[a] "Wie fünf Mädchen im Branntwein jämmerlich umkommen" was published in 1838. Jeremias Gotthelf is a pseudonym for the Swiss author Albert Bitzius (1797-1854).
Edmund Franz Andreas Hoefer (1819-1882).
From these examples you can see how well I first had to get to know my library and then also the needs of its readers. This involved some serious and difficult psychological considerations and led to the sad final conclusion that, basically, of the kind of books we needed there were only a very few. They were not just missing from our prison library, they were also missing from literature in general. I thought of my boyhood, of the little tracts I had read then and of the trash which had poisoned me; I thought further, and I compared. Then, a realization dawn on me. Are only the inmates of the penitentiaries in confinement? Is not every human being basically a prisoner? Are not millions of people confined by walls, which might not be visible to the eyes, but the existence of which can nonetheless be felt just too well? Does it only apply to the inmates of a penitentiary that the body has to be constricted, so that the higher part of our being, the part which came from above, shall reveal itself? Does it not apply to all mortals, and thus to all of mankind, that everything which is low has to be put in bondage, so that the soul, having gained liberty by such means, could uplift itself up to the highest ideal to be found on earth, to the nobility of the spirit? And are not religion, art, and literature those things which are supposed to guide us from these depths into those heights? The very literature, I, the prisoner confined to my narrow cell, am also a part of!
Proceeding with this train of thought, I arrived at considerations and conclusions, which might seem to be very strange, but were in their essence quite natural. A light shone between my four tight walls; they grew more spacious. At first I felt, than I saw, and finally I understood the concealed and yet intimate connections between the small and the big, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the mind, the finite and the infinite. This was the time, when I started to comprehend those dear, old fables of my grandmother in their deepest meaning. For entire nights, I lay awake and pondered. I was chained to the deepest, lowest, most despised Ardistan and sent all of my thoughts up to the bright, free, Jinnistan. I imagined myself as the lost human soul, which can never be found again, unless it finds itself. This finding of one's true self can never be achieved high up in Jinnistan, but only down here in Ardistan, among the suffering of earth, the torment of mankind, eating the husks of the lost son [a] of our biblical story. My imagination started to put this what I was looking for into a tangible form, to be able to seize it and to hold on to it. It dwelled and lived within me. And not just there, but also outside of me, omnipresent, in every other human being, and also in the entire human race as one large and whole entity. At this time, Marah Durimeh took form within me, this great, glorious soul of mankind, to which I gave the appearance of my beloved grandmother. At this time, Tatellah-Satah for the first time appeared within me, this mysterious "keeper of the great medicine", whom my readers got to know in the thirty-third volume of my works. And at this time, the idea of "Winnetou" was born as well. Do not get me wrong, it was just the idea, not really him, whom I did not find until later. In those days, the psychological volumes of the officials' library and all others which had been made available to me were -- almost devoured, I was inclined to say; but this would not be the truth, because I have slowly analysed them, dissected them word by word, and have marked every word with a thoughtfulness, which is most likely not a very common thing; but I have done this so eagerly and with a hunger, with a zeal, as if my life, my salvation would depend upon me becoming fully aware of my internal condition. And when I finally thought that I was on the right path, I reached back into my childhood and turned back to my old, bold wish "to become a story-teller, like you, grandmother". After all, I was in in one of those places which are the greatest and richest sources of stories to tell, in prison. Here, all this gets condensed and concentrated which out there, in freedom, flows past so easily and thinly, that it cannot be seized and even much less be observed. And here, the contrasts, which outside intermix like on a plane surface, rise high up like mountains, so that, in this magnification, everything is revealed which would otherwise remain concealed in secrecy. They lay opened up before me, those difficult, scientific volumes on psychology, especially on criminal psychology. Almost every line was impressed on my memory. They contained the theory, a conglomeration of riddles and problems. But what this meant in practice, I could see all around me in a truthfulness, which was just as plain as it was disturbing. What a contrast between theory and practice? Where was the truth to be found? In the opened books or in open reality? In both! Science is true, and life is true. Science commits mistakes, and life commits mistakes. Both of these ways lead via mistakes towards the truth; there, they will have to meet. Where this truth is and what it says, we can only guess. Just one eye is granted the gift to glimpse ahead at it and this is the eye of -- -- the fable. Therefore I want to be a stroy-teller, nothing but a story-teller, just as grandmother was! I only need to open my eyes, to see them recorded, hundreds and hundreds of incarnations of these parables and salvation seeking fables. One in every cell and one on every chair in the workshops. Lots of sleeping beauties, who are just waiting for the kiss of mercy and love to wake them up. Lots of souls, languishing in bondage, in old castles, which had been converted into prisons, or in modern huge buildings, in which kindness goes from cell to cell, from chair to chair, to wake up and to free, whoever proves himself to be worthy of the awakening and of freedom. I want to be the mediator between science and life. I want to tell parables and fables, with the truth being hidden deeply inside, the truth which by other means cannot be perceived, yet. I want to derive light out of the darkness of my life in prison. I want to convert the punishment, which has come upon me, into freedom for others. I want to turn the severity of the law, under which I suffer, into a great sympathy for all those who have fallen, into a love and mercy, to which there will finally be no "crime" and no "criminals", but only the sick, again and again nothing but the sick.
[a] "the lost son": see Luke 15:24: "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."
"Winnetou IV", a.k.a. "Winnetous Erben" <Winnetou's Heirs>
But no one may suspect, that my stories are only parables and only fables, for if it was known, I would never achieve what I intend to achieve. I have to become a fable myself, I, my own self. This will surely be a boldness, which might easily ruin me, but what does the fate of one single, small human being matter, when the subject is the great, hugely arising question facing the entire human race? What matters the tiny fate of a despised prisoner, who is anyhow already lost to society, if the manner in which "crime" is regarded and discussed does not change soon!
This was a thought which came to me quite suddenly, but sunk in deeply and never left me again. It gained power over me; it became large. It finally encompassed my entire soul, which was probably because it contained the fulfilment of all this, which already, since my childhood, lived as my wish and hope within me. I seized it, this thought; I extended and deepened it; I elaborated on it. It had me, and I had it; we both became identical. But this did not happen quickly, it rather took a long, long time, and even harder and more dreary days than the present ones passed by, before I had developed the plan of my work and had it such firmly fixed, that no further change was to be made to it. I planned to continue writing my humorous stories and village-tales from the Ore Mountains for a while, to make a name for myself among the German readers and to show them that I was absolutely just moving on god-fearing territory. But then, I wanted to turn to a genre, the public was interested in, and possesses the greatest ability to make an impression: to the traveller's tale. To make real journeys the basis of these tales, was no absolute necessity; after all, they were only meant to be parables and only fables, though extraordinarily meaningful parables and fables. Nevertheless, journeys were desirable, to conduct studies, to get to know the various circles in which my characters had to move. Most of all, I had to prepare myself thoroughly, study geography, ethnology, and languages. I had to take my topics from my own life, from the lives around me, from the place where I was at home, and therefore, I could always maintain truthfully that everything I told about was experienced or witnessed by myself. But I had to move those topics out into distant lands and to foreign peoples, to give them the effect they would not have dressed in the familiar garments of home. Set in the prairie or under palm-trees, in the glistening sun of the orient or in raging blizzards of the Wild West, in perils which would evoke the reader's strongest compassion, thus and in no other way all of my characters had to be depicted, if I was to achieve through them what they were meant to achieve. And for this purpose, I had to be, at least theoretically, as much at home in all of those countries which I had to describe as a European could possibly be able to. So I had to work, to work hard and exhaustingly, to prepare myself; and for this, the quiet, undisturbed prison cell, I lived in, was just the right place.
There is a truth of earth, and there is a truth of heaven. The truth of earth is presented to us by science, the truth of heaven by revelation. Science usually proves its truthfulness; what a revelation asserts, the learned will regard as nothing more than believable, but not as proven. Such a true revelation from heaven descends down to earth on the rays of the stars and goes from one house to the next, to knock and to be allowed to enter. It is rejected everywhere, because it wants to be believed, but it is not believed, because it possesses no learned proof of validity. Thus it goes from one village to another, from one town to another, from one country to another, without being listened to and without being accepted inside. Then, it ascends back up to heaven on the rays of the stars and returns to the one from whom it came. Weeping, it laments before Him of its pains. But He smiles kindly and speaks: "Do not weep! Go back down to earth and knock at the door of that one person, whose house you have not found, yet: the poet. Ask him to dress you into the guise of a fairy-tale, and then try your luck again!" It obeys. The poet lovingly takes it on and dresses it up. It now begins its journey once again as a fairy-tale, and wherever it knocks, it is welcome. The doors and hearts are opened for it. Its words are attentively listened to; it is believed. It is asked to stay, because it has become so dear to everyone. But it must go on, on and on, to fulfil the task it had been given. But it only leaves as a fairy-tale; as the truth, it stays. And even though it is not seen, it is nevertheless there and works its influence within the house for all times to come.