The Golem

Vérbeli misztikus kalandregény mindennel, ami a műfaj kötelező eleme: akad itt szerelem, gyilkosság, ármány, kabbalista titkok, rohangálás sötét sikátorokban, ártatlanok szenvedése és gonoszok démoni kacaja. Ugyanakkor van valami, ami az egészet igazán ínyenceknek való csemegévé teszi: az elbeszélő, Pernath figurája, aki mintha ébren álmodná végig a rohanó cselekményt. A megbízhatatlan krónikás iskolapéldája, nem csak rettentő egzaltáltsága okán, hanem azért is, mert nem emlékszik a saját múltjára (ami mondjuk lehet, engem is egzaltálttá tenne), annyit mindenesetre sejt, hogy nemrégiben egy bolondokháza vendégszeretetét élvezte – ezért is bánnak ismerősei vele úgy, akár a show more hímes tojással. Ő bolyong keresztül-kasul a hátborzongató, gótikusan szürreális prágai gettón, miközben a zsidó mitológia ősszörnye a sötétből fen rá fogat. Persze ez az egész voltaképpen egy metafora: a prágai gettó az elme labirintusának tükörképe, Pernath abban vetődik ide-oda, a Gólem pedig, aki egy ajtók nélküli szobában gubbaszt arra várva, hogy kitörhessen, alighanem Pernath őrülete maga. Meyrink példásan adagolja a miszticizmust, a pszichologizálást és az atmoszférát, aminek csodásan áll az expresszionista máz, jó ez a könyv, jó benne lenni, jó járni az azóta porrá omlott prágai gettó szűk utcáit, és közben fülelni: mi ez? Csak nem lépteket hallunk? Csak nem...

És jön a Gólem.

Jön a Gólem.

A Gólem.

(Mit találtam, miközben képeket kerestem az értékelésekhez? Hát ezt.

Hm, hát már gólem is. Különös, hogy a kormányzati propaganda ezt még így nem kapta fel.) show less

A disappointing excursion into the eerie, even allowing for my perhaps unreasonably high hopes for the book. Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel The Golem is occasionally touted as a more obscure, 'hidden gem' counterpart to Gothic horror classics like Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde, but I found it to be a story that didn't settle.

There's a decent sense of atmosphere and gloom – the Jewish ghetto in turn-of-the-century Prague – but no storytelling spine to help it stand upright. I like to think of myself as a reasonably attentive reader, but I never really knew what was happening or the motivation of the characters; even before the cop-out "it was all a dream"-style ending, I had lost faith in the intentions of the novel. It also has a show more melodramatic style – typical of Gothic novels, of course – but in lesser fare such as The Golem the histrionics were grating and I longed for something more suitably brooding and stone-like.

Although it was not enough to redeem it in my eyes, one merit of the book was the totality of its protagonist's fear and madness and loss of identity. So complete was this unpinning of the character's mores that I found it to be a detriment: the protagonist was lost and I, seeking to follow the plot, was lost also. When Meyrink writes of his paranoid protagonist that "all my senses [were] permanently ready to pounce, but with nothing to clutch at" (pg. 147), I recognised it not only as a decent line but a fitting description of my own experience of The Golem. The book's concept promises more than it delivers, and in reading it I became exhausted, my reading instincts restlessly searching for something more than I could find. show less

Con ‘El Golem’ no hay término medio. O la consideras una obra capital dentro del gótico del siglo XX, o la desprecias sin más, teniéndola por una novela enrevesada y pesada. Yo soy de los primeros. Al principio, y sin tener mucha idea de lo que me iba a encontrar, pensaba leer una historia de terror con la figura del mito del Golem de la literatura judía como tema principal. Y no es así, porque el terror brilla por su ausencia. Es posible que este sea uno de los principales motivos por los que la gran mayoría de lectores se lleven una decepción una vez metidos en su lectura, ya que esperan algo que no llega a surgir nunca, además de encontrarse con una prosa llena de simbolismos.

La novela tiene como protagonista a show more Athanasius Pernath y transcurre en el gueto de Praga, tal vez a finales del siglo XIX. Entre sueños y alucinaciones, donde es difícil distinguir qué es real, Meyrink nos va adentrando más y más en esa Praga oscura de la mano de Pernath y de los demás personajes secundarios, mezclando sus historias tal como van surgiendo, espontáneamente. Pero lo que puede parecer confuso para el lector, realmente lo que hace es crear una atmósfera de tal intensidad que es imposible no seguir con obsesión la historia de Pernath, que transcurre entre edificios con entradas secretas, personajes que buscan venganza, amantes con oscuros secretos, amigos que no lo son tanto y enemigos ruines, y todo ello le sucede a un Pernath que no recuerda muy bien su pasado y que deambula por un presente que le sobrepasa.

Sin lugar a dudas, ‘El Golem’, publicado en 1915, es un libro que no deja indiferente a nadie. Seguramente no sea una lectura para todo el mundo y tenga un tipo de lector específico, pero si logras adentrarte en sus páginas, llenas de imágenes poderosas, el recuerdo que deja es imborrable. show less

Suffering the initial onslaught from a nasty head cold I sat in front of the computer screen. It was nearly midnight and the rain was battering the skylight just above my head. The old timbers of my attic were creaking and groaning, the mice were scrabbling around on the roof trying to get in and I had wrapped myself up in an old blanket as the central heating had gone off hours ago. I had earlier downloaded Gustav Meyrink's The Golem and the image above shivered onto the screen. I was immediately plunged into Meyrink's story of old Prague and of Athanasius Pernath the gem cutter who dreams the dreams of a man looking for his soul:

At times I emerge with a start from the half-light of this reverie and see again for a moment the moonlight show more 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.

I read on through the first couple of chapters empathising with the dream like/nightmare like quality of the words, my own head seemed to expand with the effort of concentration and I slipped in and out of consciousness as the words scrolled down the screen.

It was morning and I could make little sense of the few notes I had written last night or of the chunks of the book that I had copied, but it had been an experience to read the text in a slightly heightened feverish state.

I was suddenly visited by the notion that at some time I must have heard or read of a strange comparison between a stone and a lump of fat.

Yes I had read that last night and now Meyrink was telling me through Athanasius Pernath's own semi conscious state in the light of a new day in Prague that the stone and a lump of fat was significant. I decided not to re-read the first chapter because I was convinced I would find no answers there and so carried on with Pernath's own adventures in the Jewish quarter of Prague. Pernath gets involved in the plotting of the consumptive student; Charousek, who is carrying out a vendetta against his neighbour Wassertrum, who he believes is bent on instigating the suicide of the young doctor in revenge for his own sons death. There are stories within stories, the golem makes his appearance after a nightmarish journey through the underground passages of old Prague, Pernath has to make difficult life changing decisions as the the old town and it's inhabitants morph around him. Is he awake, is he dreaming even the passage of time seems to take on a twisted circular aspect. Meyrink uses the stories to give other characters points of view, but it is Pernaths own consciousness that concerns him most.

The voice, which is circling round in the darkness, searching for me to torment me with the stone or the lump of fat, has passed me by without seeing me. I know that it comes from the realm of sleep. But everything that I have just experienced was real life, and I sense that is why it could not see me, why its search for me was vain.

We follow Pernath's tormented path as he struggles to make sense of what is happening around him. Those torments include a spell in prison where he meets the strange Laponder a medium for psychic forces that Pernath believes holds vital clues for his past and his future. The story now seems to be rushing towards its conclusion and ends in a way that makes perfect sense to anyone who has been reading through a dazed fog of feverishness.

If there is one thing that I take away from this delicious tale of fantasy and horror is that if you accidentally pick up the wrong hat when leaving a party: whatever you do, don't put it on your head. Four stars. show less

Meyrink’s horror story set in the Prague Ghetto and based on the cabalist legend of a human-like being created from clay is much richer than I had expected. It has been on my “to-be-read” list for a long time and I always perceived that it was going to be a slower and more arduous read than it turned out.

From the very start Meyrink blurred the boundaries between sleep and consciousness; dream and reality; madness and sanity. He also played with the narrator’s, and consequently the reader’s, sense of identity. The initial sections are dense with ideas and it is worth taking them slowly but the story soon picks up the pace. This tale is enthralling and as I read the book I was taken up with the narrator’s problems and fears.

Thanks Chris. There is no colour in this book. It is a curiously circular book of shadows and spectres where, in the half-light of dreams and the unconscious, a group of obsessively driven characters, in a Jewish Ghetto, act out a ghostly play of vengeful illusions, cabalistic keys, fatal mistakes, and merged identities.

To feel letters, not just read them with my eyes in books, to set up an interpreter within me to translate the things instinct whispers without the aid of words: that must be the key, I realised that must be the way to establish a clear language of communication with my own inner being. p. 104.

Gustav Meyrink wrote with this book a fantastic Gothic novel, also this is not an adaptation of the Jewish Golem folklore tale, but a kind of impressionistic vision before its background. In the 16th Century the wise Rabbi Loew created a figure of clay who haunted the labyrinthine streets of Prague. This figure tends to return every 33 years. I may should also mention that I read this book in the German and English version and they did compare quite well.

The gem cutter Athanasius Pernath leads a life of isolation and loneliness in the Prague Jewish Quarter and finds himself repeatedly exposed to close encounters with the Golem.
This story of Pernath arises initially from a dream of an anonymous narrator. This narrator read a book on show more the life of Buddha before going to bed and just couldn't stop thinking about one particular sentence.

“ A crow flew to a stone which looked like a lump of fat, thinking perhaps it had found something good to eat. But when the crow found that it was not good to eat, it flew off. Like the crow that went to the stone, so do we- we, the tempters – leave Gautama, the ascetic, because we have lost our pleasure in him.”

Than the narrator falls into a kind of half-sleep/dream

“Did I voluntarily give up all resistance, or did my thoughts overpower and blind me?
…..Who is this I now? Is the question that suddenly occurs to me, but then I remember that I no longer possess an organ with which I can ask questions;.......

However, the dreamer doesn't meet none other than Athanasius Pernath. Soon the dream and the story become one and it is very difficult to tell where one begins or ends. He (they) continuous to have frequent encounters with this mysterious figure which lead Pernath deep into the depth of his own soul and long-forgotten past and sometimes you wonder if he is this mysterious Golem. The further you read on, you find that the boundaries between fantasy, dream and reality become more and more blurred. Each time you turn the page something surreal, threatening and unexpected happens.

There were so many moments in this book which I just absolutely loved. Although, at the exaltation of the story Pernath is united with his dream – the narrator had to find out that he is not the man he thought, but a man without qualities at the gate of Paradise, which he may not enter.
Well, as you can see I really enjoyed this book and with his magical/surreal realism this book actually also reminded me of some of the books of Haruki Murakami. Looking at other reviews it appears that they like to compare him to writers such as Franz Kafka or E.T.A. Hoffman. I wouldn't be able to comment on the second author, but I can see where the comparison with Franz Kafka stems from.

“The soul is not a single unity; that is what it is destined to become, and that is what we call 'immortality'. Your soul is still composed of many 'selves', just as a colony of ants is composed of many single ants. You bear within you the spiritual remains of many thousand ancestors, the heads of your line. It is the same with all creatures. How could a chicken that is artificially hatched in an incubator immediately look for the right food, if the experience of millions of years were not stored inside it? The existence of 'instinct' indicates the presence of our ancestors in our bodies and in our souls.” show less