Want from the mill
Will of the mill ( Engl. Will o 'the Mill ) is an allegorical short story by the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson , 1887 in the collection of the great men and other stories (Engl. The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables ) in Chatto & Windus appeared.
The love of the natural philosopher Will for the pastor's daughter Marjory (in some translations: Margreet) is unhappy.
content
The mill , in which little Will lives with his foster parents in a highland valley, can only be reached via a bumpy, dangerous mountain path. Will has questions for the miller: where is the river going? What are the people doing down there on the plain? ... The boy suspects that "real life" is going on down there. Time flies. After the mill can also be reached by car, the miller turns the mill house into a tavern. Once a professor comes up from town and invites Will to come along. The boy should receive a good education on the plain. The foster parents are proud of their will. But this remains until the end of his life, i.e. until he is 72 years old, up in his highland valley.
After the foster parents die, Will expands the inn, hires servants, and becomes wealthy over time. Will, who lives withdrawn, is considered an eccentric: He questions "the most natural things in the world". As a 30-year-old, Will woos about 19-year-old Marjory because he loves her. The young man knows what is proper. He asks the father. The pastor passes on the question: “Do you love him too, yes or no?” Marjory replies quietly: “I think so.” Then the father: “You have to get married”. Nothing will come of it. Will spoils the upcoming wedding by sharing one of his thought results with the bride. The marriage is not worth the effort. The reader does not find out how Will came to this realization and can only puzzle: Presumably the natural philosopher snubbed a habit of the bride. She likes to pick a bouquet of sunflowers in summer. Will would rather leave flowers there. Marjory feels he is being fooled. Will gives in. If Marjory wanted to, he could marry her too. The bride rejects this as an insult.
Marjory presents the momentous conversation a little different to the astonished father. Both would have been mistaken in their feelings and she would have asked Will to remain very good friends. That’s what happens. The two visit each other every week. But after three years, Marjory marries someone else. A year after this marriage, Will is surprisingly called to Marjory's deathbed. Both can speak privately for a few minutes. Then the woman dies.
Year after year disappears into nothing. Will becomes known and better known. Young people come up from the plain and want to study Will's “natural philosophy ”. When Will has grown old, death knocks at the mill and roughly announces Will's last journey, the philosopher trembles, but then welcomes death. Because since Marjory's death he had been waiting for this, his last day.
shape
The narrator addresses the readership in the 2nd person plural. The text consists of three chapters. The love story “Des Pastor Margreet” is flanked by the philosophical introductory chapter “The Plains and the Stars” and the excellent allegorical showdown “Death” .
reception
Will doesn't go out into the world. In the absence of temptation, he becomes wise at home . In this story of praising those who stay at home, Wirzberger discovers an "indirect autobiographical reference". The model for the narrative tone of this parable was Hawthorne .
German-language literature
expenditure
- The Adventures of John Nicholson and Other Tales. Translated into German by Marguerite and Curt Thesing. ( The Adventures of John Nicholson. The Isle of Voices . The Corpse Robber . Wanted from the Mill. The crooked Janet ). Buchenau & Reichert Verlag, Berlin around 1925. 248 pages
- Quarters for the night . Want from the mill. Novellas. Insel Library No. 234 . Transferred from Irma and Albrecht Schaeffer (afterword), Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1951. 80 pages
- Robert Louis Stevenson: Will from the mill . Pp. 280-311. (Translator: Barbara Cramer) in Robert Louis Stevenson: The Enigmatic Life. Master tales. ( Des Sire de Malétroit's door . Markheim . Olalla . The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde . The crooked Janet . John Nicholson's unfortunate adventures . Will of the mill. The pavilion on the dunes ) Afterword by Karl-Heinz Wirzberger . Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung , Leipzig 1953, 400 pages
- Will from the mill / Will o 'the mill. German and English . Reclam, Stuttgart 1971. ISBN 3-15-007947-0 . 78 pages
Secondary literature
- Michael Reinbold: Robert Louis Stevenson. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1995, ISBN 3-499-50488-X .
Web links
in English
Remarks
- ↑ Also “Will aus der Mühle” (Reinbold, p. 153, 19. Zvo).
- ↑ When reading the word highland valley, some seasoned Stevenson readers think of the highlands . Wirzberger teaches, however, that the scenery was an alpine montage from Brenner and Murgtal (Wirzberger in the afterword of the edition used, p. 386, 10th Zvo).
- ↑ Edition used.