German Literature Archives - Page 4 of 7

Harsh Reality? Love and Class in Theodor Fontane’s On Tangled Paths

On Tangled Paths (Irrungen Wirrungen) is the fourth novel of the German author Theodor Fontane that I have read, and the third on this blog after No Way Back and Effi Briest. It is a love story, but an incredibly prosaic one. Its focus is the relationship of Lene, the adopted daughter of a washerwoman, and Botho, a young aristocrat and officer. The relationship is doomed from the start – Botho cannot possibly marry her. The great question is whether the characters will accept that and let what they have become a pleasant memory, or whether they will try to hold onto the past and potentially destroy their own futures. As with his other novels, Fontane writes simply, carefully, and intelligently about the social problems of the late 19th century. An old man when he published the novel in 1888, he treats his subject with corresponding warmth and wisdom.

Setting the Scene in On Tangled Paths

We begin with a house. Fontane demands a little initial patience – each one of his stories begins with a slow camera shot, drawing ever closer to a front door. The house in question is the one where Frau Nimptsch and Lene, her adopted daughter, live. From the beginning there is a note of plaintive nostalgia – Fontane mentions that the house is no longer there. We take this to mean that it has been consumed by the urban sprawl that transformed Berlin in the closing decades of the 19^th century from a comparative backwater to a metropolis as great as any then in Europe. We are witnessing in this building something temporary as the relationships of the novel, but still we are asked to sit by, to watch, to find its beauty.

A painting showing a thriving Berlin scene — In the background of *On Tangled Paths* we have a sense of the churning development of the newly founded German Empire. Many of the locations featured in the novel had already been destroyed and replaced by new buildings to house the city’s ballooning population by the time Fontane published it. Painting by Adolph von Menzel

Alongside Frau Nimptsch is an old couple, the Dörrs. They grow a little produce that they sell at market. These four characters form the working class of the novel, an untraditional family of sorts. They bicker, they argue, but there is a tenderness and warmth here. We are introduced to Lene and her relationship through conversation between the two older women. Frau Dörr, whose husband married her in part because he considered her more attractive for once having had a relationship with someone from the higher classes, takes a somewhat cynical view of things – that one must remain detached. “When they start gettin’ ideas, that’s when things turn bad.” Love is not something that triumphs over all else, but one factor among many in determining what makes best sense.

Lene and her Love

Lene is perhaps my favourite heroine of Fontane’s. Though she is young, she evades many of the clichés authors, especially male authors, usually attach to their female creations. And indeed, perhaps that’s what I like about Fontane – for all his mundanity in style, his content is quietly revolutionary. I was genuinely surprised when I understood that On Tangled Paths was going to have such a focus on the lower classes. It was so natural, but at the same time unusual for a work of the 19^th century. Though Lene is in love with Botho, her aristocrat, she also is intelligent enough to know that their time is limited. At one moment she’s putting a strawberry in her mouth for him to eat; in another, she’s admitting she knows this cannot last.

“Believe me, having you here now, having this time with you, that’s my happiness. I don’t worry about what the future holds. One day I’ll find you’ve flown away…”

Maybe words like these are dishonest. Maybe Lene uses them to try to convince herself to let him go. But they still speak to a deep self-knowledge and reflection, a kind of strength of character.

We meet Lene already into the relationship with Botho. They met after a boating trip went wrong and Botho intervened to save her party. That is in Easter, and before the end of the Summer things are finished between them. Time is short, and they aim to spend it well. One day, they go alone on a trip to an inn out in the countryside for a few days of peace and quiet. The whole experience is fragile, but beautiful for that very fragility. “Neither of them said anything. They mused on their happiness and wondered how much longer it would last.”

Botho…

Botho is less interesting than Lene, but then again, I’ve met far more of his kind in literature than I’ve met of hers. Botho is the kind of person I’d dismiss as a fool, no doubt because I see myself in him. He is terribly weak-willed, completely prey to external circumstances – his reputation, his family, and money. He is, at least at first, unable to do either what is necessary and part with Lene, or else to do battle against necessity and find a way for them to be together forever. Anything that suggests commitment he shies away from.

But at the same time, he is interesting more for what he and his role says about class in the early German Empire. Fontane is, after all, writing a book that is keenly attuned to slight and not-so-slight social differences. From the moment we meet him we’re aware that he’s not like the others: “He was visibly on the merry side, having come straight from imbibing a May punch, the object of a wager at his club”. He has been at the club, a place inaccessible to the women both on account of their gender and their class. He is jolly, but there is a hint of mockery about his joviality. When he declares that every station in life has its dignity, even that of a washerwoman, it’s hard to tell whether he really means it, or indeed anything he says.

…And his World

Fontane shows us Botho among Lene’s people, and then among his own. The change is immediately apparent. No longer is he Botho, but “Baron Botho von Rienäcker”. He lives in an apartment, with servants, with art on the walls and a bird in a cage for entertainment – the little hobbies of a certain social stratum. When he meets his friends they adopt masks in the form of names taken from books – Lene can read, but she hasn’t the cultural knowledge that is second nature to Botho’s coterie. He dines out with them, and we have a sense of further insurmountable linguistic barriers. Metaphors are invariably hunting related, or else concern the military – they are all officers. Botho’s enjoyment of Lene is tolerated, but not any suggestion that he would take it further. He is allowed entertainment, but not to go against his duty. He is trapped, but not like her.

A painting showing a restaurant scene of the sort Lene wouldn't have access too with her income and class — Max Liebermann, *Restaurant Terrace in Nienstedten*, 1902. Nienstedten is in Hamburg, but I like the painting. Food and drink is a part of Fontane’s repertoire of social commentary in *On Tangled Paths.* The Dörrs grow their own food, while Botho simply orders it. When he dines with Lene he gets filling meals of fish, but with Käthe he is forced into eating sweets – one woman provides what is nutritious, the other what is only on fulfilling on the surface.

But we should not judge him too harshly. He cannot truly know her life, just as she cannot truly know his. Each station has its sufferings, and while one certainly has it worse, we can only compare what we know. For Lene, the relationship is her life. “Lord, it’s such a pleasure just to have something going on. It’s often so lonely out here.” Her simple words speak to a deeper gulf. He can always find another Lene, but she can never find another Botho. Once, she describes seeing him in town among his people, riding. She cannot approach – her position is one of a spectator, doomed never to interact with him in the public space. She does not have the systematic advantage that is his by birth.

Two Perfect Matches?

Suddenly the relationship ends. Botho’s expenses have consistently eclipsed his spending, and his mother puts her foot down in a letter. Botho breaks with Lene, marries his rich cousin, and time skips forward two and a half years. Käthe, his wife, is a disappointment. Lene’s desire to learn is beautifully shown in a scene where she inspects a painting whose inscription is in English. She can mouth the letters with passionate interest, but their meaning is inevitably hidden from her. Käthe just doesn’t care. She epitomizes everything that Botho dislikes about his class – she is frivolous, full of empty words and phrases, and childish. Part of this is yet again a language problem – Botho wants authenticity; instead, he gets “chic, tournure, savoir-faire” – all French and fashionable words. He compares Käthe’s soulless letters from her time at a resort town to Lene’s misspelt but heartfelt ones.

And yet in On Tangled Paths there is no going back.

Meanwhile, Lene suffers into a new life of her own. She and Frau Nimptsch move out of their old home. In their new lodgings a religious man, Gideon Franke, falls in love with her. It is not the best match in the world, but Franke is hardworking, industrious – a new and modern man, through and through. He brings to Lene’s life much-needed stability, saving her from what no doubt would otherwise have been frightening poverty. Given a woman’s lot in the era, we should probably be as grateful as she is.

Pessimism or Realism? – the Morals of On Tangled Paths

Botho eventually comes to terms with his situation. In this lies the pessimistic, or perhaps realistic, side of On Tangled Paths and Fontane in general – no rash actions come in to save the day. But then again, no rash actions come in to spoil it. He doesn’t try to meet her again; in fact, he burns their love letters to better forget her. Lene, whose parentage is unknown, doesn’t turn out to be of royal blood. She doesn’t turn out to be anybody but herself. Botho, for his part, decides to find the good in his wife. It is not a wholly successful endeavour, but these things take a lifetime, and for Fontane it is enough to show the beginning of the process.

A photo of Theodor Fontane, author of On Tangled Paths, in his later years — Theodor Fontane. He started writing fiction when he was 57, and his works reflect that. There is a wisdom in *On Tangled Paths* and elsewhere, which though at times can strike one as pessimistic, nonetheless comes from a lifetime’s experience.

One day a colleague from the military meets him, Rexin, and asks his advice. He wants to know what to do about his own mistress: he hopes to marry her, or else escape Berlin altogether. He longs for “honesty, love and freedom” and hopes Botho will back him up. But Botho does not. He says that it is better to stop now, before the memories get too strong. No middle path is acceptable in the world they live in, and in the end staying within society’s bounds will always be the thing to do. It’s a surprisingly conservative message. But then, perhaps it’s the right one. The social bonds are simply too tight for anything beyond them to be worthwhile. There is no great love against the odds here, but we must remember that there is no great tragedy here either.

Perhaps “A silly young wife” really “is better than none at all”, as Botho concludes.

Conclusion

On Tangled Paths celebrates a pragmatic approach to life. Lene and Botho may not elsewhere reach the heights of bliss that they had had together, but they also remain alive and happy (enough) when the novel draws to a close. In the 19^th century novel this is already a great achievement. The message that love does not, or oughtn’t, conquer all may strike us as pessimistic or overly conservative, but I find it hard to argue with here. Lene perhaps is perhaps right in her parting words to Botho: “If you’ve had a beautiful dream you should thank God for it and not complain when the dream ends and reality returns.” Better to have a beautiful dream than see life become a nightmare.

I have come to love Fontane. His novels are short, but they each display a great deal of variety in their subject matter, and they are all extremely well-written. However boring they may appear, they are all worthy of close and repeated reading. The only shame is that with On Tangled Paths I have now reached the end of Fontane’s novels easily available in English translation. There exist versions of both Jenny Treibel, and of The Stechlin, but they are hard to find. I may be forced, alas, to read him in the original again, as I did Effi. Luckily, Fontane’s worth it. Wish me luck!

Theodor Fontane’s Irretrievable / No Way Back

Theodor Fontane’s Irretrievable, also translated as No Way Back (German: Unwiederbringlich), is a carefully constructed social drama in the same vein as his Effi Briest, which I’ve written about here. Fontane, who is little known outside of his native Germany, belongs to the same group of masterful European realists as Flaubert and Turgenev. And like Turgenev, his novels are usually pleasantly short. Irretrievable focuses on the collapse and apparent reconciliation between a married couple. Count Holk and his dully religious wife Christine have, after many years of marriage, drifted apart. When Holk meets an exciting and flirtatious young lady, Ebba von Rosenberg, during his work at court, far away from home, he begins to doubt his marriage.

Is it too late to change, and is it right to?

Houses and Juxtapositions

I’ve noticed that all of Fontane’s novel begin with descriptions of houses. Though it’s a practice any modern editor would undoubtedly murder him for, nonetheless it serves its purpose. One thing I really like about Fontane is his use of natural objects as symbols. By natural, I mean the sort of things that in our own, non-fictional, minds can be seen with hindsight as symbols of this or that. A house reflects its owners, and in the Holks’ case, the castle already hints at various disunities in their world. For though Irretrievable takes place in Schleswig and Denmark during the time when they were both still under one ruler, the house has “a Mediterranean feel”. It is out of place by the beach on the Baltic coast.

The Baltic coastline of Irretrievable is peaceful and ultimately boring for Holk. Instead, he heads into the city of Copenhagen, where excitement can be found – but also the seeds of tragedy. John Samuel CC BY-SA

It is also not where Countess Christine wants to live. The castle was built by Holk recently, as an alternative to the traditional seat of his family, which lies inland. She and he have lived in both buildings, and she prefers the original. For her, it is associated with the happier days of her marriage. So, immediately, we have one spouse who has moved forward, and another who is looking back. This kind of division runs through Irretrievable and will be one source of its ultimate tragedy.

Indeed, the danger of irretrievable lies in the sharpness of its divisions. There are two houses. There is the sea and the land. Holk and Christine live in the countryside, but Holk works at the Court in Copenhagen, which Christine considers a hive of immorality. The countryfolk are pious and intelligent, while the inhabitants of the city are playful and mysterious. For Holk, once he decides to move away from Christine, there can be no gradualism, and no clear compromise. It is either one extreme, or the other. And although he thinks otherwise, he is not suited for either option.

Holk and the Crisis of Masculinity

Holk is an insecure man. Early on the narrator informs us that he finds Christine too perfect, while she herself wishes he were more so. “He would be the ideal husband, if only he had some ideals”, she says. Without ideals he thinks only of the present, while she thinks both of the past – in her mourning both of a deceased child and of the old house – and of the future – in considering where the two living children will go to school to finish their education. And so Holk falls into flirtation, an action marked by its disregard of past affections and future consequences. He flirts both with the daughter of his landlady, Brigitte Hansen, and with Ebba von Rosenberg, the companion of the Danish princess whom he serves.

For Holk, life with Christine at their castle by the sea is dreadfully dull, and flirtation is exciting. He imagines that he is moving beyond the strict social constraints of that pious coastal life, but he doesn’t realise that flirting just brings him into another set of social codes, of whose very existence he is blissfully unaware. He thinks that Ebba is interested in him, and indeed their affection is consummated over the course of a single hour, but when he’s next seen by the Princess she shuns him for breaking the rules of Copenhagen society. While Holk thinks that he must propose to Ebba, he doesn’t realise that she considers her brief romance with him to be a simple game, and she rejects him harshly.

Interior 1899 Vilhelm Hammershoi 1864-1916 Presented in memory of Leonard Borwick by his friends through the Art Fund 1926 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N04106 Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported). Photo @ Tate

Holk is guilty of a traditionally masculine overconfidence. He lacks the emotional intelligence to notice the social constraints he has flouted until it is too late. In the same way, when he first meets Ebba, he tries to impress her with his knowledge of genealogy, trying to guess her origins. But in spite of his impressive memory, she reveals that she is the granddaughter of a court Jew, which shames him and reveals his racial prejudices also. Holk, having rejected one world, finds himself failing to enter the new one too. He doesn’t notice the rules until it’s too late. At the end of the book he returns painfully to Christine to beg forgiveness; meanwhile, Ebba has made a fantastic marriage to an extremely rich Englishman. She, at least, understood how to play the game.

Speech, Style, and Structure

Fontane is a master of dialogue. It sounds realistic and advances the plot, which I suppose is all we can ask for, given the novel’s ambitions. But in Irretrievable dialogue isn’t the only way that the plot is advanced, however, and there are a number of cool little tactics I think are worth dwelling on. One of these is connected to the novel’s setting. Much of the novel’s action takes place in Denmark proper, where Holk works at court. News comes predominantly from letters, whether from his wife, his brother-in-law, or someone else. That means that news is delayed, but it also means that news is open to interpretation. Holk constantly misreads letters, assuming a different tone than is actually there. This is in part because he wants to justify his infidelity to himself. The reader, because the narration follows Holk closely, is consequently led along with his delusions.

Fontane thus gives us a narrative that seems at first flat, by which I mean there are few key moments of change – rather we just witness the gradual moral decline of Holk. But because he isn’t aware of this, Fontane makes the reader responsible for finding significance in his actions and inactions. For example, there is the way that he first promises Christine he will be home for Christmas… and then by new year he is still in Denmark. The narrative rarely draws attention to this, but so the reader must pay attention to connect the dots.

Paying attention also reveals a certain degree of irony in the narration, of the sort that Holk himself seems incapable of picking up on. “Christine was unable to write because she was ill. It couldn’t be said that this information made much impression on him.”, is one example. Uncertainty is carefully maintained all through the story, providing an implicit contrast to Holk’s self-assurance in his interpretation of events. One such example lies at the end of the book, warning of the final tragedy of it all – “Holk’s dream was fulfilled, or seemed about to be fulfilled”. This use of “seemed” repeats at key moments throughout. In Irretrievable Fontane artfully uses a seemingly straightforward narrative only to reveal its – and Holk’s – ultimate illusory control over events. It’s quite clever, really.

The Title – the Shades of Meaning of Irretrievable / No Way Back

Irretrievable takes place in 1859-1861, towards the end of Danish control of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Politics and history are not of prime importance, but they already add a shade of meaning to the title of Irretrievable. Readers familiar with German history know what none of the characters can yet know – that the uneasy presence in Denmark of two duchies containing a sizeable ethnic German population will not last more than a few years after the novel ends. Holk, as an ethnic German serving an aging Princess in the Danish court, has an uncertain future even before his infidelity is considered. What Irretrievable becomes, then, is also a record of a dying place, culture, and identity.

Irretrievable refers, more obviously however, to the state of Christine and Holk’s marriage. Their relationship goes from tranquil distance at the beginning to – ultimately – Christine’s suicide under the waves. Yet this suicide comes only pages after a renewal of their marriage vows, after Holk’s return following their separation. There are few signs that there really was no way back. So the title, although it speaks to the inevitability of the plot, doesn’t speak to the reality of the situation. Rather, it reflects a single character’s view on things – Christine’s. It is she who cannot move on from first the loss of her child, and then Holk’s infidelity. The simplicity of the title conceals the ultimate fragility of the viewpoint it expresses.

Theodor Fontane himself lost a child, so had plenty of reasons to feel Christine’s position. Nonetheless, he knew that staying in the past could only lead to further tragedy.

The idea of irretrievability also has some relevance to Holk’s age. In the novel he is not old, but at about forty, he is also not young either. His dalliance with Ebba reflects ultimately how out of touch he is as to his true identity as an aging family man. He can try to flirt and flout convention, but in the end, he does not belong to that world anymore, and his failure is inevitable.

Conclusion

There’s no way back to the youth we’ve lost, just as there’s no way to remove the fact of death’s loss from out hearts. But we can move on and try again to find life and love beyond them. Holk returns to Christine after his infidelity and they even renew their marriage vows. She, however, is unable to move on. Being locked in the past only leads to an ever-greater dislocation from the present, and one that proves ultimately fatal for her. Fontane wrote Irretrievable in the aftermath of the death of one of his own children, and it’s easy to see how its theme could be dear to him. For although on one level this is simply a book about an adulterous adventure gone wrong, at a deeper level it is about whether we choose to live in the past or try to find life in the present.

I enjoyed it a lot.

For more Fontane, here’s my review of Effi Briest.

Theodor Storm’s Poetry of Love and Death (Translations)

I really like Theodor Storm as a poet because he seems to me to be incredibly conventional. There is almost nothing special about either the form or the content of Storm’s poetry, but these little pieces are (forgive the translations if they don’t convey this) perfectly crafted all the same. There is no danger of ambition getting in the way of the message. While it is true that Storm wrote longer poems that I haven’t translated here, even those are all limited in formal and thematic scope. It seems he understood his talents and never thought it was worth the danger of trying to move beyond them, something he did in the formal experimentation of his novellas.

Storm was born in 1817 in Husum, a small town in the duchy of Schleswig, at that time ruled by the Danish crown, even though it contained a sizeable German population. He studied law further south, wrote poems and novellas (I’ve written on Aquis Submersus here, and Immensee here), and returned to Husum after it had come under Prussian rule following a brief war with Denmark. There is a political slant to his work at times, but this doesn’t come across in the selection I’ve translated. I don’t feel the patriotism translates well without notes and I’m not sure it’d be enjoyable with them either.

Storm died at the age of 70 from cancer, shortly after completing “The Rider on the White Horse”, perhaps his greatest novella.

The Poems

I’ve translated several of Storm’s poems. His topics within them range from life and love to death and decay. My only regret with them is that I haven’t yet translated his more nature-based poems. I find them particularly beautiful. But that means I’m harder on myself – I want to do them justice. Since I myself grew up by a grey and northern coastline, I’m especially fond of Storm’s poetry dealing with his homeland.

But anyway, here are the poems. Following them will be a few comments.

 Beginning of the End
 
 It's just a point, not even pain -
 It's just a feeling you perceive -
 And yet it hangs around your thoughts,
 And yet it makes it hard to breathe.
  
 And when you try to tell your friends,
 You find you cannot find the words. 
 You tell yourself: "this is no end."
 And yet there's no peace from its birth.
  
 And now the world becomes so strange, 
 And quietly your hopes depart,
 Until you see at last - at last! -
 That death's dark arrow's found your heart.

 

 Insomnia
  
 I woke from dreams in worried fright -
 Why is the lark's song out in the night?
  
 The day's gone by, the morning's still far,
 Down onto my pillow there shines a star.
  
 Yet on and on there floats the lark's song -
 O voice of day, what has gone wrong?

 
 
 Early Morning

 Above the roof the sun's gold shines,
 And cocks begin to crow the time;
 The one crows here, the other there,
 Their call rings out from everywhere.
 Now in the distance dies the cry -
 There's nothing more to fill the sky.
 Oh brave old cocks, sing on your song!
 They are still sleeping, sleeping on.

 
 
 A Whisper
  
 It is a whisper in the night,
 And yet it set my peace to flight.
 I feel it's there, it wants to say
 Some thing but cannot find the way.
  
 Is it love's words, their secrets thrown
 Into the wind, blown far from home?
 Or is it pain from future days
 That hopes to help me change my ways?

A photo of Husum, showing the water and a few of the waterfront houses, which are much the same as they were during Storm's time. — Husum, Storm’s birthplace and home for much of his life. It’s a lovely little town and the Storm Museum there is worth visiting if you’re ever in the area. Photo by Bernd Untiedt (CC BY-SA 3.0)

 
 "One body and one soul..."

 One body and one soul, as once we were,
 - Seen thus, how great your death to me appears.
 As you, alone, within the grave decay,
 So too feel I, myself, decay up here.

 
 "A man held once..."

 A man held once by loving arms,
 Need never ask in life for alms.
 If he must die far off, alone, 
 Still yet he'll feel those blessed hours,
 When her mouth loved with all its powers,
 And now in death she'll stay his own.

 
 Consolation
 Whatever happens, come what may!
 If you still live I'll love this day. 

 The feeling goes, the world to roam -
 Wherever you are, that's my home.

 I see your lovely face before me,
 And know the future cannot hurt me.

Closing Remarks

If I had to write about these in an essay, I’d find more to say than I will say now. But essays are always unnatural; they just get in the way of enjoying the simplicity of the poetry. Storm’s poetry is often about love, about the changes in love brought by death and separation. In this he seems quite similar to another major German poet of the same period, Eduard Mörike. But Storm’s poetry, at least here, also has a much greater sense of apprehension and anxiety about it. Death is always just around the corner, and however beautiful the natural world is there’s also a sense that Storm is not always certain that he can correctly interpret the world’s symbols. The gap between perception and his understanding seems to torment him, as in “Insomnia” and “A Whisper” – both end in questions.

I hope you enjoyed my translations. If you have any comments, why not leave a comment? If you want more German poetry, I have a piece on Hugo von Hofmannsthal here.