Under the volcano

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Mexico, Popocatepetl

Beneath the volcano is the main work of the British Malcolm Lowry , published in 1947 by Reynal and Hitchcock in New York. The novel is considered to be one of the highlights of 20th century English-language literature. The Modern Library listed Lowry's work at number 11 on its 1998 list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century .

action

The novel is set in a fictional central Mexican city called Quauhnáhuac . This is the ancient name Cuernavacas in Nahuatl , which means the place between the trees . The volcano in the title is the Popocatépetl . This small town is home to a British consul in the early 1930s (at a time when relations between Britain and Mexico were frozen, that is, with no real employment) who is in the final stages of alcoholism .

The novel is partly written from the perspective of the consul, that is, it is written over long distances like a drunkard thinks: full of repetitions and surprising discontinuities - often only in bits of thought or in sentences that sometimes change their meaning. Not least because of his style, he is considered an important exponent of literary modernism .

An action in the classical sense is only rudimentary . He is visited by Yvonne , his wife, who lives separately from him in the USA . She still loves him, but no longer believes she can save him. At the same time, his younger half-brother Hugh visits him , an aimless, immature existence who has already worked as a musician and sailor and is now a journalist - a job he despises. Politically he is shaped by socialism, but also in a half-baked way. He is in love with Yvonne , knowing full well that he has no chance. In Mexico at this time, parallel to the Spanish Civil War , which is also present in the thoughts of the main characters, a civil war between supporters and opponents of the Mexican Revolution is raging .

Mainly the reader sees individual scenes in the life of the consul. He strolls through the completely overgrown garden of his house, where he has hidden a liquor bottle behind every bush, visits the fairground in the city, where he is promptly forgotten in the ferris wheel there and spins senselessly in circles all night. His wallet falls out and street boys not only steal his money, but also his ID cards, robbing him of his existence, as it were. During a trip with his wife and brother to the next bigger city, he witnessed a bullfight and involuntarily intervened.

The people get lost in a dark forest in which the consul loses his wife. In the end, the consul is shot by right-wing extremists out of a stupid coincidence, who see him as a foreigner as a spy.

interpretation

Mexico is described as an archaic country in which wild cruelty is met with deep-seated anger, but also lethargy - an endless continuum of domination and oppression, for which the boxing matches and bullfights that appear more often in the novel are a symbol.

The metaphors of this novel (the deep gorge in front of the city, the overgrown garden, the senselessly turning wheel) are not only determined by Lowry's interest in mystical symbolism, but also (dark forest!) By Dante , whose inferno Lowry created a parallel work wanted to. The consul is also on a journey to hell, but through a hell that is also heaven. Or as Lowry writes in the preface: the alcoholic is like the mystic who has abused his mental powers.

filming

In 1984 there was a film adaptation of the same name by John Huston with Albert Finney as Consul and Jacqueline Bisset as Yvonne.

literature

  • Lawrence J. Clipper, Christopher Ackerley: A Companion to Under the Volcano . University of British Columbia Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-7748-4503-8 .
  • Frederick Asals: The Making of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano . University of Georgia Press, 1997, ISBN 0-8203-1826-4 .
  • Nigel H. Foxcroft: The Kaleidoscopic Vision of Malcolm Lowry: Souls and Shamans . Lexington Books: Lanham, MD, 2019, ISBN 978-1-4985-1657-0 .
  • Sherrill Grace (Ed.): Swinging the Maelstrom: New Perspectives on Malcolm Lowry . McGill-Queen's Press, 1992, ISBN 0-7735-0862-7 .
  • Patrick A. McCarthy, Paul Thiesen (Eds.): Joyce / Lowry: Critical Perspectives . University of Kentucky Press, 1997, ISBN 0-8131-3309-2 .
  • DRINKER - Only throat . In: Der Spiegel , 19/1952 of May 7, 1952, pp. 29–31.
  • Rainer Schauer: Hell in the sun city. In Cuernavaca, Mexico, Malcolm Lowry wrote the novel “Under the Volcano”, the city's residents hardly remember . In: Die Zeit , 3/1988 of January 15, 1988, p. 41.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 100 Best Novels. In: modernlibrary.com. Retrieved October 14, 2018 .