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the complete review - fiction

The Black Spider

by
Jeremias Gotthelf

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B+ : impressive horror, a well-presented tale

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "Gott­helf spins his horrifying tale patiently, serenely, with full confidence, it seems, that it will be strong enough to bear all the allegorical weight he can load on it. His confidence is justified. The Black Spider is scary as hell, and the evil it portrays with such apparent simplicity seems, in the end, a more complex phenomenon than we might have thought." - Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "While this may remind us of Hollywood's special effects, Gotthelf's talent is to make his horror credible by the simplicity of his style and the acuteness of his psychological perception, particularly of the herd instinct among the villagers. His story is a homily, showing how the everyday moral weaknesses of men and women give an opening to the spirit of evil." - Piers Paul Read, The Times
  
  
• "The narrative drive, the symbolic interplay of darkness and light, and the mixture of moralizing legend and local detail, ensure The Black Spider its status as one of the great novellas of nineteenth-century German literature." - MGB, Times Literary Supplement

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       The Black Spider begins cheerily and bright, a Sunday dawning with preparations for an infant's baptism and the attendant celebrations. The locale is the Swiss countryside, but the family of the child seems fairly well-to-do, and they're putting out an impressive spread (some of the courses seasoned even with precious saffron). It's a happy occasion, and everything seems to be going well -- but a guest remarks that, while the new house is such a splendid, perfect structure, there is one blemish, a: "rough black window post beside the first window". The grandfather offers some explanations, but nobody is fooled; as one of those present notes: "I've heard rumors, but no one ever tells the whole story the way it was". So the grandfather does -- and it is this that is the heart of the very dark story of The Black Spider.
       The story goes back hundreds of years, when the local peasants had to do whatever the lord of the day said. One of these, a Hans von Stoffeln, was particularly demanding. First the peasants had to build him a castle, and when that was done he insisted they also transplant a hundred full-grown beeches to line a shady walk for him leading up to the castle. He only gives them a month for the overwhelming task, too.
       Despairing of ever being able to do as von Stoffeln demands, they encounter: "a tall, spindly huntsman, dressed in green from top to toe". He says he can help them out: yes, it's a devil's bargain, but he'll get the walk properly lined in time -- in exchange for the promise of an unbaptized child. He gives them a few days to think it over -- and, despite all their reservations, of course, eventually the deal is struck (although in such a way that the community can claim not to have been fully on board ...).
       As every child knows, making deals with the devil is a dangerous business. The locals think they might be able to avoid holding up their side of the bargain -- just get those little newborns baptized almost as soon as they're out of the womb ! -- but given how satanically efficiently the trees are transplanted, night after night, and, more significantly, what happens to those who try to spy how exactly this stranger manages this impressive feat, it should be clear that the devil has great powers at his disposal.
       The devil lives up to his side of the deal, and then the locals try to weasel out of theirs. It does not go well.
       What Gotthelf imagines is, indeed, a horror-vision. Really creepy stuff. (This is not a story for the kids -- they'll have nightmares for weeks.) To offer just one incidental casualty, as an example:

There his body was found, and his helmet; the spider's feet had burned their way through the helmet and into his brain, igniting the most horrific flames there, until death overtook him.

- M.A.Orthofer, 7 October 2013

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Links:

• New York Review Books publicity page
• Alma Classics publicity page
• Suhrkamp publicity page
• Reclam Verlag publicity page
• dtv publicity page
• Diogenes Verlag publicity page
• Éditions l'Âge d'Homme publicity page
• Adelphi publicity page
• Die schwarze Spinne - German text

• Bibliophilia Obscura
• Dave's Book Blog
• Desperate Reader
• The Emotional Life of Books (German)
• Das Gespräch (German)
• Michael Haldane
• Herbert Huber (German)
• Lucifer's Librarian
• The Mookse and the Gripes
• Open Letters Monthly
• Pechorin’s Journal
• Philosophy, lit, etc.
• A Rat in the Book Pile
• Tony's Reading List
• The Truth about Lies
• Underrated Reads
• A Work in Progress
• Wuthering Expectations

• See Index of German literature
• See Index of Books Written Before 1900
• Other books from New York Review Books

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About the Author:

       Swiss author Jeremias Gotthelf (actually: Albert Bitzius) lived 1797 to 1854.

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© 2013-2021 the complete review

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