Robert Louis Stevenson

wurde am 13.11.1850 in Edinburgh / Schottland als Sohn von Thomas Stevenson und Margaret Balfour geboren. Er studierte zuerst Technik und entwarf (dem Vorbild seines Vaters entsprechend) auch einige Leuchttürme. Die Familie der Stevenson's war seit Generationen im Leuchtturmbau beschäftigt. Er erkrankte in jungen Jahren an Tuberkulose, musste daher oft das Bett hüten und dachte sich während dieser Zeiten die ersten Geschichten aus. Später begann er ein Jura-Studium und widmete sich danach vollends der Literatur. Stevenson heiratete 1880 in Kalifornien die um 10 Jahre ältere Fanny Van de Grift (geschiedene Osbourne). Gemeinsam mit ihrem Sohn Lloyd Osbourne verfasste er mehrere Werke, darunter 'The Wrong Box' und 'The Wrecker'. Um sein Lungenleiden zu lindern, zog er in die Schweiz, nach Südfrankreich und nach Kalifornien, verbrachte fast ein halbes Jahr auf Hawaii, bevor er sich im Jahre 1890 auf Samoa niederließ. Stevenson war von Shakespeare, Alexandre Dumas und Walt Whitman beeinflusst. Er starb am 3.12.1894 im Alter von nur 44 Jahren in Apia auf Samoa.

Wichtige Werke:

Die Schatzinsel (Original: Treasure Island), 1883

Entführt (Original: Kidnapped), 1886

Der schwarze Pfeil (Original: The black Arrow), 1888

Der Erbe von Ballantrae (Original: The Master of Ballantrae), 1889

Der seltsame Fall des Dr. Jekyll und Mr. Hyde

(Original: The strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), 1886

Catronia, 1893

gemeinsam mit seinem Stiefsohn Lloyd Osbourne:

Die falsche Kiste (Original: The wrong Box), 1892

Die Ausschlachter (Original: The Wrecker), 1892

Ebbe (Original: The Ebb Tide), 1894

Robert Louis Stevenson: 'An Island Landfall' (aus: 'In the South Seas')

The first experience can never be repeated. The first love, the first sunrise, the first South Sea island, are memories apart and touched a virginity of sense. On the 28th of July 1888 the moon was an hour down by four in the morning. In the east a radiating centre of brightness told of the day; and beneath, on the skyline, the morning bank was already building, black as ink. We have all read of the swiftness of the day's coming and departure in low latitudes; it is a point on which the scientific and sentimental tourist are at one, and has inspired some tasteful poetry. The period certainly varies with the season; but here is one case exactly noted. Although the dawn was thus preparing by four, the sun was not up till six; and it was half-past five before we could distinguish our expected islands from the clouds on the horizon. Eight degrees south, and the day two hours a'coming. The interval was passed on deck in the silence of expectation, the customary thrill of landfall heightened by the strangeness of the shores that we were then approaching. Slowly they took shape in the attenuating darkness. Ua-Huna, piling up to a truncated summit, appeared the first upon the starboard bow; almost abeam arose our destination, Nuka-Hiva, whelmed in cloud; and betwixt and to the southward, the first rays of the sun displayed the needles of Ua-Pu. These pricked about the line of the horizon; like the pinnacles of some ornate and monstrous church, they stood there, in the sparkling brightness of the morning, the fit signboard of a world of wonders.

Not one soul aboard the 'CASCO' had set foot upon the islands, or knew, except by accident, one word of any of the island tongues; and it was with something perhaps of the same anxious pleasure as thrilled the bosom of discoverers that we drew near these problematic shores. The land heaved up in peaks and rising vales; it fell in cliffs and buttresses; its colour ran through fifty modulations in a scale of pearl and rose and olive; and it was crowned above by opalescent clouds. The suffusion of vague hues deceived the eye; the shadows of clouds were confounded with the articulations of the mountains; and the isle and its unsubstantial canopy rose and shimmered before us like a single mass. There was no beacon, no smoke of towns to be expected, no plying pilot. Somewhere, in that pale phantasmagoria of cliff and cloud, our haven lay concealed; and somewhere to the east of it - the only sea-mark given - a certain headland, known indifferently as Cape Adam and Eve, or Cape Jack and Jane, and distinguished by two colossal figures, the gross statuary of nature. These we were to find; for these we craned and stared, focused glasses, and wrangled over charts; and the sun was overhead and the land close ahead before we found them. To a ship approaching, like the 'CASCO', from the north, they proved indeed the least conspicuous features of a striking coast; the surf flying high above its base; strange, austere, and feathered mountains rising behind; and Jack and Jane, or Adam and Eve, impending like a pair of warts above the breakers.

Courtesy of 'Classic Literature Library'