Read Online Out of the Line of Fire by Mark Henshaw - Free Book Online
Authors: Mark Henshaw
Tags: Classic fiction
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Konzertsaal. He had become instantly and completely besotted by her, something that was even more remarkable given the fact that at the time he had a reputation for being, if not exactly a ladies’ man [ein Charmeur], then at least someone whose elegant manner would not have gone unnoticed amongst the women with whom he came in contact.
Apparently the first few years of their marriage were idyllic. They were both blissfully happy. His mother had been content to give up her career as a pianist to devote herself to her husband and the child she was now expecting. Even when Elena was born three years later they were still happy. But according to Wolfi, in the years that followed, his father became more and more aloof, more and more involved in his own research and the increasing administrative burden of his university post. It was as though his dead father had cast a shadow over him, a shadow that slowly transformed him into the person his father had been years earlier.
This was very cruel for my mother, Wolfi said. As a girl she had loved life and the early years of her marriage had awakened new demands in her as a woman. Then at the very moment she was discovering her own sensuality my father withdrew her access to it. An affair was something she could not easily contemplate and so for years she remained frustrated and unhappy. Eventually, however, she did discover someone with whom she fell in love and with whom she maintained a passionate and clandestine affair. I think this period was the happiest in my mother’s life.
Is such an arrangement so unusual? Wilfried Berghahn, in his short biography of Robert Musil who, coincidentally, was born in Klagenfurt, writes of Musil’s mother:
Hermine Bergauer ist, als sie heiratet, zwanzig Jahre alt. Sie scheint auf einen Mann zu hoffen, der ihr Leben fest in seine Hand nimmt und ihre Phantasie beschäftigt. Aber Alfred Musil liegt es offensichtlich nicht, Autorität auszuüben. Er steht dem Temperament und Heftigkeit der Gefühle seiner Frau zeitlebens ein wenig hilflos gegenüber. Sie indes vermag in seiner beruflichen Karriere keinen Inhalt für ihr eigenes Leben zu finden. Als sie 1881 nach sieben Ehejahren und bald nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes in Komotau einen Bekannten ihres Mannes namens Heinrich Reiter kennenlernt, schliesst sie sich an ihn an. Alfred Musil toleriert dieses Verhältnis. Reiter gehört von stund an zur Familie, begleitet Musils regelmässig in die Sommerferien…Wir finden ihn noch 1924 am Sterbebett Hermine Musils, das zu bewachen und zu besorgen offenbar seine Aufgabe ist, nicht die ihres Mannes.
Wilfried Berghahn,
Robert Musil.
p.22
[When Hermine Bergauer married she was twenty years old. She seemed to be hoping for a man who would take her life in his hands and capture her imagination. But Alfred Musil seemed incapable of exercising any sort of authority. During his entire life he seemed to be a little helpless in the face of his wife’s temperament and the passionateness of her feelings. She, on the other hand, could find no satisfaction in her husband’s professional career. Then, in 1881, after seven years of marriage and shortly after the birth of her son, she met and formed a liaison with an acquaintance of her husband named Heinrich Reiter. Alfred Musil tolerated this relationship and from that time on Reiter was part of the family, regularly accompanying the Musils on their summer holidays…It was he, and not her husband, who in 1924 attended her on her death-bed.]
What is the real mystery of language? Why do the German sentences above mean nothing to someone who does not read German? Or do they mean nothing? Why is it that as we read the translation in English tiny little scenarios of so much import in the lives of these three people unfold so clearly before our eyes?
Yet how adequate is ‘to form a liaison with’ as a translation of ‘sich anschliessen’? Does it not, in fact, mean ‘to join’ or ‘be connected’ to somebody?
Apparently the first few years of their marriage were idyllic. They were both blissfully happy. His mother had been content to give up her career as a pianist to devote herself to her husband and the child she was now expecting. Even when Elena was born three years later they were still happy. But according to Wolfi, in the years that followed, his father became more and more aloof, more and more involved in his own research and the increasing administrative burden of his university post. It was as though his dead father had cast a shadow over him, a shadow that slowly transformed him into the person his father had been years earlier.
This was very cruel for my mother, Wolfi said. As a girl she had loved life and the early years of her marriage had awakened new demands in her as a woman. Then at the very moment she was discovering her own sensuality my father withdrew her access to it. An affair was something she could not easily contemplate and so for years she remained frustrated and unhappy. Eventually, however, she did discover someone with whom she fell in love and with whom she maintained a passionate and clandestine affair. I think this period was the happiest in my mother’s life.
Is such an arrangement so unusual? Wilfried Berghahn, in his short biography of Robert Musil who, coincidentally, was born in Klagenfurt, writes of Musil’s mother:
Hermine Bergauer ist, als sie heiratet, zwanzig Jahre alt. Sie scheint auf einen Mann zu hoffen, der ihr Leben fest in seine Hand nimmt und ihre Phantasie beschäftigt. Aber Alfred Musil liegt es offensichtlich nicht, Autorität auszuüben. Er steht dem Temperament und Heftigkeit der Gefühle seiner Frau zeitlebens ein wenig hilflos gegenüber. Sie indes vermag in seiner beruflichen Karriere keinen Inhalt für ihr eigenes Leben zu finden. Als sie 1881 nach sieben Ehejahren und bald nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes in Komotau einen Bekannten ihres Mannes namens Heinrich Reiter kennenlernt, schliesst sie sich an ihn an. Alfred Musil toleriert dieses Verhältnis. Reiter gehört von stund an zur Familie, begleitet Musils regelmässig in die Sommerferien…Wir finden ihn noch 1924 am Sterbebett Hermine Musils, das zu bewachen und zu besorgen offenbar seine Aufgabe ist, nicht die ihres Mannes.
Wilfried Berghahn,
Robert Musil.
p.22
[When Hermine Bergauer married she was twenty years old. She seemed to be hoping for a man who would take her life in his hands and capture her imagination. But Alfred Musil seemed incapable of exercising any sort of authority. During his entire life he seemed to be a little helpless in the face of his wife’s temperament and the passionateness of her feelings. She, on the other hand, could find no satisfaction in her husband’s professional career. Then, in 1881, after seven years of marriage and shortly after the birth of her son, she met and formed a liaison with an acquaintance of her husband named Heinrich Reiter. Alfred Musil tolerated this relationship and from that time on Reiter was part of the family, regularly accompanying the Musils on their summer holidays…It was he, and not her husband, who in 1924 attended her on her death-bed.]
What is the real mystery of language? Why do the German sentences above mean nothing to someone who does not read German? Or do they mean nothing? Why is it that as we read the translation in English tiny little scenarios of so much import in the lives of these three people unfold so clearly before our eyes?
Yet how adequate is ‘to form a liaison with’ as a translation of ‘sich anschliessen’? Does it not, in fact, mean ‘to join’ or ‘be connected’ to somebody?
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