Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

AutorVirginia Woolf
Verlag Penguin Classics
Erscheinungsdatum 7 June 2018
FormatPaperback
Seiten192
SpracheEnglish
ISBN-13978-0241341117

„She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. (Zitat Seite 6)

Inhalt

Es ist ein Mittwoch Mitte Juni 1923 und Clarissa Dalloway ist mitten in den Vorbereitungen für die Party, die sie an diesem Abend geben wird. Seit mehr als zwanzig Jahren lebt sie nun schon in Westminster, sie liebt das Leben in London und ihre Spaziergänge durch die Straßen und Parks, macht Einkäufe, trifft Freunde. Zu Hause überwacht die die Vorbereitungen für den Abend. So vergeht auch dieser Tag, während Big Ben pünktlich jede Stunde schlägt, bis die ersten Gäste eintreffen und das Gerücht, auch der Prime Minister werde kommen, für weitere Aufregung sorgt.

Thema und Genre

Dieser Roman, 1925 erschienen, gilt als wichtiger Meilenstein in der Entwicklung des Romans des 20. Jahrhunderts. In diesen Jahren nach Kriegsende ist die Gesellschaft im Wandel, verunsichert über die Zukunft und während die Gedanken der glamourösen Mrs Dalloway sich um ihre Abendgesellschaft drehen, kämpft der junge Septimus Smith, mit seiner italienischen Ehefrau in bescheidenen Verhältnissen lebend, noch immer gegen sein persönliches Kriegstrauma an.

Charaktere

Mrs Dalloway hält sich selbst nicht für außergewöhnlich, doch sie besitzt eine sehr gute Menschenkenntnis. Sie selbst fühlt sich manchmal beinahe unsichtbar, nicht Clarissa, sondern Mrs Richard Dalloway, Gattin eines Parlamentsabgeordneten. Peter Walsh dagegen, ihr alter Freund, sagt über sie „She came into a room; she stood, as he had often seen her, in a doorway with lots of people round her. But it was Clarissa one remembered.” (Zitat Seite 69)

Erzählform und Sprache

„Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.“ (Zitat Seite 1) Mit diesem ersten Satz beginnt dieser ungewöhnliche Roman, inzwischen ein Klassiker der Moderne. Virginia Woolf gelingt es, innerhalb eines Zeitrahmens von nur einem Tag in London die Erinnerungen von Clarissa Dalloway und die Lebensgeschichten von einer Reihe von weiteren Figuren mit den alltäglichen Ereignissen dieses einen Tages zu vernetzen, zu einer unglaublich dichten, aussagekräftigen Geschichte, die bei aktuellen Autorinnen mindestens dreihundert Seiten füllen würde. Da werden Blumen gekauft, die Fehlzündung eines Automobils lässt kurz alle innehalten, die dies miterleben, ein Flugzeug malt Buchstaben in der Luft, wer kann das Wort erkennen, es werden Einkäufe gemacht, Spaziergänge unternommen, alte Freunde empfangen.

Wer mehr als nur Theorie über die damals neue, moderne Erzähltechnik stream of consciousness (Bewusstseinsstrom)wissen will, wird in diesem Roman fündig. Er ist eines der ersten Beispiele und setzt sie so weit um, dass die Gedankengänge der vielen sehr unterschiedlichen Figuren die eigentliche Handlung der Geschichte bilden. Die Sätze sind eher kurz, aber prägnant und treffend formuliert, Lesevergnügen. Ich habe diesen Roman in der englischen Originalausgabe gelesen.

Fazit

Diese Rezension fasst meine persönliche Meinung und Eindrücke zusammen, denn zu Klassikern wie diesem gibt es eine Fülle von Abhandlungen und Rezensionen von versierten, literaturwissenschaftlich ausgebildeten Menschen. Ich will einfach nur neugierig darauf machen, neben den aktuellen Neuerscheinungen auch immer wieder einen modernen Klassiker zur Hand zu nehmen, denn es lohnt sich.

Another Country – James Baldwin

AuthorJames Baldwin
PublisherPenguin Classics
Date11 September 2001
EditionPaperback
Pages448
LanguageEnglish
ISBN-13978-0141186375

 “People don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you’re dead, when they’ve killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn’t have any character.” (Quotation page 261)

Content

Rufus Scott is a musician and the evening he meets Leona, he plays a gig in one of the new Harlem spots. It was meant to be just one night, but soon they move in together, Rufus, charming, but also violent and full of hate, black, and the white lady from the South. Now, seven months later, Rufus is broken and lost and for him there is just one step forward left. Then things restart, but in a different setting, as Vivaldo, Rufus’s best friend, and Ida, the younger sister of Rufus, fall in love. Vivaldo, an Irish-Italian writer, as well as his friends, the now successful writer Richard and his wife Cass, are white New York Bohemians, having been friends of Rufus too, as well as Eric, a young actor, who is now comng back from Paris.

Theme and Genre

“Another Country” was written between 1956 and 1961 and is a famous, timeless classic novel about racism, discrimination, the life of Black people in the white American society of the vivid city New York in the fifties. It is about music, love, dreams, hope, destructive relationships, sexuality and gender, betrayal and hate.

Characters

Rufus, one of the main characters, carries the first chapter of the story and disappears, but now comes Ida, his younger sister. There is a bit of brilliant, violent, charming and self-destructive Rufus in every main character of this novel: Vivaldo, Ida, Richard, Cass and Eric. They all are looking for changes, trying to find out who they are and who they could be.

Plot and Writing

The novel is told in three main parts, with different characters in the center of the events. Book One, Easy Rider, moves between darkness, rage and philosophy. It starts with Rufus, who comes to meet his friend Vivaldo, but as they speak about what had happened, we learn from their memories and flashbacks what had happened and led to the present situation. The second book shows a profound situation of American life in that time. “And each man or woman that passed seemed also to be carrying some intolerable burden; their private lives screamed from their hot and discontented faces.” (Quotation page 265). In this Book Two, Any Day Now, we learn more about the actual situation and life of Vivaldo, Ida, Richard, Cass and Eric. Book Three is about decisions, possible future solutions, but lets us readers to think about it, offering only the possibility of changes. The powerful language is everything between realistic, clear, compassionate and profoundly touching.

Conclusion

A powerful, timeless classic novel, beautifully written.

Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin

AuthorJames Baldwin
PublisherPenguin Classics
Date2 August 2007
EditionPaperback
Pages160
LanguageEnglish
ISBN-13978-0141032948

„It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself hereafter will remind me of Giovanni’s room.” (Quotation page 76)  

Content

David’s mother dies when he is only five years old and he grows up with his father and his aunt Ellen, the unmarried sister of his father. As soon as possible, he leaves and lives on his own. When he feels weary of every part of his life in New York, he moves to Paris, where he meets Hella. When he asks her to marry him, she leaves him, travels to Spain to think about her future. David stays in Paris. One evening he meets the bartender Giovanni, and from the first moment, there is a deep attraction between them. Giovanni lives in a small one-room-apartment and David moves in the same evening. When Hella comes back, David leaves Giovanni on that same day, pretending that this love affair never has happened.

Theme and Genre

This novel, written 1956, is about living between truth and lies, bisexuality, love, lost innocence, shame and guilt. An important topic for Baldwin’s persons is their search for their sexual identity and the related insecurity.

Characters

David, the young American, hides his feelings for men and feels sure about Hella, wants to marry, settle down and have children. His life is a perfect vision, created for the others, but a vision, he desperately tries to believe to be true. He knows that Hella will probably come back.

Giovanni is Italian, emotional and lives his feelings. That David, whom he trusts and loves, just leaves without a word destroys him.

Plot and Writing

David, the first person narrator tells the story during one night, and thinking about the next day, just in the present time. The first pages contain the whole story, revealing the major points, themes and conflict. Doing so, the author is free of any timeline and suspense level. The story moves between memories and significant events in David’s childhood, teenage years, and his years in Paris, and the hours of the present night and morning. A central point of the story is Guilleaume’s bar, a place for bohemians living their sexual diversity. Baldwin uses the scenes to describe a different live, working or without work at daytime, but waiting for the evenings and living during the night. He shows a very special picture of early Parisian mornings and the locations still open or just opening, for example the famous Les Halles.

Conclusion

Not always highly acclaimed by literary critics, this novel for a long time now is a timeless classic. Written with empathy and sensivity, in a poetic narrative language, the story gives many questions to reflect on them, about human life, decisions, possible guilt and fate.