Today I'm going to talk about a book that enjoyed so much that it became one of my favorites: The Golem.
The Golem is Gustav Meyrink's masterly 1915 retelling of the legend of the blasphemous creation of an artificial man by Rabbi Loew in the Prague ghetto of the sixteenth century. Meyinrick's novel is an exploration of personal identity and the horror inherent in the search for self-knowledge. In this brooding, atmospheric story, the monster terrorising the streets of Prague is inextricably bound up with the psyche of the people who live there.
this novel inspired the well known Borges' novel The Aleph.
While the legend of the golem is a product of Jewish folk tradition, its origins lost in those obscuring mists of time everyone is always talking about. But what is a Golem???
A Golem, perhaps the best known of the Jewish legends, is an automaton, typically humanoid and typically male, created as the result of an intense, systematic, mystical meditation. The word golem means (or implies) something unformed and imperfect, or a body without a soul. The word appears once in the Bible, in Psalms 139:15-16.
The story of the Golem begins in the old city of Prague. the Rabbi of that city created a golem to defend the Prague guetto from anti-semitic attacks. According to the legend, Golem could be made of clay from the banks of the Vltava river in Prague. Following the prescribed rituals, the Rabbi built the Golem and made him come to life by reciting a special incantation in Hebrew.
The Cabbala said, "A Golem must be made of the sticky clay from the bank of the Moldavka River. Make the face, hands and feet out of clay. Roll it over on its back. Walk around the form of clay from right to left seven times." As you walk around the form, shout, "Shanti, Shanti, Dahat, Dahat!"
The Golem would obey the Rabbi's every order and would help and protect the people of the Jewish Ghetto. However, as he grew bigger, he also became more violent and started killing people and spreading fear. Rabbi Loew was promised that the violence against the Jews would stop if the Golem was destroyed.
During the Second World War, the Golem crops up again. Survivors of the Holocaust said that The Golem safeguarded the Synagogue of Prague. When german soldiers came into the Synagogue they saw a shadow of a giant hand falling from the window onto the floor. The Germans were terrified and they threw away their tools and fled away in panic.
A popular variation on the story has the Golem rebel and become an uncontrolled monster before being stopped and returned to clay. It has been speculated that Mary Shelley patterned Frankenstein on this story.
The Golem has appeared several times on the screen.
El Golem, de Gustav Meyrink, tiene su origen en el conjunto de leyendas de la Cábala judía sobre la creación artificial de vida mediante el poder evocador de las letras. El ser artificial de la novela de Meyrink vuelve a la vida cada 33 años y vive en una habitación sin acceso situada en algún lugar del laberinto del ghetto de Praga. El Golem se erige como una figura de doble significado: de un lado, representa el doble del protagonista, Athanasius Pernath; de otro, la conciencia colectiva del ghetto, que anuncia la guerra y la destrucción. La novela aparece envuelta en una atmósfera onírica y angustiosa, donde se mezclan lo visible y lo invisible, el sueño y la realidad, a través de la cual Pernath se esfuerza por superar las esferas materiales para alcanzar el reino espiritual.
