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River without Banks #3
Epilog
German
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
21 people want to read
About the author
Hans Henny Jahnn
56 books49 followersHans Henny Jahnn (17 December 1894, Stellingen – 29 November 1959, Hamburg) was a German playwright, novelist, and organ-builder.
As a playwright, he wrote: Pastor Ephraim Magnus (1917), which The Cambridge Guide to Theatre describes as a nihilistic, Expressionist play "stuffed with perversities and sado-masochistic motifs"; Coronation of Richard III (1922; "equally lurid"); and a version of Medea (1926). Later works include the novel Perrudja, an unfinished trilogy of novels River without Banks (Fluss ohne Ufer), the drama Thomas Chatterton (1955; staged by Gustaf Gründgens in 1956),[1] and the novella The Night of Lead. Erwin Piscator staged Jahnn's The Dusty Rainbow (Der staubige Regenbogen) in 1961.
Jahnn was also a music publisher, focusing on 17th-century organ music. He was a contemporary of organ-builder Rudolf von Beckerath.
As a playwright, he wrote: Pastor Ephraim Magnus (1917), which The Cambridge Guide to Theatre describes as a nihilistic, Expressionist play "stuffed with perversities and sado-masochistic motifs"; Coronation of Richard III (1922; "equally lurid"); and a version of Medea (1926). Later works include the novel Perrudja, an unfinished trilogy of novels River without Banks (Fluss ohne Ufer), the drama Thomas Chatterton (1955; staged by Gustaf Gründgens in 1956),[1] and the novella The Night of Lead. Erwin Piscator staged Jahnn's The Dusty Rainbow (Der staubige Regenbogen) in 1961.
Jahnn was also a music publisher, focusing on 17th-century organ music. He was a contemporary of organ-builder Rudolf von Beckerath.
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June 15, 2023yeah, it‘s not nice to rate a posthumously published novel like the third & final part of jahnn’s trilogy „fluss ohne ufer“ bad, as it was never finished by the author & remained a fragment. therefore: no rating – but a few words nonetheless.
if you loved the previous installments of the trilogy, „das holzschiff“ & „die niederschrift des gustav anias horn“, you won‘t necessarily like this one. in today's terminology, it‘s more of a spin-off than a direct continuation. the story of the previous installments has come to an end, & you will basically not learn anything new (not much at least) about the happenings of part 1 & 2. as the title suggests, there‘s a switch in perspective & a change of the narrative mode.
we follow a diverse cast of characters, which to some extent already were introduced to us in part 2 of the trilogy, but this time it‘s all about them. so you‘ll get to learn more about xavier faltien, vetenarian dr. lien, gemma, egil bohn & especially about gustav's son nikolaj.
the fragment & its partly fragmentary chapters make up roughly 400 pages, but there's not really an overarching plot, it‘s just silhouettes, more or less. with that said, there‘s a clear shift of poetics going on, a shift in how the events are portrayed to us, as the „epilog“ reads mostly like a 19th-century realist novel. the prose is close to the levels of previous installments, although not that refined. but gone are nearly all the ambiguous moments, gone are the questions that arise, & the themes explored are mostly „more of the same“, although nothing is quite as deep & expansive as in part 2. the dialogues are highly artificial, probably not in a good way, as mid-20th-century people are almost talking like in a goethe text, so dialogues feature page long segments loaded with pathos.
besides that, there's simply not much new the „epilog“ brings to the table, & one questions, if this installment really was necessary, or if jahnn missed the right moment to let his monumental work go.
the text even can be highly comical, although not out of intention. in fact, the text is pretty dead serious, & whatever mysterious aura was inheriting parts 1 & 2, has vanished. so what’s left is a highly demystified & flat novel. the unintentionally comical nature results out of lines like the one below, which is a dialogue between two male protagonists:
„[…] Oh, wenn ich nur eine Woche lang so glücklich bleiben dürfte<,> wie ich jetzt bin! Eine Woche lang müsstest du mich jeden Morgen so küssen wie heute – du schmeckst so jung und nach lebendigem Pferd […]“
„[…] Oh, if only I could stay as happy as I am now for one week! For a week you would have to kiss me every morning like you do today - you taste so young and like a living horse […]“
also, it's quite ironic when a family has 3 sons, & all of them are of homosexual or at least of bisexual nature. almost throughout the whole novel the only kind of sexuality or love that‘s portrayed extensively, is the homosexual form. that’s not necessarily a critique, but it is rather unbelievable in a realistically portrayed world, one could argue.
the „epilog“ goes even further: slightly older men or strangers have erotic encounters with 16-year-old boys, & the boys are fine with it, as they even long for the older ones.
also, people tend to drink horse & cow urine for the good hormones, as if it is or was a normal thing.
mother gemma has a talk with her coming-of-age son about love, which is so cringy(as are large parts of the novel), you don‘t know whether to laugh or cry.
& the list goes on.
it’s not all bad, & the prose most of the time is at least solid, but in the end there's just no good reason to read this book, except if you are a literary researcher or a completionist – like me. otherwise: enjoy jahnn's praiseworthy magnum opus for what it is, but do yourself a favor & stop with part 2. the previous installments cemented jahnn as one of the most gifted german-language writers, but the „epilog“ has nothing to do with it & unfortunately can only subtract from it.
to be fair, we don't know what jahnn was going to do with this conclusory part of the trilogy or how far it was progressed, but as it stands, it's just no reading recommendation.
if you loved the previous installments of the trilogy, „das holzschiff“ & „die niederschrift des gustav anias horn“, you won‘t necessarily like this one. in today's terminology, it‘s more of a spin-off than a direct continuation. the story of the previous installments has come to an end, & you will basically not learn anything new (not much at least) about the happenings of part 1 & 2. as the title suggests, there‘s a switch in perspective & a change of the narrative mode.
we follow a diverse cast of characters, which to some extent already were introduced to us in part 2 of the trilogy, but this time it‘s all about them. so you‘ll get to learn more about xavier faltien, vetenarian dr. lien, gemma, egil bohn & especially about gustav's son nikolaj.
the fragment & its partly fragmentary chapters make up roughly 400 pages, but there's not really an overarching plot, it‘s just silhouettes, more or less. with that said, there‘s a clear shift of poetics going on, a shift in how the events are portrayed to us, as the „epilog“ reads mostly like a 19th-century realist novel. the prose is close to the levels of previous installments, although not that refined. but gone are nearly all the ambiguous moments, gone are the questions that arise, & the themes explored are mostly „more of the same“, although nothing is quite as deep & expansive as in part 2. the dialogues are highly artificial, probably not in a good way, as mid-20th-century people are almost talking like in a goethe text, so dialogues feature page long segments loaded with pathos.
besides that, there's simply not much new the „epilog“ brings to the table, & one questions, if this installment really was necessary, or if jahnn missed the right moment to let his monumental work go.
the text even can be highly comical, although not out of intention. in fact, the text is pretty dead serious, & whatever mysterious aura was inheriting parts 1 & 2, has vanished. so what’s left is a highly demystified & flat novel. the unintentionally comical nature results out of lines like the one below, which is a dialogue between two male protagonists:
„[…] Oh, wenn ich nur eine Woche lang so glücklich bleiben dürfte<,> wie ich jetzt bin! Eine Woche lang müsstest du mich jeden Morgen so küssen wie heute – du schmeckst so jung und nach lebendigem Pferd […]“
„[…] Oh, if only I could stay as happy as I am now for one week! For a week you would have to kiss me every morning like you do today - you taste so young and like a living horse […]“
also, it's quite ironic when a family has 3 sons, & all of them are of homosexual or at least of bisexual nature. almost throughout the whole novel the only kind of sexuality or love that‘s portrayed extensively, is the homosexual form. that’s not necessarily a critique, but it is rather unbelievable in a realistically portrayed world, one could argue.
the „epilog“ goes even further: slightly older men or strangers have erotic encounters with 16-year-old boys, & the boys are fine with it, as they even long for the older ones.
also, people tend to drink horse & cow urine for the good hormones, as if it is or was a normal thing.
mother gemma has a talk with her coming-of-age son about love, which is so cringy(as are large parts of the novel), you don‘t know whether to laugh or cry.
& the list goes on.
it’s not all bad, & the prose most of the time is at least solid, but in the end there's just no good reason to read this book, except if you are a literary researcher or a completionist – like me. otherwise: enjoy jahnn's praiseworthy magnum opus for what it is, but do yourself a favor & stop with part 2. the previous installments cemented jahnn as one of the most gifted german-language writers, but the „epilog“ has nothing to do with it & unfortunately can only subtract from it.
to be fair, we don't know what jahnn was going to do with this conclusory part of the trilogy or how far it was progressed, but as it stands, it's just no reading recommendation.
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