The Golem
Authors: Gustav Meyrink
Tags: #Literature, #20th Century, #European Literature, #v.5, #Amazon.com, #Retail
Dedalus European Classics
General Editor: Mike Mitchell
Gustav Meyrink
translated by Mike Mitchell and with an introduction and chronology by Robert Irwin
Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited,
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ISBN 978 1 873982 91 4
Kindle e-book ISBN 978 1 907650 08 6
e-Pub e-book ISBN 978 1 907650 09 3
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Publishing History
First published in Germany in 1915
First English translation in 1928
Mike Mitchell’s translation in 1995
Reprinted in 2000, 2005, 2008, 2010
First e-book edition in 2010
The right of Mike Mitchell to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Printed in Finland by W.S. Bookwell
Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A C.I.P. listing for this book is available on request.
Books by and about Gustav Meyrink which are available from Dedalus:
The five novels translated by Mike Mitchell:
The Golem
The Angel of the West Window
The Green Face
Walpurgisnacht
The White Dominican
A collection of short stories translated by Maurice Raraty:
The Opal (and other stories)
A sampler for Gustav Meyrink’s complete works edited and translated by Mike Mitchell:
The Dedalus Meyrink Reader
The first English language biography of Gustav Meyrink written by Mike Mitchell:
ABOUT THE TRANSLATORVivo: The Life of Gustav Meyrink
Mike Mitchell is one of Dedalus’s editorial directors and is responsible for Dedalus translation programme.
His publications include
The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy: the Meyrink Years 1890–1932; Harrap’s German Grammar
and a study of Peter Hacks.
Mike Mitchell’s translations include the novels of Gustav Meyrink and Herbert Rosendorfer,
The Great Bagarozy
by Helmut Krausser and
The Road to Darkness
by Paul Leppin.
His translation of
Letters Back to Ancient China
by Herbert Rosendorfer won the 1998 Schlegel-Tieck German Translation Prize.
His current projects include a new translation of
The Other Side
by Alfred Kubin.
1868 | 19 January. Gustav Meyer born (Meyrink will be his |
1882–1902 | One of the directors of the Meyer and Morgenstern Bank in Prague. Becomes well known as a man about town. |
1891 | Nervous breakdown and suicide attempt. Interests himself in occultism and becomes a founder member of the Theosophical Lodge of the Blue Star. |
1892 | Marries Hedwig Aloysia Certl. |
1893–6 | Investigates Cabalism, freemasonry, yoga, alchemy and hashish. |
1896 | First meeting with Philomena Bernt, a banker’s daughter. |
1901 | While convalescing in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Dresden, he begins to write. The first short story ‘The Burning Soldier’ is published in |
1902 | Fights a series of duels with officers of a Prague regiment. Rumours that he was directing the bank’s affairs according to spirit guidance. Accused of fraud and imprisoned. Temporarily paralysed. Freed after two and a half months, but financially ruined. Recovers his health through the practice of yoga. |
1903 | His first anthology of grotesque and satirical short stories published under the title ‘The Burning Soldier’. |
1904 | Moves to Vienna. |
1905 | Divorces first wife and he and Philomena Bernt travel to Dover where they can get married out of the reach of scandal. |
1905–6 | His anti-militarist writings make it necessary for him to exile himself in Switzerland for a while. |
1906 | Moves to Bavaria. |
1907 | The Cabinet of Wax Figures |
1908 | His son Harro born. |
1909–10 | Translates the works of Dickens. |
1911 | Settles by Lake Starnberg in Bavaria. |
1913 | The Enchanted Horn of the German Petit Bourgeois |
1913–14 | The Golem |
1914 | Paul Wegener’s first film version of |
1915 | The Golem |
1916 | His second novel |
1917 | Meets |
1920 | Wegener’s second film version of |
1921 | The White Dominican |
1921–5 | Edits a series of alchemical, occult and mystical works. |
1925 | Tales of the Gold Seekers |
1926 | Translates Kipling. |
1927 | The Angel of the West Window |
1928 | Pemberton translation of |
1932 | Harro, his son, commits suicide. 4 December Gustav Meyrink dies in The House of the Last Lamp looking east over Lake Starnberg. |
1936 | Duvivier film version of |
1971 | French television version of |
1985 | Dedalus republishes Pemberton’s translation of |
1991–4 | Mike Mitchell’s first English translation of |
1994 | A selection of Meyrink short stories translated by Maurice Raraty published by Dedalus as |
1995 | New translation of |
The Golem
has been generally acknowledged to be Meyrink’s masterpiece. In it we have the Castle which is not Kafka’s Castle, The Trial which is not Kafka’s Trial, and a Prague which is not Kafka’s Prague. Kafka and Meyrink were contemporaries in Prague in the years before World War I. Max Brod knew and admired them both. By the time Brod met him, Meyrink was already a published writer with a life of mystery and scandal behind him, an eerie presence among the chess players and political dabblers of the city’s café society. (Two of Meyrink’s drinking companions, Teschner the puppeteer and Vrieslander the painter appear in
The Golem
– Teschner as Zwakh, Vrieslander under his own name.) Meyrink’s novel powerfully evokes the physical presence of Prague three quarters of a century ago – Hradcany Castle, the Street of the Alchemists, the Charles Bridge, the Jewish Quarter. As Kafka acknowledged, Meyrink brilliantly reproduced the atmosphere of the place.