Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Why Theodor Fontane is good - no quotes, no examples, no nothin' - a ramble

Maybe ten years ago I read a number of the short novels of Theodor Fontane, the German novelist with confusingly French name,* and I reread his masterpiece Effi Briest (1894), still pre-blog.  In Germany he is, or at least used to be, much assigned to youngsters, which ought to make him hated, but my understanding is that a number of his characters are among the most beloved in German fiction, like Jo March or Jane Eyre in English.

Fontane’s greatest skill was creating lifelike or rounded or “real” characters, really wonderful characters.  He used techniques borrowed from French literature.  He brought Flaubert into German literature, much like Eça de Queirós was doing in Portuguese literature at the same time, with similarly vivid results, although he has none of Eça’s satirical savagery.

Great, lifelike characters had not been the strength of German literature in the 19th century.  Characters were flat or perhaps a better word is abstract, social and physical settings idealized, plots episodic.  German-language fiction was full of uncanny effects, whether as outright fantasy or the unsettling weirdness of Adalbert Stifter, who I would suggest as the extreme end of what I am describing.  I suppose it is not surprising that to the extent German literature seeped into English, the effect was mostly seen in fantasy literature.  A well-rounded character would be out of place in a Poe story, and might even destroy the effect.

Fontane is a realist in a Kantian sense.  Stifter, Hoffmann, Goethe – idealists.  As if this is any help.  Aside from the German setting, Fontane kept in touch with two distinctive aspects of German literature: first, he liked to include uncanny touches amidst the so-called realism; second, he made use of songs and poems within the novel, a device that is socially accurate but also connects his fiction to that of Theodor Storm and many others.

The novel I just read, Irretrievable (1891) makes especially poignant use of a couple of songs.  What more effective way to reach for a sense of beauty than to mesh the action with a poem?  Or what cheaper way?  But in this case, effective, so poignant, so sad.

Fontane firmly joins the European mainstream in his interest in stories about adultery and marriage.  He does not have a hint of the censoriousness that some readers find in, say, Tolstoy.  Well, even I find it in Tolstoy.  You pick a better example.  Fontane first, writes with some distance, and second, shows great sympathy for human weakness.  Any reader of, say, Effi Briest, who thinks that Fontane has picked a “position” on adultery will be surprised when he tries a different book.

Fontane ought to be read much more widely than he is.  A lot of readers would love him.  Tomorrow, though: the case against, or at least a sympathetic glance at those other readers.  Anything to avoid writing about the book itself (as with this very post).

*  No silent vowels in German.  The last “e” is a schwa.  Fon-TAH-nuh.  A French name made German.

28 comments:

  1. No silent vowels! I learned something wonderfully useful. When I buy that Porsche, I will remember the lesson. And as for Fontane, I am intrigued. Next stop: campus library.

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  2. Hang on. Three words: "Krapp's Last Tape."

    I'm not kidding.

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  3. I want to save it for tomorrow. But there's a hidden but explicit reference to Fontane about four pages from the end of "Krapp's Last Tape." I could hardly believe it myself.

    So if you're picking up a novel, the one you want it Effi Briest, or Effie as Beckett calls it.

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    1. I used to know the play very well. In fact, I performed as Krapp a few decades ago (1972). I look forward to your exposition on the connections. Beckett loved allusions. He followed Joyce (for whom he worked) in that tendency. I will stay tuned!

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  4. I always took that as a Chekhov reference. Huh.

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  5. Well, I'll mention the book - which is wonderful :) I agree that Fontane is best amongst the 19th-C German-language writers at creating well-rounded characters. The only problem is that he had almost zero competition in this area...

    I actually downloaded some more of Fontane's novels for my Kindle the other day - I wonder if I can fit one in for my GLM reading...

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  6. I hardly believed it myself - it does not obviously seem like Samuel Beckett's kind of book - but some Googlin' convinced me. Also "up there on the Baltic, and the pines, and the dunes" is directly from Effi Briest.

    Not a problem, Tony, not a problem. The German aesthetic was just different, valuable for different reasons. It's a challenge for readers coming at it from English and French literature, certainly, who expect a certain kind of characterization.

    I'm going to try to read at least one more Fontane novella myself. Maybe Poggenpuhls, since the last time I read it I thought it was incomprehensible, which can't be right.

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  7. It's interesting how you say, "Great, lifelike characters had not been the strength of German literature in the 19th century." Buddenbrooks, in which I'm becoming immersed, was published in 1901, and yet I found it lacking to the likes of Russian literature I've been so entranced with. No matter how many times I've read Anna Karenina (published in 1877), it never ceases to thrill me, but I'm not sure how I'll feel about Buddenbrooks when I'm done. So far, I guess I can say that I haven't read many German authors, and I'm not sure I'm sorry. I'm reading them for German Lit month, glad to expand my knowledge, but I don't know if they'll ever hold the place that Russian, Japanese, and English authors have in my heart. We'll see...

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  8. Effi Briest is on my list; I want to read all the famous 19th century adultery novels. I like what you write about lack of censoriousness.

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    1. I want to read them all, too. So far, I've only read Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and The Awakenings; Tom continues the yearning with his discussion of Effi Briest. Off to search my titles for the kindle...

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    2. 'Effi Briest' is definitely one which compares with the big European novels, a much more well-rounded book than many other German novels of the time.

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  9. Effi Briest if full of fine things. "Well-rounded" is a good phrase. Of course it does not have the scope of Anna Karenina - no Levin side of the book, just Anna, so to speak. Imagine AK or Madame Bovary if the authors did not reluctantly but rather enthusiastically loved their heroines.

    I thought about mentioning The Awakening, since it is an example of the same phenomenon, this time an American writer importing French techniques.

    Now, Buddenbrooks - how far have you gotten? I think it has a number of outstanding, plump, lifelike characters, Tony Buddenbrook first among them. Her part of the book may include a bit of parody of Effi Briest. Mann was a great admirer of Fontane, and Buddenbrooks is the most Fontane-flavored book of his that I know.

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  10. First, the more I read Buddenbrooks the more I like it. Tony is indeed becoming fully fleshed out, even with her pouting upper lip. I love her spitfire side.

    I'm thinking about Anna reluctantly loving Vronsky...to me, both she and Emma weren't all that reluctant. Guilty about their actions, yes.

    I've bought Essie Briest. I hope to read it after Buddenbrooks, can't wait to read it in fact.

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  11. EFFie, not ESSie, for crying out loud.

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  12. Sorry, I mean Tolstoy reluctantly loved his creation Anna! And Flaubert his creation Emma. Neither meant to fall in love with their marionettes, but they both did. Fontane has no such hesitation.

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    1. See? This is what I get for responding first thing in the morning, before fully waking up. As I reread your comment, that is clearly what you meant. So eager to discover Fontane. So glad I bought it for my Kindle for .99 cents! (The value of literature is so crazy, when a cheap trashy romance can be upwards of 10.00).

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    2. It tells you something about his lagging reputation in English that there are no old (and thus public domain, and thus free) translations.

      Not that $.99 is a problem.

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    3. Of course, if you can read the original German, virtually everything he ever wrote is available in digital form for free :)

      I don't think I'm helping here, am I...

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    4. Helping, maybe you help by goading us to spend 10 minutes a day on our German.

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  13. I'm curious to hear more about Irretrievable as that's one I haven't read.
    I remember we read Frau Jenny Treibel in school and it wasn't the best choice for 16 year-olds. But I still remeber the atmosphere. He's actually quite good at that too.

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  14. Frau Jenny Treibel would be a challenge for young readers. Maybe the lesson was patience. I looked for a summary to refresh my memory - I don't remember the story at all, how sad. More Fontane next November, maybe, all re-reading.

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    1. I have a mini-review, but I'm not sure it will jog your memory much - perhaps just nudge it a little:

      http://tonysreadinglist.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/twice-around-fontane.html

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    2. You've jogged my memory of your review, at least! Less so of the book itself. Subtlety is hard to remember.

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  15. I completely agree - Fontane is good. Effi Briest and Stechlin are simply wonderful and all the rest is worth reading too. My favorite is Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg (Ramblings in Brandenburg - is it translated?)

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  16. I do not believe the Brandenburg book is in English. Fontane's travel books about Scotland and England are! Of course they are.

    Meine Frau has told me about the importance of the Brandenburg book, about a contemporary writer (or film-maker?) re-tracing Fontane's path, for example.

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  17. Now I begin to understand why you are so well-informed about German literature - Cherchez la femme, as the French say!
    Fontane was an Anglophile and his books and letters about his time in England and Scotland mark the beginning of the career of this writer (together with his pieces on the German-French War, which saw the Huguenotte Fontane as a PoW in France).

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  18. Yes, there's a real expert in the house. All errors and crackpottery are completely mine, though.

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