Vermont novel

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Vermonter Roman is a fragment of a novel by Carl Zuckmayer that was only published posthumously in 1996 . Zuckmayer wrote the work in 1942/43 in American exile on his Backwoods farm in Vermont .

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School bus in Vermont, 2003

The journey of an ancient, gas-powered school and post bus across the icy and snow-covered streets of a sparsely populated area in Vermont in March 1938 already shows all the main characters in one of the first passages of the novel. The journey of the “stage”, as the vehicle is called, is observed from a distance by a man not initially named, who lives lonely and close to nature in a hut in the forest and writes. The cheering teenagers on the bus and its resolute driver Laura Burke beckoned to a newcomer in a lumberjack camp, as has been the case every day for some time. To whom this man's wave is actually intended is the subject of a dispute on the bus, during which Laura does not fully concentrate on driving for a moment. The vehicle promptly slides into a ditch and has to be pushed back onto the road by the occupants. This situation would actually be the given reason to get in touch with the loggers, but with the indication that these men have a large workload to cope with, Laura Burke refuses to ask them for help.

There is also seventeen-year-old Sylvia McManama on the bus, who lives with her grandfather, known as "Old Man", and an "Aunt Clara" on a small farm. She owns a large dog named Wouff who loves to chase car wheels and is generally very inaccessible to strangers.

When Laura has finished her grueling journey, she discovers that she has forgotten to deliver a package addressed to Oliver Paine, the hermit in the forest. Since this mishap has happened to her for the third time - Paine hardly ever receives any mail and she usually just drives past his mailbox - she asks Sylvia to take the package with her and to throw it into Paine's mailbox on the street. Sylvia is also happy to do so. But she decides to take a detour and go ice skating on one of the frozen lakes in the area. She is watched by two men from the lumberjack camp who are on their way to do some shopping in the village shop. One of them is Thomas Steingräber, the young man who always waves to the girls on the school bus.

Steingräber's father comes from Austria, his mother, who died young, was Italian. He was born in Berlin and was educated in elite English schools because the family apparently went into exile during the Third Reich . When he reacted a little too violently to the initiation rituals at an American university and was supposed to be evicted, he broke with his father, whom he hates. Since then he has tried to make ends meet. When he was working in construction, he was a union member. A police officer was killed during a strike he took part in. Since then, Thomas Steingräber has been on the run. For him, the lumberjack camp is a transit station on the way to Canada.

His colleague Bill Buglebee, with whom he is on the way to the store, initially portrays himself as a clichéd primitive American of the purest water. He tends to annoy stone graves by deliberately confusing “Austria” with “Australia” and, like the two men, leaves himself to be Watching girls on the ice, explaining extensively what nymphs and elves are - Thomas Steingräber initially perceives Sylvia as such. Actually, Steingräber doesn't want Sylvia to know that she has been observed, but Wouff throws a spanner in the works: He suddenly rushes towards the two men, barking, and is called back by his owner. Then Thomas Steingräber and Sylvia get to know each other. Stone graves can also hope to see Sylvia again, because a maple syrup party is to take place in town to celebrate spring . First, however, he and his colleague continue to the shop, where a surprise awaits him. When the two men stand there in front of an old map of the world and Steingrber finally wants to explain the difference between Austria and Australia, it turns out that his older colleague has an idea of ​​Europe because he fought in France in the First World War .

Sylvia, on the other hand, does her job to bring the package to Oliver Paine more thoroughly than promised. She doesn't just toss it into Paine's mailbox, but instead, despite the deep snow, makes the way to Paine's hut and knocks there. Although Paine is so withdrawn, he shows no surprise. He invites the girl in, shows him the entire furnishings of his hut including his ice cellar and impresses her with his apparently self-sufficient way of life.

Sylvia meets up with Steinräber again at the maple syrup party that has been announced. During a break in the dance he asks her to leave the hall with him for a while, and leads her to the home of a baker of Italian descent with whom he is friends. Sylvia is enthusiastic about the people she meets there, but also about the culinary offerings, and immediately signs a contract with the Italian for the delivery of goat's milk from which he wants to make cheese. In addition to some ducks, the young girl also owns two goats that her grandfather gave her.

Stone graves told Sylvia about his fate on this occasion. In return, Sylvia reports on her past, which she otherwise does not address if possible: At the age of five, she lost her father, Old Man's only son - he took his own life. This was kept from the child for two years; the girl was always told that her father was abroad. At the end of these two years, however, her rich mother wanted to remarry, which is why her daughter was now pretended that the father had died abroad. The mother then left the child who had lived with the grandfather since then.

Thomas Steingräber is shocked when he hears about this fate, but at the same time he feels a commonality with Sylvia and tries to approach her more intensely than before. But she fends off in horror and lets him swear that they should always be friends and nothing more. For the moment, stone graves can also be persuaded to take this oath.

But a little later there is a crisis. It is learned that Oliver Paine broke his leg in an accident with his wooden sledge. Although he was rescued by the loggers and then given medical attention, he refused to go to a hospital and is now alone in his hut. Sylvia wants to bring him some food and see him in the hut, accompanied by Stone Grave. The conversation initially revolves around the possibility of retreating into nature and not being tracked down by the authorities and other institutions. This is not uninteresting for Steingräber, as a registered letter recently arrived for him with the stamp of the detective agency that his father had commissioned with the search for the prodigal son. It also turns out that Sylvia knows the hidden places Paine alludes to and the old Indian trails for the most part, while Stone Graves must still feel strange in the country.

Finally, the two men argue. Steingräber offers Paine every now and then to bring him some newspapers that have already been read in the lumberjack camp, Paine refuses: he never reads the news about world affairs, he knows and already knows all about it. This amazes the trade unionist. When Paine explains that one always has to fight the evil or the evil and that these can be recognized even without the newspaper, he obviously feels provoked and insults Paine. He accuses him of not engaging enough in his seclusion in the forest. Finally, furious, he leaves the hut while Sylvia stays with the hermit.

Zuckmayer explained his conception of the novel in a letter with the following sentences: “There are two basic themes and a melody woven into them. The topics are: a Melusinenthema - the animation of an elf, nymph, the man is - and a pauper Heinrich theme - the redemption of unfortunates by a virgin. The melody: the story of a sweet, simple love. "

Origin and publication history

During the war years, Carl Zuckmayer ran a small farm in Vermont together with his wife Alice from 1941 . While he was in his autobiography As if it were a piece of me said that he had in those years mainly to do with the dairy industry, with its goats and hardly ever had time to write, to read in the memories of the farm in the green mountains that his Frau wrote that poultry was also bred quite intensively and that the couple could also take the time for intellectual activity - Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer temporarily had a study in the nearest university library at Dartmouth College . Carl Zuckmayer also wrote more during these years than the drama Des Teufels General , which he mentions in his autobiography. In his Vermont novel , impressions and experiences from his time as a farmer are reflected in part quite directly. The novel, then untitled, was written between March 21, 1942 and summer 1943. After that, the typescript was probably left in the state in which it was handed down. In a letter to Gottfried Bermann Fischer from November 1942, Zuckmayer reported on his work on the novel. He said the work was now about two-thirds complete and could be “beautiful to drive you crazy”. It will probably be finished in a few weeks.

Zuckmayer also commented on his inspiration to begin with the novel in a letter of June 24, 1942 to Franz Horch : “I always knew that my development from an exiled author who had become insecure as a result would be more a biological than an intellectual process will [...] I will penetrate when I am not writing for ›America‹ out of consideration, but when what I am writing is received and born here. This novel is the beginning. "

In 1946, in a letter to Annemarie Seidel , Zuckmayer expressed the hope that the novel might be ready in the foreseeable future. Obviously the work was left behind. The typescript later came to the German Literature Archive in Marbach am Neckar as the estate of Zuckmayer and remained unpublished until the blocking period set by the heirs had expired. Then it was published, cleared of Anglicisms . A title was used for this that Zuckmayer had not chosen himself.

Valerie Popp assumes that Zuckmayer wanted to achieve a breakthrough on the American book market with the Vermont novel , but not only failed because of its low level of awareness in the USA, but also no longer pursued this project after the end of the war: “[...] and thus Zuckmayer became one of the few celebrated German-speaking remigrants. Due to the exorbitant success of his play Des Teufels General (1946), which made Zuckmayer not only famous but also wealthy, America and the American book market were a long way off for Zuckmayer, especially since he too, despite his positive attitude towards the USA and especially Vermont During his time in exile, he had always retained his deep ties to Germany and Europe. "

reception

The novel fragment has seen several editions since it was first published in 1996. Valerie Popp dedicated a multi-page treatise to the work in her work "But everything was different here ..." - American images of German-language exile literature after 1939 in the USA . Among other things, she emphasized that the novel is a "declaration of love to Vermont" and to the pioneering days, which Zuckmayer was surely under the impression of the difference between the relative security in the community of farmers in rural Vermont and the conditions in Europe or in other parts of the USA. Vermont is portrayed here, so to speak, as "America's Europe", in which the loveless business acumen of the people is not quite as pronounced as on the west coast with its film industry, in which Zuckmayer himself had traumatic experiences. In general, Popp places Zuckmayer's handling of the contrast between rural and urban life, but above all that between Europe and the USA, in the foreground. The use of “metastereotypes”, for example, is described as striking and unusual - European stereotypes from Americans who are well aware of them, which is why Bill Buglebee plays his game with confusing “Austria” and “Australia” and the European stone graves this Cliché thinking. On the other hand, Zuckmayer himself makes very strong use of traditional ideas, for example when describing the idea of ​​freedom in the USA. Popp sees here references to the image of America in historical novels and especially Johannes Urzidils .

Text output

  • Carl Zuckmayer: Vermont novel. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-10-096552-3 .

literature

  • Hans Daiber : The beautiful Melusine and the poor Heinrich or behind the seven mountains. In: The world . 189, August 14, 1996.
  • Valerie Popp: "But everything was different here ..." - Pictures of America from German-language exile literature after 1939 in the USA . Königshausen & Neumann, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8260-3831-0 , p. 261-278 ( google.com ).
  • Hans Wagener: Carl Zuckmayer's Vermont novel - an American fairy tale. In: Zuckmayer yearbook. 1, 1998, pp. 251-279.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Quoted from: KB: Editorial note. In: Carl Zuckmayer: Vermonter Roman. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-10-096552-3 , pp. 203-205.
  2. ^ Historical commission of the Börsenverein: Archive for the history of the book industry . Walter de Gruyter, 2001, ISBN 3-11-094295-X , p. 104-106 ( google.com ).
  3. ↑ Valerie Popp: "But everything was different here ..." - Pictures of America from German-language exile literature after 1939 in the USA . Königshausen & Neumann, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8260-3831-0 , p. 262 ( google.com ).
  4. ↑ Valerie Popp: "But everything was different here ..." - Pictures of America from German-language exile literature after 1939 in the USA . Königshausen & Neumann, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8260-3831-0 , p. 277 ( google.com ).
  5. ↑ Valerie Popp: "But everything was different here ..." - Pictures of America from German-language exile literature after 1939 in the USA . Königshausen & Neumann, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8260-3831-0 , p. 271 ( google.com ).
  6. ↑ Valerie Popp: "But everything was different here ..." - Pictures of America from German-language exile literature after 1939 in the USA . Königshausen & Neumann, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8260-3831-0 , p. 270 ( google.com ).
  7. ^ A b Valerie Popp: "But everything was different here ..." - Pictures of America from German-language exile literature after 1939 in the USA . Königshausen & Neumann, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8260-3831-0 , p. 268 ( google.com ).