No Way Back

by Theodor Fontane, Hugh Rorrison (Translator), Helen Chambers (Translator)

Charming, cheerful Count Holk is delighted to be called away from his solemn wife to the distant court of a Danish princess. Swept up in the romance of his new, lively surroundings at a 'castle by the sea', the Count does not realize that not everyone there is what they seem - and that a wrong decision may have fatal consequences. Published in 1892, this tragicomic work of failing marriage and modern sexual politics is full of the irony, elegance and masterful dialogue for which Theodor Fontane is acclaimed.

Genres: Classics, German Literature, Fiction, Germany, 19th Century, Novels, Historical Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1891

About the author

Theodor Fontane, novelist, critic, poet, and travel writer, was one of the most celebrated nineteenth-century German men of letters. He was born into a French Huguenot family in the Prussian town of Neuruppin, where his father owned a small pharmacy. His father’s gambling debts forced the family to move repeatedly, and eventually his temperamentally mismatched parents separated.

Though Fontane showed early interest in history and literature - jotting down stories in his school notebooks - he could not afford to attend university; instead he apprenticed as a pharmacist and eventually settled in Berlin. There he joined the influential literary society Tunnel über der Spree, which included among its members Theodor Storm and Gottfried Keller, and turned to writing. In 1850 Fontane’s first published books, two volumes of ballads, appeared; they would prove to be his most successful books during his lifetime. He spent the next four decades working as a critic, journalist, and war correspondent while producing some fifty works of history, travel narrative, and fiction. His early novels, the first of which was published in 1878, when Fontane was nearly sixty, concerned recent historical events.

It was not until the late 1880s that he turned to his great novels of modern society, remarkable for their psychological insight: Trials and Tribulations (1888), Irretrievable (1891), Frau Jenny Treibel (1892), and Effi Briest (1895). During his last years, Fontane returned to writing poetry, and, while recovering from a severe illness, wrote an autobiographical novel that would prove to be a late commercial success. He is buried in the French section of the Friedhof II cemetery in Berlin.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

So. Irretrievable (1891). A marriage novel. Possibly untranslatable. I liked this novel so much that I feel hesitant to recommend it and if you've read Madame Bovary (1856) or Anna Karenina (1877) you may well wonder why you should read this, after all, it is just another nineteenth century story of adultery with an interplay between provincialism and the, ahem, "sophistication" of Court life.

The action of the novel can be summed up simply enough. Man (Holk) meets woman (Ebba). They have sex. Man decides to marry woman, which requires him to divorce his wife (Christine). Woman does not want to marry man and thinks he's being an idiot. Wife is eventually reconciled with man but is unhappy. There then follows an even more unhappy ending.

So what has it got to offer to make it worth the reader's while?

Well, it is a witty book, skilful, rather pragmatic and finally fairly short.

By pragmatic I mean that for Fontane adultery is a feature of human life. It's not a harbinger of disaster. Nor is it intrinsically good or bad. It is just one of the many things that people do. The crisis in the novel doesn't come from the fact of adultery but from the interaction of the characters. They have self knowledge, they understand that other people's characters are different from their own - but fail to realise the implications of this. There in lies the tragedy, from the desire to act in accordance with their own characters, while ignoring the traits of those they love and desire everything is lost, irretrievably.

It is skilful in how the setting and minor references all consistently reinforce the main theme. The best example of this is the pre-1864 Schleswig-Holstein setting.

The actual events that inspired the novel occurred in Pomerania, but shifting the setting to Schleswig and Denmark between 1859 and 1861 means that the political situation with all the tensions in the relationship between Schleswig-Holstein (then part of the Crown of Denmark but administered separately, I would go into detail but since Disraeli claimed that only three people understood the Schleswig-Holstein question, himself, Bismarck and a professor who went mad you will appreciate my reluctance to do so) and Denmark, the irreconcilable differences in the aspirations of the populations breakdown and the looming ambitions of the Prussians mirror the personal interrelations that unfold from one page to the next. Even the state motto of Schleswig-Holstein, Up ewich ungedeelt, forever undivided, serves very nicely as an ironic commentary on relationships that are straining, splitting and soon to be separated.

My initial thought on this was that it pointed towards a political reading of the novel and the irretrievability of pre-1864 politics. But since that suggested a degree of inevitability in human affairs that worked against the human shortcomings of the protagonists bringing about their own problems. Not so much the absence of free will, more the failure to exercise it.

Nor is it just the large political setting that reinforces the theme of breakdowns in relationships. The text is full of subtle references. The story of a threat to her marriage from the landlady's daughter, the story of the stone inscribed by Christian IV as a memorial to an unusual bad day in his relationship with Kirsten Munk, the mentions of Aegisthus and Agamemnon all point to troubled and stressed relationships. All are softly sneaked into conversations in a natural way.

The Schleswig setting means that both the politics and the marriage are implicitly contrasted with each other. When the Danes mount a massive exhibition of historical and patriotic paintings in Copenhagen we are reminded of Christine's plans to have a new family crypt (with Gothic decoration) built for one of Christine and Holk's children who died in early childhood. Both are sentimental appeals to a shared past to shore up failing relationships. But no effort is made, politically or personally, to address the current difficulties that will lead them to separate.

Indeed the crude outline of events given above in the second paragraph barely takes up the last quarter of the book. Instead what we have is the development of Holk and Christine. Fontane is a relaxed narrator. He's no Trollope. Rather his characters speak for themselves and reveal their characteristics through dialogue.

Conversation reveals the chemistry of the characters and we realise even before Holk departs for Copenhagen to take up his post at the Danish Royal Court that his relationship with Christine is inert. Already drifting apart emotionally, insecurity has Christine reading the worst into his innocent letters home and suspecting adultery on Holk's part with several women long before deed or thought on his part.

Holk the bluff country gentlemen, who rather than a family crypt is planning to construct a model dairy for his cows, is naturally interested in breeding and genealogies. Knowledge of people's genealogies allows him to fixes those others in their place. Ebba, with her mixed Jewish and Portuguese heritage, coming in from the Swedish Royal court (giving us an association with the arriviste Bernadotte dynasty) represents from from all those fixed and certain relationships.

The reaction is slow starting. It speeds up slowly but Holk's reaction to his adultery, which could be put down to his coming from the provinces (the homoeopathic vet reminded me of Monsieur Homais' electric corset in Madame Bovary of how provincial life is prey to curious fads) or to his German character, is that he has to marry Ebba. The fixed state of marriage is not what she had in mind and the public nature of Holk's marital difficulties make her own position at court irretrievable.

So there we have it a simple story of the breakdown of a marriage set in the milieu of court life and the nobility of mid-nineteenth century Denmark before the second Schleswig-Holstein war.

Unfortunately the detail of the setting, with it's mentions of Fritz Reuter and Klaus Groth as well as the maddening, deteriorating, politics of the Jutland peninsula may well make it untranslatable and quite possibly alien to most contemporary readers in any language. On the other hand Theodor Fontane, a late flowering author who published his first novel at the age of 57 writes a deft story and surely there will always be a readership for that.

[Karen·]

Popularly known as 'The Skating Minister' this is the image conjured by my reading of Fontane: soberly, nay, severely dressed and yet elegant and graceful; a stark, clear image that is nevertheless enigmatic; free and yet perfectly controlled.

This skating minister is usually assumed to be Reverend Robert Walker. In Unwiederbringlich, the skating minister has the wonderfully jingly name of Schleppegrell. He accompanies the ageing and rather demanding Princess who is bundled up and safely seated in her sled, but Holk and the object of his sweet desire, Ebba, take off, skating ever further out into the dangerous area where the ice begins to thin and crack in open water.

"Hier ist die Grenze, Ebba. Wollen wir darüber hinaus?"

Do they cross that line? Well, this is the 19th century, so the door closes behind Holk when he enters Ebba's room. Whatever happens in the hour before a portentous rap at that door is immaterial. The damage has long been done. There is no way back, as the title says. What is lost cannot be recovered.

What did you think, asks that persistent little question at the top of the review box.
I thought: why have I not read far more Fontane?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The painting was long ascribed to Sir Henry Raeburn. But recent research suggests that it may be by Henri-Pierre Danloux. Not a Scottish painter at all, but an emigré from revolutionary France who settled in Edinburgh. If that's the case, I'm glad that Scotland welcomed him so much as their own that his painting has become an icon of Scottish art.

[Tony]

It's not that adultery is a bad thing so much as that it rarely works out.

And this wasn't even adultery really, 19th century fiction being somewhat vague about what happened in that one hour between the closing of the door and the whiff of smoke that alerted all to a fire. But it was adultery enough for Helmut who thought, after all, that this was the real thing. And it was adultery enough for Christine who predicted, and imagined, the worst.

We see this marriage erode through the mind of Helmut, a Count and, well, a lameass. An American, I don't know for Counts, but clearly you don't have to take a test or anything like that to be one. And so adultery without sex, geopolitics without war, ladies in waiting. Bored yet?

I was.

And then Christine takes center stage. At an angle. Not as we've winced at Helmut, making choices. No, we see Christine through an answer. We see Christine affected by a song. Or two.

It is those two songs which give this book its poetry, its purchase. Discretion prohibits me from from pasting them here. But they are why you should read this book.

[Olaf Gütte · Rating 4 out of 5]

In diesem Roman, der schon in Richtung Novelle geht,
zieht Fontane alle Register seines schriftstellerischen Könnens.
Das eigentlich unbeschwerte Leben in der Welt des Adels, das im 19. Jahrhundert spielt,
endet in einer Tragödie.

[Sophy H · Rating 2 out of 5]

*Re-read February 2023- I think this novel suffers from an over concentration on social dialogue. Although the dissolving marriage is the main crux of the story, this feels overshadowed by the many stilted observations made by the characters on society, particularly political society. I allowed for this the first time around but on this re-read, it detracted heavily from the story which could have been so much more poignant and telling. I'm dropping my rating from a 5 star to a 2 star and this title is going in the name of my book cull.

Original review:- This was a funny old book, and it took me a little while to get my head around it, and indeed rate it. Although the main premise of the story is the slow and painful disintegration of a long marriage, the story also involves copious dialogue about historical and political Germany particularly Schleswig-Holstein (a state of Germany under Danish influence). This dialogue proved a little distracting to me initially and I felt as though I were missing the "main" story. Fontane however is one of those writers, like Dostoyevsky and Gogol, who like a slow building of tension and pressure, and the history and politics come into the story as influencers of mood and attitude.
We see a couple at odds with each other, chalk and cheese, jovial and serious, breezy and dour. They have battled through it for the sake of their two children but find it increasingly hard to bear each other's foibles. The characters are fleshed out beautifully throughout and the story builds to a fantastically murky ending (which I won't spoil). Its writing at a very distinguished and clever level.

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I’ve read books whose characters or stories resonate so powerfully with me that I feel as if the author was writing about me. Croaker in Glen Cook’s Black Company series is one of my favorite characters in SF because he and I are “soul mates”; if I were ever to meet him (a la Harold Shea in The Compleat Enchanter - oh, how I wish), I’m sure we’d get along famously. And then there are W. Somerset Maugham’s Larry and Philip, from The Razor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage, respectively. Both reflect me in ways that made already great novels even better. Then there are books that mirror me or my life in ways that are less comfortable, in fact, downright squirm-in-my-seat inducing. Into this latter category falls Theodor Fontane’s Irretrievable (a translation of the German, Unwiederbringlich). The story is of Helmut Holk and Christine Arne, whose marriage comes apart. After twenty+ years, their relationship has devolved into one of passive-aggressive sparring and nasty little digs against each other. And they see it happening but they can’t seem to help themselves.

In a word – my marriage (though it lasted considerably less than 20 years and fortunately had no children). Helmut Holk’s personality bears a too close and uncomplimentary resemblance to my own, a bit too careless and unserious, prone to deflecting real intimacy for the safety of – say – a book or inordinate numbers of cats (in Helmut’s case it tends toward antiquarianism or experimental farms). And Christine’s bears a resemblance to the ex’s: More serious, more about the future, and more aware of the consequences of one’s actions. Neither are perfect, and Christine’s nature puts as many obstacles in the way of intimacy as Helmut’s, and it was wrenching for me to read about it and relive my own experience.

On top of that Fontane has the gall to be a brilliant writer (and his translator, Douglas Parmée, is a brilliant medium for bringing him to an English audience). He has a spare, elegant style that rarely interferes with your enjoyment of the story. But you have to be careful because some of the most important events can slide by almost without comment. For example, there’s the ultimate act that irretrievably shatters the Holks’ marriage:

As he came upstairs, Ebba was standing in her open door and the lights were still burning. Holk felt some doubt whether she had merely been waiting for all the guests to depart, or for him to return. “Good night,” she said and with a mock-solemn bow seemed to be on the point of going back into her room. But Holk seized her by the hand and said: “No, Ebba, you mustn’t go like that. You must listen to me.” And following her into her room he gazed at her with eyes full of a turmoil of passion.

But she gently released herself from his grasp and, alluding to the conversation of a few minutes ago, said: “Well, Helmut, what role are you playing now? Paris or Aegisthus? You heard that Pentz has volunteered for one of them.”

And she laughed.

But her laugh only increased Holk’s confusion, which she continued to enjoy for a moment and then, half-pityingly, she said: “Helmut, you really are more German than the Germans….It took ten years to conquer Troy. That seems to be your idea, too….”

{Chapter 27}

An hour later there was a knock at the door. Holk started up; but Ebba, less afraid of being discovered than of appearing ridiculous by anxiously trying to avoid discovery, went quickly to the door and opened it. (pp. 200-201)

He also has tremendous, and sympathetic, insight into the minds of his characters. For example, Helmut recognizes Christine’s virtues but resents them and lashes out at her in self-righteous anger:

After he had read the letter, Holk felt somewhat sentimental. It contained so much affection that it revived memories of past happiness. She was still the best of them all. What was the beautiful Brigitte by comparison? Yes, and what was Ebba, even, by comparison? Ebba was like a rocket that you followed with an “Ahhh…!” of astonishment as long as it continued to shoot upwards but when it was all over, it was nothing but a firework after all, something completely artificial. Christine, on the other hand, was like the simple, clear light of day. Immersed in this feeling, he quickly read through the letter again, only to find that his pleasure had quire evaporated, all the pleasant impressions had gone, leaving only one, or predominately one, thing behind: the tone of self-righteousness. And once more his thoughts took their familiar turn: “Oh, these virtuous women! Always sublime, always serving the Truth; and I suppose then even think so themselves. But without wishing to deceive anyone, they deceive themselves. Only one thing is quite certain: their excellence is appalling.” (pp. 137-138)

There are scenes like this throughout the novel, in particular, between Helmut and Christine when he rushes back from his tryst with Ebba and foolishly demands a divorce from Christine, or Christine’s reflections on Helmut’s personality in letters to her brother.

In the end, Christine reconciles to Helmut (who, IMO, hasn’t learned anything from his actions) and remarries him against her better judgment but the marriage is only “peaceful,” there is no “happiness,” and the pressure to keep up appearances drives her to suicide.

I will certainly seek out more works by this author, and strongly recommend that you do too.

PS – In my case, there was no “ultimate act” that broke the marriage and, happily, my ex’s fate was not that of Christine’s (see spoiler). Like Helmut, though, there are times when I miss my life-that-could-of-been and wish I could go back and do things differently. Unlike Helmut, I like to think I’ve learned something and am wise enough to understand that some things are truly “unwiederbringlich,” however.

[Issicratea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t think this novel was quite as good as Fontane’s Effi Briest—but that’s setting the bar very high. It’s still an absorbing and subtle novel, with the same obliquity that I liked in Effi Briest, and the same intriguing parsing of the emotional dynamics of marriage. And the setting is, again, unusual and evocative. The novel is set between Denmark and Prussia, in the era of the Schleswig-Holstein question, of which we hear much in this book (fortunately, handled with Fontane’s signature light touch).

Having read two novels of his in close succession, I feel I’m beginning to pick up characteristic devices and structures in Fontane. I recognized from Effi Briest both the deceptively meandering and paratactic narrative rhythm of Irretrievable, and the forebodings of the end of the narrative contained in the opening segment. These two movements are in contradiction—one suggests a meaningless, chance-driven world in which events follow on one another in no particular sequence; while the other implies some kind of providence or patterning, benign or otherwise. Perhaps it is partly the fact that Fontane is prepared to remain so suspended between these two perspectives that gives his novels their ambiguity and fascination.

There’s a very good endnote by Philip Lopate in the NYRB Classics edition in which I read this novel which compares Fontane to other “wonderful, lesser-known ironists of the late nineteenth century, such as Eça de Queiroz, Perez Galdós, Machado de Assis, Boleslaw Prus.” I like that category, and, as a fan of Eça de Queiroz and Galdós, I can see the resemblance. Fontane isn’t a million miles, either, from Hjalmar Söderberg, whose Doctor Glas I read and enjoyed last year.

[Mary Durrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully translated.Lovely descriptions.
A lovely moving book which had such a sad ending!

[Subashini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading about dreamy aristocrats in 2020 made me want to roll out the guillotine at the start of this book, but despite my own resistance, I persisted. In between checking the news for updates on plague and the return of right-wing reactionary forces in my country I found the prose in this novel clean, clear, and strangely restful. I was suspended in a strange dream-state. Beats me what any of this is about, but I slowly grew to appreciate the carefully-observed psychological landscape of these characters. It's written with a light yet probing sensitivity. If I was a different frame of mind I might have been more absorbed, I think, and perhaps it wouldn't have seemed like such tedious work to get into the headspace of the book.

[Katie Long]

DNF 25%...I fall asleep every time I open this book, so clearly I am not in the mood for it. Time to move on.

[Nicholas During · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the ever-going debate between the objective, traditional 3rd person narrative vs. the experimental, subjective, nouveau-roman Fontane seems a breathe of fresh air. He clearly is in the former camp, but, like H. James, is able to do some pretty awesome things with it. In this instance, exploring the dissipation of once very happy relationship, with, of course, his own and the novels favorite plot device, adultery.

It is brilliant to watch how people completely deceive themselves, as well as others, and Fontane's very absent narrator does this with the subtlest hint that often makes a great book but is often missing in our current books on similar subject, where witty narrators are considered a must. But it is unfair to label this an adultery book, because really what it is about is how a individual struggles to adjust to society. A society that is rapidly on the fritz no less. In this sense it does remind me of an Chekov play (all due credit to the introduction), in the falling aristocracy can see the end of its lifespan while completely helpless to stop it. The new nationalism of C19th Germany washes away with the old regional, landlord ways. And its members struggle to reconcile their old mores with the new slightly more liberal ones that their education requires of them. Needless to say, they fail completely.

But not only are the themes pretty interesting in the "history of the novel" sense and in relation to the other books about similar themes (Flaubert, etc.), but the way that Fontane does it is exceptional. The Jamesian style of having all this come out through dialogue is excellent, and much credit needs to go to the translator for keeping this alive and well in English. Not much happens plot-wise in this book, but the how the little that does is portrayed is very well done. I'm in the middle of my German lit. immersion while writing this from Berlin, and one can see an interesting link from Goethe to Fontane and then, with a weird twist, to Mann. Anyone wanting to do a similar literary exploration should read this book.

[BJ Lillis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Effi Briest and On Tangled Paths, No Way Back is the kind of novel that gets under your skin. Fontane conjures up atmosphere effortlessly, and although his openings can feel like the kind of picturesque scene-setting that went out of style a hundred years ago for a reason, in fact, nothing is ever irrelevent in a Fontane novel; every snatch of dialogue, every architectural description, not only contributes to atmosphere and characterization, but also, on reflection, relates to one of the novel's themes, or foreshadows its end. There is something surreal about Fontane's Schleswig-Holstein, and something equally surreal about his Copenhagen. Perhaps that is why No Way Back, which seems tailor made for a freezing January morning, wrapped in blankets with a warm mug of tea or chocolate, offers some of the same pleasures as a good fantasy novel. And although the plot could easily have leant itself to melodrama, the complexity of characterization, and the way that the motivations and thoughts of the characters remain a constantly moving target as the book progresses, felt utterly real and true. (In that way, it reminded me a little of an early Bergman film, Summer with Monika, perhaps, where a run-of-the-mill plot is quietly transformed into something hypnotic and magical by the way in which the actors' performances are caught in the camera's frame. Like Bergman at his best, this is the kind of novel that feels, on the surface, as if it should be deathly boring, and yet, from the very first page, casts its spell and holds you mesmerized. (As a side note: although Irretrievable strikes me as a far better translation of Unwiederbringlich than No Way Back, I found the Chambers and Rorrison translation otherwise excellent.)

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Irretrievable, by Theodore Fontane, was first published in 1891 and is also known as "No Way Back". I like that title better I think. Fontane was a German novelist and poet , the son of a pharmacist from Prussia. At the age of 16 he was apprenticed to a pharmacist eventually becoming one himself. I wonder if I could get a discount on all my medication if I became a pharmacist. During this time he wrote his first poems, now I'm going to sit here wondering what kind of poems you would write sitting behind the pharmacy counter. Anyway, Fontane eventually gave up the pharmacist profession to devote himself to writing. Fontane first wrote political texts (yuk) and became a full time journalist publishing articles in a newspaper.

Irretrievable is a story about a marriage that is falling apart. Boy do I have a bunch of family members who could have written a book about that lately, I've been feeling overwhelmed largely from trying to hold both my sister and daughter together and finding I'm not so great at fixing things. Anyway, Count Helmut Holk lives with his wife Christine in an isolated valley by the sea with their two children. They seem to be happily married for 23 years. Helmut is fun loving and lighthearted. He lives for the moment and doesn't worry about the future. His wife Christine is the opposite. She cannot enjoy the moment because being very devout she is focused on the life hereafter. When Helmut is called to the Danish Court Christine refuses to go along, she has no interest in the pleasures of court life. Although Helmut and Christine seem genuinely fond of each other they have been drifting apart, and now that Helmut goes to court the trouble really begins. While there he becomes fascinated by a young companion of the princess, Ebba von Rosenberg, who enjoys flirting with him. Helmut takes her much more seriously than she seems to take him.

Christine and Helmut are going to find themselves in a situation that there may be "No Way Back" from, one that their marriage and their love may be "Irretrievable". It is sad that still today a marriage can fall apart the way their marriage seems to be. People get tired of each other and look for something better, personality traits that didn't used to bother them about their spouse now drives them crazy, they stop listening to each other. That's for sure.

I was once told that Fontane's style of writing was similar to Anthony Trollope, but I didn't find it that way. If I had heard that before I read the novel I may have been disappointed, but reading it not expecting it to be Trollope, I found the story very enjoyable. I thought it was well written and the theme was very interesting. I am glad I read the book and also glad that I "found" this author. Happy reading.

[Quinby6696 Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

This heartbreaking,devastating portrait of the disintegration of a marriage is all the more poignant because it happens slowly, inexorably and in spite of the volition of both participants involved.

Baron Helmut Holke has been married to the beautiful Christine Arne for many years. They have two adolescent children and live in a castle by the sea near Glucksburg in Schleswig-Holstein - the Holke family estate. Christine is highly emotional, extremely intellectual, and somewhat of a religious fanatic. Helmut is her total opposite - easygoing, pleasure-loving, and phlegmatic. Christine's constant put-downs for Helmut's lack of intellectual prowess have begun to wear thin, and a trip to Copenhagen as Gentleman-in-Waiting to the Danish princess makes Holke begin to seriously question his life and his relationship with his wife. Beautifully written and translated from the German, the story is a quiet tragedy and unbearably moving. I had never heard of this author but, apparently, he ranks right up there with Goethe and Thomas Mann.

[Masha N · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me quite a while to get through the book and, at times, it seemed quite boring and academic. I still think it's very academic, but I thought that the story was amazing, and I wanted to highlight certain moments in the book. It talks about marriage and feelings in a way that I haven't yet seen before. I can definitely see this book sparking long conversations and discussions.

[Armin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Die allzu hart sind, brechen
Die allzu spitz sind, stechen
Und brechen ab sogleich
Und brechen ab sogleich

Wolf Biermanns Ermutigung ging mir immer wieder bei der Zweitbegegnung von Theodor Fontanes Roman über eine Mesalliance durch den Kopf, den ich mit bei der Verfolgung des Themas Allzu tugendhafte Frau treibt ihren Mann aus dem Haus und auf lasterhafte Wege noch mal vorgenommen habe. Gewissermaßen als Abschluss einer Tetralogie aus Marais Wandlungen einer Ehe, Balzacs Tante Lisbeth, und Schnitzlers Das weite Land. Die erste Hälfte des Konflikts habe ich ja oben aufgeführt, die Tragödie wie in anderen Romanen Fontanes auf einen Satz eingrenzen: doch der Kammerherr hat weder ausreichend charakterliche noch finanzielle Substanz für die Auserwählte, die stockfromme und permanent in ihrer Würde gekränkte Gattin ist wiederum zu stolz, um noch mal als Ersatz herzuhalten
Im Vergleich zu Baron Hulot und dem Glühbirnenfabrikanten Hofreiter ist Fontanes Baron Holk geradezu eine Identifikationsfigur, zumal sich seine Frau Christine wirklich als ganz übler Tugendbesen aufführt und permanent Adelsstolz und geistige Beschränkung absondert. Als eingefleischte Preussin fordert sie auch von ihm, dass er sein Amt als Kammerherr einer dänischen Prinzessin in Kopenhagen und auf deren Schlössern aufgibt.
Erweist sich Fontane beim Schildern der Ausgangssituation schon als Realist hohen Grades, der als Psychologe sicher sämtliche Autoren seiner Generation weit überragt, so gewinnt der Roman bei der Darstellung des Alltags bei Hofe und im Umfeld der Prinzessin, einer boshaften alten Jungfer, einen weiteren Horizont und höheren Unterhaltungswert. Zumal der mit offenen Sinnen ausgestattete Baron Holk auf zwei verlockende Alternativen trifft: die wunderschöne Tochter seiner Vermieterin, eine grüne (Kapitäns)Witwe, die sich durch die dem Grafen gewährte Gunst den Alltag verbessern will, sowie die Gesellschafterin Ebba Rosenberg. Die geistreiche Dame ist wegen ihres bissigen Witzes gerade die Favoritin der Prinzessin und auch so etwas wie die Vertraute. Unter Mädels stellt Ebba dem Grafen schon mal ein ziemlich vernichtendes Zeugnis aus, auch wenn Holk durchaus das Zeug zum Zeitvertreib hat und schließlich beim Schlossbrand auch als Lebensretter nach der Liebesnacht über sich hinaus wächst.
Den ersten zwei Dritteln würde ich fünf Sterne geben, die Auflösung überzeugt sich aber nur rational in Sachen Gestaltung fällt das Finale leider stark ab, von daher bleibt Frau Jenny Treibel wohl für mich der Gipfel in Fontanes Schaffen.

[John David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Theodor Fontane (1819-1898) has been largely forgotten in the Anglophone world, despite his reputation as one of the first writer to truly work in the heavily psychological, realist tradition of his craft. His novels are known for letting the reader enter the mind of the novel’s characters, a new approach that hadn’t been introduced with the bourgeoisification in the eighteenth century. This, combined with his keen psychological insight, allowed him to claim writers as diverse as Zola, Balzac, and Flaubert as acolytes. In fact, Effi Briest, his most famous novel by far in the English-speaking world, bears strong resemblances to Madame Bovary, with its female protagonist expecting to find satisfaction in marriage, but finding only loneliness when her husband, a Prussian official, is constantly called away in service of Bismarck.

I’ve found the publication of NYRB Classics a bit uneven in their curatorial decisions. At their peak, the persistence of their attempts to introduce Americans to writers they should already know is admirable. To be especially applauded is their continued, unabashed cosmopolitanism; their collection can probably still be considered Eurocentric, but it is much less so than other lists that deign to identify themselves as lists of “classics.” At their worst, the writers that they choose are downright eccentric and bizarre. Are we really calling Ines Cagnati and Margarita Liberaki, whose Free Day and Three Summers respectively, are now cataloged in the NYRB Classics repertoire? Probably not.

This attempts rests somewhere in the middle – but not because Fontane is a poor writer or isn’t canonical. NYRB opted to not go with a new translation, instead reviving one from 1964 by Douglas Parmee and including an introduction by Philip Lopate. The piece by Lopate is largely of historical interest and situates Fontane’s place in the 19th century. Unfortunately, it provides very little critical apparatus for appreciating the novel itself, which could have been especially helpful in understanding the German-Danish War.

As evidenced by the plots of both Effi Briest and Unwiederbringlich (“Irretrievable”), Fontane was obsessed with the psychological implications of marriage, which he invariably seems to find problematic. Set on the eve of the German-Danish War, this is the story of the marriage between Count Helmut Holk and Christine Arne. Even though Helmut’s personality is free-wheeling, open, and warm and Christine’s is religious, dogmatic, and sententious they manage to flourish together.
Eventually, they start to hit some rough spots when, because Schleswig-Holstein is still under Danish rule, the Count is called away on some diplomatic business to visit a Danish princess.
It’s during this time that they both mutually start to sense their marriage starting to fall apart. Despite the Count’s blue blood and his marriage to an ice queen, he still manages to have a tremendous amount of naivete when it comes to romantic entanglements. While abroad, he starts to flirt and develop feelings for Ebba, one of the ladies-in-waiting to the Danish princess. When she reciprocates with flirting in kind, he assumes that the interest is mutual. But flirtation has obviously changed from the time the Count was looking for a wife, and Ebba lets him know that she’s just been leading him on like her personal play-thing, which ends up upturning Helmut’s life in more ways than he could have possibly imagined.

The themes here are pretty thin gruel, even for the nineteenth century “marriage plot” novel: infidelity, the inability to attain human perfection, fickleness (mostly – especially – that of men), and the awkward situations that arise when marriage develops out of a means to gain social advantage instead of two people who truly have romantic affinities for one another.

I can’t help but think that the commission of another translation would have perhaps added to the fluidity and pleasure of the overall reading experience. For those of you who read my reviews regularly, I sometimes express worry about the “fidelity” (see what I did there?) of translations into English. Most of the time, the translation never feels like a problem, so the issue falls into the background. But whenever the reading experience is less than pleasurable I can’t help but think that the translation would be at least partially to blame. In any case, I really question the usefulness of re-printing such an old translation instead of bringing out a new one. So let us to the streets in our demand for a newer and better Fontane!

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like the vitamins you buy but never end up taking even though you know they're good for you. This book had been through 3 changes of address before I cracked it open. Interesting title by a highly regarded though not widely read 19th c. German writer on a subject familiar to the majority of long marrieds: happily married couple becomes satisfyingly enough married couple to dissolution. Within 20 pages I quickly deduced that this was a marriage quite possibly more boring than my own where at least I can feel some air on my face. Mired in endless court scenes, highly nuanced looks of longing substitute for physical action. It was only reading the Afterword that drove me to finish. Fontane is such a subtle writer that when the pivotal scene finally occurs you're not really sure it has. The book gains momentum in the final 50 pages and Ebba's speech refusing the over confident Holk is a timeless laser beam. And the lovely, dogmatic Christine, a martyr all the way to her self-induced end.....

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there were some moments of levity, the characters seemed to be mostly depressed or depressing. The writing provided a lovely sense of place but overall it was a slog fest. The afterword provided a good deal of information about the author and I found that much more interesting than the book.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading a Fontane novel is an immersive experience of the best kind, the kind you don’t ever want to end. His beautifully-written novels attract, then captivate, and then totally engulf and consume the reader. His simple, fluid writing reminds me of books by John Williams (Stoner) and Marilynne Robinson (Home), and even Anita Brookner at times (Hotel du Lac).

The protagonist of Irretrievable is Count Helmut Holk. He lives in a customized castle that he built with his beautiful wife, Christine, and two well-adjusted teenage children, Asta and Axel. At the start of the novel, the whole Holk family has lived a fairly happy life. It is only lately that relations between Helmut and Christine have begun to stagnate such that former amicable, pleasant conversation is now marked by tension and irritation about the simplest of things. As much as they believe they still love each other, they are also aware that a certain marriage harmony has been lost.

Christine and Helmut’s natures, once seemingly compatible, have deteriorated over more than two decades. Christine, always a serious woman, has grown more so, and has increased her piety and attention on religious matters. Lately she has become preoccupied with details about the family burial vault. By contrast, Helmut is easy-going, finding enjoyment in matters of his estate and the social company of other men. Where Christine believes the children’s further education is of great importance, Helmut believes it is hardly worth bothering about. In particular, Helmut is quite a simpleton when it comes to dealing with sophisticated women, and all his male friends tell him so.

The plot of the story is launched when Helmut (and a number of other people) is summoned to Copenhagen by a Danish Princess to play the role of courtier, a role, as I understand it, that consists of being in attendance whenever the Princess desires it for casual company and entertaining conversation. Over several months, Helmut, whose mature understanding of women leaves a lot to be desired, falls under the spell of Ebba, a lady-in-waiting for the Princess.

Ebba is worldly-wise and circumstances offer her plenty of opportunities to flirt with Helmut including a passionate one-night stand. Prior to this, Helmut has been writing home to Christine, but his innocent clumsiness with words (as he repeatedly mentions Ebba) allows Christine to easily read between the lines with uncanny feminine insight. Meanwhile, Helmut’s shocking naïveté has him convinced that Ebba has instantly fallen in love with him as much as he has with her!

This sets up much conflict in the drama with Helmut, Christine, and Ebba all having differing expectations, demands, and desires. Conflict can only be resolved by harmony or tragedy. How Fontane makes his choice shows his talent and competence as a brilliant writer.

Not only do I recommend Irretrievable to readers, but also two other Fontane books I have read: Effi Briest and On Tangled Paths.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helmut and Christine have been married for 23 years, and they’ve gotten to the point that many couples in long-term relationships get to: they irritate the crap out of each other. Little things that don’t matter now get on their nerves, habits and tendencies that were once charming or unimportant now seem like serious (and seriously irritating) character flaws. She now finds him shallow and weak and not much of a partner to her; he now finds her overly serious and priggish and inflexible. They’re both right; no one knows your flaws better than a spouse. And once a couple lets their irritation and impatience with each other get to a certain point, their marriage can become irretrievable.

[Rosana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here is the truth, I read this book because of the title. I am taking part on a reading challenge and one of the more interesting tasks was to read 3 books with titles that would form a “spine poem” (you can check more here http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/book%20s... ). Anyway, I needed to read Irretrievable because I had already invested too much time on the other 2 titles and I was not about to start it all over again. But I got very close to giving it up.

At the end I finished and I am glad I did because the last 1/4 of the book was rewarding. It is just one of those books that takes forever creating a scene and a mood before letting the plot move forward. It is however an interesting commentary on married life, and although marriages have changed profoundly in the past 120 since this book was first published, certain aspects of married life are consistent though the ages: we get tired of one another and certain qualities of our personality can became irritating to the other.

I really wish it had been a short story or novella though.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

My attempt to read some classics every now and then as I hadn't read anything by this very famous German author. I loved the character development in this story and it just reminded me of how so often in older books, the characters are much more of the focus than the plot. I almost wish it had a different title as I might have preferred not knowing that the marriage/ past/ happiness was "irretrievable."

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book - a witty, interesting depiction of a breakdown of a marriage in 19th century Schleswig Holstein, with some interesting bits about Danish/German relations at that time. The writer of the introduction called Fontane the German Jane Austen! Wonderful characters who you really feel you know by the end of the novel & refreshingly non-judgmental. I would recommend this - and will be looking out for more books by Fontane...

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a pearl on a cloudy day -- a lovely story of an avuncular, hen-pecked Count and his irritatingly pious wife in their castle in Denmark by the sea. It is a Victorian (1871) book of manners set in Victorian times (1850s) but it reads as lightly and humourously as any contemporary novel.

[Carson · Rating 2 out of 5]

It takes a particular state of mind to read nineteenth century European fiction I feel. This is a subtle, gentle novel and is mostly dialogue; it must be read through the prism of its Age, which is not always easy to this modern reader. I'm glad I read it, but for fiction from the same era I still prefer Zola.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dull. Excessively dull. With characters that manage to be dull AND ridiculous.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holk Helmut, half-hearted, talks himself out of devoting himself to his loving and steadfast wife Christine to fling himself into the turbulence of court life and romance. He has all the qualities necessary to make a good husband save constancy, and should have amended this fault instead of throwing himself into other arenas where his mediocrities become more apparent. In a political scene where the different populations of Germany cannot reconcile what they want and what they ought, this story shows characters self-aware yet unwilling to follow what is best for themselves and those they love over fleeting desires. It's very Lutheran, in a way. The bondage of the will is due to sin, not lack of freedom. At the risk of book review cliche, a story that is quietly devastating.

[Ad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Opposites attract, but when it concerns a marriage of opposites, the question is how long the partners can manage to stay together. "Irretrievable" (Unwiederbringlich) is the story of such a failed marriage, by Theodor Fontane, one of Germany’s greatest novelists. Fontane shows deftly how a couple can slowly drift apart, until one day they find themselves in a situation from which there is no return, although they never wished for this alienation. And then the husband takes a step from which there really is no way back...

The novel takes place in the years 1859-1861 in Holstein (today the southern half of Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost state of Germany), which at that time was a Duchy governed by Denmark – it would after a short war be incorporated into Prussia in 1866. The fact that Holstein is part of Denmark means that the protagonist Count Helmuth Holk also has to serve at the Danish court in Copenhagen.

Count Helmuth Holk and his wife Christine live with their two children in a lonely but beautiful castle on the Flensburg Fjord, a house they have built themselves. Christine is portrayed as a pious woman of high moral standards, but Holk as a rather fun-loving man, who, although he admires his wife, also suffers under her strictness. Fontane shows how their marriage is slowly falling apart as they have less and less in common. Holk wants to invest in an agricultural enterprise on his estate, but his wife wants to use the same money for building a mausoleum, demonstrating how much she is occupied already by concern for the next world. They also differ about the education of their children, Christine wants them to go to strict boarding schools, Helmuth wants to continue educating them at home.

As happens every year, Holk is summoned to the Danish court for a few months, to serve the Danish princess. In contrast to previous stays in the Danish capital, his mission this time becomes a danger to his marriage. In the past, the temporary separation always led to a reawakening of love between Christine and Holk, but this time, in the various women Holk meets in Copenhagen, he only sees qualities he admires and which are lacking in his wife. The reason is of course that husband and wife have already drifted apart. At first, the seductive Brigitte Hansen, the daughter of his landlady, attracts his attention, but soon after that he meets the young and intelligent companion of the princess, Ebba von Rosenberg, who flirts violently with him.

At the end of the year, the group around the Danish princess spends a few weeks at Frederiksborg Castle. First a skating expedition of Holk and Ebba ends in a dangerous situation, as they are too infatuated with each other to watch the quality of the ice; next, when they do indeed spend the night together (if you correctly interpret the suggestions by Fontane), a devastating fire happens to break out in the castle. Holk can save Ebba, but their dramatic flight together over the castle roof becomes the object of countless rumors.

Holk decides to divorce his wife and marry Ebba. He returns impulsively home to tell his wife, without having talked the matter over with Elba. The self-righteousness attitude of Christine tips the balance and the couple decides to separate. Back in Copenhagen, however, Ebba just laughs at Holk’s marriage proposal: she was not serious and although the term “one night stand” still had to be invented, has only flirted with him – the serious country squire has completely misunderstood the playful attitude of the worldly court lady.

Holk is exposed to social ridicule and leaves on a long trip. Finally, his brother-in-law convinces him to remarry Christine and, surprisingly, a second wedding is celebrated, but as we already suspected, the couple cannot return to the original “status quo.” Too much has happened, not only Holk’s infidelity, but also their drifting apart, to make a way back possible. Love has been irretrievably lost. A few months after the apparent reconciliation, Christine commits suicide by drowning herself in the sea.

Like Effi Briest, Irretrievable is a nuanced novel, told in the characters’ own words and through their conversations (as well as through what they don’t say). Fontane shows how they turn their back not only on each other but also on their own true feelings, until the situation of the marriage has indeed become “irretrievable.”

Read my blog https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

The sole message I took from this book was "don't marry a fool, even if he's a count."

After reading Fontane's engaging Effi Briest, I found this work of his a disappointment. Part of the problem was due to the fact I had little idea what was going on for the first 149 pages. I'm not up on Danish/Swedish politics of the mid-1800's and before, and there is such constant reference to them that this book can't be made sense of apart from a Scandinavian history lesson.

But more than that, the characters simply were a bore. Holk, the "half man," left me feeling constantly embarrassed for him. I still have no idea what purpose he was to serve at the Princess's court, and the boorish little dialogues among her highness and the ladies in waiting encouraged me to frequently double check how many pages were left in the book.

The ending was the worst part. *spoiler alert* Would a woman as pious as Christine really off herself because her happiest days were behind her? We all know what depression can do, but it still seemed extreme, even for her.

The "sexual politics" theme for which this book is recognized was uninteresting to me, not to mention another factor that I felt dated the book. All in all, Fontane's philosophy is as foreign to me as Urdu. I don't subscribe to it and I can't admire it.

One thing the book did do for me was to stoke an interest in Jutland geography and its landscape.