Someday in some city, a certain legend of a certain house, which disturbs the tranquility of the entire neighborhood, finding confirmation in the testimony of eyewitnesses who just yesterday witnessed manifestations of the veracity of mystical visions, will certainly be subjected to artistic treatment and written. Old buildings are filled with ghosts, under big bridge there may be a troll living, or somewhere in Prague, in the Jewish ghetto, a myth has taken root about a protective golem that wakes up every thirty-three years, taking another victim before oblivion. The legend of the golem dates back to XVI century and is a feature of the myth-making of the Prague Jewish community, one of whose representatives decided to repeat God’s providence by creating a likeness of himself from clay, but not for admiration, but to maintain order. That golem was an obedient creature, being at the same time the first robot to listen to commands through a piece of paper with information that was inserted into a connector that resembled a mouth; One day the golem did not receive a command, after which a great pogrom occurred. Whether thanks to Meyrink or others, the concept of a golem has firmly entered into the everyday life of the inhabitants of the entire planet, who perfectly understand the meaning of the word and the nature of that creature, which is the best guard that comes to life to eliminate the threat.
Gustav Meyrink for a long time lived in Prague. At twenty-four, he stood on the verge of death, pondering the rationale for his continued existence. The case helped him put off solving the delicate situation until later, and as a result of severe emotional trauma, Gustav easily began to listen to everything mystical; was a member of the circle of Kabbalists. Seeing secret signs in everything, trying to justify the events taking place in the world with the help of various devices, but at the same time remaining a person devoid of an excessive desire to immerse himself and take on everything that his friends live with - this is exactly the impression Gustav makes on the reader. Having discarded everything superfluous, armed with local folklore, Meyrink recreated the golem, stirring the thoughts of warring Europe, which had not yet been exposed to poisonous mustard gas, in order to understand the necessity of the existence of golems in reality, how the only remedy get away from the horrors of war by replacing living people with artificial creatures. All this will wander in the heads of people of that time who wanted to find such a protector.
There really is a mystical component in “Golem”, but the author will break it down by giving the wet clay a finished look and waiting for it to dry naturally, after which the reader will be doomed to see under the guise of mystery the evil genius of humanity, accustomed to shooting in the back under loud sounds and plucking the carcass of a domestic animal raised for food. Any undertaking can be ruined, but mysterious story give the most common appearance. In part, Meyrink did just that, covering with intrigue the most common awareness of the fact that everything secret sooner or later becomes clear. But by what means is the understanding of the incomprehensible achieved? main mystery. Meyrink does not introduce people with unusual abilities, but does it in a rather surprising way, filling the book not only with signs, but also with artifacts that give the ability to perceive what someone has seen before. It seems that the reader is confronted with a typical myth with fairy-tale elements - and this is in fact the case. Not a self-assembled tablecloth, not an invisibility cloak, or even a wall that eats people, but a similar object.
“Golem” is the writer’s first major work, so it is very difficult to read. The author does not know how to beautifully reveal the plot to the reader, paying attention to more attention filling the pages, rather than producing a unique narrative according to a recipe worked out over the years. The reader will have to wade through, trying to assimilate the content in order to independently look for the necessary threads. At first glance, it seems that starting a book about the occult with a story about an ophthalmologist is a play on words. The blasphemous actions of the pseudo-doctor are the very trigger that prepares the reader for the shot, fueling interest interesting story, where everyone can be drawn into. Having fully realized all the horror, the reader will look for exactly the same moments throughout the rest of the book, but he will no longer find anything like it, having accepted all the confusion that Meyrink squeezed out of himself.
The heroes of “Golem” move through different locations, performing actions, testing theories, refuting early assumptions and making conclusions that are important for further actions. It goes without saying that it all comes down to the search for the meaning of life in Kabbalah and other books about mysticism. The answer has long been clear, but human brain not ready to accept a logical explanation, interpreting again and again the world from the position of a secret principle, hidden from a person, so that only a select few have access to it. It is impossible to say unequivocally about the simplicity of all things, since many matters have not yet been discovered, but there is definitely no mystical matter among them. However, at one fine moment, the unknown will come to the surface, becoming part of Everyday life, devoid of cave prejudices.
It is necessary to break the shackles of misconceptions, but to do this it is necessary to understand that misconceptions are generally possible. Meyrink's "Golem" is one of the keys to understanding this.
Additional tags: Meyrink Golem criticism, Meyrink Golem analysis, Meyrink Golem reviews, Meyrink Golem review, Meyrink Golem book, Gustav Meyrink, Der Golem, The Golem
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– Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman
Moonlight falls on the edge of my bed and lies there like a large shining flat slab.
When the face full moon begins to deteriorate and its right side begins to decline - as if a face approaching old age first becomes covered with wrinkles and begins to lose weight - at such hours I am overcome by a heavy and painful anxiety.
I neither sleep nor am I awake, and in my half-asleep my experience mixes with what I have read and heard, as if streams flow together. different colors and clarity.
Before going to bed, I read about the life of Buddha Gotama, and now a thousand ways flash through my mind, constantly returning to the beginning, the following words:
“The crow flew to a stone that looked like a piece of lard, and thought: there is something tasty here. But not finding anything tasty, she flew away. Like a crow that descended to a stone, we, the seekers, leave the ascetic Gotama, having lost our taste for him.”
And the image of a stone that looked like a piece of lard grows incredibly large in my brain.
I walk along the bed of a dry river and collect smooth pebbles.
Gray-blue stones, speckled with glittering dust, over which I ponder and ponder, and yet I do not know what to do with them—then black, with sulphur-yellow spots, like the petrified attempts of a child to fashion a rough spotted lizard.
And I want to throw them far away from me, these pebbles, but they all fall out of my hands, I cannot drive them out of my field of vision.
All the stones that have ever played a role in my life stand up and surround me.
Some, like large, slate-colored crabs, before the returning tide, straining their strength, try to crawl out of the sand into the light, in every possible way trying to attract my gaze to themselves in order to tell me about something infinitely important.
Others, exhausted, fall powerlessly back into their pits and refuse to ever say anything.
From time to time I come out of the twilight of this half-sleep and for a moment I see again on the bulging edge of my blanket the moonlight, lying in a large shining flat slab, so that then in the recesses of the again slipping consciousness I restlessly look for the stone tormenting me, which is somewhere, in the refuse of my memories , lies like a piece of lard.
Near it on the ground, there was probably once a drainpipe - I picture it to myself - bent under obtuse angle, with edges corroded by rust, and I stubbornly try to awaken in my mind an image that would deceive my frightened thoughts and lull them to sleep.
I can't do this.
Over and over again, with senseless persistence, tirelessly, like a shutter with which the wind hits the wall at regular intervals, a stubborn voice repeats within me: “this is not at all the same, this is not at all the stone that looks like a piece of lard.”
Even if I proved to myself a hundred times that it doesn’t matter at all, he falls silent for a moment, then imperceptibly wakes up again and persistently begins again: “Okay, okay, so be it, but it’s still not a stone that looks like a piece of lard.”
Gradually, an unbearable feeling of complete helplessness takes possession of me.
I only know that my body lies asleep in bed, and my consciousness has separated from it and is no longer connected with it.
Who is my Self now? I suddenly want to ask, but then I realize that I no longer have an organ through which I could ask, and I begin to fear that the stupid voice will wake up in me again and again begin an endless interrogation about stone and fat.
And I shrug everything off.
I stood in a dark courtyard and through the red arch of the gate saw opposite side a narrow and dirty street of a Jewish junk dealer, leaning against a shop hung with old iron rubbish, broken tools, rusty stirrups and skates, as well as many other used things.
This picture contained the painful monotony of daily impressions, rushing, like street vendors, through the threshold of our perception, and did not arouse in me either curiosity or surprise.
I realized that in this environment I had been at home for a long time.
But this consciousness did not arouse in me deep feelings, although it went against what I had recently experienced, and with how I got to this state.
I must have once heard or read a strange comparison between a stone and a piece of lard. It came to my mind as I walked up the trampled steps to my room and thought briefly about the greasy and stone threshold.
Then I heard someone’s footsteps ahead of me, and when I approached my door, I saw that it was fourteen-year-old red-haired Rosina, the daughter of rag-picker Aaron Wassertrum.
I had to squeeze close to her; she stood with her back to the railing, leaning back lustfully.
She put her dirty hands on the iron railing to hold on, and in the dim twilight I noticed her glowing naked hands.
I avoided her gaze.
I was disgusted by her obsessive smile and that waxy face of a carousel horse.
She must have a loose white body, like a newt, which I recently saw in a cage with lizards at a bird seller - that’s what I felt.
Redheads' eyelashes disgust me, like rabbit eyelashes.
I ran up and quickly slammed the door behind me.
From my window I could see ragpicker Aaron Wassertrum at his stall.
He stood leaning against the ledge of a dark arch and trimming his nails.
Is his red-haired Rosina his daughter or niece? He bears no resemblance to her.
Among the Jewish faces that I come across every day on Rooster Street, I clearly distinguish several breeds; Despite the close relationship of individual individuals, they are as difficult to mix with each other as oil and water. There is no need to say here: these are brothers, or these are father and son.
This one belongs to one breed, that one to another - that’s all that can be read on their faces.
So what if Rosina looked like a ragpicker?
These breeds have secret disgust and hostility towards each other, breaking through even the walls of narrow blood relationships, but they hide it from outside world like a dangerous secret.
Not a single one betrays himself, and in this unanimity everyone looks like embittered blind men who wander, holding on to a dirty rope - some with both hands, some with one finger, but all with superstitious horror of the abyss into which everyone must fall as soon as the common one disappears. support, and people will lose each other.
Rosina is from that breed, the red type of which is even more disgusting than others. Males belonging to this breed are narrow-chested, with a long neck and a protruding Adam's apple.
They seem completely covered with freckles, they suffer severe torments all their lives - these men - and secretly wage a continuous and fruitless struggle with their lust, in constant disgusting fear for their health.
It was not clear to me why I actually thought that Rosina was a relative of the rag-picker Wassertrum.
After all, I had never seen her next to the old man, I had never noticed that one of them called out to the other.
Almost always she was in our yard or sneaking through the dark corners and passages of our house.
I am sure that all the inhabitants of my house considered her a close relative, or at least the pupil of a ragpicker, and yet I have no doubt that not one of them would give reasons for their assumption.
I wanted to take my mind off Rosina and looked out the open window of the room onto Rooster Street, and suddenly, as if sensing my gaze, Aaron Wassertrum turned his face in my direction.
A disgusting, motionless face, with round fish eyes and a hanging harelip.
He seemed to me like a spider among people, subtly feeling every touch on the web, despite all his apparent indifference.
Gustav Meyrink, illegitimate son of Maria Wilhelmina Adelheid Mayer and minister of state Karl Freiherr von Farnwühler, born January 19, 1868 in Vienna. His mother was an actress and therefore traveled a lot with the theater. Meyrink spent his childhood and youth in constant travel. He studied at gymnasiums - alternately in Munich, Hamburg and Prague. Literary scholars and biographers of Meyrink believe that the writer’s mother treated her son rather coldly, and the boy was deprived of maternal warmth in childhood. Some believe that this is why the writer was so successful in later vampiric and demonic female characters and the positive figures came out quite flat. In 1888, Meyrink graduated from the Trade Academy in Prague. After this, he founded, with the nephew of the poet Christian Morgenstern, the trading bank Mayer and Morgenstern, which functioned quite successfully for some time.
Although not very diligent in his banking activities, Meyrink led a high-society life in Prague. Once he even fought a duel with some officer because of an inappropriate and offensive allusion to illegitimacy.
In 1892, Meyrink married Jedwiga Maria Zertl - but he quickly became disillusioned with this marriage and did not get a divorce until 1905 only because of the stubbornness of his wife and some legal details.
In the 90s, Meyrink became interested in the occult. In his posthumously published autobiographical story “The Pilot,” he himself describes the circumstances under which he first encountered the mysterious forces of fate. In 1892, when he was 24 years old, he experienced the deepest spiritual crisis, which gradually led him to the idea of suicide. When he was already standing in his room, preparing to leave the world of the living forever, something rustled under the door, and he saw how a thin brochure was pushed through the crack under him. strange name"Life after death". This made such a strong impression on him that he abruptly changed his intention. The mystical coincidence largely influenced his entire future fate.
After this incident, he delved into the study of occult treatises, participated in the establishment of the Prague branch of the Theosophical Society “At the Blue Star” and came into contact with a circle of “Prague mystics grouped around a certain Weber Alois Mailender.
Also in 1892, the Prague police received a slanderous accusation against Meyrink for using spiritualism and witchcraft in banking. He was taken into custody and was in prison for two and a half months. Despite the eventual proof of his innocence, this incident negatively affected all his affairs, and he was forced to leave his enterprise.
In the 1900s, Meyrink began writing satirical stories for the magazine Simplicissimus. Already in them one can see the author’s significant interest in mysticism and Eastern religions. At this time, Meyrink was in close contact with the Prague group of neo-romantics A. Kubin, R. Teschner, R. Leppin and O. Wiener. From his pen come grotesque fantasy stories with elements of social satire and outright macabre. Later he combined them in the 3-volume book “The Magic Horn of the German Philistine.”
In 1905, Meyrink married Philomena Berndt. With his new wife, they often travel around Europe. In Vienna, Meyrink publishes the satirical magazine “Der lieber Augustin”, while continuing to collaborate at the same time in the Prague “Simpilissimus”. In 1906, Meyrink's daughter, Felicitas Sibylla, was born in Switzerland, and in 1908, a son, Harro Fortunat, was born in Munich.
During his travels, Meyrink meets various representatives of European occult schools and, in particular, with the esoteric group of the Italian Giuliano Kremmerz, called the Miriam Chain. Communication with Kremmerz and initiation into the occult hermetic-tantric practice “Miriam’s Chains” was extremely important for Meyrink important event, which affected all subsequent literary works, one way or another connected with the ideas and techniques of the Kremmerz school, and especially on the novel “Golem”.
In 1915, this novel was published and immediately brought Meyrink incredible success. It went through several editions, plays were staged and expressionist films were made based on it. Immediately after “Golem,” Meyrink publishes a second novel, “The Green Face,” and a collection of short stories “ The bats" Although these books do not exceed the success of Golem in popularity, the public reads them willingly. In addition, Meyrink is engaged in translations of Dickens and occult treatises. In 1917, he wrote the novel “Walpurgis Night”, the interest in which is noticeably weaker than in previous books.
Thanks to the income from his publications, Meyrink was able to buy a villa on Lake Starnberg, which he called “The House at the Last Lantern.” He lived in it for the rest of his life.
In 1921 he published the novel “The White Dominican”, and in 1927 last book- “Angel of the Western Window.” Meyrink also publishes 5 volumes of the series “Novels and Books about Magic”, established by himself.
In 1927 Meyrink accepted Buddhism and devoted himself entirely to meditation practice. They say that he was so proficient in yoga that he used it to treat all diseases without resorting to the services of doctors. His only theoretical brochure, “On the Border with the Otherworldly” (1923), is devoted to certain aspects of the practice of “hatha yoga”.
In the summer of 1932, his son Harro Fortunat, at the age of 24, committed suicide, not only repeating the tragic attempt of his father in his youth, but also, as it were, confirming all his literary creativity, in which similar situation the mystical transmission of the same archetypes along a chain of generations is repeatedly played out. In a letter to a friend, Meyrink talks about the horror he experienced when faced with personal life with such a direct reflection of his mystical ideas about the cyclical circulation of events.
Six months after the death of his son, on December 4, 1932, Meyrink himself died. His wife, who survived him by 30 years, wrote that he felt the end was approaching and asked her not to worry or fuss. He met death in the same way as the heroes of his novels: with dignity and firm confidence that this was only the transition of the immortal “I” from one state to another.
Meyrink's life and death are inseparable from his work. For fans of his art, his heroes exist almost like real faces. And the fate of the author himself is no less mysterious and full of mysterious signs and mystical incidents than the fate of the characters in his novels.
After Walpurgis Night, interest in Meyrink in literary circles waned and the release of The White Dominican and The Angel of the Western Window went virtually unnoticed. The wave of popularity subsided as quickly as it rose. In the 30s, 40s and 50s, almost no one remembered Meyrink until a new boom of “black romanticism” began in the early 60s.
standing in front of me not an easy task. Briefly outline some impressions about one of the most difficult books I have read in my life. Many people wrote about her - and to be honest, having mastered the novel with some difficulty, I immediately began actively reading articles dedicated to creativity Mayrink in general and “Golem” in particular. But I never found material that would answer all the accumulated questions. At least on Russian-language sites.
There are books written in a fascinating and complex way, but this complexity in all its diversity is ultimately intended to convey to the reader one simple and clear idea. Typical example This approach is the magnificent “Foucault Pendulum”. “Golem” is written, although beautifully, but extremely clearly and concisely. The novel is so integral that it is difficult to analyze from the point of view of compositional fragmentation into separate parts. Only the finale “falls out” a little, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Knowledgeable people they say that it is best to travel to Prague in November - it is at this time of year that a traveler has a chance to see it true face. But once you open “The Golem” and immerse yourself in reading, November Prague will come to you on its own.
There is an opinion that Meyrink created his most famous novel by analyzing the experience of a number of Hermetic teachings, and that without knowledge of the specifics of these teachings, it is difficult to understand anything in the book. This approach seems somewhat one-sided to me. "Golem" is first and foremost piece of art, so deep and multifaceted that to consider it in just one section means to rob yourself.
That our life is just a dream. The main character, like many people living “not their own” lives, sees a dream several decades long. And in this dream amazing things happen to him and amazing people he is surrounded. People possessed by “chimeras” of passions. Almost every character is shining example any one of them. Rosina is lust personified. A ragpicker is obsessed with greed. Student - with hatred that almost stronger than death. Brothers Lojza and Jaromir are love and jealousy that always go hand in hand. Each of them is locked in the prison of his soul as a prisoner in the mysterious Golem chamber, from where there is no way out. One on one with your dark double, victory over whom is the only chance to gain freedom.
Only by dying is a person finally freed. In the penultimate chapter of the novel main character sitting on the roof of a burning house, he experiences both fear and insane joy. I foresee objections, but everything that follows - I mean the final chapter of the book - looks as if the author simply did not know how to end and decided to write the ending in an ironic and mocking manner.
All I can say is that this book will not let me go anytime soon. Probably only when death - like the archivist Hillel - holds its palm in front of my face, finally bestowing oblivion...
Moonlight falls on the edge of my bed and lies there like a large shining flat slab.
When the face of the full moon begins to fade and its right side begins to decline - as if a face approaching old age first becomes covered with wrinkles and begins to thin - at such hours I am overcome by a heavy and painful anxiety.
I am neither asleep nor awake, and in my half-asleep my experience mixes with what I have read and heard, as if streams of different colors and clarity are flowing together.
Before going to bed, I read about the life of Buddha Gotama, and now the following words flash through my mind in a thousand ways, constantly returning to the beginning:
“The crow flew to a stone that looked like a piece of lard, and thought: there is something tasty here. But not finding anything tasty, she flew away. Like a crow that descended to a stone, we, the seekers, leave the ascetic Gotama, having lost our taste for him.”
And the image of a stone that looked like a piece of lard grows incredibly large in my brain.
I walk along the bed of a dry river and collect smooth pebbles.
Gray-blue stones, speckled with glittering dust, over which I ponder and ponder, and yet I do not know what to do with them - then black, with yellow sulfur spots, like the petrified attempts of a child to fashion a rough spotted lizard.
And I want to throw them far away from me, these pebbles, but they all fall out of my hands, I cannot drive them out of my field of vision.
All the stones that have ever played a role in my life stand up and surround me.
Some, like large, slate-colored crabs, before the returning tide, straining their strength, try to crawl out of the sand into the light, in every possible way trying to attract my gaze to themselves in order to tell me about something infinitely important.
Others, exhausted, fall powerlessly back into their pits and refuse to ever say anything.
From time to time I come out of the twilight of this half-sleep and for a moment I see again on the bulging edge of my blanket the moonlight, lying in a large shining flat slab, so that then in the recesses of the again slipping consciousness I restlessly look for the stone tormenting me, which is somewhere, in the refuse of my memories , lies like a piece of lard.
Near it on the ground, there was probably once a drainpipe - I picture to myself - bent at an obtuse angle, with edges corroded by rust, and I stubbornly try to awaken in my mind an image that would deceive my frightened thoughts and lull them to sleep .
I can't do this.
Over and over again, with senseless persistence, tirelessly, like a shutter with which the wind hits the wall at regular intervals, a stubborn voice repeats within me: “this is not at all the same, this is not at all the stone that looks like a piece of lard.”
You can't get rid of this voice.
Even if I proved to myself a hundred times that it doesn’t matter at all, he falls silent for a moment, then again imperceptibly wakes up and insistently begins again: “Okay, okay, so be it, but it’s still not a stone that looks like a piece of lard.”
Gradually, an unbearable feeling of complete helplessness takes possession of me.
I don’t know what happened next. Did I voluntarily give up all resistance, or did they - my thoughts - overcome and conquer me?
I only know that my body lies asleep in bed, and my consciousness has separated from it and is no longer connected with it.
Who is my Self now? I suddenly want to ask, but then I realize that I no longer have an organ through which I could ask, and I begin to fear that the stupid voice will wake up in me again and again begin an endless interrogation about stone and fat.