Tag: German Literature

Conrad Meyer’s The Marriage of the Monk and the Challenge to Truth

I confess I only read The Marriage of the Monk (“Die Hochzeit des Mönchs”) because it was mentioned a few times in the general criticism on German novellas in the 19th century I’d been reading and it sounded like it would be a good fit for my exams at the end of next year. But, all things considered, there’ve been worse reasons I’ve read books. And worse books I’ve read for better reasons. For it actually turns out that The Marriage of the Monk was actually worth reading to begin with, even in the original German as I did. I thought I’d share a few of its interesting features here, since it’s impossible to find a translation online and hard enough in the real world too, and they aren’t worth being lost along with the novella.

A photo of Conrad Meyer
Conrad Meyer (1825 – 1898) is chiefly known outside of the German-speaking lands for nothing, because hardly any translations of his works exist. But The Marriage of the Monk is one of his many well-crafted little historical stories

The Frame Narrative

The story is made up of a frame narrative, the outer layer of which takes place in Verona, where a group of friends are gathered round the fire and telling stories. Their head is Cangrande della Scala, an Italian nobleman best known now for his patronage of the poet, Dante. He summons Dante from the back of the room and asks him to tell the group a story, and the story of The Marriage of the Monk is his choice. How does a monk get married? The title already contains the central tension – a monk is someone who has renounced worldly passions including love and marriage, so it is only by breaking one’s vows of chastity that such a man can return to the world. Dante details the consequences of this.

A painting of Dante, the story's primary narrator
Dante Alighieri, world famous poet. By choosing him as a narrator Meyer already raises questions about what kinds of “truth” he as a writer can represent.

The Marriage of the Monk – Plot Summary

Dante’s tale begins with the sinking of marriage boat as it goes along a river in Padua. The husband and almost every male in his family is on board, in the chaos they all perish. Diana, the wife, is rescued by the monk, Astorre, who appears from one bank of the river just as from the other there comes the famed tyrant, Ezzelino III da Romano. It turns out that the monk is the last male heir of the groom’s family, and the old patriarch, on his deathbed, begs the monk to renounce his vows and return to the world, so that his accumulated worldly wealth will not be wasted. A Papal letter grants permission to return only if Astorre agrees to by his own free will, but he is against it. Only with pressure from the old man does he eventually relent and agree to marry his brother’s widow.

Obviously, love in those days counted for very little. A date is set for the exchange of rings, and the marriage itself. Astorre meets old friends and finds himself more than a little out of his depth in the world of cutthroat tyrants and backstabbing. But he successfully goes and buys a ring for his future wife, only to realise that he doesn’t know her finger size, so he gets two gold rings instead of the one. As he walks home he drops one of these rings, and this finds its way into the hands of a young girl, Antiope, who he had once met at the beheading of her father. Her mother, driven mad by the incident, declares that the monk must wish to marry her daughter, and decides that they must go to his parties to see him.

This happens, and a fight takes place between the three women of the story. As Astorre walks the young girl home, however, it becomes clear that he loves her instead of his betrothed. His friends are against it, especially since the widow’s brother is one of them. But eventually the widow relents, agreeing to give return the old ring to Antiope so that the monk no longer has any divided loyalties. But there is a condition. At the fancy dress party taking place that evening Antiope must come to the widow, Diana, herself and take the ring off, humiliating herself in front of high society. When she comes, however, Diana (who is dressed as her divine namesake) takes an arrow and kills Antiope. The monk, arriving too late to save her, tries to get revenge but is cut down. They die in each other’s arms.

That’s the plot, so now for the cool things about how The Marriage of the Monk is made.

Interpretation: Playing with Truth

Storytelling

Even if you didn’t get that Cangrande was a real figure, it’s hard not to have heard of Dante. Meyer uses real figures in all of his novellas, but we should immediately ask ourselves the question – Why? It is easy enough to answer why Ezzelino is included: he is a splash of local colour, tying the story down to a concrete place and time and thus adding to the verisimilitude of it just as namedropping a few landmarks helps in modern historical novels. But why use Dante and Cangrande?

I think, at least in part, it has to do with a sceptical attitude towards truth that runs through the whole of the story. When I imagine Dante, it’s as a grand poet, dressed in his magnificent red robes, as in the portrait. By having him be a slightly scrawny figure, uncomfortable in the world, Meyer undermines our idea of Dante, leaving our footing uncertain. The same is true of his story – this is a simple tale, hardly comparable in scale or scope to the Divine Comedy. As Dante himself says, “I am developing this story from an inscription on a tombstone”. Is this what Dante would tell? I think we are supposed to be left dissatisfied and questioning.

A woodcut of Ezzelino III da Romano, one of the novella's characters
Ezzelino III da Romano, another one of the historical figures used by Meyer. Is he just a splash of colour or does his inclusion mean something more?

More importantly, there is the question of how Dante would tell a story. I don’t mean in tercets. The Marriage of the Monk does some other cool things that challenge our usual idea of stories and storytelling. For one, Dante often admits that he doesn’t know something or a concrete detail. He challenges his own authority as the teller by drawing the reader’s attention to the fact that his story is only one of many possible interpretations of the event. There are also regular interruptions from other characters in the frame narrative, either to challenge something that Dante said, or even just so that people can shuffle about by the fire. The cumulative effect, though, is to make us aware both that this is really just a story, and that it is being told in a way that is far from any Truth.

There are other contributing factors to this critique of truth. For one, Dante takes the names of the characters around the fire for the characters within the story. Naturally, Ezzelino retains his name, but there is a Germano in both the frame narrative of The Marriage of the Monk and in its main story. The same is true of the women. Though Dante freely admits “I leave your innermost feelings untouched, since I can’t see into them”, the use of names still strikes us as strange. It means that the characters within the story are obviously not entirely the people they are supposed to be, because when we imagine people their names are a big part of their identity. Once again, we’re only getting a half-truth as a story.

Dante also leaves out the moral at the end of the story, a key element of fireside tales. After finishing he just stands up and leaves. This is particularly jarring because he is otherwise a very chatty storyteller, regularly listening to the interruptions and giving his opinion on them. The ending, then, comes as a shock and leaves us alone to decide for ourselves why it is that the monk is punished. Is it just because he removed his cowl? Or because he went against society by abandoning the woman he was supposed to marry?

Authority and Truth, inside and outside of the narrative

This critique of truth, indicated by the various formal features of the narrative, now lets us look at the story in a new light as we try to answer the question of Astorre’s fate. The consciousness of authority’s weak support base in truth is now revealed. In part the story does this by regular use of doublings. To the sinking boat come from one side the monk, representing a pure and Christian world view, and from the other Ezzelino, representing a worldly and scheming world view. There are two women. Antiope is pure and loved while Diana is the daughter of a rich man and so has more worldly value. The two rings bought by Astorre convey a sense of his divided loyalty to both the world and the divine.

When Dante describes Antiope finding the ring, he draws attention to his own sceptical storytelling by asking the listeners why they would believe in the fantastic overturning of the boat, but would not believe that from Antiope’s perspective she was perfectly correct in taking the gold ring as a sign that Astorre loved her and wished to be married. Dante shows that the worldview where we build stories around coincidences often leads us down paths that can be fatal, as in Antiope and Astorre’s case. He seems to suggest that is dangerous to believe too much.

Conclusion

What then kills Astorre? I think it is his divided loyalty between too many different truths. He cannot decide whether to commit to love, or whether to commit to worldly power and his duty as a nobleman. As one of his friends says before the monk dies, “Go back to your cloister, Astorre – you never should have left it”. The man is right – by leaving his cloister Astorre has to make a choice about what truth he believes in, while so long as he stays inside he is safe with only his duty to God. The Marriage of the Monk thus becomes a cautionary tale about the danger of naivety in a world where truth no longer matters. In our own modern world, where considerable scepticism is necessary to survive the modern news landscape, it remains surprisingly relevant in its message. If you can read German, give it a go.

Before the Law by Franz Kafka – Translation and (brief) Analysis

This is my translation of Franz Kafka’s story “Vor dem Gesetz”, which also appears towards the end of The Trial. After the text there are some casual comments on the meaning and on reading Kafka generally.

Before the Law

Before the Law there stands a gatekeeper. And to this gatekeeper comes a man from the country and asks for entry into the Law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry. The man thinks for a moment and then asks whether he will be able to enter later on. “This much is possible,” says the gatekeeper. “But not now.” Since the door onto the Law stands open as ever and the gatekeeper stands to one side of it, the man bends forward so as to see through it into what lies within. When the gatekeeper notices it, he laughs, saying: “If you’re so allured by what’s inside, why not try going through in spite of my forbidding it? Be warned, though: I am mighty. And I am but the lowest of the gatekeepers. From each hall to the next there are gatekeepers, each one mightier than before. By the third one I cannot even bear his sight.” Such difficulties the man from the country has not counted on. Surely the Law, he thinks, ought to be accessible to all people and at all times. But as he looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, with his sharp nose and long thin black beard like a Tartar’s, he then decides he had better wait until he received permission to enter. The gatekeeper gives him a little stool and lets him set himself down on the side by the door. He sits there for days and then years. He makes many efforts to be let in and tires the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper every-so-often engages to give him little interrogations, where he asks the man about his homeland and about plenty of other things. But they are lifeless questions, however, of the sort that great men ask, and in the end he tells him once more that he still cannot let him in. The man, who had prepared a great deal for his journey, uses everything he has, whether valuable or not, in order to bribe the gatekeeper. The other man takes everything from him, but says as he does so: “I am only taking these from you so that you don’t think you haven’t tried everything.” During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost without a moment’s pause. He forgets about the other gatekeepers, so that this one seems to him the only obstacle preventing him from entering the Law. He curses his misfortune, at first heedlessly and loudly; then, as he grows older, he just mutters to himself. He grows childish and, since from his years of study of the gatekeeper he has come to recognise the fleas in his felt collar, he asks the fleas to aid him in changing the gatekeeper’s mind too. At last his sight grows weak and he is unable to tell whether it is really getting darker, or if it is just his eyes deceiving him. He does recognise well, however, a radiance shining forth in the dark, one that escapes inextinguishably from the door into the Law. Now he has little time left to live. Before his death all the experiences of the whole time gather themselves inside his head into a single question, which he had hitherto not asked the gatekeeper. He beckons to him, for now he can no longer hold his head up straight. The gatekeeper has to bend himself deeply to lower himself down to him, since the height difference between them has greatly changed to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you still want to know?” Asks the gatekeeper, “You are insatiable.” “Look, if every man strives after the Law,” says the man. “How does it happen that in all these years nobody but myself has demanded entry?” The gatekeeper recognises that the man has already reached his end and, so as to reach him through his failing hearing, he shouts to him: “Nobody else could obtain permission here. This entrance was destined only for you. And now I am going to shut it.”

Comments

I’ve never been much of a fan of German, either as a language or as a literature, in comparison with others. I guess I’ve struggled to see the beauty in the words, and for a long time it seemed that German literature was a lesser copy of the Russian version, but without the redemptive hope of national faith. That is, simply a little grim and depressing. But Kafka has always been an favourite exception, in part because he has never fit snugly into the classification of “German literature”, being a Jew in what is now the Czech Republic, which even in the early 20th century was not exactly the centre of German culture. Yet Bohemia produced, in some way or other, Kafka, as it did Rilke. No matter my misgivings about the wider literature, misgivings which truth be told time and experience are quickly changing anyway, it’s hard not to feel grateful for those two.

Picture of Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is perhaps the most widely read German language author outside of the German-speaking lands, and just as ambiguous a fellow as is his work.

Even so, “getting” Kafka took a long time. I’ve read The Metamorphoses two or three times now, in both the original and in translation, and have struggled to enjoy it. Only recently, under the full weight of various critics’ opinions, did the work begin to open up to me. But in spite of that misfire, other parts of Kafka’s oeuvre have more easily reached and crashed against the inner shore of my soul: “In the Penal Colony”, “A Hunger Artist”, and both The Trial and The Castle are among them.

It is perhaps foolish to have people in schools read Kafka because often they haven’t themselves lived in any serious way. It was certainly my problem when I started out. Without experience, it’s hard to appreciate the absurdity, because the stories seem simply absurd, as opposed to that Kafkaesque standard – absurd yet constantly revealed in our own lives to be entirely real. Within school and even, to be fair, university, usually we can only look at them clinically, rather than personally – that is, we can only appreciate, rather than truly enjoy them.

Kafka’s Train Ticket

My first experience of Kafka’s world being transported into my own came with receiving a penalty fare while trying to take the train home after having had dinner with a friend. I had bought a return ticket at the same station a few hours earlier, but unfortunately after going through the turnstiles I had thrown away the return ticket rather than the outbound one. When I arrived that evening the ticket office had closed, so there were only machines for buying tickets still operating. But I didn’t have a card on me, so I couldn’t buy a new ticket. I waited on the platform for the train to arrive, hoping to buy a ticket on board. Instead, what happened was that one of the railway workers came up and asked to see my ticket beforehand.

I explained what had happened and why I was unable to buy a replacement ticket, then asked to buy one as I saw that the worker had a ticket dispensing machine on her. I said that I had more than enough money in cash to buy the ticket. She told me to be quiet and asked for my ID. She then began writing me a penalty fare for trying to travel without a ticket. I tried once more to explain, and indeed I asked the worker to go and speak with her co-worker – the exact person I had bought both tickets from only a few hours previously – who I could see a few meters away.

Yet again, though, and against all that could be called reasonable – given that I had plenty of money and my receipts and an eyewitness in addition to everything else – I was told to stop being rude and to write down all of my details. I was then told that I had a month to pay the inflated price of the ticket she was giving me, or else I would be forced to go to court. Unexpected and in part inexplicable exercises of power and an illogical and cruel bureaucracy are all mainstays of Kafka’s world, but here they had been transported into my own. In a particularly sour mood, I eventually got my train back home. The penalty fare had cost about £5. The damage to my pride and dignity had cost considerably more.

There was a silver lining to this tale, though: it was the key to understanding Kafka. This, of course, turned out to be a great overestimation on my part, for as with the many doors of “Before the Law”, there are many different Kafka stories and each of them is be opened up by a different experience or several. But this was the first of many, and over time I’ve begun to enjoy Kafka more and more. What at first was simply a cold academic understanding of possible meanings is now a personal understanding of a few meanings.

Before the Law

“Before the Law” is probably my favourite of Kafka’s parable-like shorter stories. In part this is because it is simple linguistically and, like anyone who reads in a foreign language they are not yet the master of, I much prefer those works I feel I fully understand, even if the works themselves are perhaps on some other scale less great or complex. But the fact that it’s easy to read is not the reason it’s my favourite. No, I love it because it uses its simplicity not to leave its meaning concealed, like some abstract postmodern text, but rather to multiply its potential meanings, so that each new reading and each time it reappears in one’s mind is accompanied by a new thought, a new guess at one of its many possible truths.

Some Interpretations

I mean, in a sense you can list the things it might be about. It may well be about Gnosticism. It may also be about trying to reach God through a faith that never seems sufficient. Here in Cambridge it seems to me to be at least partially about the struggles of learning, how in spite of our best efforts we can waste away on a goal of knowledge that turns out to be entirely illusory, or at best the first door when there are many others left to come. Or maybe it is more broadly about any of those goals or ideals that become so great that we fail to live as a result of our quest to grasp them and even give away all that actually can give our life happiness and meaning instead – the equipment the man from the country has with him.

I mean those are just some ideas. As part of the translation process I had to make decisions that undoubtedly also contribute to the meanings you can locate in the text. Capitalising “Law” is a little controversial because it undoubtedly makes it harder to imagine that the story as simply being about trying to reach a lawyer for some advice. That said, I think by capitalising it I make it more clear that the Law is itself a symbol, and worth substituting if you feel like it. Another thing is the translation of “bestimmt” as “destined” when talking about the door itself. This reinforces the suggestion that perhaps the story as a whole is a way of looking at our relationship to fate. We need to accept it as personal and at the same time immutable. The man is a fool for wanting to change it by entering.

We do talk about the “laws of fate”, after all.

Conclusion

But there are so many meanings that going on would be foolish. What is true without a shadow of a doubt is that this is a wonderful story in the way that Walter Benjamin conceived of the term. I narrated it to a friend as we both went out for a burger and with my own retelling it took on newer meanings while still retaining the heart of Kafka’s work. “Before the Law” is special precisely because its size and interpretative potential mean that wherever it goes it can have its impact, and that repeating it is like simply adding a new flavouring to a dish. That’s the best argument for reading it and retelling it, again and again and again.

What do you think the story is about? Let me know in the comments

Photograph of Franz Kafka taken by Sigismund Jacobi is in the public domain.