But Golem of Gustav Meyrink is a creature that comes in dreams. “Rabbi Löw, well versed in all of the arts and sciences, especially in the Kabbalah, had fashioned for himself one such servant out of clay, placed in his mouth the magic formula, and thereby brought him to life”. Perhaps the most memorable figure in the story is the city of Prague itself, recognisable through its landmarks such as the Street of the Alchemists and the Castle. The Golem, though rarely seen, is central to the novel as a representative of the ghetto's own spirit and consciousness, brought to life by the suffering and misery that its inhabitants have endured over the centuries. When the jeweller Athanasius Pernath, suffering from broken dreams and amnesia, sees the Golem, he realises to his terror that the ghostly man of clay shares his own face. Supposedly a manifestation of all the suffering of the ghetto, it comes to life every 33 years in a room without a door. Lurking in its inhabitants’ subconscious is the Golem, a creature of rabbinical myth. The red-headed prostitute Rosina the junk-dealer Aaron Wassertrum puppeteers street musicians and a deaf-mute silhouette artist. First published in serial form as Der Golem in the periodical Die weissen Blätter in 1913–14, The Golem is a haunting Gothic tale of stolen identity and persecution, set in a strange underworld peopled by fantastical characters.
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