Vener av Bernhard

by Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Runa Kvalsund (Translator)

Vener av Bernhard er ei reise tilbake til dei frie 1920-åra der alt verkar å blomstre, medan det ulmar under overflata. I romanen møter vi unge Bernhard, som er elska av venene rundt seg. Han er mild og god og ein inspirasjon for dei meir eksentriske, meir eller mindre knekte personlegdommane omkring han. Vi følgjer den unge kunstnarvenegjengen gjennom Europa og blir med til Paris, Berlin, Lugano og Firenze – fristadar for kunstnarar og dei som samtida såg på som avvikarar.

Schwarzenbach skriv fram eit miljø der kjønnsroller går i oppløysing og menneske står friare i møta med kvarandre. Boka krinsar rundt tema som kjærleik, venskap, homoseksualitet, fridom, men også lengsel etter tryggleik og det å høyre til. Romanen er i dag sett på som eit sentralt verk i den moderne, skeive verdslitteraturen og det å høyre til.

Genres: Queer, Classics, German Literature, Fiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942) was a Swiss writer, journalist, photographer and traveler.

Reviews

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bernhard is a teenage piano prodigy with a polite face and a nervous soul who lives in a rich family that expects him to behave like a future export manager instead of a future Bach wizard. By day he practices scales and fugues like a monk training for sonic sainthood, by night he drifts into a small orbit of older friends who handle him like a fragile miracle.

The two gravitational centers of this orbit are Gert, a handsome law student who secretly wants to be a painter and openly wants to stare at Bernhard forever, and Ines, a calm, elegant young woman who somehow manages to be kind, distant, and quietly powerful at the same time. Together they drive him around the countryside, feed him cake, pet a grubby white dog named Flock, and give him the dangerous idea that life could be chosen instead of assigned.

The social life of this trio looks sweet on the surface and slightly radioactive underneath. Gert flirts with Bernhard in a way that feels both protective and unsettling, Ines keeps everyone emotionally balanced while also never quite belonging to anyone, and Bernhard floats between them like a very talented piece of emotional artwork.

Their evenings involve cafés, cheap food, talk of art and music, and a lot of longing that pretends to be friendship. Meanwhile Bernhard also has real obligations like school, parents, and a future that comes with a tie and a desk. He tries to do everything at once, please everyone, and be brilliant on command. I'm sure you can guess how well that turns out.

Then the adult world notices. Bernhard s father starts to suspect that all this freedom, art, and unsupervised affection might be corrupting his carefully groomed son. Family conversations turn into subdued interrogations, and the word dangerous begins to hover in the air like a badly tuned note.

Bernhard is slowly pulled away from Gert and Ines with rules, schedules, and that special kind of moral concern that always smells faintly of fear. The book tracks this emotional tug of war, showing how a gentle, gifted boy gets caught between love, loyalty, desire, and the polite machinery of a respectable family, all while the grown ups insist this is for his own good.

This quiet, dangerous book, is beautifully written, cruelly perceptive, and emotionally ruthless. It pretends to be a gentle coming of age story about a gifted boy and his friends, then slowly turns into a study of how society crushes anything that does not fit its approved shapes. The tone is soft, almost old fashioned, which makes the cruelty sharper. Being loved by the wrong people can be more dangerous than being hated.

Bernhard is targeted because he is special, emotionally open, artistically gifted, and not easily folded into the standard male life script. His respectable family is not a safe places. It is a factory. It produces correct adults, and anything that resists gets corrected.

Desire, especially male desire that does not follow tidy heterosexual lines, is treated as a moral infection. Gert is not a villain. Ines is not a villain. They are complicated, flawed, sincere people. The real threat comes from the well mannered, well dressed machinery of normalization.

The book never waves a flag or names a party. The novel was written with Nazi Germany still very fresh. The obsession with purity, discipline, proper upbringing, dangerous influences, and social hygiene echoes the language and logic that made fascism feel reasonable to ordinary people. Bernhard is being subjected to the same kind of thinking. Identify the deviance, isolate it, remove it, claim it is for the child's own good. That is how authoritarian systems begin, with worried parents and concerned officials.

I think that the book is about the psychological soil that made Nazism possible. It shows how a society that cannot tolerate ambiguity, queerness, artistic intensity, or emotional freedom will always drift toward cruelty while calling it order. Bernhard is a kind of warning figure. If you crush the sensitive children first, the rest of the population becomes easier to manage.

The fascinating and inimitable Annemarie Schwarzenbach was a Swiss writer, photographer, and journalist, born in 1908 into a very wealthy, very conservative family. She was openly queer, politically anti fascist, and emotionally fragile in a world that had little patience for any of those things. She traveled widely, including a Ford road trip to Afghanistan, wrote against Nazism, helped refugees escape Germany, and lived a life that was intense, brilliant, and self destructive.

Friends around Bernhard חוג החברים של ברנהרד reads like a coded autobiography of what it felt like to be a gifted, queer young person trapped inside a respectable family that loved you while quietly trying to erase you. She died young in 1942 after a bicycle accident, which feels cruelly on brand for a life that burned too fast. Strangely, this book begins with a bicycle scene.

This novel is tender. It is also furious. It looks small and turns out to be about everything that goes wrong when society decides that only certain kinds of people deserve to grow.

[BrokenTune · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5* rounded up.


Bernhard is a student who has a talent for playing the piano and making friends with similarly artistically minded youths in the late 1920s. When school finishes, he persuades his family that he should receive musical training in Paris. With the move from Germany to Paris, however, begins Bernhard's journey of life on his own and he has to navigate not only his new home, new acquaintances, and difficulties making a living, he also leaves behind a circle of friends, who seem to be rather lost without him.

Freunde um Bernhard (Bernhard's Friends) is Schwarzenbach's debut novel. Written in 1930/31, Schwarzenbach had to divide her time between writing this novel and writing her PhD, an endeavour which left her close to exhaustion on many an occasion. At the time, Schwarzenbach was only 22, and it continues to astound me that she not only was in a position to submit a postgraduate degree at this point, but also that, by this time, she had already close friendships with Klaus and Erika Mann, both of whom discussed their work with her and critiqued her work. That is, at least the Manns discussed Schwarzenbach's previous novella (Lyric Novella) with her. It seems from the correspondence between Schwarzenbach and Erika, that Erika didn't get to read Bernhard until after it was published (if, indeed, she ever did read it).

Freunde um Bernhard is not a book that thrives on a gripping plot. Rather, it is a coming of age story of the main character Bernhard as well as of each of the friends surrounding him that is based on the development of the relationships between each of the friends. This is not a concept that I expected to work as well as it did, tho, it does require some patience on the part of the reader to bear with the characters. The characters, themselves, i.e. Bernhard and his friends, are well drawn out, even if they are somewhat naive at times. Then again, Schwarzenbach is fully aware of this but also describes to Erika Mann that some of the characters show much of her adolescent self and her own struggles coming to terms with the world around her.
Reading the story, this was fascinating because the set of characters, modeled - no doubt! - not only on the author but also on the relationship with her friends (particularly the Mann siblings) is such a mirror of the generation of its time. A generation of the inter-war years finding it difficult to conform to the societal norms of the previous Wilhelminian Era and trying to build a society of its own, yet, not accustomed to or comfortable with the idea of fully-fledged rebellion.

[Siv30 · Rating 3 out of 5]

לסקירה מפורטת בעברית, קישור לבלוג שלי -

https://sivi-the-avid-reader.com/חוג-...

[Denis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schwarzenbach has become, in Europe, a cult figure for many people. Her short, tragic, yet brilliant, life has become symbolic of the malaise that a whole generation felt between the two wars, of the search for humanity amidst the irreversible destruction of the basic values in the hands of dictatorial regimes, and of the quest to find oneself outside of the traditional paths. This novel (which I read in its fine French translation, and which is not available so far in the US) is, in this sense, very representative of its writer, and is surprisingly modern in its style, its narration, as well as in its themes. At the same time, it is deeply rooted in the world of the thirties, which adds wonderful depth and meaning to its impact on us. Schwarzenbach’s portrayal of young people in search of who they are is as timely today as it was in her time.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

עוקבים אחרי חוג החברים והמכרים של ברנהרד, שרובם סביב גיל 20 בברלין ופריז, רובם אמנים ומוזיקאים ובכללי נפשות חופשיות וצמאות לחיים, וליטרלי כולם שם קווירים. לספר אין באמת עלילה, הוא פוט מתמקד בדמויות וברגשות שלהן ובקשרים בניהן וכל השיט הזה, שזה כמובן הסוג האהוב עליי של ספרים.
הספר הזה הוא מאוד אוטוביוגרפי ומשקף את אנמארי ואת מעגל החברים שלה, כמו גם את הקשיים והייאוש שהיא חוותה כצעירה המתחבטת עם הזהות שלה כסופרת (וכלסבית). היא מעבירה את החוויה בצורה שאפילו אני מנקודת הזמן והמקום שלי יכולה להזדהות איתה עמוקות, מתוך כמה שהיא נערית וצעירה ומלאת תשוקה לאומנות ולעולם, אך גם מלאה בדיכאונות חולפים ואכזבות וסטירות פנימיות וסערות נפש.
התוצאה הסופית של הספר מציגה את מרקם החיים של הצעירים הפרועים והנלהבים של שנות ה20 באירופה, באופן לירי ומרתק שמשאיר אותך ברצון לעוד…
קיצר הספר הזה קחי לי בול לטעם ואני מאוהבת באנימארי קשות
אה והיא כתבה את זה כשהיתה בת 22!!!!!! היא ככ מדהימה

[Jelka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Das Nachwort bringt es auf den Punkt: "Das Buch ist eine Galerie von Porträtaufnahmen und Gruppenbildern [...]. Die Beziehungen wechseln: Liebe zu dritt, Liebe zwischen Knaben, Liebe zwischen Mädchen - und doch geht es keusch, ja fromm in diesem Liebesreigen zu. Die Erwachsenen mögen sich entrüsten, sie verstehen nichts. Der eigentümliche Charme des Buches liegt in seiner Unschuld."

[Beatrice (carvi bee) · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Si dovrebbe vietare ai giovani di dichiararsi soli”.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

1931 ist dieses Buch als erster Roman der damals 23-jährigen Annemarie Schwarzenbach erschienen.

Es handelt von einer Gruppe junger, priviligierter Menschen, von den einige ein künstlerisches Leben anstreben, die alle in Beziehung zu Bernhard, einem 17-jährigen liebenswerten Musikstudenten stehen.

Interessant sind in diesem Roman die Rollen der Protagonisten. Da ist das Geschwisterpaar, das wie ein Liebespaar wirkt, da sind Ines und Gert, die befreundet sind, aber wie Geschwister miteinander umgehen. Die Geschlechterrollen sind ganz und gar nicht traditionell angelegt.
Das Buch thematisiert Homosexualität, Melancholie und die Suche der jungen Menschen nach ihrem Platz im Leben. Es zeigt, wie wichtig dabei die freundschaftlichen Beziehungen sind, aber auch welchen Schmerz diese auslösen können.

[Kristine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dette var en utrolig deilig bok! Så engasjerende, elegant og full av liv. Den er også utrolig godt oversatt. En fryd å lese!

Jeg må innrømme at et par av karakterene gikk meg en anelse på nervene etterhvert, med all sin selvsentrerte og lammende lidelse, men såpass må man vel kanskje tåle fra en gjeng skeive misfits på 1920-tallet. Og Schwarzenbach var bare 23 år da hun skrev boka! Jeg vil lese mer av henne.

[Mette Løkeland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein ung og lett roman sett i eit kunstnarmiljø delvis i Frankrike og Tyskland på 30-talet, og skrive av ei på 23 år. Det er ei brytningstid i dei unge, men òg i Europa. Vennskap, kunstnarleg utvikling, forelsking og søkande sjeler som ikkje følger dei tradisjonelle parkonstellasjonane på den tida. Føraren vert nemnd, så sett frå ettertida er det nesten som eit frampeik. Boka er sett på som eit av dei tidlege og sentrale verka i den skeive litteraturen står det på omslaget.

[Marian · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Du er veldig ung til å snakke slik", seier Gérald (...) Så svarer Gert: "Slik er det ikkje min herre. Vi unge er jo mykje meir sårbare, fordi vi er opnare, livet vårt er eit einaste stort spørsmål, og vi lever av det som rører seg i sjela vår åleine".

En veldig fin bok dette, både en tidsreise tilbake til 1920/30-åra og samtidig så allmenngyldig, om ungdommens sårbarhet og søken etter å finne seg selv, lengselen etter å høre til.

[Telemachus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually this is the only book that matters to me right now

[Lnrno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yaoi frå ei anna tid

[Torden · Rating 5 out of 5]

En nydelig bok! Anbefales