The Bottle Imp
The bottle imp ( engl. The Bottle Imp) is a novel by the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson. The story was printed in 1891 in several parts in advance and published in 1892 for the first time in book form. In 1893, Stevenson published the bottles leprechaun with other South Sea stories in the short story collection Island Nights ( engl. Iceland Night's Entertainments ).
Content
The protagonist Keawe, a Hawaiian sailor who acquires a mysterious bottle that meets its owner every wish. However, this they must sell before his death, so as not to go to hell. Furthermore, the bottle can only cheaper than their purchase price and sold to coins, otherwise it returns to its owner.
After Keawe has a beautiful house desired, he sold the bottle to his friend Lopaka. Some time later he meets his true love Kokua, but is shortly thereafter discovered that he is suffering from the incurable disease leprosy. He then buys the bottle for a penny back and be healed. Keawe desperate but because he can no longer sell cheaper the bottle. His wife has Kokua but the idea with Keawe to drive on the French Pacific islands, as there are still minor currency unit centime exists. There, however, nobody wants to buy the bottle and then Kokua sacrifices and buys the bottle by means of a ruse. Keawe in turn finds out and hired a boatman to retrieve the bottle for him. However, this then refused to publish because he thinks that he must go to hell anyway.
Miscellaneous
Stevenson, who has the novella written for pure entertainment, takes up the literary motif of the devil pact with the story of a wish -fulfilling goblin. A number of similarities, there are also the subject of the bottle Spirit in the Sage spirit familiaris of the Brothers Grimm.
Significantly impressions of his five- month stay in the Kingdom of Hawaii will be processed in 1889. So playing a part in the history Hookena, a settlement on the Kona coast of the Island of Hawaii, who had visited the writer. In one scene in Honolulu, he mentions Heinrich Berger, bandmaster of the Royal Hawaiian Band. The name of Keawes woman refers to the Hawaiian word Kokua, which means help. Finally, Stevenson had in 1889 visited the leper colony on the island of Molokai and met Damian de Veuster. He was therefore familiar from my own experience with the fate of lepers. At various points Stevenson used the Hawaiian word haole are denoted by the white man, so also in the description of the last owner of the bottle.
The original bottles goblin wrote Stevenson, who lived in Samoa from 1890 until his death (1894 ), in contemporary Samoan language. He was then dubbed by locals as " Tusitala " ( " the narrator ").
The bottle imp was launched in German translations, first as The Flaschenteufelchen ( Island Library 302, with wood engravings by Hans Alexander Müller, 1925), then as The Bottle Imp (Hamburg 1926).