Description
Book SynopsisThe first English translation of a presciently modern portrayal of emerging feminist sensibilities in a nineteenth-century family, by one of Germany's leading pre-First World War writers. Best known now for her involvement with Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud, Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937) first became famous for fiction and criticism that engaged provocatively with "the woman question." In recent years, the author's literary treatment of the challenges facing women in a patriarchal society has awakened renewed interest. Anneliese's House is the first English translation of her last and most masterful work of fiction, the 1921 Das Haus: Familiengeschichte vom Ende vorigen Jahrhunderts (The House: A Family Story from the End of the Nineteenth Century). Anneliese Branhardt, the book's protagonist, long ago renounced a career as a pianist to raise a family with her physician husband, Frank. She worries about her son Balduin - an aspiring poet modeled on Rilke - and about her equally free-spirited daughter Gitta. She is haunted by memories of a daughter who died in childhood and anxious about a risky, late pregnancy. With her domestic harmony threatened by her own stirrings of autonomy and her children's growing independence, Anneliese finds the future both frightening and promising. The edition is fully annotated, with a critical introduction and bibliography.
Trade ReviewThis translation makes Andreas-Salomé's last novel accessible to English speakers and offers an important addition to the growing body of critical work on the author. [...] With Anneliese's House, Beck and Whitinger pave the way for broadening insight into the emancipatory significance of her fiction. * FEMINIST GERMAN STUDIES *
This intricate psychological novel . . . is about the house of happiness we can build for ourselves and how that deeply human vision sits with nature. [It is] surely the best of her fiction and deserves to be read widely. -- Lesley Chamberlain * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *
Frank Beck and Raleigh Whitinger deserve praise both for rendering precise, intricate sentences from German into English, and for deciding that this novel deserves attention. -- Declan O'Driscoll * IRISH TIMES *
Unfolding largely within the titular house, Lou Andreas-Salomé's last novel delicately probes a German bourgeois family on the cusp of a new era. As it renders the inner turmoil of parents and young adult children who sometimes remain opaque even to themselves, the text gently insists on the sustaining goodwill of love in the face of inevitable social change, disappointment, passing time, and mortality. As a subtly complex response to modern times, Anneliese's House-in this finely worded translation-proves the capacities, nuance, and significance of literary evocations of marriage and family. * Lynne Tatlock, Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis *
Anneliese's House gives invaluable insight into Lou Salomé's thoughts on the complicated process of relationship between the sexes. This makes it an important book in considering her own relationships with Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud. It is translated with subtlety and sensitivity. * Sue Prideaux, author of I am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche *
A wonderfully lucid and elegant translation and a must-read not only for literary scholars but also for social historians for its evocative treatment of the "woman question" and family relationships in the early twentieth century. * Erika Rummel, Professor Emerita of History, Wilfrid Laurier University *
A Nietzschean ode to love, marriage, and motherhood, Lou Andreas-Salomé's last novel is finally available in English. Accompanied by an informative introduction and extensive notes, this well-wrought translation captures the psychological nuance and exuberance of the original's bourgeois critique of turn-of-the-century German patriarchy and its incipient anti-Semitism. * Susan Ingram, York University *
Salomé's final novel is shot through with a critical eye for the fractured realities of the time and can be read alongside her famously insightful work on Ibsen or Freud. The sharp dialogue, brilliant characterisation and architectural acuity are lovingly translated by Beck and Whitinger to make this essential reading for those interested in twentieth-century German literature and the vital recovery of major women writers. * Karen Leeder, Professor of Modern German Literature, New College, Oxford *
This first translation into English should reach a wide, international readership. [It] is readable, thoroughly considered and researched, and could serve as a model for those interested in translation studies. Beck and Whitinger's erudite introduction presents their translation philosophy, which includes bringing their readers to the foreign text by preserving elements of German language and culture (lviii-lix). Their extensive endnotes contribute an impressive amount of context and clarification to Salomé's narrative. -- Susan C. Anderson * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Biographical Sketch The Critical Fortunes of Andreas-Salomé and Das Haus Grasping the Novel: Interpretive Trends and Points to Ponder Works Cited Translators' Note and Acknowledgments Anneliese's House Part One Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Part Two Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX
