Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Dedalus (2004), Paperback, 224 pages
Description
The quest for the Wandering Jew in a fin-de-siecle Amsterdam. "Of the volumes available to the English public, The Green Face, first published in 1916, is the most enjoyable. In an Amsterdam that very much resembles the Prague of The Golem, a stranger, Hauberisser, enters by chance a magician's shop. The name on the shop, he believes, is Chidher Green; inside, among several strange customers, he hears an old man, who says his name is Green, explain that, like the Wandering Jew, he has been on earth 'ever since the moon has been circling the heaven.' When Hauberisser catches sight of the old man's face, it makes him sick with horror. The face haunts him. The rest of the novel chronicles Hauberisser's quest for the elusive and horrible old man." Alberto Manguel in The Observer… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
The legend of the Wandering Jew is a thread connecting the episodes of this novel of occult initiation, set in early 20th-century Amsterdam. But Meyrink was neither a folklorist nor a religious propagandist. His literary skill serves to give the reader a sense of the tenuousness of the mundane
Franz Rottensteiner's afterword in the Daedalus European Classics edition of The Green Face goes further than any other single source I have read in attempting to call out the specific occultist interests and involvements of Meyrink. I would certainly like more detail on Meyrink's 1895 correspondent from Manchester, who asssigned him a new name or occult motto; it sounds as if this instructor was an initiate of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. In fact, Rottensteiner insists that Meyrink "apparently had no knowledge of English fiction of the supernatural," (221) although Godwin, Chanel and Deveney relate that Meyrink was responsible for a German edition of P.B. Randolph's Dhoula Bel. (The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, p. 365) Meyrink was also involved "with French and British Freemasons," including the Antient and Primitive Rite, and Rottensteiner claims that he joined the "Order of Illumination" (Reuss' Illuminati Order?) in 1897. All these details serve to make his work of special historical interest to initiates of O.T.O. and its emulators, as well as relating far more clearly to the metaphysical content of Meyrink's work than the usual biographical gloss of him simply being Theosophist.
The Green Face has a status in Meyrink's ouvre second only to The Golem, and the two were written during the same period (1910-1916). While brimming over with supernatural revelation, it maintains a vigorously esoteric perspective independent of any social institution or codified tradition.
The Dutch setting, largely in the shadow of the Sint Nicolaas Kerk, was especially effective for me as a reader. In fact, it worked almost exactly like my viewing of The Matrix (a curiously similar story, despite its science-fictional premises). In that film, there were frequent dialogue references to Chicago street geography, although the movie's cityscape was actually shot in Sydney, Australia, which created an alienating sense of familiarity for this Chicagoan. Just so, my time in 21st-century Amsterdam helped me achieve the same sense of situated displacement with respect to Meyrink's Zeedijk.
Show More
events and places that we consent to call real, and he captured the apocalyptic zeitgeist of the early years of the New Aeon of the Crowned and Conquering Child. Franz Rottensteiner's afterword in the Daedalus European Classics edition of The Green Face goes further than any other single source I have read in attempting to call out the specific occultist interests and involvements of Meyrink. I would certainly like more detail on Meyrink's 1895 correspondent from Manchester, who asssigned him a new name or occult motto; it sounds as if this instructor was an initiate of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. In fact, Rottensteiner insists that Meyrink "apparently had no knowledge of English fiction of the supernatural," (221) although Godwin, Chanel and Deveney relate that Meyrink was responsible for a German edition of P.B. Randolph's Dhoula Bel. (The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, p. 365) Meyrink was also involved "with French and British Freemasons," including the Antient and Primitive Rite, and Rottensteiner claims that he joined the "Order of Illumination" (Reuss' Illuminati Order?) in 1897. All these details serve to make his work of special historical interest to initiates of O.T.O. and its emulators, as well as relating far more clearly to the metaphysical content of Meyrink's work than the usual biographical gloss of him simply being Theosophist.
The Green Face has a status in Meyrink's ouvre second only to The Golem, and the two were written during the same period (1910-1916). While brimming over with supernatural revelation, it maintains a vigorously esoteric perspective independent of any social institution or codified tradition.
The Dutch setting, largely in the shadow of the Sint Nicolaas Kerk, was especially effective for me as a reader. In fact, it worked almost exactly like my viewing of The Matrix (a curiously similar story, despite its science-fictional premises). In that film, there were frequent dialogue references to Chicago street geography, although the movie's cityscape was actually shot in Sydney, Australia, which created an alienating sense of familiarity for this Chicagoan. Just so, my time in 21st-century Amsterdam helped me achieve the same sense of situated displacement with respect to Meyrink's Zeedijk.
Show Less
LibraryThing member RandyStafford
Written in the middle of World War One, Meyrink’s novel imagines a post-war Amsterdam crammed with refugees and underemployed intellectuals, counterfeit counts, real and haughty aristocrats, a Zulu witch doctor, and a group of mystics who want to transform their bodies.
It starts with our hero
Given Meyrink’s occult interests, I expected a story clotted with mysticism. Instead this book, which plays with the legend of the Wandering Jew among other things, is witty and suspenseful, apocalyptic and hopeful and ends in an unexpected manner.
It starts with our hero
Show More
Hauberrisser, an engineer, wandering into Chider Green’s Hall of Riddles. Weary of life, he seeks re-birth and a new life. He will be introduced to Eva, a young Jewish woman, whose guardian thinks she and Hauberrisser are destined to marry and bring in a new world.Given Meyrink’s occult interests, I expected a story clotted with mysticism. Instead this book, which plays with the legend of the Wandering Jew among other things, is witty and suspenseful, apocalyptic and hopeful and ends in an unexpected manner.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Poquette
Readers of The Golem who felt they were had by the shaggy-dog-story ending may expect the same sort of literary trickery with The Green Face. However, this novel, which is very much in the genre of mystical fantasy (if such a category exists) which The Golem pretends to be right up to its final
Novels like this are probably unfashionable today, yet it is quite compelling if the reader is in the right frame of mind. What we have here is a novel of redemption almost in the guise of an initiation. Written during WWI but set in an imagined Amsterdam at the end of the war, with intimations of apocalypse at the end of the novel, Meyrink again applies his considerable understanding of gnostic and theosophical lore to lure the reader into a deeply mystical adventure.
The Green Face — not unlike The Golem — is an archetypal entity which plays the role of elusive spiritual guide, pursuit of which leads the protagonist down paths that take him to a Jungian kind of wholeness. Read as an allegory of such a psychological journey, the book provides an interesting milieu, unusual characters and a satisfying sense of completion.
The only jarring note concerns a description of mystical ecstasy which climaxes in an Abraham-and-Isaac kind of horrific child murder. A similar ecstatic murder mars the mysticism of The Golem and leads one to wonder which side Meyrink was on. He certainly knows and understands the gnostic brand of mysticism, but is he a practitioner or is he engaged in a subtle attack? That is the question raised by both The Golem and The Green Face.
Show More
page — is a deeply philosophical, even mystical novel right through to its final words: No clever punch lines to mar the effect.Novels like this are probably unfashionable today, yet it is quite compelling if the reader is in the right frame of mind. What we have here is a novel of redemption almost in the guise of an initiation. Written during WWI but set in an imagined Amsterdam at the end of the war, with intimations of apocalypse at the end of the novel, Meyrink again applies his considerable understanding of gnostic and theosophical lore to lure the reader into a deeply mystical adventure.
The Green Face — not unlike The Golem — is an archetypal entity which plays the role of elusive spiritual guide, pursuit of which leads the protagonist down paths that take him to a Jungian kind of wholeness. Read as an allegory of such a psychological journey, the book provides an interesting milieu, unusual characters and a satisfying sense of completion.
The only jarring note concerns a description of mystical ecstasy which climaxes in an Abraham-and-Isaac kind of horrific child murder. A similar ecstatic murder mars the mysticism of The Golem and leads one to wonder which side Meyrink was on. He certainly knows and understands the gnostic brand of mysticism, but is he a practitioner or is he engaged in a subtle attack? That is the question raised by both The Golem and The Green Face.
Show Less
Language
Original publication date
1916
1992 (English: Mitchell)
Physical description
224 p.; 5.08 inches
ISBN
0946626928 / 9780946626922