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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. I wanted a gothic horror novel along the lines of Frankenstein or Dracula. It was a good story, but I didn't learn enough about the Golem or its origins. That said, it was very good and I recommend it.
Hay libros que son complicados de afrontar, ya sea por el tema que tratan, por cómo están escritos, lo técnicos que pueden ser o en casos como éste porque el desarrollo de la trama no es de éste plano, sino de varios, porque no es realidad, sino sueños. Después de quedar fascinado con su relatos en “Murciélagos” (Fledermäuse, 1916) tenía tentación por leer su famoso “El Gólem” (Der Golem, 1915), no sabía en lo que me estaba metiendo.
Ésta edición de Cátedra (ISBN 978-84-376-3184-4) cuenta con una muy necesaria introducción a cargo de Isabel Hernández, quien también se encarga de la traducción y que de acuerdo a lo que puede encontrar se especializa en literatura alemana, en donde nos da contexto de la vida del autor así como las diferentes capas e interpretaciones que se le ha dado a la obra desde su publicación. Me parece muy importante decir que es una obra que sí o sí necesita tener notas, introducción y contexto, en caso de que no sea la de Cátedra busque una de alguna casa editorial que tenga mucho respeto por las obras que publica.
Una vez dejando el tema de lo que implica entrar en el libro que nos atañe y a diferencia de lo que podría parecer el autor no usa un lenguaje complicado o rebuscado, es sencillo de leer, sin embargo desde el principio el autor nos lleva a un viaje en el que muchas veces nos preguntaremos quién es el protagonista y que momento o lugar es. Es un libro lleno de metáforas y simbolismos. Quisiera hablar más de la figura del Gólem pero sería estropear un poco el libro. Lo que el autor logra es plasmar ese momento en el tiempo, puede uno imaginar el gueto, las calles, las creencias de la gente, como era su día a día, es un libro muy atmosférico.
Recomendado si estás dispuesto a darle una segunda vuelta y con una edición a la altura, un obra con muchos secretos por descubrir.
Ésta edición de Cátedra (ISBN 978-84-376-3184-4) cuenta con una muy necesaria introducción a cargo de Isabel Hernández, quien también se encarga de la traducción y que de acuerdo a lo que puede encontrar se especializa en literatura alemana, en donde nos da contexto de la vida del autor así como las diferentes capas e interpretaciones que se le ha dado a la obra desde su publicación. Me parece muy importante decir que es una obra que sí o sí necesita tener notas, introducción y contexto, en caso de que no sea la de Cátedra busque una de alguna casa editorial que tenga mucho respeto por las obras que publica.
Una vez dejando el tema de lo que implica entrar en el libro que nos atañe y a diferencia de lo que podría parecer el autor no usa un lenguaje complicado o rebuscado, es sencillo de leer, sin embargo desde el principio el autor nos lleva a un viaje en el que muchas veces nos preguntaremos quién es el protagonista y que momento o lugar es. Es un libro lleno de metáforas y simbolismos. Quisiera hablar más de la figura del Gólem pero sería estropear un poco el libro. Lo que el autor logra es plasmar ese momento en el tiempo, puede uno imaginar el gueto, las calles, las creencias de la gente, como era su día a día, es un libro muy atmosférico.
Recomendado si estás dispuesto a darle una segunda vuelta y con una edición a la altura, un obra con muchos secretos por descubrir.
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This novel is haunting, half a dream (or a nightmare ) and half a reflection on Jewish beliefs. It spins together an ambiance awakening what could have been the Jewish ghetto of Prague before it got destroyed by the city, with all its complexity of relationships existing in such a small neighborhood, and the economic and social pressures applied on its population by the state. Following the narrator, we encounter a great variety of Jewish characters, showcasing the diversity of situations and status with dire clarity and endings. At the same time, the narrator is as lost as the reader, circuiting in what he lives through and what he has been told before, a truly dreamlike construction. Horror is underlying in the whole book, the text swinging between hopeful dreaminess and stark terror. It is an experience I had not had before.
Powiem szczerze, że ciężko mi ocenić tę książkę, szczególnie, gdy widzę ilość pozytywnych ocen. Może nieznajomość części symboliki mnie zgubiła... sama nie wiem. Na pewno nie jest to książka do czytania w autobusie, bo wymaga w wielu momentach pewnego skupienia. Z jednej strony nie jest to ciężki język, ale z drugiej sama treść też nie jest prosta.
Jak na prawie 280 stron mamy tu sporo wątków. Jakby ktoś mnie zapytał, o czym jest ,,Golem", to streściłabym początek książki, bo na dobrą sprawę sama nie jestem pewna, o czym on tak właściwie jest i jak dużą rolę odgrywa ten tytułowy Golem, bo odnoszę wrażenie, że niemal żadną. Albo autor tego nie podkreślił wystarczająco jasno. I nie mogę się oprzeć odczuciu, że część wątków jest urwana, nie do końca wyjaśniona czy w sporej mierze niejasna. Prawdę mówiąc, treść mnie nie porwała, ale nie uważam, że jest zła. Miałam też nadzieję, że autor pokusi się o wytłumaczenie zamieszczanej symboliki, chociaż w jakimś skrócie, ale niespecjalnie się to wydarzyło.
Mamy tu też istną mieszankę gatunkową, bo i kryminał, i trochę horroru, i ezoteryka, i jakieś dramaty rodzinne. Nie powiedziałabym, że to wychodzi tej powieści na dobre. Teoretycznie to klasyka grozy, ale gdybym tego nie przeczytała z tyłu okładki, to wcale bym tak nie powiedziała. Ot taki miszmasz.
Ciężko mi nawet powiedzieć coś o głównym bohaterze, bo niby ma momenty, gdy pokazuje swój charakter i że nie daje sobie wejść na głowę czy się zastraszyć, i te fragmenty były bardzo na plus, ale jednocześnie wydaje się taki niezdecydowany czego on właściwie oczekuje od życia. Błądzi między nie wiadomo czym, znajduje różne symbole, jest wmieszany w jakieś spiski, niby jest zakochany, ale w kim konkretnie to też sam nie wie niemal do samego końca... Nawet się nie dowiadujemy, dlaczego spotkało go to, co go spotkało, więc nie mamy też przedstawionej jego przeszłości w całości.
Są momenty, gdy historia mnie nawet wciągnęła, ale szkoda, że były to tylko momenty. Widziałam opinie, że książka jest lepsza fragmentami niż jako całość i ja się pod tymi opiniami podpisuję.
Niby jest to klasyka, z którą warto się zapoznać, jednak nie dziwi mnie, jeśli ktoś się poddaje w trakcie czytania. Sama nie oczekiwałam żadnych konkretów, gdy po nią sięgałam, ale czuję zawód. Musiałam się wręcz chwilami niestety przymuszać do jej czytania. Może do niej kiedyś wrócę jeszcze raz.
Jak na prawie 280 stron mamy tu sporo wątków. Jakby ktoś mnie zapytał, o czym jest ,,Golem", to streściłabym początek książki, bo na dobrą sprawę sama nie jestem pewna, o czym on tak właściwie jest i jak dużą rolę odgrywa ten tytułowy Golem, bo odnoszę wrażenie, że niemal żadną. Albo autor tego nie podkreślił wystarczająco jasno. I nie mogę się oprzeć odczuciu, że część wątków jest urwana, nie do końca wyjaśniona czy w sporej mierze niejasna. Prawdę mówiąc, treść mnie nie porwała, ale nie uważam, że jest zła. Miałam też nadzieję, że autor pokusi się o wytłumaczenie zamieszczanej symboliki, chociaż w jakimś skrócie, ale niespecjalnie się to wydarzyło.
Mamy tu też istną mieszankę gatunkową, bo i kryminał, i trochę horroru, i ezoteryka, i jakieś dramaty rodzinne. Nie powiedziałabym, że to wychodzi tej powieści na dobre. Teoretycznie to klasyka grozy, ale gdybym tego nie przeczytała z tyłu okładki, to wcale bym tak nie powiedziała. Ot taki miszmasz.
Ciężko mi nawet powiedzieć coś o głównym bohaterze, bo niby ma momenty, gdy pokazuje swój charakter i że nie daje sobie wejść na głowę czy się zastraszyć, i te fragmenty były bardzo na plus, ale jednocześnie wydaje się taki niezdecydowany czego on właściwie oczekuje od życia. Błądzi między nie wiadomo czym, znajduje różne symbole, jest wmieszany w jakieś spiski, niby jest zakochany, ale w kim konkretnie to też sam nie wie niemal do samego końca... Nawet się nie dowiadujemy, dlaczego spotkało go to, co go spotkało, więc nie mamy też przedstawionej jego przeszłości w całości.
Są momenty, gdy historia mnie nawet wciągnęła, ale szkoda, że były to tylko momenty. Widziałam opinie, że książka jest lepsza fragmentami niż jako całość i ja się pod tymi opiniami podpisuję.
Niby jest to klasyka, z którą warto się zapoznać, jednak nie dziwi mnie, jeśli ktoś się poddaje w trakcie czytania. Sama nie oczekiwałam żadnych konkretów, gdy po nią sięgałam, ale czuję zawód. Musiałam się wręcz chwilami niestety przymuszać do jej czytania. Może do niej kiedyś wrócę jeszcze raz.
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Every 33 years, a golem walks the Jewish ghetto in Prague, leaving behind it death and transcendence.
A meditation on the difference between choosing life or death, and probably the inspiration for more books and movies than even knew it. There's even a Matrix moment in it!
I don't know if it's possible to spoil anything in this book. "What?!?" seems to be the appropriate response.
But:
The main character as a boy has his father ripped off by a guy. Something happens, and he loses his memories, about the same time the Golem appeared last. When it's time for the golem to appear again, the main character starts hallucinating and passing out. The guy who screwed over his father, his son commits suicide. One guy fooled the son into committing suicide, but the blame got shifted onto a different guy. The main character gets a job repairing a book from a guy he thinks is a golem. The same guy who screwed his father over tries to frame the supposed cause of his son's suicide for murder but fails. The guy who actually did cause the suicide gets the father to kill himself, while thinking favorably of the that guy. However, the guy is filled with hate at the father, who is his own father (illegitimately). The main character, being held indefinitely in jail, is released after the deaths of both the father and the illegitimate son, inheriting a third of both men's wealth after the father passed it to the illegitimate son, never knowing that truth.
Meanwhile, the main character encounters a lively young whore, an enchanting married woman who was sleeping with the first guy the father blamed, and a saintly woman, daughter of a man who initiates spiritual healing in the main character.
In the end, we learn the main character and the saintly woman join in spiritual marriage in an illusory house. All of this is seen by the narrator as part of a vision (or judgment) brought to him by a hat. The narrator is as good as the main character's twin, only about 33 years younger, the same age as the main character during his tale.
My thoughts:
--The main character experienced a spiritual injury when he saw the golem at a young age, at the same time as the fall of his family fortunes.
--A new identity was "grafted" onto the main character's at that time. This is mentioned in the book.
--The main character is also the illegitimate son who murdered the guy who screwed over the main character's father, a la Fight Club. It doesn't work out exactly, but we only have the illegitimate son's word for things, because no one else really sees him, except when it might be the main character they're seeing. It's kind of hand waved.
--The main character also has another grafted identity, a murderer and rapist who ends up in prison with him, also seems to engage with nobody but the main character, and who seems to have raped the saintly woman that the main character was getting increasingly lustful and possibly violent thoughts about.
--The three men are kind of three alchemical or mystical versions of the same guy; only when the other two are dead is the main character released.
--The three women are ditto for women, but because this is a book written from a male POV trying to transcend gender and everything material, well, they're flat and uninteresting.
--These two characters come together at the illusory house after the narrator, who is a spiritual twin of the main character, wakes up from the vision given him by the hat.
--The golem is "the rational mind," which is trapped in a room no one can get into, but occasionally sneaks out to lash out at others in a murder spree or at least glaring at people.
I liked it a lot, but it's really just a "Journey to the West" story, where a man faces his demons, subsumes some women, and wakes up holy after resisting temptation, only to encounter another seeker after the truth :)
Eventually, the author bacame a Buddhist.
A meditation on the difference between choosing life or death, and probably the inspiration for more books and movies than even knew it. There's even a Matrix moment in it!
I don't know if it's possible to spoil anything in this book. "What?!?" seems to be the appropriate response.
But:
The main character as a boy has his father ripped off by a guy. Something happens, and he loses his memories, about the same time the Golem appeared last. When it's time for the golem to appear again, the main character starts hallucinating and passing out. The guy who screwed over his father, his son commits suicide. One guy fooled the son into committing suicide, but the blame got shifted onto a different guy. The main character gets a job repairing a book from a guy he thinks is a golem. The same guy who screwed his father over tries to frame the supposed cause of his son's suicide for murder but fails. The guy who actually did cause the suicide gets the father to kill himself, while thinking favorably of the that guy. However, the guy is filled with hate at the father, who is his own father (illegitimately). The main character, being held indefinitely in jail, is released after the deaths of both the father and the illegitimate son, inheriting a third of both men's wealth after the father passed it to the illegitimate son, never knowing that truth.
Meanwhile, the main character encounters a lively young whore, an enchanting married woman who was sleeping with the first guy the father blamed, and a saintly woman, daughter of a man who initiates spiritual healing in the main character.
In the end, we learn the main character and the saintly woman join in spiritual marriage in an illusory house. All of this is seen by the narrator as part of a vision (or judgment) brought to him by a hat. The narrator is as good as the main character's twin, only about 33 years younger, the same age as the main character during his tale.
My thoughts:
--The main character experienced a spiritual injury when he saw the golem at a young age, at the same time as the fall of his family fortunes.
--A new identity was "grafted" onto the main character's at that time. This is mentioned in the book.
--The main character is also the illegitimate son who murdered the guy who screwed over the main character's father, a la Fight Club. It doesn't work out exactly, but we only have the illegitimate son's word for things, because no one else really sees him, except when it might be the main character they're seeing. It's kind of hand waved.
--The main character also has another grafted identity, a murderer and rapist who ends up in prison with him, also seems to engage with nobody but the main character, and who seems to have raped the saintly woman that the main character was getting increasingly lustful and possibly violent thoughts about.
--The three men are kind of three alchemical or mystical versions of the same guy; only when the other two are dead is the main character released.
--The three women are ditto for women, but because this is a book written from a male POV trying to transcend gender and everything material, well, they're flat and uninteresting.
--These two characters come together at the illusory house after the narrator, who is a spiritual twin of the main character, wakes up from the vision given him by the hat.
--The golem is "the rational mind," which is trapped in a room no one can get into, but occasionally sneaks out to lash out at others in a murder spree or at least glaring at people.
I liked it a lot, but it's really just a "Journey to the West" story, where a man faces his demons, subsumes some women, and wakes up holy after resisting temptation, only to encounter another seeker after the truth :)
Eventually, the author bacame a Buddhist.
Un libro strano, quasi a due volti.
A tratti scorre bene e fa interessare alla storia di Athanesius Pernath nel quartiere ebraico di Vienna, tra i suoi problemi personali legati al suo passato e l'intricata ragnatela di vendette in cui si ritrova suo malgrado invischiato, e a tratti invece colpisce in testa il lettore con fumosi capitoli che ondeggiano tra l'onirico e il mistico più sfrenati.
Non stupisce leggere in calce al romanzo che l'autore si era a lungo interessato all'occultismo diventandone un esperto, né il ritrovare nella sua vita situazioni che vagamente richiamano scene del libro (come l'ingiusta detenzione preventiva, per dirne una, o i pensieri suicidi).
Però tutti questi vaghi accenni cabalistici e mistici, che attingono a piene mani dalla spiritualità e dalle tradizioni più arcane ebraiche, privi di qualsiasi spiegazione o approfondimento risultano solo nebulosi e incomprensibili per il lettore digiuno di un'infarinatura nel campo dell'occulto.
E così si ritorna ai due volti del romanzo.
Alle parti occulte che inizialmente uno cerca di seguire immaginandosi una loro rilevanza nella trama, salvo poi perdersi tra simbolismi, nomi e allusioni, e alle parti di storia vera e propria, alla povertà vera o fittizia nel quartiere, agli amori e agli odi, al bene e al male, al degrado e alla nobiltà.
Peccato che l'interesse per la seconda vena presente nel libro (e no, il fatto che la voce narrante non sia affidabile, l'oniricità del tutto e il finale non mi sono affatto dispiaciuti, anzi!, così come certe scene confuse ma che generano un'ottima atmosfera degna di Lovecraft) sia controbilanciato dalla confusione che poi sfocia in fastidio e poi in noia della prima vena ampollosamente mistica, che spinge invece al disinteresse,
Combattuto tra l'interesse e la noia, alla fine non posso che dare una valutazione mediana al libro.
Probabilmente servono diverse conoscenze nel campo del mistico rispetto alle mie, per poterlo pienamente apprezzare...
A tratti scorre bene e fa interessare alla storia di Athanesius Pernath nel quartiere ebraico di Vienna, tra i suoi problemi personali legati al suo passato e l'intricata ragnatela di vendette in cui si ritrova suo malgrado invischiato, e a tratti invece colpisce in testa il lettore con fumosi capitoli che ondeggiano tra l'onirico e il mistico più sfrenati.
Non stupisce leggere in calce al romanzo che l'autore si era a lungo interessato all'occultismo diventandone un esperto, né il ritrovare nella sua vita situazioni che vagamente richiamano scene del libro (come l'ingiusta detenzione preventiva, per dirne una, o i pensieri suicidi).
Però tutti questi vaghi accenni cabalistici e mistici, che attingono a piene mani dalla spiritualità e dalle tradizioni più arcane ebraiche, privi di qualsiasi spiegazione o approfondimento risultano solo nebulosi e incomprensibili per il lettore digiuno di un'infarinatura nel campo dell'occulto.
E così si ritorna ai due volti del romanzo.
Alle parti occulte che inizialmente uno cerca di seguire immaginandosi una loro rilevanza nella trama, salvo poi perdersi tra simbolismi, nomi e allusioni, e alle parti di storia vera e propria, alla povertà vera o fittizia nel quartiere, agli amori e agli odi, al bene e al male, al degrado e alla nobiltà.
Peccato che l'interesse per la seconda vena presente nel libro (e no, il fatto che la voce narrante non sia affidabile, l'oniricità del tutto e il finale non mi sono affatto dispiaciuti, anzi!, così come certe scene confuse ma che generano un'ottima atmosfera degna di Lovecraft) sia controbilanciato dalla confusione che poi sfocia in fastidio e poi in noia della prima vena ampollosamente mistica, che spinge invece al disinteresse,
Combattuto tra l'interesse e la noia, alla fine non posso che dare una valutazione mediana al libro.
Probabilmente servono diverse conoscenze nel campo del mistico rispetto alle mie, per poterlo pienamente apprezzare...
‘The Golem’ by Gustav Meyrink, is an early 20th-century literary gothic (published in 1915). However, instead of the horror or monster drama that we, gentle reader, may be expecting, he explores the meaning of identity, mystically speaking, in the form of a highbrow 19th-century book written in the style of a psychological gothic of the time.
The word golem is a word used once in the Bible, specifically in Psalm 139:16, although we English speakers never see it because of translation issues. The KJV version of the Psalm: “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; And in thy book all my members were written, Which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” The word golem actually meant originally “my unshaped form’. The word is used sometimes today to describe someone who appears to be an obedient, but thick-witted, cretin.
A fairy-tale golem monster is made traditionally by writing the word ‘truth’ somewhere, sometimes on a paper, which is placed into the mouth of a man-like statue made from clay or mud, or sometimes by writing the word on the statue’s forehead. The statue becomes animated by this magical process, but it is an enslaved being, and it must obey the commands of whoever started its animation. The golem is deactivated by changing the inscription from "Truth" to "Death". The oldest versions of the story of making a golem have been traced back to Jewish fairy tales, primarily the story of Adam being created from mud by a god.
The author Gustav Meyrink was fascinated by mysticism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism), so much so that his book, ‘The Golem,’ is loaded with references to his researches; but he seems to explore primarily in this novel the idea of identity in terms of mysticism. Meyrink weaves into his plot a vague outline of the original golem story to illustrate his ideas with a great deal of playful (intellectually, not comic) literary inventiveness.
Athanasius Pernath, our protagonist, lives a life of much mental confusion. He cannot remember very much of his past, and his present often appears to recede from reality into a waking dream. We learn from the events on the first page that Pernath has just finished reading about the life of Buddha, and shortly after he wakes up he immediately begins to experience a vision of a rock which is more like a lump of fat - a shapeless, formless stone of fat, like unformed mud.
“At times I emerge with a start from the half-light of this reverie and see again for a moment the moonlight lying on the humped cover at the bottom of the bed like a large, bright, flat stone, only to grope my way blindly once more after my departing consciousness, restlessly searching for the stone which is tormenting me, the one which must lie hidden somewhere in the debris of my memory and which looks like a lump of fat. The end of a rainwater pipe must once have reached the ground beside it, I imagine, bent at an obtuse angle, its rim eaten away by rust, and I furiously try to force such an image into my mind in order to beguile my startled thoughts and lull them back to sleep. I do not succeed. Again and again, again and again, with idiotic persistence, tireless as a shutter blown by the wind against the wall at regular intervals, an obstinate voice inside me keeps insisting, ‘That is something else, something quite different, that is not the stone that looks like a lump of fat.’ There is no escape from the voice. A hundred times I object that that is all beside the point, but, although it goes silent for a little while, it starts up again, imperceptibly at first, with its stubborn ‘Yes, yes, you may be right, but it’s still not the stone that looks like a lump of fat’. I am slowly filled with an unbearable sense of my own powerlessness. I do not know what happened after that. Did I voluntarily give up all resistance, or did my thoughts overpower me and bind me? All I know is that my body is lying asleep in bed and my senses are detached and no longer tied to it. ‘Who is this ‘I’, now?’, is the question that suddenly occurs to me”
Gustav Meyrink (2012-10-23). The Golem (Dedalus European Classics) (pp. 24-25). SCB Distributors. Kindle Edition.
Pernath is a gem cutter, by trade, but we never see him at work. Instead, he frequents a neighborhood (a Jewish enclave) of housing, restaurants, pubs and shops where he meets his friends and acquaintances (by the way, every character is bleak, mysterious and peculiar, except for one - and it isn’t Pernath). He picks up local gossip and doings, some of which interests him a great deal.
A junk dealer, Aaron Wassertrum, is one who particularly interests him because he appears to be a force of negativity or evil, and his daughter (maybe), Rosina, is perhaps a teenage prostitute, a possible victim of Wassertrum’s depravity, whatever it may have been. She certainly is an uninhibited force of unconstrained sexuality in Pernath’s mind.
Pernath is attracted to another woman, Miriam, who is moral and responsible, who he met while visiting her father, Shemaiah Hillel. Pernath himself had a nervous breakdown after a previous unhappy love affair, and he is being treated by Shemaiah Hillel with hypnotism to be calm and to forget. Remembering his past (he gets flashbacks) causes Pernath extreme anxiety. He also sees ghostly visions and haunted houses. It may or may not be true he is being haunted by a golem.
If you have noticed my difficulty to elucidate events and activities from the book, you are a perceptive, maybe even mystical, person. Pernath is the most undependable narrator I have come across in my reading to date! A lot takes place in Meyrink’s story; but since we see everything through Pernath’s eyes, it is impossible to know how much of what happens is from his real life and what is occurring in a waking dream state. Frankly, most of the book appears to be a dream vision.
From Wikipedia, on the subject of gem facets:
"Many crystals naturally grow in faceted shapes. For instance, common table salt forms cubes and quartz forms hexagonal prisms. These characteristic shapes are a consequence of the crystal structure of the material and the surface energy, as well as the general conditions under which the crystal formed.”
The author’s linking of a gem’s faceted structure and Pernath’s job skill at cutting away at a solid stone to reveal and shape the faceted jewel underneath is one example of the interlocking literary subterfuges hidden within the novel. A lot of the fun in reading ‘The Golem’ is finding the hundreds of symbolic word puzzles Meyrink used to power the ideas behind the story’s action. Honestly, I would have been highly amused if instead of calling his hero Pernath Meyrink used the name Walt Whitman for his character, although it is very likely the European Meyrink did not know about the American Whitman’s poetry, especially the notorious poem, ‘Song of Myself’ from ‘Leaves of Grass’. However, I couldn’t help connecting such a dot myself.
Anyway, Meyrink was not so much illustrating the multitudes of self within as the duality of a self within. Pernath is haunted by oppositional identity issues in a delirious hodgepodge of doppleganged issues, characters and situations.
But whatever the concerns of the author, the main nightmare scaring the narrator Pernath is in believing his senses to experience reality. His existential uncertainty includes emotional inconsistency as well, so that he alternates between being numb and anxious. He often feels he isn’t feeling his own feelings, too.
He is such a mess!
Third, Pernath is curious/repulsed/drawn by monsters - real and mythic, human and mystical. He wants to control/kill the monster
I can't honestly say this is a good read, although it is an interesting novel which I intend to keep and re-read. The translation, if accurate, which it most likely is, shows a writer with a strong literary intelligence. By the way, I suggest reading up on the author’s life - it is actually an exciting story!
The not-so-thrilling book that the larger-than-life author wrote, however, reminded me of a goofy 1970's art film short I saw, where there are two people sitting on separate chairs in an otherwise empty room. A person walks into the room and shows them a card that has been colored blue. One person stands up, cries, and runs away. The other stands up and slaps the person with the colored card. As viewers, we know that the card meant something to each individual, but it was personal feeling and unknowable to the viewer. Art like this is meant to be sort of a Rorschach test for the viewer. The book, like the art film, may intend for all of its inferences to resonate within the reader, the way a Rorschach test does.
A MAJOR annoyance of mine is what Literature experts often cover up or skate over: that often these so-called ‘proto-modern’ Great Books are written by an author whose biography reveals heavy drug abuse and/or alcoholism. Experts almost NEVER point those facts out except briefly in passing (depending on the expert, institution or era), even if they also mention, with a stronger emphasis, any war experiences. When they are discussing why an author’s work was subsequently important, they usually talk about their originality, intuition, intelligence and amazing imagination. They speak of how the work inspired later generations and new categories of Literature and Art. They almost never say any genius activity resulted from the delusions and madness released of a night or nights of substance abuse, and later the images being put down on paper, unless everyone has been mentioning it for centuries.
I hazard the assumption most of us have been drunk or feverish or so anxious as to experience mistaken or heightened sense experiences, even metaphysical ones. I once stayed awake for three days because I had taken a cold medicine for a really really really bad cold, completely unaware of the side effects of the OTC medicine. When I finally figured out the reason I couldn’t sleep was the cold medicine, I stopped it. My ensuing sleep was like that of a dead person, but my dreams were crazy! (I’m sure the walking pneumonia had an effect as well…)
I agree or submit to expert opinions generally; however, I am extremely annoyed at the lack of giving any credit, or minimizing the contribution, of the obvious source of these artists’ creativity - that of the utterly delirious hallucinations from substance abuse (usually), and the being out of their minds and insane, temporary as it might be. The extreme mentally ill state or psychosis of the authors led to their imaginative tour-de-force. Full stop. I am not advocating for excessive substance abuse, mind. Most of these authors died young and sick. Still, it’s Truth! And Death! Emeth and Meth! (Warning, do not stick those words written down in your mouth.)
Right?
The word golem is a word used once in the Bible, specifically in Psalm 139:16, although we English speakers never see it because of translation issues. The KJV version of the Psalm: “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; And in thy book all my members were written, Which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” The word golem actually meant originally “my unshaped form’. The word is used sometimes today to describe someone who appears to be an obedient, but thick-witted, cretin.
A fairy-tale golem monster is made traditionally by writing the word ‘truth’ somewhere, sometimes on a paper, which is placed into the mouth of a man-like statue made from clay or mud, or sometimes by writing the word on the statue’s forehead. The statue becomes animated by this magical process, but it is an enslaved being, and it must obey the commands of whoever started its animation. The golem is deactivated by changing the inscription from "Truth" to "Death". The oldest versions of the story of making a golem have been traced back to Jewish fairy tales, primarily the story of Adam being created from mud by a god.
The author Gustav Meyrink was fascinated by mysticism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism), so much so that his book, ‘The Golem,’ is loaded with references to his researches; but he seems to explore primarily in this novel the idea of identity in terms of mysticism.
Spoiler
He seems to hint in his novel how some of us may be connected through an actual, but vaguely understood, parallel universe, operating through symbols and an alternative logic, seen or accessed through dreams or a meditative waking dream state, with a physics that transcends time.Athanasius Pernath, our protagonist, lives a life of much mental confusion. He cannot remember very much of his past, and his present often appears to recede from reality into a waking dream. We learn from the events on the first page that Pernath has just finished reading about the life of Buddha, and shortly after he wakes up he immediately begins to experience a vision of a rock which is more like a lump of fat - a shapeless, formless stone of fat, like unformed mud.
“At times I emerge with a start from the half-light of this reverie and see again for a moment the moonlight lying on the humped cover at the bottom of the bed like a large, bright, flat stone, only to grope my way blindly once more after my departing consciousness, restlessly searching for the stone which is tormenting me, the one which must lie hidden somewhere in the debris of my memory and which looks like a lump of fat. The end of a rainwater pipe must once have reached the ground beside it, I imagine, bent at an obtuse angle, its rim eaten away by rust, and I furiously try to force such an image into my mind in order to beguile my startled thoughts and lull them back to sleep. I do not succeed. Again and again, again and again, with idiotic persistence, tireless as a shutter blown by the wind against the wall at regular intervals, an obstinate voice inside me keeps insisting, ‘That is something else, something quite different, that is not the stone that looks like a lump of fat.’ There is no escape from the voice. A hundred times I object that that is all beside the point, but, although it goes silent for a little while, it starts up again, imperceptibly at first, with its stubborn ‘Yes, yes, you may be right, but it’s still not the stone that looks like a lump of fat’. I am slowly filled with an unbearable sense of my own powerlessness. I do not know what happened after that. Did I voluntarily give up all resistance, or did my thoughts overpower me and bind me? All I know is that my body is lying asleep in bed and my senses are detached and no longer tied to it. ‘Who is this ‘I’, now?’, is the question that suddenly occurs to me”
Gustav Meyrink (2012-10-23). The Golem (Dedalus European Classics) (pp. 24-25). SCB Distributors. Kindle Edition.
Pernath is a gem cutter, by trade, but we never see him at work. Instead, he frequents a neighborhood (a Jewish enclave) of housing, restaurants, pubs and shops where he meets his friends and acquaintances (by the way, every character is bleak, mysterious and peculiar, except for one - and it isn’t Pernath). He picks up local gossip and doings, some of which interests him a great deal.
A junk dealer, Aaron Wassertrum, is one who particularly interests him because he appears to be a force of negativity or evil, and his daughter (maybe), Rosina, is perhaps a teenage prostitute, a possible victim of Wassertrum’s depravity, whatever it may have been. She certainly is an uninhibited force of unconstrained sexuality in Pernath’s mind.
Pernath is attracted to another woman, Miriam, who is moral and responsible, who he met while visiting her father, Shemaiah Hillel. Pernath himself had a nervous breakdown after a previous unhappy love affair, and he is being treated by Shemaiah Hillel with hypnotism to be calm and to forget. Remembering his past (he gets flashbacks) causes Pernath extreme anxiety. He also sees ghostly visions and haunted houses. It may or may not be true he is being haunted by a golem.
Spoiler
It might even be himself!If you have noticed my difficulty to elucidate events and activities from the book, you are a perceptive, maybe even mystical, person. Pernath is the most undependable narrator I have come across in my reading to date! A lot takes place in Meyrink’s story; but since we see everything through Pernath’s
Spoiler
or maybe notFrom Wikipedia, on the subject of gem facets:
"Many crystals naturally grow in faceted shapes. For instance, common table salt forms cubes and quartz forms hexagonal prisms. These characteristic shapes are a consequence of the crystal structure of the material and the surface energy, as well as the general conditions under which the crystal formed.”
The author’s linking of a gem’s faceted structure and Pernath’s job skill at cutting away at a solid stone to reveal and shape the faceted jewel underneath is one example of the interlocking literary subterfuges hidden within the novel. A lot of the fun in reading ‘The Golem’ is finding the hundreds of symbolic word puzzles Meyrink used to power the ideas behind the story’s action. Honestly, I would have been highly amused if instead of calling his hero Pernath Meyrink used the name Walt Whitman for his character, although it is very likely the European Meyrink did not know about the American Whitman’s poetry, especially the notorious poem, ‘Song of Myself’ from ‘Leaves of Grass’. However, I couldn’t help connecting such a dot myself.
Anyway, Meyrink was not so much illustrating the multitudes of self within as the duality of a self within. Pernath is haunted by oppositional identity issues in a delirious hodgepodge of doppleganged issues, characters and situations.
But whatever the concerns of the author, the main nightmare scaring the narrator Pernath is in believing his senses to experience reality. His existential uncertainty includes emotional inconsistency as well, so that he alternates between being numb and anxious. He often feels he isn’t feeling his own feelings, too.
He is such a mess!
Third, Pernath is curious/repulsed/drawn by monsters - real and mythic, human and mystical. He wants to control/kill the monster
Spoiler
, which might be him - is he a murderer? He is uncertain at several points if he saw a murder or committed one.I can't honestly say this is a good read, although it is an interesting novel which I intend to keep and re-read. The translation, if accurate, which it most likely is, shows a writer with a strong literary intelligence. By the way, I suggest reading up on the author’s life - it is actually an exciting story!
The not-so-thrilling book that the larger-than-life author wrote, however, reminded me of a goofy 1970's art film short I saw, where there are two people sitting on separate chairs in an otherwise empty room. A person walks into the room and shows them a card that has been colored blue. One person stands up, cries, and runs away. The other stands up and slaps the person with the colored card. As viewers, we know that the card meant something to each individual, but it was personal feeling and unknowable to the viewer. Art like this is meant to be sort of a Rorschach test for the viewer. The book, like the art film, may intend for all of its inferences to resonate within the reader, the way a Rorschach test does.
A MAJOR annoyance of mine is what Literature experts often cover up or skate over: that often these so-called ‘proto-modern’ Great Books are written by an author whose biography reveals heavy drug abuse and/or alcoholism. Experts almost NEVER point those facts out except briefly in passing (depending on the expert, institution or era), even if they also mention, with a stronger emphasis, any war experiences. When they are discussing why an author’s work was subsequently important, they usually talk about their originality, intuition, intelligence and amazing imagination. They speak of how the work inspired later generations and new categories of Literature and Art. They almost never say any genius activity resulted from the delusions and madness released of a night or nights of substance abuse, and later the images being put down on paper, unless everyone has been mentioning it for centuries.
I hazard the assumption most of us have been drunk or feverish or so anxious as to experience mistaken or heightened sense experiences, even metaphysical ones. I once stayed awake for three days because I had taken a cold medicine for a really really really bad cold, completely unaware of the side effects of the OTC medicine. When I finally figured out the reason I couldn’t sleep was the cold medicine, I stopped it. My ensuing sleep was like that of a dead person, but my dreams were crazy! (I’m sure the walking pneumonia had an effect as well…)
I agree or submit to expert opinions generally; however, I am extremely annoyed at the lack of giving any credit, or minimizing the contribution, of the obvious source of these artists’ creativity - that of the utterly delirious hallucinations from substance abuse (usually), and the being out of their minds and insane, temporary as it might be. The extreme mentally ill state or psychosis of the authors led to their imaginative tour-de-force. Full stop. I am not advocating for excessive substance abuse, mind. Most of these authors died young and sick. Still, it’s Truth! And Death! Emeth and Meth! (Warning, do not stick those words written down in your mouth.)
Right?