Das Traumschiff

A 10 year old girl lives in post WWII rural France with her parents, who are about to divorce. Her older sister leaves home to finish school, and the young girl is left with a mysterious, almost silent housekeeper. Being afraid of the dark, and of other "phenomenoms" including a haunted château nearby, she curiously accepts a stranger she finds in her mansion's barn. This fact contradicts her fearful nature, but fulfills her loneliness. The stranger has run away from a nearby psychiatric clinic, where her father was treating the stranger. She hides the stranger, protects him, and he becomes her best friend. Is this girl searching for true companionship, coming of age, or is she asserting her independence for the first time in her short life?

One night, in a remote country estate, five people confront their past sorrows when a young woman's seemingly miraculous emergence from a years-long catatonic state coincides with the arrival of a mysterious stranger who knows everyone's deepest secrets. Is he a con man, an angel, or a mass hallucination?

The protagonist is a university law professor, an attractive, intelligent, ironic forty-year-old who has achieved a prominent position socially and professionally. Not surprisingly he is sought after by women. And to a degree he succumbs. But he comes across as a character closed up in himself, locked into his privileged situation, which he uses as a defensive screen between himself and the "vulgarity and absurdity of reality". Towards everyday reality he assumes an attitude of total, superior disdain. Our protagonist lives in an ivory tower he has constructed for himself, and it seems that nothing can break down his defenses. In order to preserve this obstinate individualism, he does not hesitate in repressing his feelings and sacrificing those of others. Thus, without any plausible reason, he breaks off the relationship he has with Silvia, a young woman who is desperately in love with him. But fate intervenes to break down the perfect system of rules he has constructed to protect himself. In the pocket of a young suicide victim - who turns out to be one of his best students - the police find a piece of paper with the his name and telephone on it. From this moment on, nothing will be the same as before. The story turns into a murder mystery, so it is appropriate to stop telling the story here. The point is that the real world, carefully kept at arm's length by our protagonist, accidentally infiltrates his life and then invades it completely, turning it upside down.

After his classes, the teacher is questioned by his wife. The wife is skeptical about the new Academic project his husband is devising. The teacher is trying to build up a new "Academy of the Muses"that, inspired by the Classics will help to build up a brand new World through a real commitment to Poetry. The controversial project triggers a round of scenes on words and desire.