Downfall of a heart
Downfall of a Heart is a novella by Stefan Zweig from 1926.
action
The secret commissioner Salomonsohn, one of the richest men in his southern German hometown, stayed with his wife and their 19-year-old daughter Erna in a hotel in Gardone in northern Italy . Sometimes the small, fat man, 65, is plagued by biliary cramps. On the night in which the story begins, however, stomach pressure probably robs him of sleep, caused by Italian food. When Solomon's son gets up and feels his way through the dark corridor, he makes an incredible discovery. Erna returns to her room, apparently without noticing her father. Solomonsohn neither confronts his only daughter, nor does he discuss the special incident with his wife. Instead, tormented inwardly, he puzzles as to which of the three “neat little monkeys” could be the seducer of the daughter, who was so beloved to date. Is it the narrow-headed Conte Ubaldi, the Italian officer or the Mecklenburg gentleman rider von Medwitz?
The next day Salomonsohn bought a knot stick with an iron mountain peak , but did not use the bulky weapon against the gentlemen. He doesn't know one yet. With vague reasons - because Erna found the company of the three gentlemen unsuitable - he asks his wife to move to a hotel in Florence or Rome . The woman cannot recognize the concern of her husband and rejects it as nonsense. A trip to Desenzano in Herr von Medwitz's Fiat had also been arranged.
When Erna, who was supposed to be the source of the happiness of his age, set off again for a night walk, the old man's death had long since begun. He hides a biliary spasm from his two women and starts the journey home solo. When the two women finally follow, they find an indifferent father and husband at home. The son of Solomon, never really a believer in his life, became pious overnight.
Reluctantly, the really sick man finally has an operation when there is no other way. After the operation, on his deathbed, the son of Solomon wants to turn to his beloved daughter one last time. He does not succeed. He pushes her away.
shape
The staff is manageable. In addition, the narrator seldom distances himself from his protagonist Solomon's son. For example, when Erna and her mother talk in private about the awkwardness, lack of sociability and sociability of the father. The narrator mostly reproduces the inner monologues of Solomon's son in haunting passages, in which the aging, sick and then slowly dying secret commissioner views his life with a critical and disapproving view and does not spare his two loved ones insulting them - for example when he calls them “dishonorable, in a runner Women ”in the mud. However, the incessantly monologizing family man relativizes his general condemnations again and again. He loved his wife after all, she gave him a child and the growing Erna had been his hope for years.
Despite all emphatic introspection, Zweig retells the story cautiously. The badly tortured father does experience his daughter's questionable nightly walks through the hotel twice, but he does not provide a lover who dishonors Erna. So the reader puzzles: To whom did Erna go quietly through the gloomy corridor during the night? The question cannot be answered. In Solomonsohn's monologues, the Italian officer, this "greyhound", is branded as a seducer.
reception
- The text can be read as a psychoanalysis of the Son of Solomon case. In letters of September 4, 1926 and October 2, 1926 to the author, Freud and Schnitzler do not really agree with the figure of the son of Solomon.
- According to Rovagnati, Stefan Zweig covers up the lack of action with “imaginative imagery ”. Rovagnati takes the late relapse of his hero Solomonsohn into the Jewish faith , as he was brought up as a child, as the starting point for a look into Stefan Zweig's inner state.
literature
First edition
- Stefan Zweig: Confusion of feelings. Three novels. ( Twenty-four hours from a woman's life . Downfall of a heart. Confusion of emotions). Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1927, 275 pages, half leather
Used edition
- Stefan Zweig: The downfall of a heart. In: Novellas . Vol. 2, pp. 395-432. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1986 (3rd edition), without ISBN, licensor: S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 532 pages
Secondary literature
- Gabriella Rovagnati: “Detours on the way to myself”. On the life and work of Stefan Zweig. Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 1998 (Vol. 400 of the series "Treatises on Art, Music and Literature"), ISBN 3-416-02780-9