FORGOTTEN BOOK: SIMPLICIUS SIMPLICISSIMUS

Simplicius Simplicissimus by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen  (1668; with many editions and translations)

And now for something a little bit different.  Usually when I post about a Forgotten Book on Fridays, I cover a book that I have read that particular week, or, on occasion, the week  before.  Once in a while I will post on a book that I am still reading.  This week, I want to concentrate on a book that I read nearly six decades ago.  I cannot rightly call it a "Forgotten Book" since I have never forgotten it.

Simplicius Simplicissimus is considered the first great German novel and is a masterpiece of Baroque literature, a satire for the ages.  It is one of only three books from my college days that have stayed with me and have greatly influenced me.  (The other two are Musil's The Man without Qualities and the writings of Heraclitus.)  Grimmelshausen taught me the value of looking at things sideways (wryly) and to appreciate the absurdities of life.  I truly cannot remember what translation of the work I read, not can I remember who the professor was who assigned the book -- it was either Joe Meeker or Jac Tharpe, both of whom seemed invested in inculcating me with more questions than knowledge; whoever it was, I remain grateful.

In brief, it is a picaresque novel about an illiterate peasant boy whose home is sacked and destroyed during the Thirty Years' War.  Because he is so naive, he is dubbed "Simplicius" -- the simpleton.  As he wanders through the landscape, he is taken in by a hermit who teaches him to read and write and gives him lessons in Christianity.  After the hermit dies, our hero is on his own and soon encounters the corruption of the world and the carnage of war, becoming in turns, a soldier, a royal jester, a thief, a wealthy landowner, and a traveler to distant climes (including an alternate, fantastic world of mermen).  As a result of his bawdy and absurd adventures, he eventually retires and become a hermit himself.

The book is breathtakingly funny and heartbreakingly satirical, a masterpiece of imagination and human characterization.  Grimmelshausen evidently based much of it on his own experiences during the Thirty Years' War.  The subtitle of the book is "The account of the life of an odd vagrant named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim:  namely where and in what manner he came into this world, what he saw, learned, experienced therein; also why he again left it of his own free will."

The book was an instant success and drew many plagiarisms and copies throughout Europe.  It has inspired operas, sequels, adaptations, a television series, and even a newspaper comic strip.  Bertold Brecht lifted a character from the book to model his character Mother Courage.  Jorge Luis Borges speculated on the infamous frontispiece of the novel (depicting a chimeric winged monster holding a book; the hidden "meaning" behind the drawing is still debated).  John le Carre has made a number of references to the book in his novels.  Grimmelshausen himself becme a character in one of Gunter Grass's novels.  To celebrate Grimmelshausen's 400th birthday the German town of crested a monument inspired by the infamous frontispiece of the novel -- a hybrid with a satyr's head, a woman's body, a man's arm, a hoof, a duck's foot, wings, a fish tail, holding a book; the bronze sculpture is placed so visitors can easily interact with it.  The city of Soelst, Germany, has adopted as its mascot Das Jagerkin von Soelst, from one of the aliases used by Simplicius; since 1976, a citizen is selected who gets to represent the city and charitable projects of his choice in costume.

The character of Simpicius Simplicissimus has come to represent sanity in a world gone mad.  I wonder it I reread the book now if it would have the same powerful effect on me was it did when I was twenty.