Outrageous. Gustav Meyer, the notorious owner of a bureau de change who, after a series of problems with the courts in January of this year, was arrested on account of various widely publicised financial dealings and released because at present the law has no precise provisions for such ‘dealings’ has, after having been fortunate enough to escape retribution by the skin of his teeth, had the impu — imprudence to threaten to take the editors of the newspapers, which reported on his doings on the basis of statements from the authorities, to court — for libel. One would imagine that this type of person, only just having avoided the sword of Damocles, would be happy to sink back discreetly into social obscurity.21
The investigation had ruined his business and the period in prison had aggravated his ill-health. According to Kisch it took one more misfortune to drive him out of Prague. The court hearing Meyrink’s appeal in the libel case brought against him by the two officers upheld the decision of the original court and even insisted he should serve the prison sentence, rather than pay a fine. Meyrink gave up, though he did not move immediately, as Kisch implies. It was the next year, 1904, that he left Prague for Vienna.
The experience of prison made a deep mark on Meyrink. Soon after his release, or perhaps even while he was in prison, he wrote two short stories which express the wretchedness and despair of incarceration. The September 1902 number of Simplicissimus, after his release in April, carried a piece by him called ‘Das ganze Sein ist flammend Leid’ (The Whole of Existence is a Blaze of Suffering) the title is taken from a poetic translation of one of the sayings of the Buddha: ‘Sorrowful are all composite things. He who perceives the truth of this gets disgusted with this world of suffering. This is the path to purity.’ Old Jürgen’s feelings in his cell presumably reflect Meyrink’s closely:
The warder went from door to door with his heavy bundle of keys, shone his torch one last time through the barred openings, as is his duty, and checked that the iron bars had been put across the doors. Finally the sound of his steps died away and the silence of misery descended on all the unfortunates who, robbed of their freedom, slept on their wooden benches in the dreary cells.
…
During the first weeks the feeling of outrage, of furious hatred at being locked up for so long when he was completely innocent had pursued him even in his dreams and often he had felt like screaming out loud in desperation.
The prisoner is released and makes a meagre living selling caged songbirds until one day a woman brings two nightingales back and asks him to put out their eyes so they will sing more often. The man releases all his caged birds and hangs himself.
Before that, less than three months after his release, ‘Terror’ appeared in Simplicissimus. In it a prisoner in the condemned cell sees the terror he feels at his approaching execution as
a hideous worm … a gigantic leech. Dark yellow in colour, with black flecks, it sucks its way along the floor, past each cell in turn. Alternately growing fat and then elongating, it gropes its way along, searching.’
(Opal, 42)
In his first novel, The Golem, the hero, Pernath, is also unjustly imprisoned due to the machinations of a police officer called Otschin, which has deliberate echoes of Olic.
Notes
19 Guillaume Apollinaire: ‘Le passant de Prague’ in: L’Hérésiarque et Cie, Paris, 1967, p. 11.
20 Brod, p. 294
21 Politik, 22.4.1902; quoted in Prager Tagblatt, 21.1.1927.
Editor’s Notes:
1-8. are from Meyrink’s collection Fledermäuse (Bats), first published in 1916; the one story from Fledermäuse that has been omitted here is ‘Meister Leonhard’ which was published as ‘The Master’ in The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy 1890-2000.
9. ‘The Clockmaker’ was first published in Simplicissimus, vol. XXXI no. 1, 1926.
10. ‘The City with the Secret Heartbeat’ was first published in Die Gartenlaube, no. 44, 1928.
11. ‘The Pilot’ was unpublished in Meyrink’s lifetime; it first appeared in Mensch und Schicksal, vol. VI, no. 18, 1. 12. 1952.
12. ‘The Transformation of the Blood’ was unpublished in Meyrink’s lifetime; it first appeared in Fledermäuse, ed. Eduard Frank, Munich, 1981; some of the incidents it contains appear in shorter articles Meyrink published (e.g. ‘Magie im Tiefschlaf’, 1928); it is not clear exactly when it was written, but internal evidence suggests 1927 or 1928.
13. The Alchemist’s House was unpublished in Meyrink’s lifetime. The manuscript (now in the Bavarian State Library) was collated by Meyrink’s grandson, Julius Gustav Böhler, and first appeared in Das Haus zur letzten Lantern, ed. Eduard Frank, Munich, 1973, which also contains ‘The Clockmaker’, ‘The City with the Secret Heartbeat’ and ‘The Pilot’.
14. The Golem, tr. Mike Mitchell, Dedalus, 1995; pp. 103-113.
15. The Green Face, tr. Mike Mitchell, Dedalus, 1992; pp. 209-216.
16. Walpurgisnacht, tr. Mike Mitchell, Dedalus, 1993; pp. 46-69.
17. The White Dominican, tr. Mike Mitchell, Dedalus, 1994; pp. 36-47.
18.The Angel of the West Window, tr. Mike Mitchell, 1991; pp. 55-71, 82-94.
19-22. From: The Opal (and other stories), tr. and intro. Maurice Raraty, Dedalus, 1994.
23. Mike Mitchell: Vivo: The Life of Gustav Meyrink, Dedalus, 2008; pp. 77-86.
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First published by Dedalus in 2010
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The Dedalus Meyrink Reader Page 33