Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane (1895, translated by Hugh Rorrison andHelen Chambers, 1995)

A Very Good article from The New Yorker on Theodor Fontane by Daniel Mendelson

http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/2015/08/former-people-last-days-of-russian.html

I have read few 19th century German novels. I was very glad last year when j saw Effie Briest by Theodor Fontane was on short term sale as a Kindle for $1.95. Amazon reviewers described it as a German Madame Bovary.

After completing the novel I found an excellent article in The New Yorker by Daniel Mendelson focusing on the heroines in the novels of Theodor Fontane. After reading tgis article,I don't see a eyed or feel like writing a descriptive blog post. 

When we first meet the title character Effis Briest she is her late teens, the daughter of an affluent Prussian   family.  Fontane made me feel I was there with the family.  He does a very good job of letting us see how very young and naive Effie is when she agrees,with the urging of her parents, to marry a rich man twenty years her senior.  She is very excited and looking forward to having her own house.  There are very well done descriptions of buildings and natural scenery.  Throughout the figure of great Prussian Premier Bismark lurks in the background.  Gradually she becomes board and is led into an affair. 

Oxford University has three of Fontane's novels available as Kindles. I could see myself reading them one day.. My  first impression is he mostly read  as a cultural entity.

Mel ü 

Schlump by Hans Herbert Grimm (1928, translated by Jamie Bulloch, 2016)

German Literature VI Annoucement

Links to Participant Posts


German Literature and History on The Reading Life

My Readings For German Literature VI November 2016

1.  The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse

2.  Royal Highness by Thomas Mann

3. A Small Circus by Hans Fallada

4.  Rosshalde by Hermann Hesse

5.  "Did He Do It" by. Stefan Zweig

6.  Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig (second reading, no post, posted on in Nov 2015)

7.  The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald

8.  "The Ballarina and the Body" by Alfred Doblin

9.   Confession by Stefan Zweig

10. Schlump by Hans  Herbert Grimm

11.  "Flower Days" by Robert Walser (1911, no post)

Schlump by Hans Herbert Grimm is the story of a German soldier's experiences, mostly in France during WW I.  It is not such much a linear plot as a collection of antedotes ranging from his happy times being in charge of an occupied French village to time in the trenches.  This book was very entertaining and for sure worth reading.

I am behind on my postings so this is the end of my post. 

HANS HERBERT GRIMM (1896–1950) was born in the town of Markneukirchen and fought in World War I. After the war he taught Spanish, French, and English in Altenburg, and published Schlump anonymously in 1928 to avoid drawing his employer’s attention to his pacifist beliefs. Schlump was not the commercial or popular success Grimm had hoped it would be, but his anonymity protected him when the book was burned by the Nazis in 1933. To avoid suspicion, Grimm joined the Nazi Party and worked as an interpreter in France during World War II. After the war, however, he was barred from teaching because of his party membership and began working in the theater and, later, in a sand mine. In 1950, two days after meeting with East German authorities, he committed suicide.  -From NYRB

I was given a review copy of this book.

Confusion by Stefan Zweig (1927, a novella, translated by Anthea Bell)

Stefan Zweig on The Reading Life

"One of the most callous criticisms of Stefan Zweig’s suicide along with his wife Lotte came from Thomas Mann. “He can’t have killed himself out of grief, let alone desperation. His suicide note is quite inadequate. What on earth does he mean with the reconstruction of life that he found so difficult? The fair sex must have something to do with it, a scandal in the offing?”  From Yiyun Li, 

Includes these works

Burning Secret

Chess Game

Fear 

Confusion

Journey to the Past

German Literature VI Annoucement

Links to Participant Posts


German Literature and History on The Reading Life

My Readings For German Literature VI November 2016

1.  The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse

2.  Royal Highness by Thomas Mann

3. A Small Circus by Hans Fallada

4.  Rosshalde by Hermann Hesse

5.  "Did He Do It" by. Stefan Zweig

6.  Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig (second reading, no post, posted on in Nov 2015)

7.  The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald

8.  "The Ballarina and the Body" by Alfred Doblin

9.   Confession by Stefan Zweig

Confession is one of the five works included in The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig, translated by Anthea Bell. Socially unacceptable romantic entanglements and out of the publicly

approved forms of sexuality are frequent themes in Zweig's work.  In the novella I just retread, Journey into the Past,a young man and the wife of his mentor and benefactor fall in love.  

For the time being some of my posts will be brief.  The election of Trump has made me too sad,to feel why bother. 

The best thing about this novella are the descriptions the narrator, he is looking back from any years ago,on his younger days patrolling Berlin looking for easy women and prostitutes.  The professor has adRk secret also.he is a closeted homosexual.  The narrator's description of gay cruising in Berlin, rent boys, back alley sex and all was very well done.

For those wanting wanting to get into Zeiwg, this collection would be a good start. ,

I love as given a review copy of this book.

 

The Ballerina and the Body" - A Short Story by Alfred Doblin, 1925, Author of Berlin Alexanderplatz (translated by Damion Searles

German Literature VI Annoucement

Links to Participant Posts


German Literature and History on The Reading Life

My Readings For German Literature VI November 2016

1.  The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse

2.  Royal Highness by Thomas Mann

3. A Small Circus by Hans Fallada

4.  Rosshalde by Hermann Hesse

5.  "Did He Do It" by. Stefan Zweig

6.  Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig (s cond reading, no post, posted on in Nov 2015)

7.  The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald

8.  "The Ballarina and the Body" by Alfred Doblin

"She went to the hospital the next day. In the carriage she sobbed with rage beneath her blanket. She wanted to spit on her suffering body, she jeered at it bitterly; it disgusted her, this bad flesh whose company she was bound to. Her eyes widened with muted fear when she looked at these limbs now eluding her. How powerless she was, oh how powerless she was."  

My Post on Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin 

Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin (1878 to 1957) is Weimer Germany's greatest literary work.  It is considered to be the first German literary work to use techniques of James Joyce, an influence acknowledged by Döblin.  Döblin was a practicing neuro-psychiatrist.  He left Germany just before his books were burned.  

A bit more than a year ago I read Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin.  If you want to experience life  in Weimer Germany, read this work of genius.  I was very happy to be given a DRC by The New York Review of Books of a forthcoming collection  of his short stories.  There is a generous selections of stories in the collection, ranging from three to fifty pages.  In the advance edition I have there is no first publication data.

"The Ballarina and the Body" is a very hard edged story. The subject of the story was placed in a Ballarina company at age eleven. At the time of the story girls were placed with Ballarina companies partially as a way of "getting them of the family ledger" and also in the hopes they would find a rich husband or benefactor. The original readwrs of the story would have known this, even if modern readers might not.  At age eighteen the girl is injured terribly, she is sent to a hospital where she will undergo every painful tteatments.  She feels the doctors and others see her as of no value as she can no longer dance.  She comes to hate her body.  The ending is very powerful.

"As before, when she had thrown cold water over everything voluptuous in the dance, when her taut body had wavered like a flame, she wanted to feel her will again. She wanted to dance a waltz, a wonderful sweet waltz, with the one who had become her master, with the body. With a movement of her will she could take him by the hand once again, this body, the slothful beast, and fling it down, fling it around, and it was her master no more. A triumphant hate churned up from inside her—it didn’t go to the right and she to the left, but she, they, they leapt together. She wanted to roll him on the ground, the hobbling dwarfish barrel, trundle it head over heels, stuff sand in its maw."

German Literature Month VI - November 2016

German Literature VI Annoucement

Links to Participant Posts


German Literature and History on The Reading Life

This will be the fifth year The Reading Life has participated in German Literature Month.  This event is part of the reason it is great to be part of the international book blog community.  Last year I was motivated to read world class literary treasures by writers like Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse as well as lesser know treasures.  I learned a lot from the many very erudite posts by coparticipants and from by our very generous hosts Caroline of Beauty is a Sleeping Cat and Lizzy of Lizzy's Literary Life.  You will find excellent reading suggestions and planned events on their blog.  To participate all you have to do is to post on any work originally written in German and put your link on the event blog.  

My readings for German Literature V, November, 2015

1.  Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. A brilliant recreation of life in Nazi Germany. Soon to be made into,an English language movie

2.  Ostend, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and the Summer Before the End by Volker Weidermann. A fascinating social history 

3.  Buddenbrook Ths Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann.  Must reading 

4.  "The Governess" by Stefan Zweig

5.  Demian:  The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Herman Hesse.  Read the major works first.

6.  The Tanners by Robert Walser. a serious work of art

7. The Hotel Years Wandering Between the Wars by Joseph Hoffman, a brilliant collection of feuilletons translated and introduced by Michael Hoffman

8.  "The Dandelioln" by Wolfgang Borchert. 

9.   "The Foundling" by Heinrich Von Kleist

10.  "A Conversation Concerning Legs" by Alfred Lichenstein 

11.  A Homage to Paul Celan

12.  "The Criminal" by Veza Canetti 

13.  Rebellion by Joseph Roth. Between the wars

14.  The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch - an amazing work of art

15.  The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun.  Sex and the City redone in the Weimer Republic  

16.  Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada.  A panoramic view of the Weimer Republic 

17.  Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig

18.  Fear by Stefan Zweig

19.  "Mendel the Bibliophile" by Stefan Zweig.  I love this story

20.  "Oh Happy Eyes" by Ingeborg Bachman - 

21.  Joseph Roth. Three Short stories published in Vienna Tales 

My Hopes and Plans For German Literature VI

I began reading for this event in September.  I have already scheduled posts on works by Hans Fallada, W. G. Sebald, Hermann Hesse, and Thomas Mann.  I will for sure read more works by Stefan Zweig.  Other than that my options are open., 

Looking forward to all the Great posts from participants. 

Mel ü