Blown by the wind

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Gone with the Wind and more recently translation Gone with the Wind (Gone with the Wind) is a novel by Margaret Mitchell to the fictional characters Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, who in the 1860s in the south of the United States at the time of the Civil War and the subsequent reconstruction plays.

The book was published June 30, 1936 and immediately became one of the greatest bestsellers in the history of American literature ; more than a million copies had already been sold in October. In 1937 Mitchell was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the novel . To date, around 30 million copies have been sold worldwide.

In 1939, the film adaptation of the same name, produced by David O. Selznick , was released in American cinemas and became one of the most successful films of all time.

action

Sixteen-year-old Scarlett O'Hara lives with her parents and two younger sisters on the Tara cotton plantation near Atlanta . She is her father's darling and used to getting all wishes granted. At a garden party, she confesses her feelings to Ashley Wilkes, the son of the neighboring Twelve Oaks plantation, with whom she fell in love. However, Ashley wants to marry his cousin Melanie Hamilton; the engagement is to be announced on the same day. Following her argument with Ashley, Scarlett meets Rhett Butler, a Charleston guest who has been disowned by his wealthy family.

Shortly after the outbreak of the civil war , Ashley marries Melanie, and Scarlett, out of defiance, accepts Melanie's brother Charles' proposal. The men go to war and Charles dies of pneumonia in the camp . Scarlett gives birth to a son, but develops little maternal feelings for the child. Hoping to see Ashley again, she moves to Atlanta to live with Melanie and her aunt "Pittypat". Scarlett meets Rhett Butler again at a festival for the benefit of the Southern Army . While northern troops attack Atlanta, Scarlett helps Melanie with the difficult birth of Ashley's son. For the subsequent escape to Tara, Rhett Butler drives up a horse and a cart and brings them with Melanie and the children from the burning Atlanta. At the city limits, he leaves them to join the troops of the Confederate states that are in retreat.

When Scarlett arrives in Tara, she learns that her mother had died of typhus the day before . Her father has been confused since then, the two sisters are also sick with typhoid and, in addition to the Yankees , Confederate marauders and freed slaves have stolen almost all food. In this situation Scarlett becomes the head of the family, tries to get everyday life back on track, works in the fields. Ashley later returns from captivity. Scarlett tries again to win him over. But Ashley doesn't want to leave Melanie and longs for the past.

When the Yankees demand a hefty tax return on Tara, Scarlett hopes to get the money from Rhett Butler, who is in prison in Atlanta. She offers herself to him as his lover; Rhett rejects her. Scarlett then marries a long-time admirer of her sister Suellen, the merchant Frank Kennedy, in order to get his money. Scarlett persuades Frank to start trading in lumber and takes over the management of the sawmill. She gives birth to Kennedy's daughter, but develops no affection for this child either. Because she has business dealings with Northerners and is acquainted with Rhett Butler, who is considered a war profiteer , she comes under criticism from the former plantation owners.

After a robbery on Scarlett, her husband takes part in an act of revenge by the newly formed Ku Klux Klan that costs him his life. Rhett Butler, who has been secretly in love with Scarlett for a long time, proposes marriage to her a short time later, which she accepts. Rhett tries to win his wife's love by showering her with luxury and traveling with her. However, Scarlett still holds on to her feelings for Ashley Wilkes, who is now working for her. Scarlett gives birth to her third child, named "Bonnie".

One day Ashley thanks Scarlett for everything she's done for him and Melanie and hugs them. This scene is observed by Ashley's sister India, who suspects an affair and spreads rumors about it. That same evening, angry and drunk, Rhett attacks Scarlett in an attempt to "erase the invisible third party in his marriage from their thoughts." As a result, the spouses become more and more alienated. Rhett goes on a trip with the little daughter for a few weeks. When Scarlett notices that she is pregnant again, she is happy at first, because she is hoping for a reconciliation with Rhett.

When Rhett returns, however, he responds to the news with sarcasm. A heated argument ensues, in the course of which Scarlett falls down the stairs and miscarries. Rhett is beside himself with fear. The attempt to save the marriage is thwarted by the death of daughter Bonnie, who breaks her neck while jumping hurdles with her pony. Rhett locks himself in with his daughter's body for days and only Melanie finally manages to lure him out. Despite medical warnings, Melanie became pregnant again and died of a miscarriage.

At the end of the novel, Scarlett realizes that her love for Ashley was a pipe dream and that she has actually loved her husband for a long time. But this realization comes too late for Rhett. He leaves her and Scarlett decides to return to Tara.

background

  • Originally the protagonist was called "Pansy O'Hara" and the plantation "Tara" was called "Fontenoy Hall".
  • The plantation name "Tara" comes from the hill of the same name, Tara , the legendary seat of the Irish high kings , and indicates the continued attachment of European emigrants to their old homeland.
  • The title of the book should first be Tomorrow is Another Day . The title Gone with the Wind ultimately used comes from the poem Cynara by Ernest Dowson .

reception

Even if Gone with the Wind is perceived as a post-war novel in Germany , a German translation was published as early as 1937 and had a circulation of 300,000 copies by the time the USA entered the war in 1941. The Völkischer Beobachter also praised the work: “A great and passionate description of American history with an amazing rendering of the historical milieu and a drawing of human characters from an admirable intellectual perspective.” That did not prevent the Nazis, however, when the Americans entered the war in 1941 Ban book like all American printed matter. The film for the book was only released in German cinemas in 1953 and gave sales of the novel, which had already been reprinted, further momentum, which is why around 1.2 million copies were sold on the German market between 1950 and 1960 alone.

After 1947, the rights to the translation were transferred from Goverts Verlag to Claassen , who explained the (renewed) success of Mitchell's bestseller partly by saying that it was based on a desire to get back issues lost in the war, partly by the fact that the material - a Land devastated by the war - although there is a closeness, the historical distance does not bring the objects too close.

Unlike the reading public in the 1950s and 1960s, the German Nobel Prize for Literature Prize winner Heinrich Böll was not very impressed by the novel. The book has "that indefinable slippery content that cannot be precisely defined, can never be precisely defined."

The presentation of the historical processes in the novel takes place from the perspective of the protagonists, i.e. that of the defeated white southerners. Alan T. Nolan therefore criticizes in The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History that the depiction follows a one-sided, pro-southern narrative. Slavery and the role of the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War would be glossed over, while Reconstruction and the Northern State soldiers would be portrayed negatively. In this sense, the novel follows the typical topoi of the Lost Cause and does not reflect the historical facts.

Sonja Zekri judges the novel as "modern when it comes to women and archaic in the relationship between black and white": Mitchell could not do anything with the repressive idealization of southern women, her protagonist already shows that. Scarlett O'Hara portrayed her as a life-hungry, indestructible, multi-married, successful business woman, ironicizing "the usual male disappointment that a woman has a brain" (according to Mitchell). - On the other hand, it is a racist book. Contrary to the apologetic speech, slavery was definitely an issue. Ironically, at a time when the South was legally establishing racial segregation, Mitchell took away all whites' guilt. In the form of a "Romancing Slavery", slavery shines in the warm light of an ideal community. Mammy, Pork and the other slaves appreciate the security and care of the white owners and fear nothing as much as the Yankees. "The better of them spurned their freedom and suffered as much as their white rule," said Mitchell.

In her life's work, Die Jahre , the French author Annie Ernaux refers positively to the novel, which appeared a few years before she was born and whose reading has impressed her again and again.

In 2020 the novel was published in Germany in a new translation.

Sequels

  • Under the title Scarlett , a novel by Alexandra Ripley was published in 1991 , which is a sequel to the novel, authorized by Margaret Mitchell's heirs, her nephews Joe and Eugène Mitchell, who received a share of the sales of Scarlett for the serial rights. The action takes place in Atlanta and Ireland in the 1870s . The main character is again Scarlett O'Hara. Ripley's novel was filmed in 1994 under the title Scarlett in the form of a mini television series with four episodes of 90 minutes each.
  • In 2007 the novel Rhett by Donald McCaig was published , which tells the story from the perspective of the protagonist Rhett Butler and was also authorized by Mitchell's heirs.

expenditure

literature

  • Christian Adam : The dream of the year zero: authors, bestsellers, readers: The reorganization of the world of books in East and West after 1945. Galiani, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86971-122-5 , pp. 288-292.

Individual evidence

  1. https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buecher/rezensions/belletristik/vom-wind-verweht-margaret-mitchells-suedstaat-epos-in-neuuebersetzung-16564239.html
  2. ^ Baz Bamigboye: Darius Danesh a damned fine hero. In: Daily Mail . April 4, 2008, accessed June 30, 2016.
  3. ^ The Margaret Mitchell Encyclopedia , p. 227 ( books.google.de ).
  4. Quoted from Christian Adam: The dream of the year zero. Berlin 2016, p. 289. See Anne-M. Wallrath-Janssen: The publishing house H. Goverts in the Third Reich. Munich: 2007, p. 193.
  5. "I think it's important that we omitted this e" - Oha, Miss O'Hara! The southern epic is now called "Gone with the Wind". Just why? , Der Spiegel , December 20, 2019
  6. Christian Adam: The dream of the year zero. Berlin 2016, p. 289 ff.
  7. Heinrich Böll: The cry for ham and chocolates. In: Bernd Balzer (Ed.): Essayist writings and speeches 1. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1978, p. 135 f., Here p. 135.
  8. Alan T. Nolan. The Anatomy of the Myth . In Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan (Editors). The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History . Bloomington and Indianapolis 2010
  9. Sonja Zekri: When slavery shone in a warm light , Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 2, 2020, accessed on June 19, 2020
  10. Ernaux: Les Années. 2008; Übers. Sonja Finck The Years. Suhrkamp 2017, e.g. BS 254.
  11. TOBIAS DÖRING: In a brisk carriage without chaperones , updated on January 5, 2020, accessed on June 19, 2020
  12. Zeitmagazin, September 6, 1991, pp. 52-63.
    Focus, Issue 11, 1994, pp. 113-115.
  13. Alexandra Ripley: Scarlett. Novel. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1991, ISBN 978-3-455-06326-4 . As paperback: Heyne, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-453-40642-1 .
  14. Donald McCaig: Rhett Butler's People. St. Martin's Press, New York, NY 2007. 2007, ISBN 978-0-7394-8866-9 . German translation by Kathrin Razum: Rhett. Heyne Taschenbuch, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-453-40589-9 .