The Golem (Dedalus European Classics)

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, 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.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. 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.

The Golem by Gustav MeyrinkThis book was suggested to me by someone from Trotsdale in Second Life. I can no longer remember if it was DC, someone else in the intersim team, or whom exactly. I definitely greatly enjoyed the read and was very happy to find a copy in English since, if memory serves, it had originally been written in German.The book is part romance, part mystery, part thriller, and all spiritual. There are several plots all at once. One is the growth of the soul, one is the main character's involvement in protecting a Countess, one is the eventual union of the main character with another, far better, love interest. We then discover at the end that it could be said there were actually two main characters. Your understanding of the various levels of this book will vary depending on your grounding of knowledge of the Kabbalah (there are several alternate spellings, all of which are correct). You don't really need any as it gives you what you need as you read along, but it you are already familiar with the symbols you unlock so much more. This is one definitely worth rereading.I particularly liked how the spiritual quests intertwined with the challenges of the mundane world. Part of me would have liked more description of characters and surroundings, but the way the story is structured it is good that the surroundings can be forgotten about. This makes it easy for the reader to imagine this sort of adventure happening to them, which, on some level it happens to us all. I also very much liked how the book pointed out the three paths available, instead of fixating on just the main two.

... ay there's the rub!" Prince Hamlet, that Man of Rationality, knew that his logic was no match for the inexorable irrationality of dreams: "I could be bounded in a nut-shell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." There are no allusions to Shakespeare in Gustav Meyrink's unique masterpiece "The Golem" -- all the obscure lore of the book is drawn from Jewish folk tales and Kabbalistic esoterica -- but the narrator, Athanasius Pernath is troubled by the baddest of bad dreams. Like Hamlet, the rationalist reader will get nowhere by striving to order and make sense of Pernath's dreams, as even the dreamer himself is tormented by his uncertainty about his own reality, about the conundrum of whether he is merely dreaming, or in fact dreaming that he is dreaming.Nothing I've ever read captures the harrowing, inescapable irrationality of a nightmare as authentically as The Golem. That's its transcendent accomplishment. It's one of the most bizarre books ever published, and much of its strange atmosphere is due to the reader's constant uncertainty about the border between 'reality' and dream. Pernath is an aging gem-cutter, perhaps a gifted craftsman, perhaps a madman released from an asylum after a cure by hypnosis, ostensibly the scion of a family of wealth but stricken with almost total amnesia. Pernath lives in the ancient ghetto of Prague, amid Jews of the oddest racial/cultural traits. Pernath himself doesn't seem to be Jewish. He can't read Hebrew, yet he is obsessed with Hebraic, especially Kabbalistic, symbolism and myth. Particularly, he is obsessed with the image of the Golem, the artificial man made of clay, the created servant who runs destructively amok. Pernath thinks/dreams that he is himself the Golem ... or not. But Pernath is also the observer, or the dreamer, of other people's lives, or dreams. The nightmarishly disjointed 'plot' of the Golem includes murders, patricide, infidelity, rape, revenge, and Faustian quests for magical powers. The aging Pernath falls into an idyllic platonic love, or a dream of love, and eventually is jailed on false charges of murder. He shares his cell for a single night with a 'holy sinner', a young man condemned for the rape/murder of a woman whom Pernath begins to fear to be his own beloved, yet the young murderer convinces Pernath that he is fulfilling a mystical course toward redemption.Author Gustav Meyrink was an illegitimate child of a German Baron and an actress. He was raised as a Protestant. In his early twenties, he suffered a "nervous breakdown", attempted suicide, then threw himself into occultism, beginning with theosophy. He progressed to alchemy and Kabbalah, stimulated by use of hashish. Meanwhile, almost implausibly, he conducted the affairs of a major bank and was known as a dashing 'man about town'. Eventually he was accused of fraud, imprisoned, financially ruined, and partially paralyzed. He recovered his health, he said, by the practice of yoga. He turned to writing to support himself, beginning The Golem in 1907 and publishing it in serial form in 1913. His later life was almost as disjointed and dreamlike as his writing.Younger readers of The Golem might well be tempted to compare it to the Harry Potter novels, delighting in its tingle-inducing fantasy, or to The Hobbit, for its vivid evocation of a world of dark forces. But The Golem is far more earnest, profoundly rooted in actual historical beliefs in super-rational forces of good and evil than all the fantasy literature of later decades. Some readers might see The Golem as a Middle European antecedent of "magical realism". Borges, in fact, acknowledged Meyrink as an influence. But the magic in The Golem transcends literary manipulation and artifice. One can't help feeling that Meyrink tapped a deeper aquifer of cultural memory; if ever a book made Karl Jung's claptrap psychology plausible, it would be The Golem. The closest comparison to The Golem, in my mind, would be the supernatural tales of Edgar Allen Poe. Imagine the creepy atmosphere of "Tell-tale Heart" or "The Masque of the Red Death" extended to the full length of a novel, and replete with even more haunting revenants of one's own worst dreams....Meyrink was not a master stylist in the German language. His syntax was often crabbed and awkward. None of his other works -- forgive me please, members of the fantasy fan club -- approach The Golem in power. But translator Mike Mitchell is a genius in his vocation. His translations of German classics like Simplicius Simplicissimus and The Golem are unaffected, unostentatious, plain-English wonders of readability. You won't lose much by reading The Golem in this translation. But don't try to rationalize it!

I have absolutely no idea how this incredible book is not more popular.This book will grip and shake in in ways no other book can.

This is one of those books which opens a door onto a totally unexpected new world. Meyrink , like many of his time, had an interest in and knowledge of Jewish, European and Buddhist traditions of mysticism which he uses to provide a giddy backdrop to his social satire, dark humour and romantic fantasies. I have heard it suggested that there may be some deep meaning behind it all but the real strength of the book is its ability to possess the reader and propel them through the streets of Prague in a feverish search for something which remains just beyond their grasp. Awesome.

This is a thriller by Meyrink written around 1907, this appears to be an excellent modern translation of the original German. The book was been made into a silent film only 5 years after it was published in 1915 - the cover is from the film; one can imagine that the story must have made a strongly public impact warranting cinematic treatment so early on. I have not seen this film but I would definitely say this story is absolutely not some lame Hammer horror - this is a classic and deep psycho-drama. It does strangely come across as a being `black and white'; there is not a lot of colour in this gothic Dickensian suspense shocker which is undoubtedly ahead of its time.Pernath is the key-stone to this story everything revolves around him not least because he is the narrator: he's a potentially deranged(?) mid-forties gem engraver who's lost his past and living in a rundown Jewish area of Prague. Wassertrum, the other pivotal character, is a wealthy Jewish junk-dealer who's dead son Dr Wassory was a criminal eye surgeon; he has a prostitute(?) daughter Rosina. Next door to Pernath is Dr Savioli's illicit love nest with the married Countess Angelina. Amongst Pernath's friends is Charousek who actually used Savioli to expose Wassory. Hillel is an archivist friend and soothing influence on Pernath and he has poor daughter Miriam. Thus we have Pernath torn between 3 possible loves Rosina, Miriam and Angelina. There is an old puppeteer, a dodgy investigating magistrate, two murderers and two victims. All the while the sinister mythical Cabala Golem haunts Pernath's psyche and appearing after its usually 33 year interval (may be covering the gap that Pernath can't remember).This is a brilliant sinister existential nightmare of a novel: the title belies the absence of the Golem itself which doesn't take an active part in the story at all - this is no monster rampage tale. Pernath is haunted by his history and his present; or is he trapped by his past and future? Is he remembering or imagining? Do his desires make him a psycho? If we reasonably assume there is no Golem (i.e. within the fiction) then the story of Pernath is all these. Let yourself be a little confused by the mix and intricacy of the events - not quite remembering every detail (which then becomes all too relevant later) reflects the uncertain angst of the narrator himself (and you, as the reader) - very clever.Ultimately a brilliant five star how to write a "it was only a dream" type tale.Some interesting quotes:I have not let myself be stultified by science, whose highest goal is to furnish a `waiting room', which it would be best to tear down.Wherever I looked, there was nothing but drab despair around me, and I had a soul to match, all mangled and torn.This I realised, was terror giving birth to itself, the paralysing dread at an inexplicable, shapeless nothing that eats away the boundaries of our thoughts.A brief rustling that broke off short, as if startled at itself, then deadly silence, that agonising, watchful hush, fraught with its own betrayal, that stretched each minute to an excruciating eternity.

When ever I mention Gustav Meyrink to people they look at me blankly. It seems that nobody these days has heard of him; I've even had people tell me that if I like silent films I should watch Paul Wegeners film Der Golem.I have I tell them, 'Have you read the book its based on?'They still look back at me blankly.Wegeners film is not in anyway a translation of this book to film. The book is something else all together. Its almost impossible to put its grandeur into words here in such a short space.Meyrink writes prose like Tom Waits writes music. His prose feels like it should be read to the sound of madmen fresh from a world war 1 trench, beating out a polka on rusted metal, torn accordions and battered violins. Its like being thrown into a dark, bitter room with Van Gophs 'Potato Eaters' only to discover they are the wisest people alive. Its like Kafka, if Kafka lived under Charles Bridge with a soul eating troll. Its like Dostoyevsky, if old Fyodor was less interested in ubermensch and and more interested in the Khlysty cult.This book is just incredible; I can honestly put my hand on my heart and say that if there is one book that I am glad to have read and will read again and again it is this one. This is true industrial gothic set in a world about to be obliterated, on the cusp of the 19th century and the horrors of the 20th; and somewhere in there, hidden deep, there feels like there's a secret treasure, that thing that mystics have been searching for always, but just when you get your mud soaked, frozen fingers on it... its gone.Meyrink is a huge influence on my own writing; I wish I had an ounce of his wisdom.  The Brothers RatThe Brothers Rat