Review of 'Die Sanfte. Eine phantastische Erzählung.' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
Think [b:Lolita|7604|Lolita|Vladimir Nabokov|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1377756377l/7604.SY75.jpg|1268631], but without the legal implications, and as a zip file.
So there is a manipulative pawn-broker of questionable ethics and mental stability in his fourties who, after stalking her, picks out one of his clients for pliability, malleability and power imbalance reasons to marry her and form her sixteen-year-old self into the companion of his dreams while lying to himself and the reader about his motivations. After months of mental abuse and isolation, she prefers to jump to her death instead of letting him drag her off from her familiar surroundings and acquaintances as there is effectively no other means she could get away from her husband/proprietor.
Questions?
As with Nabokov's Humbert, I was instantly repulsed by this narrator - despite the fact that, legally, this alliance would have been fine at the time. But then, there remains the fact of the older, better-off man …
Think [b:Lolita|7604|Lolita|Vladimir Nabokov|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1377756377l/7604.SY75.jpg|1268631], but without the legal implications, and as a zip file.
So there is a manipulative pawn-broker of questionable ethics and mental stability in his fourties who, after stalking her, picks out one of his clients for pliability, malleability and power imbalance reasons to marry her and form her sixteen-year-old self into the companion of his dreams while lying to himself and the reader about his motivations. After months of mental abuse and isolation, she prefers to jump to her death instead of letting him drag her off from her familiar surroundings and acquaintances as there is effectively no other means she could get away from her husband/proprietor.
Questions?
As with Nabokov's Humbert, I was instantly repulsed by this narrator - despite the fact that, legally, this alliance would have been fine at the time. But then, there remains the fact of the older, better-off man abusing his power over an economically compromised, "gender-disadvantaged" minor who has become his responsibility and, in all but words, property. The narrator actually seems to believe, in his rather monstrous egotism, it is his right and in the best interest of his young wife to psychologically break and form her to what he perceives the ideal. The professed love for her is hardly believable, and there are definitely none such feelings on her part. The girl, the reader learns, seemed to have been relieved when she had gotten her own bed and table after what might or might not have been the development of romantic feelings for another man who told her unflattering facts about her husband's past, and that she was known to sing when her husband wasn't there.
Dostoyevsky's style kept me enthralled despite my negative feelings towards the narrator. The atmosphere of the tale, though told from the oblivious husband's point of view, has a foreboding quality which is furthered by the fact that one knows of the wife's suicide from the very first paragraph on. The narrator may not (want to) see how all his actions led towards her doom, but the reader very well can. And the satisfying end of it is that he is left alone, and, despite what could be counted as belated insight, without redemption.
