted in Scheible, p. 124, 7. Zvo
  7. quoted in Farese, p. 299, 7th Zvu
  8. Farese, p. 301, 5th Zvu
  9. Elsbeth Dangel, quoted in Perlmann, p. 180, 2. Zvo
  10. Farese, p. 300, 4th Zvu
  11. Kilian, quoted in Perlmann, p. 179, 5th Zvu
  12. Perlmann, p. 177, 12th Zvu
  13. ^ Rita K. Angress, quoted in Perlmann, p. 180, 11. Zvo
  14. Klüger in the afterword of the source, p. 305, 7th Zvu
  15. Klüger in the afterword of the source, p. 305, 3rd Zvu
  16. Klüger in the afterword of the source, p. 317, 2. Zvo See also source, p. 141, 16. Zvo and source p. 142, 7. Zvo
  17. Le Rider, p. 91, 15. Zvo
  18. Le Rider, p. 134, 15. Zvu
  19. Le Rider, p. 133 below
  20. Le Rider, p. 136, 6. Zvo
  21. Le Rider, p. 136, 4th Zvu
  22. Le Rider, p. 134, 4. Zvo
  23. ^ Arnold (1998), p. 165, right column, chap. 3.5.29
  24. Perlmann, p. 17, 7. Zvo