Episode 345: 'The Black Spider' by Jeremias Gotthelf

Summary

The Great Books Podcast: Episode 345 Summary

Title: The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf
Host/Author: National Review’s John J. Miller
Guest: Peter Milander, Dean of Religion, Humanities and Global Studies, Professor of Political Science at Houghton University
Release Date: October 22, 2024

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Introduction

In Episode 345 of The Great Books Podcast, hosted by John J. Miller of the National Review, Peter Milander joins the discussion to delve into Jeremias Gotthelf’s classic novella, The Black Spider. Recorded from Hillsdale College's campus radio station, WRFH in Michigan, Milander provides insightful commentary on why this 19th-century work remains relevant today.

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Why The Black Spider is a Great Book

Peter Milander outlines three compelling reasons that underscore the novella's enduring significance:

1. Authorial Excellence:
   “Gotthelf is a fantastic writer. He's really a writer of the first rank, a canonical status author” (00:54). Milander emphasizes Gotthelf’s prolific output and storytelling prowess, noting that his works are staples in German literary courses.

2. Engaging Narrative:
   The novella is praised for its captivating and suspenseful storytelling. It’s a concise, eerie tale that maintains tension and engages readers from start to finish.

3. Profound Themes:
   Beyond its horror elements, The Black Spider explores deep themes such as faith, courage, cowardice, tyranny, freedom, and evil. These themes invite reflection and resonate with the enduring questions discussed in academic and literary settings.

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Overview of The Black Spider

The Black Spider begins with an idyllic setting during Ascension Day, a significant Christian holiday, where a harmonious family prepares for a baptismal celebration. The tranquility is soon disrupted by the introduction of a mysterious black window post, prompting the grandfather to recount a dark family legend.

Key Plot Points:

• Introduction of Tyranny:
  The grandfather narrates the tale of Hans von Stauffen, a tyrannical Teutonic knight who imposes impossible tasks on his serfs, such as constructing a new castle and planting an alley of 100 beech trees. His oppressive demands highlight the cruelty of feudal lords.

• The Huntsman’s Deal:
  A supernatural figure, the Huntsman dressed in green, offers help to the struggling villagers in exchange for an unbaptized child—a clear manifestation of a deal with the devil.

• Christine’s Defiance:
  Unlike her skeptical peers, Christine, a strong-willed outsider, bargains with the Huntsman, agreeing to sacrifice her firstborn child. When the child is born, the villagers intervene by baptizing the baby, thereby nullifying the pact. However, this act unleashes the titular Black Spider, which begins wreaking havoc by killing livestock and later humans.

• Recurring Threats and Sacrifices:
  The spider’s menace forces the villagers to make recurring sacrifices, each time revealing their moral and communal weaknesses. Ultimately, a devout mother sacrifices herself to trap the spider, temporarily restoring peace.

• Generational Reflection:
  The story cycles through generations, illustrating how societal virtues can deteriorate over time, leading to repeated confrontations with evil unless faith and communal integrity are maintained.

Notable Quote:
“Above the mountains rose the sun, shining in limpid majesty down into a welcoming but narrow valley where it woke to joyous life creatures that had been created to take pleasure in the sunshine of their days.” (00:47)
This opening sets an idyllic scene contrasted sharply by the ensuing horror, emphasizing the novella’s exploration of good versus evil.

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Themes and Analysis

Milander highlights several overarching themes within the novella:

• Moral and Communal Integrity:
  The villagers’ inability to consistently uphold their moral obligations leads to recurring disasters, underscoring the fragility of societal virtues.

• Sacrifice and Redemption:
  The narrative emphasizes the necessity of personal sacrifice and steadfast faith in combating evil, as exemplified by the mother’s ultimate sacrifice.

• Political and Social Commentary:
  Milander interprets the story as a critique of both feudal tyranny and the complacency of the middle class, drawing parallels to contemporary political dynamics.

Comparison to Other Works:
The Huntsman’s appearance is likened to the Green Knight from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, illustrating the use of traditional folklore motifs to convey deeper moral lessons.

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Translation and Availability

The Black Spider was originally written in German. Milander recommends the recent translation by Susan Bernofsky, published by the New York Review of Books (NYRB), for its readability and contemporary language. This accessibility has contributed to its recognition among English-speaking audiences.

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Jeremias Gotthelf: The Author

Jeremias Gotthelf is the pen name of Albert Bitzius, a Swiss pastor and author born in 1797. Milander provides an overview of Gotthelf’s life and works:

• Literary Career:
  Gotthelf began writing in his 40s, producing a significant body of work within a 15-year period. His stories often reflect Swiss peasant life and address social issues like poverty, education, and alcoholism.

• Political Stance:
  Initially a liberal reformer, Gotthelf became increasingly critical of radical secularism as it diverged from his Christian values. Milander describes him as a "conservative liberal," akin to Edmund Burke or Alexis de Tocqueville, balancing progressive ideals with traditional moral concerns.

• Limited Recognition in the USA:
  Despite his prominence in German literature, Gotthelf remains relatively obscure in the United States. Milander attributes this to the challenges of translating Swiss German and Gotthelf’s political positions, which may be perceived as reactionary by modern standards.

Personal Anecdote:
Milander shares a personal story of visiting Gotthelf’s former church in the Emmental region of Switzerland, highlighting the author's lasting physical legacy.

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Conservative Liberalism: A Dual Legacy

Milander elaborates on Gotthelf’s position as a "conservative liberal," explaining:

• Embracing Modernity with Caution:
  Like Burke and de Tocqueville, Gotthelf appreciated aspects of modern liberal democracy but remained wary of its potential excesses and moral pitfalls.

• Consistency vs. Radicalism:
  Gotthelf maintained his reformist stance even as liberal movements became more radical, leading to perceptions of him being out of step with contemporary progressivism.

Connection to The Black Spider:
The novella reflects this duality through its portrayal of societal virtues and flaws, illustrating the delicate balance between progress and preservation of moral integrity.

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Relevance Today: Why Read The Black Spider Now?

Peter Milander makes a compelling case for reading The Black Spider in the modern era:

• Timeless Moral Lessons:
  The novella’s exploration of human nature, communal responsibility, and the struggle between good and evil remain pertinent in today’s polarized political and social landscape.

• Literary Merit:
  As a piece of world literature, it offers rich storytelling coupled with profound thematic depth, distinguishing it from genre-specific horror tales.

• Self-Reflection and Awareness:
  Milander highlights Gotthelf’s ability to diagnose societal shortcomings, encouraging readers to introspect and uphold virtues in both personal and communal spheres.

Final Quote:
“He has this remarkable eye for seeing the ways in which we kind of hide the truth... an author who can help us take that good hard look at ourselves... is still worth reading.” (37:57)

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Conclusion

The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf stands as a profound literary work that transcends its horror genre trappings to offer incisive social and moral commentary. Through Peter Milander’s insightful analysis, listeners are encouraged to appreciate the novella’s rich themes and its relevance to contemporary societal challenges. As Milander aptly concludes, Gotthelf’s work remains a valuable tool for self-reflection and understanding the complexities of human nature and community dynamics.

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Connect with the Podcast:
For more discussions on classic literature and enduring themes, subscribe to The Great Books Podcast and leave a review to support future episodes. Share your thoughts and suggestions for upcoming topics through the podcast’s website or on Twitter @heyMiller.

Transcript

[Peter Milander]

Foreign.

[John J. Miller]

Welcome to the Great Books Podcast. Today we'll talk about the Black Spider by Jeremias Gottelf. I'm your host, John J. Miller of National Review and you're listening to a production of National Review. Our guest is Peter Milander, Dean of Religion, Humanities and Global Studies, as well as a professor of Political Science at Houghton University, New York. He co edits the Journal of Austrian Studies. He's written for many publications, including National Review, and his substack is called From My Bookshelf. He joins us by Zoom as we record from Hillsdale College's campus radio station, WRFH in Michigan. Peter, welcome to the Great Books Podcast.

[Peter Milander]

Thank you John. Great to be here.

[John J. Miller]

Why Is the Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf? Great book.

[Peter Milander]

Well, let me give you three short reasons why I think it's a great book. One is just about the author himself. Now I know that most of your listeners probably have not heard of Gotthel before, but he is a fantastic writer. He's really a writer of the first rank, a canonical status author. He writes wonderful books. He wrote about a dozen novels, tons of novellas and short stories in a relatively brief writing career. And it's the kind of stuff you might encounter in a high school course or college course if you were in a German speaking country. He would be known just wonderful stories, a great storyteller. And so that's one reason worth knowing about this. The Black Spider. Second Reason is probably his best known book. It is, it's a novella. It's not very long, easy to read. It is a spooky story. It is an eerie story. It keeps you on the edge of your seat. It is exciting, just really well told and fun to read. And then a third reason is the Black Spider. Beneath the surface of this kind of scary horror story raises all kinds of big questions about faith and courage and cowardice and tyranny and freedom and evil. And so all the enduring questions that we like to talk about on this show in the college courses that I teach, and so it just raises all sorts of things for reflection. So I'd say all those reasons, from the quality of the author to the quality of this particular book, to these questions it reasons it raises, make the Black Spider a great book.

[John J. Miller]

We're going to talk about all of that. The characters in this story, the wild story itself, who was this author? Why don't we know very much about him in the United States, its themes and of course, the spookiness of the black spider. So Peter, this is gonna get weird. Pretty soon, with this story, it's gonna get strange. But you wouldn't know it from the first line of the book, which is this quote. Above the mountains rose the sun, shining in limpid majesty down into a welcoming but narrow valley where it woke to joyous life creatures that had been created to take ple. In the sunshine of their days, unquote. That sounds pleasant. It also sounds like we are in the hands of a writer of faith.

[Peter Milander]

We are, absolutely. And it does sound pleasant. In fact, I would put it even stronger than pleasant. It sounds idyllic. And those opening pages, in sharp contrast to some of what will come later, do set up this gorgeous idyllic scene as we kind of zoom in onto the house and the family that are gonna take up the action once it gets going. We start off with this picture of the valley, and then the house appears. And then we kind of move in closer, and we see the animals wandering around and the serpents. And there's the grandfather and the grandmother finally move in the house, into the kitchen inside, and the mother's there, the father. So this process of kind of moving in, but the sun is shining. It says there's a Sunday gleam on the house. And everything is clean and neat and orderly and beautiful and. And it also turns out that this is happening. The action we're about to experience on an important Christian holiday. It tells us on the second page that this is the day on which the Son returned to the Father. So this is Ascension Day, 40 days after Easter. And that image of the souls going up to heaven along with Christ is brought in there in that same paragraph. Not only is it Ascension Day, but it's also a baptismal festival. So we are joining this family on the day of a baptism. There's a big celebration going on. The guests are about to arrive. And so there's this wonderful picture of kind of harmonious household, a harmonious family in tune with nature, in tune with all of creation. And it all looks perfect. It's not quite as perfect as it initially appears. And I think as it goes along, we see a few subtle cracks appear in that image. But it looks about as perfect as it could be. And all bound up with that image of kind of holy, pious family celebrating an important day, both in their family and in the church here.

[John J. Miller]

The first crack, then, in the story involves this house. So the author brings us into this idyllic scene, as you say. And then there's this house. There's this family gathered. They're having their baptismal celebration. They're Preparing for a baptism. And there's this house. And a woman in the book says, I find this house quite exceptionally beautiful. Then she says, I can't help asking, though, and please don't take the question amiss, why you left that rough black window post beside the first window. It's not very attractive, unquote. And therein lies the tale. First of all, Peter, she mentions a window post. What's a window post as a feature of architecture? Is that just part of the frame?

[Peter Milander]

It's just the vertical piece that would be on the right or left of the window, helping to support the windows. This is right next to the window. And she's noticing this piece of wood that doesn't seem to fit the rest of the new rebuilt beautiful house.

[John J. Miller]

Okay. And she says, that's strange. It's not beautiful, this thing. What's going on here? What is the deal with the black window post?

[Peter Milander]

Well, that takes us right into the action and really into the heart of things. She asked this question of the grandfather, the kind of patriarch of the family, as they're waiting for the dinner to be served at this celebration. And he kind of hems and haws a little bit. At first, he doesn't really want to tell the story, but is prompted by a cousin who says to him, you know, I've heard some rumors, I've heard some tales, and there's something going on here, but I never really heard the whole truth. Can you. Can you let us in on the truth and not just kind of beat around the bush? And so, with some reluctance, because he says stories like this can give a home a bad reputation. The grandfather then launches into a story from the past that has been passed down through his family and through the people of the town about where this post came. Came from. It takes us back several centuries into the medieval period when a knight named Hans von Stauffen had had a castle there and had been kind of a tyrant over the peasants.

[John J. Miller]

I hear a name like Hans von Stolfen, and I immediately think, villain. I don't know if it's because of, you know, Hans Gruber from Die Hard or something like that, but it sounds like a Germanic villain name. He's a knight. He's a Teutonic knight. He's the lord of the area. Who is this guy?

[Peter Milander]

So the Teutonic knights were an old Catholic order in the medieval period that had been founded to protect Christians on pilgrimage in the Holy Land, had been a crusading order. Also was active in central and also north central Europe. But so He's a member of this order, but we're told that there are some of these knights who would rather be hanging out at a castle in Switzerland than off fighting somewhere. And he's one of those. And so he has this castle, he has serfs in the village, in the local region who are his PR and have to work for him. And he orders them to do a couple of really unreasonable things and reveals himself to be kind of a tyrant. He asked them first to build himself a brand new castle up on top of a hill, kind of far away from all the other houses or really anything else. And so it's hard work for them. It's not close by. They have to leave their fields and carry all the materials there and do the building work. And then once it's built and they finally think, okay, it was awful, it was hard, we got it done, but we can get back to our families and our harvests. He tells them that the next thing he wants them to do is build him a walkway, an alley of 100 beech trees that they are supposed to transport from another mountain nearby, uproot the trees, bring them down the mountain, carry them back up to his castle and plant this nice shaded walkway for him. And of course, they are devastated. They don't know how it's gonna work. He threatens them and they give it a try. But the efforts do not go very well.

[John J. Miller]

And it's a ridiculous demand. I mean, the initial demand of the castle is bad enough, but you're thinking, he's a cruel lord and lords need castles, they're going to want castles built. He's going to order people to build it. That sounds like something cruel lord would do. And they deal with it. This is a truly outrageous demand, what he's asking for here, is it not?

[Peter Milander]

This is way over the top, but we're supposed to clearly realize that this is over the top. We see the interactions. There's different kind of social levels and classes going on in the story. There's the townspeople, the peasants, the villagers. But then there are also some knights who are hanging around at the castle with von Stauffen, and among themselves, they kind of quarrel and bicker. And Fenstafel is very concerned with his status. He's very proud, and he doesn't want them to think that, you know, he's not working the peasants hard enough. He doesn't like them laughing at him because they think it's a little strange. He built this castle way out of the way, far away from everything else. And so he's really kind of trying to show the rest of them that I'm the boss, I'm in charge. I'm going to make them do this other thing. And even once they start and it's clear to everybody that this is just impossible, he is not going to back down.

[John J. Miller]

The task is impossible. They simply cannot do it. The demand is absurd. Then someone shows up. They have a visitor. Who is this?

[Peter Milander]

Well, after the first couple of days of work, everything's going badly, and they are lamenting on their way home. They stop at night in the forest, just crying. They're in tears, they're sobbing. They don't know what to do. They don't know how they could possibly manage this. And suddenly a fellow shows up out of the blue that they don't know. He is Dr. Cast as a huntsman in green, although he has dark skin and a bright red feather dancing up and down on his cap, that a reddish beard that moves around when he talks. And he. He offers to hear their story, asks why they're so upset. Why are they lamenting? At first they don't really want to tell him, but he says, come on, folks, look, somebody shows up and. And offers to help you. Who knows, maybe I can give you a hand if you tell me what's wrong.

[John J. Miller]

He's a striking figure, and he reminded me of the Green Knight from Sir Gawain in the Green Knight. This figure who shows up and starts making bold pronouncements and so on. This is not just an ordinary guy dressed oddly. He's something else, isn't he?

[Peter Milander]

He is, absolutely. Which becomes clear to them when he offers to help them. So he offers them a bargain. After they tell him what the problem is, he says, well, look, I have a team of horses that can carry those trees up the mountain for you. If you bring them and put them down here, I will take them the rest of the way and plant them. I might need something in return. And they ask him, well, okay, what are the terms of the bargain? This sounds like it could be a deal. Maybe you can negotiate with this fellow. And it turns out that what he wants in return is an unbaptized child. It's not good news, right? Never good to be asked for an unbaptized child. And then they realize who he is, and of course, he is the devil. And they run away in terror, not wanting to strike that particular deal.

[John J. Miller]

But there's one person who does agree to meet the huntsman. Who is she?

[Peter Milander]

Her name is Christine. We're told that she's kind of an outsider in the village. She has come from Germany, so she's a foreigner, right, and she's married in. But she's not really accepted. It's clear that the other women in the village don't like her. She's very strong willed, she's a powerful personality. She's always criticizing the men for not working hard enough and the women for being weak. And she goes back to meet this green Hun and has a private conversation with him and she kind of, as they talk, thinks, maybe this is somebody I can do business with, maybe even it's somebody I could trick. And she thinks most men are not that smart. You can trick them. She's tricked other ones. You could trick this guy too. And so she cuts a deal. She says, well yeah, I don't have a baby right now. There's not one being born. But when the first one comes along, yes, sure, we could hand that one over to you when the time arises.

[John J. Miller]

Now does she know at this point she's making a deal with the devil? Because that's what she's doing. She is she fully aware of, of, of that fact?

[Peter Milander]

I think it's a little ambiguous. I think that she is kind of aware on one level and kidding herself on another level. So it's pretty clear when the villagers all scatter when they've been asked the unbaptized kid at that first conversation that they think this is the devil, this is not some ordinary huntsman. She's a little more skeptical. But it's partly her pride at play, right? Partly her sense, I cannot wit this guy. And so when she says, yeah, when the first child comes along, we'll give it over, she's thinking, we're not gonna, right, we'll find, we'll find a way to avoid it. But he does insist that she seal the deal. And she thinks he's gonna ask for her to sign him blood or something. But it's not quite that dramatic, at least not yet. He plants a kiss on her cheek and that is how he signs this bargain.

[John J. Miller]

But it's not an ordinary kiss, is it?

[Peter Milander]

It's not an ordinary kiss at all, no. It starts to bother her after the first child is born. So there is a child born about a month later, not too long.

[John J. Miller]

And so the kiss leaves a mark. It actually it initially it leaves just.

[Peter Milander]

A tiny little dot. We're told there's nothing much to see at first. But after the first child is born, after a month, then the villagers do hatch a scheme. Christine talks them into trying to fool this huntsman and cheat him of the bargain. They get the village priest to come down, he carries the sacrament, he brings holy water, he scatters it around the house. And as soon as the baby's born, he baptizes it in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, which rescues it from the clutches of the Huntsman.

[John J. Miller]

Because now the baby is baptized and what the Huntsman wanted, we'll recall, is an unbaptized child. So this kid escapes the huntsman. The devil has kept up his side of the bargain though, hasn't he? He does the job absolutely.

[Peter Milander]

He had, he had delivered, the huntsman had planted those hundred beeches. Nobody looking on is quite sure how it's happened. Nobody sees them planted. There's a couple of knights from the castle who were kind of surprised and try to spy one night to see what happens, that are found dead the next morning. So nobody knows. But he kept it, he kept up. And now the villagers are going to try to cheat him out of this baby.

[John J. Miller]

And by the terms of the deal, they really do need to provide an unbaptized child. That is the deal.

[Peter Milander]

Absolutely. They owe him.

[John J. Miller]

Okay, what happens then? Christine continues to try to outsmart the devil. Is she able to pull it off?

[Peter Milander]

Well, just for a little while. She pulls it off. At first there's really three efforts that they go through, right? There's a baby that's born, the priest baptize, rescued. This mark on Christine's cheek that was just a tiny dot begins to grow and it itches and it burns her. She feels like her face is on fire and it starts to look like a spider growing in her cheek. Then a second child is born and they work the same scheme, only this time things go very badly indeed. After the child is baptized, Christine's face almost kind of explodes in agony. She runs out of the house screaming, drops to the ground and this growth, this spider like growth on her cheek bursts open and hundreds of little black spiders come pouring out, crawling all over the town, killing the livestock and the cattle.

[John J. Miller]

And now we're into full on weirdness with this, with this story. You know, we've read in literature deals with the devil. We've seen characters like the Huntsman. This is striking and weird what happens with this scene. It's almost like the birth scene in the original Alien movie except it's a bunch of black spiders bursting from Christine's cheek.

[Peter Milander]

Yeah, it's very weird and very creepy and scary and I think Godhelp really kind of, he keeps heightening the Scare the terror element of this as he goes along. Because first these spiders, they're just going around killing the livestock. And that's bad enough. Of course, it's the livelihood of these people.

[John J. Miller]

The spiders aren't going and catching insects and pests and so forth. They're killing the beasts.

[Peter Milander]

That's right. So they're taking out the source of income and livelihood. The animals are dying, but not yet people. Right after this second child, it's not people who are being killed. The growth on Christine's cheek kind of subsides, but there's another child gonna be born. And this time the villagers get together trying to figure out exactly. They know that Christine has cut a deal. They don't actually know about the kiss. She hadn't told anybody about the kiss. And now she tells him about the kiss. The whole kind of terms of the bargain. And as they debate and it's actually, I think one of the more interesting and kind of chilling scary scenes in the book because it's a kind of parody of Swiss township direct democracy in action. The villagers get together and discuss what are they going to do? And without anybody ever really quite exactly coming out and saying, let's sacrifice the child, they end up agreeing to sacrifice the child. And so they hatch a plan to be sure that when this child is born, the priest will not show up on time and Christine herself will hand it over to the huntsman in their defense.

[John J. Miller]

In a sense, their community is under real threat. These spiders are destroying it and they've got to do something. You'd kind of like them to protect the baby a little more than they, than they do. But they're, they are in a real mess here and they've got to do something. What is the author then telling us about politics in this moment? Because this is a political decision they're making to forfeit a baby to the devil.

[Peter Milander]

It is, and I do think it's supposed to for a Swiss reader, I think that the idea of we talk about New England style town hall democracy. But of course the Swiss are known for this local level township popular democracy where you get together and you raise your hands and vote. And so I think a reader would think about that would have that resonance in the background. And for me at least one of the really interesting things makes this still an intriguing book to read is the way that Gotthelf describes that conversation. He says they spoke in broken phrases. A few words here, a few words there. Nobody ever really came out and said what they meant, but they all know where it ends. Up. So it's this wonderful picture of people who don't really have the courage to stand up their convictions, who will go along without speaking out, who will kind of put themselves in a situation where they have an excuse ready at hand to explain. Well, I never. I never really came out and said we should kill the child. Right. But they all know what's going to happen, so they're all kind of complicit, even though they've all got, what, plausible deniability or something like that.

[John J. Miller]

And remember, this story is being told to us from this grandfather figure in the frame narrative. So he's telling us this tale, and it begins with the cruel lord. What we're not seeing are the heroic villagers. Right? We almost expect that these are cowardly villagers. They're almost just as bad as the cruel lord in their way.

[Peter Milander]

They are. And I think it's one of the really important things to kind of watch as you're reading is the way the dynamics we saw among those quarreling, bickering, cruel, proud lords at the beginning, at the one level of society, now reappear in a little different form among the villagers. So they're not really any better. Now, we. We do have a couple of heroic figures in the story, but by and large, the townspeople are not any more impressive than the lords. They just have less power.

[John J. Miller]

Okay, so the strangeness is going to continue. They come up with this idea, what happens next with this third child, this agreement? This story continues to get strange.

[Peter Milander]

Yeah, it gets even stranger. The third child. The time comes, the third child is going to be born. The mother goes into labor. And so the plan kind of gets put into action. The father is supposed to go get the priest, but kind of dallies along the way. So even the father is in cahoots. He's walking slowly, conveniently slowly, so the priest won't get there on time. Christine is ready to grab the child when it's born. The father does kind of find the priest and sort of tell him what's going on and says, ah, there's no rush, no hurry. These births always take a long time with my wife. But finally the priest decides he can't risk waiting any longer, and he rushes down toward the village. And at exactly the same moment, he sees Christine coming from the village with this baby in her arms. And he sees the green huntsman standing there. They're converging from opposite ends, and he rushes in between and holds up the cross and sprinkles the holy water toward the huntsman. The huntsman disappears But Christine falls to the ground. And now this growth again begins to swell and increase in size, while Christine herself shrivels up and she just turns into a giant black spider, which then goes on to work another round of destruction and devastation, this time going after the humans and not just the cattle.

[John J. Miller]

And the title of the book, of course, is the Black Spider. Here it is. It's not a swarm of spiders. It's one big black spider. What does it do?

[Peter Milander]

It shows up all over the place, unpredictably, at strange moments in strange places. It'll suddenly drop from the ceiling or pop out of the grass. If you're out in the field, it runs over your feet and they turn black and you die. It lands on your head and you feel burning inside your head. It gets the lords in the castle. It gets the peasants in the village. It is running rampant, basically. And there is no knowing where it will show up next, whom it will kill next. People try to run away. It sort of teases them, even showing up in front of them. And then they turn and run someplace else. And there it is again. It's like a bad nightmare, right where you've got somebody that you can't get away from. Everywhere you turn, there it is.

[John J. Miller]

Do the villagers overcome it wouldn't be.

[Peter Milander]

Quite right to say the villagers in the plural. But there is one villager who manages to overcome it. The woman, the mother who gave birth to this third child. She has two other young children with her, and she's worried about them. And she's in the house trying to protect them and praying for them. And she is sort of the exception to the general cowardice and folly of the villagers. She has maintained her Christian faith. As we talked at the very beginning. This is an obviously Christian book from the start. Godhelp was, in fact, a pastor. So not maybe surprising that he would have these themes in his work. She's maintained her faith, she's praying. She's trying to steel herself to protect her children. She develops this idea that although anybody who touches the spider will die, maybe there's a way to trap the spider. And so she takes a wooden post and hollows out one end of it and then has a wooden peg that she carves that would fit the hole in the post. And one night, the spider shows up. She sort of drowsy and dozes and wakes and sees it crawling across the bedclothes to her young son. She reaches out and grabs it. Her arm feels as if it's on fire and burning, but she manages to stuff it into this hole in the wooden post, pound in the peg and trap it there. And she dies. So she rescues her children at the cost of her life as a sacrifice going on there. But she does trap the spider. And of course, at that point we also realize that that wooden post that the people in the initial scene that the celebration of the baptism had asked about in this house is the same post that's now by the window where they are sitting, which kind of gives them the heebie jeebies.

[John J. Miller]

And now we have an interlude in the story. We're most of the way through the story at this point. It's a. It's a novella, as you say. The edition I'm using is a little more than 100 pages. You can read this pretty quickly. Take a couple of hours, but you can read it pretty quickly. We're most of the way through at this point. And it feels like the story could end right now. They. They got the spider trap. We have our theme of sacrifice. It's all there, but we're not done. What happens next?

[Peter Milander]

Yeah. So the grandfather is encouraged to go on with the story. There's more to tell the people. It's kind of funny. The villagers, none of them who are too eager to walk home in the dark at this point, having heard this story about the spider, they're also not too eager to go back inside this house with the window post there with the spider in it. But the grandfather keeps telling the story. What he says. I don't think we need to go into too much detail on it because it's very similar to what happened before. But he says after that first episode with the spider, people were so grateful that it had been trapped. They're grateful to have been saved and they sort of improve their behavior, right? Turn over a new leaf. So they become much more faithful, much more holy again, much more public spirited, et cetera, all of those things. But over time, that fades. And so a couple of centuries later, we're told that this house has still been existence. The post has been there all this time. They deliberately kept it there and not rebuilt it so they'd be remembering what had happened. But the generations start to deteriorate. And so at one point we get another family where there is one kind of righteous figure. It's the father. And then a couple of people who are vain and proud and they want to build a new house. They don't care about the spider. There's a bunch of servants who are also kind of vain and proud and conceited. And one of Those servants finally trying to impress the others and scare the others, removes the pig, lets the spider loose. And so we have another episode where it runs rampant until finally that one kind of holy Father who had maintained the faith, he does similarly sacrifice himself and once more trap it inside the post. So we get a kind of a shorter repeat of that earlier story.

[John J. Miller]

It's kind of an echo of the earlier one. I thought the story was complete at the end of the grandfather's first tale, before this interlude. And then this. This second part. What is the purpose of the second part? Is it. Is it important to the overall book?

[Peter Milander]

Yeah, I think that's a good question, John. I mean, it's kind of one of the tough questions. You've got this nice framed episode and this sort of long story in the middle, and then suddenly you get a second take, which you don't really expect. But I do think it adds something to the book. Maybe a couple of things that it does. I think it sort of spreads out the message of the book both in time and in space or in maybe socioeconomic class. So the first one, it's set way back in the past. We're back in the medieval period. And you might read that, or if you're in the group of people celebrating the baptism, listen to that and think, this is an old legend. This is kind of back in the midst of time. This happened long ago. This doesn't happen anymore. But the second version is moving us closer to the present. So it kind of reminds us that what happened once not only can happen again, but has happened again, could happen again now. I'm always reminded a little bit of sort of the people of Israel, right, who are kind of backsliding all the time and have to be kind of brought back into line. And it happens again and the same thing. So I think chronologically it makes a little more alive for us. Doesn't feel just so much like it's an old story. But the other thing that I think is really important is that it happens at a different social class, right? So that first one, we see the feudal lords, the knights kind of oppressing the villagers. But now the villagers themselves have taken the place of those feudal knights. They're the ones. We don't have feudal knights anymore. By now, they're all gone, right? So the villagers, it's like the middle class, the property owners, the family owners, and they've got their servants who are sort of the lowest rung of society. And we see these same motives and vanity and greed and self interest infect Them as well. So if you thought that maybe it was just long ago in the past, or if you thought maybe it was just the Lords or some segment of society, God help us, kind of saying, you know, you're wrong. It can happen anywhere, anytime, any place, any category of people. So I think the second version kind of universalizes the message of the first one.

[John J. Miller]

So in this story we've got a strange huntsman, a deal with the devil, violence, spiders bursting out of cheeks, a person who turns into a spider, but also messages about sacrifice, maybe statesmanship, community and so forth. What's the point of the book? What makes this rise above, say, a run of the mill horror movie?

[Peter Milander]

Maybe a few different things, really. I think the way that Gothilf does expose not just the obvious tyranny of the Lord, but also these more subtle forms of self interest and cowardice among the villagers, this starts to make it more than just your run of the mill story. And I think Gotthel, surely I say he's a pastor, he is interested in writing stories that kind of remind his readers of the way they ought to lead their life. By the time we get to the end of the book, we're reminded that where belief dwells, the spider may not stir, neither by day nor by night. And so Gothelf really wants to kind of awaken in us a lively awareness of all the ways we can go wrong and remind us at the same time that God is the place we should turn to help us walk the narrow path and to maintain those virtues in both our personal and our communal lives.

[John J. Miller]

Is this horror literature or maybe the sub, sub genre of Christian horror literature?

[Peter Milander]

I hesitate just to give it that label. I think it's perfectly fair to call it a horror story in all kinds of ways. It obviously is. It feels like you're plugging it a little bit into a genre category, if you call it that. And I think this rises ab just sort of the genre fiction level. This is world literature, this is first class stuff. But sure, there are themes of horror there. And I think, you know, a horror story, at least the way Gothelf works it, the horror is to remind us something, right? So it's kind of like if you go to church and you hear the law preached, you're reminded of the ways you fall short and are condemned. But then the gospel comes back in and reminds you that you're also redeemed and saved. And something like that is at work here, right? We got the horrors of our condition that we should be reminded of. But Gothel was not just trying to tell a scary story. It's also supposed to remind us of how we can do better and that there is somebody who's looking out for us.

[John J. Miller]

The Black Spider was written in German. Do you have a preferred translation or edition for those of us who want to read it in English?

[Peter Milander]

Yeah, I like the one that I think you were quoting from before. There's a pretty recent translation by Susan Bernofsky. It's published by nyrb, New York Review of Books. There are a couple of older ones, but I think this is a very readable one in contemporary English and it works pretty well.

[John J. Miller]

The name we've been using for this author is a pen name. Who is the real author behind the Black Spider? Who is this guy?

[Peter Milander]

So Gothelf. His real name was Albert Bitsius. He was a Pastor, born in 1797, died in 1854. Lived his entire life really very close to the Swiss capital of Bern in what would be called the Emmental, mostly, if your listeners know about Emmentaler cheese. Right, Swiss cheese, that's where it comes from. That's where we are. He doesn't start writing until he's about 40 years of age, but he has his parish, just a small town. You can go still see the church he's in. I've been to the church where he preached. In fact, one time I was in there, nobody's around, so I just kind of quickly slipped up into the pulpit for a minute so I could say I stood in the pulpit where God help would have preached. But yeah, he's a pastor. He would have overseen a number of local schools and about 40 years of age. He starts writing, only writes for about 15 years, but produces all this work in that time and is active, engaged in political debates of his time. One of the things that got me interested in him is this fact about him that. So my training is political science, even though I'm working in these literary texts. And he is responding in all kind of ways in his work to issues of the day, ideals coming out of the French Revolution, things like that. So there's a lot going on. It's this kind of. I think this is wonderful contrast sort of between this person you would think would be very parochial, right, this Bernese Swiss pastor there in the countryside. It's a small little town, a small parish who more or less never leaves except for a little study abroad trip to Germany when he's a student there his whole life. But he has these stories that describe Swiss peasant village life in ways that are completely universal. You can see the same factors at work in life really anywhere, anytime, any place.

[John J. Miller]

You say he's a well known German writer, he's a part of their German literary tradition. He's virtually unknown in the United States. Why have we not heard more about this guy?

[Peter Milander]

Well, there's a couple of reasons for that. And really I found him by accident myself. Kind of a good little anecdote. Just I discovered him. I suppose my wife could have told me about him. My German wife would have known about him from her education. But I was reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's letters and Papers from prison and he talked about all the stuff he reads in prison. There's about a dozen references to Godhof and they're usually short but all very positive. And that kind of got me interested. But why he's not noted. Very little of his work is translated. And I would say two basic reasons for that. One is just sort of practical. He uses a fair amount of Swiss German in his texts. Now I don't know what that means to people, but Swiss German is significantly different from German German, it's actually not a written language at all. It's a spoken language. But you know, German from Germany just plopped down in the streets of Switzerland or a little town in the. In the Emmental wouldn't necessarily understand what people were saying. And Gladow fairly liberally sprinkles his work with that. So it's kind of. It actually gives it a certain kind of vigorous quality. But it's a challenge for a translator. The other reason is a little more substantive. Godhill, I say he was very interested in political debates. He was commenting on them very often. His early novels could be called novels of social reform. In fact, they're about care of poor and orphan children, about the education system, about rural alcoholism. He's kind of a reformer. But as the first half of the 19th century extends the kind of liberal party that he was affiliated with becomes more and more radical. And Gothel kind of splits off from them to some extent and becomes critical of that. And you could imagine kind of like in the United States today, we have this idea that maybe there are some cosmopolitan elites who scorn fly over a country. Well, some similar dynamic. The people who are shaping opinions which we kind of look on Godhel as a guy of the past, right? He has, hasn't kept up with the flow of progressive opinion. He sort of got stuck and he's complaining about us. And so people kind of turn on him a little bit and think that maybe he is outdated and not not with it. And so I think he kind of gets a bad rap. People tend to describe him later in life as reactionary. I think that's just wrong. I think he. He basically stays consistent. It's kind of a case of I didn't leave the party, the party left me. While others around him are radicalizing. But I think that, that he kind of gets tarred with that, with that reputation. And that's part of the reason also why I think he hasn't gotten quite the attention he deserves.

[John J. Miller]

You've called him in your academic writings a quote, conservative, liberal, unquote, which sounds like, I don't know, a contradiction in terms. What do you mean by that? And is the Black Spider a conservative liberal book? Do you want to connect that term with this, with this work?

[Peter Milander]

So what I mean by that, first, I think there are some figures, maybe especially in the 19th century, but already starting in the late 18th century, that I would use that label for. And for me, maybe the two best examples would be somebody like Edmund Burke or Alexis de Tocqueville. These are figures who see good, positive things in modern liberal democracy and modernity in markets, everything that comes with the modern world. They are of the modern world and prepared to embrace it in important ways. But at the same time they're critics and they see problems with it. And so something like that is going on with Godhealth as well. As I say, he starts off as a reformer. He's embracing what would sound like very familiar causes to us. Care of the poor, care of children, education reform. Exactly the things you'd expect a liberal reformer to be standing for. But then he starts to worry, especially as the kind of radical forces turn more and more aggressively secular. Whereas he would have thought there was an alliance between him as a Christian reformer and these progressive liberals, now it doesn't look like that anymore. So he's kind of caught in between two stools, much the way Burke is a reforming Whig who's a defender of liberty and then gets kind of cast after the French Revolution as a Tory. Or Tocqueville comes to America and sees all these positive features of democracy, but also is worried about ways it could go wrong. That's how I read Gothelf as well. The Black Spider. Does it connect up with that? Maybe not as obviously as some of his other works. It has the advantage for your listeners, of course, that it's available in English, which is no small advantage for most of us. But I do think, at least with that, to some of the things we mentioned before, particularly the way. The way the villagers debate sounds like a town hall meeting. We can kind of see Gothelf navigating in this space, trying to understand what might be positive about village life, where there might be resources to draw upon in some of these more heroic characters, but also the ways in which that can go wrong if we're not attentive to the dangers built in.

[John J. Miller]

Final question, what is the case for reading the Black spider, published in 1842? What's the case for reading it now in the 2020?

[Peter Milander]

Yeah, well, I think just apart from the fact that it's a great read, it's a fun book, it'll carry along, it's fast paced. But I really think Gotthelf has this knack for exposing all of the subtle ways that people go wrong and do things wrong. There's a wonderful phrase. There's a Swiss literary scholar and critic, retired now, University of Zurich, Peter von Maat, Swiss public intellectual, who in an essay about Gotthel, called him the diagnostica unzre beauxit, the diagnostician of our wickedness. And he has this remarkable eye for seeing the ways in which we kind of hide the truth. Like that father who dilly dallys on his way to the priest, right? And who can therefore say, well, I didn't do anything. I was going for the priest after all. But he's going wrong. Like those villagers who don't come out and say we should sacrifice a child, but are happy to go along with it. And it just seems to me that even today, in a polarized political sphere, in a political culture where we worry a lot about whether things are going right or on the wrong track, an author who can kind of help us take that good hard look at ourselves and ask us whether we are sticking to the truth and willing to speak honestly is still worth reading.

[John J. Miller]

Peter Milander thanks so much for joining us and telling us all about the Black Spider by Jeremias Gottel.

[Peter Milander]

Thank you, John. It's great to be here. I appreciate doing the show.

[John J. Miller]

You've just listened to the Great Books Podcast, a production of National Review. Please subscribe to the Great Books Podcast and leave reviews of the show that helps us keep this podcast going. Send me your ideas for future episodes. You can reach me through our [e-mail] on Twitter. My handle is at hey Miller. And last of all, special thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week with a new episode of the Great Books Podcast.