Franz Werfel

An Austrian Jewish author. Born into a wealthy family in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, he enjoyed a happy childhood. He received a German education and was friends with Kafka, Max Brod, and Willy Haas (1891-1973) from his student days. He worked at a bookstore in Leipzig for several years. He participated in World War I, and lived in Vienna from 1917 onwards. In 1929 he married Alma, widow of the musician Mahler. As his fame as a writer grew, he encountered the Nazi annexation of Austria and fled to France, where he spent his final years wandering and suffering, with no people to attach to and no land to put down roots in. After France's defeat, he crossed the Pyrenees, passing through Spain and Portugal to escape to the US, where he died in California. He began as an expressionist lyric poet, and his representative works from this period include the poetry collections "Friends of the World" (1911) and "One Another" (1915), which call for fraternity and innovation in humanity, the unrestrained and original play of self-exploration "The Mirror Man" (1920), and the novel about the conflict between father and son "Not the murderer, but the murdered is to blame" (1920). After the novel "Verdi" (1924), he turned to psychological realism, and although he is sometimes criticized for his talkativeness and baroque exaggeration, many of his works, which depict religious people and nations suffering, thanks to his natural and simple "sentimentality", have been recognized worldwide. His major works include the play Paul among the Jews (1926), the Hussite tragedy The Country of God in Bohemia (1930), the tragic novel of the Armenian minority, The Forty Days of Musa Dirk (1933), the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah (1937), The Song of Bernadette (1941), and the utopian novel The Star of the Unborn (1946). His critical essay Between Above and Below (1946) provides clues to the author's worldview and religious views.

[Teruyasu Yamato]

"The Wanderings of My Love" by Alma Mahler-Werfel, translated by Tsukagoshi Satoshi (1963, Chikuma Shobo)

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

ユダヤ系オーストリア人の作家。チェコの首都プラハの富裕な家庭に生まれ、幸福な少年期を送る。ドイツ語教育を受け、学生時代からカフカ、マックス・ブロート、ウィリー・ハース（1891―1973）らと親しかった。ライプツィヒの書店に数年勤務。第一次世界大戦に参加、1917年以後ウィーンに居住。29年音楽家マーラーの未亡人アルマと結婚。作家としての名声が高まるなかでナチスのオーストリア併合に遭遇しフランスへ亡命、結び付くべき「国民もなく」根を生やすべき「国土も持たぬ」流浪受難の晩年を送る。フランスの敗北でピレネーを越え、スペイン、ポルトガルを経てアメリカへ逃れ、カリフォルニアに没す。表現主義叙情詩人として出発、友愛と人間性革新を叫ぶ詩集『世界の友』（1911）や『互いに』（1915）、奔放で新奇な、自己探求の劇『鏡人(きょうじん)』（1920）、父子相克の小説『殺した者ではなく、殺された者に罪あり』（1920）などがこの期の代表作である。小説『ベルディ』（1924）以後心理的リアリズムに転じ、多弁、バロック的誇張がときに指摘されるが、持ち前の素朴な「感激性」によって、信仰をもち苦悩する人間や民族を描いた多くの作品は世界的に認められている。劇『ユダヤ人の中のパウロ』（1926）、フス教徒の悲劇『ボヘミアの神の国』（1930）、少数民族アルメニア人の悲劇の小説『ムサ・ダークの40日』（1933）、旧約の預言者エレミヤを描いた『エレミヤ』（1937）、『ベルナデットの歌』（1941）、ユートピア小説『未生人の星』（1946）などが主要作品。評論『上と下との間』（1946）は作者の世界観、宗教観を知る手掛りである。

［山戸照靖］

『アルマ・マーラー・ウェルフェル著、塚越敏訳『わが愛の遍歴』（1963・筑摩書房）』

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