Veronika decides to die

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Veronika decides to die (original title in Portuguese : Veronika decide morrer ) is a novel published in 1998 by the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho .

content

The novel tells the story of 24-year-old Veronika, who apparently lacks nothing and which nevertheless decides to suicide to commit. The attempt fails; she is admitted to the psychiatric clinic “Villete”. Here the doctors predict that she will die within a week from the long-term effects of the tablet overdose. In view of the short time left, Veronika finally allows herself to be as she sees fit. Another central theme is madness and its paradoxical relationship to normality .

backgrounds

The action begins on November 11, 1997 and ends on February 18, 1998 and takes place in Slovenia . Paulo Coelho uses other references to reality in addition to these dates. On the one hand, he mentions scenes in Ljubljana or the Slovenian poet Prešeren , and on the other hand, the novel takes place against the background of the conflicts after the partition of Yugoslavia . There are some entanglements of the characters with the consequences of Slovenia's declaration of independence and the crises in neighboring countries. In addition, Coelho is not afraid to establish a self-reference right from the start. He later tells how he came across Veronika's story. All of this gives the impression of a true story. In fact, Coelho claims to have processed his experience of having been taken to a psychiatric clinic three times by his parents because they did not recognize his desire to be an artist. This is similar to the story of the schizophrenic Eduard , which is given a particularly autobiographical trait.

action

The novel begins with Veronika's attempted suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills . While waiting for her death, she happened to notice a newspaper comment by the writer Coelho: “Where is Slovenia?” Veronika decides to write a letter to the editor before she dies, because she is annoyed that nobody knows her home country Slovenia. While writing the letter, she began to have doubts about the correctness of her suicide, but soon afterwards the sleeping pills began to work. She wakes up a few days later in the infamous “Villete” madhouse. During a visit to the infirmary, she was told that the sleeping pills had caused a heart defect and that she only had a few days to live. For Veronika, knowing that you will only die in a few days is far worse than knowing that you will die in a few minutes. Now she tries everything to get medicine so that she doesn't have to wait so long.

In the following days Veronika made the acquaintance of various patients, through whose experiences she gradually learned to recognize herself and increasingly regained the will to live. Their fate of imminent death and the life energy it awakens also stimulate the other patients to reflect on their lives, and in some even arouse the desire to leave the institution. Meanwhile, shortly before her predicted death, Veronika falls in love with the schizophrenic Eduard, with whom she escapes from “Villete” to spend her old age together. But Veronika is still alive the next day.

It turns out that the treating chief physician and clinic director Dr. Igor at Veronica caused symptoms of heart attacks through regular injections, to make her believe in her impending death. He hoped to get evidence of his own studies on mental illness, which start from the idea of ​​a poison, which he named " Vitriol " (bitterness) and that only with the consciousness of life (caused by the consciousness of death ) can be fought. Dr. Igor's approach is revealed in the final part of the novel as an unorthodox therapeutic trick, which serves to relieve his patient Veronica of the bitterness and fatigue of life and thereby prevent her from repeating her suicide attempt.

main characters

Veronica

Veronika is the protagonist of the novel. She decides to commit suicide because she finds her life too monotonous and fears that nothing will change with age, except that she will have to endure more suffering. In addition, there is a feeling of powerlessness that she felt because of the suffering in the world. As a child, Veronika was an avid piano player. She wanted a career as a pianist, but her parents found it too risky and pushed her to study. She passed her diploma but took a poorly paid but secure job in a library. Until she was admitted to “Villete”, Veronika lived in a rented room in a convent, as the strict exit times served as an excuse to say goodbye to her lovers early on. Veronika had a few of these, but she always shied away from deeper relationships, as she couldn't admit many feelings to herself. Her activities with friends and the evenings in bars and then in the beds of her lovers thus became a routine that she believed she could not break through except by suicide.

Zedka

In “Villete” Veronika meets Zedka first. Zedka explains to Veronika that madness is in principle not a disease and that it can be rewarding. For her time after Villete, Zedka wishes to continue to remain crazy, but she doesn't want her depression again. This depression brought her to the clinic and threw her apparently regular life off track. In her youth she fell in love with a married American, traveled after him and got involved in an affair. When the contact broke off, she went through her first major depression. In time, she got over it, found work, and got married. But one day she noticed the statue of the poet Prešeren and found her struggle for the American's love in his works, which he had dedicated to an equally hopeless love. The impossible attempt to find the American again followed. Her heartache was worse than before, and she eventually had a nervous breakdown . Soon afterwards she was brought to “Villete”.

Mari

Zedka tells of a group in "Villete" called "The Brotherhood". These are patients who have already been cured, but are tolerated for financial reasons. They appreciate the freedom to be able to do whatever they want in the institution without being convicted, because after all they are crazy. One of them is Mari. She was admitted with a panic attack . She had her first seizure in the cinema, followed by more and more severe and prolonged seizures. A colleague recommended that she seek treatment. She later leaves Villete and is determined to help street children.

Eduard

The story of Edward is told in the greatest detail. Only Veronika manages to reach him with her music and they fall in love. Shortly before Veronica's supposed death, Eduard talks about his youth as a diplomat's son in Brazil, where he cannot take advantage of the sober life of the political city of Brasília . After a serious bicycle accident, through reading a book by a nurse, he got the idea of ​​becoming a saint who shared his visions of the paradise of mankind, and then he wanted to learn to paint. When he was released from the hospital, he enrolled in a painting class and met artists. His parents make it clear to him that they have planned a diplomatic career for him and that in the name of their love he should stop painting. In the dilemma between painting and parental love, Eduard begins to withdraw from reality. Doctors diagnose schizophrenia , which they suspect was caused by a bicycle accident. When his father was ordered back as ambassador because of the war in Yugoslavia, his parents were forced to take him to “Villete”.

reception

In his review in Der Spiegel , Rainer Traub emphasizes that the novel tells “of elementary experiences” in which the readers would recognize “their own weaknesses and fears as well as their longings and dreams”. Here, too, as in his other books, Coelho processed his own experiences; the clinic director's view that the only effective medicine against fatigue is the awareness of death, which would allow us to live life more intensely, is "a paradoxical, but ultimately successful insight". From a literary point of view, the framework of the novel is undoubtedly a weakness of the book, but Coelho's 'personal legend' as an unmistakable experience and determination of each individual is an essential part of the effect of the novel on the reader. The global success of this book is due to the fact that Coelho “condenses the traumatic experiences and setbacks and the moments of happiness in his biography into a highly concentrated message”.

In a literary talk with Paul Coelho in Focus, Umberto Eco described Veronika decides to die as a book that he “liked” and “really touched” him.

In contrast, in his review of the book in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Wolfgang Schneider criticizes the literary qualities of the novel, in particular its simplified narrative style and limited expressiveness. Coelho's novel is by no means “entranced and serene”, although it is set in the cold world of psychiatry, in which “electrical surges and insulin shocks are administered.” The patient biographies presented , in which Coelho processed his own experiences in psychiatric hospitals, would nevertheless all be shared only "reveal the same need to adapt". The novel is "structured like a didactic play" and works with corresponding simplifications. The narrative is "like a woodcut"; the simplicity of fables and fairy tales has given way to the “simplicity of life help books” in this novel. The statement of the novel is essentially limited to the fact that the normal are the crazy and that we should all have more courage to be different. Although Coelho has little essential to say about the Ljubljana location, it is still a suitable choice, since the "normality" in ex- Yugoslavia is more fragile than elsewhere.

The novel was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award .

In the ZDF readers' poll in autumn 2003, the novel was one of the 100 most popular books of all time.

The novel was filmed under the same title and directed by Emily Young and was released in theaters in 2010. American actress Sarah Michelle Gellar took on the role of "Veronika" . In the film, the location is moved to New York and the name of the clinic director in Dr. Blake changed.

The German-language play of the same name (script: Hakon Hirzenberger ) premiered in Potsdam in 2006.

The Danish doom metal band Saturnus released the album Veronica Decides To Die in 2006 , which was inspired by Coelho's novel.

The 2010 song Saint Veronika by the Canadian rock band Billy Talent is based on the novel.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Schneider: The nine chosen ones . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , May 3, 2000. Accessed July 15, 2014. See also Rainer Traub: The second life of Veronika . In: Der Spiegel , April 3, 2000. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
  2. ↑ Rainer Traub: The second life of Veronika . In: Der Spiegel , April 3, 2000. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
  3. ↑ New Dimension in Literature . In: Focus , February 14, 2000. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Schneider: The nine chosen ones . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , May 3, 2000. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
  5. ↑ "Our Best - The Great Reading" . On: ZDF yearbook . Retrieved July 15, 2014.
  6. ↑ Veronika decides to die (2009) . In: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved July 15, 2014.