The Indian World of a German Writer: «The Rebellion of the Hanged» by B. Traven

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the work of the German writer B. Traven in the context of the problems of Indianism. The purpose of the article is to explore the poetic foundations of the novel «The Rebellion of the Hanged» («Die Rebellion der Gehenkten, 1936), to analyze the artistic world based on the pre-revolutionary struggle of the autochthonous Indian culture and industrial culture of the heirs of European colonialists. The article clarifies the biographical context of the writer's immersion in the reality of an exotic country. The article considers Ukrainian publications of the 1960s about the mysterious figure of the writer, developing a hypothesis about the connection between B. Traven and the Bavarian revolutionary activist Reat Marut. It is noted that the revolutionary orientation is determinative for the Indianist poetics of the novel «The Rebellion of the Hanged». A distinction between the terms «indianismо» and «indigenismo» in the study of the writer's creative heritage is proposed. The problems of the journalistic book by B. Traven «Land of Spring» («Land des Frühlings», 1928), the materials of which served to create the Indian imagery of the Kaoba-cycle, including the analyzed novel, are investigated. The poetic principles of «The Rebellion of the Hanged» are described: the plot-compositional structure, chronotope, the characteristics of the main and secondary characters are given, the imaginative and lexical-stylistic features of the novel are analyzed. The symbolism of the novel's title is analyzed: from tortured «animals» the Indians turn into a revolutionary mass, relentless and cruel in their revenge. It is determined that the uniqueness of B. Traven's indigenіst novel is due to its direction to the German recipient. Indigenous images of the novel acquire universal significance, and the Indian appears as an «another», whose fate allows us to understand the essence of European culture. B. Traven appears as an artist who embodies the problem of «other» in its intercultural dimension.