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Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman Paperback – 1 Sept. 2010

by Friedrich Christian Delius (Author), Jamie Bulloch (Translator)

4.2 28 ratings

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Rome, one January afternoon in 1943. A young German woman is on her way to listen to a Bach concert at the Lutheran church. Innocent and naive, the war is for her little more than a daydream, until she realizes that her husband might never return. This is a mesmerizing psychological portrait of the human need to safeguard innocence and integrity at any cost - even at the risk of excluding reality. ------- Why Peirene choose to publish this book: 'I was simply enthralled by the structure of this narrative; a single 117-page long sentence with a beautifully clear rhythm. At the same time it's a compelling and credible description of a "typical" young German woman during the Nazi era. If we can relate to her we come close to understanding the forces that were shaping an entire generation.' Meike Ziervogel, Publisher

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Print length

125 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Peirene Press Ltd
Publication date

1 Sept. 2010
Dimensions

12.5 x 1.1 x 19.8 cm
ISBN-10

0956284000
ISBN-13

978-0956284006
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Audre Lorde
419
Paperback
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Review

"What a superb translator. This extraordinary and eloquent novella, a true tour de force, has made me long to find more of Delius's work straightway." --Miranda Seymour, writer

"A slim text. Huge literature." --Observer, Vienna

"A big historic picture in a small space" --Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

"The tension and elasticity of this superb narration are impressive."
--Die Welt

"This is a small masterpiece." -- TLS

"A revelation of humanism and hope almost musical in its intensity." -- The Guardian

"for, ultimately, it is what we know about the tragedy of World War II, and what Margherita does not, or will not ... that gives this miniature its power" -- Time Out

"Delius has the gift to articulate joy, beauty and love." -- The Independent

"This is the kind of reckoning with the past that could happen only with the passing of time."
-- Standpoint

"Delius's exploration of how indoctrination and denial work impresses with both the sympathy it creates for its bewildered protagonist and the musicality of its prose." --Financial Times

From the Publisher

Why Peirene chose to publish this book:
"I was simply enthralled by the structure of this narrative, a single 117-page long sentence with a beautifully clear rhythm. At the same time it's a compelling and credible description of a "typical" young German woman during the Nazi era. If we can relate to her we come close to understanding the forces that were shaping an entire generation. "Meike Ziervogel (publisher)

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Peirene Press Ltd (1 Sept. 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 125 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0956284000
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0956284006
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.5 x 1.1 x 19.8 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 955,554 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 82,735 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- 86,598 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)

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4.2 28 ratings

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Xavi #6

brilliant short book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 October 2022

Such a great little book. So evocative, so well told. Bach, Haydn, Rome's buildings and people, WW2, Christianity, pregnancy, hope, wrestling with philosophical contradictions all in 125 pages. Bravo

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Stewart Ross

A charming piece of writing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 June 2017

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A moving tale, clevery written and excellently translated. By the end, however, I felt it was beginning to cloy a little.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 January 2015

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Delightful.

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I do not wish to be profiled.

Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman. by F.C. Delius

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 December 2012

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Did not find it particularly moving. Very well written particularly if one knew Rome and could follow her through to the
Lutheran Church by the very good verbal map. I would be unlikely to say to any of my friends that they really must read it.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 December 2010

This is the third title from Peirene Press who launched this year publishing thought-provoking short novels of contemporary European literature in luxury paperback editions.

Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, appears rather daunting at first glance for the whole novel is written in just one 117 page long sentence, but once you start reading you soon realise that this is only due to the lack of full stops, for there are other punctuation marks and paragraphs - so don't let that worry you, let me tell you a little about the story instead ...

It is January 1943, and a young German woman in Rome is on her way to a Bach concert. The woman is heavily pregnant with her first child, and is missing her husband who is on active service in Africa. She walks through the streets of the Eternal City from her accommodation to the church, a stroll of an hour or so across Rome, and we go with her - in her head.

We see what she sees, we hear what she hears, and we know what she thinks. All her hopes, fears and memories are laid bare for us in that single sentence which contains all her thoughts. Sometimes musing on the buildings she walks past, other times remembering her courtship with Gert, a preacher who has had to become a soldier, feeling her baby stir within her belly, and always wishing to see Gert again soon. She is uneducated and naive, an innocent abroad, in Rome to be with Gert who then got redeployed leaving her stranded amongst a nation so foreign to her. She lives as a guest in an old people's home run by nuns, she tries to be close to God but is also desperate to be a good German, although she is confused by the Fuhrer who seems to want to replace God. She doesn't dwell long on things, her thoughts flit here and there, but they do keep returning to her husband, her God and her country, and we gradually build up a complete picture of her life.

Of Peirene's three books so far I liked No 2, Stone in a Landslide the best, but No3 is indeed a charming portrait of a young woman in troubled times that flows by and beguiles you, while letting you sense that a happy ending to her story is unlikely.

2 people found this helpful

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Freckles

No ordinary day

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 September 2010

This enthralling story centres around a single afternoon in January 1943.

A heavily pregnant young woman is in the "eternal city" of Rome. We learn that she is German and is residing in the capital because her husband has returned from the war due to a leg injury. Cruelly, they have been only been together for a couple of days, when Gert is recalled to serve in Africa, following Germany's defeat at El Alamein.

The young woman is on her way to the Lutheran church to attend a Bach concert. Her bewilderment and sadness is palpable, as she tries to make sense of her situation and the strangeness of Germany's presence in their ally's country. It seems like an "occupation" rather than an invitation from willing hosts. There is a "protocol" which this young woman fails to grasp. Even the unfamiliar statues and artwork confuse her, and she longs for her husband's knowledge and company. Her whole life has been influenced by the Protestant Church, reinforced by her husband's calling as a minister. This also sits uncomfortably within the very centre of the Catholic church in Rome.

What persists throughout the narrative, unusual and compelling in it's single 117 page sentence,is her innocence,her utter belief that God will prevail and a sense that if she chooses not to confront her fears.......they will never come to be. I found this deeply moving. Her whole being is concerned with the baby she is carrying and the hope that child will bring. As the music of the concert swells and unites Germans and Italians, Protestants and Catholics alike and her tears flow freely.....yes there has to be hope......for what is left in this confusing and damaged world?

Another little masterpice from Peirene.

4 people found this helpful

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Roger Brunyate

A Walk Through Rome

Reviewed in the United States on 18 December 2011

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Friedrich Christian Delius is the winner of Germany's highly prestigious Georg-Büchner Prize, but this, I believe, is the first of his books to be translated into English. And a very fluid translation too, by Jamie Bulloch -- important in that the whole novella, though divided into paragraphs, is a single run-on sentence, a third-person stream of consciousness that is virtually impossible to stop reading.

"Walk, young lady, walk if you want to walk, the child will like it if you walk," so speaks the Italian doctor to the title character, a young German woman in Rome, eight months pregnant. And walk she does, by a route that is easy to follow today, from the Waldensian hostel in the Trastevere, over the Ponte Margherita (the Italian version of her own name, Margaret), through the Piazza del Popolo, ascending the Pincio to take in its view towards St. Peter's, then along towards Santa Trinità dei Monti via the Spanish Steps, ending at the Lutheran Church on the Via Sicilia, where she attends a concert of Bach and Haydn. It is a practical walk, threading the arch-Catholic city from one outpost of German Protestantism to another.

It is also a very beautiful one, but the mother-to-be notices very little. She is not well educated, speaks no Italian, and feels isolated in a culture that she barely trusts. Besides, she is waiting for her husband to return to show her around properly. For the year is 1943, and he, though wounded on the Russian front, has unexpectedly been recalled to service following the German defeat at El Alamein, only one day after his pregnant wife had travelled to Rome to be with him.

The use of Rome as a mirror to reflect the mid-century German psyche reminds me of Wolgang Koeppen's powerful DEATH IN ROME , set in the immediately postwar years. But Delius writes at the turning-point of the war itself. He is also the more understated writer, confining himself to the thoughts of this modest young woman during her hour-long walk. At first she seems simple and unquestioning, content to leave difficult decisions to her betters. But as time passes, and she worries if she will ever see her husband again, she begins to question the discrepancies between the attitudes indoctrinated in her by the League of German Girls and the Christian beliefs of her husband and father. The concert in the church provides a magnificent climax, as her prayers interleave with the text of Bach's great Cantata 56 ("Ach, wie flüchtig"), about the brevity of human life.

Without ever spelling anything out, Delius gives an excellent sense of how the German people could have fallen under the spell of the Führer, but also have found the spiritual strength to recover their moral center afterwards. I have never seen the two phases summarized so compactly in such a short span, and with barely a mention of the horrors that have become so familiar. Instead he conveys volumes indirectly; even the mere mention of buildings in Germany such as the Wartburg Castle or the Minster in Bad Doberan (look them up) implies moral values that will outlast mere regimes.

And Delius himself? One fact: he was born in 1943... in Rome.

2 people found this helpful

K. Kennedy

A German woman living in Rome toward the end of World War II

Reviewed in the United States on 30 November 2018

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"Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman" by Delius is a short novel about a young German wife, who is living in Rome while her husband serves in the Nazi army in North Africa. She is also due to give birth shortly, and lives an isolated and insulated existence apart from the Romans. She does not seek to mingle with them, and slowly comes to realize her separateness and begins to question war and society and some basic Nazi precepts. An interesting book...

switterbug/Betsey Van Horn

A portrait of contemplation

Reviewed in the United States on 27 February 2013

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This brief, evocative novella takes place during a late afternoon stroll in 1943. A very young, pregnant German woman is separated from her husband, who is stationed in North Africa during World War II. She is staying in Rome, in a guest room in a hospital for the elderly, run by German nuns in what seems to be the Prati neighborhood, between Vatican City and the historic center. Her obstetrician instructs her to "walk, young lady, walk" for the health of the child, soon to be born.

Margaret looks forward to these daily constitutions to the Lutheran Gospel on Via Sicilia, and today she is on her way to hear a Bach concert. She considers her beginning and end points as two German islands "in a sea of Rome," a bewildering city, for the most part, to an innocent, devout Protestant. Margaret is terrified to admit thoughts of her own that are not consecrated by the Bible and the Reich.

Does Margaret's naiveté shield her from the uncertainty of war? Or does she wrap herself in the flag and confine her catechism to the Bible as a camouflage from doubt? As she walks through the ancient streets of Rome, memories of her past and questions about her future surface and trouble her. There are also divides between what she learned about Brotherly Love from her preacher father, and the message from Hitler's Germany.

New ideas threaten to shift her current perspective--or at least question it, such as the German position on war, the attitude toward Jews and Italians, and whether her station and circumstances are propitious or unfortunate. Moreover, she worries whether she should explore other views or scrutinize the authority of the principles/morals/values she's been taught. Some ideas circle around, generating more powerful internal conflicts as they materialize, and threaten to shake her resolve. And throughout is her concern about her husband, Gert, whose letters she holds sacred.

And Margaret walks, and crosses the Tiber via the Ponte Margherita, smiling at the name of the bridge. The obelisks on Piazza del Popolo and the sculptures with the lion fountains provoke more memories, as well as thoughts about the strength of the city--the Eternal City that has survived many wars--and is older than Christ himself. The Christian cross at the tip of the obelisks comforts her, in that "the Christian symbol triumphed over the heathen one." The circumlocution of her thoughts has its own logic, which includes her benevolence toward the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, because Martin Luther, the great Protestant, had once stayed there. And why were there so many eagles in Rome? They looked softer here, less stern than the German eagles.

This is a story of contemplation, all told in one sentence. However, despite the Joycean title, this is written in a gentle, poetic, accessible style. The frequent paragraphs prevent weariness and provide white space, and the natural pauses are inherent and organic. Jamie Bulloch's translation from the German is superb. (I don't speak German, but can sense a clunky or awkward translation.) This is a seamless stroll through the streets of Rome, as well as a sensitive, soulful sojourn of a mother as a young woman.

2 people found this helpful

NK

She is both enthralled and terrified by Rome and it is a masterfully written short novel that both describes the city and the in

Reviewed in the United States on 11 July 2016

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A really lovely novella set in Rome during WWII.

It is an intriguing style - written as a single sentence. The story revolves around a 21-year-old German girl who has moved to Rome to be with her husband, before he is sent suddently to Tunisia to fight on the African front.

She is both enthralled and terrified by Rome and it is a masterfully written short novel that both describes the city and the inner joy of a woman about to give birth all alone in a foreign city.

Georgiapoet

Lyrical and sublime

Reviewed in the United States on 21 April 2012

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This is an absolutely beautiful meditation on life, love, war, cruelty, faith, humanity. . . all within the mind of a young and pregnant German woman walking to a concert in Rome during WWII. The novel works the way that the mind does, moving back and forth in time, pursuing some ideas and shutting off others. Stylistically, the novel is remarkable, as it is written in one sentence, broken into paragraphs. I'm reminded of Virginia Woolf's work, as the author so beautifully enters this naive, hopeful, but anxious young woman's mind. Most admirable to me is the humanity at the heart of the book: the miracle of life during a time of death, and the essential goodness at the center of one woman's heart, despite its human flaws and weaknesses.

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Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman Paperback – 1 Sept. 2010

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