Herman Melville

Four Great Novels by Herman Melville, (Complete and Unabridged). Including Moby Dick, Typee, a Romance of the South Seas, Omoo

Adventures in the Sout

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Moby Dick is a literary classic. It charts the adventures of a madman as he pits his wits against a creature, huge and dangerous, set against the haunting background of the sea and its legends and myths. This is not a book about whaling, more a book about humanity, belief and perception, written with skill and humor. The book deserves its position as a classic epic tale. Typee was Herman Melville's first book. He mixes his personal experience of living with the primitive South Sea islanders for four months with further research and his powerful imagination to produce this great work. During his lifetime this book won him great fame, shocking his contemporaries with his descriptions of tribal life. The Readers Encyclopedia described it thus: "A vivid picture of a civilized man in contact with the exotic dream-like life of the tropics." Omoo is the Polynesian word for someone who roams from island to island. The book is once again based on his own experiences, this time he is a crew member whaling in the South Seas. The book gives an account of the life of a sailor in the nineteenth century on the high seas - enlisting the locals, handling deserters and mutiny, visiting beautiful Polynesian islands. A fascinating window through time and space. Redburn is a novel taking us back to Herman Melville's youth - in this book he is a boy on a packet ship sailing between New York and Liverpool. It is a coming of age story, moving from innocence to manhood, encountering bullying, slavery and social privilege. It is punctuated with humor and irony, metaphor and transendence. A semi-autobiographical novel, it helps us understand Herman Melville who lost his father when his was only twelve, his father died penniless after the failure of his business.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Benediction Classics
• Seitenzahl: 1152
• Erscheinungstermin: 14. April 2013
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 250mm x 175mm x 65mm
• Gewicht: 2122g
• ISBN-13: 9781781393819
• ISBN-10: 1781393818
• Artikelnr.: 38032175

Autorenporträt

Herman Melville was an American Renaissance novelist, poet, and short story writer who lived from August 1, 1819, to September 28, 1891. His most well-known pieces are Typee (1846), a romanticized narrative of his experiences in Polynesia; Moby-Dick (1851); and Billy Budd, Sailor, a novella that was released after his death. Although Melville was no longer well-known to the general public at the time of his death, a Melville renaissance began in 1919, the year of his birth. In the end, Moby-Dick was regarded as one of the best American novels. The third child of a wealthy merchant who died in 1832, leaving the family in terrible financial shape, Melville was born in New York City. He sailed as a common sailor in 1839, first as a whaler Acushnet and subsequently as a merchant ship. However, he abandoned ship in the Marquesas Islands. His first work, Typee, and its follow-up, Omoo (1847), were travelogues inspired by his interactions with the island peoples. He was able to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of Boston lawyer Lemuel Shaw, because to their prosperity. His debut novel not drawn from personal experience, Mardi (1849), was not well received.

Rezensionen

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung | Besprechung von 07.09.2019

Peeping Tom
Herman Melvilles "Typee"

Das Buch trug keine gängige Gattungsbezeichnung, und genau diese Uneindeutigkeit machte 1846 seinen Erfolg aus: In "Typee" erzählte der junge Debütant Herman Melville von seinen Reisen als Seemann und vor allem von einigen Monaten in einem abgeschiedenen Inseltal als entlaufener Matrose, der Unterschlupf bei einem gastfreundlichen Südsee-Stamm fand, der noch nicht intensiv mit Fremden in Kontakt gekommen war. So weit, so nahe an Melvilles eigenen Erlebnissen. Ob es aber sexuell tatsächlich so freizügig bei den Typee (der Name des Stammes) zugegangen ist, wie im Buch vom Ich-Erzähler Tom berichtet, kann mangels anderer Berichte Melvilles nicht mehr rekonstruiert werden. Seine Erzählung traf jedenfalls genau den Nerv im prüden England des frühen Viktorianischen Zeitalters und dem noch prüderen Amerika. Und der Untertitel tat das Seine dazu: "A Peep at Polynesian Life".

Warum Alexander Pechmann in seiner Neuübersetzung darauf verzichtet hat, den "Schlüssellochblick", was wohl die gängige deutsche Entsprechung für peep gewesen wäre, entfallen zu lassen und das Buch nun ganz ohne Gattung auf die Leser loszulassen, erläutert er leider nicht in seinem umfangreichen Nachwort. Dafür liest sich diese insgesamt vierte deutsche Übertragung von Melvilles zu Lebzeiten mit Abstand erfolgreichstem Buch sehr gut, weil Pechmann den Erzählton des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts auch ohne Archaismen trifft - wer "Vorkehrungen" statt "Vorbereitungen" sagt, ist diesbezüglich auf dem richtigen Weg. Hoffentlich wird er auch noch "Omoo" übertragen, die Fortsetzung zu "Typee" mit weiteren Abenteuern von Peeping Tom.

apl.

Herman Melville: "Typee".

Hrsg. und aus dem Amerikanischen von Alexander Pechmann. Mare Verlag, Hamburg 2019. 447 S., geb. im Schuber, 38,- [Euro].

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