{"id":17411,"date":"2016-01-26T01:57:50","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T05:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=17411"},"modified":"2016-01-26T01:57:50","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T05:57:50","slug":"jakob-wassermann-my-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2016\/01\/26\/jakob-wassermann-my-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"Jakob Wassermann: My Marriage<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
My Marriage<\/em><\/strong><\/span>\r\nby Jakob Wassermann\r\ntranslated from the German by\u00a0Michael Hofmann\r\nNYRB Classics\u00a0(2016)\r\nOriginally published posthumously in 1934.\r\n276\u00a0pp<\/span><\/pre>\n
Well that was quick: with their second release of 2016 NYRB Classics has almost certainly already secured a spot on my Top Ten Reads list I’ll put together at the end of the year. Wassermann’s My Marriage<\/em> is a beautifully complex emotional and intellectual account of a budding relationship that careened into a failed marriage, based, reportedly, a great deal on the author’s own first marriage to Julie Speyer, pictured on the book cover. How much is autobiographical, I don’t know, but perhaps we can take the word of the German literary historian Peter de Mendelssohn, who said it was the “exactest, most scrupulous autobiography,” “the true confession of the death-marked author,” as per translator Michael Hofmann’s Afterword.<\/p>\n
\"My<\/p>\n
The book was originally published posthumously in the autumn of 1934; Wassermann himself had died on New Years Day of that year of various troubles, including what Hofmann calls “general exhaustion.” After reading this book, we might extrapolate what\u00a0Hofmann means.<\/p>\n
To be honest, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to reading My Marriage<\/em>. That’s not to say I was dreading it or anything; rather, I figured it would be pretty good, but it wasn’t the book I was most excited for to begin this new year. But when I started it . . . it’s just exceptional. It wasn’t happy reading, particularly following Black Wings Has My Angel<\/em>, but it is an exquisite rendering of pain that is brought on by union and separation at once. Wassermann seems to be exploring, trying to comprehend just what happened with this central experience of his life, and I loved the step-by-step exploration of his painful past — not that it was entirely the past.<\/p>\n
Though autobiographical, I won’t focus on that aspect here, so let’s introduce the characters who stand in for Wassermann and Speyer. The author\/narrator is a man named Alexander Herzog. He divides his account into three sections: Mirror of Youth, The Age of Certainties, and The Age of Dissolution. Mirror of Youth\u00a0begins\u00a0before he’s ever met the persistent, eccentric\u00a0Ganna Mevis. Again, it’s like Herzog has to go back that far just to get his footing, just to see where this juggernaut that would run through his life got its beginning.<\/p>\n
The youngest of six daughters, Ganna doesn’t fit in. Ganna is fiercely competitive with her sisters. She dreamed of a glorious future. Hers weren’t the usual banal girlish dreams, they were scenarios and imaginings of an usual definition. She felt chosen, even though she couldn’t have said in what way.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Meanwhile, Herzog is a young author who has published one great book that made him no money. Nevertheless, Ganna gets a hold of the book and her imaginings tell her that she must be a part of the author’s life. She knows nothing about him, naturally — she even is afraid that any letter she sent would simply be lost amongst the flood of letters Herzog was definitely not<\/em> receiving — but she pursues him even when he obviously thinks little of her.<\/p>\n
The next day, I got a pneumatique<\/em> from her. Why the rush, I asked myself. There was nothing pressing in it. The letters were just as urgent as her speech. Big, jagged, impetuous characters that resembled a meeting of conspirators. I can’t remember if I wrote back. It seems to me it was only the third or fourth letter that induced me to give her an answer. Because she wrote to me almost every day. Always pneumatiques<\/em>. A few lines, with obvious attention to style. I thought sardonically: writing letters to a writer is surely an education in itself. And the content? Atmospherics: happy wonderment at the new turn in her life; a plea to me not to forget her; a friendly greeting because it was a nice day; anxious inquiries about my state, because she’d had a bad dream about me. She wasn’t short of things to say.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Herzog thinks back on this time and tries to understand “what possessed me to answer her?” His answer: “I don’t know.” But he has some ideas and he works through them. For one, “[e]ven the most resolute misanthrope has a spot where he falls prey to vanity. And I was anything but a misanthrope.” Still, the notes are exhausting, and he admits that sometimes, “when I was opening one of her notes, it was as though I had to push away her little hand that reached for me with greedy grasp.”<\/p>\n
Money, though . . . he’s honest enough to admit that her money and his lack thereof contributed greatly, even if he did his best to leave the subject under the surface. She’s the one who brings it up, and I love Herzog’s lingering amazement, capable of erasing the years and\u00a0taking him back\u00a0to the initial confusion as the young man pondered just what she was thinking:<\/p>\n
But patience, Ganna, patience: do you propose to take what you call your wealth, today or tomorrow, and merely drop it at his feet, unconditionally and impulsively and without regard to yourself, and without any reference to any of the usual contracts and obligations? It would be a splendid impulse, whether it were possible or not. Or is some forfeit not required — in fact, wouldn’t the person, the future, the whole man from head to toe have to serve as your collateral? Speak!<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We already know where this is heading, despite words of warning from the author himself: “You can find a woman lovable without loving her; that’s a dangerous grey area.”<\/p>\n
Marriage, honeymoon, children, pain, a slow — and strange! — separation. Throughout, Herzog — Wassermann —\u00a0shifts from a distant perspective, trying to see the forest for the trees,\u00a0to an impassioned closeness. It was his writing that brought Ganna into his life, and it is with his writing that he attempts to exorcise her. He knows in the end that such an act is impossible: “But in the end it’s just words on paper, which can be turned and twisted and perhaps challenged by a higher instance.” It’s not spoiler to say that he is still struggling even with his last paragraph:<\/p>\n
So what do I need? A hand to help me past an obstacle whose nature I cannot ascertain. A human breath to imbue me with the spirit of understanding. Understanding would surely illumine me like a flash of lightning ripping apart the sheet of darkness. And then the devil riding over the wreckage of my life would disappear with a howl into the gulch of his hell. A slightly overdone image. But then I’ve lost all sense of measure.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trevor reviews a book that will surely make his top ten of 2016 list, Jakob Wassermann’s posthumously published autobiographical novel, My Marriage<\/em>, translated from the German by Michale Hofmann. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[800,837],"tags":[556],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-17411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-jakob-wassermann","tag-german"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/My-Marriage.jpg?fit=750%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-4wP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17411"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17426,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17411\/revisions\/17426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17411"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}