Riassunto
Riassunto di Amore
A chi è rivolto
Readers who love intense, poetic fiction about love pushed to its limit, who are drawn to Vienna before the Great War, and who enjoy stories where passion meets questions of sacrifice, guilt and grace.
Che cos’è questo libro
Love is a short novel by the Austrian writer Hans Kaltneker, who died in 1919. It is set among the palaces, bars and courtrooms of Vienna in the years before the First World War. It opens with two lovers who say they have found each other at last. Then it follows the man, Prince Secundus, into a long and terrible campaign against the woman he adores. You get a story of obsession and revenge that is also a religious argument about what love may ask of a person.
The book carries two epigraphs, one from Goethe and one from the medieval preacher Meister Eckhart. Both point to the idea that love can reach its goal only through pain and giving up what one holds dearest. Kaltneker writes in bursts of strong, poetic images, and he mixes real Vienna with visions of angels and abysses. In this summary you will meet the main people, follow the story scene by scene, and see what the book is really saying. We begin on a night of tenderness, a promise to leave everything behind, and a morning that starts with a dog.
In questo riassunto
- 1A night of vows and a dead dogFree
- 2A marriage bought on strange terms
- 3The Sad One preaches the last sacrifice
- 4Slander, a husband's visit, and a death
- 5A fortune thrown away to ruin her
- 6Trial, prison, and a brothel waiting
- 7What the novel is really about, and how it speaks
Punto chiave 1 di 7
A night of vows and a dead dog
The book begins in a bedroom at night. A man and a woman say they love each other and speak as if they have been searching for each other all their lives. The woman tells him how she waited for years, and how she once walked barefoot across a cold floor so that God and her unknown beloved might notice the small sacrifice. She is married to another man, and she confesses that she once loved dresses, hunting, concerts and her dog.
Their joy is so great that the man wants to die in it at once. She says no, because that would be too small for them. They have not yet suffered through each other, and she senses that the world cannot stay balanced until they have. He brushes this fear aside and plans a future of journeys to India, Java and Japan, and even a life of piracy in the South Seas.
He promises to speak to her husband at noon and to set her free. Then they part into a gray, heavy morning. In the garden, a large black dog comes shivering toward him and rubs its head against his knee. He strokes it with a terrible tenderness, takes a small bottle from his pocket, and puts the dog to sleep forever with a cloth held to its muzzle.
That quiet, cruel act is the hinge of the whole book. It shows that the man called Secundus has already decided something that the reader cannot yet understand. The scene is told in a hushed, dreamlike way, and it makes you ask what could turn such deep love so quickly into harm.
That’s 1 of 7 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Amore
What is Love by Hans Kaltneker about?
It tells of Prince Secundus, who loves a married woman, Kathrin Nhilius, and then sets out to ruin her and himself, believing that the highest love must be willing to be hated and to give up grace.
Who is the Sad One in Love?
He is a dark angel with Dante's face who visits Secundus at night. He claims to be both a fallen brother and the hero's own soul, and he teaches him a stern creed of sacrifice.
What does the epigraph from Meister Eckhart mean?
Eckhart, a medieval preacher, says love as strong as death goes past all comfort and even past hope of eternal life. The Sad One retells this idea to Secundus as a plan for his own actions.
When and where is Love set?
It is set in Vienna in the years before the First World War, among aristocrats, bankers, officers and courtesans, and it moves between palaces, bars, a court, and Davos in Switzerland.
Is Love worth reading?
It offers a short, intense story with vivid scenes, a clear line of events, and a bold religious idea of love that you can weigh against what the hero does.