A Sad Affair

Wolfgang Koeppen is widely regarded as one of the most important German writers of the twentieth century despite writing only five novels – two in the 1930s and another three in the 1950s. Though he did not die until 1996, he only published travel books and a memoir in that time, and the much promised sixth novel never appeared. A Sad Affair is Koeppen’s first novel, published in 1934, and written, according to translator Michael Hofmann, in a very short period of time after Koeppen spent the advance travelling to Italy, and, when he returned without the expected book, his publisher resorted to locking him in a room with a typewriter.

A Sad Affair is a story of tormented love. Its narrator, Friedrich, is completely entranced by a young actress, Sibylle. Unfortunately Sibylle thinks little of his, or any man’s, love, an aspect of her character that Friedrich is warned of even before he first encounters her when he overhears a conversation between Sibylle and his friend, Beck, which he describes as “a dance on hot coals.” Meeting her in the flesh, however, he feels “sandbagged or hexed” and struck with “sudden paralysis”. His broken arm leads her to declare, “you’re a cripple!” but he is also crippled by her presence:

“At the moment of my first encounter with Sibylle, I got into the habit of feeling crippled with indecision.”

Soon Sibylle is happy to go out with Beck and Friedrich, and use them to torment the man she is living with, Walter, declaring:

“I’m not your creature, I’m not your slave, I’m not your dog, I can do what I want, and if you don’t want to stand over me while I sleep with someone off the street, then you’d better get out and leave me alone.”

Sibylle is a powerful, one might even say empowered, female character. She may seem heartless, cruel even, if we judge her with conventional notions of morality (particularly if we wish the novel to be a ‘love story’) but she does not invite the attentions of the men who love her, nor does she make promises she does not keep. (As Friedrich tells us, “She had never used untruths or strategic evasions to gain a small, momentary advantage”). It is Friedrich who convinces himself that they are destined for each other, and that somehow the power of his love alone will win her over. At one point he complains that she does not see him:

“To Sibylle, he was a shadow. Her eyes barely took him in as a physical shape. He might stand before her, as now, or he might be far away in a different country – it made no difference, he was still a shadow.”

Yet, it is Friedrich who cannot see Sibylle, instead imposing his idea of her on the young woman in front of him.

Cleverly, Koeppen does not tell the story in this order, but begins with Friedrich already quite lost in his love for Sibylle and searching for her in a “foreign city”. It seems any attempt to get over her has failed:

“And there it was again, his heart was once more in someone else’s hand, sometimes they squeezed it shut, sometimes they allowed it to breath, it wasn’t to die on them, a little bird in a cage that had to sing.”

Their relationship stalls on the fact that neither one wants to sleep with the other: Sibylle because, despite her promiscuity, “I’ve never met a woman who was less able to give herself against her own will,” and Friedrich because he wants the moment to be an admission of Sibylle both acknowledging and returning his love – “He refused to take her against her own will.” Despite this, he begs her to travel to Italy with him. Whether she will go with him or not seems to be the defining moment in their relationship, though we also fear that, such is Friedrich’s passion, he may not be able to move on under any circumstances.

A Sad Affair is not a happy book so perfectly does it capture the pain of unrequited love. For the crueller reader there may be some humour in Friedrich’s utter helplessness, while for the more sympathetic minded there will be be frustration at his inability to extract himself from feelings which are clearly damaging. But Sibylle herself is an equally interesting character, though one viewed through the unreliable lens of the narrator. For all her flaws, the reader may find themselves a little bit in love.

Tags: a sad affair, german literature month, Wolfgang Koeppen