Like a tear in the ocean
Like a tear in the ocean is a trilogy of novels by Manès Sperber . The trilogy , which consists of The Burned Bush , Deeper Than the Abyss and The Lost Bay , is Sperber's most important novel and, together with his autobiography, established his reputation.
Summary of contents
Sperber's trilogy of novels tells the story of the Communist Party's betrayal of a great idea. With the assumption of power, the CP asserts the view that chance can be abolished and history can be made. Thus the means of attaining the ends are released and the Communist Party's disregard for human dignity and life begins. The individual is increasingly being grasped by the dynamics that are developing in the two European states that are becoming more totalitarian - as victims and perpetrators.
The first part of the trilogy tells the story of various communist fighters. In view of the Stalinization of the Communist Party in the 1930s, you feel compelled to react to this change. They have to redefine their relationship with the party and develop an opinion on the meaning and nature of political action in general. The hero of the trilogy, Dojno Faber, is one of those who break with the party: he is disillusioned with the feasibility of the story and he is beginning to despair of the ineffectiveness of political action. The development that leads to this point is made comprehensible through discussions, especially with Professor Erich von Stetten, a liberal, politically abstinent scholar and an intellectual authority from Faber's youth.
The second part of the trilogy describes the boundless hopelessness and homelessness of the double exiled Faber, who had to leave Germany because of the National Socialists and could no longer stay in the communist party. With every political defeat of the anti-fascists and with the increasingly totalitarian character of the communist party, his personal situation, but also the overall situation in Europe, worsens. In parallel to this development, hopeful and meaningful elements emerge. Together with Stetten, Faber writes purposeless political and historical analyzes. And what is more, meaning is created in the private sphere, which is represented by the metaphor of an abandoned boy whom Faber takes care of.
The third part describes a small eastern Jewish town called Wolyna, in which, shortly before the final annihilation, a group of Jews defended themselves under the spiritual guidance of a young charismatic rabbi. In addition, it is primarily about the struggle of partisans in Yugoslavia, who defend themselves against the National Socialists but also against the unrestricted claim to leadership of the partisan groups loyal to the Soviet Union. It is not a struggle for power, but for values like freedom and justice. Even if the fight cannot be won, it is preferable to a defeat without a fight in view of the reorientation necessary after the war. The novel ends with the hero, Dojno Faber, approaching the position of his teacher and no longer willing to hide or suppress the truth in favor of an ideology.
Origin and reception history
Sperber wrote the first part from 1940 to 1948; the second part and the third part were written between 1948 and 1951. He wrote all three parts in German, but they were initially published in French translation: the first part in 1949, the second and the third in 1952. The third chapter of the third part, which gives the title of the novel, 'Qu'une larme dans l'océan', with the aforementioned description of the town of Wolyna, was also published separately with a foreword by André Malraux . The trilogy of novels only came out in German in 1961. The fully preserved handwritten manuscript of the trilogy of novels is now stored in the literature archive of the Austrian National Library in Vienna and can be viewed there.
In the 1950s, Sperber's novel met with a certain response in France, but in Germany, Sperber's writings were hardly known - although he wrote mainly in German. With the German publication of the trilogy of novels, a turning point began, the literary criticism reacted enthusiastically, but the public was initially cautious. The success with the public then followed in the 70s and 80s. At the time when illusions collapsed in the 1968 movement, the trilogy of novels became a cult book of the left. The late success of Sperber's work in German-speaking countries was certainly also due to the fact that he spoke to a new generation that was interested in the past based on authentic experience.
With the award of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1983), the author and trilogy were at the peak of their popularity. Since the fall of the wall, they have been more forgotten, as their main theme, the perversion of socialism into Stalinism , has moved out of public interest.
Contemporaries about Like a tear in the ocean
Those who talk about sparrowhawks usually mean their trilogy. Siegfried Lenz describes How a Tear in the Ocean as “a great testimony to European fiction, a political and philosophical work, a conscience research, an unparalleled portrait of the times, in which, it sometimes seemed to me, Dostoyevsky's passion was as much a part as the intellectual lucidity of the French Moralists ”. Heinrich Böll calls it one of the most important publications after 1945, a European key novel, which he compares with Tolstoy's War and Peace , and Marcel Reich-Ranicki extends Arthur Koestler's predicate "Saga of the Comintern" by pointing out that beyond the temporal, fundamental Issues of human existence are addressed and that Sparhawk only, as he says in the preface, treats characters, events, experiences and experiences if they carry a parable in them.
For the literary club's hundredth broadcast on Swiss television, Daniel Cohn-Bendit had the audience choose the five "most important" novels from a number of great novels of the 20th century and then discussed them in his group: Homo faber , Malina , Der Fremde , Der Steppenwolf and the process . If he could have named a book himself, he said, his choice would have been Like a Tear in the Ocean by Manès Sparhawk, which is why he briefly introduced this book at the end of the program:
- “ Like a tear in the ocean , for me, a novel is about dealing with communism and fascism. It is an attempt to understand how to become a revolutionary and why to remain a revolutionary. But it is also the story of those who leave this path when they learn how terrible the revolution is. Manès Sperber describes a part of the last century - one of the most dramatic and terrible centuries. And yet he creates a novel that has always left me in a basically positive mood while reading, which has inspired me, because you get out of the novel well, you find something, namely a democratic society. And for me that is the strength of Manès Sperber: his skeptical optimism. "(Copyright cleared)
Quoted from: Rudolf Isler: Manès Sperber. Witness of the 20th century - a life story . 2nd Edition. Sauerländer, Aarau 2004, p. 4 ( ISBN 3-0345-0122-6 )
filming
Like a tear in the ocean was filmed in 1970 by WDR and ORF as a three-part series.
proof
- ↑ As a tear in the ocean in the Internet Movie Database (English)