Melmoth the Wanderer

Melmoth the Wanderer ( orig. Melmoth the Wanderer) is a 1820 horror novel published by Irish writer Charles Robert Maturin. The novel is a synthesis of the styles of the terror and the gothic horror. He is regarded as "the best English-language horror novel ."

Content

The nearly 800 -page novel consists of six partially nested, stories. Any act of Melmoth, who is doomed to wander through the world 150 years to expand his knowledge of his own volition. Melmoth has in the best manner a Faustian pact with the devil to satisfy his own thirst for knowledge. At the end of 150 years the devil Melmoths requires soul as price, unless he supply them with the devil a substitute soul. Unfortunately Melmoth found on his odyssey hunderfünfzigjährigen not so desperate people who would be willing to pledge his soul and so it the devil. After the deadline, the desperate Melmoth have no choice but to surrender to his fate.

Reception

Melmoth the Wanderer looked at the literature of the 19th century and has been recognized in the 20th century as " the masterpiece of the genre ." Hugo Han d' Islande is influenced by the work. Balzac wrote the " satirical sequel" Melmoth reconcilié à l' église. Baudelaire examined the " psychic conflict Melmoths ". Melmoth the Wanderer is also one of the few books, in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin still appreciates the bored protagonist. In Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray go several motifs back to Maturin's novel. After Oscar Wilde had left after his release from prison, England, he called himself Sebastian Melmoth ( Maturin was a great-uncle of Oscar Wilde, the name he chose for the holy Sebastian ). In 1955 published novel Lolita Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov the narrator calls his car with which he undertook long journeys across the USA, jokingly " Melmoth ".

Expenditure

  • First edition: Melmoth the wanderer. A tale. 4 vols A. Constable and Company, Edinburgh, 1820. Bd.1 Vol 2 Vol 3 Vol 4
  • German first translation: Melmoth the Wanderer. Free from the English of the venerable Mr. Maturin, author of the Bertrams and other writings, transferred from CvS Publisher of Hildebrand'schen bookstore, Arnstadt 1821
  • First complete translation: Melmoth the Wanderer. Translated by Friedrich Polakovics. With an afterword by Dieter Sturm. Hanser Verlag ( Bibliotheca Dracula ), Munich 1969, 1006 pp., ISBN 3-446-11019-4
  • Current issue: Melmoth the Wanderer. Translated by Friedrich Polakovics. Area, Erftstadt 2004, 800 pp., ISBN 3-89996-073-4
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