Am Donnerstag wurde der Literatur-Nobelpreis an die Kurzgeschichten-Erzählerin Alice Munro vergeben. Wie wir erwähnt hatten, handelt die Titelgeschichte ihres letzten Kurzgeschichtenbandes “Too much happiness” von der Mathematikerin Sofia Kowalewskaja.
Wir hatten am Donnerstag schon die Übersetzung der ersten Seiten verlinkt, wo es um Funktionen, elliptische Integrale und starre Körper geht. Um was geht es in der Geschichte sonst noch?
Munro hat ihre Informationen zu Kowalewskaja weitgehend aus Little Sparrow: A portrait of Sophia Kovalevsky von Don und Nina Kennedy übernommen, wo viele Originaldokumente, Tagebücher, Briefe aus dem Russischen übersetzt werden. Ihre Erzählung konzentriert sich auf die letzten Tage aus Kowalewskajas Leben, die Rückreise aus Nizza nach Stockholm, an deren Ende sie einer Lungenentzündung erliegt, mit längeren Flashbacks zum Beispiel zur Pariser Kommune oder in die Zeit ihrer ersten mathematischen Arbeiten mit Weierstrass, zur Familie in Palibino und der für das Auslandsstudium notwendigen Scheinehe, und natürlich auch zu Geschichten um den Brodin-Preis und die Stockholmer Professur.
In vielen Rezensionen des Buches wird die Pariser Kommune erwähnt, mit der Kowalewskaja durch ihre Schwester Aniuta und deren Mann Victor Jaclard in Berührung gekommen waren. Tatsächlich nehmen die Ereignisse um die Kommune in der Erzählung einigen Platz ein, die Kommunarden und insbesondere Jaclard kommen allerdings, wenn man denn bereit ist, zwischen den Zeilen zu lesen, nicht besonders gut weg dabei. (“Jaclard had told Aniuta she could never be a true revolutionary, she was only good for getting money out of her criminal parents. As for Sophia and Vladimir (Vladimir who had snatched him away from the police) they were preening parasites, soaking up worthless studies.”)
So richtig gut weg kommt andererseits natürlich niemand, ambivalent ist die Sicht auf Rußland, das Landleben und die im Ausland lebenden Russen, ein Thema, das in der oszillierenden Erzählung einerseits keinen großen Raum einnimmt, andererseits immer wieder in anderen Handlungssträngen durchkommt:
The Shubert grandparents. No comfort there. he in uniform, she in a ball gown, displaying absurd self-satisfaction. They had got what they wanted, Sophia supposed, and hat only contempt for those not so conniving or so lucky.
“Did you know I’m part German?” she had said to Maxsim.
“Of course. How else could you be such a prodigy of industry? And have your head filled with mythical numbers?”
Für den Mathematiker sind vielleicht die Anekdoten über Weierstrass der spannendste Teil der Erzählung.
Their house is always comfortable, with its dark rugs and heavy fringed curtains and deep armchairs. Life there follows a ritual – it is dedicated to study, particularly the study of mathematics. Shy, generally ill-dressed male students pass through the sitting room to the study, one after the other.
[…]
Those sisters – Klara and Elise – had been startled the first day Sophia entered their sitting room on her way to the study. The servant who admitted her had not been trained to be selective, because those in the house lived such a retired life, also because the students who came were often shabby and unmannerly, so that the standards of most respectable houses did not apply. Even so, there had been some hesitation in the maid’s voice before she admitted this small woman whose face was mostly hidden by a dark bonnet and who moved in a frightened way, like a shy mendicant. The sisters could get no idea of her real age but concluded – after she was admitted to the study – that she might be some student’s mother, come to haggle or beg about the fees.
[…]
Weierstrass’s thoughts and now hers, were concerned with elliptic and Abelian functions, and the theory of analytic functions based on their representation as infinite series. The theory named for him contended that every bounded infinite sequence of real numbers has a convergent subsequence. In this she followed him and later challenged him and even for a time jumped ahead of him, so that they progressed from being teacher and pupil to being fellow mathematicians, she being often the catalyst to his investigations. But this relationship took time to develop, and at the Sunday suppers – to which she was invited readily because he had given up his Sunday afternoons to her – she was like a young relation, an eager protégé.
[…]
In the autumn they went to Petersburg, and the life of important amusement continued. Dinners, plays, receptions, and all the papers and periodicals to read, both frivolous and serious. Weierstrass begged Sophia, by letter, not to desert the world of mathematics. He saw to it that her dissertation was published in Crelle’s Journal for mathematicians. She barely looked at it. He asked her to spend a week – just a week – polishing up her work on the rings of Saturn so that it too might be published. She could not be bothered. She was too busy, wrapped up in more or less constant celebration. A celebration of name days and court honours and new operas and ballets, but really, it seemed to be, a celebration of life itself.
Neben Weierstrass kommen natürlich auch Mittag-Leffler und Poincaré zu Wort, letzterer immer als “Jules” – tatsächlich war das Henri Poincarés erster Vorname:
Poincaré arrived at an exceptionally early hour of the morning, complaining at once about the behaviour of the mathematician Weierstrass, Sophia’s old mentor, who had been one of the judges for the king of Sweden’s recent mathematical prize. Poincaré had indeed been awarded the prize, but Weierstrass had seen fit to announce that there were possible errors in his – Poincaré’s – work that he, Weierstrass, has not been given time to investigate. He had sent a letter submitting his annotated queries to the king of Sweden – as if such a personnage would know what he was talking about. And he had made some statement about Poincaré being valued in future more for the negative than the positive aspects of his work.
Sophia soothed him, telling him she was on her way to see Weierstrass and would take the matter up with him. She pretended not to have heard anything about it, though she had actually written a teasing letter to her old teacher.
“I am sure the king has had much of his royal sleep disturbed since your information arrived. Just think of how you have upset the royal mind hitherto so happily ignorant of mathematics. Take care you don’t make him repent of his generosity …”
“And after all,” she said to Jules, “after all you do have the prize and will have it forever.”
Jules agreed, adding that his own name would shine when Weierstrass would be forgotten.
Everyone of us will be forgotten, Sophia thought but did not say, because of the tender sensibilities of men – particularly of a young man – on this point.
Die eigentliche Rahmenhandlung ist ihre Heimreise aus Nizza.
The weather is warmer at Nice, a few days later, when he takes her to board the train.
“How can I go, how can I leave this soft air?”
“Ah, but your desk and your differential equations will be waiting. In the spring you won’t be able to tear yourself away.”
(Eine Seite später: “She has not, of course, reminded him that her work was on the Theory of Partial Differential Equations, and that it was completed some time ago.” Kursivsetzung im Original.) Im Zug von Berlin nach Rostock spricht sie ein dänischer Arzt an und verrät ihr nach längerem Zögern, in Kopenhagen herrsche eine von den Finnen eingeschleppte und von den Autoritäten verschwiegene Pockenepidemie, sie solle nicht über Kopenhagen fahren. (Keine Ahnung, ob dieser Teil der Geschichte wahr oder erfunden ist.) Sie nimmt also einen anderen Weg nach Schweden und stirbt nach ihrer Ankunft bekanntlich an einer Lungenentzündung.
Was Munros Erzählungen von anderer “großer” nobelpreisträchtiger Literatur unterscheidet ist vor allem die Einfachheit der Sprache. (Übrigens ein Grund, die Erzählungen im Original zu lesen, denn die deutschen Übersetzungen sollen sehr viel länger und sprachlich komplizierter sein.) Stilistisch erinnert vieles an Unterhaltungsliteratur, nicht zuletzt die sehr einfach gehaltenen Konversationen:
“Perhaps you would not always be happy calling out the stations.”
“Why not? It’s very useful. It’s always necessary. Being a mathematician isn’t necessary, as I see it.”
She kept silent.
“I could not respect myself,” he said. “Being a professor of mathematics.”
They were climbing to the station platform.
“Just getting prizes and a lot of money for things nobody understands or cares about and that is no use to anybody.”
“Thank you for carrying my bag.”
She handed him some money, though not so much as she had intended.
Fazit: schnell und leicht zu lesen und sehr interessant.
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