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The Neo-Classical Chronicle of the Wandering Jew
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
It was inevitable that sooner or later the Wandering Jew, probably the most celebrated of all parcoureurs du monde, should come to be regarded as omniscient as well as ubiquitous. After all, he had been alive since the beginnings of the Christian era, and there was no spot in the generally known world of the Occident where he had not at one time or another passed by or spent his allotted period of residence. In his privileged condition of one who was all-wise, it would be easy for him, if he were so disposed, to assume the mantle of teacher and prophet, with a particular liking for history and geography; but he need not confine himself to those two subjects. The neo-classical age, which developed his didactic powers, sometimes appealed to him for social comment, criticism, and satire.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1948
References
1 In most instances of the legend in its popular form (as distinguished from its art-form, which includes belletristic treatments of the Wandering Jew from about 1750 to the present) the protagonist stays no longer than three days in any given place. (This period was undoubtedly suggested by the three days between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.) At times, however, the Wanderer is so restless that he cannot stay more than one night in any place; sometimes he cannot remain past the next midnight hour; sometimes he is unable to stand still long enough to tell his name, but must keep walking about a room all the while. On the other hand, in his more leisurely and relaxed moods, his sojourn can last as long as a fortnight.
2 For a full account of this German pamphlet and its progeny, as well as the first good reprint of it, see L. Neubaur, Die Sage vom ewigen Juden (rev. ed., Leipzig, 1893), pp. 14 ff. and 53 ff. The most recent reprint of this extremely rare work is in G. K. Anderson, “The Wandering Jew Returns to England,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XLV, 237–250. Arno Schmidt's Das Volksbuch vom ewigen Juden (Danzig, 1927) offers a most valuable explanation of the genesis of the pamphlet, showing that the Danzig imprint is the original and correct one, and indicating how the medieval legend of the Wandering Jew was brought from Italy (which, in my own opinion, was the cradle of the legend) to Reformationist Germany.
3 The first French translation is given in P. V. P. Cayet's Chronologie septenaire (Paris, 1605), vol. vii. This version was later reprinted separately as Discours veritable d'un juif errant (Bordeaux, 1609). English, Flemish, Danish, and Swedish translations appeared soon thereafter. Most Slavic versions of the legend seem to depend upon the German Volksbuch.
4 Particularly the legend of Judas Iscariot and the saga of the Seeds of the Holy Tree whence was derived the wood for the Cross.
5 These have never been collected. The first was probably the one printed at Bruges by Andrew Wyds (n.d.) ; the last I have seen was issued at Paris in 1833. Here the Jew is met by two grenadiers from the army of Napoleon. Two peculiar contributions of the Histoire admirable are the identification of Ahasuerus as of the tribe of Naphthali and the statement that he was a carpenter by trade instead of the traditional shoemaker.
6 Giovanni Marana, L'espion du grand seigneur dans la cour des princes chrétiens (Paris, 1684), ii, 176–181. Neubaur, op. cit., p. 131, says that the original was in Italian, as may well be—Marana was a Genoese, who died in Paris in 1692—but I have never seen the original. The first English translation appeared in 1686 as Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, who Liv'd Five and Forty Years Undiscovered at Paris. There were no less than twelve editions of this English translation before 1748. The work is similar in range and scope, though not in literary value, to a combination of Montesquieu's Lettres persanes and Goldsmith's Citizen of the World. The general reference is always to Volume ii, Book 3, Letter 1.
7 (Paris, 1720), ii, 472.
8 (Frankfurt) xiv, 723.
9 John Aubrey, Miscellanies, Library of Old Authors (London, 1857), p. 69. Aubrey explains that a poor invalid in the Moorlands of Staffordshire, lying alone in his house, was called to the door by a stranger, who desired a drink. The story is told also in Peck's History of Stamford, where it is referred to the year 1658.
10 As in the curious little ballet, the Mariage de Pierre de Provence et de la belle Maguelone, performed at Tours as early as 1638. Here the Jew is in the disreputable and humorous company of a fool, a physician, a buffoon, and a muleteer. The French satirist d'Esternod, in his Espadon satyrique (1680), v, 56, affords another example. Several skits produced in the Théatre des Folies Dramatiques as late as the 1830's attest the French preference for this point of view.
11 Among these should be mentioned J. Sebastian Mitternacht, Dissertationes de Iohannis XXI (Naumburg, 1645) ; Gottfried Thilo, Meletma historicum de Judaeo immortali (Wittenberg, 1668; 1671)—a German translation of this appeared at Leipzig as Der unsterbliche Jude (1702); Martin Droscher, Dissertatio theologica de duobus testibus vivis passionis dominicae (Jena, 1668); Christopher Schultz, Dissertatio hislorica de Judaeo non mortali (Kônigsberg, 1689; Jena, 1734); J. J. Schudt, Judische Merckwivrdiglieiten (Frankfurt-Leipzig, 1714), Book v, Chap. 13, pp. 488-512; the anonymous Historische Nachricht von dem ewigen Juden (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1723); and Caçl Anton, Lepidam fabulam de Judaeo immortali (Helmstadt, 1756). The Historische Nachricht, though rare, is probably the most satisfactory summary of the learned point of view in the eighteenth century, far better than the smug comment in the Hannoverische Beytràge zum Nutze und Vergnugen (Sept. 7, 1761) that “we are cleverer than our grandfathers.”
12 Even Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy (Book v, chapter iii), while he listens to Father's oration, recognizes the Wandering Jew not only as a world-traveler but as something of a narrator of ancient events.
13 “Printed by T. Norris at the Looking Glass on London Bridge and sold by J. Walter.” The sub-title reads: “A brief history of the remarkable passages from William the Conqueror to this Present Reign.”
14 By this I refer specifically to the historians of the later part of the Age of Reason, who practiced their art before the romanticists got their hands on it; in particular such works as Voltaire's Siècle de Louis XIV (1756); the Abbé Fleury's Histoire ecclésiastique (1791;) David Hume's History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688 (1754–61); William Robertson's History of Scotland (1759), History of the Emperor Charles V (1769), and History of America (1777); Adam Ferguson's History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (1783); Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88); J. L. Mosheim's Commentarii de rebus Christianorum ante Constantinum Magnum (1753); J. C. Gatterer's Weltgeschichte (1792); A. L. von Schlôzer's Ge-schichte von Russland (1769), Allgemeine nordische Geschichte (1771), and Weltgeschichte im Auszuge und Zusammenhange (1792); and A. H. L. Heeren's Reflections on the Politics, Intercourse, and Commerce of the Chief Nations of Antiquity (1796). Of these the German histories of Mosheim, Gatterer, and von Schlozer represent the so-called Gottingen school and from their tendency to “universal” history seem to have the closest connection with the Chronicle of the Wandering Jew. For the whole matter, cf. James Westfall Thompson and Bernard J. Holm, A History of Historical Writing (New York, 1942), ii, 58–131.
15 This date advances in subsequent works derived from the Mémoires until it has neared the close of the 1780's.
15 The Mémoires purports to be merely a reprinting of the Histoire admirable issued at Rouen in 1751. But since none of the many versions of the Histoire admirable gives the material found in the Mémoires, we may deduce that the Mémoires is not what it pretends to be. As a matter of fact, the author breaks down at the end and admits it: “Il ne nous reste plus qu'à demander excuse à nos Lecteurs de leur avoir donné, au heu d'un extrait de la petite brochure bleue du Juif-errant, qui ne contient pas 30 pages, & qui est bien un Roman, & même un misérable Roman, un volume entier, contenant 17 voyages autour du monde; mais cette fable nous a paru présenter un cadre si heureux, que nous n'avons pu nous empêcher de la remplir par différens tableaux, tous fidèlement & exactement tirés de l'Histoire.” The reference to the “brochure bleue” is to the Histoire admirable, which seems to have been printed customarily with blue paper covers. The author of the Mémoires omits from consideration the sections of the Histoire admirable treating of Judas Iscariot, of the Tree of Life, and of the Legend of the Cross. These independent sagas were combined with the Legend of the Wandering Jew in the French pamphlet.
17 Undoubtedly Heinrich A. O. Reichard (1751-1828), a miscellaneous writer with particular interest in travelogues and descriptive geography. His autobiography (cf. Hermann Uhde, H.A.O. Reichard [Stuttgart, 1877]) does not mention Der ewige Jude. But the work first appeared in Bibliothek der Romane, viii, 19–24; ix, 39–103; x, 111–167; xi, 99–137; and xii, 83–141—in other words, in installments between 1781 and 1785. The Riga volume explains itself as “Ein Abdruck der Reichardschen Urharbeitung des bekannten Volksromans, welcher in einigen Bânden der Romanenbibliothek zerstreut stand, und nun, auf Verlangen mehrerer Leser, in Einem Band zusammengedruckt worden ist.” Reichard founded the Bibliothek der Romane in 1773 on the model of the French Bibliothèque universelle des romans (cf. Uhde, p. 152). Furthermore, his obvious interest in travels and wanderings—many pages of his autobiography are devoted to accounts of his own peregrinations—makes his choice of the story of the Wandering Jew a natural one.
18 Reichard moves the date of the meeting to 1780. His English youth is named—surprisingly enough—Smith; his Italian is Cambiagi; the German and French representatives are unnamed. In general, his version is more sophisticated and given more definitely to topical allusions than the French Mémoires.
19 The romanticists of this same period, possibly under the influence of the Mesmer vogue, were wont to dwell upon the transfixing power of the glance of the Wandering Jew.
20 Christian F. D. Schubart's lyric rhapsody, Der ewige Jude (1787), was composed in 1783. An emotionally wrought monologue of the Jew's seeking death and unable to find it, this poem had great influence. In an English prose translation it came to the attention of Shelley, who used the material in all four of his poems in which the Wandering Jew appears —The Wandering Jew (1810?); The Wandering Jew's Soliloquy (not published until 1887); Queen Mab (1813); and Bellas (1822). Gerard de Norval made a French translation in 1830.
21 “Trotz einiger Schritte in der Philosophie und Aufklärung ist das 18. Jahrhundert nicht frei von Intoleranz, Taten des Verfolgungsgeistes, Gasznereyen, Mesmereyen, Alchymistereyen, Geistersehereyen, und wie die übrigen Krisen des Vorurtheils und des Aberglaubens weiter heiszen mögen, den neuen Messias und den Ziegenpropheten zu Berlin mit eingeschlossen.” (Page 245.)
22 A Spanish translation and adaptation, with extensive concluding additions, of the Mémoires is Historia del Jtidio Errante (Madrid, 1819) by a certain Don Luis Fris Ducos. This is not a Spanish name; presumably Ducos (Duclos?) was a Frenchman, an expatriate, who had managed to become a comisario of the Spanish Inquisition a few years before its dissolution, and was also rector y administrador de la real iglesia-hospital de S. Luis rey de Francia. In this translation the date of the meeting of the young men with the Jew is given as 1763. But the author adds to the original material much subjective comment on European history after 1789. The last third of the book degenerates into frank polemics, attacking (1) the philosophers of the eighteenth century, whom Fris Ducos considers a pack of atheists, and (2) Napoleon and his era. It is evident that the author was a Carlist. Leaving the polemics aside, we find only a few minor alterations of the original material of the Mémoires. The Jew's name is given as Abasuero. He must proceed on a continuous narrative, for he can stay but three days; he therefore bids one of the four youths keep awake and transcribe his story, which is told in relays. When he has finished, there is an end—“al decir estas últimas palabras el Judéo errante se echó á andar, y anda todavia.”
Similarly, Reichard's Der ewige Jude was translated and adapted in a Danish Folksroman under the title Jerusalems Skomager (Copenhagen, 1828). This work follows its original much more closely than the Spanish book just mentioned. It keeps away from political controversy and exhibits little independence on the part of the author, who remains unidentified. Since there is at this time nothing comparable in contemporary Swedish literature, where the legend of the Wandering Jew is still decidedly in the very early popular stage, we may be permitted the opinion that the Danish treatment of the legend has advanced more rapidly into the art-form than that of the other Scandinavian countries—a belief well substantiated by the appearance in the next literary generation of Hans Christian Andersen's Ahasverus and . S. Ingemann's Blade af Jerusalems Skomagers Lammebog.
23 The first two volumes appeared in 1791 ; the third in 1801. The work is so rare as to be virtually no longer extant, especially the third volume, which has not been seen by many scholars working on the legend of the Wandering Jew. The title-page gives the author as “M. Heller,” but the work is entered in C. G. Kayser, Index Locupletissimus Librorum (Leipzig, 1834), p. 351, as Wilhelm Friedrich Heller's, who wrote also Geschichie der Kreuzzüge nach dem heiligen Lande (Frankfurt, 1784); Kardonens Vermächtniss und Lieder von Selima zum Vorlesen für Mutter und Tochter (Stuttgart, 1781); Kayamonte, der grosse Stier unserer Zeiten (Frankfurt, 1792): Sokrates, Sohn des Sophroniskus (Frankfurt, 1795); and three volumes of Novellen (Dresden-Leipzig, 1837–40). The imprints for volumes i and ii are “Utopia, 1791”; for volume in, “Germanien, 1801.” A second edition of volumes i and ii was printed by Offenbach in 1793. The most accessible edition is a slightly altered (pirated?) edition beating the imprint “Germanien, 1793”; but the edition of Volume iii just mentioned seems to be unique.
24 Especially in David Hoffman, Chronicles Selected from the Originals of Cartaphilus, the Wandering Jew (Baltimore-New York, 1858), undoubtedly the best of the romantic Chronicles of the Wandering Jew, for Hoffman, a distinguished Maryland jurist, was also a good historian who wrote well. But there are a great many other typical nineteenth century Chronicles, many of which are heavily romanticized. Moreover, even if a nineteenth century work on the Wandering Jew is not a full survey of world history and hence is not classifiable as a Chronicle of the Wandering Jew, the historical approach is usually evident. Indeed, the Wanderer seldom appears in fiction or drama after 1830 except in some kind of historical setting. Representative of the whole output would be the following: Pasero de Corneliano, Histoire du juif errant, écrite par lui-même (Paris, 1820), with a German translation (Gotha, 1821)—more satirical than the others listed here; Edgar Quinet, Les tablettes du juif errant (Paris, 1822) and Ahasvère (Paris, 1833)—the latter a powerfully conceived and effectively poetic modern mystery-drama in prose; George Croly, Salathiel: a story of the past, the present and the future (London, 1827), in the next edition (1828) known as Salathiel, or Tarry Thou Till I Come, of which there are two German translations, from Leipzig and Stuttgart (1829), a French one (1852), and a Danish one (1903)—much the best of the Gothic novels to treat the Wandering Jew as a protagonist; F. F. Franke (Ferdinand Hauthal), Die Ahasveriade (Dresden, 1838), an extremely turgid effort; J. C. Freiherr von Zedlitz, Die Wanderungen des Ahasverus (Stuttgart, 1855); John Galt (“the Reverend T. Clark”), The Wandering Jew, or the Travels and Observations of Hareach the Prolonged (London, 1820), with a second edition entitled The Travels and Observations of Hareach, the Wandering Jew (1821); Hans Christian Andersen, Ahasverus (Copenhagen, 1844), with German translation in the same year—employing a free dramatic form; Seligmann Heller, Ahasverus (Leipzig, 1865; 1868), a good epic poem.
Individual works, too many to enumerate here, make Ahasuerus a spectator of single events in world-history. These have not yet all been gathered together and discussed; the author of the present article is engaged in the task. In the meantime the only thorough bibliographies are those of A. Soergel, Ahasver-Dichtungen seit Goethe (Leipzig, 1905) and J. J. Gielen, De wandelende Jood in Voekskunde en Letterkunde (Amsterdam, 1931).
25 This letter is an essay highly appreciative of Franklin. It considers him as a sage and not as a politician. Contained in it is a translation into German of his little allegory, The Whistle (1779).
26 In fact, the opening letter of Volume m of the Briefe is so overwritten as to suggest some author other than Heller. The remaining letters, however, are entirely in keeping with the rest of the work.
27 This is the general picture of Ahasuerus as an exponent of Wellschnerz in the Chronicle of the Wandering Jew; I have noted more than fifty such treatments of the Wanderer in German poetry alone between 1820 and 1860. An unusually good example, from an artistic point of view, is Julius Mosen's epic Ahasver (Dresden-Leipzig, 1838).
28 Eugène Sue, Le juif errant (Paris, 1844–45), the most famous, the least typical, and far from the most effective of the many novels about the Wandering Jew. There have been translations of this novel into all the European languages and a rousing parody by Charles Philipon and Louis Huart (1846).
29 George Croly, Salalhiel (cf. note 24 above).
30 Lew Wallace, The Prince of India (New York, 1894).
31 Pasero de Corneliano, Histoire du juif errant, écrite par lui-même; cf. note 24 above.
32 Robert Hamerling, Ahasver in Rom (Hamburg, 1866–70), an epic poem of considerable power.
33 John Galt (“the Reverend T. Clark”), The Travels and Observations of Hareach, the Wandering Jew; cf. note 24 above.
34 Found only in Heller's Briefe. In general Heller comports himself as the most learned of the three chroniclers under discussion. His knowledge of Ulfilas seems to have been derived chiefly from W. Weingärtner, Die Aussprache des Gothischen (Leipzig, 1658), which was a stand-by until F. Dietrich's excellent early monograph, Ueber die Aussprache des Gothischen (Marburg, 1862).
35 A theme which Heller is fond of repeating; it is not mentioned in the Mémoires and is touched upon only briefly by Reichard. Heller devotes an entire letter to the subject and praises particularly the military spirit of the Germans.
36 It is obvious, from a perusal of the German Volksbücher of the early seventeenth century, that the renaissance of the legend of the Wandering Jew instituted at that time had its roots in the propaganda value of the Jew as a follower of Antichrist, that great adversary who included (according to some fanatical Protestants) the pope of Rome under his evil banners. It is characteristic of the generally strong Protestant bias in all the modern German treatments of the Wandering Jew that Reichard and Heller, particularly the latter, should note with satisfaction the coincidence of the highest power of the Papacy with the lowest ebb of human knowledge and understanding. This point, of course, is not mentioned in the Mémoires.
37 A natural consequence of Heller's interest in the Crusades, of which he was a chronicler.
38 Here is quoted the inevitable anecdote, first told at length in The Turkish Spy. I quote from the English translation (see note 6 above): “He told me... that he saw Saladine's return from his conquests in the East, when he caused his shirt to be carried on the top of a spear, with this proclamation: ‘Saladine, Lord of many rich countries, conqueror of the East, ever victorious and happy, when he dies, shall have no other memorial left of all his glories but only this poor shirt’.”
39 Most interesting in all three of these Chronicles of the Wandering Jew is the virtual absence of any important references to England. There is no mention of the Armada, of the Revolution of 1688 and the Bill of Rights, of Marlborough, or of the growth of the British Empire. The English Civil War is disposed of in one line. The American Revolution takes two. In fact, except for a brief allusion to Alfred the Great, there is no important concern with England after the time of the Roman occupation until we come to the younger Pitt, whose part in European power politics after 1795 cannot well be overlooked. Nor does the Dutch Republic have any appreciable standing in the scheme of things.
40 Found only in Volume iii of Heller's Briefe.