Det gröna ansiktet

by Gustav Meyrink

A stranger enters a magician's shop. Inside, among several strange customers, he sees an old man, who makes him sick with horror. The rest of the novel chronicles his quest for the elusive and horrible old man.

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Fantasy, German Literature, Classics, Literature, Gothic

265 pages

First published January 1, 1916

About the author

The illegitimate child of a baron and an actress, Meyrinck spent his childhood in Germany, then moving to today's Czech Republic where he lived for 20 years. The city of Prague is present in most of his work along with various religious, occult and fantastic themes. Meyrinck practiced yoga all his life.

Curious facts:

He unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide at the age of 24. His son committed suicide at the same age with success.

Meyrinck founded his own bank but was accused of fraud for which he spent 2 months in prison.

He worked as a translator and translated in German 15 volumes by Charles Dickens while working on his own novels.

Among his most famous works are Der Golem (1914) and Walpurgisnacht (1917).

Reviews

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one trippy book, and that's putting it mildly. It is certainly classic Meyrink, though, and anyone who's read his The Golem would have to agree that the two books were definitely the work of the same person. Once again turning to legend as a basis for his book, this time Meyrink uses the story of the Wandering Jew, and as in The Golem, he also incorporates several different types of esoteric and occult elements within the text.

In this novel, Kabbalah, Buddhism, mysticism, and other esoteric beliefs find their way onto the pages; secret knowledge is given and the recurring idea is the way to transcendence of the physical self, and indeed of the physical world, while keeping one foot in both. Here, though, a new element creeps into the story, a dark ending that is clearly a reflection of the anxieties of the time -- I mean, it is 1916; World War I is still going -- and the end, which many readers have noted as "apocalyptic" ... but I think I'll leave it there for now.

Meyrink's commentary on civilization is excellent here, as is his take on contemporary culture. And also, as one might expect at this time in history, Meyrink tackles nationalism, demagoguery, and racism (although strangely, he does use a racial slur more than once to describe the Zulu so you've been warned).

Frankly, The Green Face isn't quite as good as The Golem, but I'd certainly rate it much higher than his The Angel at the West Window. It's another novel that is NFE (not for everyone), but it's one I certainly recommend to anyone who is already of fan of Meyrink who may not have read this book yet. It's another out-of-the-box read for people who enjoy pondering what they've just read.

http://www.oddlyweirdfiction.com/2017...

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Green Face is a book about disgust with the world. It was written during WWI, yet is set just after its end, and the populace instead of feeling relief is wandering lost, on edge, searching. It is set in Amsterdam, largely in its more disreputable sections, and what Meyrink does best is create poisoned atmospheres of dark mystery peopled by grotesques. He translated Dickens into German and there is a darkly Dickensian quality to his characters and his urban landscapes, but Meyrink is for the most part a poisoned cynic and so is more like Dickens’ shadow figure. There is a pervasive claustrophobia in his settings, an almost living animal-like claustrophobia; a claustrophobia that prowls. And as one of Meyrink’s major concerns is the occult, this claustrophobia is not just an aspect of the physical setting, it also exists at the mind level and can threaten from within. Meyrink’s characters, at least his main characters, are necessarily wary, if not paranoid, and realize that any solution to their distressed state will have to involve battling invisible powers. And this is where he gets very good, but also where he falters. He was obviously well-versed in a host of occult trends and fads and legitimate movements and practices, so his take on this “invisible warfare” is detailed and authentic and invested with intense emotion, as if Meyrink himself were representing his own real life involvement in such matters, which I believe he was. But he falters in his excessive use of the didactic through long discourses on occult matters. While this is of interest to me, as I have my own history with such things, it does not typically make for great reading in a novel, especially when it interrupts what is otherwise a delectable darkly atmospheric thriller. I can imagine him having great appeal to someone much younger than me, someone into Goth who’s just making his/her way through labyrinths of the occult. In his didacticism, and his general concerns with the psychic nature of his distressed heroes, he reminds me of Herman Hesse. Though I haven’t read Hesse for years, I don’t remember his didacticism defusing his narratives overmuch, but then Meyrink covers much more strange psychic ground than Hesse, and so the didacticism and explication is somewhat justified, if only as an expedient way to describe all the weirdness. This book revolves around a vision of the “Green Face”, a Wandering Jew-type apparition, but instead of being a figure condemned to wander the earth, it is a manifestation of immortality, a union of the spiritual and physical realms that is potentially a savior for all lost souls wandering the earth, looking for a way out of the madness. Meyrink was an inveterate dualist, opposing a degenerate world to a blessed trans-physical realm, but he was no escapist and so his salvation, his way out of the madness, is a complex union of the degenerate with the blessed in the form of a “mystic marriage”, or the figure of the hermaphrodite. As should be easy to see, achieving this is a thorny proposition, and so the path to transcendence is fraught with obstacles and suffering, more madness, more death.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

In his fiction, Gustav Meyrink often seems to be working out his own thoughts and beliefs regarding the occult and what may lay beyond the material world. Unfortunately, this can derail the plots of his books at times. In this way, his work reminds me of the fiction of Ithell Colquhoun. The two writers were both lifelong seekers in the esoteric realm, each of them collecting memberships in various clandestine societies while never seeming to find the exact fit, and both used their fiction as a kind of personal sounding board. They were dabblers determined to craft their own unique visions, which could be explored through writing fiction. The tension between belief and skepticism is more prevalent in Meyrink’s work, perhaps because he could not resist engaging in satire and had no qualms about directing it toward spiritualists, astrologers, and others he considered charlatans. As Franz Rottensteiner notes in the afterword of The Green Face: 'At times Meyrink gives the distinct impression that he was better at formulating what to dislike than what he believed in.' Nevertheless, fans of Meyrink’s best known work The Golem would likely also enjoy this novel, for there are a lot of similarities in plot and theme. Apparently the two books were written in parallel, which may explain some of that. Personally, I think Meyrink’s masterpiece is The Angel of the West Window, which I found to be more consistent and compelling than either The Green Face or The Golem. Still, Meyrink's writing is always worth reading—he was the real deal when it came to the fantastic fiction of his day—and passages like this one illustrate that nicely.

Spectres, monstrous yet without form and only discernible through the devastation they wrought, had been called up by faceless and power-hungry bureaucrats in their secret seances and had devoured millions of innocent victims before returning to the sleep from which they had been roused. But there was another phantom, still more horrible, that had long since caught the foul stench of a decaying civilisation in its gaping nostrils and now raised its snake-wreathed countenance from the abyss where it had lain, to mock humanity with the realisation that the juggernaut they had driven for the last four years in the belief it would clear the world for a new generation of free men was a treadmill in which they were trapped for all time.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

For lovers of the surreal and decadent, there's a lot to like here. We have a protagonist who wanders through disreputible alleys full of pleasure-seekers and desperate people who seem fractured by the shock of World War I. The whole place feels like something out of a German Expressionist film. The writing can also be quite witty at times with some worthy observations.

There's some memorable images and scenes, and some colorful characters too, the apocalyptic ending is like something out of "The House on the Borderland." But compared with "The Golem" this book is far less focused on narrative. This novel is more concerned with exploring ideas; spiritual, political and social. A lot of the mystical ramblings go on at great length and bored me. At several points the book is downright suffocated by these long, often repetitive digressions.

Advice for reading this is the same as for reading a Michael Cisco novel; you've got to be in the proper mood and don't attempt to soak up everything. Just enjoy the strangeness and atmosphere. It's all too surreal, vague and open-ended frankly, and while there are some valuable spiritual concepts expressed, attempting to untangle every vaguery will ruin the overall experience.

A few quotes...

One of the best evocations of autumn I've ever read:

"A breath of decay in the air, the stifling heat of dying days, the chill of misty nights; spider webs like patches of mould on the rotting grass in the early morning light; the purplish-brown clods of earth around dull, cold puddles that keep out of the way of the sun; straw-coloured flowers that lack the strength to raise their faces towards the glassy sky; tumbling butterflies with ragged wings that have lost their bloom; the harsh rustle of brittle-stemmed leaves in the avenues of the city…
Like a fading beauty trying to hide her age beneath a welter of bright cosmetics, nature was flaunting her autumn colours."

On the war:

"But there was another phantom, still more horrible, that had long since caught the foul stench of a decaying civilisation in its gaping nostrils and now raised its snake-wreathed countenance from the abyss where it had lain, to mock humanity with the realisation that the juggernaut they had driven for the last four years in the belief it would clear the world for a new generation of free men was a treadmill in which they were trapped for all time."

And post-war malaise:

"His eyes were suddenly opened to the shock of the distorted expressions on the faces crowding round him. Those were not the expressions he remembered, the expressions of people in pursuit of pleasure, hurrying to forget their troubles at some entertainment. Their faces were already irrevocably marked by a sense of dislocation. The struggle for existence carves different lines and furrows on the face of mankind. These reminded him of the old woodcuts depicting frenzied dances in times of plague, and then, again, of flocks of birds which, sensing a coming earthquake, fly round and round in silent, instinctive fear."

On the bourgeois:

"...beings that will ever remain a mystery to the masses, arousing both contempt and envy, creatures that can wade through blood without batting an eyelid and yet swoon at the screech of a fork across a plate, who will pull out a revolver at the slightest suggestion of a sneer yet calmly smile when caught cheating at cards, for whom vices, the very thought of which makes the ordinary citizen shudder, are commonplace and who would rather go thirsty for days than drink out of a glass another has used, who accept God as a matter of course and yet shut themselves off from Him because they find Him boring..."

[Hux · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was both strange and creepy. I'm tempted to describe it is a horror novel but it goes beyond that and is more surreal and disturbing. It reminded me a little of 'The Tenant' by Torpor in the sense that it was just a little unnerving and obscure. Written at the height of the war in 1916, the book actually takes place after the war has ended and implies (quite correctly as it turns out) that the consequences of this war will change the world and lead to even greater upheaval. Especially, Meyrick predicts, for the Jews.

A man named Hauberisser lives in Amsterdam and visits a magic shop where he encounters a creepy old Jew who works there. As the book goes along, his friends and others have also seen this 'wandering' Jew either in paintings or in real life. He has a green, bronze face and seems to be neither a harbinger of good nor bad. What follows is Hauberisser trying to make sense of what he has seen and what it might mean. He returns to the magic shop only to discover that it has a new name and no-one knows anything about the Jewish bookkeeper. Meanwhile, Hauberisser has a friend named Pfeill who has friends who appear to be in a spiritualist cult. One of them is murdered by a Zulu warrior (did I mention there's a Zulu warrior?). Then he meets a woman called Eva who he instantly falls in love with (there follows a chapter where the Zulu warrior follows her and tries (via some African magic) to control and rape her). She then disappears. But reappears in a haze of fog and dies. I mean... it's all a bit weird and hard to explain. But it's good.

I enjoyed it a lot and was fascinated by the creepiness of it all. There are huge swathes of Jewish and Christian myth involved and, to be fair, those parts of the book were the only ones that I didn't care for. I find it hard to take religion seriously especially when it takes itself so seriously. Meyrink throws a lot of this stuff at the reader and talks about Elijah and Cabala and a bridge from this world to the world beyond. From a religious point of view it didn't interest me. But from a creepy novel point of view it was highly effective.

A strange and interesting book.

[Armin]

Esoterischer Schmarren, aber brillant, kann jedes Urteil von * bis ***** nachvollziehen. Brauche aber einen zweiten Durchgang, um sämtliche Zusammenhänge aufzulösen. Derzeit ist die Diskrepanz zwischen 5* für die erste Hälfte und der Auflösung einfach noch zu groß um auf 3* abzurunden oder doch 4* zu rechtfertigen.

[Patrick Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meyrink is an author I'm guilty of obsessing over. He represents a time in my life when I explored the "esoteric" or "mystical" in literary and religious texts, genres overflowing with old Judaic and Qabbalic symbolism. He's most famous for writing The Golem, which was adapted into a very famous silent film in the '20s. This if his second novel and was a critical and commercial success at the time of its publication in the late 1910s. It takes place in Amsterdam - the city itself is one of Meyrink's characteristic symbols of mysticism and decadence. A man somehow (beyond his recollections) finds himself in a magician's shop called Chidher Green. Inside, he finds an old man named Green who tells us he's been wandering the Earth for eternity, since its beginnings. This is essentially the legend of the Wandering Jew found throughout other religious/Judaic and Qabbalic literature and texts. The face of the old man makes the protagonist ill and before he knows it, he is somehow (again, beyond his recollections) on the streets of Amsterdam, the shop nowhere in sight. He spends the rest of the novel searching for this wandering, ages-old man and meeting other strange characters. I liked this novel more than most other Meyrink novels because it is the most mysterious, and the most symbolic. His ability to interview myth and mystery into an otherwise historically pertinent novel is admirable and his characters and always described vividly.

[Bill Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's really nothing quite comparable to Meyrink's novels....This one begins with a hilarious description of a "magic shop" in Amsterdam -- a gathering place for the shattered flotsam of Europe -- and ends with a physical and spiritual apocalypse that must have seemed prophetic in 1916. I find it very difficult to imagine how such a novel was perceived in the middle of the Great War, since it seems to be a parable of the destruction (and possible rebirth ) of Europe and of the individual soul caught in the horrors of a postwar world -- hardly stuff to please the Austrian censors. Meyrink jumps from occult minutia to social satire on a single page, so one finds it difficult to tell how much of the occultism is intended to be taken seriously. The cumulative effect is nightmarish, poetic. and enigmatic.

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s a bit more to this than just being a horror novel, it’s disturbing content is as much due to its ventures into the surreal.

A man named Hauberisser lives in Amsterdam, reminiscent in its descriptions of Prague, and visits a magic shop where he encounters a strange old Jewish man who works there. Subsequently it seems that his friends and others have also seen this 'wandering' Jew either in paintings or in real life. He has a green, bronze face and seems to be neither a harbinger of good nor bad. What follows is Hauberisser trying to make sense of what he has seen and what it might mean.

The plot alone is not strong enough to be a reason to read this book, rather that, published during the Great War, it is an intriguing record of the time. The novel was popular amongst the Surrealist movement, typical as it does not follow any logical plan, though its first section is strongly plot driven.

It is set in an uncomfortable future post-war era described as being even more depressing, and more hate-filled than the war itself. Race plays a key role; a ‘wandering’ Jew and a huge black African come over as cartoonish racial stereotypes, and it is not until later in the story that their purpose in the narrative is explained. It’s an uncomfortable element that even though one race is not depicted lesser than another, the characters are still a product of their race, they are not described in any other way.

It’s an interesting novel of its day..

[Remco Straten · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not as much a novel as it is an experience. At times, stream of conscious, the plot may not hang together too well, the language and the images evoked are in turns beautiful and chilling. The novel is set in Amsterdam, and while geographically there are some inconsistencies, these are easily forgiven, as the city itself becomes a character in its own right.
If you read Meyrink's "Der Golem" -and enjoyed it- you'll not want to pass this on!

[Birgit]

abgebrochen - ich wurde einfach nicht warm mit diesem Buch

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Green Face (Das grüne Gesicht) was written by Austrian author Gustav Meyrink and first published in 1916. Curiously, the events in the book take place in Amsterdam following World War One.

The book opens with Fortunas Hauberrisser entering a shop to escape the crowds. The sign on the shop says 'Chidher Green's Hall of Riddles'. The shop sells a mixture of practical jokes, occult material and pornographic material. Hauberrisser is followed into the shop by a Zulu carrying a spear and who is known by the staff. Both the Zulu and Hauberrisser are allowed to enter the back of the shop where there are other customers and staff. One of the staff members appears to be an old Jewish man who is making entries into a ledger—his face is in shadows. Hauberrisser makes himself comfortable and after a while starts to nod off. He awakes to see the Jewish man before him:

...the face before him was like nothing he had ever seen before. It was smooth, with a black strip of cloth tied over its forehead, and yet it was deeply furrowed, like the sea, that can have tall waves but not a wrinkle on the surface. The eyes were like dark chasms and yet they were the eyes of a human being and not empty sockets. The skin was a greenish olive colour and looked as if it were made of bronze...

The man speaks cryptically which confuses Hauberrisser. A salesgirl takes advantage of his confusion to sell him a papier mache skull that tells fortunes. Before leaving he glances round at the Jewish man to see he is seated as he was when he entered.

We are subsequently faced with a whole number of strange characters with strange names; such as Baron Pfeill, Professor Arpád Zitter (a.k.a Count Ciechonski), Anselm Klinkherbogk the cobbler, Eva van Druysen, Dr Sephardi, Lazarus Egyolk, Usibepu the Zulu, Jan Swammerdam and more. After conversing with his friend, Baron Pfeil, Hauberrisser finds out that the 'Wandering Jew' is also known as Chidher Green, 'the Green One'. When Hauberrisser returns home and goes to bed some previously concealed documents fall on to him. When he looks at these documents he keeps seeing the name 'Chidher Green'. When he returns to the shop to see if he can find the Jewish man he finds that no-one knows him and that the shop is called 'Arpád Zitter's Hall of Riddles'. Intrigued with Hauberrisser's experiences with the Green Face Baron Pfeill enquires with Dr Sephardi about the connection between the Wandering Jew and Chidher Green. When he had been talking to Hauberrisser he had recalled seeing a painting of this Chidher Green but now, in conversation with Sepahardi he is unsure whether it was a painting, a dream or a vision. They then end up going to a 'spiritual circle' headed by the elderly Jan Swammerdam where things begin to get increasingly bizarre. The group are invited, by Klinkherbogk's granddaughter Kaatje, to attend Klinkherbogk's 'second birth' in the room above. He believes that he is Abraham reborn and as the evening progresses ends up in a trance. In this state Klinkherbogk sees the green-gold face of a man take up the whole sky. When he regains consciousness all the others have left and he discovers that he has stabbed his granddaughter in the heart. If that's not enough, when Klinkherbogk turns towards the window, still half-ecstatic from his vision, he sees the Zulu Usibepu who comes in, kills Klinkherbogk and leaves with his money.

Trying to make sense of this crazy novel is probably a waste of time; instead I think the reader should just enjoy the general weirdness of it all. It's like trying to follow one of E.T.A. Hoffmann's more madcap stories where any attempt to work out what's happening just ties oneself in knots. This novel is populated by people seeking all sorts of spiritual help from wherever they can find it. That most of these attempts end in failure and death probably says something about the time in which it was written.

One of my favourite scenes from this novel is in chapter eight when Eva, Hauberrisser's beloved, is walking through the city at night, and as she walks there are fewer people about and the sense of malevolence begins to grow:

The very earth gave off a dark malevolence which was directed against her; the icy, pitiless fury of nature towards any man who tries to cast off the bonds of his servitude.

She comes across the Zulu in a sort of trance. She 'felt that it was from him that the demonic power emanated'. The Zulu comes around and tries to abduct Eva. Eva screams and they are chased by a crowd from a local tavern. As some of the attackers are in reach of the Zulu, Eva manages to get clear. They're in a churchyard and she's watching the Zulu protect himself against his assailants:

Then, for a sudden moment, she thought she must have gone mad, for there, in the middle of the garden, with a calm smile on her face, stood her own double.
    The negro must have seen it as well; he halted in astonishment and then went over to it. She thought she could hear him talking to the apparition; she could not understand what was said, but his voice suddenly changed to that of a man paralysed by horror and hardly able to stammer a few words.

Still, he regains his composure as the image fades, and makes his escape. Eva goes missing and events get even stranger from here on.

This novel has a suitably surreal, cataclysmic ending. I've re-read parts of it since and realised that there were so many bits that I missed on my first reading that I may have to schedule in a second reading soon. I think I've concentrated on some of the more horrific episodes but there is also a lot of humour in this book.

This was read as part of German Literature Month 2015.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Meyrink and it still reverberates. A man is haunted by a green-faced apparition (Khidr? The messenger of revelation in ancient Judaic/Islamic lore). His obsession chases him into the spiral of his own death? destiny? self-revelation? A lot is left to interpret, but it's a thick, phantasmic and suspenseful journey.

[Lee Foust · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I've enjoyed Meyrink's novels before, The Golem years ago when I found it in an Italian translation when I was an undergrad and needed some fun reading aside from the classics I was learning Italian in order to read in the original, and much more recently The White Dominican, this one was more of an up and down ride. It began really well, mysteriously and full of the creepy images the Surrealists loved this type of literature for, for it hardly followed any logical plan. But then logic and plot entered into it and it got less interesting, interestingly, as it tried to be less of a Gothic series of dream images and nightmarish events and construct something of an actual plot. A sort of sad plot it was, not at all worthy of the fringe elements that made it so enjoyable at first and then again only in patches throughout the rest of the narrative. The apocalyptic ending, though, was unexpected and also kinda cool. I dunno, but it felt like the cleverly bizarre and the hackneyed worked by turns to sort of cancel each other out in the end.

One uncomfortable element is that, true perhaps to its era (written and published, interestingly, during the first World War, yet set in a kind of uncomfortable future post-war era described as even worse/more hate-filled than the war itself), as the German speaking world headed into Nazism's open jowls, it's not exactly racist, but it is race obsessed, both with Jews and with a black African (a Zulu to be specific). It's jarring at first as these characters jump out at the reader as cartoonish racist stereotypes, even if they each get their moments of great humanity as their own suffering (and therefore humanity) is described later on in the story. This is why I say not exactly racist in the sense of hating or belittling or attacking another race as evil or inferior per se, but the novel definitely presents these characters as products of their race, seemingly incapable of being depicted as human beings without their race being at the forefront of their identities, bereft of that great largess that white Europeans are allowed, to be individual human beings first and foremost and never identified by their race, the utter neutrality of their racial identity never brought into question.

The World War I setting was quite interesting, given that war's cultural upheaval of the Occident, which was seemingly responsible for all of the diversity and originality of the Modernist art and writing to follow. Was nice to see a hint of that at this novel's opening, as if even the pseudo-Gothic writers were feeling the coming zeitgeist. But, like the great creepy opening in the hall of riddles, the theme seemed to evaporate when the novel shifted to focus on a tragic love affair. Pretty much the same idea was handled much better in Meyrink's later novel, The White Dominican.

[Ivar Volmar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Romaani paljud põhiteemad tekitavad seoseid Meyrinki tuntuima raamatuga "Golem", aga pean ütlema, et "Roheline nägu" jättis väga palju kahvatuma mulje. Süžee oli ajuti ebaveenev ning näis, et autori jaoks on olulisemad raamatus olevad filosoofilis-religioossed arutlused, mistõttu hakkas tegevus kohati lonkama.

[Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first third of this was richly evoked and compellingly bizarre, but then the novel nigh on shat itself with knotty mystic diatribes and metaphysical convolution, the plot growing too floppily boneless to provide ample support. And yet, still sort of fun. Read if you dare.

[Răzvan Ursuleanu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Romanul lui Gustav Meyrink poate fi redus la un singur rând. “Acțiunea contrarie a ceea ce face mulțimea este în principiu corectă”. Și Gustav Meyrink consideră că tot ceea ce i-a trecut lui prin cap să îndese în “Fața verde” reprezintă o astfel de acțiune contrarie.

Era tare omul ăsta. Genul de scriitor – pasăre rară căruia puțin îi pasă dacă îi citește cineva cartea. Mare parte din dialoguri par a se purta mereu într-o altă cameră decât cea în care se află cititorul, genul de conversații particulare pe care le poți asculta doar dacă pui un pahar pe perete și îți ții urechea lipită de el.

De cele mai multe ori abandonez o astfel de lectură, dar de această dată am mers cu cititul mai departe, măcar și pentru acele scurte fragmente colorate cu un umor pe care l-am considerat a fi cizelat și elegant. Doar că Meyrink se satură până și de un astfel de umor, abandonează haina sa croită impecabil pentru un Caragiale al austriecilor și trece la treburi mult mai… serioase.

Șamanism, transcendență, metempsihoză și multe alte asemenea, toate culminând cu un început de apocalipsă pe care autorul îl plasează în Amsterdam, poate pentru a pedepsi “bădărănia specific olandeză” cu care ni se face cunoștință încă din primele rânduri ale romanului. Stați liniștiți, Meyrink nu are nimic personal cu olandezii, pentru că nimeni nu scapă de ironiile sale voit rudimentare. Negrii, rușii, evreii, balcanicii (adică noi, cei “cu o figură tipic balcanică și cu ten de culoare închisă, având pielea învinețită în locurile atinse de brici și părul lucind de grăsime”), toată lumea este “tratată” în mod egal de către autor.

După ce mai amestecă un pic cu un linguroi în această salată, Gustav Meyrink se plictisește până la urmă de gătit și încheie romanul.

[Phinehas · Rating 4 out of 5]

An apocalyptic, cabbalistic novel set in a decadent Amsterdam. At the center of this book is the legend of the Wandering Jew, who here is also the prophet Elijah and the Green Face of the title. Well written and effectively strange in tone, the novel is marred by the unfortunate ethnic stereotypes of the milieu in which it was written, (Austria, 1916).

[Leo Ovidiu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting journey to the heart of the world of one of the best fantastic story writers in all times. Very easily red, the book captivates from the first few pages. A must read for Meyrink fans.

[شيماء الوطني · Rating 3 out of 5]

رواية غرائبية ، تستمد أفكارها من الديانة اليهودية ومعتقدات " الكابالا" تحديداً .
أحداث تشبه إلى حد بعيد الخيوط المتشابكة ، بسرد بتداخل فيه الواقع بالخيال .

[Missberet · Rating 5 out of 5]

It really deserves thousands of stars.
Childer Greens Hall of Riddles is where Hauberrisser meets the green face with a piece of black tied about his forehead with a cross bore on his forehead cursed as "The Jewish Wanderer" until Christ's second coming to wander the earth. A card game that night between his good friend Baron Pfeill and a few sailers (ruffians for the times in old Amsterdam so well described) and a Zulu named Usibepu finds the Baron leaving to embark on an adventure. A gathering of Christian myth also says there is a green face who used to be a shoemaker, but he denied Christ a place to rest for the night, so he is forever wandering. After the card game the Baron escorts Eva, a local woman to a gathering of mystics who have, without irony, have met klinkherbogk, a shoemaker and his granddaughter Kaatje. The shoemaker is sent messages from God and speaks his word. The mystic group adopts names from the bible, his being Abram. Hauberrisser is a lone man with no desire to meet people, he is a foreigner, but that changes when he meets Ava. They fall in love at first sight. All he does is think of her as well as searching for the green face. They want to be together, but cannot be. She wants to follow the mystic path. Later in the night Eva is attacked by the Zulu who has a passion for her also and takes her away by force for months. During this time the shoemaker commits crimes only explained by mystics.In these desperate months Hauberrisser meditates starting to transcend into a higher conscious bending cosmically leaving his body behind joining with Ava in spirit. Their souls meet with each other very contented to be together. Through his asking and living within the cosmos and a dabble in voodoo The Green Face appears to him again as a snake and grants him back Ava physically. The Green Face forces the Zulu to give her up only for the Egyptian gods and goddesses to enter..

[D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gustav Meyrink'in ünlü eserlerinden olan Yeşil Surat'ta, Birinci Dünya Savaşı sonrasındaki Amsterdam'da geçiyor bütün olaylar. Günlerden bir gün baş karakterimiz Fortunat Hauberriser, şehrin Jodenbreestraat caddesinde gezinirken, dikkat çekici tabelası olan, gözüne gizemli ve ilginç görünen bir dükkânla karşılaşır. Söz konusu bu yerin ismi "Chidher Yeşil’in Bilmeceler Dükkânı"dır. Hauberriser merakına kapılıp içeri girer ve buranın büyülü eşyaların satıldığı, sihirbazlık eğitimlerinin verildiği bir yer olduğunu görür. Ayrıca gelen müşteriler de garip özelliklere sahiptir. Daha da meraklanan kahramanımız, dükkânın içine doğru ilerledikçe, tam köşede, mekânın sahibi olan uzun boylu, yeşil yüzlü ve alnının tam ortasında tuhaf bir bez olan sıra dışı bir adamla karşılaşır. Bu kişi, dükkana ismini veren Chidher Yeşil'dir. Adama karşı hem bir tedirginlik, hem de büyük bir keşfetme arzusu duyan Hauberriser, Chidher Yeşil'i ve Bilmeceler Dükkânı'nı araştırmaya koyulur. Konunun derinlerine daldıkça ve birden fazla tesadüfle karşı karşıya kaldıkça, kahramanımız ve yan karakterlerimiz, mistik, gizemli, büyülü ve sonu korkunç olabilecek bir yolculuğa adım atarlar.
Kitabın dilsel, konu, tema ve olay örgüsünün ilerleyişi açısından herkese hitap etmeyeceğini düşünmekteyim. Örneğin ben okült, mistik, fantastik romanlara karşı ilgili olmama rağmen bu kitabı sevemedim. Bunun birinci sebebi birkaç sayfada anlatılabilecek şeylerin uzun uzun betimlenmesi ve okuru yorması. Belki daha kısa sürede biterdi ama sırf bu sebeple zorlandım okurken. İkinci sebebi ise, yazarın gizemli bir hava yaratmak isterken aşırıya kaçıp okura "Ehh haydi ama artık ne olacaksa olsun" dedirtmesi. Tabii ki herkeste bu böyle olacak diye bir şey yok. Yalnızca bende hissettirdiği bunlar oldu. Bu sebeple de kendimce, belki haddim olmayarak puan kırdım. Yine de sevenler olacaktır elbette.

[Pablo S. Martín · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es, sin duda alguna, un libro escrito por el inigualable Gustav Meyrink.
Lleno de referencias herméticas y ocultistas, filosóficas y proféticas.
Es una experiencia interesante.
Menos enfocada que ''El Golem'', pero aún así muy interesante.
Tiene frases increíbles que hacen pensar el por qué este autor no es más conocido por el mundo y reconocido por el ambiente literario.

Pero he de suponer que tantas y tan extrañas referencias a múltiples cosas distintas no deben ser de fácil comprensión para alguien no versado en esta materia.
Bueno, he aquí un consejo para todos ellos:
Lo enigmático, lo sobrenatural y lo extraño, solo ha sido utilizado por Meyrink como un vehículo para exponer ideas más elevadas. Es decir, todo el argumento y todo lo sobrenatural tienen un fin claro, que, una vez terminado el libro, no se puede negar.

En este caso, más allá de toda la búsqueda de espiritual del protagonista. El fin del libro después de la metafórica catástrofe descrita, y la aparición del amor, son un claro mensaje de cómo se ha de haber sentido el buen Meyrink durante los sucesos de la primera guerra mundial, quien siempre se mostró positivo respecto al rol del ser humano sobre la tierra, como bien demuestra el fin de este genial libro.

Gracias, una vez más, mi buen y querido Gustav Meyrink.
Disfruté intensamente esta lectura.

[Antony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Een zeer merkwaardige roman, geschreven in de Eerste Wereldoorlog, gesitueerd in het naoorlogse Amsterdam. Meyrink is in al zijn boeken aangetrokken tot het mystieke, spirituele, ja zelfs het occulte. Zelf heb ik daar niet zo veel mee op, al verdiep ik me graag in het Boeddhisme en beoefen ik Vipassana-meditatie. Maar hetzelfde gold voor Meyrink die ook niks moest hebben van astrologie en spiritisme.

’Het groene gezicht’ speelt zich af in het naoorlogse, tumultueuze Amsterdam en eindigt apocalyptisch met de verwoesting van de stad door een allesvernietigende storm.

Er bestaat een notitieboekje waarmee Meyrink door Amsterdam wandelde en waarin hij met potlood opschreef wat hij zoal om zich heen hoorde: ’Stick, verreck, fal dod, chot verdomi, aschübliw’.
Hoe herkenbaar!

Ik heb het boek gelezen omdat het op mijn pad kwam. Het portretteert een omineus Amsterdam dat ik uit mijn eigen dromen ken. Daarom had ik het ook gekregen van een vriendin wie ik deze dromen ooit vertelde.

Qua topografie klopt er niks van de vertelling. Zuidoost ligt in Slotermeer, en de Jordaan en de Nieuwmarktbuurt lijken (deels) verwisseld. Al met al een boek dat het herlezen waard is, vooral de taaie passages, zogenaamde dagboekaantekeningen waarin de spirituele inzichten van de dag worden uitgelegd en waar niet een twee drie een touw aan vast is te knopen.

[Duvid Mdd · Rating 2 out of 5]

Duele puntuar tan bajo una novela de uno de mis autores favoritos. Pese a que la historia y los temas tratados no carecen de interés, la forma de plasmarlos resulta una tarea un tanto pantanosa debido a la gran cantidad de contenido ocultista, místico y gnóstico que hace que un lector poco avezado en la temática de pueda perder.

De hecho la trama principal tiende a desvalazarse en demasiadas micro escenas. Pese a todo Meyrink nos deja grandes momentos como esa descripción de una extrañisima Amsterdam de entreguerras desmenuzadas en oscuras calles llenas de refugiados de países recién salidos de la Gran Guerra, grandes soliloquios sobre la iluminación del ser humano, personajes situados en el umbral de lo mítico y lo fantástico, etc. En definitiva, novela muy aprovechable para gente versada en los temas místicos y gnósticos pero menos interesante si te ves atraído por la.vena fantástica y extraña de Meyrink.

[Gijs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wat een reis, een magisch realistisch Amsterdam na WWI. Gecombineerd met lange zinnen en vertaalt uit het Duits naar (oud) Nederlands is het echt lezen een avontuur. Soms te zweverig om door te gaan, op andere momenten eet je de pagina's. Bijzonder dat dit geschreven is in 1916, enorm ruimdenkend en voor zijn tijd. Wil graag nog een aantal van de interessante termen delen:

ontsloot: van het slot halen
koeterwaals: onbegrijpelijk taalgebruik
houtmijt: stapel hout, denk aan hooimijt
katafalk: kleine verhoging waarop een doodkists ligt opgebaard
boernoes: Noord-Afrikaanse mantel met capuchon (uit het Arabisch)
gecapitonneerd (meubel): techniek waarbij stof of ledere bekleding op een vaste ondergrond wordt genaaid of geknoopt
carillon: klokkenspel

Mooi toch?

[Ellenore Clementine Kruger · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is too offensive and taboo, so it could be like that 70s book (once again) with some weird unconquerable spirit of misogyny which has genuinely claimed lives. I see it has occult roots, but people get super hurt by that stuff, and the social scene is unhealthy, because it leads to people suffering from disloyal std culture. This should be ignored a bit and …just choose jung instead. But even still, jung had to keep a famous syphilitic daughter after her secret affair, and I don’t see all curious people avoiding the same fate. However, jung would also say many people have latent sickness and are just high functioning with a ton of midnight oil. Meyrink is good in golem, but not polite in this one.

[Dylan Rock · Rating 4 out of 5]

In keeping with the theme of the clash between occult and reality, the weight of the past and its horror versus the unknowable future and the endless cycle of death and rebirth. While similar to the "Golem " sharing many of its themes , while the setting of the story is Amsterdam, the pages are still full of the gothic grandeur of Prague, This novel, while similar is much more apocalyptic the passages when we finally see what "The Green Face" truly holds rival the awe inspiring horror of authors such as H.P Lovecraft or Thomas Ligotti but also the illuminating intellect of Jorge Luis Borges.

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinated by the concept (horrifying green face, etc) and at times the story was very interesting and mysterious. Drifted off into mystical, spiritual rants at times, which was frustrating. However, I enjoyed the setting (e.g. Zeedijk) and the sense of mystery (before it was lost).

Meyrink is very curious. Did he really believe in these 'insights' he presents here? I found his short story collection ('The Opal') much more impressive than 'The Green Face'.

[Per · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt a lot more abstract than The Golem, which felt a lot more alive and autobiographical. Still deeply spiritual, but, I understand why some view him more like a teacher than as a writer.
P.S. I kept falling asleep while reading this, which is highly recommended; just like in The Golem, the story tends to go in and out of dreams regularly.