The corpse robber
The Body Snatcher ( Engl. The Body Snatcher ) is a horror story of the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson , 1884 in the Christmas special edition of the Pall Mall Gazette was published.
In novelistic form, Stevenson addresses two cases of heinous crime in the time of the anatomist Robert Knox : the theft of corpses and the procurement of corpses through murders .
content
The drunk Scot Fettes, an obviously medically educated old man, meets the wealthy London doctor Dr. Wolfe Macfarlane. The anonymous first-person narrator lures the story of his youth out of Fettes. Fettes had studied medicine with Mr. K. in Edinburgh and was responsible for the procurement of anatomical raw materials . That means that Fettes had to pay the suppliers from Mr. K's till and had to be silent. Sometimes the student Fettes had been amazed at the strange freshness of the corpses . When the guys bring him Jane Galbraith, a girl he was joking with yesterday, Fettes realized with a shudder that he was paying murderers for "his" corpses. The student examines the dead woman and discovers signs of strangulation . Dr. Wolfe Macfarlane, one of the young assistants Dr. Ks, Fettes expresses his firm conviction. All corpses were obtained through murder - with one exception. When the “delivery” stalls, Fettes and Macfarlane, armed with spades, drive out into the country in a horse and cart and vilify village cemeteries with nefarious work .
Time goes by. Sometimes Fettes drinks with his crony. On the occasion, he observes how a certain health-brimming Mr. Gray leads the confident Macfarlane on the lead. The next day Macfarlane delivers poor Gray's body to Fettes. For the sake of order, the murderer demands the usual amount of money. Fettes reluctantly pays out of Mr. K's till and becomes hopelessly entangled in the gruesome business. Gray's limbs are distributed to the anatomists for further dissection. When Mr. K. once again complains about the lack of corpses, the young Doctors Fettes and Macfarlane set out for Glencorfe via Penicuik and Peebles . At night the two men of the Resurrection tear the sackclothed body of a recently buried peasant woman from the grave and roar - the body bag in their midst - over Fisher's Tryst to Edinburgh. On the way near Auchenclinny, Fettes is afraid of the unholy burden . Stevenson writes: ... a horror ... captured his brain ... Fetten insists on opening the sack. Strange and creepy - this is where Mr. Gray's corpse hides.
shape
Stevenson framed his story about two young doctors with a visit to a restaurant by the two aged protagonists in Debenham. The eponymous corpse robber is Fettes. He always gets a remorse and, unlike Macfarlane, he is a vile robber, but not a murderer.
The narrative reference to the murderers Fettes had to pay for on behalf of Mr. K. has not been worked out.
For mentioned in the article head novelistic character: Stevenson has the story on a "strange, unheard-of event" ( Goethe's novellas written definition) out. The contents of the body bag make the reader wonder immediately after reading it. How and why did the dismembered remains of Mr. Gray - neatly put together again, as it were - got into the grave of the farmer's wife? The fantastic Stevenson gives the answer in the text by preparing his punchline: "... more firmly in Fettes' mind the thought that something supernatural had happened, that an unknown change would have taken place in the dead body ..."
Film adaptations
- 1945 The Body Snatcher by Robert Wise with Boris Karloff , Bela Lugosi and Henry Daniell .
- February 5, 1966: The Body Snatcher by Toby Robertson with Trevor Baxter , David Buck and James Cossins .
- December 1, 1975: El ladrón de cadáveres by José Antonio Páramo with Jack Taylor , Raúl Sénder and Andrés Mejuto .
German-language literature
expenditure
- Robert Louis Stevenson: The Corpse Robbers. (Translator: Richard Mummendey ) in Robert Louis Stevenson: Stories ( A night's quarters . The door of the Sire de Maletroit . Wanted out of the mill . The suicide club . The diamond of the Rajas . Providence and the guitar. The story of a lie. The pavilion in The dunes . The crooked Janet . The mad men . The treasure of Franchard. The corpse robbers. Olalla . The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde . Markheim . The unfortunate adventures of John Nicholson . The beach of Falesa . The bottle devil . The Island of Voices . The strangers . When the devil was well again. Robert Louis Stevenson - a life picture of Lloyd Osbourne ). German Book Association , Stuttgart around 1969. 1099 pages
- Robert Louis Stevenson: The Corpse Robber . Pp. 103-131. (Translator: Curt Thesing ) in Robert Louis Stevenson: The Wide Horizon. Tales ( Strangers. The mad men. The corpse robber. Villon . Providence and the guitar. The story of a lie. The treasure of Franchard. The beach of Falesa. The island of voices. The bottle devil ). Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung , Leipzig 1987 (6th edition), ISBN 3-7350-0026-6
- Robert Louis Stevenson: The Corpse Robber and Other Stories. Translated from the English by Marguerite and Curt Thesing . Diogenes, Zurich 1979 (1st edition), 248 pages
- Robert Louis Stevenson: The Corpse Robber . Audiobook (audio CD). Director: Viktor Pavel . Speaker: Michael Rotschopf . After the translation by Curt Thesing. Verlag Argon, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-87024-779-9
- Robert Louis Stevenson: The Corpse Robber. The Junker of Ballantrae . Translated from the English by Curt Thesing and Richard Mummendey . Audiobook (7 audio CDs). Speaker: Hans Helmut Dickow and Gert Westphal . Produced by NDR in 1984 and 1986. Grosser & Stein publishing house, Pforzheim 2007. ISBN 978-3-86735-252-9
Secondary literature
- Michael Reinbold: Robert Louis Stevenson. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1995, ISBN 3-499-50488-X .
Web links
English
- Gaslight etext online
- bibliography
- Cover of the 1884 Christmas edition of the Pall Mall Gazette
- Victorian Ghost Stories
- Reading at LibriVox on YouTube (42:27 min)
- November 14, 2011: Catherine Duffy on Stevenson's writing technique
Remarks
- ↑ Behind the I is certainly Stevenson himself.
- ↑ Stevenson may mean Auchendinny .
- ↑ Edition used.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Reinbold, p. 153, 17th Zvu
- ↑ engl. The Body Snatcher
- ↑ Edition used, p. 110, 4th Zvu
- ↑ engl. Debenham
- ↑ Robert Knox is meant, see edition used, p. 110, 8th Zvu and explanation, p. 539, 9th Zvu
- ↑ engl. Gig
- ↑ engl. Peebles
- ↑ engl. resurrectionists (see also edition used, p. 540, explanations, 1st entry)
- ↑ Edition used, p. 131, 10. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 130, 11. Zvo
- ↑ The Body Snatcher ( The Body Snatcher )
- ↑ engl. The Body Snatcher
- ↑ engl. Toby Robertson
- ↑ engl. Trevor Baxter
- ↑ engl. David Buck
- ^ Spanish El ladrón de cadáveres
- ↑ span. Raúl stations
- ^ Spanish Andrés Mejuto