The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf

The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf

An NYRB Classics Original

It is a sunny summer Sunday in a remote Swiss village, and a christening is being celebrated at a lovely old farmhouse. One of the guests notes an anomaly in the fabric of the venerable edifice: a blackened post that has been carefully built into a trim new window frame. Thereby hangs a tale, one that, as the wise old grandfather who has lived all his life in the house proceeds to tell it, takes one chilling turn after another, while his audience listens in appalled silence. Featuring a cruelly overbearing lord of the manor and the oppressed villagers who must render him service, an irreverent young woman who will stop at nothing, a mysterious stranger with a red beard and a green hat, and, last but not least, the black spider, the tale is as riveting and appalling today as when Jeremias Gotthelf set it down more than a hundred years ago. The Black Spider can be seen as a parable of evil in the heart or of evil at large in society (Thomas Mann saw it as foretelling the advent of Nazism), or as a vision, anticipating H. P. Lovecraft, of cosmic horror. There's no question, in any case, that it is unforgettably creepy.

Albert Bitzius (1797-1854), writing as Jeremias Gotthelf, was a Swiss pastor and author of novels, novellas, short stories, and nonfiction, who used his writing to express his reforming concerns in the fields of education and the fate of the poor. The author assumed the name of the story's protagonist after the success of his first novel, Die Bauernspiegel or Lebensgeschichte von Jeremias Gotthelf: Von ihm selbst beschrieben (The Peasants' Mirror; or, The Life History of Jeremias Gotthelf: Described by Himself; 1836). The Black Spider, Ulric, the Farm Servant, and The Tale of an Alpine Valley are among his notable works that have been translated into English. Susan Bernofsky has translated works by Jenny Erpenbeck, Yoko Tawada, Hermann Hesse, Gregor von Rezzori, and others, as well as six books by Robert Walser. She is the current chair of the PEN Translation Committee and teaches at Columbia University's Writing Program, where she is also the director of the Graduate Translation Program. She is now working on a biography of Walser.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781590176689
ISBN 10	1590176685
Title	The Black Spider
Author	Jeremias Gotthelf
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The New York Review of Books, Inc
Year published	2013-10-08
Number of pages	120
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.