If you'd talked, Desdemona

If you'd talked, Desdemona. Angry speeches by angry women is a cycle of monologues by Christine Brückner . It was published by Hoffmann and Campe in 1983, with drawings by Horst Janssen . The monologues were translated into different languages ​​and staged in many theaters, which is why they established Brückner's success as a playwright.

contents

The eleven texts are monologues by 10 (11) well-known women from history, literature and mythology who only played secondary roles in their personal stories and, as the title suggests, did not get enough say. Brückner gives these women a voice and in the seventh monologue it is she who gives an angry speech to colleague Meysenbug . In her successful book, Brückner shows a new, female perspective on apparently familiar events when it was published (1983). The monologues are each embedded in a fictional situation and have a specific addressee; both are made clear in the subtitle of the respective text.

Brückner's perspective

Despite all the linguistic and entertaining virtuosity of Christine Brückner's texts, which Walter Jens characterizes as "shrewdness, ingenuity and amusing reversal of all relationships" and "always brushed against the grain", a passionate, realistic ("angry") undertone cannot be ignored, which does not always come to the fore in the literature reviews on this Brückner book. It is particularly pronounced in the fifth speech to Lysistrate and the women of Athens and in Gudrun Ensslin's eighth speech against the walls of the Stammheim cell , or in Mary's tenth prayer in the Judean desert. In the seventh monologue, it is Brückner himself who gives autobiographical insights in a broad sense.

Title of the monologues

• I would be Goethe's bigger half. Christiane von Goethe in the anteroom of the widowed head stable master Charlotte von Stein
• If you'd talked, Desdemona . The last quarter of an hour in General Othello's bedchamber
• Are you sure Martinus ? The table speeches of Katharina Luther , née von Bora
• Do not forget the name of the kingfisher. Sappho to the girls saying goodbye on Lesbos
• You are wrong, Lysistrate ! The speech of the hetaera Megara to Lysistrates and the women of Athens
• Do you just hit the magic word. Effi Briest to the deaf dog Rollo
• An octave lower, Miss von Meysenbug ! Speech by the angry Christine Brückner to the colleague Meysenbug
• No memorial for Gudrun Ensslin . Talk against the walls of the Stammheim cell
• Love has a new name. The speech of Laura, suffering from the plague, to the escaped Petrarch
• Where did you lose your language, Maria ? Prayer of Mary in the Judean Desert
• Are you happy now, dead Agamemnon ? The not recorded speech of Clytemnestra on the bier of the king of Mycenae

In 1996 an extended edition was published by Ullstein Verlag with three further speeches:

• We're even, messieurs! The lady of the camellias on "marionette", her mannequin
• The banality of evil. Speech by Eva Hitler , née Braun, in the Führerbunker
• The trip to Utrecht . Speech of an unborn

Adaptation

The monologues were also published as audio books by Hörverlag in 2005 , read by Eva Mattes , Maria Wimmer , Christa Berndl , Doris Schade and Rita Russek .

literature

• Christine Brückner: If you had talked, Desdemona. Indignant speeches from indignant women. Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe 1983. 18th edition 1994, ISBN 3-455-00366-4 .

Web links

• Goodreads review
• Klaus Ziermann: “Unrestrained” in one great artistic achievement. In: Berlin Reading Signs 11/12 1997.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christine Brückner: If you had spoken, Desdemona. Indignant speeches from indignant women. Ullstein Taschenbuch Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-548-20623-9 , back.
2. ↑ Compare weblink goodreads.com
3. ^ Review by Dieter Wunderlich, published in 2005
4. ↑ The trip to Utrecht - speech of an unborn author: Christine Brückner, the actress Carolin Sophie Göbel plays https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVR36Zi8CTQ