Gothic architecture
The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus
Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen
Introduced by Kevin Cramer, translated by J. A. Underwood, Penguin, 2018, 462 pps., £12.99
On 23 May 1618, Bohemian Protestants pushed two Catholic governors and their secretary through the windows of Prague Castle, in protest at the anti-Protestantism of Bohemia’s King Ferdinand, soon to be elected Emperor Ferdinand II. The defenestration was only injurious to dignity, and had farcical aspects, a rebel shouting ‘We shall see if your Mary can help you!’, only to exclaim ‘’By God, his Mary has helped!’ to see the men land in a midden.
This sparked what C. V. Wedgwood termed “the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict” – the bloodiest campaign ever waged on German soil. It was long thought 70% of Germans had died during those decades, particularly 1630-1638’s ‘years of annihilation’; recent scholarship favours 33%, even that equating to 6.5 million fatalities. ‘Fire, pestilence and death my heart have dominated’, Andreas Gryphius repined on behalf of a continent, in Tears of the Fatherland, Anno Domini 1636.
A troubling trace-memory persists in German minds, recalled in re-enactments like at the little Protestant burg of Memmingen, where Catholic field-marshal Wallenstein pitched ominous camp in the summer of 1630 – art by Wouwerman, Callot and others – folk-songs like Wenn die Landsknechts trinken (‘When the Mercenaries Drink’) and Das Leben ist in Würfelspiel (‘Life Is a Game of Dice’) – and Simplicius Simplicissimus, seen as the first great German novel. This subtle translation has returned to the 1669 original, restoring immediacy, making it oddly modern.
Simplicius went into seven editions in Grimmelshausen’s lifetime. That the author was respectably obscure – it was not until 1838 that he was established as author – did not lessen its‘realism’, because clearly the author had really seen some of the mayhem he describes. It borrowed from wider mock-heroic and picaresque traditions, but added elements now called ‘Gothic’ – coarse humour, deep forests, fantastical incidents, gore, grotesquerie, and introspection. It influenced Defoe, Schiller and Manzoni, and is held to herald the Bildungsroman, and masterpieces like Good Soldier Svejk, Catch-22, and Brecht’s Mother Courage. Always in print, it was seized upon by nineteenth century Romantics seeking a Volksschriftsteller (‘writer of the people’) to codify pan-German consciousness, and has since been utilised by propagandists willing to overlook earthiness and subversiveness.
Protagonist ‘Simp’ is a ten year old churl, whose sole accomplishment is being a ‘fair bagpipe-player’. When his family is erased by Swedish soldiery, a hermit educates him, and inculcates religion. Then Imperialists impress him, and he is carried off to multiple fronts and no-man’s lands, whirled through an upended universe where preachers mingle promiscuously with princes, prostitutes, psychopaths, quacks, starvelings, thieves, and witches (and mermen, and Jupiter).
Meanwhile, chancellors and counsellors constantly rearrange all geo-strategic pieces, and kings can fall to musket-ball, like Gustavus Adolphus at Lützen. Simp adapts to survive – trooper, gigolo, mountebank, highwayman. But he is always armoured with simplicity – ignorance counterbalanced by innocence that lets him blunder through all trials, and at the end find
absolution, albeit in a Europe still at war.
This review first appeared in the 31st March 2018 issue of The Spectator, and is reproduced with
permission