7 Richard A. Koc, The German Gesellschaftsroman at the Turn of the Century: A Comparison of the Works of Theodor Fontane and Eduard von Keyserling (Berne: Peter Lang, 1982), p. 9.
8 Nicholas Boyle, German Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 105.
9 Tilman Krause, “Nicht lesen, schlürfen,” Die Zeit, 14 May 2005.
10 Felix Salten, Gestalten und Erscheinungen, 2nd Ed. (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1913), p. 70.
11 Gabriele Radecke, Afterword to Wellen, by Eduard von Keyserling (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2018), p. 178.
12 Mann, “Zum Tode Eduard Keyserlings,” p. 258.
13 Homscheid, Eduard von Keyserling, p. 80.
14 Koc, The German Gesellschaftsroman, pp. 7-15.
15 Gordon A. Craig, Theodor Fontane: Literature and History in the Bis-marck Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 184-188.
16 Mann, “Zum Tode Eduard Keyserlings”, p. 261.
17 According to the writer Peter Härtling, once you become familiar with Keyserling’s work, “you will realise that you have been missing it. It is the connection between Fontane and Thomas Mann.” Peter Härtling, Afterword to Wellen, by Eduard von Keyserling (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1982), p. 134.
18 Florian Illies, “Für die blaue Stunde,” Die Zeit, 29 August 2018.
19 Reich-Ranicki, Literarisches Quartett, 6 February 1998.
20 Not all scholars agree that there is an increase in the use of light or colour in Keyserling’s later works. See, for example, Richard A. Weber, Color and Light in the Writings of Eduard von Keyserling (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), pp. 329-330.
21 Koc, The German Gesellschaftsroman, pp. 50-52, 56-58, 94-98, 110-117, 146-155, 163-169.
22 Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow, “Eduard von Keyserling und die Literatur der europäischen Dekadenz,” in Baltisches Welterlebnis: die kulturgeschichtliche Bedeutung von Alexander, Eduard und Hermann Graf Keyserling. Beiträge eines internationalen Symposiums in Tartu vom 19. bis 21. September 2003, ed. Michael Schwidtal and Jaan Undusk, (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2007), p. 309.
23 Diether H. Haenicke, “Vitalität und Dekadenz: Beobachtungen zum Typus des Helden in Eduard von Keyserlings Roman Wellen,” in Eduard von Keyserling: a Symposium, ed. A. Wayne Wonderley (Lexington: Academic and Professional Research Associates Press, 1974), pp. 18-20; Koc, The German Gesellschaftsroman, pp. 58-65.
24 Haenicke, “Vitalität und Dekadenz,” p. 17; Härtling, Afterword to Wellen, p. 135; Koc, The German Gesellschaftsroman, pp. 173-183, 186-188.
25 Koc, The German Gesellschaftsroman, p. 40.
26 Härtling, Afterword to Wellen, p. 135.
27 Homscheid, Eduard von Keyserling, p. 338.
The Translator
Gary Miller is a senior lecturer in the history department at the University of Massachusetts Boston and an associate professor of liberal arts at Berklee College of Music. He teaches courses in European history and film studies.
Vous êtes tous1 les deux ténébreux et discrets:
Homme, nul n’a sondé le froid de tes abîmes,
O mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes,
Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets.
Baudelaire
Note
1 Vous êtes tous… de garder vos secrets: The third stanza of the poem L’Homme et la mer (The Man and the Sea) by the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), which was published in 1857 in the book Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil).
The two of you are shadowy, deep, and wide.
Man! None has ever plummeted your floor –
Sea! None has ever known what wealth you store –
Both are so jealous of the things you hide!
Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)
Chapter One
The widow of General von Palikow entered the sitting room with Fräulein Malwine Bork, her longtime companion and friend. They needed to catch their breath for a moment. The Generalin sat on the sofa, which had been freshly covered with a length of bright red and black calico. She was very hot and undid the hat band under her chin. Her lilac-coloured summer dress rustled lightly, the white ringlets of hair on her temples were askew and she breathed heavily. She sat silently for a moment and looked critically about the room with her slightly protruding bright blue eyes. The room was whitewashed, a few pieces of heavy furniture stood along the walls, the sand strewn on the floorboards glistened in the afternoon sun. It smelled here of quicklime and seaweed.
“Hard,” said the Generalin, and she laid her hand on the sofa.
Fräulein Bork tilted her head, with its lightly greying hair, towards her left shoulder, looked sharply through the lenses of her pince-nez at the Generalin, and her tanned face, which looked like the face of a clever older gentleman, broke into a thoughtful, indulgent smile. “The sofa,” she said, “of course, but one cannot expect anything better. Given the circumstances, it’s perfectly good.”
“Dear Malwine,” responded the Generalin, “You have a habit of defending everything against me. I am not criticising the sofa. I said only that it is hard, which is surely permissible.”
Fräulein Bork made no reply, but maintaining her indulgent smile, she now looked sceptically through her pince-nez at the small garden that lay outside the window. Stunted lettuce and cabbage plants were growing there, along with sunflowers with great black hearts, and over everything lay a veil of light yellow dust. Beyond that the beach, bright orange in the late afternoon sun, and finally the sea, indistinct from all the restless shimmer that swam upon it, bordered by two regular white lines of surf. And a monotonous roar came over the air, as if directed by a drowsy conductor’s baton.
The Generalin had rented the Bull’s Inn for the summer so that she might gather her family around her by the sea. She had arrived three days ago with Fräulein Bork, Frau Klincke, the cook, and Ernestine, the little maid, in order to prepare everything. It had required a good deal of thought and effort to find room for all of these people, and it was not just a question of accommodation, for as the Generalin would often say, “I know my children, and they are critical of everything that I give them, like a theatre audience.” Just today the Generalin’s daughter, the Baroness von Buttlär, had arrived with her children, the two grown girls Lolo and Nini and their fifteen-year-old brother Wedig. Baron von Buttlär was supposed to follow as soon as the hay harvest ended, and Lolo’s fiancé, Hilmar von dem Hamm, a lieutenant in the Brunswick Hussars, was also expected.
“Will they all have enough to eat this evening?” began the Generalin once again. “Travel makes one hungry.”
“I believe so,” replied Fräulein Bork. “There is the fish, the potatoes, the strawberries, and Wedig has his beefsteak.”
“Very well,” replied the Generalin. “By the way, a boy who must always have his beefsteak won’t have an easy life.”
Fräulein Bork shrugged her shoulders and noted apologetically, “He’s so delicate.” But this irritated the Generalin: “Of course I don’t begrudge him his beefsteak; you don’t need to defend him. But I find, dear Malwine, that you have no real understanding of what are commonly called general observations.” Then both ladies fell silent once again.
Noises came from the wooden veranda outside, the clatter of dishes and raised voices. Ernestine was setting the table for supper and bickering with Wedig. Lolo and Nini had also appeared, leaning on the wooden railing, slender in their blue summer dresses. The sea breeze blew through their light red hair, causing it to flutter prettily around faces graced with exceedingly fine, almost sickly, features. The girls knitted their eyebrows slightly and looked fixedly with their red-brown eyes at the sea, opening their lips as if they were about to smile, but then the great shimmering light before them made them dizzy. Wedig had also now joined them and gazed silently at the sea as well. The frail boy’s face was contorted, as if all that light hurt him.
“Well,” said the Generalin to Fräulein Bork i
ndoors, “that was a pleasant quiet interlude. But I hear my daughter coming downstairs, so we will have to rouse ourselves.”
Frau von Buttlär, who had slept a little, was wearing her dressing gown, and she had also wrapped herself, shivering, in a woollen shawl. She may have once possessed the pretty, delicate features of her daughters, but her cheeks were now fallen and her skin was slightly yellowed. Worn out by motherhood and her household duties, she understood fully her right to play the invalid and to no longer pay much attention to her appearance.
They sat down to their evening meal on the veranda, the red light of the setting sun streaming across the table, and the sea wind tugging at the table cloth and napkins. The presence of the sea before them, the feeling that they were not alone, caused them to fall silent.
“I always imagined that the sea was bigger,” declared Wedig finally.
“Of course, dear boy,” responded the Generalin. “You probably want an additional sea just for yourself.”
Touched, Frau von Buttlär smiled and said softly: “He has such a vivid imagination.” Fräulein Bork looked dubiously at Wedig through her pince-nez and declared: “Even the ocean is not enough to satisfy the imagination of this child.”
Frau von Buttlär now began to speak with her mother about her estate at Repenow, about arrangements that she had forgotten to make, about vegetables that needed to be preserved and servants who were unreliable – trivial things, thought Lolo, which sounded strangely out of place and inappropriate against the backdrop of the sea’s roar. But at the foot of the table a quarrel had broken out between Wedig and Ernestine. “Ernestine,” said Fräulein Bork severely, “how often have I told you that you must not speak while serving at table. Oh, cet enfant!”2 she added with a sigh. The Generalin laughed. “Yes, our Bork has had a difficult time with Ernestine’s training. Can you believe it, at noon today she decided to go bathing. She went into the sea stark naked – in broad daylight.”
“Mama, please!” whispered Frau von Buttlär. The two girls looked down at their plates, while Wedig gazed thoughtfully at Ernestine as she disappeared with a giggle.
The setting sun suddenly bathed the table with an unbelievably brilliant red light, leading Fräulein Bork to cry, “Look at that!” They all turned their heads. Giant copper-coloured clouds were massed in the pale blue sky and great sheets of gleaming red metal swam on the darkening sea, while along the shoreline the incoming waves covered the sand with lengths of pink muslin. Wedig, squinting through his red eyelashes, made a face, as if he were in pain. “Well, it certainly is red,” he said. The Generalin, however, was displeased: “You startled me, Malwine. You have a way of drawing attention to natural beauty that always alarms me and leads me to believe that I have a wasp landing somewhere on my face.”
The meal was over, and the girls and Wedig lined the veranda railing and stared at the sea. Frau von Buttlär wrapped herself more closely in her shawl and spoke in a low, worried voice of her domestic affairs.
The violent colours in the sky faded abruptly. The colourless transparency of summer twilight covered the land, and the sea, now completely dark, seemed suddenly infinite and strange. The dull roar of the sea was also no longer as monotonous or as regular – it was as if the individual voices of the waves could now be distinguished as they called to and interrupted each other. Perched on the pale dunes, small and dark, were fishermen’s cottages; here and there a yellow point of light awakened within one of them and blinked shortsightedly into the deepening night. Silence had fallen on the veranda. The strange feeling of being there, utterly insignificant in the surrounding endlessness, made each of them slightly dizzy for a moment, as if they feared falling.
“Who lives over there?” began Frau von Buttlär at last, gesturing towards one of the points of light along the shore.
“That one there,” replied the Generalin, “that is the house of the coastguard. A crippled government official is renting a room with him. You already know him, Privy Counsellor Knospelius. He is a somebody at the Reichsbank,3 I believe he signs the banknotes.”
Yes, Frau von Buttlär remembered him: “A little man with a hunched back. Quite uncanny.”
“But very interesting,” added Fräulein Bork.
“And the other houses?” continued Frau von Buttlär.
“Those are fishermen’s houses,” explained Fräulein Bork. “The biggest one belongs to the fisherman Wardein and, yes, that turns out to be where she is staying.”
“She?” asked Frau von Buttlär, alarmed that Fräulein Bork had lowered her voice in such a secretive manner.
“Yes,” whispered Fräulein Bork, “the Countess Doralice, Doralice Köhne-Jasky, she lives there with… well, let’s call him her husband.”
Frau von Buttlär did not yet entirely understand. “Do you mean Doralice Köhne, the wife of the ambassador, the one who ran away with the artist? And you’re saying that she is staying here? But this is terrible – we are acquainted with her.”
But this annoyed the Generalin: “What is so terrible? We did know her, now we do not know her. The beach is wide enough that we can walk past each other, past a stranger named Frau Grill, nothing more. Her artist, I believe, is named Hans Grill.”
“Are they at least married?” wailed Frau von Buttlär.
“Yes, or so they say, but I don’t know,” answered the Generalin. “It is all the same. She won’t make the sea unclean if she bathes in it. There is no reason, dear Bella, to make a face and act as if you and your children are now doomed.”
“And he is an entirely common sort of person?” continued Frau von Buttlär mournfully.
“Yes,” said Fräulein Bork, who was still speaking softly, but her voice now took on a tender, solemn tone, as if she were reciting a poem: “It is sad and yet in a way beautiful how the old Count discovered the talent of the young schoolmaster’s son, saw to his education, summoned him to the castle to paint a portrait of the young Countess – and then they simply had to fall in love, they had no choice. But they didn’t want any secrecy or deceit. Together they went to the old Count and said: ‘We are in love, we can’t help it, give us our freedom’, and he, the noble old man…”
“The old fool,” interrupted the Generalin. “Who told you this is what happened, who witnessed this? The two of them probably didn’t go to the old man, but rather he walked in on them, which is entirely different. Köhne was always a fool. When a man is thirty years older than his wife, he shouldn’t pose as an art connoisseur or have his wife’s portrait painted. As for Doralice, I knew her mother, a silly goose, who did nothing her whole life except have migraines and say: ‘My Doralice is so peculiar.’ Well, she did actually turn out to be peculiar, for what it’s worth, but that’s no reason for you to get all starry-eyed and to exclaim: ‘How beautiful!’ Leave Frau Grill to her fate, dear Malwine. If you turn her into the heroine of the seashore with your fantasies, you will completely turn the children’s heads. As it is, Ernestine runs down to the strand every chance she gets to steal a glimpse of the runaway Countess – and I won’t stand for that. Please be so good as to keep your poetry to yourself.”
“Terrible, terrible,” sighed Frau von Buttlär. But Fräulein Bork, seemingly deaf to the Generalin’s rebuke, was gazing dreamily out to sea in the twilight, watching as the darkness gradually brightened – the moon had risen, and silver mingled with the dark waves and the beach lay brightly illuminated.
“There they are,” cried out Fräulein Bork.
Startled, they all turned around. On the edge of a dune, clearly outlined against the moonlit sky, they saw the figures of a tall man and a woman standing quite close together. “They stand there every evening,” confided Fräulein Bork in a whisper.
Frau von Buttlär stared anxiously at the couple out on the dune, and then, agitated, called out: “Children, why are you still up? Why don’t you go to bed? You must be tired – no, no, go now, good night,” and only calmed down once the children were gone. Then she looked once more at the cou
ple, walking now along the shore in close embrace, sighed deeply and declared sadly: “This is quite unexpected, completely disastrous. Whenever I look forward to anything, something always ruins it. If only for the sake of the children, I find this very disagreeable.”
“I know, I know,” responded the Generalin. “You must always have something to complain about, otherwise you are not happy. Even as a girl, when everyone else was looking forward to a walk, you would say: ‘Why bother, I will just get a pebble in my shoe.’ But your girls have enough discipline in their bones! Just tell them that the person is Frau Grill, whom we will not acknowledge, and I am sure that Lolo and Nini will press their lips together and look straight ahead and walk right by Madame Grill.”
“Yes, of course,” answered Frau von Buttlär softly, “but to tell the truth, it is also on account of Rolf. The person in question is very beautiful, such women are always beautiful and, well, you know Rolf…”
The Generalin struck the table with the flat of her hand: “Of course, this had to happen, you are already jealous of Madame Grill. But, dear Bella, your husband is not that sort of man. Yes, there is always that old story involving the governess, which, by the way, you would do well to forget. Now and then, early in the year, the cavalry officer stirs in him once again, but that is just a sort of spring fever. It is women like you, with your jealousy, who first put these dangerous ideas into the heads of men. No, dear Bella, what is the purpose of being who we are, of what use is our social position and our ancient name, if we are afraid of every little runaway wife? You are the Baroness von Buttlär, are you not, and I am the widow of General von Palikow, and that means we are both fortresses, admitting no one who is not of our rank; and so we can sleep easy tonight, as if Madame Grill did not exist. We simply decree, Madame Grill does not exist.”
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