I’ve begun with firsts in the last two posts and I will continue that here. Today’s story is the first by a German author so far. Paul Heyse’s “The Fury” is a strange little tale that replays yesterday’s relationship between violence and sexual desire in more explicit detail. Though set in Naples “The Fury” reads like a gothic exploration of how two individuals with elaborate interior lives decide to be together.
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| "The Fury" was first published in English as part of this collection from 1878 |
The seeming pitter-patter of the day is prolonged past the point of onomatopoeia. Turning from detail to detail, it appears that life is moving drab or slow but Heyse’s characters have internal lives overflowing with contradictions, questions and wonders. With a subdued style that still seems to have a kind of breadth, I was reminded of Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest. Religious desire for salvation and the quotidian structuring of sensibility are topics for both Heyse and Breton.
We begin in the early hours of the morning. As the sun rises, and the morning arrives, Heyse establishes the interplay between natural environment and those who labor in and around it: “Over Vesuvius hung one broad gray stripe of mist… the sea lay calm. Along the shore of the narrow creek that lies beneath the Sorrento cliffs, fisherman and their wives were at work already… nowhere an idle hand… here and there, on some flat housetop, an old woman stood and spun…” The world moves with a slowness which is embedded with the rapidity of working people. No character is detached from the work they do—though not defined by their job, Heyse never lets the reader forget that his characters are fundamentally laborers. And that labor relates to their identity.
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| The Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson, 1951) |
Little happens and yet lives make great shifts. A group of men, including Antonio and a priest are soon to row a boat to the city of Capri. A young woman named Laurella emerges, almost as an apparition from “behind [a] wall.” After a brief discussion with the “padre” Laurella sits on the boat, making room by swiftly moving Antonio’s jacket “without a word.” Such a little action signals a sense of comfort that disturbs the oarsman. The displacement of his clothes carries with a sensibility defined by the past.
Laurella is going to Anacapri where she will be selling silk she has spun. She must go there and return her mother is sick. We learn through her conversation with the priest that Laurella is deeply devoted to her job, her family and to what the padre calls the life of a “young Christian maiden.”
Unsurprisingly, the priest asks about marriage and Laurella explains that she is uninterested as she watched her father physically abuse her mother. Even now, many years later, after the father has passed, Laurella is struck by the pain of his actions and views marriage as a vestibule to self-immolation. She spares no words and no mercy: “if [my mother] should soon die—which God forbid!—I know who it was that killed her.” Declaration of love, as she sees it, is merely the prefix to violence.
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| Paul Heyse (1830-1914) |
It is unclear to me if we are to empathize fully with Laurella at this moment. The priest preaches forgiveness and encourages her to marry but she is staunch in her refusal: “I will never so love a man as to be made ill and wretched by him.” The narrative of a traumatized woman made uncomfortable by the societal signs of intimacy is long-standing at this point. So often, however, this type of character is defined only by pain—her existence is figured only through negative experience. Heyse refuses such a simplistic move. Instead her identity is equally influenced by the work of spinning silk and her devotion to a more ascetic life. Her life does not redound to one life-defining incident.
The boat lands and Antonio waits for Laurella to finish her work before taking her back. Again Heyse details the lives of those who are not identifiable characters but who inhabit the space he sculpts: “The marina was deserted. The fisherman were asleep, or rowing about the coast with rods or notes; a few women and children sat before their doors, spinning or sleeping; and strangers as has come over in the morning were waiting for the cool of the evening.” The two leave and thus begins the turn back to the questions of love that Heyse laid out in the first leg of the journey.
We are still in the volume titled “Romance” and that categorization again coalesces around the intimate entanglements and possibilities between a man and a woman. I have sought, in these posts, to try to draw a line through the stories in each volume and that has remained difficult. Still, there are similarities. Following Conrad’s “Youth” and Hergesheimer’s “The Token” Heyse plays on the possibilities and dangers of water. When Heyse heightens emotions, he does so not in the melodramatic way that reflects how individuals can dwell and be soaked up by their emotions. He instead relies on the surreal. This becomes clearer on the trip back.
While rowing Antonio makes clear that he desires Laurella. Upset by her lack of interest and repeated rejections, he grows angry and abusive. His understanding of the world has been wrenched: “I am not the man to let my whole life be spoiled by a stubborn went like you! You are in my power here, remember, and may be made to do my bidding.”
The danger of such threats is unsettling. Laurella is unmoved remarking as “her eyes flashed bravely on him. ‘You may kill me if you dare.’” Frustrated by the rupturing of the social protocol in which a woman must make herself subservient to the man, Antonio grabs Laurella. Rather than dwell on this scene of attempted rape, one which has been played out in so many stories, Heyse moves quickly. Laurella bites Antonio and his had begins to bleed profusely.
Almost immediately Antonio is contrite and apologetic. But his apologies read as those of a serial abuser. As Laurella leaves the boat he repeatedly calls her back explaining “If you should come to grief, I should die of horror.” A different type of selfishness permeates his being now.
When the two make it back to land Antonio haphazardly patches himself up, hiding his injury from those who might see it. As he washes his hand he expresses “she was right… I was a brute, and deserved no better.”
The next day Laurella arrives at his house. She too is apologetic. The hilandera tries to assist Antonio with his hand but he wants to no help. Overcome by remorse he apologizes. Then he apologizes again and again to an almost absurd degree. This catches Laurella off-guard. His relentless outpouring of apologies and self-effacement (though it is also self-celebratory) look to Laurella like forgiveness, something she has struggled with. Angry but moved by this response she yells at Antonio “beat me! Trample on me! Curse me! Or if it can be that you love me still, after all I have done to you, take me and keep me.” The two who ventured out in the sea together will now spend their lives together. And so Heyse’s tale ends with love after violence. Or perhaps it is love through violence.
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| Excerpt from a review in The Philadelphia Inquirer (September 3, 1899) |
I wanted a different ending if not in narrative than in tone. But I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, Heyse returns to the opening connection drawn between romantic partners and violence. The loop is made and the characters go through the dynamic change that Writing 101 classes teach. Yet, I found myself frustrated at this conclusion. Like Ira Calef in Hergesheimer’s story from last week, the abusive undercurrent of the male protagonist is made inconsequential and invisible as though it doesn’t exist.
We are left with a woman whose earlier choice not to forgive is turned into some false protective cloak. But Laurella has every reason to fear Antonio. Where yesterday’s story by Edginton ended on the establishment of a relationship after various scenes of captivity, her conclusion left the relationship unresolved. Heyse could pursue a complicated investigation of the complicated layers that define a relationship; he could elaborate on the ways violence undercuts most romantic engagements.
However what we are left with is something far too clear for what is such an otherwise peculiar tale. What we are left with is, for me, not enough.
First line: “The day had scarcely dawned.”
Last line: “Ah! well, indeed! L’Arrabiata!”
You can read “The Fury” courtesy of Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/larrabiataandot01heysgoog
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