Melmoth the Wanderer

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Title page of the first edition from 1820

Melmoth the Wanderer (orig. Melmoth the Wanderer ) is a horror novel published in 1820 by the Irish writer Charles Robert Maturin . The novel is a synthesis of the styles of terror and gothic horror . He is considered to be "the best English-language horror novel" of Black Romanticism .

content

The almost 800-page long novel consists of six stories, some of which are nested in one another. All are about Melmoth, who is doomed to wander the world for 150 years in order to expand his knowledge at his own request. Melmoth has made a pact with the devil in the best Faustian manner to satisfy his own thirst for knowledge. After 150 years, the devil will ask for Melmoth's soul as a price , unless he procures a replacement soul for the devil. Regrettably, on his hundred and fifty-year odyssey , Melmoth does not find someone so desperate who would be willing to pledge his soul to him and thus to the devil. After the deadline, the desperate Melmoth has no choice but to surrender to his fate.

The story of Melmoth and Immalee contained in the novel, from which Goethe translated a few passages, shows clear parallels with that of Faust and Gretchen.

reception

Melmoth the Wanderer had an impact on 19th century literature and was recognized as " the masterpiece of the genre " in the 20th century . Hugos Han d'Islande is influenced by the work. Balzac wrote the "satirical sequel" Melmoth reconcilié à l'église . Baudelaire examined the “spiritual conflict of Melmoth”. Melmoth the Wanderer is also one of the few books that the bored protagonist in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin still appreciates. In Wilde's Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray some motifs go back to Maturin's novel. After Oscar Wilde left England after his release from prison, he called himself Sebastian Melmoth (Maturin was a great-uncle of Oscar Wilde, he chose his first name after Saint Sebastian). In the 1955 novel Lolita by the Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov , the first-person narrator jokingly calls his car, in which he takes long trips across the United States, "Melmoth".

expenditure

literature

  • Leven M. Dawson: Melmoth the Wanderer: Paradox and the Gothic Novel. In: Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900. Vol. 8, No. 4, 1968, pp. 621-632, doi : 10.2307 / 449469 .
  • Kathleen Fowler: Hieroglyphics in Fire: "Melmoth the Wanderer". In: Studies in Romanticism. Vol. 25, No. 4, 1986, pp. 521-539, doi : 10.2307 / 25600620 .
  • Mark M. Hennelly, Jr .: Melmoth the Wanderer and Gothic Existentialism. In: Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900. Vol. 21, No. 4, 1981, pp. 665-679, doi : 10.2307 / 450233 .
  • Veronica MS Kennedy: Myth and the Gothic Dream: CR Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer". In: Pacific Coast Philology. Vol. 4, 1969, pp. 41-47, doi : 10.2307 / 1316542 .
  • Walter Kluge: Charles Robert Maturin. Melmoth the Wanderer. In: Walter Jens (Ed.): Kindlers new literary dictionary . Volume 11: Ma - Mo. Kindler, Munich 1988, p. 343 f.

Web links

  • Text of the abridged edition of The Lock and Key Library

Remarks

  1. ^ Kindler's new literary dictionary . Volume 11. 1988, p. 343.
  2. ^ Michael Krüger: Charles Robert Maturin. In: Melmoth the Wanderer. Paperback edition shortened by Michael Krüger. Licensed edition, Wilhelm Heyne, Munich 1971, pp. 346–351, here: p. 351.
  3. ^ Kindler's new literary dictionary . Volume 11. 1988, p. 344.