Diana : $b A novel
| Language | en |
|---|---|
| First published | 2025-12-16 |
| Rights | Public domain in the USA. |
| Gutenberg ID | #77479 |
Description
"Lord Lister No. 0037: De Diamantenkoningin" by Kurt Matull and Theo von Blankensee is a novel written in the early 20th century. The narrative that follows a free-spirited woman named Diana and a young poet, Andreas, blends romantic intrigue with cosmopolitan restlessness and the pull of politics and journalism across Italy and central Europe. It appears to explore freedom versus attachment, art versus action, and how charisma and ambition ripple through love, friendship, and power. The opening of the narrative finds Andreas waiting on a small island in an Italian lake, composing a sonnet for his beloved Diana, only to discover her farewell letter: she has sailed away, drawn by movement and adventure, and asks him not to follow. His friend Nikolai arrives—summoned by Diana—to steady him; together they talk about her as a liberating force and about Andreas’s sudden urge to leave poetry for public life. The scene shifts to Milan, where Diana, under an alias, takes a brisk, multilingual secretarial post tied to Balkan news and catches the attention of the publisher Scherer, who senses her value for Eastern ventures. One evening at the opera, she reunites with her elegant brother Sidney and is confronted by Major Felix, a former lover who proposes marriage; she refuses, insisting on freedom. Scherer quietly investigates her background while Felix sends flowers, and the section closes with a political-club dinner where Scherer spars with a foreign minister about Balkan policy—hinting that Diana’s talents and the men’s ambitions may soon intersect. (This is an automatically generated summary.)