Carnival and Carnivorous Plants – Gender and Humor in the works of Ruth Landshoff-Yorck
Es ist nur gut dass auch fast alles andere in dieser Welt unerklaet [!] bleibt. Sonst koentts [!] einen ja bedruecken. Aber so? Der Welt gegenueber kommt man sich eh mehr und mehr wie der Valentin vor. der von Muenchen. [...] Ich sollte eigentlich auf [!] mich ins komische flueckten [!]. (Landshoff, zwiespalt 6)
1Humor, and taking refuge in it, as described here in one of Landshoff’s later articles, is a theme common to Landshoff’s writing – even if she seldom wrote it as explicitly as here. Especially her early works have been characterised as an “Amalgam aus ästhetischer Avantgarde und leidenschaftlich-leichter Unterhaltung” (Grisko 255) and are unique because of the combination of artistic claim and nonchalant humor. Even though her writing in her last years was less blithe and demonstrated confusion between the author's two languages, English and German, as can be seen in the first quotation (Landshoff, zwiespalt 1), - it also showed a more sarcastic side of her humor.
2The exploration of gender in her works follows a similar pattern and the way the subject is handled changes over the course of her complete works: the easy-going and amusing understanding of gender and sexuality in her early works is replaced towards the end of her writing career by a strict separation of them, accompanied by much black humor. This article describes this change and the particular characteristics of her humor in an analysis of her first novel Die Vielen und der Eine (1930) and one of her short stories The Opening Night (1959). The latter exists in two versions, one in German and one in English published two years later. The two editions differ not only in their titles (the German is entitled Durch die Blume), but also in their endings – thus offering a grotesque form of the stories themselves. This article concludes with a comparison of the two versions.
3The theoretical foundation for the analyses carried out in this text is provided by various works by Mikhail Bakhtin. While the focus is placed on Landshoff’s works, Bakhtin's theory of humor offers a theoretical framework which illuminates aspects of Landshoff’s writing – even though many aspects of Bakhtin’s theories have to be left aside, for example the historical context of his works or his anthropological ideas. Landshoff and Bakhtin’s ideas are, of course, non-congruent and do not explicitly correlate to each other, however many aspects of Bakhtin’s theory are reflected in Landshoff’s works. This is especially the case for ideas of transgression, the carnival as an actual festival (see Die Vielen und der Eine) or the emphasis of particular parts of the body (see The Opening Night / Durch die Blume).
4But while gender plays an important role in Landshoff’s works, it never appears in Bakhtin’s theories. Even if many elements of his theories, such as the openness of the transgressive or the grotesque body touch on subjects such as gender, a direct relationship is never explicitly established. Landshoff’s experimentation with gender, in contrast, is often analog to Bakhtin’s theories, but also demonstrates many differences. Thus bringing together Bakhtin and Landshoff and investigating their parallels and contrasts can not only illuminate Landshoff’s works, but also widen our understanding of Bakhtin’s theory of humor, to demonstrate the extent to which these ideas are helpful in relation to aspects of gender.
5Die Vielen und der Eine is not only a typical example of Landshoff’s early writing, it also marks an important turning point in her career as this was the only one of her three novels written in the Weimar Republic to actually be published. Before the takeover of the Nazis abruptly ended her thriving career, Landshoff had been one of the pillars of the Berlin bohemia in the 1920s:
Im Berlin ihrer Jugendjahre war [Ruth Landshoff-Yorck] ein Liebling der damaligen Edel-Boheme – schön, klug, unternehmend, vorurteilslos. Sie hatte sich ihr eigenes Milieu geschaffen, das aus den Kreisen der Kunst, der Bühne, der jeunesse dorée, der Avantgarde aller Gebiete bestand. (n.N., Memoriam 8)