German ballad (1907) about a knight called Manuel

I came across a German ballad featuring a character called Manuel, which reminded me of some Cabellian themes. While I can't really see any proper connection, it set me wondering. There must be any amount of discussion about Cabell's choice of a name for his protagonist, but I haven't got access to a lot of Cabell scholarship; apologies if this is a boring question, but at least I did try searching this forum before posting.

The poem in question is "The Tale of Manuel, the Knight" by Agnes Miegel (1907), and not particularly well-known. We start right in the middle of the action. Apparently, a travelling magician has appeared at court and performed an experiment on one Manuel, who has just put his head in a bowl of water, and rising again, is under the impression that his hair is white and many years have passed. He is surprised to see the people at court looking just as he has left them, while he - well, he begins to tell his story: He has travelled to another, foreign country, lived a life there, left a lover there, and now does not know how he got back to the court. He can't even remember the name of the country or his lover and has just some vague memories and a feeling of sadness. The king calls for the magician, but he is nowhere to be seen (last seen at a fountain in the yard); a few years later, Manuel dies with the name "Tamara" on his lips. - Some more years later, a weary group of travellers from a foreign land appear, looking for King Manuel, who is much missed by his wife Tamara. And now the king wonders.

While the similarites may be superficial, the themes of loss, rapid aging, buried memories do appear in Figures of Earth, as do the wandering stranger and the pool of water. But then again, those are common tropes. So, is there any chance of a connection?

That is certainly very interesting. Is there an English translation of this ballad available?

I doubt it; not a recent one, and not online, in any case.

How long is it? Can you translate it? It's possible we might be able able to 'publish' it along with your commentary on the Silver Stallion site http://www.silverstallion.karkeeweb.com/cabellmain.html

I might have it in a good week or so, a hundred lines of iambic pentameter are fun, and I've got the first quarter already, but am busy now. I'm quite happy to send you my translation then, but it's not yet in the public domain in Germany, and, unless it did get published in the USA before 1920 or thereabouts, not there either. Whether anybody cares is another question, I'm sure it won't be much of a problem outside Germany.

This is a great find. Is the German online?

Crypto-Willobie: Okay, I translated it. Is it okay if I email it to you? (Your address is in your profile.)

The German is online, but hard to find. Here's a link to a pdf, the poem is on page 12:
http://www.ostpreussen.de/uploads/media/Agnes_Miegel.pdf

(I know little about the author, who apparently used to be moderately famous quite some time ago, but has fallen out of grace when her glowing odes to Hitler were rediscovered in the 1990s.)

>7 HerrRau: Yes, please do!

Here it is read aloud inGerman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3seV8RbqmNM

Also some interesting parallels adduced here. See roundabout footnotes 7-9 in the text and the notes
https://archive.org/stream/THEPROPHETsNightJourneyAndAscensionAnnemarieSchimmel/...

As it happens, no books by Miegel appear inthe inventory of Cabell's library.

Hm. That youtube video isn't available any more, after just three views. (At least from a German IP address; probably set to private.)

The footnotes: That might be a common source, yes. I've read that Miegel got her idea from a tale of the Arabian Nights, in a version published by Joseph Addison in the Spectator, 1711. I'm not sure that's correct, at least I didn't find such a tale there, but the story of Abu al-Hasan in the Arabian Nights does have some similarities.

Cabell's library: The poem may also have been published in the Göttinger Musenalmanach for the year 1905, edited by Börries von Münchhausen, though I wouldn't expect this to be in Cabell's library either.

It's a very interesting find (and, as so often, a beautiful tale by a terrible person), but as a you said, these are all common medieval or romantic fairy-tale tropes Cabell was well familiar with: knights get enchanted, forget about their quests, travel to Faerie, get drained of their vitality; magicians are old and mysterious, mirrors or bodies of water show visions or serve as magical artifacts or portals into another world. I can't answer the question of Manuel (but I also don't know whether there's a story behind Jurgen, Florian et al); but it's a common and befitting name for a medieval king. In southern Portugal, for example, you can't escape the shadow of "Dom Manuel" anywhere (the Manuel in question is Manuel I, 1469 – 1521). He even lends his name to the Manueline style of architecture, which is quite beautiful :)

So: the parallels are there, for sure, but I'm not convinced (yet) it's more than a coincidence. Especially since many of these elements or motifs -- the enchanted water bowl in the ballad and the vision-lending pool of Haranton; the 'time travel' (?) in the poem and Manuel trading off 30 years of his life to the Head of Misery -- are employed in very different ways.

I find the Miegel poem especially interesting for its brevity: in a compact form, the various tropes are employed and easily identified. It then serves as a useful framework on which I can hang various other parallels or influences, which are not so quickly summarised. So an organising principle, if you will.

I hope to download the PDF and read it soon, my German is not so good as to immediately pick up these things but it's a good exercise in reading the language, too.

Please be aware that it's actually a rather tough exercise, too, since it's a 40-year-old publication by some of our Vertriebenenverbände, political organizations at the nationalist end of the spectrum pining for the lost territories of WWII. Many of the reproduced texts in there are ripe with blood and soil terminology.

So definitely interesting from a literary studies angle, but the Cabell fanboy in me somewhat cringes to compare the gentleman from Virginia to a Nazi-sympathizing Philistine ...

Point taken. I'm currently reading Gottfried Benn (mostly in translation, but the poetry is offered auf Deutsch as well as in English), and there are similar concerns with his work. It helps that I'm interested in German literature and culture as much as I am in Cabell -- not interested in Miegel solely in terms of the Cabelliana, that is.

I agree, this is probably a case of common sources and motifs, with the added coincidence of the name. According to Miegel, the source for the poem is a translation exercise in an English textbook for Germans (1873), which turned out to be this passage from The Spectator, No. 94 (1711):

A Sultan of Egypt, who was an Infidel, used to laugh at this Circumstance in Mahomet's Life a magicial incident about the passage of time, as what was altogether impossible and absurd: But conversing one Day with a great Doctor in the Law, who had the Gift of working Miracles, the Doctor told him he would quickly convince him of the Truth of this Passage in the History of Mahomet, if he would consent to do what he should desire of him. Upon this the Sultan was directed to place himself by an huge Tub of Water, which he did accordingly; and as he stood by the Tub amidst a Circle of his great Men, the holy Man bid him plunge his Head into the Water, and draw it up again: The King accordingly thrust his Head into the Water, and at the same time found himself at the Foot of a Mountain on a Sea-shore. The King immediately began to rage against his Doctor for this Piece of Treachery and Witchcraft; but at length, knowing it was in vain to be angry, he set himself to think on proper Methods for getting a Livelihood in this strange Country: Accordingly he applied himself to some People whom he saw at work in a Neighbouring Wood: these People conducted him to a Town that stood at a little Distance from the Wood, where, after some Adventures, he married a Woman of great Beauty and Fortune. He lived with this Woman so long till he had by her seven Sons and seven Daughters: He was afterwards reduced to great Want, and forced to think of plying in the Streets as a Porter for his Livelihood. One Day as he was walking alone by the Sea-side, being seized with many melancholy Reflections upon his former and his present State of Life, which had raised a Fit of Devotion in him, he threw off his Clothes with a Design to wash himself, according to the Custom of the Mahometans, before he said his Prayers.

After his first Plunge into the Sea, he no sooner raised his Head above the Water but he found himself standing by the Side of the Tub, with the great Men of his Court about him, and the holy Man at his Side. He immediately upbraided his Teacher for having sent him on such a Course of Adventures, and betrayed him into so long a State of Misery and Servitude; but was wonderfully surprised when he heard that the State he talked of was only a Dream and Delusion; that he had not stirred from the Place where he then stood; and that he had only dipped his Head into the Water, and immediately taken it out again.

For what it's worth Cabell owned the 4-volume Everyman's Library edition of The Spectator, and was an aficionado of 18c literature. The motif of being transported to an enchanted alternative life and then returning to one's original life occurs in both Jurgen and The High Place.

>16 HerrRau:

Many thanks for reproducing the Spectator passage. It has a familiar feel to Cabell, I think -- but agree need not be a direct source for Cabell except (assuming he ever saw it) his general affinity for the time period and approach to fantasy.

A great find and a beautiful story. Reminds me a lot of Star Trek's "The Inner Light", too, when Picard gets carried away to an alternative life. It's definitely the kind of nostalgia for roads not taken Cabell was fond of.

This could run parallel to the Nabokov Lolita's precursor find in German literature. Of which I have written about, but I've removed from online. (I argued Nabokov was not a victim of cryptomnesia, as was alleged by the discoverer of the precursor story; Nabokov instead deliberately used the secret pre-history in an elaborate jape. My friend Bob Pyle, the lepidopterist, read my argument at a Nabokov conference, but I presume it was not taken well.)

This is amazing, and I'm inclined to suspect Cabell of doing the same thing as Nabokov did later. It would be the cream of the jest were we to uncover that Nabokov did this in imitation of Cabell. The two have an affinity, noted by Gore Vidal in "Two Sisters." And eerily finding precursors in German lit to two of the great modernist masterpieces — Lolita and the Biography of the Life of Manuel — is quite a coincidence. Reminds me of the weirdness involved in recent months and years of Pepe magic and the impish cult of Kek.

For the second time in my adult life, I wish I had continued with my studies of German.

I've finally teased out of my mind another more recent use of the "head plunged into water" as a portal to another world. It is the framing device of "The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha" by Lloyd Alexander from 1978.

Although I was fascinated with Classical Mythology as a kid, Alexander's Mabinogion based Prydain books, published during my elementary school years, were the most influential influencing my love of fantasy literature, proceeding directly from them to T.H. White and Tolkien.

>21 dscottn:

I'm fuzzy on whether I read the Prydain books before or after Tolkien or T.H. White, but they've been recurring to me these past few years and I think I should revisit them. Certainly now I'm more aware of the Mabinogion than I was when I first read them.

Have you read Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion-based novels?

I was pleased to see Cabell's library contains The Virgin and the Swine AKA Island of the Mighty, which I enjoyed most of her Mabinogion quartet. I've also acquired Walton's The Cross and the Sword, Witch House, and The Sword Is Forged, which all remain on the someday to be read list.

"influential influencing" (sigh!). Oh well, at least I am trying to write after essentially decades of writer's block.

>23 Crypto-Willobie:
>24 dscottn:

Walton was on my "recon" list and based on this discussion, I've moved it formally to my Wishlist. We'll see if that means I read them any sooner than I would have!

>25 elenchus:
Fwiw I think the intended 1st volume, Prince of Annwn is the weakest. My favorite is Children of Llyr, along with Island of the Mighty. Here and there I've encountered complaints that these are NOT the Mabinogion. Of course not -- they are modern novels that retell the Mab material, in a few cases even moving incidents from one branch to another.

>26 Crypto-Willobie: I agree on Prince of Annwn, based on my favorite branch of the Mabinogi. I had such high hopes which perhaps made me pickier. The Children of Llyr is just so tragic and upsetting, like its source material. I am sure you know it and Song of Rhiannon were one long unpublished book written in the late 40s or 50s, split into two after the success of the BAF Island of the Mighty, and Prince was newly written 20 plus years later, so they came out nearly in reverse order.

The other classic treatment of the source material of course is Kenneth Morris' The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed and Book of the Three Dragons. I did see Douglas Anderson's promised "Family of Pwyll" complete omnibus from Nodens Books.

>27 dscottn:

I likely read that Llyr and Song were once one book, but if so I had forgotten. I did know they were written back in the day shortly after
Island, and decades before Annwn.

Any reason to read Walton in intended order? Maybe I should start with something other than Prince of Annwyn, though I'm usually loathe to do that.

>29 elenchus:

I don't know that you have to read them in order in order to 'follow the story'. Annwn is first simply because it is based on the so-called 'First Branch' of the Mabinogion. But the Mabinogion is ultimately compiled from a mass of older legends.

I started with Children of Llyr, which I loved. Then Island of the Mighty which I liked a lot. Then I had to wait for Song of Rhiannon to be published, and then I had to wait even longer for Annwn to be published. I'd say don't worry about order but start with Llyr or Island.

>30 Crypto-Willobie:

Editing my wishlist accordingly.

As much as I loved Children of LLyr, I remember Prince of Annwn much better. I liked it a lot. It has a unity of action that I greatly admired. Arawn swapping bodies with Pwyll was, I thought, nicely Cabellian.

But I haven't read it since my 20s.