Der Schimmelreiter is a great story even when you have to read it to get through exams ( )

A wonderful story, very stormy and sinister in places, evokes great moods. Education vs. superstition. I love the dialogues, the old German, has so much charm to it. Great story to read late at night during a thunderstorm! Absolutely eerie in parts. Reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe in parts. ( )

German Novella

This is Denis Jackson's nice translation of Theodor Storm's Der Schimmelreiter (first published in 1888).

Storm's novella presents the legend of Hauke Haien as recounted by an old teacher, a `rationalist' who doubts the supernatural elements of the tale. The teacher depicts Hauke as a great innovator whose engineering prowess gave him superior powers over nature, enabling him to design a better dyke to protect the community. The people respond with dark suspicion and rumors that he's in league with the devil.

In the teacher's version of the tale, the supposedly supernatural elements figure only ambiguously. So, e.g., there is a seemingly spectral horse, which is sold to Hauke by someone who laughs like `the devil' (p. 72). But nothing much comes of this. In the rest of the story the horse is like a natural, though somewhat wild, horse, one that only Hauke can tame (just as he alone can tame the sea with better dykes). Then there's Trin Jans, who is presented not as a real witch but rather as ... well, as the sort of character who becomes a witch in more fanciful legends. Thus, while the old teacher is aware of the supernatural aspects of the tale, he reigns them in to make them conform to a naturalistic interpretation.

The resulting narrative is in places quite eerie. Examples include the narrator's partly anthropomorphic characterization of some birds on the tidal flats (pgs. 22 & 99) and Trin Jans' uncanny story about a mermaid, which actually makes the mermaid seem terrifying, like something more and less than human (p. 98). In both cases the author embeds fragmentary human traits in what are ultimately strange, alien creatures that, like nature itself, efface humanity with a chilly indifference.

As an epitome of Freud's account of the uncanny in fiction, the tale charts a mundane landscape suffused with potentially supernatural elements that appear fleetingly in ambiguous forms, never quite surfacing as truly supernatural phenomena but, instead, appearing to be at home in the confines of nature. There is thus an ongoing juxtaposition of the world as (on the one hand) a natural order that fits the technical-scientific templates of reason and (on the other hand) a chaotic abyss from which wild, non-rational forces periodically erupt with cataclysmic effect.

These unpredictable forces find their echo in the human psyche. Hauke Haien, a paragon of reason, isn't alert to these destructive elements in his own soul, so he's unaware of how they have eroded his own foundations over the years. Eventually, they catch him totally unawares, welling up from within and casting him into the abyss.

Such a psychological reading is pursued in a meticulously Freudian (all too Freudian) direction by Anette Schwarz in her paper, “Social Subjects and Tragic Legacies: The Uncanny in Theodor Storm's Der Schimmelreiter” (The Germanic Review 73.3 [Summer 1998]: 251). Schwarz points out that neither Hauke nor his wife (Elke) has a mother who figures in the narrative, and that Trin Jans stands in symbolically as the mother figure. ( )

Plot: The life of the central character, with a few side plots to introduce other characters. Uncomplicated and streamlined.

Characters: Most attention goes to the central character. Side characters are sparsely sketched. An interesting touch is that animals are given characters just like other side characters.

Style: The language is at times hard to read, with numerous words that have gone out of use in German by now. Complex sentence structure that demands attention. The scenes are short, for the most part. What is interesting is the double frame narrative.

Plus: The constant build-up of the eerie atmosphere.

Minus: The legend could have gotten a bit more attention at the end.

Summary: Absolute classic and an excellent read. ( )