台奥多尔·冯塔纳

特奥多尔·冯塔内（德语：Theodor Fontane，德语发音：[ˈtʰeːodoɐ̯ fɔnˈtaːnə] ，1819年12月30日—1898年9月20日）是德国批判现实主义小说家、诗人。他1819年出生于胡格诺教徒家庭，6岁成为药店学徒，20岁写出处女作，在莱比锡进修。他参加了1848年的革命事件，1849年从药店辞职成为全职作家。代表作有《沙赫·冯·武特诺》(Schach von Wuthenow，1883年)、《埃菲·布里斯特》(Effi Briest，1895年)和《燕妮·特赖贝尔夫人》(Frau Jenny Treibel，1892年)等。他被认为是19世纪最重要的德语作家之一。

Theodor Fontane (German pronunciation: [ˈtʰeːodoɐ̯ fɔnˈtaːnə] ; 30 December 1819 – 20 September 1898) was a German novelist and poet. He has been called "the greatest German realist novelist" and "clearly the greatest German novelist before Thomas Mann."

He published the first of his novels, for which he is best known today, only at age 58 after a career as a journalist. Many of his novels delve into topics that were more or less taboo for discussion in the polite society of Fontane's day, including marital infidelity, class differences, urban vs. rural differences, abandonment of children, and suicide. His novels sold well during his lifetime and several have been adapted for film or audio works.

Fontane's novels are known for their complex, often sceptical view of society in the German empire. He shows different social and political parts of society meeting and sometimes clashing, his main characters range from lower-middle class to Prussian nobility. Fontane is known as a writer of realism, not only because he was conscientious about the factual accuracy of details in fictional scenes, but also because he depicted his characters in terms of what they said or did and refrained from overtly imputing motives to them. Other trademarks of Fontane's work are their strongly drawn female characters (such as Effi Briest and Frau Jenny Treibel), tender irony and vivid conversations between characters.

Life

Youth

Fontane was born in Neuruppin, a town 30 miles northwest of Berlin, into a Huguenot family. At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to an apothecary, his father's profession. He became an apothecary himself and in 1839, at the age of 20, wrote his first work (Heinrichs IV. erste Liebe, now lost). His further education was in Leipzig, where he became acquainted with the progressives of the Vormärz.

Fontane's first published work, the novella Geschwisterliebe (Sibling Love), was published in the Berlin Figaro in December 1839. His biographer Gordon A. Craig claimed it gave few indications of being a gifted writer: "Although the theme of incest, which was to occupy Fontane on later occasions, is touched upon here, the mawkishness of the tale... is equalled by the lameness of its plot and the inertness of the style in which it is told, and [the characters] Clärchen and her brother are both so colourless that no one could have guessed that their creator had a future as a writer."

Fontane's first job as apothecary was in Dresden, after which he worked in his father's shop in the town of Letschin in the Oderbruch region. Fleeing its provincialism, Fontane published articles in the Leipzig newspaper Die Eisenbahn and translated Shakespeare. In 1843 he joined a literary club in Berlin named Tunnel über der Spree (Tunnel over the River Spree) where he became acquainted with many of the most renowned German writers, including Theodor Storm, Joseph von Eichendorff and Gottfried Keller.

Newspaper writer and critic

In 1844, Fontane enlisted in the Prussian army and began the first of numerous journeys to Britain, which fostered his interest in old English ballads, which he – a lifelong anglophile – began to imitate. In 1845 became engaged to his future wife, Emilie Rouanet-Kummer, whom he had met when still at school.