Maghrebian Characters: National Characters in the Novel “An Ermine in Czernopol” by Gregor von Rezzori

Abstract

“Maghrebian” novel “An Ermine in Czernopol” by G. von Rezzori is considered to be the first multicultural novel in the postwar German literature. Its multicultural nature is linked to the Bukovyna origin of the author, who was born in a region that is rich in different ethnic groups, languages and religions, where the author could collect his childhood experiences and later transform them into artistic images. The author lightly encrypts topographic concepts of Czernopol and Teskovyna, by which real historical topoi of Chernivtsi and Bukovyna shound be understood. In his novel the author describes real “maghrebian cabinet of figures” marked by unique originality. Here we see Germans and Jews, Romanians and Ukrainians, Russians and Poles, and representatives of the other nationalities, ethnic origin of which is undefined. In the images of the protagonist of the novel major Tilda, such original characters as Pashkano or prefect of Teskovyna Tarangolian, national identity of which is rather blurred, the Romanians Nastaze or Aleksyanu, the Germans professor Foyera and editor Adamovsky, the Jewish children Blanche Schlesinger and Sally Brilya, the Jewish entrepreneurs Ushera Brilya, Ephraim Perko and Wolf von Leybish Merores, Ukrainian prostitute Mititka Pyovarchuk, we see the colorful national gallery of types that, despite the author’s tendency to operate by the stale cliches appear to be eventually strong individuals. The report also touches the problem of Rezzori’s “anti-Semitism” and the satirical methods of depicting “maghrebian” reality.