Triumph of beauty
Triumph of Beauty is a novella by Joseph Roth that appeared in September 1934 in the magazine "Les Nouvelles littéraires" under the title Le Triomphe de la Beauté . From May 6 to 15, 1935, the work was preprinted in the German-language anti-fascist daily Pariser Tageblatt and was published in 1973 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in Cologne.
Summary: The lovely Gwendolin brings her husband, a diplomat, son of an ammunition manufacturer , to the grave.
content
As a young man, the diplomat went to the spa doctor Doctor Skowronnek and was healed. From then on, doctor and patient are friends. A specialty of the doctor is the treatment of psychosis in married women.
The diplomat married Gwendoline, the blonde English girl with the blue eyes, strong teeth and boring chin . The young woman is not ready to follow her husband's diplomatic missions in major European cities. Rather, she stays in Austria. Doctor Skowronnek receives an assignment from the diplomat to take care of Gwendolin at home. Without much effort, the doctor states that Gwendolin is cheating with Doctor Jeno Lakatos, a young lawyer from Budapest . Such and similar adultery happened from 1910 until the end of the war . When it no Austro-Hungarian Monarchy longer there, the diplomat depends necessarily his profession on the nail and wants to devote his wife. Once he asks Doctor Skowronnek whether Gwendolin would have always remained loyal to him during his years of absence. Skowronnek has to say no. Then the diplomat, angry about this - in his view - malicious slander, no longer wants to be a friend of the doctor who is too honest.
Gwendolin denies her infidelity. The body of the adulteress can react pathologically to the unpleasant truth. Gwendolin gets thin legs and a fat upper body . The diplomat stands by the "disabled". After he later caught her red-handed in adultery, he kills himself. Within six months Gwendolin, finally redeemed, rushed through the metamorphosis from the disfigured to the attractive woman of yore. Your groom will be Dr. Lakatos.
shape
His old friend Doctor Skowronnek ( frame story) shares the story of the hysterical Gwendolin ( internal story ) with the narrator .
reception
- Blanche Gidon (photo near Nürnberger), Joseph Roth's French translator, recognized the novella as misogynistic.
- The man is seduced by the woman.
literature
source
- Fritz Hackert (Ed.): Joseph Roth. Works. Volume 5: Novels and Stories. 1930-1936. P. 629–654: Triumph of Beauty. Novella. 1935. With an afterword by the editor. Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7632-2988-4 .
Secondary literature
- Helmuth Nürnberger : Joseph Roth. In self-testimonials and picture documents. Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-499-50301-8 ( Rowohlt's Monographs 301).
- Ulrike Steierwald: Suffering from history. On the modern conception of history in the texts of Joseph Roth. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1994, ISBN 3-88479-880-4 ( Epistemata. Series: Literaturwissenschaft 121), (At the same time: Munich, Univ., Diss., 1992).
- Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German authors A - Z. 4th, completely revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 , p. 519.
- Wilhelm von Sternburg : Joseph Roth. A biography. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2009 (2nd edition), ISBN 978-3-462-05555-9 .