From aspiring rabbi to excommunicant
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| Baruch Spinoza |
Baruch Spinoza (a.k.a. Benedict de Spinoza) is a philosopher whose work I greatly admire. Berthold Auerbach is a German writer of the 19th century who has since faded into relative obscurity, but I have previously enjoyed reading his short story “Christian Gellert’s Last Christmas” and his book Black Forest Village Stories. When I discovered that Auerbach had written a biographical novel about Spinoza, I was eager to read it, hoping the book would provide insight into Spinoza’s intellectual development. This 1837 novel did not turn out to be the masterpiece I had hoped, but it does have its merits, both literary and philosophical.
Spinoza was born in Amsterdam, the son of Portuguese-Jewish immigrants who fled the Inquisition to find religious freedom in the Netherlands. Spinoza lived from 1632 to 1677, but Auerbach’s biographical narrative only covers his life from about 1647 to 1657. The novel begins with a teenage Spinoza undergoing studies to become a rabbi in his community synagogue. It ends a decade later with his being excommunicated from the Jewish faith for heresy. In the intervening years, Auerbach focuses on two main plot threads. One is Spinoza’s drifting away from the Jewish faith as he develops his own individual pantheistic philosophy. The second is a love story between Spinoza and Olympia van den Ende, the highly educated daughter of his Latin teacher. Both are freethinkers, but Spinoza was raised a Jew and Olympia a Catholic, and neither of their communities will accept an intermarriage. In addition, Spinoza feels compelled to abandon earthly pleasures such as love so that he may concentrate solely on his intellectual pursuits.
The narrowness of the novel’s scope is a bit disappointing. I was hoping for a more lifelong view of the development of Spinoza’s philosophy, but instead Auerbach concentrates on this one period of its nascency. Auerbach himself was a Jew, and it is clear from this book that he is enthralled by Jewish history and ritual. The entire first half of the book is strictly about Judaism; freethought doesn’t rear its ugly head until roughly the halfway point. There are only a couple chapters where Auerbach really discusses Spinoza’s mature philosophy in detail, but when he does delve into the philosopher’s Ethics, for example, Auerbach explains Spinoza’s ideas clearly and insightfully. We see how Spinoza’s conception of monism emerges from the dualism of Descartes. Much of this is revealed through extensive dialogues between Spinoza and a small circle of friends that includes Olympia. While the scenes dealing with Judaism seem authentic in their level of detail, the love story never really rings true. It feels like fictional license on Auerbach’s part but not necessarily in a bad way, much like Shakespeare’s fictionalizations of the lives of historical figures.
I don’t know enough about Auerbach to say to what extent he was a faithful Jew and to what extent he was a Spinozan freethinker, but as a member of the latter category myself I can say that when all is said and done the author certainly does justice to the philosopher’s freethought. He paints Spinoza as a secular Christlike figure who sacrificed much in his search for rational truth. Spinoza’s pantheistic conception of a deity is portrayed as his attempt to seek out divinity in the universe rather than turning away from God. Reason is a gift from God, Spinoza believed, even when the exercising of that reason clashes with religious tradition and dogma. I wish there had been less about Judaism and more about monism in this book, but in the end I found this to be an interesting, though romanticized, look at Spinoza’s life and thought.
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The shorter the better, the longer the duller
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| Berthold Auerbach |
I first became aware of Berthold Auerbach from his story “Christian Gellert’s Last Christmas,” included in the 1898 collection Stories by Foreign Authors: German II. After reading this excellent short story, I decided to seek out more fiction from this masterful storyteller. Black Forest Village Stories was Auerbach’s first published book, originally appearing in 1843 under the German title of Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten. Regrettably, I didn’t find any of the pieces in this collection to be as compelling as the Christian Gellert story, but overall the short stories are of good quality. The problem is, there’s a lot more going on here than just short stories. The collection also contains two novellas and one work that could qualify as a complete novel by itself. Unfortunately, Auerbach’s literary talents have not translated well to these longer format works.
The collection opens with six short stories which together comprise a mere quarter of the book’s total length. The best of these are “The Gawk” and “Manor-House Farmer’s Vefela.” The former is about an awkward young man, nicknamed the gawk, who suffers the jokes and insults of his neighbors in their small Black Forest town. His cousin is the only person who shows him any kindness, so he falls in love with her. To prove his manhood to her, he becomes a soldier. The latter selection tells the tale of a manor-house farmer who is wealthier than his neighbors, a fact for which they resent him. As a result, his daughter, Vefela, suffers the sins of the father and grows up in an antagonistic environment devoid of friends. Auerbach’s stories exhibit a sort of proto-realism—too romantic to be called naturalistic and vice versa. Realistic details of German village life are interspersed with philosophical interludes displaying keen insight into human nature. The stories all take place in the village of Nordstetten, in Wurtemberg, and feature recurring characters throughout. The effect is similar to Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, suffused with a touch of the earthy authenticity of Wladyslaw Reymont’s The Peasants.
“Ivo, the Gentleman,” about a young man’s journey to the priesthood, is a novel of 15 lengthy chapters, most of which are unnecessary. By the time you get around to caring about the characters, the plodding pace has grown tiresome. Likewise tedious is the novella “The Lauterbacher,” in which a new school teacher arrives in Nordstetten full of idealism, only to be shocked by the close-minded anti-intellectualism of the peasant population. Though ultimately the message of the story turns out to be moving and inspirational, it takes forever to get there. Faring slightly better, but likewise suffering from long-windedness, is “Florian and Crescence.” Florian, a butcher, has just returned to his hometown from Alsace. He finds that his sweetheart Crescence has taken up with a surveyor from the city. While her new boyfriend is educated, has career prospects, and has been granted her father’s approval, Florian is merely a lovable good ol’ boy with tendencies toward gambling, partying, and unemployment. The touching and pathetic story of the titular couple ends up resembling a Bruce Springsteen song set in 19th-century Germany.
Black Forest Village Stories would have been a much better collection if it were comprised entirely of short stories. Instead, the three longer works feel like short story plots that have been stretched out well beyond their welcome and are really an ordeal to get through. Auerbach later wrote a novel entitled On the Heights which is often described as his finest work, but frankly, after reading the three dull novellas included here, I’m scared to even attempt it.
Stories in this collection
The Gawk
The Pipe of War
Manor-House Farmer’s Vefela
Nip-Cheeked Toney
Good Government
The Hostile Brothers
Ivo, the Gentleman
Florian and Crescence
The Lauterbacher
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The long, tiring road to the priesthood
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| Berthold Auerbach |
Ivo, the Gentleman is included in German author Berthold Auerbach’s 1843 fiction collection Black Forest Village Stories, but, comprised of 15 lengthy chapters, it is a complete novel in its own right and merits a separate review. Ivo, the son of a carpenter, lives in the village of Nordstetten. As a little boy, he witnesses a young man from his hometown perform his first Catholic mass as a member of the clergy. After the ceremony, Ivo’s father suggests that perhaps he too could one day become a “gentleman”—that is to say, a minister or parson. Young Ivo, awed by the respect shown by the townsfolk to this new priest, greets the idea with enthusiasm. From that point on, the course of his studies is planned out for him with this goal in mind, and he begins his long journey to the priesthood.
And the reader begins his long journey of reading this novel. Like the other entries in Black Forest Village Stories, the narrative presents a vivid slice of rural life in 19th century Germany. The various stories and novellas in the collection are tied together by a common village and recurring characters for an effect that falls somewhere between Balzac’s Comédie Humaine and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. While I have enjoyed Auerbach’s Black Forest stories so far, this novel was an ordeal to get through. Ivo goes about his business attending school. He has a crush on a young neighbor girl, but of course his future calling won’t allow him to act on any feelings of earthly love. The plot just kind of lopes along with the leisurely pace of changing seasons, nothing worthy of note really happening until about the ninth or tenth chapter (out of 15). At that point it starts to get a little more interesting, but by that time it’s already been a long haul. The reader can see that it’s all building up to a will-he-or-won’t-he decision toward the priesthood, yet is too tired to really care what the resolution to this conflict might be. The most interesting parts of the books are the two stories-within-a-story that don’t have anything to do with Ivo: one the story of Aloys, an emigrant to America, and the other the tale of Nat, Ivo’s former family servant and closest friend.
The narrative of Ivo’s education reminds me a lot of Hermann Hesse’s novel Beneath the Wheel (Unterm Rad), enough to think that the latter was likely familiar with this work. Hesse’s novel is darker than this one, and a little less dull, but not much. Auerbach is an impressive writer of short stories, as evidenced by “Christian Gellert’s Last Christmas” (included in Scribner’s Stories by Foreign Authors: German II) or “The Gawk” (in Black Forest Village Stories), but Ivo, the Gentleman doesn’t say much for his talents as a novelist. One can see how Auerbach’s realistic portrayals of village life were a refreshing departure from the romantic fiction that preceded them, and how his work presages that of later authors like Hesse, Anderson, or even William Faulkner’s tales of Yoknapatawpha County. Admiration doesn’t always equate to enjoyment, however, and this novel is a bit of a bore. On the other hand, I have heard high praise for Auerbach’s novel On the Heights, so perhaps this is a just one failed effort in an otherwise illustrious career.
A masterpiece from Auerbach, a dud from von Chamisso
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| Berthold Auerbach |
This book is the second of two volumes of German short fiction included in the ten-volume series Stories by Foreign Authors, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1898. It contains English translations of four stories by four German authors. While the first book of German stories in this series, subtitled German I, leaned toward the lighter side of 19th-century literature, this second volume delivers more of the deep thoughts and dark drama one might expect from this romantic, philosophical period in literary history.
So far I’ve read five of the volumes in the Stories by Foreign Authors series, and the best story I’ve encountered yet is “Christian Gellert’s Last Christmas” by Berthold Auerbach. It takes place in 1768, when Gellert, a real historical figure, was professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig. He is a well-respected man but poor, sickly, and dejected. When a peasant reads a passage of Gellert’s verse, he is so touched by it that he sets out to meet the great man and give him a gift. Gellert’s faith in God and life is renewed by this simple act. This story is quite moving and profound. Although the philosophical message is expressed in Christian terms, in accordance with Gellert’s philosophy, there is a core of ancient stoicism to it that can be valuable to nonbelievers as well. As I read it, I couldn’t resist highlighting several passages. It’s one of those deeply affecting stories that really makes you consider your own life and look at it from a different perspective.
Also quite moving, though not as philosophical, is Leopold Kompert’s “A Ghetto Violet.” A teenage brother and sister living in a Jewish ghetto learn that their father will be returning home after five years of incarceration. In the past, he was an inveterate gambler whose transgressions drove their mother to die of despair. Has he learned from his mistakes, and how will the children react to his return? Overall the story is very good, though some of the dialog is a bit clunky, possibly from the translation, and it could have used a less expected ending.
“The Severed Hand” by Wilhelm Hauff belongs to the horror/mystery drama and has an air of Edgar Allen Poe about it. Zaleukos is a doctor and merchant from Constantinople whose wanderings eventually lead him to settle in Florence. One night a mysterious stranger asks him to make an unusual house call, and for the sake of surprise, the less said about it the better. This story reminds me of a tale by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle entitled “The Case of Lady Sannox.” Both stories revolve around a fictional doctor making a stupid mistake that a real doctor would never make. Hauff’s tale is stylishly done but ultimately based on a silly premise.
The collection ends with “Peter Schlemihl,” a novella by Adelbert von Chamisso that takes up fully half the book. It tells the tale of the title character, who sells his shadow for a bottomless bag of gold. Stylistically, it feels like a Twilight Zone episode written by Balzac. Though fascinating at first, it goes on way too long and devolves into comic absurdity. There’s some indelible imagery and a few fun moments of dark humor, but ultimately it all feels rather pointless.
Overall this is a fairly good, diverse sampling of German stories. Your enjoyment of it will largely depend on your tolerance for “Peter Schlemihl.” Auerbach’s selection alone makes this collection well worth downloading.
Stories in this collection
Christian Gellert’s Last Christmas by Berthold Auerbach
A Ghetto Violet by Leopold Klompert
The Severed Hand by Wilhelm Hauff
Peter Schlemihl by Adelbert von Chamisso
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