Simplicissimus Read online

  Johann Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen

  Simplicissimus

  Translated and with an introduction by Mike Mitchell

  Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited

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  Email: [email protected]

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  ISBN 978 1 903517 42 0

  Kindle e-book ISBN 978 1 907650 12 3

  e-Pub e-book ISBN 978 1 907650 13 0

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  Publishing History

  First published in Germany in 1668

  English translation by S. Goodrich in 1912

  Dedalus editions in 1989 and 1995

  New translation by Mike Mitchell in 1999

  Reprinted in 2005 and 2009

  First e-book edition in 2010

  The right of Mike Mitchell to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Printed in Finland by WS Bookwell

  Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A C.I.P. listing for this book is available on request.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Mike Mitchell is one of Dedalus's editorial directors and is responsible for the Dedalus translation programme. His publications include The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy, Peter Hacks: Drama for a Socialist Society and Austria in the World Bibliographical Series. His translation of Rosendorfer's Letters Back to Ancient China won the 1998 Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize after having been shortlisted in previous years for his translations of Stephanie by Herbert Rosendorfer and The Golem by Gustav Meyrink. His translation of Simplicissimus was shortlisted for The Weidenfeld Translation Prize in 1999 and The Other Side by Alfred Kubin in 2000.

  He has translated the following books for Dedalus from German: five novels by Gustav Meyrink, three novels by Johann Grimmelshausen, three novels by Herbert Rosendorfer, two novels by Herman Ungar, The Great Bagarozy by Helmut Krausser, The Road to Darkness by Paul Leppin, The Other Side by Alfred Kubin and On the Run by Martin Prinz. From French he has translated for Dedalus two novels by Mercedes Deambrosis and Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach.

  Book I

  Chapter 1

  Describes Simplicius’s rustic origins and upbringing

  In these days (which some believe to be the last days) a new sickness has appeared among ordinary people. When those who have been infected by it have scratched together enough money with their sharp practices that they can afford, besides a few coppers in their purse, to dress themselves after the latest absurd fashion with thousands of silk ribbons, or when by some lucky chance they have made a name for themselves, they immediately try to pass themselves off as knights and nobles of ancient lineage. It usually turns out that their grandparents were day-labourers, carters and porters, their cousins muleteers, their brothers tipstaffs and turnkeys, their sisters whores, their mothers bawds, if not witches; in short that their whole ancestry, right down to the thirty-second degree, is as tainted and tarnished as ever Seb Sugar’s gang of thieves in Prague were. Indeed, these new-minted nobles are themselves often as black as if they had been born and bred in Guinea.

  I wouldn’t want to be likened to such foolish folk even though, to tell the truth, I have often fancied I must owe my existence to some great lord, or at least a gentleman, since I have a natural inclination to follow the nobleman’s trade, if only I had the necessary capital and equipment.

  To be serious, though, it is true that my birth and upbringing can well be compared with that of a prince, if you overlook the one great difference. How can that be? you ask. My Da (for that is the title we give to fathers in the Spessart) had a palace of his own, as good as any man’s, and finer than any king could build with his own hands. Its facade was finished off with clay and its roof, instead of sterile slate, cold lead and red copper, was covered with the straw on which the noble grain grows. And to make a show of his wealth and nobility, my Da did not, as other great lords do, build the wall round his castle out of stones, such as you may find by the roadside or dig out of the ground in barren places, much less out of common brick, which can be moulded and fired in a short time. No, he took oak, that noble and useful tree from which pork sausages and fat hams grow and which takes over a hundred years before it reaches full maturity. Where is the monarch who will follow him in that?

  He had his rooms and chambers blackened all over inside with smoke, since that is the most permanent colour in the world and to paint them by that method takes longer than any artist would spend on even the best of his paintings. The wall-hangings were of the most delicate weave in the world, being made by the weaver who, in olden times, dared to challenge Minerva herself to a contest. The windows were dedicated to St Notoglas for the very good reason that he knew that, counting from the hemp or flax seed, the paper with which they were covered took much more time and labour before it was finished than the finest and clearest Murano glass. It was his station in life that led him to believe that things which required much labour to produce were therefore valuable and more costly, and that costly things were best suited to the nobility.

  Instead of pages, lackeys and grooms, he had sheep, goats and pigs, each neatly clad in its own livery, which often used to wait upon me in the fields, until I drove them home. His armoury was well stocked with ploughs, hoes, axes, picks, spades and forks for both manure and hay. He practised daily with these weapons; clearing the ground and digging were for him a military exercise, just as they were for the ancient Romans in times of peace. The oxen were the company he commanded, spreading manure was his fortification and ploughing his campaigning, but mucking out the stables was his noble pastime, his jousting. By these means he dominated the whole round world, as far as he could walk, and at every harvest he gathered in rich tribute from it.

  All this means nothing to me and I don’t give myself airs because of it, so that no one will have reason to scoff at me along with other would-be nobles from the same background. I consider myself no better than my Da was, whose house was in a merry part of the country, namely over the hills and far away in the Spessart. The fact that I have refrained from going on at great length about my Da’s lineage, race and name is for the sake of brevity. This is not an application for entry to an abbey reserved to the nobility, in which case I would have to swear to my ancestry; it is sufficient for our purposes that you know that I come from the Spessart.

  Since, however, it has been made clear that my Da’s household was truly noble, any intelligent person will readily conclude that I enjoyed a corresponding upbringing. And anyone who believes that will not be deceived, for by the age of ten I had already grasped the principles of my Da’s aforementioned noble exercises. However as far as learning was concerned I matched the famous Amphisteides, of whom Suidas reported that he could not count beyond five. The reason was perhaps that my Da, in his high-mindedness, followed the custom of the present age in which people of quality do not bother much with study, or tomfoolery as they call i
t, because they have other people to do their scribbling for them. But I was an excellent musician on the bagpipes, on which I could play the most beautiful dirges. In religion, however, I do not believe there was another boy of my age in the whole of Christendom who was like me, for I knew nothing of either God or man, heaven or hell, angels or the devil and could not tell the difference between good and evil. As you can well imagine, with such knowledge of theology I lived like our first parents in paradise, who in their innocence knew nothing of illness, death and dying, and even less of the resurrection. What a fine life (though you may say fool’s life) where you didn’t have to bother with medicine! In the same way you can judge my knowledge of law and all other arts and sciences. Indeed, so perfect and complete was my ignorance that it was impossible for me to know that I knew nothing. I repeat: what a fine life it was that I led in those far-off days. But my Da did not want me to enjoy this bliss any longer. He thought it right and proper that, being nobly born, I should live and act according to my nobility, for which reason he began to educate me for higher things and give me harder lessons.

  Chapter 2

  Describes Simplicius’ first step up the ladder of dignity, containing also praise of shepherds and, in addition, some excellent instruction

  He invested me with the most magnificent dignity that could be found, not only in his household, but in the whole world, namely with the office of herdsman. First of all he entrusted his swine to my care, then his goats, and finally his whole herd of sheep. I had to mind them, take them out to pasture and guard them from the wolf with my bagpipes (the sound of which, so Strabo writes, fattens the sheep and lambs in Arabia). I was like David, except that he had a harp instead of bagpipes, and that was no mean beginning. Indeed, it was a portent that with time, and if fortune should favour me, I would become a famous man, for from the earliest days persons of note have been shepherds, as we can read in the Bible of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his sons. Even Moses had to mind his father-in-law’s sheep before he became leader and law-giver to six hundred thousand Israelites.

  And if someone should object that these were holy and godfearing men, not Spessart peasant boys ignorant of God, I would have to agree. Yet why should the innocent that I was be blamed for that? Similar examples could be found among the ancient heathens as well as among the chosen people of God. Among the Romans there were noble families that called themselves the Bubulci, Statilii, Pomponii, Vituli, Vitellii, Annii, Caprae and so on because they had to do with those animals and perhaps even herded them. Romulus and Remus themselves were shepherds; Spartacus, who made the whole power of Rome tremble, was a shepherd. Does not Lucian record in his Dialogo Helenae that Paris, the son of King Priam, and Anchises, father of the Trojan prince Aeneas, were shepherds? And Endymion, renowned for his beauty that warmed even the cold heart of Selene, was he not also a shepherd? So too was the terrible Polyphemus. Even the gods, as Cornutus tells us, were not ashamed of that calling. Apollo kept the cattle of Admetus, King of Thessaly; Mercury, his son Daphnis, Pan and Proteus were all great shepherds, for which reason our foolish poets count them the guardian deities of shepherds. Mesha, King of Moab was a sheepmaster, as one can read in the second book of Kings; Cyrus, the mighty king of the Persians, was not only raised by Mithridates, a shepherd, but kept sheep himself. Gyges was first a herdsman and then became king through the power of a ring and Ismail Shah, a Persian king, also minded sheep in his youth. Philo Judaeus puts the matter very well when he says, in his Life of Moses, the office of herdsman is both a preparation for and the first step in exercising command. For just as the warlike and martial arts are first practised in the hunt, so men who are intended for government receive their first training in the gentle and amiable office of herdsman. My Da must have known this very well, and to this very hour it gives me no small hope I may yet rise to future greatness.

  But to return to my own flock, you must know that I was as little acquainted with wolves as I was with my own ignorance, for which reason my father took all the more pains with my instruction. ‘Kidder’, he said, ‘make sure the sheep divent gan too far from each other. An’ keep playin’ yer pipes, so the wolf won’t come an’ harm ‘em. Yon’s a fower-legged rogue and thief that’ll eat up man and beast. If ye divent keep yer eye open, Aw’ll gie ye a right skelpin’.’ To which I answered with similar courtesy, ‘Da, can ye no tell me what this wolf looks laike? Aw’ve nivver seen won yet.’ ‘Ach, ye great donkey’, he replied, ‘ye’ll be a fule all yer laife. I divent ken what’ll become ov ye. Such a big laddie and still ye divent ken what a fower-footed rogue the wolf is, ye great booby.’ He gave me even more instruction, but eventually grew angry and went away muttering to himself, thinking my dim wits could not take his subtle instructions.

  Chapter 3

  Records the sufferings of a faithful set of pipes

  Then I began to play my pipes so well you could have poisoned the toads in the herb garden with it, assuming I would be safe enough from the wolf, which was always uppermost in my mind. And remembering my Ma (which is what a mother is called in the Spessart and on the Vogelsberg), who often used to say she was worried some day the hens might die of my singing, I decided to sing, to make my defence against the wolf even stronger. And I sang a song I had learnt from my Ma herself:

  O farmer, whom most men despise,

  To you of all, should go the prize.

  No one who sees what work you do

  Will stint the praise he heaps on you

  Where would our present fortunes stand,

  If Adam had not tilled the land?

  The sire of every noble lord,

  He dug the soil for his reward.

  Your power encompasses most things;

  The harvest fruitful Nature brings,

  The produce that sustains our land,

  Must first of all go through your hand.

  The Emperor, whom Our Lord gives

  For our protection, also lives

  By your hard work. The soldier, too,

  Who does much injury to you.

  Meat for our table you provide,

  With wine you keep us well supplied;

  The earth must feel your plough’s sharp blade

  If corn shall grow and bread be made.

  A wilderness this earth would be

  But for your patient husbandry;

  If there were no more farmers left

  The countryside would stand bereft.

  So you deserve the highest praise

  Because you feed us all our days.

  God’s blessing falls on all you do

  And even Nature smiles on you.

  Who ever heard men talk about

  A farmer suffering from the gout,

  The torment that the wealthy dread,

  That strikes so many nobles dead?

  Strange in these puffed-up times to see

  A man from arrogance so free.

  And God, to keep you from pride’s snare,

  Gives you your heavy cross to bear.

  Even the soldier’s cruel mood

  Can serve, in this, to do you good,

  When he, lest you to pride incline,

  Says, ‘All your worldly goods are mine’.

  That was as far I got with my song and no farther for in a flash, or so it seemed, I and my herd of sheep were surrounded by a troop of dragoons who had lost their way in the great forest and been put back on the right track by my singing and shepherd’s cries.

  Aha, I thought, these must be the rogues, these must be those four-legged rascals and thieves your Da told you about! For at first I took rider and horse to be one single beast (just as the American indians did the Spanish cavalry) and assumed it must be the wolf. So I resolved to drive these terrible centaurs away, but hardly had I inflated my pipes to do this than one of them grabbed me by the shoulder and threw me so roughly onto a spare farm horse they had stolen in the course of their depredations that I fell off over the other side and landed on my dear bagpipes, whic
h immediately gave out heart-rending squeals, as if trying to move the whole world to pity. But it was no use, even though they spent their last breath bewailing my fall I still had to climb back onto the horse, no matter what my bagpipes sang or said. But what annoyed me most of all was that the soldiers claimed that in falling I had hurt my pipes, and that was why they had set up such a heretical wailing.

  My mare took me along at a steady trot, all the way to my Da’s farm. As I rode, bizarre fancies filled my mind, for I imagined that since I was riding on such a beast, the like of which I had never seen before, I too would be changed into one of these iron men. When the transformation did not happen, other foolish notions came into my head. I imagined these strange creatures had come just to help me drive my sheep home, since none of them ate any up, but hurried along together straight to my Da’s farm. Therefore I kept a good look-out for my Da, to see whether he and my Ma would come to meet us and bid us welcome. But I looked in vain, for he and my Ma, together with our Ursula, who was my Da’s only daughter, had slipped out of the back door without waiting for our guests.