Ship of Fools
Authors: Katherine Anne Porter
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Ship of Fools
A Novel
Katherine Anne Porter
For Barbara Wescott
1932: Paris, Rambouillet, Davosplatz, Salzburg, Munich
,
New York, Mulhocaway, Rosemont: 1962
Author's Note
The title of this book is a translation from the German of
Das Narrenschiff
, a moral allegory by Sebastian Brant (1458?â1521) first published in Latin as
Stultifera Navis
in 1494. I read it in Basel in the summer of 1932 when I had still vividly in mind the impressions of my first voyage to Europe. When I began thinking about my novel, I took for my own this simple almost universal image of the ship of this world on its voyage to eternity. It is by no means new â it was very old and durable and dearly familiar when Brant used it; and it suits my purpose exactly. I am a passenger on that ship.
K. A. P.
CONTENTS
Quand partons-nous vers le bonheur?
(B
AUDELAIRE
)
Kein Haus, Keine Heimat â¦
(
SONG BY
B
RAHMS
)
For here have we no continuing city â¦
(S
AINT
P
AUL
)
A Biography of Katherine Anne Porter
CHARACTERS
On board the North German Lloyd S.A.
Vera
, between Veracruz, Mexico, and Bremerhaven, Germany, August 22âSeptember 17, 1931.
German
Ship's Captain Thiele.
Dr. Schumann, ship's doctor.
The purser, and a half dozen young ship's officers.
Frau Rittersdorf, who keeps a notebook.
Frau Otto Schmitt, recently widowed in Mexico.
Herr Siegfried Rieber, publisher of a ladies' garment trade magazine.
Fräulein Lizzi Spöckenkieker, in the ladies' garment business; from Hanover.
Herr Professor Hutten Frau Professor Hutten |
| Former head of a German school in Mexico, and his wife; traveling with them is their white bulldog Bébé. |
Herr Karl Baumgartner Frau Baumgartner Hans Baumgartner |
| Lawyer from Mexico City â hopeless drunkard; his wife Greta, and their eight-year-old son. |
Herr Karl Glocken, a hunchback, who has sold out his little tobacco and newspaper stand in Mexico, and is returning to Germany.
Herr Wilibald Graf, a dying religious enthusiast who believes he has the power of healing.
Johann, his nephew and attendant.
Herr Wilhelm Freytag, “connected with” an oil company in Mexico, returning to Germany to fetch his wife and her mother.
Herr Julius Löwenthal, Jewish manufacturer and salesman of Catholic Church furnishings, returning to his home in Düsseldorf for a visit with his cousin Sarah.
Swiss
Herr Heinrich Lutz Frau Lutz Lutz |
| A hotelkeeper from Mexico, returning to Switzerland after fifteen years, with Elsa his wife and their daughter, eighteen years old. |
Spanish
A zarzuela company, singers and dancers who call themselves gypsies, returning to Spain after being stranded in Mexico.
Women: Amparo, Lola, Concha, Pastora.
Men: Pepe, Tito, Manolo, Pancho.
Children: Ric and Rac, Lola's twins, boy and girl, six years old.
La Condesa, a déclassée noblewoman who has lived many years in Cuba; political exile being deported from Cuba to Tenerife.
Cuban
Six Cuban medical students on their way to Montpellier.
Mexican
The bride and groom from Guadalajara, Mexico, on a honeymoon trip to Spain.
Señora Esperón y Chavez de Ortega, wife of attaché of the Mexican Legation in Paris, traveling with her newly born son and Indian nursemaid Nicolasa.
Father Garza Father Carillo |
| Mexican Catholic priests on a journey to Spain. |
Political agitator: Fat man in cherry-colored shirt, who sings.
Swedish
Arne Hansen, at feud with Herr Rieber.
American
William Denny, from Texas, a young chemical engineer going to Berlin.
Mary Treadwell, a woman of forty-five, divorced, returning to Paris.
David Scott Jenny Brown |
| Two young painters living together, on their first voyage to Europe. |