Between the races
Between the races is a seduction novel by Heinrich Mann , started in 1905 and published in May 1907.
The young Lola Gabriel with the trained alto voice loves the very reserved German Arnold Acton. But the sensual blonde girl falls for the gambler Count Pardi from Florence. The marriage with him fails and the disillusioned young woman finds her first love.
characters
- Lola Gabriel.
- Arnold Acton.
- Conte Cesare Augusto Pardi from Florence.
action
Lola has lived in Germany since early childhood, sheltered and cared for by the young Ernestine, separated from her parents. When her father dies in Brazil, Lola is sixteen years old. Lola's mother, the "dark, soft beauty", comes from Rio and Erneste has had its day. Mai and Lola travel the world. Paolo earns the money in South America and every now and then sends some of it to the two women.
Germany
Tired of life in hotel rooms, Mai and Lola leave northern Italy. They quarter with their Bavarian relatives. There Lola befriends Tini and Arnold Acton.
The young Tini, who has not yet made it big from her rural home, is happy that, with Lola, she has a full-time relative who has already seen something of the world. So Tini makes sure with Lola how you can tell if you are in love. Lola has more than one answer to this: for example, if the girl near the lover calms down, that's a pretty sure sign. Lola only marks the more experienced one. She is deflowered by her husband Pardi much later (see below).
Arnold Acton is staying at the relatives' house and is about to leave for Munich when Mai and Lola approach. Apparently he needs a little town again. In truth, Arnold is extremely shy. Lola waits in vain for a declaration of love on seemingly endless walks through the summery Upper Bavaria. Arnold philosophizes in the open air in private with Lola about God and the world, but does not explain himself. Lola waits and waits, but only learns irrelevant things: Arnold has the “drive to create”. Arnold's love for Italy is discussed, but it later died out.
A completely different guy is Count Pardi from Florence, who is visiting relatives in the neighborhood. This Italian daredevil could be Lola's father by age and took part in the Battle of Adua in 1896 . Pardi is acting like a saloon lion and courting Mai. Mai is delighted and reacts jealously when Pardi also turns to Lola. Although Lola despises Pardi's behavior, she is impressed by the manhood of the count. To her, Pardi appears as a “whole person”, while Arnold appears as “none”. Pardi travels to his homeland - to the Tuscan seaside resort of Viareggio . Mai and Lola, infatuated with the Count, no longer want to be a burden to their relatives and travel behind them.
Italy
First, the train journey of the two ladies ends in Mantua in Lombardy . Tini, meanwhile more experienced, had secretly arranged the Italian adventure with a bogus letter. Pardi soon arrives and confronts the ladies in the Palazzo del Tè with art - “the flood of carnality”. Lola gets hot and cold when she inadvertently overhears a conversation Pardis has in which he brags to a friend that he wanted to take Lola - entranced by her "bitter, blonde elegance" - away from a German. Lola has to take note that things are different in Italy than in Germany. Not only that Pardi feels responsible for Lola and wants to raise her to be a "really female woman who can obey". Even more, he negotiates “through the open window beyond your body”. To her astonishment, Lola lets herself be defeated and is relieved. Lola tells herself that she has a “right to luck” and doesn't want Pardi to be taken away by Mai. Pardi's friends pour Lola pure wine. The count owned and still have several lovers. One of them, a pregnant woman, is said to have killed Pardi by deliberately knocking over the horse-drawn carriage with her and himself on it. From time to time Pardi duels. The Pardis, Florentine citizens, rich fur traders, were ennobled late.
When Lola is courted by Pardi, she appears brittle. First of all, she wants to be married. Pardi is in no hurry with the wedding. Mai also wants the two of them to marry because Pardi, who is next to Lola, is compromising her daughter. In addition, Lola had to be taken care of, because the flow of money from the Big Island slowly dried up. Mai would like to do without Pardi, her crush.
Lola says to her mother that she doesn't love Pardi at all, but Lola confesses to a friend of Pardi's that she loves the count. Through this and similar willful behavior, Lola says she drove Pardi into the next duel. Lola really wants to prevent the death of Pardi's opponent and thinks about it. What to do? Should she surrender to Pardi? May, more practical, has the way out. Lola follows him: she suggests that Pardi shouldn't fight a duel, but marry her.
Secretly, however, Lola is still wavering. Because actually she loves Arnold. She also notices unmistakable signs: Pardi loves Mai and not her. But then Pardi storms into her room and irritably asks her whether she would finally marry him. Lola angrily affirms it.
The young Countess Lola, the Contessa Pardi, is now under the guardianship of her husband. He leads them to his palace in San Gregorio in the Campagna near Spello. The marriage is consummated. Pardi has what he wanted and wants more. Lola finds out about women in San Gregorio - the count had several lovers there. Pardi and his drinking buddies were not squeamish with one of these women. There is talk of flogging. Another of these former lovers, she is married, has a child by Pardi and is still in love with the Count. Lola lets Lola in on the secrets of lust. That's what it's about - Pardi's seduction of Lola into lust. Heinrich Mann does not describe this directly, but rather indulges in hints. What “carnal insanity” is meant when Lola's “desecrated mouth” is mentioned? All in all: Lola, portrayed by the "pleasure-addicted" woman who is still longing for Pardi, lets herself be seduced. Incited "by elegance and coarseness", she goes along with almost everything in bed and in the dark palace garden, "covetously excited". Pardi's seduction succeeds completely. Lola reaches the “peak of lust” with “cheeky love screams” and has to fight against evil desires. She toyed with the idea of letting the servants beat the children in the palace.
Having gone “deep through dirt” with Pardi, returning to Florence, Lola again witnesses Pardi's boasting in front of friends, listens in disgust as he “dissects her body”, inserts “a very dirty word” here and there and on top of that her “docility “Boasts. Lola realizes her shame.
Pardi, who previously proved his fertility in San Gregorio, wants a child. Lola does not get pregnant and considers herself infertile. Pardi gambled away his fortune, took one lover after the other and simply brought the light girls with him to the palace. Pardi, meanwhile in debt, is even monetizing the frescoes on his palace, a work by Luca Giordano .
Lola desperately laments her lot. She selfishly gambled away her luck abroad and became Pardi's "dirty maid". Having become unclean, she must now atone. Actually, she thinks, it is "alien in every country". Mai is back in Brazil to see Paolo and does not write. Erneste, who has since died, blames Lola for her narrow-mindedness.
When Pardi takes the whoring to extremes, it comes to a scandal. Lola wants to jump out of the window of the palace. She confesses to Pardi that she loves someone else and accuses him of having "made her mean and miserable". So enjoyment is followed by suffering.
But that's where Phantast Arnold from Germany comes from. Immediately at home in his Italy again, he confesses his love to Lola. Now he has to find out from Lola's mouth that she is betrayed by her own husband. Lola confesses some of her orgies with Pardi to Arnold . Arnold swallows the news and only states that Lola is sensual and sick. He wants to heal her. On endless excursions through Tuscany, Lola and Arnold slowly get closer again. Pardi suspects his skins are swimming away. The "man of honor" would like to turn the neck of the lovebirds, but cannot prove anything to the extremely cautious lovers.
The measure is full when Lola gets her hands on a letter of corn. It shows that Pardi went to bed with Lola's mother before he married, on the condition that he received Lola as a reward for intercourse. Lola was sold by her mother, so to speak.
Arnold now acknowledges this news with the strange suggestion to escape the "rushed existence" - to go to death together. But Lola wants to live, wants to get better. Arnold can't hate Pardi. He despises violence.
Pardi who is ruined has the law on his side. Lola has to go with him even if he raises pigs in San Gregorio. At first it looks like Arnold is leaving Lola. Lola is sad. And the end of the story: Arnold returns and challenges Pardi to a duel because the uncouth Italian wanted to turn Lola 's neck.
background
Autobiographical traits
- Heinrich Mann's maternal grandmother was the Brazilian Maria da Silva . In addition, a Herr da Silva appears briefly as a minor character in the novel.
- According to Anger, there is a role model for the Lola: “Inés Schmied, born in 1883, was the daughter of an Argentinian plantation owner who immigrated from Germany. She traveled with her mother ... Europe. Inés Schmied wanted to become a singer. Heinrich Mann met her in Florence. He kept almost 100 letters and cards from her from 1905 and 1909. "
- Heinrich Mann held out
- from November 1893 to March 1894 in Florence
- in March / April 1894 in Viareggio
- from January 1895 (with interruptions) to 1898 in the Campagna (mostly in Palestrina ) and
- 1905 in Upper Bavaria.
The description of the Italian landscape is without a doubt one of the literarily most impressive passages in this book.
Races
Heinrich Mann uses the term race not ideologically , but phenotypically . Lola says of herself that she has “both races” in her, “the Germanic and the Latin”. So, in a phenotypic sense, she observes characteristics per se. She got the temperament from her Latin American mother and the depth from her father.
Social criticism
In every work by Heinrich Mann from the later Wilhelmine era , the reader comes across social criticism at some point .
- In San Gregorio Pardi presses the rent from a poor tenant. Lola fights against the screaming injustice, but turns out to be weak and powerless.
- Lola, who penetrated the Florentine aristocracy through her marriage, has to defend herself in her new social class against the discrimination against her sympathetic socialist Ricchetti.
Testimonials
- “This reviewer found it smart to stick to the language; but be convinced that actually his enemy is the world of my book, his passions and his tendencies "(Heinrich Mann in a letter of 23 October 1907 Maximilian Brantl in which it refers to a review of the novel by William Michel refers .)
- At the end of a mention of the novel, Ebersbach quotes from an autobiographical work by Heinrich Mann from February 21, 1911: “I stayed in Italy a lot: initially for the sake of the colors and lines that the country and art have here, but gradually more and more out of interest on the people. "
reception
- Contemporaries
- In the letter of June 7, 1907 to his brother, Thomas Mann actually only emphasizes the good qualities of the text: “... no tendency, no limitation, no glorification and mockery, no trumpeting of anything and no contempt, no partisanship in intellectual matters , moral and aesthetic things ... "and adds:" Your most human ... at the same time your most sovereign and most artistic "[book].
- "Again and again I notice how your books, but especially this one, are teeming with people who can be recognized and with experienced details" (The sister Carla Mann in a letter of June 20, 1907 to Heinrich Mann.)
- "... who has ever formed pieces of landscape so brilliantly, only to throw them onto the driving blood of a story ..." ( Rilke 1907.)
- The novel was discussed by Oskar Bulle (1907), Ludwig Ewers (1907), Max Brod (1907), Waldemar Bonsels (1907), Carl Busse (1907), K. Schultze (1908), Walter Behrend (1908), Friedrich Ranke (1908), Carl Korn (1908), Ilse Frapan- Akunian (1908), Albert Julius Wentzel (1908), Kurt Martens (1910) and J. Sandmeier-Goettersberg (1916).
- Recent comments
- A dear memory : In Spiegel of October 8, 1958, the novelist isaccused of being exhaustedduring the Cold War .
- Emrich compares this "intimate-analytical novel" - as the author called it - with other works by Heinrich Mann and prose from his predecessors and contemporaries.
- Sprengel sums up the novel. The "German dreamer and poet Arnold Acton" help Lola. Through him, at the end of the novel, she was well on the way to her lost identity, to her initially pronounced musical ambitions, to her earlier higher moral will.
literature
- source
- Between the races. A novel. Seventh volume in: Heinrich Mann: Collected novels and short stories. Kurt Wolff Verlag Leipzig. The 26th to 35th thousand. Printed by Dr. Reinhold & Co, Leipzig, 577 pages.
- expenditure
- Between the races. Novel. With an afterword by Elke Emrich and a material appendix, compiled by Peter-Paul Schneider. Fischer Taschenbuch 5922, Frankfurt am Main 1987. Study edition in individual volumes (Licensor: Claassen Düsseldorf), ISBN 3-596-25922-3 . 530 pages.
- Secondary literature
- Klaus Schröter: Heinrich Mann . Pp. 63-66. Reinbek near Hamburg 1967, ISBN 3-499-50125-2 .
- Sigrid Anger (Ed.): Heinrich Mann. 1871-1950. Work and life in documents and images. Aufbau-Verlag Berlin and Weimar 1977, 586 pages.
- Volker Ebersbach : Heinrich Mann . Pp. 118-124. Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig 1978, 392 pages.
- Brigitte Hocke: Heinrich Mann. With 62 illustrations . Pp. 39-40. Leipzig 1983, 110 pages.
- Helmut Koopmann in: Gunter E. Grimm , Frank Rainer Max (eds.): German poets. Life and work of German-speaking authors . Volume 7: From the beginning to the middle of the 20th century . Pp. 15-39. Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-15-008617-5 .
- Peter Sprengel : History of German-language literature 1900 - 1918. Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9 .
- Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German Authors A - Z . P. 410. Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 .
Web links
- Jens Sadowski: full text online in Project Gutenberg
- 2006: Paulo Astor Soethe Universidade Federal do Paraná
- Entry in WorldCat
- Entry on HathiTrust
- A translation into Russian appeared in Moscow under the title Golos krovi (Голос крови - voice of the blood )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Anger p. 51
- ↑ Ebersbach p. 51,52; Anger p. 106
- ↑ Source p. 169
- ↑ Source p. 390
- ↑ a b quoted in Anger p. 110
- ↑ Ebersbach p. 54
- ↑ Thomas Mann, quoted in the study edition 1987, p. 513, 17. Zvo
- ↑ Thomas Mann, quoted in the study edition 1987, p. 513, 5th Zvu
- ↑ quoted in Anger p. 108
- ^ Oskar Bulle
- ↑ Walter Behrend
- ↑ Review ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 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. Carl Korn
- ^ Albert Julius Wentzel
- ↑ Study edition 1987, pp. 519-521
- ↑ Emrich in the afterword of the 1987 study edition, pp. 465–478
- ↑ Sprengel p. 337
- ↑ see also VIAF entry
