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My First Wife
My First Wife is Jakob Wassermann's intense, powerful account of a marriage - and its ruinous collapse - translated by the award-winning translator of Alone in Berlin, Michael Hofmann.It is the story of Alexander Herzog, a young writer, who goes to Vienna to escape his debts and a failed love affair. There he is pursued by book-loving giddy, girlish, clumsy, eccentric and wild. Dazzled and unnerved by her devotion to him, and attracted to the large dowry offered by her wealthy father, he thinks he can mould Ganna into what he wants. But no-one can control her troubling passions. As their marriage starts to self-destruct, Herzog will discover that Ganna has resources and determination of which he had no idea - and that he can never escape her.Posthumously published in 1934 and based on the author Jakob Wassermann's own ruinous marriage, My First Wife bears the unmistakable aura of true and bitter experience. It is a tragic masterpiece that unfolds in shocking detail. Now this story of rare intensity and drama is brought to English readers in a powerful new translation by Michael Hofmann.'The candour and extremity and intelligence of My First Wife are profoundly affecting ... This is a literary masterwork of a vanished kind, but through the remarkable Hofmann it is born again as a story for our age. Hogmann has the rare ability to refresh the very heart of a text in translating it, to increase its connections to life'Rachel Cusk, Guardian'Like something out of Chekhov - it's all there, the ennui, the preening etiquette, the intellectual posturing ... painfully heartfelt ... My First Wife is a devastating indictment of the choices we make out of convenience against our hearts and instincts, and the tragedies that ensue'Independent'You won't find a more agonising, fascinating literary account of a marriage hitting the rocks'Mail Online
277 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1932
About the author
Jakob Wassermann
384 books44 followersJakob Wassermann (1873 – 1934) was a German writer and novelist of Jewish descent.
Born in Fürth, he was the son of a shopkeeper and lost his mother at an early age. He showed literary interest early and published various pieces in small newspapers. Because his father was reluctant to support his literary ambitions, he began a short-lived apprenticeship with a businessman in Vienna after graduation.
He completed his military service in Nuremberg. Afterward, he stayed in southern Germany and in Switzerland. In 1894 he moved to Munich. Here he worked as a secretary and later as a copy editor at the paper Simplicissimus. Around this time he also became acquainted with other writers Rainer Maria Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Thomas Mann.
In 1896 he released his first novel, Melusine. Interestingly, his last name (Wassermann) means "water-man" in German; a "Melusine" (or "Melusina") is a figure of European legends and folklore, a feminine spirit of fresh waters in sacred springs and rivers.
From 1898 he was a theater critic in Vienna. In 1901 he married Julie Speyer, whom he divorced in 1915. Three years later he was married again to Marta Karlweis.
After 1906, he lived alternatively in Vienna or at Altaussee in der Steiermark where he died in 1934 after a severe illness.
In 1926, he was elected to the Prussian Academy of Art. He resigned in 1933, narrowly avoiding an expulsion by the Nazis. In the same year, his books were banned in Germany owing to his Jewish ancestry.
Wassermann's work includes poetry, essays, novels, and short stories. His most important works are considered the novel Der Fall Maurizius (1928) and the autobiography, My Life as German and Jew (Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude) (1921), in which he discussed the tense relationship between his German and Jewish identities.
Born in Fürth, he was the son of a shopkeeper and lost his mother at an early age. He showed literary interest early and published various pieces in small newspapers. Because his father was reluctant to support his literary ambitions, he began a short-lived apprenticeship with a businessman in Vienna after graduation.
He completed his military service in Nuremberg. Afterward, he stayed in southern Germany and in Switzerland. In 1894 he moved to Munich. Here he worked as a secretary and later as a copy editor at the paper Simplicissimus. Around this time he also became acquainted with other writers Rainer Maria Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Thomas Mann.
In 1896 he released his first novel, Melusine. Interestingly, his last name (Wassermann) means "water-man" in German; a "Melusine" (or "Melusina") is a figure of European legends and folklore, a feminine spirit of fresh waters in sacred springs and rivers.
From 1898 he was a theater critic in Vienna. In 1901 he married Julie Speyer, whom he divorced in 1915. Three years later he was married again to Marta Karlweis.
After 1906, he lived alternatively in Vienna or at Altaussee in der Steiermark where he died in 1934 after a severe illness.
In 1926, he was elected to the Prussian Academy of Art. He resigned in 1933, narrowly avoiding an expulsion by the Nazis. In the same year, his books were banned in Germany owing to his Jewish ancestry.
Wassermann's work includes poetry, essays, novels, and short stories. His most important works are considered the novel Der Fall Maurizius (1928) and the autobiography, My Life as German and Jew (Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude) (1921), in which he discussed the tense relationship between his German and Jewish identities.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
January 7, 2026
"You must respect what fate has in store for you. It is the bitterest of disappointments when a friend fails to keep what he promised to friendship, because he promised it also to the world"- Jakob Wassermann.
Quite possibly one of the shrillest and most misogynistic novels I've ever read, this book is Mr. Wassermann's autobiographical tale depicting his torrid and self-destructive marriage with the ever annoying and childlike Ganna. In the guise of Alexander Herzog, the reader is invited to feel sorry for this man, who married a woman who was at once manic depressive, and one minute a talented writer, then a hideous harridan for all to behold. Ganna is seen as all too controlling, and is given every horrible female stereotype imaginable- femme fatale, harping, shrieking and talented, but the whole notion that she cannot live without Alexander (he does marry her for her dowry) is what made the novel one of the most masochistic reading experiences I've had, and in the most awful way. Only another woman, the saintly Bettina can Alexander finally escape the wicked Ganna...it makes you think why the hell did he even marry this woman?
Quite possibly one of the shrillest and most misogynistic novels I've ever read, this book is Mr. Wassermann's autobiographical tale depicting his torrid and self-destructive marriage with the ever annoying and childlike Ganna. In the guise of Alexander Herzog, the reader is invited to feel sorry for this man, who married a woman who was at once manic depressive, and one minute a talented writer, then a hideous harridan for all to behold. Ganna is seen as all too controlling, and is given every horrible female stereotype imaginable- femme fatale, harping, shrieking and talented, but the whole notion that she cannot live without Alexander (he does marry her for her dowry) is what made the novel one of the most masochistic reading experiences I've had, and in the most awful way. Only another woman, the saintly Bettina can Alexander finally escape the wicked Ganna...it makes you think why the hell did he even marry this woman?
September 15, 2012
Excerpt from the afterword.
"My first wife is the true account of Jakob Wesserman's first marriage to Julie Speyer of Vienna, with almost nothing omitted or changed."
When reading this I was unaware of this truth, this fact makes the story more compelling of a well written story. Uncomplicated writing where the words flow of the age into an enjoyable effervescent story. With the stories humble content of only a few cast of characters one man and two women he has captured my attention and hooked me right from the first paragraph.
A credit to Penguin publishers for bringing this to my attention for review and re-printing this with a great translation from the German language in a wonderful quality presentation in the printing and binding. This a story for any era written in the 1920′s to 1930′s that holds no Lessening of its great reading due to age.The first wife is a character who you would wish to have a very uneventful end due to her entrapment, lies and trickery. The end product of reading this could be the putting off of marriage for many readers who are wanting to be married, they may reconsider due to the whole commitment and the legalities that the main protagonist found himself lost in.
I would have not expected to like this story so much right to the end. Great writing and he connects with the reader a cut above many modern writings.
A very human tragedy spilling out on the pages that in the end was a tale from the authors real life, that holds close to his heart and gives the story that extra life to it.
Due to the authors death there was never a continuation of the main protagonists life. I would have loved to see how his future panned out in the pursuit of love and happiness.
This was written in the days of Freud being alive and writing and I sense a physiological approach to the writing here with questions on relationships, trust, and love and success and failure as a writer or any man in Vienna of that time.
One question I leave with the possible reader of this story is..
Did Alexandre tame the wild Ganna?
"There, in the valley that had become home to us, we were allowed to forget the world in flames. We weren't mocking the war; rather it became subsumed in nature. When the guns' thunder boomed up to us out of the south, it sounded like God's anger about a humanity that vandalized his creation; the glaciated peaks were like bolted green gates at which human dying stopped. Everything belonged to the two of us, the forests, the lakes, the bridges, the white footpaths. There were starlit evenings when the trembling firmament sprinkled golden flakes on the bed of our love, and rainy nights that seemed they must quench all the flaring hatred of the world."
"All together, they would make up an uninterrupted conversation going over many days. Put on record, they would represent the exhausting and perspective less efforts of two people to get something from one another that it wasn't in the others power to give. One seeks to tear a band; the other, seeing belatedly how cracked and holey it is, wants to patch it. One wants to leave the cold hearth; the other claims the fire is still burning, a holy flame, to extinguish which were an act of godliness. One is coming to terms with the past; the other won't accept the reckoning and is whimpering for more credit. Conversations as old as the world, as sterile as pebbles, as agonizing as toothache. Here, they were given a new point and terrible amplitude by Ganna's character and methods."
"Caught in this schism, she was ever more dissatisfied, excitable, disputatious, confused, bewildered. Humanity, where she was concerned, was divided into two camps: there were her supporters and her opponents. And in the middle stood this light-some guides to fortune and triumph,the lawyers. Of course that was only true of those lawyers she had taken on; those of the other side were the dregs of mankind."
"Not a single chink of light. A hopeless tangle of proposals, measures, discussions, euphemisms, accusations, conjectures, cunning distortions, coarseness and hair-splitting. The lawyers inundate each other with letters, inundate their clients with letters, inundate each other with more letters. Typewriters clatter, telegraphs click, telephones bleat, messengers run- each of the parties involved is raking it in, all except the one that has to pay for such endeavor, the costs of the materials and the nervous strain with his own dearly acquired money, his tranquility, his blood and his life, and who gets nothing return except- more paper.
And always at the back of everything-Ganna, unmoved, immovable and brazen, the deceptive perhaps always on her lips, the rigid No in her heart, the goddess of discord like the grim Ate, misconceived daughter of Zeus. Undaunted and indefatigable, she shores up her mad world, which has so surprisingly many points of contact with the real world and at the same time bears the stigma of doom."
Review also @ http://more2read.com/review/my-first-wife-by-jakob-wasserman/
"My first wife is the true account of Jakob Wesserman's first marriage to Julie Speyer of Vienna, with almost nothing omitted or changed."
When reading this I was unaware of this truth, this fact makes the story more compelling of a well written story. Uncomplicated writing where the words flow of the age into an enjoyable effervescent story. With the stories humble content of only a few cast of characters one man and two women he has captured my attention and hooked me right from the first paragraph.
A credit to Penguin publishers for bringing this to my attention for review and re-printing this with a great translation from the German language in a wonderful quality presentation in the printing and binding. This a story for any era written in the 1920′s to 1930′s that holds no Lessening of its great reading due to age.The first wife is a character who you would wish to have a very uneventful end due to her entrapment, lies and trickery. The end product of reading this could be the putting off of marriage for many readers who are wanting to be married, they may reconsider due to the whole commitment and the legalities that the main protagonist found himself lost in.
I would have not expected to like this story so much right to the end. Great writing and he connects with the reader a cut above many modern writings.
A very human tragedy spilling out on the pages that in the end was a tale from the authors real life, that holds close to his heart and gives the story that extra life to it.
Due to the authors death there was never a continuation of the main protagonists life. I would have loved to see how his future panned out in the pursuit of love and happiness.
This was written in the days of Freud being alive and writing and I sense a physiological approach to the writing here with questions on relationships, trust, and love and success and failure as a writer or any man in Vienna of that time.
One question I leave with the possible reader of this story is..
Did Alexandre tame the wild Ganna?
"There, in the valley that had become home to us, we were allowed to forget the world in flames. We weren't mocking the war; rather it became subsumed in nature. When the guns' thunder boomed up to us out of the south, it sounded like God's anger about a humanity that vandalized his creation; the glaciated peaks were like bolted green gates at which human dying stopped. Everything belonged to the two of us, the forests, the lakes, the bridges, the white footpaths. There were starlit evenings when the trembling firmament sprinkled golden flakes on the bed of our love, and rainy nights that seemed they must quench all the flaring hatred of the world."
"All together, they would make up an uninterrupted conversation going over many days. Put on record, they would represent the exhausting and perspective less efforts of two people to get something from one another that it wasn't in the others power to give. One seeks to tear a band; the other, seeing belatedly how cracked and holey it is, wants to patch it. One wants to leave the cold hearth; the other claims the fire is still burning, a holy flame, to extinguish which were an act of godliness. One is coming to terms with the past; the other won't accept the reckoning and is whimpering for more credit. Conversations as old as the world, as sterile as pebbles, as agonizing as toothache. Here, they were given a new point and terrible amplitude by Ganna's character and methods."
"Caught in this schism, she was ever more dissatisfied, excitable, disputatious, confused, bewildered. Humanity, where she was concerned, was divided into two camps: there were her supporters and her opponents. And in the middle stood this light-some guides to fortune and triumph,the lawyers. Of course that was only true of those lawyers she had taken on; those of the other side were the dregs of mankind."
"Not a single chink of light. A hopeless tangle of proposals, measures, discussions, euphemisms, accusations, conjectures, cunning distortions, coarseness and hair-splitting. The lawyers inundate each other with letters, inundate their clients with letters, inundate each other with more letters. Typewriters clatter, telegraphs click, telephones bleat, messengers run- each of the parties involved is raking it in, all except the one that has to pay for such endeavor, the costs of the materials and the nervous strain with his own dearly acquired money, his tranquility, his blood and his life, and who gets nothing return except- more paper.
And always at the back of everything-Ganna, unmoved, immovable and brazen, the deceptive perhaps always on her lips, the rigid No in her heart, the goddess of discord like the grim Ate, misconceived daughter of Zeus. Undaunted and indefatigable, she shores up her mad world, which has so surprisingly many points of contact with the real world and at the same time bears the stigma of doom."
Review also @ http://more2read.com/review/my-first-wife-by-jakob-wasserman/
Read
September 14, 2018The loosely fictionalized life history of a woman with narcissistic personality disorder, written by a her manipulative, selfish husband, who also happens to be a pretty famous early 20th century Austrian novelist. Really, really good – the portrait of Ganna within will resonate with, I can’t help but imagine, anyone who reads it – she is your cousin, your best friend’s ex-girlfriend, maybe an individual you yourself were foolish enough to allow into your life. Her endless struggle against the world’s refusal to bend to her every whim is chronicled with blazing clarity, albeit by an author whose own self-obsession itself borders on the pathological. Other readers – was your impression that Wasserman is writing himself in as a particularly noxious character, or that he simply didn’t understand the degree to which he was betraying himself within the narrative? I think it was the latter. Absolutely fabulous, in any case, strong rec.
January 26, 2016
I received an ARC from the publisher.
Wassermann presents us with the story of Alexander Herzog and his disastrous marriage to a woman from a middle-class German family named Ganna. Alexander begins his tale with a history of Ganna’s childhood which seems to have a profound effect on her mental stability as an adult. Ganna is one of six daughters, fifth in line, and is described as a duckling among swans. She is not as pretty, graceful or demure as her sisters. Her disobedience and lying often result in brutal beatings from her father. No one ever thinks that Ganna could attract a man to marry; but Alexander, a young and up-and-coming writer, enters the scene and Ganna is smitten with him.
The beginning of the story has a light and funny tone as Alexander tells us about Ganna’s devotion to him and his writing. She follows him around like a puppy and adores anything and everything he writes. During this time Alexander is not able to make a successful living from the sales of his books so he is often in debt and wondering where his next meal will come from. It starts to wound his pride when he is forced to rely heavily on the charity and pity of his friends. Ganna suggests marriage to him because her rather sizeable dowry would mean the end of his financial woes. Alexander dismisses Ganna’s suggestion of marriage as ridiculous, first and foremost because is not the one- woman, settling-down type of man. But Ganna is relentless and finally wears him down, even threating to jump off a balcony if Alexander doesn’t agree to marry her.
Alexander lets Ganna and her world wash over him and he accepts his fate as her husband and a member of her extended family. But Alexander’s passivity is his greatest flaw and he ignores the many warning signs of his impending misery and doom. I kept reading the book and cringing because of all the gloomy foreshadowing. The marriage starts to unravel rather quickly because it is evident that Ganna is mentally unstable, volatile, paranoid, and quite possibly psychotic. She yells at the servants and then plays the part of the victim; she makes quick and intimate friends with various people in society and just as quickly makes them her mortal enemy. Ganna and Alexander fight constantly and all the while Alexander keeps believing that he can change Ganna, calm her down, make her see reason.
After about ten years of marriage Alexander has many affairs which Ganna accepts as something that Alexander needs to do; she is content with the fact that she is the lawful wife and that he will always come home to her. But when Alexander meets and falls in love with a woman named Bettina, all of this changes. Bettina is kind and patient and happy and Alexander, possibly for the first time in his life, falls deeply in love with her. After carrying on their affair for several years, Alexander finally decides that he must ask Ganna for a divorce. This divorce pushes Ganna over the edge to the point at which she is completely obsessed with making Alexander’s life miserable. She employs one lawyer after another to ring more and more money out of him and to drag out the divorce for years. At one point it is estimated that she has a team of forty lawyers working to make Alexander’s life miserable. The last third of the book goes on for pages about the awful mess that Ganna makes out of everyone’s life and the horrible stress she causes to Alexander and Bettina.
I really should not have finished reading this book before bed because I laid awake for quite awhile thinking about it. The combination of Alexander’s passivity and Ganna’s mental instability causes a perfect storm of misery for both of them. The book is also an interesting commentary on mental illness and the far-reaching effects it has on a family. How does one deal with a person who is so completely irrational, paranoid and volatile? I think if Ganna were written about in the 21st century should would probably be diagnosed with a personality disorder or a psychosis.
The New York Review of Books has reissued another great classic from the German Language which I highly recommend if you enjoy books that explore marriage, psychological issues and unforgetable characters.
Wassermann presents us with the story of Alexander Herzog and his disastrous marriage to a woman from a middle-class German family named Ganna. Alexander begins his tale with a history of Ganna’s childhood which seems to have a profound effect on her mental stability as an adult. Ganna is one of six daughters, fifth in line, and is described as a duckling among swans. She is not as pretty, graceful or demure as her sisters. Her disobedience and lying often result in brutal beatings from her father. No one ever thinks that Ganna could attract a man to marry; but Alexander, a young and up-and-coming writer, enters the scene and Ganna is smitten with him.
The beginning of the story has a light and funny tone as Alexander tells us about Ganna’s devotion to him and his writing. She follows him around like a puppy and adores anything and everything he writes. During this time Alexander is not able to make a successful living from the sales of his books so he is often in debt and wondering where his next meal will come from. It starts to wound his pride when he is forced to rely heavily on the charity and pity of his friends. Ganna suggests marriage to him because her rather sizeable dowry would mean the end of his financial woes. Alexander dismisses Ganna’s suggestion of marriage as ridiculous, first and foremost because is not the one- woman, settling-down type of man. But Ganna is relentless and finally wears him down, even threating to jump off a balcony if Alexander doesn’t agree to marry her.
Alexander lets Ganna and her world wash over him and he accepts his fate as her husband and a member of her extended family. But Alexander’s passivity is his greatest flaw and he ignores the many warning signs of his impending misery and doom. I kept reading the book and cringing because of all the gloomy foreshadowing. The marriage starts to unravel rather quickly because it is evident that Ganna is mentally unstable, volatile, paranoid, and quite possibly psychotic. She yells at the servants and then plays the part of the victim; she makes quick and intimate friends with various people in society and just as quickly makes them her mortal enemy. Ganna and Alexander fight constantly and all the while Alexander keeps believing that he can change Ganna, calm her down, make her see reason.
After about ten years of marriage Alexander has many affairs which Ganna accepts as something that Alexander needs to do; she is content with the fact that she is the lawful wife and that he will always come home to her. But when Alexander meets and falls in love with a woman named Bettina, all of this changes. Bettina is kind and patient and happy and Alexander, possibly for the first time in his life, falls deeply in love with her. After carrying on their affair for several years, Alexander finally decides that he must ask Ganna for a divorce. This divorce pushes Ganna over the edge to the point at which she is completely obsessed with making Alexander’s life miserable. She employs one lawyer after another to ring more and more money out of him and to drag out the divorce for years. At one point it is estimated that she has a team of forty lawyers working to make Alexander’s life miserable. The last third of the book goes on for pages about the awful mess that Ganna makes out of everyone’s life and the horrible stress she causes to Alexander and Bettina.
I really should not have finished reading this book before bed because I laid awake for quite awhile thinking about it. The combination of Alexander’s passivity and Ganna’s mental instability causes a perfect storm of misery for both of them. The book is also an interesting commentary on mental illness and the far-reaching effects it has on a family. How does one deal with a person who is so completely irrational, paranoid and volatile? I think if Ganna were written about in the 21st century should would probably be diagnosed with a personality disorder or a psychosis.
The New York Review of Books has reissued another great classic from the German Language which I highly recommend if you enjoy books that explore marriage, psychological issues and unforgetable characters.
July 6, 2024
Kafka’s conception of bureaucracy is made manifest in the figure of Ganna, a pedantic, delusional woman who is aroused by the smell of ink and the dotted lines found on legal documents. Wonderful character study of a man who is totally incapable of escaping the sphere of a woman lost, perpetually enamoured (or perhaps more accurately myopically intrigued) by a woman whose inner fire and clawing tenacity is inextinguishable.
January 8, 2013
hell hath no fury..... This is the harrowing, lightly fictioalized, account of the breakkup of the authors marriage and his subsequent divorce from his unwilling and manic wife. The story is just about the seperation and its aftermath, and anyone who has gone through a protracted and contentious divorce will read this with the same chill as I did. He must have been reading my mail, except he lived pre-war and in Austria. A great book, although you finish it feeling as though you have been eavesdropping on a private travail.
May 19, 2025
Incredible. One of the most exasperating, unpleasant, and infuriating novels I've ever read. Perhaps this doesn't sound like praise, but it most certainly is. Although in the guise of a novel, aside from changed names this is apparently all true, and Wassermann's honesty is astonishing.
June 7, 2022
I was sent this book years ago in exchange for a review, and regret a great deal that I have only got around to reading it now. (I'm no longer a paid reviewer.)
It is, remarkably, the mildly-varnished and mostly-true tale of author Jakob Wasserman's marriage and subsequent divorce with Julie Speyer in the early twentieth century. Although the names and circumstances were altered, the afterword from the translator makes clear that almost word for word, this was the truth of the marriage, which Wasserman concealed within a trilogy, posthumously published, and re-reviewed and translated by Michael Hoffman for re-release in the early twenty-first century.
Wasserman's gift for detailing in minute and exquisite detail the changing moods, jealousies and delusions of Ganna (RL Julie) makes for car crash reading. The drawn-out story feels like a gently smouldering forest fire that quietly creeps around the author, until it ignites and rages on all sides. Quietly captivating; curiosity draws you in, but morbid fascination keeps you hooked.
Others have mentioned the narcissism of the writer himself, and I have to say I disagree. I (personally) think he shoulders the blame and accepts the mistake he makes (though, admittedly, they are a footnote and lightly-sketched or merely inferred, compared to the intense and profound character study of the manic Ganna - as is his right as author.) He admits he ignored counsel, he admits he shouldn't have married her, he admits he made many mistakes. In fact, it's almost a paradox that he could have latterly found the extraordinary insight to write such a novel, when he was so blind as to enter such an ill-fated union. I guess wisdom and hindsight are wonderful things.
I think it is a testament to Wasserman, that despite being married to someone who, by today's standards was manipulative, petty and obsessive (and who probably would have been provided with a clinical diagnosis), the book feels remarkably even-tempered - he never gives life to his rage or bitterness. After so many years of torment (an impressive feat of endurance), he still doesn't use the book as a platform to disrespect her, only to set down in words how she saw the world, and how that affected him. His frustration is self evident, but while others might have been driven to extreme measures, he continues to speak about her with respect, despite her histrionics, and attempts to reason with and placate her, even while she is tearing down everything in his life. Weakness is really his crime.
There are only one or two phrases where I find the author's original meaning opaque, and one or two paragraphs that were overly verbose, but is delightfully peppered with contemporary words and phrasing that make this an easier read than you might imagine, despite its portentous blurb. Ganna in her later years is so recognisable, though you're not really sure where or when you have known anyone like her, or why you would entertain someone like this in your life, yet the insight into her all-too-human psyche powerfully resonates. She has light as well as shade, and she truly *believes* all her hyperbole, despite all evidence to the contrary. We have all been so wilfully blind in the face of truths we cannot bear.
The Guardian review states that Wasserman was one of the greatest German novelists, and, although a lot must be credited to Hoffman for providing such an eloquent and brilliant translation, this retrospective record of a marriage is incredibly powerful, and almost chilling in its inexorable decline into a miserable nightmare. It is, indeed, a masterpiece, for both writer and translator.
It is, remarkably, the mildly-varnished and mostly-true tale of author Jakob Wasserman's marriage and subsequent divorce with Julie Speyer in the early twentieth century. Although the names and circumstances were altered, the afterword from the translator makes clear that almost word for word, this was the truth of the marriage, which Wasserman concealed within a trilogy, posthumously published, and re-reviewed and translated by Michael Hoffman for re-release in the early twenty-first century.
Wasserman's gift for detailing in minute and exquisite detail the changing moods, jealousies and delusions of Ganna (RL Julie) makes for car crash reading. The drawn-out story feels like a gently smouldering forest fire that quietly creeps around the author, until it ignites and rages on all sides. Quietly captivating; curiosity draws you in, but morbid fascination keeps you hooked.
Others have mentioned the narcissism of the writer himself, and I have to say I disagree. I (personally) think he shoulders the blame and accepts the mistake he makes (though, admittedly, they are a footnote and lightly-sketched or merely inferred, compared to the intense and profound character study of the manic Ganna - as is his right as author.) He admits he ignored counsel, he admits he shouldn't have married her, he admits he made many mistakes. In fact, it's almost a paradox that he could have latterly found the extraordinary insight to write such a novel, when he was so blind as to enter such an ill-fated union. I guess wisdom and hindsight are wonderful things.
I think it is a testament to Wasserman, that despite being married to someone who, by today's standards was manipulative, petty and obsessive (and who probably would have been provided with a clinical diagnosis), the book feels remarkably even-tempered - he never gives life to his rage or bitterness. After so many years of torment (an impressive feat of endurance), he still doesn't use the book as a platform to disrespect her, only to set down in words how she saw the world, and how that affected him. His frustration is self evident, but while others might have been driven to extreme measures, he continues to speak about her with respect, despite her histrionics, and attempts to reason with and placate her, even while she is tearing down everything in his life. Weakness is really his crime.
There are only one or two phrases where I find the author's original meaning opaque, and one or two paragraphs that were overly verbose, but is delightfully peppered with contemporary words and phrasing that make this an easier read than you might imagine, despite its portentous blurb. Ganna in her later years is so recognisable, though you're not really sure where or when you have known anyone like her, or why you would entertain someone like this in your life, yet the insight into her all-too-human psyche powerfully resonates. She has light as well as shade, and she truly *believes* all her hyperbole, despite all evidence to the contrary. We have all been so wilfully blind in the face of truths we cannot bear.
The Guardian review states that Wasserman was one of the greatest German novelists, and, although a lot must be credited to Hoffman for providing such an eloquent and brilliant translation, this retrospective record of a marriage is incredibly powerful, and almost chilling in its inexorable decline into a miserable nightmare. It is, indeed, a masterpiece, for both writer and translator.
October 31, 2016
3.5 A dark, biographical novel about Wassermann's first marriage. He has fictionalized his characters- Wassermann is Alexander Herzog, a writer, who marries Ganna simply for the partnership and money. He soon realizes what a disaster this marriage is, and spends the rest of the novel trying to leave the marriage. None of the characters are the least bit likable- you feel pity for no one, and feel that in the end they get what they deserve. A curious book.
May 1, 2023
Tomo como ponto de partida a entrada sobre Wassermann na História da Filosofia Ocidental de Otto Maria-Carpeaux porque Etzel Andergast e Joseph Kerkhovens dritte Existenz – os objetos dessa resenha – não estão contemplados. Carpeaux dá a moldura, ou o contorno (Umriss) perfeito: o que se pensava de Wassermann e sua contribuição na literatura alemã naquele momento. “O pendant alemão de Rolland foi Wassermann”, diz Carpeaux se referindo a Romain Rolland cuja missão moral é a criação de um novo conteúdo de valores, a renovação moral, social e espiritual e uma mudança na escolha das tradições (mudança no que chamamos de tradicional ou normal). Não por acaso Rolland foi o ídolo de Stefan Zweig pois pretendia incentivar um tipo de consciência europeia em lugar da nacional. Temas como conflito de gerações, rigidez de papéis e classes sociais também são proeminentes. Escritores como Rolland, Wassermann, Johan Bojer e Tagore – argüi Carpeaux – pressentiam as guerras mundiais e manobravam para guiar o ocidente afora do destino fatal apelando a um “Welt von Gestern” (mundo de ontem) onde a civilização precederia à barbárie.
Além disso “Wassermann é moralista”, “muito mais romanesco, dado a enredos complicados escritos em estilo patético”. No romance “ele reconhece o meio moderno de se falar à nação”. Seus primeiros romances eram uma reconstituição da Alemanha antiga que resistia ao anarquismo moral, poeticamente nomeado como “inércia do coração”. A segunda fase é o “moralismo profético em Christian Wahnschaffe misturando ideias de Tolstói, Dostoievski, Tagore e Rolland”. A partir daí teria lutado sinceramente pela forma do romance e admirado os ingleses, em especial Dickens. Por fim, “conseguiu “desromanizar-se” na sua obra capital Fall Maurizius”, uma terceira e última fase.
Já adianto que Wassermann jamais foi nostálgico de um “Welt von Gestern”. Mas, sim, ele via sua arte como uma missão e desejava que sua arte entrasse no fluxo de consciência germânica. Seu ponto de partida é uma busca de pureza, algo entre a época Biedermeyer e Eichendorf. Muitos de seus personagens são crianças ou jovens, inocentes dos subúrbios ou áreas rurais. Sua visão transparece no romance Caspar Hauser, caso real onde uma criança cresce sem qualquer influência da sociedade e já jovem tem de incorporar-se a ela, onde a inocência vence a ‘Trägheit des Herzens’ (inércia do coração) da sociedade moderna. Romances dessa fase como Das Gänsemännchen, O Judeu de Zindorf e Renate Fuchs descrevem a época da Alemanha Guilhermina e como o caráter do herói inocente é formado no mundo. A época de ouro do fim de século pouco prometia e a “corrida entre civilização e barbárie” já parecia pender para a última embora nem Wassermann soubesse quão fundo era o poço. Para caracterizar esse “lado negro” é característico a presença algum “forasteiro” ou excluído que pela experiência negativa se contrapunha à inocência do herói.
A próxima fase, como Carpeaux sublinhou, é marcada pelo romance Christian Wahnschaffe, escrito durante o conflito da 1ª guerra mundial. A obra é um significativo aumento do horizonte da experiência e nela o “forasteiro” quase desaparece. É como se na destruição uma luz raiasse. O romance se equipara ao Sidarta ou São Francisco de Assis de Hesse (Chr. Wahnschaffe é um Francisco moderno). Se em certo sentido Wassermann se aproxima de Rolland no sentido de se aproximar da “espiritualidade”, isto é, “uma religiosidade sem dogmas, uma ideologia sem programa, o ecletismo da época do equilíbrio”, por outro lado Christian Wahnschaffe é muito mais que isso. Se se pode resumi-lo em uma frase como: jovem influente da Alemanha pré-guerra abandona casa para virar um santo moderno; também é a resposta para a pergunta de como um homem pode viver no mundo moderno.
A cena provinciana é trocada por um contexto moderno. A vida na província difere daquela da cidade-grande porque nesta última há uma hipertrofia dos nervos. Li certa vez que em um dia recebemos mais estímulos na cidade que um camponês da idade média durante toda a sua vida. Ao indivíduo moderno – diz Georg Simmel –, confrontado com uma onda constante de novas sensações, a única forma de proteção contra sobrecarga sensorial é reagir através das abstrações do intelecto. E, no entanto, essas propriedades intelectuais têm um alto custo: a vida na cidade é impessoal, as vidas interiores são empobrecidas e as relações afetivas com outras pessoas estão cada vez mais fora de alcance. Ao contrário, as relações na cidade são instrumentais e práticas, sendo o dinheiro o único valor que importa: na cidade tudo tem seu preço, inclusive o ser humano (que Simmel chama de homem-intelecto, Verstandesmensch). No entanto nunca podemos ser verdadeiramente indiferentes uns aos outros. Nossa natureza humana inevitavelmente nos obriga a reagir de alguma forma quando confrontados com outro ser humano mas nosso sistema nervoso não pode reagir com empatia em relação a todas as pessoas que encontramos. Como consequência, a única reação que nos resta é a antipatia. É uma forma de proteção, bem como o 'elementare Sozialisierungsform' da cidade.
A versão da santidade moderna de Wassermann seria uma mudança de percepção,uma sublimação dessa hipertrofia dos nervos. Isolamento/autoafirmação, vida episódica baseada em experiências e fragmentação de si mesmo permeiam todo o romance. A estrutura de Christian Wahnschaffe (e posteriormente da trilogia Andergast/Kerkhoven) é toda ela episódica, centrada em caráter dominados por paixões dispersas. O que Carpeaux dizia sobre Wassermann ser “romanesco, dado a enredos complicados escritos em estilo patético” nos parece antes uma necessidade do tema, um avanço no estilo que se aproxima muito mais do expressionismo que do romance inglês. Ao final, através desses episódios isolados, Wahnschaff consegue esse novo tipo de percepção que é todo o evangelho dessa fase do autor: seu Ego desaparece.
Mas essa fase não demora muito. Se Christian Wahnschaffe é hagiográfico, Der Aufruhr um den Junker Etzel, de que já falei em outra resenha, é um conto de fadas. A distância de Christian Wahnschaffe para Etzel Andergast é um pulo. Parece que os ingredientes de um também fazem o outro e algum acidente misterioso transformam Wahnschaffe no seu completo oposto, Etzel. A coisa é tão feia que de hagiografia e conto de fadas passamos para o “Deutsches Inferno” (inferno alemão), nome alternativo para Fall Maurizius. Mas a este já dedicamos duas resenhas e passaremos o restante do tempo falando do outro herói da trilogia, Joseph Kerkhoven.
As duas primeiras existências de Joseph Kerkhoven
Na primeira parte de Etzel Andergast, “Vorwelt”, o personagem epônimo não aparece, antes somos apresentados a um Joseph Kerkhoven como centro da narrativa. É de se perguntar em que sentido há uma trilogia (provavelmente Wassermann não quis parar a história no terceiro livro e provavelmente tinha um quarto ou quinto em mente) ou se trata apenas de personagens que reaparecem em outras novelas. Com Der Fall Maurizius abre-se a terceira fase do escritor que descreve a República de Weimar, o período entre-guerras, e atiça-se nesse livro a percepção histórica. Provavelmente nenhum autor captou tão bem o desenvolvimento histórico através das gerações como Wassermann em sua trilogia, ápice e suma de toda sua obra. Mas essa continuidade do tempo é ainda argumento fraco para estabelecer a unidade dos livros. O argumento correto na minha opinião passa pela nota de Carpeaux sobre a busca de Wassermann pela forma. Relembremos: Wassermann teria “lutado sinceramente” pela forma no romance, admirado Dickens e em Fall Maurizius finalmente conseguido “desromantizar-se” escrevendo um romance meio que realista. Provavelmente Capeaux está falando de ‘Rede über die Gestalt’ (Discurso sobre a forma) de Wassermann.
Para Wassermann, ‘Gestalt’ pode ter suas origens na história, na religião ou em qualquer forma de arte, até mesmo na música ou na arquitetura. Essas ‘Gestalten’, exemplos literários ou históricos dos quais seriam Hamlet, Werther, Robespierre ou Ricardo Coração de Leão. Charles Dickens foi o último artista a criar ‘Gestalten’ que poderia representar uma época inteira. 'Gestalt' sobrevive à passagem do tempo e assim satisfaz nosso 'Sehnsucht nach Gesetzmäßigkeit und nach dem Bilde' (anseio por ordem e sinais). É a isso que Wassermann se refere como a transformação das pessoas por meio da fantasia. Uma vida sem essas ‘Gestalten’ levaria à barbárie porque as pessoas seriam desprovidas de verdadeira orientação. O característico dos romances de Wassermann da época de Weimar é que o estado da sociedade devido ao fator modernidade tal como esboçado anteriormente afetou de tal forma os indivíduos que se olvidaram da Gestalt ('Spiegel und Deuter', espelho e interpréte). Os personagens se tornam porosos, o que dificulta a caracterização, e há uma crise de caráter. A busca por uma nova Gestalt é o fator de união desses três romances. Enquanto Maurizius ainda é narrado na forma tradicional do romance, esta forma vai desmoronando em Andergast apenas para ruir completamente em Kerkhoven, que vive sua terceira existência. O clima de indefinição é pervasivo como se um desastre fosse assomar a qualquer momento muito embora em nenhum momento tome forma.
Assim o que Wassermann chama de forma não é meramente uma técnica literária de caracterização realista de personagens mas algo como arquétipo e o “realismo” de Der Fall Maurizius não é um objetivo em si mas uma ferramenta para narração que no final das contas se parece mais com um expressionismo. A distância dos Agathon Geyer e Caspar Hauser de Etzel é de se pasmar especialmente quando na última cena de Maurizius o pai de Etzel está tendo um ataque de nervos à beira da morte e Etzel apenas olha. Talvez uma crítica ao “kalte Man” da “Neue Sachlichkeit”, talvez um primeiro indício da monstruosidade da Alemanha Nazista. O princípio humanista de falar à nação e encontrar leitores educados para expor projetos éticos é abandonado e considerado como um erro. O caráter parece impossível e dizer “eu” é fazer uma promessa impossível de manter. Wassermann parece assumir papel de atalaia e de registrar o desenvolvimento das gerações e seu embate. Wassermann por meio da descrição das relações de pai e filho, agora simbólicas, chega a várias imagens críticas da sociedade alemã antes da Primeira Guerra Mundial, bem como durante a República de Weimar. Adotando os pontos de vista de vários personagens, Wassermann continua revisitando esses diferentes períodos, permitindo assim perspectivas muito diferentes sobre eles.
O representante do período antigo, quilhermino, é Johann Irlen, ex-oficial de alta-patente que voltou de uma viagem à África. Ele foi forçado a abandonar o cargo. Embora não esteja explícito, a cronologia coincide com o escândalo dos processos Eulenburg-Moltke, houve uma caça às bruxas contra círculo interno do Kaiser sob acusação de homossexualismo. Uma espécie de helenismo degenerado (vide Friedrich Krupp, von Gloeden e Gunther Plüschau) pegou mal junto à opinião pública, o que em si seria algo como o que aconteceu com Oscar Wilde com a diferença que na Alemanha o dano foi muito maior, tirando da vida pública os moderados e arrastando os que viriam a fomentar a guerra. Homossexual ou não, naquele momento o afastamento de Irlen da vida pública não gerou nele o cinismo de Warchauer (v. O Processo Maurizius) por causa do encontro com outro jovem, Otto Kapeller, que despertou nele novas possibilidades de ação, desta vez no meio industrial. Otto parece ter sido forjado diretamente a partir de Friedrich Krupp, até na oposição dos sindicatos, mas quando Kapeller-pai morre o filho se transforma um Calígula de perversidade. É neste contexto, desiludido com as perspectivas da Alemanha, que Irlen vai à África
Na volta, já convencido da doença do Ocidente, ele decide intervir e lutar pela autonomia do indivíduo contra a massa. Muito pouco pode fazer, porque já estava fatalmente ferido por uma cobra. Entra em cena Joseph Kerkhoven, um homem com a vida tomada pelo trabalho, que se torna o representante mais arquetípico de Wassermann da vida cotidiana moderna. Preso a uma rotina cansativa e a um casamento infeliz, Kerkhoven vive em um estado de 'Selbstauslöschung', o que significa que, em muitos aspectos, ele não vive. Somente através de sua amizade com Irlen que ele se torna consciente de sua solidão que Irlen considera 'ein Merkmal der Zeit' - uma nova era que ele não pode resistir à tentação de tentar moldar.
Incapaz de suportar a dor da ferida, Irlen pediu a Kerkhoven auxílio em seu suicídio fornecendo-lhe uma mistura letal. Como Kerkhoven se vê incapaz de tomar uma decisão, Irlen o lembra de seu desejo de possuir 'das Doppelte', i. e. para fazer de Irlen uma parte de si mesmo. Irlen finalmente convence Kerkhoven contando a ele sobre a crença dos Persas em 'Fravashis', pedaço de alma legado para alguém. Os ‘Fravashis’ fazem parte do uso eclético de imagens religiosas do romance, o que parece indicar que qualquer forma de religiosidade ou espiritualidade pode ser relevante. Kerkhoven entende que Irlen está, pelo menos em parte, se sacrificando pelo bem do médico, tornando-se assim a parte complementar da alma de Kerkhoven. A ideia de sacrifício está no centro dessa transformação. Nas cinco semanas entre a morte de Irlen e a eclosão da Primeira Guerra Mundial, Kerkhoven passa por uma mudança: é dito que Kerkhoven embarca em uma jornada da qual ele retorna um homem diferente com poderes quase sobrenaturais. Nesse caso, como em outros aqui e ali, é de se perguntar o que Carpeaux acharia dessa mudança “realista” de Wassermann...
Após seu encontro final com Irlen, Kerkhoven é dotado de um misterioso poder sobre as almas de outras pessoas que logo o transformará em um dos médicos mais procurados de Berlim. Em sua função de 'Seelenarzt'(médico de almas), Kerkhoven tentará contrabalançar o efeito que a vida na cidade de Berlim tem sobre muitas pessoas enquanto, ao mesmo tempo, é devorado pelas demandas intermináveis das massas da cidade. Aqui o espelhamento de personagens volta: tal como o conceito de advocacia e justiça está para Wolff Andergast (pai de Etzel) o conceito de saúde e medicina estará para Joseph. Maurizius disse a Wolff no primeiro livro que somente Deus poderia realmente julgar um homem e aqui também Joseph está constantemente pensando no que significa realmente curar uma pessoa. Etzel, a juventude em busca de um Führer, depois de destruir para si tantas figuras paternas, chama Kerkhoven por ‘Meister’, que acede na ânsia de curar mais uma alma. No centro da relação entre Etzel e Kerkhoven está o desejo de superar suas formas individuais de isolamento: Kerkhoven, como uma imagem espelhada de seu tempo, é um workaholic moderno e, portanto, encontra-se isolado de sua privacidade, enquanto Etzel, como outra imagem espelhada da mesma época, sofre de uma forma de isolamento emocional deliberado provocada pelos eventos traumáticos de sua juventude. Já escrevi melhor na resenha de Etzel Andergast mas, para resumir, o resultado é outro: é Etzel quem sai destruído da relação. Simbolicamente isso representa que mais uma vez o embate de gerações resultou em discórdia e tragédia.
Além disso “Wassermann é moralista”, “muito mais romanesco, dado a enredos complicados escritos em estilo patético”. No romance “ele reconhece o meio moderno de se falar à nação”. Seus primeiros romances eram uma reconstituição da Alemanha antiga que resistia ao anarquismo moral, poeticamente nomeado como “inércia do coração”. A segunda fase é o “moralismo profético em Christian Wahnschaffe misturando ideias de Tolstói, Dostoievski, Tagore e Rolland”. A partir daí teria lutado sinceramente pela forma do romance e admirado os ingleses, em especial Dickens. Por fim, “conseguiu “desromanizar-se” na sua obra capital Fall Maurizius”, uma terceira e última fase.
Já adianto que Wassermann jamais foi nostálgico de um “Welt von Gestern”. Mas, sim, ele via sua arte como uma missão e desejava que sua arte entrasse no fluxo de consciência germânica. Seu ponto de partida é uma busca de pureza, algo entre a época Biedermeyer e Eichendorf. Muitos de seus personagens são crianças ou jovens, inocentes dos subúrbios ou áreas rurais. Sua visão transparece no romance Caspar Hauser, caso real onde uma criança cresce sem qualquer influência da sociedade e já jovem tem de incorporar-se a ela, onde a inocência vence a ‘Trägheit des Herzens’ (inércia do coração) da sociedade moderna. Romances dessa fase como Das Gänsemännchen, O Judeu de Zindorf e Renate Fuchs descrevem a época da Alemanha Guilhermina e como o caráter do herói inocente é formado no mundo. A época de ouro do fim de século pouco prometia e a “corrida entre civilização e barbárie” já parecia pender para a última embora nem Wassermann soubesse quão fundo era o poço. Para caracterizar esse “lado negro” é característico a presença algum “forasteiro” ou excluído que pela experiência negativa se contrapunha à inocência do herói.
A próxima fase, como Carpeaux sublinhou, é marcada pelo romance Christian Wahnschaffe, escrito durante o conflito da 1ª guerra mundial. A obra é um significativo aumento do horizonte da experiência e nela o “forasteiro” quase desaparece. É como se na destruição uma luz raiasse. O romance se equipara ao Sidarta ou São Francisco de Assis de Hesse (Chr. Wahnschaffe é um Francisco moderno). Se em certo sentido Wassermann se aproxima de Rolland no sentido de se aproximar da “espiritualidade”, isto é, “uma religiosidade sem dogmas, uma ideologia sem programa, o ecletismo da época do equilíbrio”, por outro lado Christian Wahnschaffe é muito mais que isso. Se se pode resumi-lo em uma frase como: jovem influente da Alemanha pré-guerra abandona casa para virar um santo moderno; também é a resposta para a pergunta de como um homem pode viver no mundo moderno.
A cena provinciana é trocada por um contexto moderno. A vida na província difere daquela da cidade-grande porque nesta última há uma hipertrofia dos nervos. Li certa vez que em um dia recebemos mais estímulos na cidade que um camponês da idade média durante toda a sua vida. Ao indivíduo moderno – diz Georg Simmel –, confrontado com uma onda constante de novas sensações, a única forma de proteção contra sobrecarga sensorial é reagir através das abstrações do intelecto. E, no entanto, essas propriedades intelectuais têm um alto custo: a vida na cidade é impessoal, as vidas interiores são empobrecidas e as relações afetivas com outras pessoas estão cada vez mais fora de alcance. Ao contrário, as relações na cidade são instrumentais e práticas, sendo o dinheiro o único valor que importa: na cidade tudo tem seu preço, inclusive o ser humano (que Simmel chama de homem-intelecto, Verstandesmensch). No entanto nunca podemos ser verdadeiramente indiferentes uns aos outros. Nossa natureza humana inevitavelmente nos obriga a reagir de alguma forma quando confrontados com outro ser humano mas nosso sistema nervoso não pode reagir com empatia em relação a todas as pessoas que encontramos. Como consequência, a única reação que nos resta é a antipatia. É uma forma de proteção, bem como o 'elementare Sozialisierungsform' da cidade.
A versão da santidade moderna de Wassermann seria uma mudança de percepção,uma sublimação dessa hipertrofia dos nervos. Isolamento/autoafirmação, vida episódica baseada em experiências e fragmentação de si mesmo permeiam todo o romance. A estrutura de Christian Wahnschaffe (e posteriormente da trilogia Andergast/Kerkhoven) é toda ela episódica, centrada em caráter dominados por paixões dispersas. O que Carpeaux dizia sobre Wassermann ser “romanesco, dado a enredos complicados escritos em estilo patético” nos parece antes uma necessidade do tema, um avanço no estilo que se aproxima muito mais do expressionismo que do romance inglês. Ao final, através desses episódios isolados, Wahnschaff consegue esse novo tipo de percepção que é todo o evangelho dessa fase do autor: seu Ego desaparece.
Mas essa fase não demora muito. Se Christian Wahnschaffe é hagiográfico, Der Aufruhr um den Junker Etzel, de que já falei em outra resenha, é um conto de fadas. A distância de Christian Wahnschaffe para Etzel Andergast é um pulo. Parece que os ingredientes de um também fazem o outro e algum acidente misterioso transformam Wahnschaffe no seu completo oposto, Etzel. A coisa é tão feia que de hagiografia e conto de fadas passamos para o “Deutsches Inferno” (inferno alemão), nome alternativo para Fall Maurizius. Mas a este já dedicamos duas resenhas e passaremos o restante do tempo falando do outro herói da trilogia, Joseph Kerkhoven.
As duas primeiras existências de Joseph Kerkhoven
Na primeira parte de Etzel Andergast, “Vorwelt”, o personagem epônimo não aparece, antes somos apresentados a um Joseph Kerkhoven como centro da narrativa. É de se perguntar em que sentido há uma trilogia (provavelmente Wassermann não quis parar a história no terceiro livro e provavelmente tinha um quarto ou quinto em mente) ou se trata apenas de personagens que reaparecem em outras novelas. Com Der Fall Maurizius abre-se a terceira fase do escritor que descreve a República de Weimar, o período entre-guerras, e atiça-se nesse livro a percepção histórica. Provavelmente nenhum autor captou tão bem o desenvolvimento histórico através das gerações como Wassermann em sua trilogia, ápice e suma de toda sua obra. Mas essa continuidade do tempo é ainda argumento fraco para estabelecer a unidade dos livros. O argumento correto na minha opinião passa pela nota de Carpeaux sobre a busca de Wassermann pela forma. Relembremos: Wassermann teria “lutado sinceramente” pela forma no romance, admirado Dickens e em Fall Maurizius finalmente conseguido “desromantizar-se” escrevendo um romance meio que realista. Provavelmente Capeaux está falando de ‘Rede über die Gestalt’ (Discurso sobre a forma) de Wassermann.
Para Wassermann, ‘Gestalt’ pode ter suas origens na história, na religião ou em qualquer forma de arte, até mesmo na música ou na arquitetura. Essas ‘Gestalten’, exemplos literários ou históricos dos quais seriam Hamlet, Werther, Robespierre ou Ricardo Coração de Leão. Charles Dickens foi o último artista a criar ‘Gestalten’ que poderia representar uma época inteira. 'Gestalt' sobrevive à passagem do tempo e assim satisfaz nosso 'Sehnsucht nach Gesetzmäßigkeit und nach dem Bilde' (anseio por ordem e sinais). É a isso que Wassermann se refere como a transformação das pessoas por meio da fantasia. Uma vida sem essas ‘Gestalten’ levaria à barbárie porque as pessoas seriam desprovidas de verdadeira orientação. O característico dos romances de Wassermann da época de Weimar é que o estado da sociedade devido ao fator modernidade tal como esboçado anteriormente afetou de tal forma os indivíduos que se olvidaram da Gestalt ('Spiegel und Deuter', espelho e interpréte). Os personagens se tornam porosos, o que dificulta a caracterização, e há uma crise de caráter. A busca por uma nova Gestalt é o fator de união desses três romances. Enquanto Maurizius ainda é narrado na forma tradicional do romance, esta forma vai desmoronando em Andergast apenas para ruir completamente em Kerkhoven, que vive sua terceira existência. O clima de indefinição é pervasivo como se um desastre fosse assomar a qualquer momento muito embora em nenhum momento tome forma.
Assim o que Wassermann chama de forma não é meramente uma técnica literária de caracterização realista de personagens mas algo como arquétipo e o “realismo” de Der Fall Maurizius não é um objetivo em si mas uma ferramenta para narração que no final das contas se parece mais com um expressionismo. A distância dos Agathon Geyer e Caspar Hauser de Etzel é de se pasmar especialmente quando na última cena de Maurizius o pai de Etzel está tendo um ataque de nervos à beira da morte e Etzel apenas olha. Talvez uma crítica ao “kalte Man” da “Neue Sachlichkeit”, talvez um primeiro indício da monstruosidade da Alemanha Nazista. O princípio humanista de falar à nação e encontrar leitores educados para expor projetos éticos é abandonado e considerado como um erro. O caráter parece impossível e dizer “eu” é fazer uma promessa impossível de manter. Wassermann parece assumir papel de atalaia e de registrar o desenvolvimento das gerações e seu embate. Wassermann por meio da descrição das relações de pai e filho, agora simbólicas, chega a várias imagens críticas da sociedade alemã antes da Primeira Guerra Mundial, bem como durante a República de Weimar. Adotando os pontos de vista de vários personagens, Wassermann continua revisitando esses diferentes períodos, permitindo assim perspectivas muito diferentes sobre eles.
O representante do período antigo, quilhermino, é Johann Irlen, ex-oficial de alta-patente que voltou de uma viagem à África. Ele foi forçado a abandonar o cargo. Embora não esteja explícito, a cronologia coincide com o escândalo dos processos Eulenburg-Moltke, houve uma caça às bruxas contra círculo interno do Kaiser sob acusação de homossexualismo. Uma espécie de helenismo degenerado (vide Friedrich Krupp, von Gloeden e Gunther Plüschau) pegou mal junto à opinião pública, o que em si seria algo como o que aconteceu com Oscar Wilde com a diferença que na Alemanha o dano foi muito maior, tirando da vida pública os moderados e arrastando os que viriam a fomentar a guerra. Homossexual ou não, naquele momento o afastamento de Irlen da vida pública não gerou nele o cinismo de Warchauer (v. O Processo Maurizius) por causa do encontro com outro jovem, Otto Kapeller, que despertou nele novas possibilidades de ação, desta vez no meio industrial. Otto parece ter sido forjado diretamente a partir de Friedrich Krupp, até na oposição dos sindicatos, mas quando Kapeller-pai morre o filho se transforma um Calígula de perversidade. É neste contexto, desiludido com as perspectivas da Alemanha, que Irlen vai à África
Na volta, já convencido da doença do Ocidente, ele decide intervir e lutar pela autonomia do indivíduo contra a massa. Muito pouco pode fazer, porque já estava fatalmente ferido por uma cobra. Entra em cena Joseph Kerkhoven, um homem com a vida tomada pelo trabalho, que se torna o representante mais arquetípico de Wassermann da vida cotidiana moderna. Preso a uma rotina cansativa e a um casamento infeliz, Kerkhoven vive em um estado de 'Selbstauslöschung', o que significa que, em muitos aspectos, ele não vive. Somente através de sua amizade com Irlen que ele se torna consciente de sua solidão que Irlen considera 'ein Merkmal der Zeit' - uma nova era que ele não pode resistir à tentação de tentar moldar.
Incapaz de suportar a dor da ferida, Irlen pediu a Kerkhoven auxílio em seu suicídio fornecendo-lhe uma mistura letal. Como Kerkhoven se vê incapaz de tomar uma decisão, Irlen o lembra de seu desejo de possuir 'das Doppelte', i. e. para fazer de Irlen uma parte de si mesmo. Irlen finalmente convence Kerkhoven contando a ele sobre a crença dos Persas em 'Fravashis', pedaço de alma legado para alguém. Os ‘Fravashis’ fazem parte do uso eclético de imagens religiosas do romance, o que parece indicar que qualquer forma de religiosidade ou espiritualidade pode ser relevante. Kerkhoven entende que Irlen está, pelo menos em parte, se sacrificando pelo bem do médico, tornando-se assim a parte complementar da alma de Kerkhoven. A ideia de sacrifício está no centro dessa transformação. Nas cinco semanas entre a morte de Irlen e a eclosão da Primeira Guerra Mundial, Kerkhoven passa por uma mudança: é dito que Kerkhoven embarca em uma jornada da qual ele retorna um homem diferente com poderes quase sobrenaturais. Nesse caso, como em outros aqui e ali, é de se perguntar o que Carpeaux acharia dessa mudança “realista” de Wassermann...
Após seu encontro final com Irlen, Kerkhoven é dotado de um misterioso poder sobre as almas de outras pessoas que logo o transformará em um dos médicos mais procurados de Berlim. Em sua função de 'Seelenarzt'(médico de almas), Kerkhoven tentará contrabalançar o efeito que a vida na cidade de Berlim tem sobre muitas pessoas enquanto, ao mesmo tempo, é devorado pelas demandas intermináveis das massas da cidade. Aqui o espelhamento de personagens volta: tal como o conceito de advocacia e justiça está para Wolff Andergast (pai de Etzel) o conceito de saúde e medicina estará para Joseph. Maurizius disse a Wolff no primeiro livro que somente Deus poderia realmente julgar um homem e aqui também Joseph está constantemente pensando no que significa realmente curar uma pessoa. Etzel, a juventude em busca de um Führer, depois de destruir para si tantas figuras paternas, chama Kerkhoven por ‘Meister’, que acede na ânsia de curar mais uma alma. No centro da relação entre Etzel e Kerkhoven está o desejo de superar suas formas individuais de isolamento: Kerkhoven, como uma imagem espelhada de seu tempo, é um workaholic moderno e, portanto, encontra-se isolado de sua privacidade, enquanto Etzel, como outra imagem espelhada da mesma época, sofre de uma forma de isolamento emocional deliberado provocada pelos eventos traumáticos de sua juventude. Já escrevi melhor na resenha de Etzel Andergast mas, para resumir, o resultado é outro: é Etzel quem sai destruído da relação. Simbolicamente isso representa que mais uma vez o embate de gerações resultou em discórdia e tragédia.
January 7, 2024
- [ ] “A human being, Gannon likes to say, has everything in his own hands, happiness + unhappiness, life + death.”
- [ ] “Luckily she had the blessed gift of forgetting bad and ugly things, that was the observe of her courage; and when the first green shoots would show above the ground, and the sun rose above a certain gable, she would be desperate for spring and slowly climb out of winter, and the darkness and sickness associated with it. Evidently she had her own darkness in her as well. So-called cheerful people often have much darker hours to endure than self-proclaimed pessimists.”
- [ ] “The way individuals live together. The truth of each individual is only the truth of his own perspective. The eternity of mankind and of human qualities is always seen through a prism, where its colors are broken. Observation is so utterly different from experience; there is no hope of fusing their contradictions, as the I and the I have been foes from the worlds beginning.”
- [ ] “Novelty has an alarming quality for us. Please no changes, no new battles in my day to day life, we say to ourselves, the old ones are bad enough. A philistine loyalty to things can also play a part; the house that has become a haven; the bed one has become attached to; the old brown desk with its ink spatters green baize and its dozen or so familiar Knick knacks. Some relationships that are even stronger.”
- [ ] “Hanna was always knocked flat by exigencies of the moment. She had no sense of time, only of the moment but in an unbroken chain of milliseconds without soul and sense, which was why behind her breathless busyness and industry there was something like continual tragic fade into nothingness.”
- [ ] “The silence is so powerful that it feels like a blissful transmutation of death.”
- [ ] “No one nowadays can commit themselves to anything. Circumstances are just too volatile.”
- [ ] “When two individuals, whose pleasure and at it is to fish in troubled waters intone abracadabras, join forces their relationship will be closer than most real friendships, just as bonds between thieves, “thick as thieves” - tend to be firmer than those between honest men. “
- [ ] “A man who lives off his intellect and imagination. Most men are a little like that. Is the gambler and the player in them all, and in their profession. The gifted and honest ones are dazzled by their idea, the mean and brutish ones by success and profit. So between them they rule the world.”
- [ ] “I’d sooner love in a hut than share a palace with a ghost.”
- [ ] “Don’t talk to me about love/ hate, or the chase such things, it wasn’t that. ‘Amor demens’ would be closer to it. But delusion is a mysterious unexplored element; no mirror has ever caught its reflection, no pen has described it utterly, because it reaches down into the lowest depths of humanity.”
- [ ] “Luckily she had the blessed gift of forgetting bad and ugly things, that was the observe of her courage; and when the first green shoots would show above the ground, and the sun rose above a certain gable, she would be desperate for spring and slowly climb out of winter, and the darkness and sickness associated with it. Evidently she had her own darkness in her as well. So-called cheerful people often have much darker hours to endure than self-proclaimed pessimists.”
- [ ] “The way individuals live together. The truth of each individual is only the truth of his own perspective. The eternity of mankind and of human qualities is always seen through a prism, where its colors are broken. Observation is so utterly different from experience; there is no hope of fusing their contradictions, as the I and the I have been foes from the worlds beginning.”
- [ ] “Novelty has an alarming quality for us. Please no changes, no new battles in my day to day life, we say to ourselves, the old ones are bad enough. A philistine loyalty to things can also play a part; the house that has become a haven; the bed one has become attached to; the old brown desk with its ink spatters green baize and its dozen or so familiar Knick knacks. Some relationships that are even stronger.”
- [ ] “Hanna was always knocked flat by exigencies of the moment. She had no sense of time, only of the moment but in an unbroken chain of milliseconds without soul and sense, which was why behind her breathless busyness and industry there was something like continual tragic fade into nothingness.”
- [ ] “The silence is so powerful that it feels like a blissful transmutation of death.”
- [ ] “No one nowadays can commit themselves to anything. Circumstances are just too volatile.”
- [ ] “When two individuals, whose pleasure and at it is to fish in troubled waters intone abracadabras, join forces their relationship will be closer than most real friendships, just as bonds between thieves, “thick as thieves” - tend to be firmer than those between honest men. “
- [ ] “A man who lives off his intellect and imagination. Most men are a little like that. Is the gambler and the player in them all, and in their profession. The gifted and honest ones are dazzled by their idea, the mean and brutish ones by success and profit. So between them they rule the world.”
- [ ] “I’d sooner love in a hut than share a palace with a ghost.”
- [ ] “Don’t talk to me about love/ hate, or the chase such things, it wasn’t that. ‘Amor demens’ would be closer to it. But delusion is a mysterious unexplored element; no mirror has ever caught its reflection, no pen has described it utterly, because it reaches down into the lowest depths of humanity.”
June 24, 2024
O estilo, ao mesmo tempo direto e barroco, claro e difuso, é tanto uma característica do autor, quanto um feito do tradutor. Adequa-se bem ao tema, que divide o autor ao meio, entre as duas mulheres que parecem ter guiado a sua vida.
Todo o livro gira em torno do primeiro casamento do autor. Fosse uma obra de ficção, seria realmente genial, porque nos pouparia de julgamentos mais duros. Sendo autobiográfico, como dizem que é, apesar da visão profunda de certos aspectos do relacionamento humano, é impossível não ficar um pouco chateado com o vitimismo: o que sofre - e o autor-narrador sofre bastante - é fruto de sua vontade manifesta e de sua incapacidade de correção.
O mais interessante, buscando algum distanciamento da série de maledicências que o autor-narrador lança, justa ou injustamente, sobre sua primeira esposa, é o panorama moral e jurídico da época.
E o fato é que quando cedemos a um poder estatal, judiciário, a solução de problemas tão pessoais e tão graves, condenamo-nos, mesmo, a um inferno terrestre.
Todo o livro gira em torno do primeiro casamento do autor. Fosse uma obra de ficção, seria realmente genial, porque nos pouparia de julgamentos mais duros. Sendo autobiográfico, como dizem que é, apesar da visão profunda de certos aspectos do relacionamento humano, é impossível não ficar um pouco chateado com o vitimismo: o que sofre - e o autor-narrador sofre bastante - é fruto de sua vontade manifesta e de sua incapacidade de correção.
O mais interessante, buscando algum distanciamento da série de maledicências que o autor-narrador lança, justa ou injustamente, sobre sua primeira esposa, é o panorama moral e jurídico da época.
E o fato é que quando cedemos a um poder estatal, judiciário, a solução de problemas tão pessoais e tão graves, condenamo-nos, mesmo, a um inferno terrestre.
August 1, 2025
Wasserman does a fantastic job of writing an utterly suffocating and stressful fictional autobiography which has some very interesting commentary and insights into the early 20th century bourgeois family & society:
“When I decided once and for all in favour of the life of the bourgeois and the tax payer - with a bank account to protect me from every eventuality, newest recruiter and pride of the Mevises, Schlemms and Lottlelotts - that meant the end of poet’s garret and Samson’s struggle. Fedora and Riemann were right: I had sold myself and betrayed myself”
“All in all, when I think about it today, it was a concentrated parody of the social mores of the epoch. Life of a comfortable middle class condensed into a matinee performance, with musical accompaniment from a mildly soused four-piece band”
This was an unexpected, but welcome, supplement to my concurrent research on Horkheimer and Adono’s critique of instrumental reason. If I could be bothered I would go into detail and make some connections, but I’m afraid I can’t spare such a luxury
“When I decided once and for all in favour of the life of the bourgeois and the tax payer - with a bank account to protect me from every eventuality, newest recruiter and pride of the Mevises, Schlemms and Lottlelotts - that meant the end of poet’s garret and Samson’s struggle. Fedora and Riemann were right: I had sold myself and betrayed myself”
“All in all, when I think about it today, it was a concentrated parody of the social mores of the epoch. Life of a comfortable middle class condensed into a matinee performance, with musical accompaniment from a mildly soused four-piece band”
This was an unexpected, but welcome, supplement to my concurrent research on Horkheimer and Adono’s critique of instrumental reason. If I could be bothered I would go into detail and make some connections, but I’m afraid I can’t spare such a luxury
November 22, 2025
Beautifully written but so damn stressful
on-pause
May 25, 2023Got about halfway and was just struggling. Everyone’s terrible and the narrator (Alexander) is just so detached from the narrative… I’ll give it another go sometime, but for now it’s not working for me. :/
March 10, 2017
I contemplated a 'Did not Finish' with this bleak, depressing, tragic novel that takes you piece by piece through the slow, agonising disintegration of a marriage, two people irrevocably tied to each other, not by love but by...I truly cannot say. Obsession? Need? Some kind of sadomasochistic pact of mutually assured destruction? All the more disturbing when you learn the story is a lightly fictionalised version of author Jakob Wasserman's first marriage and protracted divorce proceedings, that he, in effect, was killed by the strain of it all, dying before publication.
Not an easy read in terms of content yet the writing is light, matter of fact, detailing the whole horrendous process every. single. step. of the way until you want to either weep from despair or batter the man over the head to try and make him see sense, to STOP enabling this disturbed (for clearly Ganna has psychological problems) woman he is joined to. See, a book that evokes strong emotions in the reader! One I had to keep putting down because it was making me feel so frustrated, so 'down', afraid to discover what next torture might be inflicted on Herzog as punishment for no longer wanting to be with his wife.
I have been happily married for over thirty years yet the book makes you question the whole idea of marriage. Certainly it is not something to enter into lightly, as Alexander Herzog does, for money and status. He chooses the wrong woman and Oh boy, does he pay. Again. And again. And yet again. The most sympathetic (and hardest to understand) character in the sorry story is Bettina, the woman Herzog first makes his mistress (one in a long string) then, finding himself in love for the first time, decides he must seek a divorce for, setting in train an unstoppable force of nature, woman scorned, Ganna the vindictive, vengeful first wife. The nightmarish legal wrangle lasting decades and ultimately benefiting only the lawyers involved, has obvious parallels with Dickens, e.g. Jarndyce amd Jarndyce in Bleak House.
Wasserman's account is not without humour, and has a satirical edge that may/may not have been intentional. Herzog does not entirely lack awareness of the madness of his situation, even though he is incapable of doing the one thing necessary to bring it to an end, that is simply to walk away and refuse to engage further in self-destruction. In the end I couldn't help but feel sorry for Alexander, Ganna, poor Bettina caught in the middle, and their children- what happened to them I wonder?
Not an easy read in terms of content yet the writing is light, matter of fact, detailing the whole horrendous process every. single. step. of the way until you want to either weep from despair or batter the man over the head to try and make him see sense, to STOP enabling this disturbed (for clearly Ganna has psychological problems) woman he is joined to. See, a book that evokes strong emotions in the reader! One I had to keep putting down because it was making me feel so frustrated, so 'down', afraid to discover what next torture might be inflicted on Herzog as punishment for no longer wanting to be with his wife.
I have been happily married for over thirty years yet the book makes you question the whole idea of marriage. Certainly it is not something to enter into lightly, as Alexander Herzog does, for money and status. He chooses the wrong woman and Oh boy, does he pay. Again. And again. And yet again. The most sympathetic (and hardest to understand) character in the sorry story is Bettina, the woman Herzog first makes his mistress (one in a long string) then, finding himself in love for the first time, decides he must seek a divorce for, setting in train an unstoppable force of nature, woman scorned, Ganna the vindictive, vengeful first wife. The nightmarish legal wrangle lasting decades and ultimately benefiting only the lawyers involved, has obvious parallels with Dickens, e.g. Jarndyce amd Jarndyce in Bleak House.
Wasserman's account is not without humour, and has a satirical edge that may/may not have been intentional. Herzog does not entirely lack awareness of the madness of his situation, even though he is incapable of doing the one thing necessary to bring it to an end, that is simply to walk away and refuse to engage further in self-destruction. In the end I couldn't help but feel sorry for Alexander, Ganna, poor Bettina caught in the middle, and their children- what happened to them I wonder?
Read
October 6, 2019My Marriage is a remarkable and surprising novel. The language of the translation, by the poet Michael Hofmann, is always a pleasure to read, and seems fitting for the narrative of a character who's a novelist.
The first surprise is that the story is that of the husband, Alexander Herzog, and not his wife. But additional surprises follow, so many that I'm not willing to say more for fear of reducing the pleasure of other readers as the plot, such as it is, unfolds.
What can and perhaps should be said is that, given the cover description of the novel as being based on Jakob Wassermann's own marriage, this fact has nothing to do with the work at hand. All literature except for the most extreme science fiction and fantasy, and to some extent even they, are based on the writers' experiences, and to invite narrowly autobiographical concerns is at best beside the point and distracting.
So when the reader comes to the afterword by Michael Hofmann – read carefully! His or her own experience of the work just read remains primary.
I read the New York Review Books Classics edition, which is as usual well designed and easy to read, on good paper with, one eventually learns, and especially effective cover design.
And notice, under the diction and rhythms of the writing, the novelist-narrator's regard for his wife's right to her own personality. This and similar other aspects elevate the work in some fully human way I can't put a name to, but witnessing it is exhilarating.
November 9, 2025
I started this years ago then put it down. Why did I do that? The clever staging with humor and horror that lays out a psychological insight into the narrator’s self-destruction at the hand of another is a compelling dark whirlpool of inevitability. The translator sums up this amazing work best in his afterword to the book:
“It’s that very rare thing, a twentieth century tragedy, played out with twentieth century recourses, with courts and banks and publicity. ‘In the depths, everything becomes law,’ says (a little surprisingly) Rilke. Things get worse, as calmly and methodically as in a Hitchcock movie. It’s not just what happens, it’s every stage of that happening; you start with a lobster and a bay leaf and a pan of cold water. What began by looking to the forever canny observer Arthur Schnitzler as a cold and blatant case of a marriage of convenience on Wasserman‘s part, ends up with the man hounded, frankly, to death. It is the victim’s portrait in poison of his killer. Ghana — Julie Speyer— out lived Wasserman by almost 30 years.“
Michael Hoffmann.
“It’s that very rare thing, a twentieth century tragedy, played out with twentieth century recourses, with courts and banks and publicity. ‘In the depths, everything becomes law,’ says (a little surprisingly) Rilke. Things get worse, as calmly and methodically as in a Hitchcock movie. It’s not just what happens, it’s every stage of that happening; you start with a lobster and a bay leaf and a pan of cold water. What began by looking to the forever canny observer Arthur Schnitzler as a cold and blatant case of a marriage of convenience on Wasserman‘s part, ends up with the man hounded, frankly, to death. It is the victim’s portrait in poison of his killer. Ghana — Julie Speyer— out lived Wasserman by almost 30 years.“
Michael Hoffmann.
March 7, 2015
Wassermann's psychological portrait of his own disastrous first marriage might not sound like a compelling page-turner, but it is! Told with almost no dialogue, the story details his former wife's furious efforts to marshal all the 'open oppression of the law*' against him and his new family. His own complicity in her efforts is obvious, too — he is an unfaithful and improvident husband, who sabotages his own interests out of an attachment he cannot completely sever.
Michael Hofmann's translation is excellent, as is his afterword, which succinctly analyzes the social context of the novel in the early 20th century.
(*Dickens's phrase, not Wassermann's)
Michael Hofmann's translation is excellent, as is his afterword, which succinctly analyzes the social context of the novel in the early 20th century.
(*Dickens's phrase, not Wassermann's)
May 18, 2016
In the afterward the translator says that this book is a very thinly-veiled report on the author's first marriage and protracted divorce - the latter apparently killed him; he was able to finish writing the book but died before it was published soon afterward. The narrative is stunning - initially the foibles of the author's wife are amusing to him and the reader, but the humor tends to fade as the pain increases, and does it ever! Don't read this book if you are about to get married! Or rather, certainly read it if you have some doubts about the marriage into which you are about to enter.
February 3, 2023
The more alert of her daughters had long observed the symptoms of mental illness in her. It was the illness suffered by maybe four-fifths of the women in bourgeois society, the illness of nothing to do, empty representation and constant pregnancies. --My Marriage pg. 36
The above quote describes the mother of the “heroine,” Ganna, in Jakob Wassman’s pathetic rant and detailed account of his over nineteen-year marriage to Julie Speyer beginning in fin de síecle Vienna. While the union is never blissful, the dissolution is—for lack of a better word—entertaining. Wasserman garners very little sympathy from most readers; his complaint, whether intended or not, is an accurate and harrowing description of the plight of many married women in Viennese society, matrimonial mores in that society, a depiction of immoral lawyers, misogyny, Faustian bargains, and the above-quoted mental illness.
The plot is so stereotypical that is not worth regurgitating except in archetypal generalizations. A writer of modest means marries into a well-to-do bourgeois family and collects a hefty dowry for the second youngest of five daughters, the “ugly duckling.”* The young bride, Ganna, is totally enamored by the writer, Alexander Herzog, a stand-in for the author. The wife, constantly pregnant, turns a blind eye to Herzog’s numerous affairs, including a possible one with her sister. The dowry dwindles as—a reader must assume—Herzog gains more respect and financial reward for his writing; as translator Michael Hoffman writes in his afterward, this was the era when writers, even those just below the first tier, could earn a comfortable living writing. . .that is unless the writer insists on a divorce to go live with his mistress and start a new family, thus eliciting a wrathful vendetta in his spurned wife who turns Herzog’s world into a cavalcade of demanding lawyers and financial liens; for Ganna, the spurned wife of convenience, does not want a divorce. What follows is a depiction of mental anguish that the narrator inflicted on himself by marrying for money. Thus, the narrative turns into an extended complaint and regret for the Faustian bargain.
In this sense Alexander Herzog is a harbinger of both mid-century misogynists like Henry Miller, who revered Wasserman, and later 20th century (perceived, perhaps correctly so) misogynists like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. My Marriage reads like a chapter out of either Bellow’s Herzog or Humboldt’s Gift or Roth’s ill-conceived (and worst novel) My Life as Man. However, if My Marriage is just little more than an example of this misunderstood male grudge-bearing complaint, it would be unreadable. Instead, My Marriage starts off with the narrator’s annoying presumptions that he is right and persecuted, but soon morphs into a bitter decent into a wrangling hell with an unstable spurned woman as the tormentor. The legal proceedings are endless and vastly entertaining; to call them merely Kafkaesque is to do them injustice. And the entitlement and presumption of the narrator lets the reader enjoy the downfall and comeuppance. Note to anyone: If you marry for money, don’t complain about not being able to satisfactorily extricate yourself from the situation after having three children with the wife and burning through her dowry. Don’t complain when the wife turns a blind eye to your countless affairs, but draws the line when you want a divorce after twenty years so you can move in with a younger woman and start a new family.
My suspicion is that Jakob Wasserman’s wife was probably mentally ill by the time this account saw the light of day as part of a longer and forgotten work Joseph Kerkoven’s dritte Existence (1934). However, this does not gloss over the fact that Alexander Herzog is an extremely unreliable narrator who fails to accept any blame for his own bad behavior. If his life weren’t reduced to such hell, the book wouldn’t have been any fun. One can take words like “harridan” and “virago” with a grain of salt and just enjoy the spectacle of the narrator’s life made interminable by an atrocious marriage. It’s not for nothing that the Germans have the word Schadenfreunde.
Divorce is universal and painful. Despite the fact that the most hellish aspects of this ill-foreseen marriage played out in Vienna during the 1920’s, so many details are so recognizable to anyone familiar with divorce in contemporary American society, e.g. child custody schedules, financial payments and accusations of hidden funds. Wasserman has the rare gift to relate his own demise in an amusing fashion; whether this was deliberate is another matter. The reader doesn’t feel compelled to take sides--though only the male perspective is granted--but can just laugh and enjoy the spectacle.
My Marriage flows easily in Michael Hoffman’s fabulous English transation. He is perhaps the top German to English translator working in fiction today. I increasingly grab a Hoffman translation when I don’t feel like dedicating the time I would need to read the book in German. Neither My Marriage nor Hoffman’s prose disappoints; and his “Afterward” has some perspicacious observations and arcane facts.
*The cover photo on the NYRB edition is Wasserman’s first wife, Julie Speyer, around the time of the marriage. She is hardly the ugly duckling that Wasserman claims.
The above quote describes the mother of the “heroine,” Ganna, in Jakob Wassman’s pathetic rant and detailed account of his over nineteen-year marriage to Julie Speyer beginning in fin de síecle Vienna. While the union is never blissful, the dissolution is—for lack of a better word—entertaining. Wasserman garners very little sympathy from most readers; his complaint, whether intended or not, is an accurate and harrowing description of the plight of many married women in Viennese society, matrimonial mores in that society, a depiction of immoral lawyers, misogyny, Faustian bargains, and the above-quoted mental illness.
The plot is so stereotypical that is not worth regurgitating except in archetypal generalizations. A writer of modest means marries into a well-to-do bourgeois family and collects a hefty dowry for the second youngest of five daughters, the “ugly duckling.”* The young bride, Ganna, is totally enamored by the writer, Alexander Herzog, a stand-in for the author. The wife, constantly pregnant, turns a blind eye to Herzog’s numerous affairs, including a possible one with her sister. The dowry dwindles as—a reader must assume—Herzog gains more respect and financial reward for his writing; as translator Michael Hoffman writes in his afterward, this was the era when writers, even those just below the first tier, could earn a comfortable living writing. . .that is unless the writer insists on a divorce to go live with his mistress and start a new family, thus eliciting a wrathful vendetta in his spurned wife who turns Herzog’s world into a cavalcade of demanding lawyers and financial liens; for Ganna, the spurned wife of convenience, does not want a divorce. What follows is a depiction of mental anguish that the narrator inflicted on himself by marrying for money. Thus, the narrative turns into an extended complaint and regret for the Faustian bargain.
In this sense Alexander Herzog is a harbinger of both mid-century misogynists like Henry Miller, who revered Wasserman, and later 20th century (perceived, perhaps correctly so) misogynists like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. My Marriage reads like a chapter out of either Bellow’s Herzog or Humboldt’s Gift or Roth’s ill-conceived (and worst novel) My Life as Man. However, if My Marriage is just little more than an example of this misunderstood male grudge-bearing complaint, it would be unreadable. Instead, My Marriage starts off with the narrator’s annoying presumptions that he is right and persecuted, but soon morphs into a bitter decent into a wrangling hell with an unstable spurned woman as the tormentor. The legal proceedings are endless and vastly entertaining; to call them merely Kafkaesque is to do them injustice. And the entitlement and presumption of the narrator lets the reader enjoy the downfall and comeuppance. Note to anyone: If you marry for money, don’t complain about not being able to satisfactorily extricate yourself from the situation after having three children with the wife and burning through her dowry. Don’t complain when the wife turns a blind eye to your countless affairs, but draws the line when you want a divorce after twenty years so you can move in with a younger woman and start a new family.
My suspicion is that Jakob Wasserman’s wife was probably mentally ill by the time this account saw the light of day as part of a longer and forgotten work Joseph Kerkoven’s dritte Existence (1934). However, this does not gloss over the fact that Alexander Herzog is an extremely unreliable narrator who fails to accept any blame for his own bad behavior. If his life weren’t reduced to such hell, the book wouldn’t have been any fun. One can take words like “harridan” and “virago” with a grain of salt and just enjoy the spectacle of the narrator’s life made interminable by an atrocious marriage. It’s not for nothing that the Germans have the word Schadenfreunde.
Divorce is universal and painful. Despite the fact that the most hellish aspects of this ill-foreseen marriage played out in Vienna during the 1920’s, so many details are so recognizable to anyone familiar with divorce in contemporary American society, e.g. child custody schedules, financial payments and accusations of hidden funds. Wasserman has the rare gift to relate his own demise in an amusing fashion; whether this was deliberate is another matter. The reader doesn’t feel compelled to take sides--though only the male perspective is granted--but can just laugh and enjoy the spectacle.
My Marriage flows easily in Michael Hoffman’s fabulous English transation. He is perhaps the top German to English translator working in fiction today. I increasingly grab a Hoffman translation when I don’t feel like dedicating the time I would need to read the book in German. Neither My Marriage nor Hoffman’s prose disappoints; and his “Afterward” has some perspicacious observations and arcane facts.
*The cover photo on the NYRB edition is Wasserman’s first wife, Julie Speyer, around the time of the marriage. She is hardly the ugly duckling that Wasserman claims.
January 22, 2018
Melodramatic but definitely engaging, until it becomes so exhausting you just want it to end. Still an interesting book; Ganna is a character I'd never encountered before and the story itself a horrifying portrait of bourgeois marriage and divorce at its worst.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 10, 2017
A brief summary of this book in a meme:
Ganna: hoe don't do it
Alexander: divorce
Ganna: oh my god
Ganna: hoe don't do it
Alexander: divorce
Ganna: oh my god
February 26, 2024
(A clarification: I'll be talking here about the character of Ganna Mevis purely as a literary creation, without considering the real events on which the story is based. We have only Wassermann's point of view to work with, and so it would be fruitless to speculate on how just and impartial is his account.)
This is the lightly fictionalized story of the spectacularly lengthy and painful divorce of Jakob Wassermann from Julie Speyer (here fictionalized as Alexander Herzog and Ganna Mevis). It's a relentless work, written as a confession, but also, one feels, as an attempt at exorcizing the vampiric influence of Ganna/Julie from Herzog/Jakob's life (Wassermann was consumed by the experience, becoming almost literally a slave, writing at the alarming rate of almost one book a year in order to pay the exhorbitant sums stipulated in his divorce terms; he died one year before "My First Wife" was published).
The use of the term "vampiric" is not unwarranted. At times Wassermann's experience reads as something out of a horror story: he's constantly foreshadowing some great dark catastrophe, constantly teasing some revelation about Ganna's true horrific nature, always in the agitated and melodramatic tone of a protagonist in a silent horror film: "A demonic person, I told myself. That was the first flash of the insight that later, much later, came over me like a brand. Demonic;". Also of note is the fact that Herzog's misery begins when he enters into a pact with Ganna, which, given his condition of famished artist, can be seen as the selling of his soul for financial security. It goes as well as such pacts usually do. This is how the book ends: "And then the devil riding over the wreckage of my life would disappear with a howl into the gulch of his hell. A slightly overdone image. But then I’ve lost all sense of measure."
Ganna, the "ugly duckling" among her sisters, is an avid reader, an intelligent, if clumsy, admirer of Herzog, whose first book has left a deep impression on her. The story follows Ganna as she stalks, courts and harrasses Herzog (even threatening to kill herself if he doesn't agree to marry her); then it chronicles their marriage and separation.
It's an extenuating, exasperating read. Wassermann creates one of the most interesting villains in literature. Ganna Mevis, a psychotic paranoid, creates and lords over her own version of reality, admitting no contestation, trampling facts and other people's feelings, expertly using the levers of the Law to make sure she gets everything she thinks she's owed. Ganna is a new type brought about by a new social and psychological arrangement, a monstrous hybrid of a kind that has sadly become prevalent today: the petit bourgeois or commoner endowed with a tyrannical spirit and a desire for control that dwarfs anything ever attempted by past kings and Popes.
The novel shows what happens when the distorted inner reality of Ganna, despite being a psychotic's fantasy, starts exerting a degree of influence utterly incommensurate with its source, spilling into broad daylight, in the real prosaic world, an exuberant efflorescence of evil which is so petty and mundane that there's no possible way to counter it. Just like the shapeless multibrachial bureaucracy in "The Trial", Ganna acquires sinister powers of ubiquity and materialization, capable of appearing at any time in the form of shrill phone calls or incessant letters and telegrams. And just like in The Trial, there's no rational resolution at the end, no respite from the oppression: "My First Wife" ends, but the divorce proceeding doesn't (in real life, Julie Speyer outlived Jakob Wassermann by thirty years).
There are few things sadder or scarier than the complete breakdown in communications because, after that, all that remains is annihilation. Ganna is simply unassailable in her delusions, someone who's impossible to pin down, a consummate tyrant. Inaccesible to any form of consensual, shared reality, she always has the upper hand when confronted with someone bound to notions of cogency, reasonableness and fairness. A terrifying reminder to any of us who have ever argued with girlfriends, or leftists.
This is the lightly fictionalized story of the spectacularly lengthy and painful divorce of Jakob Wassermann from Julie Speyer (here fictionalized as Alexander Herzog and Ganna Mevis). It's a relentless work, written as a confession, but also, one feels, as an attempt at exorcizing the vampiric influence of Ganna/Julie from Herzog/Jakob's life (Wassermann was consumed by the experience, becoming almost literally a slave, writing at the alarming rate of almost one book a year in order to pay the exhorbitant sums stipulated in his divorce terms; he died one year before "My First Wife" was published).
The use of the term "vampiric" is not unwarranted. At times Wassermann's experience reads as something out of a horror story: he's constantly foreshadowing some great dark catastrophe, constantly teasing some revelation about Ganna's true horrific nature, always in the agitated and melodramatic tone of a protagonist in a silent horror film: "A demonic person, I told myself. That was the first flash of the insight that later, much later, came over me like a brand. Demonic;". Also of note is the fact that Herzog's misery begins when he enters into a pact with Ganna, which, given his condition of famished artist, can be seen as the selling of his soul for financial security. It goes as well as such pacts usually do. This is how the book ends: "And then the devil riding over the wreckage of my life would disappear with a howl into the gulch of his hell. A slightly overdone image. But then I’ve lost all sense of measure."
Ganna, the "ugly duckling" among her sisters, is an avid reader, an intelligent, if clumsy, admirer of Herzog, whose first book has left a deep impression on her. The story follows Ganna as she stalks, courts and harrasses Herzog (even threatening to kill herself if he doesn't agree to marry her); then it chronicles their marriage and separation.
It's an extenuating, exasperating read. Wassermann creates one of the most interesting villains in literature. Ganna Mevis, a psychotic paranoid, creates and lords over her own version of reality, admitting no contestation, trampling facts and other people's feelings, expertly using the levers of the Law to make sure she gets everything she thinks she's owed. Ganna is a new type brought about by a new social and psychological arrangement, a monstrous hybrid of a kind that has sadly become prevalent today: the petit bourgeois or commoner endowed with a tyrannical spirit and a desire for control that dwarfs anything ever attempted by past kings and Popes.
The novel shows what happens when the distorted inner reality of Ganna, despite being a psychotic's fantasy, starts exerting a degree of influence utterly incommensurate with its source, spilling into broad daylight, in the real prosaic world, an exuberant efflorescence of evil which is so petty and mundane that there's no possible way to counter it. Just like the shapeless multibrachial bureaucracy in "The Trial", Ganna acquires sinister powers of ubiquity and materialization, capable of appearing at any time in the form of shrill phone calls or incessant letters and telegrams. And just like in The Trial, there's no rational resolution at the end, no respite from the oppression: "My First Wife" ends, but the divorce proceeding doesn't (in real life, Julie Speyer outlived Jakob Wassermann by thirty years).
There are few things sadder or scarier than the complete breakdown in communications because, after that, all that remains is annihilation. Ganna is simply unassailable in her delusions, someone who's impossible to pin down, a consummate tyrant. Inaccesible to any form of consensual, shared reality, she always has the upper hand when confronted with someone bound to notions of cogency, reasonableness and fairness. A terrifying reminder to any of us who have ever argued with girlfriends, or leftists.
February 24, 2020
Strictly speaking a 3.5, I'd started on this, upon an Penguin UK article of best Oscar-related books , recommending it in relation to the recent Netflix's critically acclaimed Marriage Story.
Yes divorce settlement legalese and maneuvering are reminiscent of Marriage Story, but what struck me more was the disconnect between Herzog and Ganna bordering on the deranged, making Charlie and Nicole's infamous quarrel look so tame and controlled in comparison.
But...
Just when I was seriously doubting the realism in the book, how any woman could be as unhinged in a manner as Ganna, wondering if the prose was some metanarrative, coincidentally I explored the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard recently leaked martial discord recordings and by golly, I must say, unfortunately Wassermann was indeed onto something. I think I need to remind myself about this book once in a while whenever I start getting frustrated in my marriage...
July 13, 2019
This book has some amazing insights into the middle class and relationships and marriage, but it's a tough read. There are too many details, it's not well-paced, and there are few dialogue sections to give more connection to the characters.
The title character, Ganna, is on the border or actually way past crazy, so it's hard to fathom the obsession she has for her ex husband, coming from someone who doesn't have that much energy for even minor revenge. It's hard to read so much about her madness without much reprieve, because of how relentless she is. There's of lot of unnecessary details about their life as well, so you're just dragging through the misery of it while trying to read and find any hope or redemption for Ganna or Alexander.
The weirdest part was getting to the epilogue and finding this was all true, and was basically the author trying to tell his major life story of being hounded by this woman. I wish I'd known from the start! I almost stopped reading this book, but that adds a much more interesting dimension, so I'm proud I plowed on.
Apart from the historical interest there's only very sparse parts that I could recommend about this book, unfortunately.
The title character, Ganna, is on the border or actually way past crazy, so it's hard to fathom the obsession she has for her ex husband, coming from someone who doesn't have that much energy for even minor revenge. It's hard to read so much about her madness without much reprieve, because of how relentless she is. There's of lot of unnecessary details about their life as well, so you're just dragging through the misery of it while trying to read and find any hope or redemption for Ganna or Alexander.
The weirdest part was getting to the epilogue and finding this was all true, and was basically the author trying to tell his major life story of being hounded by this woman. I wish I'd known from the start! I almost stopped reading this book, but that adds a much more interesting dimension, so I'm proud I plowed on.
Apart from the historical interest there's only very sparse parts that I could recommend about this book, unfortunately.
March 16, 2017
Devastatingly true and grim - makes Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf look like a cakewalk. Forget about Gone Girl's comparatively amateur antics: Wassermann's wife, not his life, is his punishment.
March 16, 2019
Extraordinary.
October 7, 2019
An all too realistic narration of a marriage as it goes topsy-turvy. It is in fact a factual account of the author's own disastrous marriage.
February 17, 2025
“she forgot everything from one hour to the next, the way only angels or demons forget; I forgot none of it, for all eternity. And it grew darker and darker in my heart.”
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