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- Herausgeber: Dedalus
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
The adventures of Tearaway and mother Courage in the Thirty Years War. 'The author', the aging Simplicissimus and his former comrade Tearway (a character from Simplicissimus) happen to meet in a village inn. First of all 'the author' describes how he was caught by Courage and her band of gypsies and conned into writing her life-story for her. In the main part of the novel, Tearaway then recounts his adventurous life, which takes him through the horrors of the Thirty Years' War and then to Hungary to fight against the Turks, later to Italy and Greece. He ends up as a one-legged fiddler, travelling round Germany, playing, begging, stealing and cheating. The narrative includes tales of trickery, sorcery and magic, some revolving round Tearaway's wife, who discovers a magic bird's nest which makes her invisible and which she uses it for various escapades, including cuckolding Tearaway, until she is caught and killed. Despite the fantastic elements of some episodes, the novel is told in the same down-to-earth, often earthy style of Grimmelshausen's other novels.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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A map indicating the main regions of Tearaway’s travels. The boundaries are modern.
THE TRANSLATOR
Mike Mitchell is one of Dedalus’s editorial directors and is responsible for the Dedalus translation programme. His translations include the novels of Gustav Meyrink, three by Herbert Rosendorfer and Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus and Courage. His latest include The Maimed by Hermann Ungar, Tales from the Vienna Woods by Horvath and the expanded edition of his anthology, The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy 1890–2000.
His translation of Rosendorfer’s Letters Back to Ancient China won the 1998 Schlegel-Tieck German Translation Prize.
Young Tearaway they called me, and I lived up to my name,
Went to war and risked my life in search of wealth and fame.
But Fate and Fortune, Time as well, decided otherwise,
Of booty, glory, I had none, a wooden leg my prize.
My wretched life exemplifies a story often told:
A dashing soldier in his youth, a beggar when he’s old.
Contents
Title
Map
The Translator
Quote
Introduction
The Historical Background
Chronology
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Copyright
Introduction
Tearaway (Der seltzame Springinsfeld, first published in 1670) is the third of Grimmelshausen’s novels round the figure of Simplicissimus, the first two being The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus (Dedalus 1999) and the second The Life of Courage (Dedalus 2001). As far as I am aware, this is the first translation of Springinsfeld into English.
Tearaway begins with ‘the conjunction of Saturn, Mars and Mercury.’ Grimmelshausen seems to have shared the astrological beliefs of his age; certainly astrological imagery underlies much of the structure of his novels. The significance of the astrological references was presumably obvious to his contemporaries, to the modern reader more than the most immediate meaning requires subtle explication. However, this need not detract from the enjoyment of these lively novels, which contain more than enough human and historical interest to satisfy a reader without awareness of the subtleties of the symbolic structure.
‘The conjunction of Saturn, Mars and Mercury’ is the chance meeting in an inn in Strasbourg (though the city is not named) of Simplicissimus, his old comrade, Tearaway, and ‘the author’, a young penniless and unemployed clerk, who has recently been conned into writing down the life of Courage, a former lover of both Simplicissimus and Tearaway. He it is who now writes down the story of Tearaway’s life, though this time he is adequately rewarded for his pains.
‘The author’ is a not a self-portrait of Grimmelshausen as far as biographical details are concerned: Grimmelshausen is nearer in age and experience to his first hero, Simplicissimus. The closest we get to a self-reference by Grimmelshausen is the comment by Tearaway, describing one of the more congenial winter quarters he experienced, that he ‘grew as chubby-cheeked as a village mayor in peace-time.’ Village mayor was one of Grimmelshausen’s employments after the end of the Thirty Years War.
What the conjunction of the three does allow, apart from some vivid portrait painting, is an assessment of the purpose behind these novels. Simplicissimus insists that everything must relate to an underlying religious/moral purpose. He is even reluctant to tell the other two a funny incident that happened to him because he sees no point in ‘encouraging you to indulge in empty frivolity, which is how I view the excessive laughter the story would inevitably cause. I have no wish to be responsible for other men’s sin.’
Reminded by ‘the author’ that he included a lot of funny stories in his ‘autobiography’, Simplicissimus replies that that was because otherwise no one would have read the book. He almost regrets this, he says, because now people are reading his book for amusement, like Till Eulenspiegel, rather than to learn from it.
Although this, of course, is Grimmelshausen’s character speaking, not Grimmelshausen himself, there is certainly a serious moral purpose behind his works. It is to demonstrate the ultimate vanity of earthly things, viewed against eternal truths. The lively and amusing, exciting, mysterious and gory incidents with which the books are filled are thus not just the sugar round the pill, they are essential to the moral thrust: they demonstrate the unsatisfying and unreliable nature of the things of this world, whether concerned with money, success or sex; attachment to them is dangerous to one’s eternal soul.
This does not stop the reader (and, one suspects, Grimmelshausen himself) enjoying the stories which carry the moral message. They are related with a vigour and vividness which sometimes makes one wonder whether the moral truths he feels constrained to declare are not merely an excuse for the lively narrative.
There is a further serious intent behind these novels. Grimmelshausen clearly wants to tell ‘how it was’ in the Thirty Years War. In Simplicissimus and Courage it is seen mainly ‘from below’, from the experiences of ordinary soldiers and peasants caught up in the conflict. In the central section of Tearaway, chapters 10–20, on the other hand, Tearaway’s personal account is frequently swallowed up in an overall survey of the warfare within Germany. As he tells his life story, Tearaway keeps getting diverted onto the events of the war as a whole and repeatedly has to come back, or be brought back to his own experiences. This narration of the experiences of the war reflects Grimmelshausen’s humanism, his sympathy for the sufferings of ordinary people.
The Historical Background
These novels are set against the real historical background of the seventeenth-century European conflict known as the Thirty Years War, which Grimmelshausen refers to as the ‘German Wars’.
It has been suggested by modern historians that the traditional view of the Thirty Years War as a single coherent conflict between Catholic and Protestant states, which ravaged Germany and left it completely exhausted, is a myth – a myth to which Grimmelshausen’s novels contributed.
In fact, the German ‘Thirty Years War’ (1618–1648) was part of a much wider struggle between France and the Habsburg powers (principally Spain and Austria) for hegemony in Europe which broke out intermittently in a number of separate wars during the first half of the seventeenth century. The attempt by the Dutch provinces to establish their independence from Spain was connected with it; it was complicated at times by the struggle of Denmark and Sweden for control of the Baltic area; it was coupled with the attempt by the Holy Roman Emperor to establish his authority over the German states, which was resisted by both Catholic and Protestant sovereigns alike.
One of the purposes of Grimmelshausen’s ‘Simplician’ novels is to paint a picture of the historical events, in which he took part himself. However, as suggested above, his main aims are aesthetic and moral, to amuse and to instruct. The ‘German Wars’, in which men and women can rapidly rise to great heights of fame and fortune and just as rapidly sink to the depths of poverty and degradation, provide both a wealth of exciting incident and the perfect conditions to demonstrate the vanity of worldly things. Perhaps Grimmelshausen’s own experiences during the war contributed to his outlook.
His view of the political background to the conflict is, perhaps not surprisingly, simplistic compared with the interpretations of modern historians. For the purposes of understanding Tearaway, it is best to think of the Thirty Years War as a fairly straight-forward conflict between the Protestant and Catholic forces within Germany, fought out in a series of campaigns. The principal contenders on the Catholic side are the empire itself and Bavaria, supported at times by Spain; the principal Protestant states are Weimar and Hesse, supported at times by the French and the Swedes.
Like Grimmelshausen himself, Tearaway fights on both sides, being compelled to switch whenever he is captured by the enemy. He spends most of his time on the Catholic side, however, and ends up with them, perhaps reflecting the experience of the author, who converted to Catholicism some time during the wars. There is a suggestion that the imperial/Catholic side is ‘us’, the Protestant ‘them’, but that is not very strong and contains no religious bias. Grimmelshausen’s message is universal and not based on any narrow religious dogma.
Chronology
There is frequent reference to actual campaigns and battles; the following should help the reader who wishes to follow the chronology of the novel.
Chapter 12
1620: ‘I came with the Spanish army to the Lower Palatinate when Spinola’s troops flooded into that blessed country … ’
1621: ‘I was left behind at Worms, where Spinola’s successor had withdrawn after being forced to lift the siege of Frankenthal … ’
27th April 1622, battle of Wiesloch: ‘I let myself be persuaded to join Tilly’s army, which we reached at Wiesloch, just as it was marching to meet with Mansfeld and disaster.’
10th June 1622/ 9th August 1623, battles of Höchst and Stadtlohn: ‘With that regiment I helped defeat the Duke of Brunswick at Höchst, then at Stadtlohn … ’
27th Aug 1626, battle of Lutter: ‘I helped defeat the King of Denmark himself at Lutter … ’
1629: ‘ … we had driven the King of Denmark from the field so that all the land between the Baltic and the great ocean was under our control.’
Chapter 13:
13th October 1631, capture of Würzburg: ‘I was taken by the Swedes and had to serve with them as a musketeer until the imperial troops captured me again just outside Bacharach, though not before I had helped the Swedes take Würzburg … ’
January 1632: ‘ … just as Pappenheim was preparing to drive Banér and his Swedish army out of Magdeburg.’
Chapter 14
March 1632: ‘ … beat the Duke of Lüneburg [and] relieved Stade, though leaving the town in ruins … ’
August/September 1632: ‘we failed to drive off the Dutch who were besieging Maastricht … after we had stormed Hildesheim … ’
16th November 1632: battle of Lützen.
January 1633: ‘helping to take Memmingen and Kempten … ’
Chapter 15
25 February 1634: ‘ … by that time Wallenstein had been killed at Eger.’
May/August 1634: ‘ … led us to Regensburg … once Regensburg and Donauwörth had capitulated … ’
7th September 1634: battle of Nördlingen.
Chapter 16
February, June 1635; ‘I helped the emperor recover Speyer, Worms … ’
September/October 1636: ‘what was left of our formerly incomparable regiment was sent to Westphalia … ’
January 1638: ‘Colonel de St André fell on Soest and captured it … ’
November 1641: ‘ … until the Hessian army crossed the Rhine … ’
January 1642: ‘ … forces under Lempoy, which we easily mastered and even drove from the field at the trenches outside Kempen.’
June/July 1642: ‘ … both the Bavarians and the Spaniards were out to get us.’
22 Dec 1642: ‘Guébriant managed to slip his head out of the noose … ’
June 1643: ‘During that time we were camped at Balingen … ’
Chapter 17
3rd December 1643: ‘ … the clash known as the Tuttlingen Fair.’
Chapter 18
28th July 1644: ‘After that came Freiburg im Breisgau … ’
October/November 1644: ‘ … and immediately stormed Mannheim … cleared the Hessian garrison out of Höchst, then stormed Bensheim … ’
5th May 1645: ‘He launched a surprise attack on the French at Herbsthausen … ’
Chapter 19
8th July 1645: ‘ … but Wimpfen was the first town to fall to them.’
5th August 1645: ‘Following this, Nördlingen capitulated … ’
15th August 1646: ‘ … there was an enjoyable scrap between the forces of the two sides along the River Ohm … ’
