The Black Spider

by Jeremias Gotthelf

Other authorsSusan Bernofsky (Translator)
Paperback, 2013

Status

Available

Call number

833.7

Collection

Publication

NYRB Classics (2013), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 120 pages

Description

"It is a sunny summer Sunday in a remote Swiss village, and a christening is being celebrated at a lovely old farmhouse. One of the guests notes an anomaly in the fabric of the venerable edifice: a blackened post that has been carefully built into a trim new window frame. Thereby hangs a tale, one that, as the wise old grandfather who has lived all his life in the house proceeds to tell it, takes one chilling turn after another, while his audience listens in appalled silence. Featuring a cruelly overbearing lord of the manor and the oppressed villagers who must render him service, an irreverent young woman who will stop at nothing, a mysterious stranger with a red beard and a green hat, and, last but not least, the black spider, the tale is as riveting and appalling today as when Jeremias Gotthelf set it down more than a hundred years ago. The Black Spider can be seen as a parable of evil in the heart or of evil at large in society (Thomas Mann saw it as foretelling the advent of Nazism), or as a vision, anticipating H. P. Lovecraft, of cosmic horror. There's no question, in any case, that it is unforgettably creepy"--… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Widsith
I thought this was incredibly charming and atmospheric, despite the fact that it's essentially the sort of simple religious allegory that normally makes me run a mile. The Christian symbolism is indeed the whole point: the author was a nineteenth-century village pastor who regarded his fiction as a
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kind of extended sermon. And yet his sense of pacing and the detail of his descriptions just make it such a pleasure to read for all kinds of unexpected reasons.

The bucolic early scenes of life in a tiny Swiss village are clearly written from experience, and I was just fascinated by the insight into daily life that's on show here. The way the maids tie their hair into bunches, how the old men light their pipes, how thickly the bread should be cut – lovely rich sense-pictures of all the kitchen activity:

Drinnen in der weiten, reinen Küche knisterte ein mächtiges Feuer von Tannenholz, in weiter Pfanne knallten Kaffeebohnen, die eine stattliche Frau mit hölzerner Kelle durcheinanderrührte, nebenbei knarrte die Kaffeemühle zwischen den Knien einer frischgewaschenen Magd […].

Inside in the big, clean kitchen a huge fire of pine wood was crackling; in a big pan could be heard the popping of coffee beans which a stately-looking woman was stirring around with a wooden ladle, while nearby the coffee mill was grinding between the knees of a freshly washed maid….

These are part of the preparations for a meal to celebrate a christening. The first course, incidentally, is a crazy local speciality that sounds like some sort of sweet-savoury mulled wine, yum:

…guten Bernersuppe, bestehend aus Wein, geröstetem Brot, Eiern, Zucker, Zimmet und Safran, diesem ebenso altertümlichen Gewürze, das an einem Kindstaufeschmaus in der Suppe, im Voressen, im süßen Tee vorkommen muß.

…good Bernese soup, consisting of wine, toasted bread, eggs, sugar, cinnamon and saffron, that equally old-fashioned spice which has to be present at a christening feast in the soup, in the first course after the soup and in the sweetened tea.

So if you ever have to celebrate a christening in Bern, now you know what to serve.

Anyway, I'm making this sound like a culinary textbook. It's actually an effectively creepy tale of Satanic possession – one that draws on that whole folkloric tradition of simple villagers making pacts with the Devil. There is much thunder and lightning and several dramatic set-pieces involving new-born babies, green huntsmen, evil knights, heroic priests, hideous deaths, and of course the anticipated variety of arachnean antics.

Having just read [book:A Concise History of Switzerland|17804227], it was interesting to me that the story-within-a-story comprising the main part of this tale takes place in the sixteenth century, before this little patch of the Emmental had become fully part of the Swiss confederacy. One theme that emerges from Swiss history is the idea of different communities banding together to form self-governing political units, without the feudal overlordship that was the norm everywhere else in Europe. It's striking then that when this nineteenth-century villager is telling a story about the bad old days, he looks all the way back to when this little area was still a commandery of the Teutonic Knights, when the villagers had to bow their heads to the lord of Sumiswald Castle. Clearly this is secondary to the religious allegory on show here, but it adds a fascinating extra layer to the story.

And indeed, going through the original German text, even a beginner like me can see that it contains several specifically Swiss elements – local foodstuffs like Züpfe (translated as ‘Bernese cake’) or Hafermus (‘porridge’), as well as words like Meitschi ‘girl’, which is here given a comparably regional flavour by the translation ‘lass’. Actually the translation as a whole, from HM Waidon back in 1958 (reprinted in the 2009 OneWorld Classics edition), is wonderfully supple and readable.

Thomas Mann famously said that he admired The Black Spider ‘like almost no other piece of world literature’, and sure enough, although it really shouldn't be that interesting, somehow it seems to add up to more than the sum of its parts. I recommend turning the lights down and indulging in a copy for a literary, arachnophobic Halloween treat.
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LibraryThing member Petroglyph
Meh. Overly Christian morality tale, set in a 19thC Swiss village. The main action takes place a few centuries earlier, when the village was ruled by Teutonic Knights.

The tale is an old-style deal-with-the-devil story, in which the villagers are presented with a series of impossible tasks. The
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devil shows up, offering to help in exchange for an unbaptized child. A moral quandary ensues.

Much of this novella is engaging: the food porn that opens it, the actual tale, the writing. Where it went wrong for me was in the overbearing and nonsensical "lessons" that the author highlights. As a non-christian, I cannot help but think that the villagers cheated their way out of a deal they had entered into and which they then reneged on, so it was hard to sympathise with them. Furthermore, if their god is incapable of or unwilling to help out, prevent the impossible task, or interfere in anything but coy and minuscule and indirect ways, he does not deserve the worship lavished upon him -- the devil is the real mvp here .

Other than the eyerolling Christianity on display, this was fairly enjoyable: dark enough to counterbalance the saccharine god-worship.
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LibraryThing member JBD1
A new translation by Susan Bernofsky of Gotthelf's 1842 short tale. An allegorical treatment of the Black Death and the standard Good vs. Evil story, with an extremely creepy big black spider as the devil incarnate. Worth a read for the prose, and the NYRB edition is quite a nice book, but the
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story's just not one I found myself particularly interested in.
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LibraryThing member ashleytylerjohn
I liked this one (it only took a while to read because I took a break, primarily because some borrowed e-books were finally off-hold from the library and my time with them was limited). It's a low four (I really wish we could rate out of 10, at least!), since I wasn't emotionally engaged, and the
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text is rather spare and dry--which suits the subject. It very much has the air of a legend being retold, and much of the book is indeed a story-within-a-story, so that makes sense. It's a classic (1842!) that somehow I'd never heard of or come across until this year, and it hold up very well. Unlike much modern horror, it's not stomach-turning and unreadable for me, so I appreciate that very much.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).
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LibraryThing member ragwaine
Old story, god vs the devil. Moral tale, writing aged well but the ideas are a bit overbearingly christian.
LibraryThing member passion4reading
During a christening in a small village in the Swiss valleys, the grandfather tells the assembled guests a cautionary tale that, family tradition has it, dates back to the Middle Ages: facing certain starvation in the service of the harsh local knight, the peasants consider the offer of a
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mysterious green huntsman to help them in return for an unbaptised child. This is, of course, no one other than the Devil. Having made a secret deal with one of the village women, the Devil fulfils his end of the bargain, but the peasants, unaware of the pact, think themselves cleverer and deny him the child. After a second child is also baptised by the priest before it can be claimed, the village is overrun by a swarm of deadly black spiders. Eager to finally honour her deal, the woman snatches the third child away but is again thwarted by the priest and transforms into an enormous black, poisonous spider which brings death and havoc to the valley.

Written by a rural Swiss pastor in 1842, this novella is both an allegory for the Black Death as well as an age-old tale of the fight of Good against Evil. Even though it is barely 100 pages long, there are definite lengths in the narration, and a characterisation of the main protagonists is practically non-existent. The person who is explored in most detail is the woman who makes the fateful pact with the Devil, and she is hardly someone the reader can warm to or identify with. The part with the black spider is horrible and gross, and it took enormous willpower to keep on reading (I’m a confessed arachnophobe). On the whole, the tone is too moralistic and overly pious, and the author can’t refrain from treating the reader as someone in his congregation, sermonising and proselytising (not surprising, given his background). I have to admit that I couldn’t see the “author’s talent for dark satire” that was promised on the back cover. OK, but I won’t read it a second time.
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LibraryThing member datrappert
This review applies to the NYRB version translated by Susan Bernofsky.

Published in 1842, Gotthelf's The Black Spider, though clearly written by a devout man as a warning to Christians to take their faith seriously and not neglect their worship of god, turns out to be a great horror tale due to its
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author's vivid imagination. Peasants, under the rule of a cruel master, are faced with the impossible task of transferring 100 full grown trees to the lane leading up to the castle the same peasants have just broken their backs building. It is an impossible task--until a mysterious green man appears. Of course, we all know who he is, and so did the peasants, who were terrified. But faced with ruin at the hands of their evil master or immediate relief of their problem by the green man, perhaps there is room to consider. It is left to a woman to actually take the initiative....and that is about all you need to know. The story is told many years later in a nice framing device concerning the baptism of a new baby. You'll be lulled into this peaceful world, notable for the baptism feast, which the author describes lovingly and at great length. But then--the horror, the horror!

It certainly isn't necessary to be religious to enjoy this tale--I'm not. The descriptions of the horrible black spider and its rampage are quite graphic and very well done. Translator Susan Bernofsky has done a great job. Before buying this version, I read a comparison of this translation with another one, and this came out on top. It's a quick and worthwhile read. Unusally, for an NYRB published book, there is no foreword, no afterword, no supplementary material at all. Since such material often gives away the entire plot, and this book really doesn't require explanation, I'll count that as a plus.
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LibraryThing member Gypsy_Boy
I’m not generally a fan of the horror genre, but this is different, although in its way a horror story. Written around the late 1830s, Wikipedia’s summary is accurate: “a semi-allegorical tale of a plague…that devastates a Swiss valley community; first as a result of a pact with the devil
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born out of need and a second time due to the moral decay that releases the monster from its prison again.” Really quite well done.
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Language

Original language

German

Original publication date

1842

Physical description

120 p.; 5.04 inches

ISBN

1590176685 / 9781590176689
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