Novel
Titan
Jean Paul · 1800
Opening lines
An einem schönen Frühlingsabend kam der junge spanische Graf von Cäsara mit seinen Begleitern Schoppe und Dian nach Sesto, um den andern Morgen nach der borromäischen Insel Isola bella im Lago maggiore überzufahren.
On a fine spring evening the young Spanish Count of Cesara came with his companions Schoppe and Dian to Sesto, to cross over the next morning to the Borromean island of Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from zeno.org
Synopsis
In the spring of 1791, Albano de Cesara, nineteen, raised in the countryside in a small German principality, joins Count Gaspard de Cesara on the island of Isola Bella, on Lake Maggiore; the count speaks to him of his family only in riddles. He then comes to study law in Pestitz, the capital, befriends the sombre Roquairol and the humorist Schoppe, falls in love with Liane, and then meets Linda, amid the intrigues of two neighbouring courts.
Context
The novel appeared in four volumes from 1800 to 1803. More controlled and less digressive than his other novels, it makes the characters surrounding the hero so many figures of the excesses of the age: Fichte's idealism, art for art's sake, political calculation, pietist fervour. Jean Paul thought of calling it Anti-Titan, the better to express the excess he condemned. Philarète Chasles translated it into French as early as 1834.
Who it is for
A novel of about nine hundred pages, divided into “jubilee periods” and “cycles”; the reading remains demanding.
Prizes and reception
The book its author regarded as his capital novel, and which gave its title to the first version of a Mahler symphony.