The disciples gather round the spot where the Master rests. He gently brushes aside their pleas to stay quiet: ‘Let me speak, and do not grieve. No one can save me now, and my soul longs to complete that which was impossible while it was trapped in my corporeal state.
‘Did you not see how the breath of corruption has touched this building? Another instant, and it would have become substance, as a fog solidifies into hoar-frost, and the whole Observatory and everything in it would have turned to mould and dust.
‘Those burns there on the floor were caused by the denizens of the abyss, swollen with hate, desperately trying to reach my soul. And just as these marks you can see are burned into the wood and stone, their other actions would have become visible and permanent if you had not intervened so bravely.
‘For everything on earth that is, as the fools would have it, “permanent”, was once no more than mere shadow — a ghost, visible or invisible, and is now still nothing more than a solidified ghost.
‘For that reason, everything, be it beautiful or ugly, sublime, good or evil, serene though with death in its heart or alternatively, sad though harbouring secret happiness — all these things have something spectral about them.
‘It may be only a few who have the gift of detecting the ghostly quality of the world: it is there nevertheless, eternal and unchanging.
‘Now, it is a basic doctrine of our brotherhood that we should try to scale the precipitous cliffs of life in order to reach that pinnacle where the Great Magician stands with all his mirrors, conjuring up the whole world below out of deceptive reflections.
‘See, I have wrestled to achieve ultimate wisdom; I have sought out some human existence or other, to kill it in order to examine its soul. I wished to sacrifice some truly useless individual, so I went about among the people, men and women, thinking that such a one would be simple to find.
‘With the joyous expectation of certainty I visited lawyers, doctors, soldiers — I nearly found one in the ranks of schoolteachers — so very nearly!
‘But it was always only nearly — there was always some little mark, some tiny secret sign on them, which forced me to loosen my grip.
‘Then came a moment when at last I found what I was looking for. But it was not an individual: it was a whole group.
‘It was like uncovering an army of woodlice, sheltering underneath an old pot in the cellar.
‘Clergywives!
‘The very thing!
‘I spied on a whole gaggle of clergywives, watching them as they busied themselves at their “good works”, holding meetings in support of “education for the benighted classes” or knitting horrible warm stockings and protestant cotton gloves to aid the modesty of poor little piccaninnies, who might otherwise enjoy their God-given nakedness. And then just think how they pester us with their exhortations to save bottle-tops, old corks, paper, bent nails and that sort of rubbish — waste not, want not!
‘And then when I saw that they were about to hatch out new schemes for yet more missionary societies, and to water down the mysteries of the scriptures with the scourings of their “moral” sewage, the cup of my fury ran over at last.
‘One of them, a real flax-blonde “German” thing — in fact a genuine outgrowth of the rural Slavonic underbrush — was all ready for the chop when I realised that she was — “great with child” — and Moses’ old law obliged me to desist.
‘I caught another one — ten more — a hundred — and every one of them was in the same interesting condition!
‘So then I put myself on the alert day and night, always ready to pounce, and at last I managed to lay my hands on one just at the right moment as she was coming out of the maternity ward.
‘A real silky Saxon pussy that was, with great big blue goose-eyes.
‘I kept her locked up for another nine months, to be on the safe side, just in case there was anything more to come in the way of parthenogenesis or perhaps budding, such as you get with deep-sea molluscs for instance.
‘In those moments of her captivity when I was not directly watching her she wrote a great thick book: Fond Thoughts for our German Daughters on the Occasion of their Reception into Adulthood. But I managed to intercept it in time and incinerate it in the oxy-hydrogen compressor.
‘I had at last succeeded in separating soul from body, and secured it in the flask, but my suspicions were aroused one day when I noticed an odd smell of goat’s milk, and before I was able to readjust the Hertz Oscillator which had obviously stopped working for a few moments, the catastrophe had occurred and my anima pastoris had irrevocably escaped.
‘I had immediate resort to the most powerful means of luring it back: I hung a pair of pink flannel knickers (Llama Brand) out on the window-sill, alongside an ivory backscratcher and a volume of poetry bound in cyanide-blue and embellished on the cover with golden knobs, but it was all in vain!
‘I had recourse to the laws of occult telenergy — again it was to no avail!
‘A distilled soul is hardly likely to allow itself to get caught! And now it’s floating freely about in space, teaching the innocent souls of other planets the infernal secrets of female handicrafts: I found today that it had even managed to crochet a new ring round Saturn.
‘That really was the last straw. I thought things through, and cudgelled my brain for a solution until I came up with two possibilities: either to use deliberate provocation, as in the case of Scylla, or to act in an opposite sense, like Charybdis.
‘You are familiar with that brilliant statement by the great Johannes Müller: “When the retina of the eye is stimulated by light, pressure, heat, electricity or any other irritation, the corresponding sensations are not specifically those of light, pressure, heat, electricity etc., but merely sensations of sight; and when the skin is illuminated, pressed, bombarded with sound or electrified, only feeling and its concomitants are generated.” This irrefutable law holds here too — for if you apply a stimulus to the clergywife’s essential nucleus, no matter by what means, it will start crocheting; if however it is left undisturbed’ — and here the Master’s tones grew faint and hollow — ‘it merely reproduces.’
And with these words he sank back, lifeless.
Axel Wijkander clasped his hands together, deeply moved. ‘Let us pray, brothers. He has passed on, on to the tranquil realm. May his soul rest in peace and joy for ever!’
Vivo: The Life of Gustav Meyrink
Extracts from Chapter 4 of Vivo: The Life of Gustav Meyrink — ‘The Duel Affair’ and ‘Prison’
The Duel Affair
Duelling remained widespread in the Austro-Hungarian Empire up to the First World War, long after it had disappeared in Britain — and also long after it had been made illegal in Austria. Its illegality did not apply to duels between army officers, for whom it remained a ‘sacred obligation’, and the laws were not enforced if an officer was involved. An officer who killed a civilian was invariably pardoned by the Emperor. Duels were taken seriously and could result in the death of one party. Mark Twain commented: ‘This pastime is as common in Austria today as it is in France. But with this difference — that here in the Austrian states the duel is dangerous, while in France it is not. Here it is tragedy, in France it is comedy.’15
All sources agree that Meyrink was a renowned duellist. As there appears to be no report of an actual duel, this presumably refers to his skill with the sabre. In the events referred to as the ‘duel affair’ he issued a challenge — or challenges; Strelka says he issued a public insult to the whole of the Prague officer corps and challenged any officer who sided with his opponents — but it was not accepted.
As with many aspects of Meyrink’s life, there are conflicting accounts of this business. Documents in the Meyrinkiana archives in Munich suggest the following course of events.
The matter arose, Meyrink explained in a declaration of December 1901, ‘because Doctor Bauer deeply insulted me behind my back, at a time when he knew I was dangerously ill and therefore though
t I could not defend myself.’ Bauer rejected Meyrink’s challenge on the grounds that, being illegitimate, he was incapable of ‘giving satisfaction’. Meyrink regarded that as a further insult and took the matter to the military tribunal dealing with matters of honour. The tribunal upheld Dr Bauer’s interpretation and declared Meyrink ‘incapable of giving satisfaction’. Meyrink produced a document from the police stating that ‘nothing to his disadvantage was known to them’ and accused the chairman of the tribunal, a Captain Budiner, of lying. At the same time he consulted the authors of the military code of honour, who declared the decision of the tribunal invalid (one of them later withdrew his statement). In the meantime Captain Budiner and another officer brought a case of libel against Meyrink, which they won. Meyrink was sentenced to fourteen days in prison, which was commuted to a fine. Meyrink, however, refused to accept this and appealed, claiming there had been collusion between Budiner and a policeman called Olic. Ten days later, on 18 January 1902, he was arrested on suspicion of fraud. He was kept in prison, awaiting trial, until 3 March; the arguments with the military honour tribunal continued for another year, until March 1903. Lube (182) states that Dr Bauer always said he could not attend because of work commitments, so that no conclusion was ever reached.
There is another version of the initial cause of the challenge that led to all the complications. According to Eduard Frank16 it all started when a Herr Ganghofer, who belonged to the same rowing club as Meyrink, did not greet his wife when they met in the street. Meyrink remonstrated and eventually issued a challenge. From that point on the versions are the same. In another place Frank claims that Meyrink’s future brother-in-law ‘was his bitterest enemy’. He does not relate that directly to the duel affair, but others must have done so, since Meyrink’s second wife felt it necessary to issue a denial, in a letter to van Buskirk, presumably in the 1950s: ‘There is no truth in the stories of the insult to his first wife, an argument with my brother.’
The Ganghofer story tends to degenerate into vague assertions and the documents indicate that Dr Bauer was the person involved in the ‘honour tribunal’ case. Frank does name Meyrink’s seconds, a Count Resseguier and a Herr Kolischer, though they could have been his seconds against Bauer. What this whole affair does indicate is how touchy Meyrink was about his personal standing, presumably because of his illegitimate birth. His submissions on the matter, as in other cases, are detailed and emphatic, full of underlinings, suggesting an obsessive side to his nature. A newspaper report of his arrest said, not without a touch of schadenfreude, ‘It has long been no secret for many people that Meyer, who is so touchy in certain respects, so determined in defence of his honour, is anything but a gentleman.’17 Given Meyrink’s prickliness, it is quite possible that there was another affair involving Ganghofer, which became confused in some minds with the real cause célèbre.
The duel affair was the beginning of the end of Meyrink’s period in Prague and it does bring out a number of aspects of his life there: his dubious standing because of his illegitimacy and his consequent extreme sensitivity about his personal honour; the contradiction between his desire to be accepted by the upper reaches of society and his contempt for and deliberate flouting of certain elements within it; his reputation as an athlete, especially as a swordsman. There is even, in a story related by Ursula von Mangoldt, a connection between Meyrink’s duelling and his dabbling in magic. Mocked for being a bastard, he would react aggressively with a challenge. Once an army officer lodged an official complaint and Meyrink was arrested (one of Meyrink’s complaints to the honour tribunal was that an officer had reported a possible duel to the police, leading to him being warned and threatened with deportation). Shortly before being taken to prison he had buried an egg underneath an elder bush, an ancient form of magic. As it rotted, the egg was supposed to satisfy the demons of the world below and alter the balance between him and the officer at the place where the duel was to take place. Three days later, while he was waiting in his cell for the duel, the news came that the officer had been fatally wounded in another duel. Meyrink was released. When he dug up the egg, only the shell was left. The contents had not rotted, they had completely disappeared.18
Notes
15 Mark Twain: Europe and Elsewhere, New York and London, 1923, p. 225.
16In his afterword to Fledermäuse, p. 423; there is a further variant in: Prager Pitaval (Berlin, 1931, pp. 326-8) by the journalist Egon Erwin Kisch; a long extract is printed in Fledermäuse, pp. 442-4.
17Bohemia, 19.1.1902.
18 Ursula von Mangoldt: Auf der Schwelle zwischen Gestern und Morgen, Weilheim, 1963, p. 97.
Prison
Although there is no actual documentary evidence, it seems probable and is generally assumed that Meyrink’s arrest was instigated by the two army officers involved in the dispute, in collusion with a police officer. It was either an act of revenge on the part of the officers or a way of rendering Meyrink hors de combat — or both. It was greeted in some parts of the press with the kind of response that would lead to an expensive libel action today; a newspaper article of 1927 on the case even suggests that the rumours about Meyrink’s actions were deliberately leaked to the press, presumably from official sources (see the reference to ‘statements from the authorities’ in one of the articles quoted below). The report in Bohemia quoted above continued:
That Gustav Meyer’s financial situation was not exactly sound was at least known to those who had to resort to distraint against him and only managed to recover their money with great difficulty or not at all. It happened more than once that Meyer, in order to conceal the fact that he did not even have a few stocks and shares, banknotes or coins for his window display, simply had the window repaired… He naturally needed large funds to finance his normal lifestyle and he was truly excellent at acquiring these, if not always by means of pure, honest banking business. Gustav Meyer was a ‘spiritualist’ and that explains why he had many women among his depositors. A horde of his agents travelled round Bohemia persuading credulous people to entrust their money to banker Meyer. They were told he was the son of a sovereign, his business was the leading Christian bank in Prague and his sole aim was to help the poor through skilful speculations… In all this Meyer was very cautious in his choice of customers; he sought them among the kind of people of whom he knew that for the sake of their name they would rather lose all their money than take legal action against him, in order to avoid trouble with the police and the courts.
All accounts name the key figure in the accusations that led to Meyrink’s imprisonment on suspicion of fraud as a senior police officer called Olic. According to the writer and journalist, Egon Erwin Kisch, who, together with Paul Leppin, is one of the main sources for this, in his appeal against the decision in the libel case brought by the two officers, Meyrink suggested there had been some kind of collusion between one of the officers and Olic. In the libel trial there had been suggestions that some of Meyrink’s bank dealings were rather dubious and Olic used this to instigate the investigation. Some sources also claim that Olic fancied the woman who later became Meyrink’s second wife, Mena Bernt, who was appearing as a singer in the café chantant of a Prague hotel. It is interesting, though entirely irrelevant, that Guillaume Apollinaire, in a piece called ‘Le passant de Prague’ (The Passer-by in Prague) set in March 1902, says that ‘the ground floor of the hotel I had been told about was occupied by a café chantant’.19 Could he have observed Mena singing there?
Meyrink was kept in prison for the two and a half months the investigation lasted. Kisch claims that three hundred witnesses were heard. All sorts of accusations were made: people who had put their money in Meyrink’s bank could not get it back; he used his customers’ stocks and shares for his own speculations, and, of course, that he used his occult powers to influence customers. Another accusation, that he claimed to be the son of Ludwig II of Bavaria, led to a search of his apartment.
There are also stories of bribed witnesses. Leppin says a
Hungarian was put forward to claim he had deposited a share certificate with Meyrink, but when he asked for it back, Meyrink claimed never to have had it. Another version is that it was a woman who had deposited a security with Meyrink, which had disappeared. When asked for the serial number, she could not remember it and when asked to describe the shape and colour of the document she realised the game was up and made herself scarce.
In the end Meyrink was cleared of all charges. Max Brod’s father was one of those who examined the books of Meyrink’s bank:
Enemies… had accused him of dishonesty in his business affairs and reported him to the state prosecutor’s office. Quite unjustly, as my father told me. And he ought to have known, for he was an accountant, at that time already deputy manager of a large bank; and he was one of those who had been charged with examining the books of the firm of Meyer. All the reports agreed: no impropriety had been found.20
There is a document in the Meyrinkiana confirming this:
It is hereby officially confirmed that the preliminary investigation against Herr Gustav Meyer, former banker in Prague, on suspicion of fraud, which was opened on 18 January 1902, was abandoned on 2 April 1902 following a declaration from the state prosecutor’s office that they found no reason to continue the investigation.
Meyrink was completely exonerated but ruined. During the investigation, his bank had been closed. It never reopened; after the scandal and sensational reports in the newspapers people were not surprisingly no longer willing to entrust their money to him. In typical fashion he refused to accept that and made desperate attempts to re-establish his good name by asking the newspapers, who had been so quick to condemn him, to print a statement that his books had been found to be in order. Only a few printed a brief version; the response of some was scornful. One is said to have written:
The Dedalus Meyrink Reader Page 32