Jeremias Gotthelf Books

Black Spider does have the feel of something written in the Middle Ages. The Story is very simple and could have been told in 25 or so pages. All the other reviewers seemed to just love this book. I did like the portrayal of the mob-mentality and I thought the black spider was a good allegory for the black death.
However, the message of the book is very heavy-handed and the characters are one dimensional. After hitting the reader on the head repeatedly about how he/she ought to live a good Christian life, after awhile my attitude was "O.K., Jeremias, I've got your point already." In different hands this might have been an enjoyable little horror story.

Since the above edition is all but impossible to obtain--unless you have a spare couple hundred dollars lying around--the same novella is in the book "Nineteenth Century German Tales" ed. by Angel Flores. This volume, which is also a little hard to find, has the added bonus of other wonderful stories from the German Romantic era by Jean Paul Richter, Heinrich von Kleist, E.T.A. Hoffman, Jeremias Gotthelf, Adalbert Stifter, Gottfried Keller, & Eduard Morike. Good Hunting!!!

In his Diaries, Franz Kafka wrote "Last night dreamed of the boil on my cheek. The perpetually shifting border between the ordinary world and the terror that would seem more real." This may stand as synoptical of the art of the novella, of which The Black Spider is a brilliant example. As in Kleist, Hoffmann, or Poe's Fall of the House of Usher, an indiscreet act, a deviation from the established order of things forces a rupture in the very texture of being. Within such novellas as the Black Spider or Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas, the world is understood as provisional, not fundamental. It is a covenant that once broken, returns the world of clarity and order to the mute violence of the uncreated state: tohu bohu, chaos, death and hell.

The Black Spider is available and is included in Continuum's German Novellas of Realism, Volume I.

With "Black Spider" (Die Schwarze Spinne, original title in German) pastor Gotthelf projects the reader back in an isolated valley of primitive, medieval Switzerland. And invents a legend of Man vs. the Enemy (or the Devil) that is so strong, so powerful, that it gives the book something that truly transcends time.

A truly exceptional book.

This novel starts out tranquilly as a group of friends and family gather for a christening at a Swiss farmhouse. Everything about it is idyllic, from the flowing green grass to the immaculate cleaness of the house itself. One of the visitors notices a black board in one of the window frames that clashes with the color of the house. He asks why it's there and an elderly grandfather begins the tale of the Black Spider. During the 1400's the valley was ruled by a succession of cruel knights and one of the worst was Hans von Stofflen who treats his serfs as slaves, beating them and cursing them in their destitution. After building a castle for him, he commands them to transplant 100 full-grown beech trees from another site to line a shady boulevard for him. There is no way to do this. That's when the Devil shows up and of course says he could do what is required easily-- for a price! He wants a newborn baby. Of course this puts the peasants into a dilemma. To trust in God to offer some method of salvation or to take the quicker, easier way of Satan. One woman, Christine, takes it upon herself to agree to the Devil's terms. The village goes along with her decision in the false hope that after the trees are planted they can doublecross the Prince of Lies. Gotthelf was way ahead of his time in terms of portraying the mob mentality of the villagers. They are petrified until Christine takes action and becomes an easy scapegoat. In case anything goes wrong, they can say it was her fault. You feel sorry for them because they, (pardon the cliche), are between a rock and a hard place. If they don't finish the boulevard, their lord will take his vengance on them, if they do they have to give up one of their own. When the black spider is unleashed by Satan to punish the villagers, it seems as though God is taking a hand in it too. They fear the knight more than God. The book seems very reminescent of the Bible tales in which the Jews would fall out of line and then God would punish them for their transgressions. They would renounce their evil ways for a generation or two and then it was the same cycle over again. Once the spider enters the picture the horror truly begins because it can appear anywhere. You cannot run from it. You cannot harm it. Its touch is death. It's a shame this book is out of print. Hunt it down. It's great.