Race to Death

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Race to death (original title: La course à la mort ) is a novel by the French-speaking writer Édouard Rod , which was published in Paris in 1885 .

action

The title of the novel is meaningful both in the French original and in the German translation: Nothing in it seems to make sense, to result in a goal, everything flows exclusively and inevitably towards death, from which in the end no one can escape.

The nameless protagonist hangs out in the form of a diary after his dreams. The narrator seems to be a professional writer, since he always complains about his writer's block . Only when Cécile , previously hardly noticed by the misanthropist, dies, who is the only person he describes to have a name, does he acknowledge his love for her. Above all, the novel gives literary expression to abstinence, which was strongly influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer's essay Metaphysics of Sexual Love in his main work The World as Will and Idea and the misinterpretation of Buddhism that he founded in 19th century France . Schopenhauer does not define sexuality individually, but as the “will to live of the species”. In the end, the first-person narrator mysteriously "merges" with nature in death.

classification

The novel is the first and so far only work by the author, almost forgotten even in his native language, which was translated into German over a hundred years after its creation. Thus it falls victim to “oblivion” almost as much as to that fate that the protagonist fears for himself in the race to death .

Rod may have taken the technique of diary description from the Fragments d'un journal intime by the author Henri-Frédéric Amiel , which were published posthumously in 1883 . In the original manuscript kept in Geneva , which was created between 1881 and 1884, the translator did not yet discover the form of a diary and the description of the thoroughly physical love here does not yet have the character of the unreached or unfulfilled. In addition, a common child of the two lovers appears in the original version understandably.

In the language of the 19th century, the book expresses the disgust for life and the longing for death. Charles Baudelaire's poem Death of Lovers , quoted by Édouard Rod, is another literary model for the author. Parallels to Rod's work were also discovered in Das Murderische Leben by his contemporary Félix Vallotton , from whose work the motto "Doom has taken over to arrange my life" could also come.

In his formal language Rod turns away from the naturalism of the Émile Zola school for the first time . However, Rod, who would have been familiar with this self-restraint, does not resort to the stylistic device of the inner monologue , which Édouard Dujardin , whom he knew, developed two years later in his novel Les lauriers sont coupés and 25 years before James Joyce .

The translator Fabian Stech summarized the characteristic features of the work in the following paragraph: “But his race has death as its goal. All reasons to die are listed by the first-person narrator. Loneliness and pain, boredom and inability to communicate, inability to achieve fame. It is about the reasons of a Protestant citizen in the fin de siècle . A citizen who consciously stands in the way of a change in circumstances. All attempts at change are vain. Neither socialism nor the church can help. We are born to die. Since all must die, there is no need to remove injustice. The last, only injustice remains. ”In this way,“ pessimism is elevated to a doctrine . ”

Maurice Barrès held the race against death for Rod's best work, while Marcel Proust , who, by the way, particularly valued Rod's descriptions of nature , preferred Là haut , 1896.

Vincent van Gogh mentioned in a letter of June 25, 1889 to his brother Theo van Gogh that he had read “Le sens de la vie” as it was a “sequel” to “La course à la mort” and added that he did Elisabeth Huberta Du Quesne-Van Gogh was sent by both sister Elisabeth Huberta, but the book was a bit too pretentious for him personally. Vincent von Gogh found it hardly edifying (“Surtout c'est peu réjouissant”) and was astonished that such a small book could be sold for 3.50 francs in those times.

expenditure

literature

  • Michael G. Lerner: Edouard Rod and Emile Zola. II. From La Course à la mort to Dreyfus . 1969, University of Nottingham, Volume 8.1, ISSN  0029-4586

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. on the delimitation of sexuality in French literature and the way out of suicide : Phillip Winn: Sexualités décadentes chez Jean Lorrain . (= Vol. 124, Faux titre, études de langue et littérature françaises) Rodopi 1997, ISBN 978-9042002265 , p. 43f.
  2. ↑ Arthur Schopenhauer: The world as will and idea. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1986
  3. ↑ Paul Droit: Le Cult du néant . Les philosophes et le Boudda. Paris 1997.
  4. ↑ Fragments d'un journal intime (1882–1884) Selected excerpts from his diary, published by Fanny Mercier shortly after his death. The German translation by Rosa Schapire was published by Piper Verlag (Munich and Leipzig) in 1905.
  5. ↑ Michael G. Lerner: The unpublished Manuscripts of Eduard Rod's "La course à la mort" and his departure from Zola's Naturalism. In: Studies Francesi, Torino 1971, p. 71 u. 74.
  6. ^ Sigrid Gaisreiter: Vallotton, Félix: The murderous life
  7. ↑ Ronald Daus: Zola and French Naturalism. Metzler, Stuttgart 1976. ISBN 3-476-10146-0
  8. ↑ Les Lauriers sont coupés (first May - August 1887 in continuation in the magazine La Revue Indépendante ) Librairie de la RI, Paris 1888
  9. ↑ Willi Erzgräber : James Joyce: Orality and writing in the mirror of experimental storytelling . Gunter Narr Verlag 1998, ISBN 978-3823354130 , p. 100.
  10. ^ Colette Becker, Jean-Louis Cabanès: Le roman au XIXe siècle: l'explosion du genre . Editions Bréal 2001, ISBN 978-2842917852 , p. 145.
  11. ↑ Fabian Stech: Wettlauf zum Tod, essay, February 2010. See linked * .PDF file, p. 3 ( Memento of the original from September 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fabianstech.com
  12. ↑ Fabian Stech: Race to Death, essay, February 2010. See linked * .PDF file, p. 4 ( Memento of the original from September 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fabianstech.com
  13. ↑ Hans Ulrich Jost, Monique Pavilion: Les avant-gardes réactionnaires: la naissance de la nouvelle droite en Suisse. 1890-1914 . Editions d'Enbas 1992, ISBN 978-2829001512 , p. 11.
  14. ↑ Michael G. Lerner: E. Rod and Marcel Prous. In: French Studies. London 1971, p. 163.
  15. ↑ www.vangoghletters.org (Engl./Frz. - JavaScript)
  16. ↑ http://www.editions-aire.ch/details.php?id=1372