The Golem Read Online
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.
But if this were all, then the novel could only have a limited interest for us today.
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