Carnival in Hell: Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus

 

 Numbers in brackets refer to endnotes.  Translations of excerpts are my own; the German is provided in endnotes. 

 

 

     Grimmelshausen’s picaresque novel, Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus, like Goya’s engravings of scenes during the Peninsular War, provides a vivid picture of the disasters of war. Set during the Thirty Year’s War, one of the most destructive conflicts in history, in which the population of German lands was reduced by two-thirds through violence, disease, and starvation, the narration is full of blood, unrestrained cruelty, and sadism. Like Brecht’s play Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder which borrows the era and tropes on one of Grimmelshausen’s characters from a sequel to Simplicissimus, the material is grim and the work is unapologetically anti-war, though the main character, like workers throughout history, is willing to enlist in one army after another.  Yet the tone of this often violent narrative is paradoxically profoundly comic in the profound Rabelaisian vein Bakhtin called carnivalistic.

     The depredations of war on the German countryside are depicted in frightful detail. Tortures and peculiar sexual humiliation like kissing the victor’s anus are described [1] and the reader learns of the chaos and horrors of battle [2].  The verses that accompany the fascinating symbolic frontispiece of the book declare that the author’s purpose is to encourage readers to “abandon folly and live in peace” [3].  By the author’s estimation the human race is a bestial lot: “People are in  part more swinish than hogs, more fierce than lion, more lecherous than goats, more sly than foxes, more voracious than wolves, more foolish than apes, more poisonous than snakes and toads, yet all alike eat human food and only through their shape can they be distinguished from beasts.” [4]

     Human rapaciousness is evident not only in  the barbaric conduct of war; the entire structure of feudal society is shown to be profoundly exploitative.  Though many aspects of Grimmelshausen’s own background are obscure, he cannot be said to have had a privileged upbringing.  Orphaned at an early age, he either enlisted or was conscripted into a Hessian military unit while still a child.   While he later held various administrative positions of local importance under noble lords, his novel contains numerous critiques of the feudal order.  Though the utopia described by Jupiter is infected with German chauvinism, it nonetheless suggests the possibility of a society free from economic or religious discord.  Jupiter calls for an end to “corvées, watches, contributions, assessments, wars, or any other burdens on the people” as well as ending conflict among the Christian sects [5]. 

     Grimmelshausen questions the socio-economic hierarchy at the very outset, confusing categories by maintaining that Simplicissimus’ father was in a way like a monarch, having a palace (his home), lackeys (sheep and goats), arms (pitchforks and spades), a mode of life he calls “truly noble” [6].  He asks what title Adam had boasted [7], rather as John Ball three hundred years earlier had posed the question, “When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?”  This radical point of view simmers throughout the story.  At other points, to note only a few examples, Simplicissimus criticizes the practice of making military officers only of aristocrats, notes that only the poor are punished for their crimes, and laments that people are judged less by their own characters than by the opinions of their superiors [8].   When Simplicissimus dreams, he thinks of society as a tree with the workers, the only productive ones, as its roots.  

But the root was made up of people who count for little, like craftsmen, day laborers, mostly farmers and that sort, who nevertheless gave the tree its strength, and again rebuilt it when it lost some from time to time; indeed, they made up for the loss of fallen leaves from their own resources, to their own even greater ruin; besides, they sighed over those who sat on the tree [soldiers[, and not unjustly, for the entire burden of the tree rested on them, pressing them so much that all the money from their pouches, even from behind seven locks, slipped away.  [9]

     Who is the character who can so critically assess his own superiors?  At times he is a court jester, the figure considered traditionally to enjoy a particular privilege of speaking truth to power [10].  In this role he is able to “uncover all follies and criticize all vanities, for which role my position at the time suited admirably.” [11]  He is identified as a fool simply because he tells the truth [12]; his job is to “delicately point out their faults to this person and that” [13].

     Simplicissimus’ position as a “fool,” is expressed as well by his being called a calf (cf. the English term mooncalf) and by his display (like Midas, Apuleius, and Bottom) of asses’ ears.  While his lack of experience makes him in some ways ludicrous, it also signifies his purity.  He is like the young Parsifal, a genuine naïf, ignorant of the ways of the world and thus able to react in a fresh and spontaneous way [14].  His childhood is a sort of Eden, while the world around him is decidedly fallen. 

     The vogue for picaresque novels had been initiated with Lazarillo de Torres (1554) and Simplicissimus clearly belongs to the genre.  Considered in this light, the narrative is an amusing account of a trickster figure.  The bleak view of the world of unpredictable extreme violence is offset by the hero’s survival, generally through cunning means.  The reader can enjoy his adventures, since, no matter how often he falls, he always bounces back for another round.  As a trickster, he generally succeeds by means of outwitting his antagonists. 

     Though he had at first been described as a tabula rasa [15], he becomes something close to a culture hero with his inventions and innovations [16].  He resorts to trickery to get the best of a besieged city, a landlord, and his fellow soldiers [17].  Further, though he began knowing nothing whatever of God, he becomes something of a divine instrument.  His initial instruction by the pious hermit, his friendship with Herzbruder who is in a way his spiritual double, and his eventual retirement to the contemplative life at the end mark the foundation of his values in Christianity.  With his “clear conscience and sincerely pious mind”, he is shocked at the sinfulness of everyone around him, many of whom make idols of money  or food. He seems, in fact, to some “an oracle or the voice of God “ [18].  Overlaid atop the folkloric elements of Simplicissimus’ character is a strange sort of hagiography, in which the main character’s early misdeeds are followed by a conversion experience [19] and at the end as ascetic a hymn as one might imagine taking leave of the world [20].  Here Simplicissimus reminds the reader of other fables of spiritual growth such as Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West, Langland’s Piers Plowman, or Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

     And yet, it is difficult to take this old confidence man at his word.  He has earlier demonstrated such élan vital, such ebullience, rivalling the comically swollen appetites of Gargantua and Pantagruel.  Grimmelshausen’s affirmation of things as they are is evident in his style.  The picaresque template itself is bouyant, comic, optimistic.  The book mingles genres as though a single model would be too restrictive including stories within stories, sometimes verses (as in Bk. I, ch. iii) or a dialogue (Bk. I, ch. vii).  Often the language boils over in a rich plentitude, as when Simplicissimus lists the daily round of activities at his Edenic childhood home (Bk I, ch xi) or when he catalogues a long paragraph of examples of memory (Bk. II, ch. viii) or the much longer learned catalogue of heroes of humanity (Bk. II, ch. x).  Sudden rhetorical effusions belly out at times, such as when he describes a scene of gambling in a rich manner that recalls the paintings of Pieter Breughel the Elder.  The passage is lengthy, but it represents a host of similar pyrotechnic displays of language throughout the book.

 

Quite a few were missing, a number did win, only to squander what they got.  Because of that some cured and thundered.  Consequently some were cursing; some cheated , some received sword-blows.  Hence the winner laughed and other bettors ground their teeth.  Some sold their clothes and anything else they cherished, while others won back their money.  Some wanted honest dice while others wanted loaded ones in the game and introduced them surreptitiously.   Others then tossed them away, smashed them, tore them apart with their teeth and tore others’ coats from their shoulders.  Among the loaded dice were some from the Netherlands which one had to roll in a looping motion.  These had such pointed backs like the skinny donkeys the soldiers rode that they rolled fives and sixes.  Others were from the highlands, the sort that one had to toss from a Bavarian height, others from Hirschhorn, mad heavy on the top and light on the bottom, while others were filled with quicksilver or lead, yet others with trimmings of hair or with sponges, chaff, or coal.  While some had pointed corners, others were rounded; some were like long cobs while others resembled broad tortoises.  Every one of these varieties was made for nothing but cheating.  T hey did the very thing they ere made to do.  One could equally well rock or gently let them slide.  It didn’t help with knots,  not to speak of two fives or two sixes or, on the other hand, two ones or two twos.  With these scoundrels they pinched, plotted, and stole each other’s money, which they might well have robbed or at any rate risked life and limb or otherwise gained through hard effort and work.

 

     While this passage is more than ordinarily sustained, such effusions occur throughout [21] Simplicissimus and the author’s poetry can (for instance in his best-known lyric “Komm, Trost der Nacht”) sound almost mystical.  The unmistakable tone is one of acceptance and affirmation of a monstrously flawed world.  If the final message of Rabelais is the motto of the Abbey of Thélème “Do as thou wouldst,” Simplicissimus’ might be “struggle but celebrate.”  Grimmelshausen recognizes the suffering inherent in life which people then multiply with added cruelty absent in nature, and yet his hero jumps in whole-heartedly, eager to play the game and suffer the blows and witness all the absurdity of human behavior with a mordantly ironic eye when the scene is too dreadful to laugh out loud.  Others might paint a rosier view; unfortunately, it is difficult to imagine a truer.

 

  

 

1.  Bk. I, Ch. xiv.  See also the tortures for dissenters in even Jupiter’s utopia, Bk. III, ch. v.

2.  Bk. I, Ch. xxvii.

3.  “Entferne der Torheit und Lebe in  Ruh.”  The artist is unknown. 

4.  “Wie teils Menschen säuischer als Schwein, grimmiger als Löwen, geiler als Böck, neidiger als Hund, unbändiger als Pferd, gröber als Esel, versoffener als Rinder, listiger als Füchs, gefräßiger als Wölf, närrischer als Affen, und giftiger als Schlangen und Kröten waren, welche dennoch allesamt menschlicher Nahrung genossen und nur durch die Gestalt von den Tieren unterschieden waren.”  Bk. II, ch. 7.

5.  “Daß man von keinem Fronen, Wachen, Kontribuieren, Geldgeben, Kriegen noch einziger Beschwerung beim Volk mehr Wissen.”  Bk. III, ch. iv.  Bk. II, ch. v describes the plan to reconcile divided Christianity.  The racial component here (the primacy of Germany and the recognition of  England, Sweden, and Denmark as essentially Germanic) is disturbing. 

6.  “Sehr adelig.”  Bk. I, ch. i.

7.  “[Er] fragte, wie man der Menschen ersten Vater tituliert hätte?”  Bk. II, ch. x.

8.  Bk. I, ch. xvii; Bk. IV, ch. xiii, and Bk. II, ch. ii.

9.  (Bk. I, ch.  xv)  “Die Wurzel aber war von ungültigen Leuten, als Handwerkern, Taglöhnern, mehrenteils Bauren und dergleichen, welche nichtsdestoweniger dem Baum seine Kraft verliehen, und wieder von neuem mitteilten, wenn er solche zuzeiten verlor; ja sie ersetzten den Mangel der abgefallenen Blätter aus den ihrigen, zu ihrem eigenen noch größeren Verderben; benebens seufzeten sie über diejenigen, so auf dem Baum saßen, und zwar nicht unbillig, denn die ganze Last des Baums lag auf ihnen, und drückte sie dermaßen, daß ihnen alles Geld aus den Beuteln, ja hinter sieben Schlössern hervorging.”

10.  This role is referred to in Bk. II, ch. iv; Bk. III, ch. xi, and Bk. III, ch. xiv.

11.  “Alle Torheiten zu bereden und alle Eitelkeiten zu strafen, wozu sich denn mein damaliger Stand trefflich schickte.”  Bk. II, ch. x.

12.  “My lord himself said, ‘I toom you for a fool, since you spoke the truth so unashamedly.”  (Mein Herr selbst sagte: »Ich halte ihn für einen Narrn, weil er jedem die Wahrheit so ungescheut sagt.).  Bk. II, ch. xiii.

13.  “Dem einen und dem andern seine Mängel artlich verweisen möchte.”  Bk. II, ch. xiv.

14.  Cf. representations  of the infant Jesus, Jung’s “wise child,” etc.

15.  “Einer leeren ohnbeschriebenen Tafel.” Bk. I, ch. ix.

16.  Some of his marvelous inventions re described in Bk. III, ch. i.  He is an expert at making powder and artillery pieces in Bk. V, ch xxii.

17.  See Bk. III, ch. ix for the duel and siege, Bk. III, ch. xxiv for landlord, Bk. IV, ch. x for his comrades-in-arms. 

18.  “Ein reines Gewissen und aufrichtig frommes Gemüt.”  Bk. I, ch. xxiv.  “Ein Orakel oder Warnung Gottes.”  Bk. II, ch. xiii.

19.  Here in Bk. V, ch. ii., though Simplicissimus had seemed to be religious in earlier scenes. 

20.  “Etliche fehlten; etliche gewannen, etliche verspielten: derowegen auch etliche fluchten, etliche donnerten; etliche betrogen und andere wurden besäbelt. Dahero lachten die Gewinner, und die Verspieler bissen die Zähn aufeinander; teils verkauften Kleider und was sie sonst lieb hatten, andere aber gewinneten ihnen das Geld wieder ab; etliche begehrten redliche Würfel, andere hingegen wünschten falsche auf den Platz und führten solche unvermerkt ein, die aber andere wieder hinwegwarfen, zerschlugen, mit Zähnen zerrissen und den Scholderern die Mäntel zerrissen. Unter den falschen Würfeln befanden sich Niederländer, welche man schleifend hineinrollen mußte, diese hatten so spitzige Rücken, darauf sie die Fünfer und Sechser trugen, als wie die mageren Esel darauf man die Soldaten setzt. Andere waren oberländisch, denselben mußte man die bayrische Höhe geben, wenn man werfen wollte: etliche waren von Hirschhorn, leicht oben und schwer unten gemacht: andere waren mit Quecksilber oder Blei und aber andere mit zerschnittenen Haaren, Schwämmen, Spreu und Kohlen gefüttert; etliche hatten spitzige Eck, an andern waren solche gar hinweggeschliffen; teils waren lange Kolben, und teils sahen aus wie breite Schildkrotten. Und alle diese Gattungen waren auf nichts anders als auf Betrug verfertigt, sie taten dasjenige, wozu sie gemacht waren, man mochte sie gleich wippen oder sanft schleichen lassen, da half kein Knüpfens, geschweige jetzt derer, die entweder zween Fünfer oder zween Sechser und im Gegenteil entweder zwei Eß oder zwei Daus hatten: Mit diesen Schelmenbeinern zwackten, laureten und stahlen sie einander ihr Geld ab, welches sie vielleicht auch geraubt oder wenigst mit Leib- und Lebensgefahr oder sonst saurer Mühe und Arbeit erobert hatten.”  Bk. V, ch. xiv.

21.  See, for instance, the description of the dinner in Bk. I, ch. xxix or the following list of drinkers’ activities in Bk. I, ch. xxx.