Undine (Giraudoux)

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Undine is a play in three acts by the French writer and diplomat Jean Giraudoux and was written in 1939 (original title: Ondine ). It deals with the fairytale love story between the mermaid Undine and the knight Hans, which, however, comes to a tragic end.

action

After a long journey, the young knight Hans passes the hut of a poor fishing couple and finds accommodation there for the night. As he says, he is newly engaged and raves about his beloved Bertha, the perfect woman in his eyes. But suddenly Undine appears, the fishermen's daughter, who is extremely impressed by the pretty knight. After initially throwing off her aggressive advances, he finally succumbs to her unearthly charm and forgets Bertha. He asks Undine's parents for her hand, but it turns out that the fishermen are not the birth parents of the girl, but found her on the shore of the nearby lake and took her in.

After Hans and Undine have officially known each other, the water king appears. He offers Undine a pact: should Hans ever betray her, he must die. In return, he allows her to live with him among people without revealing her true identity to him or to anyone else. Undine accepts the pact in her endless trust in Hans.

Hans takes his new fiancée to the royal court, where she has great problems adapting to the existing social fabric. In addition, there is the rivalry with Bertha, the abandoned ex-fiancé of Hans and stepdaughter of the royal couple. (Later it turns out that the vain Bertha, who is always concerned about her origins, is in truth the poor fisherman's couple's child, believed lost.) Only one poet, the knight Bertram, and the queen seem to partially understand Undine. Finally there is an argument between Hans and Undine. Overwhelmed with the situation in which quarrels and tensions are piling up, and with the absolute and idolatrous love of Undine, Hans finally ends up in the arms of Bertha again, a misstep that ultimately means his death.

Aware of this, Undine makes a desperate attempt to save the life of Hans, whom she loves so much, by claiming that she first cheated on him with Bertram. Then it disappears for several months.

But the water king is not deceived and finally the pact is fulfilled and the verdict carried out: Hans dies and Undine, who can only watch helplessly, also loses her memory. This separates the two lovers forever, because since Undine is immortal and her loss of memory prevents her from suicide, she and Hans will never be able to see each other again even after his death.

For interpretation

Undine seems to embody in this piece the ideal of an absolute and pure love, which, like Undine herself, is not of earthly origin. But Hans is too much of a person to be able to accept and return such love in the long run. But there is no lack of realistic motifs from 1939, including France's deceived love for Germany. When Hans is guilty and killed for it, Undine has to forget her love. But the piece closes with her sentence, when she sees the now inconceivable corpse again: "How would I have loved him."

The Undine material in the Giraudoux version is taken up again in 1961 by Ingeborg Bachmann in the story Undine goes .

Quotes

"The hand of the weakest woman becomes a marble cover to protect a small bird."

- Undine, Act 2, Scene 10

"Transparency. That is what [people] are afraid of. They think that's the worst. "

- Queen, Act 2, Scene 11

"The first farewell, Undine, who faithfully deserves its name."

- Hans, 3rd act

Radio plays

The play was adapted three times for radio in Germany.

See also

Web links