Under the star of evil

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Under the Star of Evil ( Spanish La mala hora ) is the title of a novel by the Colombian Nobel Prize for Literature, Gabriel García Márquez . The edition authorized by the author appeared in Mexico in 1966. The story of murder and manslaughter in a village can be seen as a parable for Colombia under Rojas Pinillas . The first German translation by Ana Maria Brock was published in 1966.

overview

The novel takes place in an unnamed Colombian village on the bank of a river. It consists of a loose construct of lots of little stories that are not always closed and are intertwined by two characters: Father Angel and the lieutenant and mayor.

action

The poor in their dilapidated huts like the unrest that rises among the rich. Almost every morning, pieces of paper with anonymous insults are stuck to the solid houses of the owners. Actually, the papers only say what everyone in the village thinks they have known about the homeowners for years. For example, it is claimed that Roberto Asís is not the birth father of his daughter at all. After all, the unrecognized smear managed to get Roberto Asís to ambush his wife's supposed gallant. Or it is written on the wall in the morning that of Señor Carmichael's eleven children, only the black children are his biological descendants. Widow de Montiel, the richest woman in the town, is nervously not up to the graffiti and asks Father Angel to condemn the posting of the note in his next Sunday sermon. The clergyman replied that the matter was not worth mentioning and was silent on the subject in the pulpit next Sunday. However, he asks the mayor to take an appropriate measure. The lieutenant imposed a night curfew and had the perpetrator searched. No one is found. When the police arrested Lieutenant Pepe Amador while distributing illegal leaflets, the disaster took its course. The mayor has Pepe Amador tortured to get the names of the people behind it. The tormented person is silent and dies of the ordeal. When the village doctor Dr. Giraldo calls for the investigation, the mayor lies. Pepe Amador had fled. Villagers then take up arms.

Origin and edition history

García Márquez began his novel in Paris around 1956 under the title "Este pueblo de mierda" (This shitty city) and continued to work on the text in 1959/1960 in Bogotá and 1961 in Manhattan . In 1961 he submitted the manuscript for the Esso Literature Prize in Bogotá and won. In 1962 Luis Pérez published in Madrid a version of the novel that had been cleared of a few expressions, from which the author distanced himself. He authorized the 1966 Mexican edition.

interpretation

The story of murder and manslaughter in a village can be seen as a parable for Colombia under Rojas Pinillas . The mayor actually meant the dictator Pinilla, the Justice Minister with the judge Arcadio and the cardinal with Father Angel. García Márquez addresses “the dark forces in Colombian society” with power and violence. As sole ruler, the mayor carries out the orders of the government and real "cemetery peace" in the village. As a despot he stands lonely. He is not capable of loving a woman.

Traces of dried blood and bullet impacts in the village police station remind of bad times a year and a half before the start of the action. Judge Vitela, the predecessor of the incumbent judge Arcadio, had been killed because he wanted to monitor the conduct of the elections. The village treasurer had been slain. Before the start of the act, the lieutenant and later mayor came with three hired manslaughters on behalf of the military regime to take the village. It seems that he succeeded in this. The persecution has ceased for over a year. Apparently nobody is beaten anymore. However, the state of emergency still applies. There are residents who at the end of the novel go armed into the mountains to join the partisans. Although their names are not mentioned, they most likely include the dentist, the barber Guardiola and the judge Arcadio, among others.

Tension is created by the question: Who is the note writer? After Pepe Amador was arrested by the local police, the slip of paper stopped. Even if one of the notes was addressed to the mayor - by the way, the only one that is quoted - it is quite possible that the mayor himself could be the culprit. Because the notes are mainly stuck to the houses of wealthy people. The mayor came to the village as a poor man. He wants to bump himself into health by first unsettling the opponent and then attacking head-on. It seems that he is indeed getting rich. By having Pepe Amador beaten to death, the mayor eliminated an opponent. Unabashedly, he declares Pepe Amador as the note writer he is looking for.

In addition to this variant, others also appear to be possible. For example, a fortune teller named Casandra came to the village with a traveling circus . When asked by the mayor about the riddle, she replies: "It's the whole place and there is nobody."

The Casandra version is unlikely because the lieutenant is portrayed as a profiteer on almost every occasion. For example, at the beginning of the novel there is the story of the Montero couple. The millionaire César Montero shoots his wife Rosario's lover, a certain Señor Pastor. The gunman arrives, but the lieutenant proposes a gentlemen's agreement to the horned husband. Anything is possible against payment; also the escape.

García Márquez knows how to trigger aha-effects in the reader after reading it. For example, the mayor is plagued by an almost unbearable toothache in the first third of the novel. When, towards the end of the first third of the novel, he and his police officers forcefully break into the local dental practice and force the dentist to treat them at gunpoint, the reader is shown the disproportionate nature of the means. Towards the end of the novel, however, it becomes clear that the dentist is one of the lieutenant's mortal enemies.

García Márquez admitted that he was based on Camus when it came to parables . If a rat harbingers the plague in Camus , the flock of mice that Father Angel and his housekeeper are fighting in the church announce the violence . The author also found symbols for deadly diseases in Daniel Defoe's “ The Plague in London ”. Further models are Sophocles ' " King Oedipus " and Thornton Wilder's " The Ides of March ".

reception

Although García Márquez did not particularly appreciate this work, it was of particular quality because it only developed its own life at the end of the novel. In addition to Pinilla, the author also included the dictator Pérez Jiménez in his case study.

Media adaptation

literature

Translations into German

  • Under the star of evil. Translated from Spanish by Ana Maria Brock. Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 1966. (Edition used for the text references)
  • The bad hour. Translated from the Spanish by Christine and Curt Meyer-Clason . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-462-01352-1

Secondary literature

  • Oscar Collazos: “Gabriel García Márquez. His life and his work". Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1987.
  • Valery Semskow: Gabriel García Márquez. Translated from Russian and edited by Klaus Ziermann. Volk und Wissen Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-06-102754-8
  • Dagmar Ploetz : Gabriel García Márquez. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-499-50461-8
  • Dasso Saldívar: Journey to the Origin. A biography of Gabriel García Márquez. Translated from the Spanish by Vera Gerling, Ruth Wucherpfennig, Barbara Romeiser and Merle Godde. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-462-02751-4

Remarks

  1. ↑ Colonel Aureliano Buendía had stayed there once on the way to Macondo (edition used, p. 51, 20. Zvo). This refers to the Colombian village of Sucre on the southwestern shore of the Caribbean Sea (Saldívar, p. 422, 7th Zvu and p. 264). The motif of the diatribes on the house walls was borrowed from a bad habit of the people of Sucres towards the end of the 1940s (Saldívar, p. 264, 13. Zvo).
  2. ↑ The mayor wants to sleep with Casandra. At the command of the ringmaster, the woman went to the lieutenant several times. It doesn't look like a night of love.
  3. ↑ In the guise of Pastor, the author processed the unhappy end of the musician Joaquín Vega (Saldívar, p. 271, 17. Zvo).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Saldívar, p. 351, 19. Zvo
  2. ↑ Gabriel García Márquez: Under the star of evil. Translated from Spanish by Ana Maria Brock. Construction Publishing House Berlin 1966.
  3. ↑ Saldívar, p. 422, 5th Zvu
  4. ↑ Semskow, p. 82, 7. Zvo
  5. ↑ Ploetz, p. 63, 4. Zvo and p. 137, entry 1956
  6. ↑ Saldívar, p. 524, Chapter 11, footnote 36
  7. ↑ Saldívar, p. 406, 8. Zvo
  8. ↑ Saldívar, p. 422, 6. Zvo and Ploetz, p. 67, 4. Zvo
  9. ^ Spanish bibliography García Márquez
  10. ↑ Spanish Era de México (Saldívar, p. 422, 16. Zvo and p. 532, chapter 13, footnote 12 and Semskow, p. 86, 4. Zvo)
  11. ↑ Saldívar, p. 351, 19. Zvo
  12. ↑ Saldívar, p. 312, 5th Zvu
  13. ^ Saldívar, p. 317, 9. Zvo
  14. ↑ Semskow, p. 82, 13. Zvu
  15. ↑ Semskow, p. 83, 14. Zvo
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 12, 9. Zvu and p. 73, 13. Zvu
  17. ↑ Edition used, p. 48, 13. Zvu
  18. ↑ Edition used, p. 67, middle
  19. ↑ Edition used, p. 138, 1. Zvu
  20. ↑ Semskow, p. 81, 3. Zvo
  21. ↑ Semskow, p. 81, 21st Zvu
  22. ^ Saldívar, p. 424, 14. Zvo
  23. ↑ Saldívar, p. 528, chapter 12, footnote 12 (10th Zvu)
  24. ↑ Saldívar, p. 422, 4th Zvu
  25. ^ Saldívar, p. 424, 13. Zvo
  26. ↑ Saldívar, p. 493, Chapter 5, footnote 1
  27. ↑ German-speaking IMDb , English-speaking IMDb