Re-encounter

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Revival is a story by Anna Seghers that appeared in Berlin in 1977 together with the story Stone Age .

A tragedy is usually performed in softer tones. With unspeakable effort, the love of the Spanish republican couple Celia and Alfonso Varela rises above the Francoist repression .

background

In 1939, after General Franco's victory over the Spanish republicans, the losers flee in droves across the Pyrenees to France. Many of these refugees then gather in Mexico. Celia is one of them. The heroine of this love story had worked as a typist on the staff of the Civil War Army.

shape

Alfonso, one of the heroes of Teruel , hardly appears. Actually, only Celia's escape via France to Mexico, the return the other way to Spain and the dangerous wait there for the beloved husband is told. The couple met three times. The first in America lasts three days. The remaining two - instant encounters in Franco Spain - are life-threatening.

Sometimes the author allows herself a very small aberration. The narrator does not stay strictly with Celia as usual, but makes Alfonso think, for example, during the last terrible encounter on his transport to the next prison: "Why doesn't she show me our child?"

Anna Seghers interweaves autobiography: "While I was [in Mexico City ] in the hospital, Hitler was beaten on the Volga ." And she gives history lessons: "The time that was called Drôle de guerre ..."

content

The first of the three above-mentioned meetings between the two communist spouses took place at the end of August 1944 on the outskirts of Taxco , when Alfonso, working illegally in Spain, was summoned to report to Mexico. The couple fathered a child in Taxco. Anna Seghers writes: “They went into their home, which was now the small, hospitable house with the garden. It was a miracle that they had found each other between life and death in the broken, confused world. The following day was more beautiful than any other. ”When Alfonso left for Spain, he wanted to see each other back home. Luisa was born in the spring of 1945.

Celia returns to her Spanish homeland with her four-year-old daughter - the child has Alfonso's bright eyes - in search of the family man. Alfonso is still working illegally there. Franco lets the Republicans persecute without mercy. Celia knows that a meeting of the small family is dangerous. The young mother also works illegally in a Republican resistance group. In February 1951 the Varelas meet for the second time. The man with whom Celia is supposed to exchange slogans at the meeting is, to her surprise, Alfonso. He senses danger, doesn't even look at his wife and leaves with the words: “What a shame, thank you very much.” Anna Seghers writes: “What happened was what he wished for, year after year, day after day.”

Celia really wants to see Alfonso again. In 1954 she finally achieved her goal after constant effort; gets to see her husband - admittedly captured and freshly operated - for the third time. This time the emaciated, aged, almost unrecognizable Alfonso returned his wife's gaze "with a trace of smile" from his bright eyes. Celia is "desperate and happy".

For a whole long year after that, Celia carefully addresses a fellow soldier to Alfonso's uncertain fate. Just as the numerous exiled Spaniards in Mexico hailed suspicions about the well-known underground fighter Alfonso at the beginning of the text, his home life ultimately remains in the dark.

reception

Neugebauer writes about the dilemma of the two resistance fighters, both of whom paid with the "man and woman living together". He brings up Anna Seghers' rigorous treatment of this subject. Hilzinger expresses the grief of the losers - the Spanish republicans.

literature

expenditure

Secondary literature

  • Heinz Neugebauer: Anna Seghers. Life and work. With illustrations (research assistant: Irmgard Neugebauer, editorial deadline September 20, 1977). 238 pages. Series “Writers of the Present” (Ed. Kurt Böttcher). People and Knowledge, Berlin 1980, without ISBN
  • Kurt Batt : Anna Seghers. Trial over development and works. With illustrations. 283 pages. Reclam, Leipzig 1973 (2nd edition 1980). Licensor: Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main ( Röderberg-Taschenbuch Vol. 15), ISBN 3-87682-470-2
  • Andreas Schrade: Anna Seghers . Metzler, Stuttgart 1993 (Metzler Collection, Vol. 275 (Authors)), ISBN 3-476-10275-0
  • Sonja Hilzinger: Anna Seghers. With 12 illustrations. Series of Literature Studies. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, RUB 17623, ISBN 3-15-017623-9
  • Josefina Sandoval: México in Anna Seghers' life and work. 1940-1947 . Scientific publishing house Berlin, 2001 (Diss. FU Berlin ). ISBN 3-932089-67-7

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anna Seghers: Erzählungen 1963-1977, p. 658
  2. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 144, 14th Zvu
  3. ↑ Sandoval, p. 44 below, Batt, p. 144-160
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 591, 10. Zvo
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 652, 6th Zvu
  6. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 144, 12. Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 585, 10. Zvo
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 590, 16. Zvo
  9. ↑ Edition used, S, 591, 5th Zvo and Neugebauer, p. 211, 12th Zvu
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 607, 5th Zvo
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 641, 19. Zvo
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 642, 11. Zvo
  13. ^ Schrade, p. 150, 13. Zvo
  14. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 212, 7. Zvo
  15. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 212, 7th Zvu
  16. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 144, 3rd Zvu