Howards End (novel)
Reunion in Howards End (in the English original: Howards End ) is the title of a novel that Edward Morgan Forster published in 1910. In 2015, 82 international literary critics and scholars voted the novel one of the most important British novels .
action
The focus of the plot are two families: the progressive-romantic Schlegels and the sober-conservative Wilcox '. While the three brothers Schlegel - Margaret, Helen and Tibby - a life in the artistic and literary bohème lead and were brought up by her German-born father to an independent and unprejudiced thinking, the (male) members provide the Wilcox family prototype of the Victorian Biedermann is, who devotes his life to the commercial profession without artistic or philosophical inclinations.
These two worlds meet in the novel several times: First in a hasty and hastily broken engagement between Helen Schlegel and the young Wilcox son, then in a tender friendship between Margaret Schlegel and his wife Ruth Wilcox and finally after the death of Ruth in the Margaret's marriage to the widowed Henry Wilcox.
In addition to the two families, a chance acquaintance of the Schlegel plays a major role: Leonard Bast, an ambitious, intelligent young man from a small family, is sponsored by the Schlegel without success. His poverty contrasts conspicuously with the material carelessness of the upper-class families.
The title of the novel is derived from the Wilcox 'country house, which the Wilcox family does not consider representative and useful, but carries great emotional significance for Ruth Wilcox. Margaret Schlegel is the only one who can understand this passion for the historic house, and thus Howards End becomes the point of contact and turning point of history.
criticism
In a review of the book, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 1995 writes that the novel introduces the reader to a bygone world "in the precarious situations of its decay" and allows him to disappear into "old Victorian England, infinitely amiable, if a little bigoted" .
Interpretative approach
In the final tableau, the main characters in Howards End are united. Mr. Wilcox, his wife Margaret, their sister Helen and their illegitimate child form a community that is certainly not a civil family. But their togetherness in the end shows, according to Annelise Phlippen's interpretation, "that they have overcome their social origins and the resulting contradictions." For Phlippen, the "ideal of a classless society [...] seems to be as touching as it is." in a serene way. "
translation
The novel, written from 1908 to 1910, was first published in English in 1910 in Cambridge.
Egon Pöllinger only translated the novel in 1949 for the German-language first edition, which at that time already had the expanded title. This translation is also the basis of the edition by S. Fischer (1958), as well as the other editions in the FA Herbig publishing house in Munich (1987), in Goldmann (1992), in Nymphenburger (2002), in the library of the Süddeutsche Zeitung (2004 ) and in S. Fischer Verlag (2005).
WE Süskind first translated for the edition by Verlag Volk und Welt Berlin in 1949, new editions appeared in 1958 and 1968.
filming
The film adaptation of James Ivory received three Academy Awards and other awards in 1992 . The BBC 's Howards End miniseries also deals with the subject.
Individual evidence
- ^ The Guardian: The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? , accessed on January 2, 2016
- ↑ Review: Fiction - EM Forster “Howards End” in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , October 16, 1995 . Retrieved September 28, 2013.
- ↑ Annelise Phlippen, Edward Howard Forster , Howard's End, in: Werner Hüllen et.al. (Ed.), Contemporary English Poetry, Introduction to English Literature Review with Interpretation, Volume 2, Prose, 2nd edition 1971, Hirschgraben Verlag Frankfurt a. M., pp. 86-95, here p. 89