Book Review - socialist magical realism: Trobadora Beatrice
Danny Yee
as Chronicled by Her Minstrel Laura
- A Novel in Thirteen Books and Seven Intermezzos
Irmtraud Morgner
translated from the German by Jeanette Clausen
University of Nebraska Press 2000
492 pages, index
A book review by Danny Yee
http://dannyreviews.com/h/Irmtraud_Morgner.html
Beatrice has slept for more than eight hundred years, in an attempt to
escape "the medieval world of men". With highway construction about to
demolish her castle, she awakes in Provence in May 1968, to find things
are not as she had envisaged. After a sojourn in Paris, she moves to the
German Democratic Republic, "a land of miracles". Employment prospects
for female troubadours are not good, but she obtains work first operating
a poetry generator and then as a writer -- and convinces Laura, a writer
turned trolley-driver, to become her minstrel. Aided by the magic of her
sister-in-law the Beautiful Melusine, who is half-human and half-dragon,
Beatrice travels around Italy hunting a unicorn, before returning to
help Laura raise her baby son. Meanwhile Melusinian magic has helped
Laura find a suitably enlightened lover.
_The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by Her
Minstrel Laura_ presents a unique East German socialist magical realism,
perhaps a magical social realism. The structure is innovative and the
content challenging, and Morgner has an unusual style, making extensive
use of sentence fragments and long paragraphs. But none of that hinders
enjoyment: Morgner is genuinely witty, intelligently funny, and highly
entertaining.
_Trobadora Beatrice_ is a montage novel, with many parts only loosely
connected to the central story. The long "intermezzos" are portions of
an earlier novel by Morgner (about Laura's husbands and their parents)
and the "books" are made up of short chapters, many of which are pieces
in their own right, some taken from other sources -- poems, industrial
"production-line" reports, and travelogues, along with science writings
(on physics, artificial intelligence, nutrition, gerontology) and
political speeches and announcements (on abortion, the Vietnam War).
A sampling of book and chapter titles will give something of a feel
for this:
"Flight on a dragon's back", followed by "Trobadora Beatrice's
self-criticism above the Luther city, Wittenberg"
"Love legend by Laura Salman, which Beatrice de Dia passes off
as her own work to thirteen male and seven female employees of
the Berlin S-Bahn"
"Wherein the reader learns what the Beautiful Melusine copied
from Irmtraud Morgner's novel _Rumba for an Autumn_ into her
35th Melusinian book in 1964"
"The excerpts read by Beatrice from the communique from the
Armed Liberation Forces of South Vietnam about the great victories
of the offensive during the month of 30 March to 1 May 1972"
It is as if Morgner had taken all her unpublished works, along with
whatever other documents happened to be around at the time, and built
a novel around them. That may not sound like either the recipe or the
ingredients for great literature, but in this case it works superbly.
The montage provides variety and changes in pacing, but doesn't endanger
the coherence of the work (though a list of major characters at the
beginning is helpful in following connections). And it allows Morgner to
juxtapose different genres and to approach ideas from several directions:
fantastic metaphors, indirect references, and allusions sit next to
blunt statement, scientific prose, and political announcements.
_Trobadora Beatrice_ is a feminist novel: it is about women and their
relationships with one another, with men, with their children and
parents, and with the state, society, housework, and history. It is
also a reflexive novel, about writing, the relationship between writers
(or perhaps different aspects of the individual writer), socialist
aesthetics, and the creative process. And it is a political novel,
grounded (fantastic elements notwithstanding) in the politics and history
of East Germany, and to a lesser extent of France. (_Trobadora Beatrice_
was a bestseller in the GDR, but one wonders how it passed the censors,
since it's not always clear which parts are intended as parody.)
For outsiders it offers fascinating windows onto East German social
history; this translation comes with a glossary of terminology which
they may find obscure. If it is chock-full of ideas, however, _Trobadora
Beatrice_ remains first and foremost a novel, centred on people.
--
%T The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by Her Minstrel Laura
%S A Novel in Thirteen Books and Seven Intermezzos
%A Morgner, Irmtraud
%M German
%F Clausen, Jeanette
%I University of Nebraska Press
%C Lincoln
%D 2000 [1974]
%O paperback
%G ISBN 0-8032-8260-5
%P xvii,492pp
%K fiction, feminism, Germany, world literature
%Z socialist magical realism from East Germany
29 July 2002
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Copyright (c) 2002 Danny Yee http://danny.oz.au/
Danny Yee's Book Reviews http://dannyreviews.com/
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