The carved head of a puppet lying in a gutter becomes a medium through which Pernath briefly observes the world around him, and as Pernath channels his fascination with Miriam into his gem-carving it seems as if he is reshaping her soul according to his intermittent visions. In the Old Town Cathedral, a monk’s statue becomes animated, fixating on Pernath, much to his own horror. The way the city’s iconography is incorporated into these delusions has the effect of making each location seem haunted, with its own consciousness that operates independently from those of its inhabitants. Pernath’s visions of the arcane are as chilling as they are indecipherable.
And as his dreams and nightmares become indistinguishable from real events, there is nonetheless a sense of Prague’s living walls closing in, taking the form of mystic visions and the tyrannical reach of the law.Īlthough the golem itself makes only vague, sporadic appearances throughout the novel, the horror is no less potent in spite of it. As we follow Pernath’s attempts to weave together the multitude of disparate mysteries that surround him, we are introduced to several strange and sinister characters ranging from the unstable, self-destructive Charousek to the ethereal, eccentric Miriam. As the whispered legend of the Golem, that pervasive figure of Jewish folklore, infiltrates the narrative – seemingly emerging through the very walls of the city – the sanity of our protagonist Athanasius Pernath appears to repeatedly disintegrate and reassert itself as he begins to realise that the golem is his own doppelganger. From the start, our narrator is conscious of location and the spaces he occupies, be it the “gloomy courtyard” of the Jewish ghetto or the eerie, baroque cathedral in the Old Town Square. Instead, this book is best introduced through its esoteric, dreamlike visions of Prague and the fluid spaces it creates within.
It’s difficult to give a plot summary or even the basic premise of The Golem.
0 kommentar(er)
