The Adventurous Simplicissimus / being the description of the Life of a Strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim

by Hans Jakob Christoph von Grimmelshausen

INTRODUCTION

The translation here presented to the public is intended rather as a contribution to the history, or perhaps it should be said the sociology, of the momentous period to which the romance of "Simplicissimus" belongs, than as a specimen of literature. Effective though its situations are, consistent and artistic though its composition is (up to a certain point), its interest lies chiefly in the pictures, or rather photographs, of contemporary manners and characters which it presents. It has been said with some truth that if succeeding romancers had striven as perseveringly as our author to embody the spirit and reflect the ways of the people, German fiction might long ago have reached as high a development as the English novel. As it is, there is little of such spirit to be discovered in the prose romances which appeared between the time of Grimmelshausen and that of Jean Paul Richter. But the influence of the latter was completely swept away in the torrent of idealism by which the fictions of the idolised Goethe and his followers were characterised, and his domestic realism has only of late made its reappearance in disquieting and sordid forms.

It should be remembered as an apology for the stress now laid upon the sociological side of the history of the Thirty Years War, that that side has by historians been resolutely thrust into the background. The most detailed and painstaking narratives of the war are either bare records of military operations or, worse still, represent merely meticulous and valueless unravellings of the web of intrigue with which the pedants of the time deceived themselves into the belief that they were very Machiavels of subtlety and resource. While the Empire was bleeding to death, the chancelleries of half Europe were intent on the detaching from one side or the other of a venal general, or the patching up of some partial armistice that might afford breathing-time to organise further mischief. It does not matter much to any one whether Wallenstein was knave or fool, but it did matter and does matter that the war crippled for two hundred years the finances, the agriculture, and the enterprise of the German people, and dealt a blow to their patriotism from the like of which few nations could have recovered. Even the character of the civil administration was completely altered when the struggle ended. An army of capable bourgeois secretaries and councillors had for centuries served their princes and their fellow subjects well. It is wonderful that throughout the devastating wars waged by Wallenstein and Weimar, and even later on during the organised raids of Wrangel and Königsmark, the records were kept, the village business administered (where there was a village left), and even revenue collected with wellnigh as much regularity as in time of peace. These functionaries, who had worked so well, were at the end of the war gradually dispossessed of their influence, and their posts were taken by a swarm of young place-hunters of noble birth whom the peace had deprived of their proper employment, and whose pride was only equalled by their incapacity. But neither particulars nor generalisations bearing on such subjects are to be found in the pages of professional historians; they must be sought in the contemporary records of the people, of which the present work affords one of the few existing specimens, or else in the work of picturesque writers who, laying no claim to the title of scientific investigators, yet possess the power of selecting salient facts and deducing broad conclusions from them. Freitag's "Bilder aus der Deutschen Vergangenheit" indicates a wealth of material for sociological study which has as yet been but charily used; and recent German works dealing directly with the subject are more remarkable for elegance of production than for depth of research.

Such being the purpose for which this translation has been undertaken, an Introduction to it must necessarily be concerned not so much with the bibliography of the book or even the sources, if any, to which the author was beholden for his material, as with his own personality and the amount of actual fact that underlies the narrative of the fictitious hero's adventures. In respect of the first point, we are presented with a biography almost as shadowy and elusive as that of Shakespeare. In many ways, indeed, the particulars of the lives of these two which we possess are curiously alike. Both were voluminous writers; both enjoyed considerable contemporary reputation; and in both cases our knowledge of their actual history is confined to a few statements by persons who lived somewhat later than themselves, and a few formal documents and entries. In Grimmelshausen's case this obscurity is increased by his practice of publishing under assumed names. In the score of romances and tracts which are undoubtedly his work, we find only two to which his real name is attached. He has nine other pseudonyms, nearly all anagrams of the words "Christoffel von Grimmelshausen." Of these, "German Schleifheim von Sulsfort" and "Samuel Greifnsohn vom Hirschfelt" are the best known; the latter being the name to which he most persistently clung, and under which "Simplicissimus" was published, though the former appears on the title-page as that of the "editor." Only as the signature to a kind of advertisement at the end do we find the initials of "Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen," his full name. Until the publication of a collection of his works by Felsecker at Nuremberg in 1685, the true authorship of most of them remained unknown. But that editor, by his allusions in the preface, practically identified the writer as the "Schultheiss of Renchen, near Strassburg," whom he seems to have known personally. The reasons for anonymity were, no doubt, firstly, the fact that "Simplicissimus" at least dealt with the actions of men yet alive; and secondly, with regard to the other books, the continual references to details of the author's own life and opinions. His dread of offending a contemporary is shown by his disguising of the name of St. André, the commandant of Lippstadt, as N. de S. A. of L. (bk. iii., chap. 15).

It is unnecessary here to enter into a discussion of the authorities from whom the meagre particulars of Grimmelshausen's life are drawn. It may suffice for our present purpose to indicate the main events of that life. He was born at Gelnhausen, near Hanau, about 1625--probably of a humble family. At the age of ten he was captured by Hessian (that is, be it remembered, anti-Imperialist) troops, and became a member of that "unseliger Tross"--the unholy crew of horseboys, harlots, sutlers, and hangers-on who followed the armies on both sides, and sometimes outnumbered them three to one. In 1648, the last year of the war, the whole Imperial army only numbered 40,000 fighting men, and the recognised camp-followers, who were commanded and kept in order by officers significantly named the "Provosts of the Harlots," no less than 140,000. In the preface to one of his works called the "Satyrical Pilgrim," Grimmelshausen speaks of himself as having been "a musqueteer" at the age of ten--a statement which is obviously to be taken in the same sense in which Simplicissimus tells us (bk. ii., chap. 4) how he "served the crown of Sweden" at a similar age as a soldier, and drew pay for it. As a matter of fact, Grimmelshausen probably served a musqueteer or several musqueteers, just as the "Boy" in Henry V. serves Ancient Pistol and his comrades. From another book, the "Everlasting Almanack," we learn that he was a soldier under the Imperialist general Götz, lay in garrison at Offenburg, the free city alluded to in book v., chapter 20, and also for a long time in the famous fortress of Philippsburg, of his residence in which he tells various anecdotes. There are traces both in "Simplicissimus" and his other books of a wide and unusual acquaintance with many lands, German and non-German. He knows both Westphalia and Saxony well; Bohemia also: and certainly Switzerland. The journey to Russia may have some foundation in fact, though the statement put into the mouth of Simplicissimus that he has himself seen the fabulous "sheep plant" (bk. v., chap. 22) growing in Siberia considerably detracts from his trustworthiness here. But when he left the army, and whether he ever attained to any reputable rank therein, is quite uncertain. If 1625 be the correct date of his birth he would be but twenty-three years old at the conclusion of peace.

Besides his military expeditions, it is pretty clear from his works that he had visited Amsterdam and Paris and knew them fairly well; but for nineteen years we have no further trace of his career, till he suddenly appears as Schultheiss, under the Bishop of Strassburg, of Renchen, now in the Grand Duchy of Baden, a town of which he deliberately conceals the name exactly as he does his own, by anagrams, calling it now Rheinec, now Cernheim. In October 1667 he appears as holding this office and issuing an order concerning the mills of the town, which is still in existence. His wife was Katharina Henninger, and entries have been found of the birth of two children, a daughter and a son, in 1669 and 1675. A curious episode in the first part of the "Enchanted Bird's-nest," quoted hereafter, seems to indicate a grave family disappointment. In 1676 he died, aged fifty-one only, but having reached what may almost be called a ripe age for the battered and spent soldier of the Thirty Years War. The entry of his death is peculiarly full and even discursive, and tells how though he had again entered on military service--no doubt on the occasion of the French invasion in 1674--and though his sons and daughters were living in places widely distant from each other, they were all present at his death, in which he was fortified by the rites of Holy Church. A final touch of uncertainty is added by the fact that we do not even know whether Grimmelshausen was his true name: it is more likely to be that of some small estate which he had acquired, and of which he assumed the name when, as we learn, he was raised to noble rank.

It is plain even from this brief outline of his life that Grimmelshausen was emphatically a self-taught man; and it is partly to this fact that we owe the originality of his work; for he had never fallen under the baleful influence of the pedantry of his time. He had, it is true, picked up a deal of out-of-the-way knowledge, which he is willing enough to set before us to the verge of tediousness. But his learning is very superficial; he was a poor Latinist; and it is likely that for most of his erudition he was indebted to the translations which were particularly plentiful during that golden period of material prosperity in Germany which preceded the terrible war. It is clear enough that everywhere he thought more of the content than of the literary form of his own or any other work; and for the times his scientific and mathematical knowledge was considerable. In the field of romance he knows, and does not hesitate to borrow from, Boccaccio, Bandello ("Simplicissimus," bk. iv., chaps. 4, 5), and the "Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," while in his minor works he shows ample acquaintance with old German legend and also with stories like that of King Arthur of England. Lastly, we find him commending the "incomparable Arcadia" of Sir Philip Sidney (which he would have read in the translation of Martin Opitz) as a model of eloquence, but corrupting and enervating in its effect upon the manly virtues ("Simplicissimus," bk. iii., chap. 18).

Yet his own earlier works are themselves in the tedious, unreal, and stilted style of the romances of chivalry. "The Chaste Joseph," "Dietrich and Amelind," and "Proximus and Limpida," though widely different in subject, are alike in this, and show no sign of the genius which created Simplicissimus. Yet for the first-named work--the "Joseph"--its author cherished an unreasoning affection, and even alludes to it in our romance as the work of the hero himself (bk. iii., chap. 19). But it is no discredit to Grimmelshausen's originality if we conjecture that the translations of Spanish picaresque novels (chiefly by the untiring Aegidius Albertini), which appeared during the first two decades of the seventeenth century, gave him the idea--they gave him little or nothing more--of a vagabond hero. Mateo Aleman's famous "Guzman de Alfarache" had been succeeded by two miserably poor "Second Parts" by different authors, and in one of these there appears a tedious episode containing the submarine adventures of the hero under the form of a tunny-fish, to which we may conceivably owe the equally tedious story of Simplicissimus and the sylphs of the Mummelsee. At the end of the original book (bk. v., chap. 24) is an unblushing copy of a passage from a work of Antonio Quevara or Guevara, also translated by Albertini.

That Grimmelshausen died a Romanist is pretty clear from the entry of his death quoted above; nor is it likely that a Protestant could have held the office of Schultheiss under the Bishop of Strassburg. There is also extant a curious dialogue ascribed to Grimmelshausen in which Simplicissimus's arguments against changing his religion are combated and finally overthrown by a certain Bonarnicus, who effects his complete conversion. It is far from improbable that the account of his rescue from sinful indifference at Einsiedel which Simplicissimus gives (bk. v., chap. 2)--of course apart from the miraculous incident of the attack on him by the unclean spirit--roughly represents the experience of his author. That the latter had been brought up a Protestant we simply assume from the fact that Simplicissimus is understood to have been so; the first indication which we have of a change in his opinions being his exclamation of "Jesus Maria!" (bk. iii., chap. 20), which draws upon him the suspicions of the pastor at Lippstadt. But Papist or not, our author's superstition is unmistakable.

It was indeed a time, like all periods of intense human misery, in which men, it might almost be said, turned in despair to the powers of hell because they had lost all faith in those of heaven. That numbers of the unhappy wretches who suffered in their thousands for witchcraft during the first period of the war actually believed themselves in direct communication with the devil is certain. The Bishop of Würzburg's fortnightly "autos-da-fé" were only stopped when some of the victims denounced the prelate himself as their accomplice, apparently believing it. Grimmelshausen is ready to believe anything. His description of the Witches' Sabbath is that of a scene which he is firmly convinced is a possible one; and he stoutly defends by a multitude of preposterous stories the reasonableness of such conviction ("Simplicissimus," bk. ii., chaps. 17, 18). But among soldiers the most widely spread superstition was that concerned with invulnerability. Not only separate individuals, but whole bodies of troops were supposed to be "frozen," or proof, at all events, against leaden bullets. Christian of Brunswick actually employed his ducal brother's workers in glass to make balls of that material to be used against Tilly's troops, who were credited with this supernatural property; and when the small fortress of Rogäz, near Dessau, was captured by Mansfeld in 1626, the assailants were forbidden to use their fire-arms as useless; the members of the garrison, being wizards all, were clubbed to death with hedge-stakes or the butt-ends of musquets. In all probability this superstition arose mainly from observation of the very small penetrating power of the ammunition of the time. Oliver (bk. iv., chap. 14) is merely bruised on the forehead by a bullet fired a few paces off: and bullets then weighed ten to the pound. It is true that he has, as it seems, been rendered ball-proof by the wicked old Provost Marshal, whose skull Herzbruder (bk. ii., chap. 27) caused his own servant to split with an axe at Wittstock, when no pistol could slay him: but the peasant in book i., chapter 14, cannot be killed by a bullet fired close to his head, perhaps by reason of the thickness of his skull. To celebrated persons particularly the reputation of being "gefroren" attached. Count Adam Terzky, Wallenstein's confidant, was supposed to be so protected: the superstition regarding Claverhouse, who could only be killed with a silver bullet, is well known: and even as late as 1792 there was a belief among his soldiers that Frederick William II. of Prussia was invulnerable. Grimmelshausen's adventuress "Courage" (of whom more hereafter) is supposed to be "sword-and bullet-proof": and towards the end of the war "Passau Tickets," or amulets protecting against wounds, were manufactured and sold, while a host of minor magic arts, more or less connected with invulnerability, were believed to exist. For such tricks the passage from the generally uninteresting "Continuatio," which is given as Appendix B of this book, is a kind of "locus classicus."