concerning the Wandering Jew contributed to “Notes and Queries” (vol.
xii. p. 503) by Mr. V. T. Sternberg. “Sometimes, during the cold winter
nights, the lonely cottager will be awoke by a plaintive demand for
‘Water, good Christian! water, for the love of God!’ And if he looks
out, he will see a venerable old man in antique raiment, with grey
flowing beard and a tall staff, who beseeches his charity with the most
earnest gesture. Woe to the churl who refuses him water or shelter!
My old nurse, who was a Warwickshire woman, and, as Sir Walter Scott
said of his grandmother, ‘a most _awfu’ leer_,’ knew a man who boldly
cried out, ‘All very fine, Mr. Ferguson, but you can’t lodge here!’
And it was decidedly the worst thing he ever did in his life, for
his best mare fell dead lame, and corn went down I am afraid to say
how much per quarter. If, on the contrary, you treat him well, and
refrain from indelicate inquiries respecting his age--on which point
he is very touchy--his visit is sure to bring good luck. Perhaps,
years afterwards, when you are on your death-bed, he may happen to
be passing, and if he should, you are safe; for three knocks with his
staff will make you hale, and he never forgets any kindnesses. Many
stories are current of his wonderful cures, but there is one to be
found in Peck’s _History of Stamford_ which possesses the rare merit
of being written by the patient himself. Upon Whitsunday, in the year
of our Lord 1658, ‘about six of the clock, just after evensong,’ one,
Samuel Wallis, of Stamford, who had been long wasted with a lingering
consumption, was sitting by the fire, reading in that delectable book
called _Abraham’s Suit for Sodom_. He heard a knock at the door, and,
as his nurse was absent, he crawled to open it himself. What he saw
there Samuel shall say in his own style: ‘I beheld a proper, tall,
grave old man. Thus he said, “Friend, I pray thee, give an old pilgrim
a cup of small beere?” And I said, “Sir, I pray you, come in and
welcome.” And he said, “I am no sir, therefore call me not sir; but
come in I must, for I cannot pass by thy doore.” After finishing the
beere, “Friend,” he said, “thou art not well?” I said, “No, truly, sir,
I have not been well this many years.” He said, “What is thy disease?”
I said, “A deep consumption, sir; our doctors say, past cure: for
truly, I am a very poor man, and not able to follow doctor’s counsel.”
“Then,” said he, “I will tell thee what thou shalt do; and, by the
help and power of Almighty God above, thou shalt be well. Tomorrow,
when thou risest up, go into thy garden, and get there two leaves of
red sage and one of bloodworte, and put them into a cup of thy small
beere. Drink as often as need require, and when the cup is empty, fill
it again, and put in fresh leaves every fourth day, and thou shalt
see, through our Lord’s great goodness and mercy, before twelve dayes
shall be past, thy disease shall be cured and thy body altered.”’ After
this simple prescription, Wallis pressed him to eat. But he said, ‘No,
friend, I will not eat; the Lord Jesus is sufficient for me. Very
seldom doe I drinke any beere neither, but that which comes from the
rocke. So, friend, the Lord God be with thee.’ So saying, he departed,
and was never more heard of; but the patient got well within the given
time, and for many a long day there was war hot and fierce among the
divines of Stamford, as to whether the stranger was an angel or a
devil. His dress had been minutely described by honest Sam. His coat
was purple, and buttoned down to the waist; ‘his britches of the same
couler, all new to see to;’ his stockings were very white, but whether
linen or jersey, deponent knoweth not; his beard and head were white,
and he had a white stick in his hand. The day was rainy from morning
to night, ‘but he had not one spot of dirt upon his clothes.’ Aubrey
gives an almost exactly similar relation, the scene of which he places
in the Staffordshire moorlands. He there appears in a purple shag gown,
and prescribes balm-leaves.”
Brand mentions having seen one of these ‘impostors’ going about
Newcastle-on-Tyne, followed by a crowd, and murmuring to himself “Poor
Jack all alone!” Probably Brand did not hear the phrase rightly,
since the cry of the Wanderer was “Poor Joe all alone!” There was a
crossing-sweeper near St. Paul’s Churchyard, who murmured the same,
of whom there is an engraving in the British Museum. A picture of
the Newcastle man was made for the Musgraves of Eden Hall, which
has beneath it “Poor Joe all alone!” My friend Mr. W. B. Scott, who
once resided at Newcastle, writes that he remembers hearing of him.
“He seemed to have left an impression of a somewhat respectful kind,
but from what cause I never heard; probably he had a history of a
melancholy kind, and had been left alone by some calamity.”
This, so far as I can learn, was the last appearance in the world
of any man pretending to be the Wandering Jew, if indeed he did so
pretend, and the honour was not thrust upon him by the superstitious
crowd. There had been advantages enough in earlier times to entice
Ahasuerus, or “the famous Joseph,” to make his appearance. He came as a
“witness” for Christ; he was generally a pious Christian; a tradition
tells of his gambling in Naples, but, as the people there invoke
their saints for luck in gambling, the exception is not considerable.
Jurisconsult Louvet heard him preaching to street crowds in a French
province like a revivalist friar. But in England common sense gradually
chilled the Wandering Jew. When it was found that he was not above
receiving sixpences to support his imperishable existence the public
lost interest in him.
A question addressed by me a few weeks ago to the _Newcastle Weekly
Chronicle_ elicited the following answer:
“It is quite true that a man who was known as ‘The Wandering Jew’
lived in Newcastle during the latter part of last century. He left
a son, who I believe has lived in Hull the greater part of this
century, and who is now a very old man indeed, keeping a small
public-house named the Cricketers’ Arms. He is very eccentric, is
known as ‘Topper, the Newcastle Fossil,’ and attracts a deal of
attention on account of his appearance and the condition of his
house. He is a very peculiar-looking man, with features of a decided
Jewish cast. His clothes appear to be as old as himself. He has never
been known to be clean: and old people in Hull do not remember the
counter or floor of his house to have been washed. He is supposed to
be emulating ‘Dirty Dick’ of London in this respect.
“GEORGE COOPER.”
_Hull._
This may be regarded as the epitaph upon an ancient dream which
branched into a vast and various mythology, and, in its time, bore
for millions their hopes of a renovated earth, and their visions of
resurrection from the sleep of death!
XV.
THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY.
Having, as a figure of popular faith, gathered to him all related
elements of mould and decay, and found fit extinction in the Newcastle
“fossil” just mentioned, Ahasuerus rises for new wanderings as a poetic
ideal.
The Germans were the first to deal seriously with our legend, and
their literature of the Wandering Jew is indicated in this chapter.
The subject attracted the unhappy DANIEL FRIEDRICH SCHUBART during his
imprisonment. Carlyle, in the notes to his _Life of Schiller_, says
the idea of making old _Joannes a temporibus_, the ‘Wandering,’ or, as
Schubart’s countrymen denominate him, the ‘Eternal Jew,’ into a novel
hero was a mighty favourite with him. “In this antique cordwainer, as
on a raft at anchor in the stream of time, he would survey the changes
and wonders of two thousand years: the Roman and the Arab were to
figure there, the Crusader and the Circumnavigator, the Eremite and
the Thebaid, and the Pope of Rome. Joannes himself, the Man existing
out of Time and Space--Joannes, the unresting and undying--was to be a
deeply tragic personage. Schubart warmed himself with this idea, and
talked about it in his cups, to the astonishment of simple souls. He
even wrote a certain rhapsody connected with it, which is published in
his poems. But here he rested; and the project of the Wandering Jew,
which Goethe likewise meditated in his youth, is still unexecuted.
Goethe turned to other objects, and poor Schubart was surprised by
death in the midst of his schemes, on the 10th of October, 1791.” But
the project, as we shall see, is not unexecuted.
Schubart’s _Rhapsody_ appeared in his “Poems, Frankfort, 1787.”[39] His
Ahasuerus has retired into the wild solitudes of Mount Carmel. There
he is seen, with frantic laughter, casting away the dry skulls of his
relatives, which break to pieces, crying, “That is my father! Those are
my wives! these my children! They could die, but I--outcast--cannot
die!” And again, “Jerusalem fell; I crushed the babe, I rushed into
the flames, cursed the Roman!--Rome fell, whole nations perished,
and--I remained!” He tries to kill himself in different ways, but in
vain. He feels pain acutely, but has to endure every variety of it,
even to the agonies of the moment of death, without this moment ever
arriving. The snake bites him, the dragon tortures, the burning forest
blisters him. He says to himself, “Under my feet the mine exploded and
threw me high into the air; senseless I fell down, and found myself
roasted amidst blood, and brains, and bones.” He is obliged to carry
on a corpse-like body, infirm, smelling of the grave; and through
thousands of years he must see, like a yawning monster, an everlasting
sameness. The rhapsody brings the Wanderer to a peaceful end. Ahasuerus
throws himself down from the top of Carmel into the abyss, “and
night covers his bushy eyelids. An angel carries him into a recess
in the rocks. ‘There mayest thou sleep now,’ says the angel; ‘sleep,
Ahasuerus, sleep soundly! God’s anger does not last for ever.’”
In 1807 appeared the ballad of _The Eternal Jew_, by ALOYS SCHREIBER.
The torture of this Ahasuerus consists in his not being able to enjoy
life and nature, open to all other men, on account of his restlessness.
He cannot drink the water of the fountain, he cannot rest in the
shade of a tree, he cannot break a flower to enjoy its smell, for
which he longs; he must start, he must wander. In this he differs
from Schubart’s Ahasuerus, who had long been weary of life. Being
continually obliged to renounce everything, he at last becomes timid,
shy; he flies all men and hurries on heedlessly. Finally he observes
a crucifix by the wayside; about to rush on, an impulse brings him to
his knees, imploring the Crucified for forgiveness. Christ answers him
from the cross, “Whoever has failed may repent; and none who loves and
believes in me shall need to shun my countenance.” The Wanderer is
found dead, kneeling before the cross.
WILHELM MÜLLER, in his _Wanderlieder_ (published in his works, 1830)
has a poem on “The Eternal Jew,” which pictures the desolation and
loneliness that torture a life satiated to disgust, longing for
rest and death. It is pervaded by melancholy. “Although I have seen
everything I am never allowed to rest!” All around him has an end: the
river in the ocean, the eagle on the Alps, the cloud in the falling
rain, and also “to the tired wanderer a certain limit has been fixed.
What, does he complain of his day’s misery?--before night death will
have taken him home.” The end of the poem is a wish of the poor
Wanderer that those who have finished their earthly pilgrimage might,
ere they go to sleep for ever, ask of God one hour’s rest for him.
NIKOLAUS LENAU has treated the subject in a similar manner. The scenery
of his poem, _Ahasuerus, the Eternal Jew_, is a lonely heath. In a
distant meadow shepherds are seen surrounding and weeping over the
corpse of a beloved youth. Whilst they are thus standing a Wanderer
passes that way: his hair is grey, his countenance pale, cold, deeply
wrinkled; his beard long and white, his fiery eyes in dark sockets.
He walks on to the bier, and calls out, with mingled mockery and
mournfulness, “Suppress your ungrateful tears; his rest is good; oh
yes, his rest is good! Though fools like you complain, his heart is
still; while mine beats on by night and day, in restless longing to
find its sabbath in the grave!” The Wanderer utters the philosophy of
Schopenhauer, explaining that the earth is only the lie of Paradise,
that it is always the same old delusion of Time--all flowering to its
destruction: a philosophy which terminates in a marriage with Madness,
personified in Lenau himself.
Meanwhile, says the poem, the shepherds cover the coffin. Suddenly the
stranger gets sight of the crucifix on the lid of the coffin. He is
frightened, and tears come to his eyes. Now the Lenau-Schopenhauer
turns out to be Ahasuerus. He tells the story of his life in the
usual form of the myth. He tells the different kinds of death he had
vainly sought. Then he wanders on, on--on; above his head you hear the
whizzing of the birds; a long shadow walks behind him; the shepherds
tremble and make the sign of the cross.
Although ADALBERT VON CHAMISSO was by birth French, his life and
culture were German; his mixed origin is shown in his subjective poem,
the “New Ahasuerus” (1836), where the Wanderer is simply a lover whose
mistress has married another! This rejected lover compares himself to
Ahasuerus, who cannot die or rest until the Day of Judgment, while the
faithless lady represents the fallen city of Jerusalem. Ahasuerus says,
“Time stands still before me; the age of man is as one moment, and
the moments ages. Every hundred years I come once more to Jerusalem,
mourning over its cold ashes, trying to put the ruins in their old
place again, but nobody takes notice of me; evermore I come to the same
thing--a grave!” Ahasuerus is “the son of sorrow turned into stone.”
The poem of A. W. SCHLEGEL, “The Eternal Jew,” follows the old myth,
with nothing new. His Ahasuerus, on account of his unbelief, wanders
through the world as a solace for all those who are miserable, until
the reappearance of Christ releases him.
JULIUS MOSEN is the first who treated the subject in a fuller and more
independent way. His “Ahasuerus” (1838) is an epic. In the notes it
is stated that the myth belongs to the poet’s earliest recollections,
the supposed Wandering Jew having passed through his birthplace,
and that a shepherd had spoken to him. The poem carries this idea
out with poetical realism. Mosen’s idea of the myth is human nature
imprisoned by an earthly existence. Ahasuerus symbolises the spirit of
Tradition embodied in an individual being, who, at first in unconscious
obstinacy, but at length deliberately, opposes himself to the God of
Christendom. Mosen gives his Ahasuerus from the first a human trait.
His deceased wife has left him two beautiful children, Eve and Reuben.
A young Roman prince, living at Jerusalem, likes these children, and he
wishes to take them with him to Rome. He applies to Pilate, who orders
Ahasuerus to part with the children. The father in his desperation
implores the assistance of Jesus, the new prophet. He will believe
in him and his new doctrine, if he can save his children. Jesus will
not grant such private wishes, but goes on to prophesy the fall of
Jerusalem. Upon this Ahasuerus tears his clothes into pieces, and
in pain and wrath accuses Jesus of falsehood and imposture: “Thou
art our God? And yet to save thou hast no power! If man or God, thou
hast deceived the people!” When the Roman prince comes to fetch the
children, Ahasuerus has slain them. In his despair he becomes more and
more a disbeliever. What, he asks himself, did Israel commit to become
so wretched? “Through its piety it has been led to misery. Why, then,
does man crowd after this haughty God? I will cast off his memory;
death to this Nazarene, to God, to everything!” In this excitement
Ahasuerus scornfully forbids Jesus to rest at his door when he asks
that favour. Jesus pronounces his sentence in these words, “Thou shalt
live without rest thy immortality upon earth!”
The Archangel Michael appears and gives Ahasuerus a hope that mercy
may be obtained at three different times of trial. The trials follow.
Ahasuerus has married again and has once more two children, Eve and
Reuben. Rome declares war against Judea, Titus surrounds Jerusalem;
Ahasuerus is full of resentment against God, who declines to help, and
in his anger sets the temple on fire. During the conflagration, with
his children at his side, he enters the flames, which do not touch him.
Eve’s lover, Matthias, who has become a Christian, for that reason
rejected by Ahasuerus, serves in the Roman army and comes rushing
through the flames to save his beloved. Ahasuerus bids him welcome as
a suitor, and pushes him into the flames. His children shriek with
terror, and Ahasuerus throws them both after him, crying, “Here,
heartless God! now thou canst rejoice!”
The first trial thus passes without redemption for Ahasuerus, and the
second comes. Ahasuerus, having tried all possible ways of suicide,
at last addresses Death with an appeal for pity. Death replies that
he has orders to pass him by until he shall believe in God. Ahasuerus
refuses. He is once more father of two beautiful children, Leah
and Reuben. He enjoys the purest happiness, when all at once, in a
thunderstorm, the God of the Jews appears to renew the old league
with him against Christ. Ahasuerus consents, and is sent to Julian
the Apostate as the great adversary of Christendom. Ahasuerus arrives
there in the very moment when the wounded Julian, under a night-vision
of Christ, begins to doubt his pagan faith. Ahasuerus gains him back
to his former antagonism, and obtains permission to rebuild the temple
at Jerusalem. But during the building, a dispute breaks out among
the workmen. All order is gone, the work is interrupted; one looks
at another in amazement, when suddenly a prophet announces that for
the reconstruction of the temple, the God of Judea and the God of the
Christians were contending; and that the latter could only be made to
yield if the blood of two innocent children should soak the ground.
Ahasuerus offers his own children. Before the sacrifice is finished,
Christ invisibly takes the children to Himself. Then the earth is rent
asunder; flames dart out and consume the new building.
The second trial having passed without saving Ahasuerus, twice a
murderer of his own children, the third trial advances. In this Death
passes, with souls that have found repose, before Ahasuerus. Ahasuerus
is in mortal agony; his soul has nearly departed, but one point still
remains, which no effort of his will can destroy. This point begins to
assume a shape, a form once more. It is the same point of life which
goes through all organic nature, and nowhere admits of destruction
or state of rest. So our Wanderer, too, is once more filled with the
wish to live. Again the God of Judea animates him to struggle against
the doctrine of Christ. Again he follows his advice. He is now sent
to Arabia, where Mohammed leads on the nations against the Cross.
Ahasuerus allies himself with Mohammed to conquer Jerusalem; he calls
his people together, but they will not hear him, they have only stones
to throw at him who suffered so much for their sake. Then, with tears
in his eyes, Ahasuerus leaves them for ever, and bestows henceforth his
love upon Humanity.
Mosen’s Ahasuerus thus becomes a hero of Humanity, and his aims rise
high above his first purpose. He is at the head of Mohammed’s warriors,
driving away the defenders of the Holy Sepulchre, menacing death to
all who approach it. All fly away; two children only remain--his own.
Ahasuerus embraces them, and rejoices to have found them at last. Then
Mohammed reminds him that he has sworn death to whomsoever should
approach the sepulchre. Ahasuerus now cries out in his grief. For the
third time he falls under the curse of his disbelief. He calls for
some one to slay him, and the third trial so releases him of his vow.
Arrows dart through the air: the children fall; he, too, sinks down,
to awake once more for fulfilment of his real mission. “One thing has
been ended; another begins, that neither time nor dark eternity can
end. Loosed from Him and His mercy, henceforth I begin a long struggle
until I have saved mankind from Him.” Ahasuerus declares an everlasting
war against Christ, “in the name of all forces and powers, all sighs,
all sorrows, shed tears and blood, broken spirits and crushed hearts.”
Christ accepts the combat: “Thou facest Me, Thought against Thought.
Wrestle on and on, until at last, the circle ended, the Day of Judgment
shall decide!”
There the poem ends, or rather, as Helbig remarks, “does _not_ end;”
the end is put off to the day of the last Judgment. The struggle now
only begins, never to end, between Ahasuerus and Christ, between
Humanity and Christendom, between Earth and Heaven.
LUDWIG KÖHLER, too, makes the Wanderer a type of human tendency. His
_New Ahasuerus_ (1845) is a prophet of freedom. The sufferer he has
derided says to him: “March on then for eternities, until veracity has
found its residence on earth, filling it with purest brightness! until
a golden Dawn as of springtide breaks, and Liberty awakes the light now
hidden in night!” Often the Wanderer thinks this morning has come, and
exults in his hope of rest; but his joy, his hopes are vain. Napoleon
crushes the French Revolution, “the Burschenschaft” leads to the errors
of Sand; the rebellious Greeks are betrayed, and so on. Everywhere is
oppression of conscience and thought. Ahasuerus despairs, and complains
that he cannot die, when suddenly Jesus addresses him with a rebuke: he
tells Ahasuerus that he is unworthy of the longed-for liberty, so long
as he has not mastered self and sacrificed his egotism. “Thy grave,
not humanity, was thine aim, so thou hast striven in vain. Liberty
shall be aim, not instrument to thee. Whilst thou wert complaining of
Destiny, it went its way, and Liberty began its heavenly progression.
’Tis no dream and delusion; ere thou thinkest, it sunders hell and
displays its light. The world gets free. Already in the vale a stir is
heard. Its reign is near!” With this vision of hope for the future the
poet leaves us.
FRANZ HORN (1818) published in Fouqué’s _Frauentaschenbuch_ his novel
“_The Eternal Jew_.” His Ahasuerus is a rich Jew in Jerusalem, who only
believes in Christ’s external mission. He thinks that Jesus, though for
the time full of humility, will rule with a commanding sceptre when
clad in purple, and by his healing power will extirpate disease and
death from the earth. In this he is disappointed: Jesus is laughed at,
despised, ill-treated, and endures all unresistingly. Mistaken in his
dearest hopes, Ahasuerus conceives a deep hate against Jesus. So, when
the latter, fallen under the burthen of his cross, asks for a moment’s
rest at his door, Ahasuerus drives him on without compassion. Then
Christ rises, and says: “Well, receive then what thou wishest; live,
live on, as never man before; die not till thou hast become worthy to
die!”
And so it came: all around him died; everything became strange to
him; only the sky above him remained the same. He comes to understand
that Christ by his death has sealed death, and that he (Ahasuerus) by
his life has to represent the insufficiency and misery of mere life.
He moves on with aimless strides, his form as of iron, his visage
weather-beaten like lichened stone, a nameless grief upon his features.
The scene of the novel is laid at the end of the Thirty Years’ War.
Ahasuerus has saved a young count in the tumult of battle, and
afterwards, by telling him the story of his life, converts him from the
blasphemy and despair into which he had fallen by the sudden death of
his family--a misfortune attributed to the appearance of Ahasuerus.
From this novel, AUGUST KLINGEMANN (1827) took the subject of his
tragedy, _Ahasuerus_. The Wanderer was a favourite character with the
distinguished actor Ludwig Devrient. With Klingemann the myth signifies
purification by suffering in order to obtain an imperishable liberty.
Christ appears as the mediator between natural and supernatural
things, and points the wandering man to his coming empire. The hero of
Klingemann’s drama is the murderer of Gustavus Adolphus, the Count of
Werth, a fanatical Catholic, who, in disguise of a Protestant, has
assassinated the champion of Protestantism. The deed weighs heavily on
his soul, drives him to melancholy and despair, and he finally drowns
his conscience in Atheism. The son of Gustavus Adolphus enters his
family as a visitor; and in his presence, and that of his family, the
guilty Count speaks of the deed with abhorrence. Only one person knows
of his guilt--the mysterious man who saved him out of the battle. To
get rid of him the assassin challenges him; but his lance breaks on
the breast of the stranger--for it is Ahasuerus, he who has blasphemed
his Lord, like the now atheistical Count of Werth. The curse upon
him is that which strikes the Denier of God. Ahasuerus, after the
fruitless combat, reveals to the count his story, and his longing to
die, imploring him no longer to blaspheme God. The Count after this
discovery acknowledges the existence of God, and confesses his murder
of Gustavus Adolphus. He then kills himself, and so finds rest; but
Ahasuerus wanders on--on!
THEODOR OELKERS has treated the subject in a novel, _Princess Mary
of Oldenhoff, or the Wandering Jew_, (Leipzig, 1848). Oelkers adds a
curse upon Ahasuerus: in order to reconcile Christ he must sacrifice
what is dearest to him, but his sacrifices are always ineffectual. He
takes from time to time a wife, he has children; he survives each
wife, slays his children; he is driven to do this by necessity, while
conscious that the offerings will be in vain. He has the fearful gift
of reading the future: foresees all that shall happen to himself and
his beloved ones. In bitterness of heart he says: “Let men see in me
how vain is their hope for divine love and mercy!” But at length he
finds reason to hope for release at a very distant period. “I am only,”
he says, “condemned in Time: Eternity belongs to me, as it belongs to
all when Time shall end. Then shall I be free to move about in endless
regions, breathing the air of heaven; then the partial tyranny of Grace
shall be dethroned; Justice will occupy the throne, sharing it with her
sister, Love.”