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Authors: Gustav Meyrink

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The Golem

BOOK: The Golem
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Dedalus European Classics

General Editor: Mike Mitchell

 
The Golem
 

Gustav Meyrink

 
The Golem
 

translated by Mike Mitchell and with an introduction and chronology by Robert Irwin

 

Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited,

24-26, St Judith’s Lane, Sawtry, Cambs, PE28 5XE

Email: info@ dedalusbooks.com

www.dedalusbooks.com

 

ISBN 978 1 873982 91 4

Kindle e-book ISBN 978 1 907650 08 6

e-Pub e-book ISBN 978 1 907650 09 3

 

Dedalus is distributed in the USA and Canada by SCB Distributors,

15608 South New Century Drive, Gardena, CA 90248

email: [email protected]    web: www.scbdistributors.com

 

Dedalus is distributed in Australia by Peribo Pty Ltd.

58, Beaumont Road, Mount Kuring-gai, N.S.W. 2080

email: [email protected]

 

Publishing History

First published in Germany in 1915

First English translation in 1928

Mike Mitchell’s translation in 1995

Reprinted in 2000, 2005, 2008, 2010

First e-book edition in 2010

 

The right of Mike Mitchell to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

 

Printed in Finland by W.S. Bookwell

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

 

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

 

A C.I.P. listing for this book is available on request.

Books by and about Gustav Meyrink which are available from Dedalus:

 
 

The five novels translated by Mike Mitchell:

 

The Golem

The Angel of the West Window

The Green Face

Walpurgisnacht

The White Dominican

 

A collection of short stories translated by Maurice Raraty:

 

The Opal (and other stories)

 

A sampler for Gustav Meyrink’s complete works edited and translated by Mike Mitchell:

 

The Dedalus Meyrink Reader

 

The first English language biography of Gustav Meyrink written by Mike Mitchell:

 

Vivo: The Life of Gustav Meyrink

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
 

Mike Mitchell is one of Dedalus’s editorial directors and is responsible for Dedalus translation programme.

His publications include
The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy: the Meyrink Years 1890–1932; Harrap’s German Grammar
and a study of Peter Hacks.

Mike Mitchell’s translations include the novels of Gustav Meyrink and Herbert Rosendorfer,
The Great Bagarozy
by Helmut Krausser and
The Road to Darkness
by Paul Leppin.

His translation of
Letters Back to Ancient China
by Herbert Rosendorfer won the 1998 Schlegel-Tieck German Translation Prize.

His current projects include a new translation of
The Other Side
by Alfred Kubin.

Contents
 

SLEEP

 

DAY

 

I

 

PRAGUE

 

PUNCH

 

NIGHT

 

AWAKE

 

SNOW

 

GHOSTS

 

LIGHT

 

CARE

 

FEAR

 

URGE

 

EVE

 

RUSE

 

RACK

 

MAY

 

MOON

 

FREE

 

END

 
CHRONOLOGY
 

1868

19 January. Gustav Meyer born (Meyrink will be his
nom de plume
), illegitimate son of Baron Karl Varnbüler von und zu Hemmingen, minister of state for Wurttemburg, and Maria Meyer, a Bavarian actress. Born in Vienna and baptised and raised as a Protestant. Education in Munich, Hamburg and Prague.

1882–1902

One of the directors of the Meyer and Morgenstern Bank in Prague. Becomes well known as a man about town.

1891

Nervous breakdown and suicide attempt. Interests himself in occultism and becomes a founder member of the Theosophical Lodge of the Blue Star.

1892

Marries Hedwig Aloysia Certl.

1893–6

Investigates Cabalism, freemasonry, yoga, alchemy and hashish.

1896

First meeting with Philomena Bernt, a banker’s daughter.

1901

While convalescing in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Dresden, he begins to write. The first short story ‘The Burning Soldier’ is published in
Simplicissimus
on 29 October.

1902

Fights a series of duels with officers of a Prague regiment. Rumours that he was directing the bank’s affairs according to spirit guidance. Accused of fraud and imprisoned. Temporarily paralysed. Freed after two and a half months, but financially ruined. Recovers his health through the practice of yoga.

1903

His first anthology of grotesque and satirical short stories published under the title ‘The Burning Soldier’.

1904

Moves to Vienna.
Orchids
(more short stories) published.

1905

Divorces first wife and he and Philomena Bernt travel to Dover where they can get married out of the reach of scandal.

1905–6

His anti-militarist writings make it necessary for him to exile himself in Switzerland for a while.

1906

Moves to Bavaria.

1907

The Cabinet of Wax Figures
published (short stories). Begins writing
The Golem
.

1908

His son Harro born.

1909–10

Translates the works of Dickens.

1911

Settles by Lake Starnberg in Bavaria.

1913

The Enchanted Horn of the German Petit Bourgeois
published (short stories).

1913–14

The Golem
appears in serial form in
Die Weissen Blatter
.

1914

Paul Wegener’s first film version of
The Golem
.

1915

The Golem
is published in book form by Karl Wolff, Leipzig. It is Meyrink’s first novel.

1916

His second novel
The Green Face
published.

1917

Meets
Bô Yín Râ
. Official change of name to Meyrink.
Walpurgisnacht
published. Allegedly requested by German government to write a novel showing that the freemasons started the Great War, but refused under pressure from the freemasons.

1920

Wegener’s second film version of
The Golem
. (It is the only one which has survived.)

1921

The White Dominican
, a novel.

1921–5

Edits a series of alchemical, occult and mystical works.

1925

Tales of the Gold Seekers
(short stories about alchemists).

1926

Translates Kipling.

1927

The Angel of the West Window
(a novel about Elizabeth I and John Dee, the sorcerer). Money and health problems.

1928

Pemberton translation of
The Golem
.

1932

Harro, his son, commits suicide. 4 December Gustav Meyrink dies in The House of the Last Lamp looking east over Lake Starnberg.

1936

Duvivier film version of
The Golem
.

1971

French television version of
The Golem
.

1985

Dedalus republishes Pemberton’s translation of
The Golem
.

1991–4

Mike Mitchell’s first English translation of
The Angel of the West Window; Walpurgisnacht
;
The Green Face
and
The White Dominican
published by Dedalus.

1994

A selection of Meyrink short stories translated by Maurice Raraty published by Dedalus as
The Opal (and other stories)
.

1995

New translation of
The Golem
by Mike Mitchell.

 
GUSTAV MEYRINK AND HIS GOLEM
 

The Golem
has been generally acknowledged to be Meyrink’s masterpiece. In it we have the Castle which is not Kafka’s Castle, The Trial which is not Kafka’s Trial, and a Prague which is not Kafka’s Prague. Kafka and Meyrink were contemporaries in Prague in the years before World War I. Max Brod knew and admired them both. By the time Brod met him, Meyrink was already a published writer with a life of mystery and scandal behind him, an eerie presence among the chess players and political dabblers of the city’s café society. (Two of Meyrink’s drinking companions, Teschner the puppeteer and Vrieslander the painter appear in
The Golem
– Teschner as Zwakh, Vrieslander under his own name.) Meyrink’s novel powerfully evokes the physical presence of Prague three quarters of a century ago – Hradcany Castle, the Street of the Alchemists, the Charles Bridge, the Jewish Quarter. As Kafka acknowledged, Meyrink brilliantly reproduced the atmosphere of the place.

BOOK: The Golem
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