Résumé
Résumé de Vers une nouvelle terre
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
Readers who like close portraits of the inner life, stories about artists and what drives them, family drama between parent and child, and wartime fiction that looks at the home front as much as the trenches.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Into the New Land is a short novel by the German writer Gabriele Reuter, set in the first year of the First World War. It follows Franz Rolfers, a middle-aged painter who volunteers for the front and comes home without his right arm. For a man whose whole life was his hand, the loss feels like the end of everything, and he has made up his mind to die.
Then two people from his past step back into his life. One is Martha Lebus, the woman he left long ago. The other is Richard, the fourteen-year-old son he has never met. Reuter takes you inside all three minds and shows how pride, guilt, love and a shared gift for drawing pull them together and push them apart. You get a war story that stays mostly far from the battlefield, a portrait of an artist who must learn to give instead of take, and a quiet family drama set among moors and hedgerows. To see how Rolfers arrives at this point, we begin in a hospital ward.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A painter returns from war without his armFree
- 2An old love and a son's drawings
- 3A house on the moor and a hostile boy
- 4Art becomes the bond between teacher and pupil
- 5A cruel word, a secret practice and a thaw
- 6Art, country and the claims of love
Point clé 1 sur 6
A painter returns from war without his arm
The story opens in a military hospital in Germany. A young doctor and a nurse talk about a patient they call the gloomy one. He is Franz Rolfers, a middle-aged painter with a high bald forehead and a hooked nose, and the stump of his right arm rests in a sling. He asks for a private room, says he has no family, and will not talk about the future.
Through his memories we learn how he came here. When war broke out he was painting on a lonely skerry off the coast of Norway, and his first thought was only to keep working. Then a fisher boy waved the newspapers at him. That evening, looking at the sea, he sees a vision of a huge woman beaten by enemy hordes who rises and looks at him the way his dying mother once did. An hour later he is packing, and soon he is on a crowded train toward the German border.
He has never served as a soldier, yet he becomes a volunteer, endures brutal drill, and marches until his body aches. Reuter writes the front in breathless, crowded sentences: mud, shells, sleeping through a barrage, a bayonet charge in the rain. Rolfers, a loner all his life, feels for once part of something larger. He also feels pain at fighting the French, whose culture he loves. Even in the trenches his painter's eye keeps working, noting the strain of horses and the faces of the dying.
The turning point comes on a night patrol. He finds a wounded French boy in the shadows, shines a light on his face, and a shot rings out. His arm is shattered, and in Berlin it must be amputated. Lying in the ward, Rolfers decides that once he is healed he will end his own life. He believes his hand was the only thing that made him useful to the world.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Vers une nouvelle terre
What is Into the New Land about?
It tells of Franz Rolfers, a German painter who loses his right arm in the First World War. In Holstein he lives with Martha, a woman from his past, and Richard, the gifted son he never knew, and tries to pass his art on.
Who is Franz Rolfers?
Rolfers is a middle-aged painter with a strong name and a stern, solitary nature. He joins the army as a volunteer, is wounded on night patrol, and must find a new purpose after losing the arm he painted with.
Who is Richard in Into the New Land?
Richard is Rolfers's fourteen-year-old son, raised by his mother Martha in Berlin. He is stocky, headstrong and talented at drawing, and he first despises his father before slowly coming to admire him.
Is Into the New Land a true story?
It is a novel, not a true story, though it is rooted in real events. Gabriele Reuter wrote it during the First World War, and it reflects how that war touched German homes, artists and families.
What is the main message of the book?
The book shows that giving matters more than taking, whether to art, to country or to family. It follows a proud man who finds a reason to live by guiding a young person, while also asking what such devotion costs those close to him.