Does Fritz do the "It would be better for him to die than for justice to pass out of the world" line? Because if so, OOOUUUCH. /o\
No idea, since I confess I haven't read the play myself, nor seen it on stage, though since Müller is a modern classic by now, I should be able to get his collected plays at my library once I'm back home. (I met him once in Los Angeles, Heiner Müller that is, though it was in passing since I was getting shown the house he had a current scholalrship in and I would have a scholarship in the next year.) The lecturer didn't quote what Müller lets Fritz say verbatim, he just says that it's the same thing FW says earlier in the play.
Also, you're too kind with the BNF, I dabble in this era at best, but I do enjoy it, and conversations with people who care about historical characters as passionately as I do - even if they're not all the same characters - are exhilarating and inspiring to me.
Re: trauma - yes. Btw, another thing the lecturer pointed out that Carlos in Schiller's "Don Carlos" gets to deal (i.e. mourn, despair, try with new resolution etc.) with the death of his beloved friend right in front of him, however briefly (since he himself is doomed when the play ends), whereas in the three works he majorly focuses on, this isn't the case - Fontane's Katte section is explicitly about him, not Fritz, ditto Roes' novel "Zeithain", and while Müller's play shows post-Katte Friedrich in the last scene, it's to hammer home his devastating conclusion. The grieving process for the loss of friend and friendship both thus isn't there in any of the three.
Travel Guide as key source: Some Fontane background might not be amiss. He's interesting in his own right, with both parents descendants of French emigrants to Prussia (courtesy of Louis XIV revoking the edict of Nantes), hence his father being called Louis, not Ludwig, for example. His father was an apothocary and gambler not good at gambling with high flying plans doomed to falter every time, but a great story and anecdote teller, and a big Napoleon fan who had an anedcote about each of the marshals, for example, and young Theo role played Marshal Ney for his dad, for example. (All in good humor. Louis F. brought his family near bankruptcy more than once but adored his kids and loved playing with them.) Mom was more strict, but she had to be (thankless job that it was - Theo said as a child, he prefered Dad and only growing up understood they'd all have been out on the street if not for his mother playing bad cop now and then). Anyway, collecting anecdotes and telling them at all kinds of occasions was something that came natural to Theodor Fontane due to this heritage. He worked as a jouirnalist for a good long while, where this came in handy, and "Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg" - where the Katte interlude is from - is of his transition period between journalist and full time novelist. His other famous travel book is "Jenseits des Tweed", inspired by the time he was a correspondant in Britain and holidayed in Scotland when not working in London.
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Re: The Lecture, summarized
Date: 2019-09-19 07:39 pm (UTC)No idea, since I confess I haven't read the play myself, nor seen it on stage, though since Müller is a modern classic by now, I should be able to get his collected plays at my library once I'm back home. (I met him once in Los Angeles, Heiner Müller that is, though it was in passing since I was getting shown the house he had a current scholalrship in and I would have a scholarship in the next year.) The lecturer didn't quote what Müller lets Fritz say verbatim, he just says that it's the same thing FW says earlier in the play.
Also, you're too kind with the BNF, I dabble in this era at best, but I do enjoy it, and conversations with people who care about historical characters as passionately as I do - even if they're not all the same characters - are exhilarating and inspiring to me.
Re: trauma - yes. Btw, another thing the lecturer pointed out that Carlos in Schiller's "Don Carlos" gets to deal (i.e. mourn, despair, try with new resolution etc.) with the death of his beloved friend right in front of him, however briefly (since he himself is doomed when the play ends), whereas in the three works he majorly focuses on, this isn't the case - Fontane's Katte section is explicitly about him, not Fritz, ditto Roes' novel "Zeithain", and while Müller's play shows post-Katte Friedrich in the last scene, it's to hammer home his devastating conclusion. The grieving process for the loss of friend and friendship both thus isn't there in any of the three.
Travel Guide as key source: Some Fontane background might not be amiss. He's interesting in his own right, with both parents descendants of French emigrants to Prussia (courtesy of Louis XIV revoking the edict of Nantes), hence his father being called Louis, not Ludwig, for example. His father was an apothocary and gambler not good at gambling with high flying plans doomed to falter every time, but a great story and anecdote teller, and a big Napoleon fan who had an anedcote about each of the marshals, for example, and young Theo role played Marshal Ney for his dad, for example. (All in good humor. Louis F. brought his family near bankruptcy more than once but adored his kids and loved playing with them.) Mom was more strict, but she had to be (thankless job that it was - Theo said as a child, he prefered Dad and only growing up understood they'd all have been out on the street if not for his mother playing bad cop now and then). Anyway, collecting anecdotes and telling them at all kinds of occasions was something that came natural to Theodor Fontane due to this heritage. He worked as a jouirnalist for a good long while, where this came in handy, and "Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg" - where the Katte interlude is from - is of his transition period between journalist and full time novelist. His other famous travel book is "Jenseits des Tweed", inspired by the time he was a correspondant in Britain and holidayed in Scotland when not working in London.