The Novella’s Everyday Peril: Reflections on Genre in Jeremias Gotthelf ’s Die schwarze Spinne Marie-Luise Goldmann New York University Abstract: The article examines the nexus between the novella and the spider in Jeremias Gotthelf’s Die schwarze Spinne (1842), offering a new perspective on the Realist novella’s self-reflexive potential. Contrary to previous scholarship, which has interpreted the spider as an allegory of the plague, femininity, and revolutions, this article reads the spider as a critical reflection on the novella form that simultaneously activates and transgresses the novella’s genre conventions. Drawing on recent theories of Realism and the novella, this study focuses on the temporal aspects of a baptismal celebration that turns into captivity, the ways in which the novella’s frame is destabilized and pluralized, as well as the poetological dimension of the spider’s growth. The black spider is an animal that proliferates and in doing so disturbs the domestic sphere and with it the limitations of the novella form. Keywords: Novella, Genre, Realism, Media, 19 th century Literary critic Theodor Mundt writes in 1834 that one must catch the Germans off guard with the novella, for it “nistet sich noch am meisten in Stuben und Familien ein, sitzt mit zu Tische und belauscht das Abendgespräch” (70). Characterizing the novella as a “Deutsches Hausthier” [sic] (71), Mundt deliberately calls on the novella’s familial reputation 1 1 in order to turn the ostensibly innocent genre into something subversive that interferes with the domestic ideal. According to Mundt, the novella provides the ideal means to activate its readers’ political awareness by clandestinely putting a “bug” in their ears within the confines of their living rooms (71). While Mundt already equips the Haustier with critical qualities that exceed those of a tame pet, Jeremias Gotthelf’s 1842 novella carries the ambiguity of the term Haustier to the extreme. Die schwarze Spinne turns the domesticated 4 Marie-Luise Goldmann pet into a perilous pest that cannot be expelled from the house. Embedded in an interior narrative, the spider dominates a story that a grandfather tells at a baptismal celebration. A detailed frame narrative describes how the guests successively arrive at a luxurious house, where they are offered a splendid feast. After some appetizers are served to shorten the wait time for the roast, someone persuades the grandfather to tell the story of the black window post that has attracted the guests’ undivided attention: Following a breached contract 600 years ago, the sprouting spider wreaked havoc among the population of a small village until a young mother finally managed to imprison it in a hollow piece of wood in the wall. The guests press the grandfather for more of this story. This time, he tells about the spider’s release after 200 years and its serial killing of the villagers, which it continues until a docile young man finally succeeds in confining the spider once again in the same wooden beam. The novella ends with the frightened party guests taking off into the night. Rather than just a semantic coincidence, the spider in Gotthelf’s novella is linked to the genre’s description as a Haustier. To speak with Mundt on this: The spider settles in with the residents of the very house from which it is supposed to be expelled; it shares their table and eavesdrops on their evening conversations. Sometimes one can even hear it cozily purring (Gotthelf 98). Given the discursive entanglement of Haustier and novella in the 19 th century, Gotthelf’s depiction of a house-monster that intrudes upon home after home until it is finally banished into a house where it remains imprisoned for centuries suggests a radical transformation of the novella genre. The ominous pest that lives in the house and yet cannot be domesticated not only contrasts with paradigmatic pets like Boccaccio’s falcon 2 and Goethe’s lion, but also resists, on a structural level, generic norms of limitation. 3 The genre of the novella can be seen as a heightened example for the limitations imposed by genre insofar as the novella is traditionally characterized by its “Einseitigkeit” (Heyse 148), “Beschränkung” (Gervinus 114), “geschlossenste Form und […] Ausscheidung alles Unwesentlichen” (Storm 119). Gotthelf’s novella thus not only depicts the transgression of any genre, but of a genre known precisely for its constraints. Scholarship has interpreted the spider-catastrophe as a representation of the epidemic of the black death (Lindemann 99; Muschg 207; Zobel 126) or the old testament’s plague (Böschenstein 151-170, Lindemann 25) and as a commentary on revolutionary disturbances (Lindemann 82-141), the threats of femininity and foreignness (Donahue 304-324, Freund Phantastik 126, Giovannini 318, Heath 333-350, Höhne 195, Kehlmann 47, Uhlig 73), and the twofold seduction that the tradition of baptism warns about (Von Zimmermann 90). In the following article, I want to suggest a different approach by drawing attention away The Novella’s Everyday Peril 5 from the spider’s meaning to its proliferating form, which bears genre-poetical consequences. 4 I will first address the temporal aspects of a baptismal celebration that turns into endless captivity. Then, I will uncover the significance of the wooden post that imprisons the spider, arguing that the post represents an entanglement of old and new, as well as the pluralization of various unstable frames. A third step engages with the central figure, Christine, whose perspective illustrates a shift from the structuring of the novella around a singular turning point to a dynamic of proliferation. A nuanced reading of the spider’s genre citations and transgressions allows for a reevaluation of a genre that has long been considered tame. In accentuating the novella’s modernity and self-reflexive potential as well as its tendency to simultaneously evoke and resist genre demarcations (Biere 9-15), my study ties in with recent scholarship on the 19 th century Realist novella (See Swales, Schlaffer, Downing, Günter, Biere). 5 Ultimately, the various figures of duration that exceed the traditional novella’s punctual event, frame, and turning point reveal the novella as a Haustier that has gone wild. The spider’s confinement in the window post is one of the most crucial scenes in Gotthelf’s novella, for it not only sets the narrative in motion but also ends the perpetual terror that the killer-spider inflicts on the village. Twice performed and many times ritually arranged, the act of sealing up the monstrous animal in a hollow piece of wood repeatedly emerges as an act of banning: “[B]ewaffnet mit kräftigen Bannsprüchen” (55); “zog er den heiligen Bann mit geweihtem Wasser, den böse Geister nicht überschreiten dürfen” (67); “Gebannt im Loche” (90); “ins Bystal gebannt” (93); “hier sei die Spinne gebannt” (94); “die Spinne, die, wie gebannt durch heilige Worte, am gleichen Flecke sitzen blieb” (108). Gotthelf mobilizes the double meaning of “bannen” as “verbannen, verweisen, verjagen” on the one hand, and as “festhalten, zaubern, bezwingen” on the other hand (Grimm 1115-1117). This ambivalent dynamic of inclusive exclusion banishes the spider from society by preserving it in the very same house that is meant to provide shelter. 6 Remarkably, the baptismal ceremony takes place in the house in which the spider sits. In doing so, the ceremony transforms the novella’s traditional premise of escape, as established by Boccaccio in the context of the plague and by Goethe in the context of the revolution. Whereas Boccaccio and Goethe narrate the story of a community that gathers far away from the site of conflict to forget the crisis at hand, Gotthelf turns the traditional refugee situation into an arrival-scene that lets the guests enter the site of terror. 7 Furthermore, Gotthelf reconfigures the novella’s typical motivation from a means of distraction from the crisis to a means of attracting the crisis. 8 Whereas Goethe’s Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten establishes the impera- 6 Marie-Luise Goldmann tive to banish all debates about current affairs (Goethe 139), in Gotthelf’s Die schwarze Spinne, everyone understands that narrating does not dispel the catastrophe but only fixates on it: “denn wenn einmal eine Sache unsere Seele recht berührt hat, so kommt dieselbe nicht so schnell davon los. […] Und du bringst unsere Gedanken doch nicht von der Sache ab; und wenn wir nicht von ihr reden dürfen, so reden wir auch von nichts anderem” (Gotthelf 93-94). The guests comment on what can be seen as a radicalized version of the novella’s characteristic reception: its captivating suspense (Reinbeck 37) and potential, “den flüchtigen Leser […] um jeden Preis von heute auf morgen festzuhalten” (Heyse 144). As a result, the central event of the novella form - what Goethe characterized as “eine sich ereignete unerhörte Begebenheit” (Goethe 54) - is transformed into an ongoing ordeal. The black beam in the wall that can be sealed and released ad libitum is, as Martha B. Helfer puts it, “a monstrous, lurking, ever-present threat to modernity” (662). The horror reaches deep into the past and never ends. Within the frame story, seemingly harmless conversations about food and festiveness reveal additional moments of duration. At first, Die schwarze Spinne appears as the epitome of an idyll (Donahue 313, Helfer 669): friendly guests eat pancakes, sit in an idealized household setting, and celebrate the baptism of a healthy child. Yet already at this point - long before the black post is even discovered - disruptive moments interfere with the peaceful ambience. The idyll is put on hold, pervaded by scenes of unbearable waiting. “Wenn sie nur bald kämen, es wäre alles bereit,” the midwife sighs, waiting for the guests to arrive (Gotthelf 30). “‘Kommen Sie noch nicht? ’ hört man es allenthalben” (31). Moments of insufferable duration anticipate the agonizing waiting scenes in the interior storyline, in which the unchristened newborns’ delivery to the devil must be prevented. Every time an impatient mother urgently awaits the priest’s arrival to baptize her child, the narrative transforms minutes into eternities (Gotthelf 77). In the frame narrative, the guests ultimately tell stories to pass the time until dinner, for without narration, as the nephew remarks, “gibt’s keine kurze Zeit mehr” (Gotthelf 95). Remarkably, the godmother names the food, namely the lavish feast, as the cause of her delay: “Ich wäre schon lange zweg [sic], wenn ich nicht mehr hätte nehmen müssen, als ich hinunterbringen kann” (Gotthelf 32). In apologizing for the long wait, she alludes to the connection between temporal dilation - a common feature of the idyll - and the excesses of the feast. The food supply exceeds not only what needs to be ingested but also what can be ingested. This is remarkable insofar as prominent theories of the novella associate the genre with a particularly light meal: in Goethe’s Unterhaltungen, the old man defines the novella as “leichten Nachtische” (Goethe 146). Stifter The Novella’s Everyday Peril 7 similarly describes it in his introduction to the novella-collection Bunte Steine as a “Naschwerk” (Stifter 15). In these formulations, the novella materializes as a piece of literature that can be consumed additionally and belatedly, as a small “Spielerei” (Stifter 15) if one is “schon gesättigt” and willing “nach einer ernsthaften Unterhaltung auf eine kurze Zeit aus[zu]ruhen” (Goethe 145-46). Evoking a connection between food and narration, Gotthelf modifies the traditional account of the novella by endowing the meal with agonizing effects. The old man’s unfounded concern in the Unterhaltungen, namely that his family could consider the proposed narrative to be “unschmackhaft” (Goethe 146), comes true in Gotthelf’s novella: the additional food as well as the grandfather’s narrative are indigestible and not “hinunter[zu]bringen” (Gotthelf 32). It is further remarkable that the narration does not unfold “abends nach Tische” (Goethe 146) but exactly between the sumptuous starters and the roast, thus raising the novella’s status from a dessert to the main course: “Jetzt schickte es sich so wohl, bis die Weiber den Braten zweghaben [sic], du würdest uns damit so kurze Zeit machen, darum gib aufrichtigen Bericht! ” (Gotthelf 44) The guests are so entirely captivated by the story of the spider even while eating that they demand a sequel, which is followed by more food. There is no end to and no escape from the manifold dishes that are served before, in between, and after the split narrative (Gotthelf 31-32, 92). Suggesting a structural parallel between literary and meal consumption, the frame narrative presents a mode of reception as perpetual overflow that is - as the godmother cleverly remarks with her comment on the food - accompanied by symptoms of overeating. How does the black post catch the guests’ attention? Remarkably, the post becomes noticeable because it disturbs the house’s harmonious perfection. Already at the outset, it is marked as a disruptive element that breaks up the otherwise ordinarily constructed wall. “Warum da gleich neben dem ersten Fenster der wüste, schwarze Fensterpfosten (Bystel) ist, der steht dem ganzen Hause übel an,” a woman critically notes (Gotthelf 44). A noticeable outlier in the otherwise well-arranged house, the raw post motivates a narrative that neither sugarcoats the misery of the community nor excludes fantastic objects. Mobilizing figures like the devil, a 600-year-old monster, a human-animal birth, a metamorphosis, and fiery squirrels carrying heavy loads, the inner story line transgresses the frame’s idyllic setting just like the rough beam disturbs the beauty of the house. When faced with the grandfather’s defense that “es hätte an Holz gefehlt beim Aufrichten, kein anderes sei gleich bei der Hand gewesen, da habe man in Not und Eile einiges vom alten Hause genommen” (Gotthelf 44), the suspicious woman replies: “Aber […] das schwarze Stück Holz war ja noch dazu zu kurz, oben und unten ist es angesetzt, und jeder Nachbar hätte euch von Herzen gerne 8 Marie-Luise Goldmann ein ganzes neues Stück gegeben” (Gotthelf 44). What exactly does she criticize about the piece of wood? The biggest problem seems to be its color (black), its size (too short), its age (it belongs to the old house), as well as its form (it is patched in). The post’s unsuitability, I want to suggest, reflects on the 19 th century novella’s relative brevity (Aust 19) 9 as well as its conditions of production: namely, the techniques of integrating pieces from other media such as past newspapers (Günter 153), adopting conventional tropes and topoi (Wassmann 61, Füllmann 11), employing traditional forms such as fairy tales and sagas (Gailus 773), and reprinting already published novellas in novella collections (Aust 19)� 10 The old post’s unfitting installation indirectly refers to the patching and recycling that characterizes the genre of the novella. When the woman emphasizes the post’s status as a remnant that is older than the house itself, the narrative introduces the theme of tradition, which continues in subsequent discussions about the value of old and new in both the frame and the interior narrative. However, the narration seems to degrade the new and the young at least as often as the old. For example, the narrator contrasts “die wilde Jugend” with the “bedächtige[n] Alte[n],” who “warnten und baten, aber trotzige Herzen achten bedächtiger Alten Warnung nicht” (Gotthelf 65). To the village’s own disadvantage, no one listens to the warnings of an “alt, ehrwürdig Weib” (Gotthelf 61). Remarkably, “ein alter und ein junger” godfather both scorn the “neumodischen Kaffee, den sie alle Tage haben konnten” in favor of the “altertümlichen, aber guten Bernersuppe” with “diesem ebenso altertümlichen Gewürze” (Gotthelf 33), thus privileging valuable tradition over newfangled trends. On the other hand, it is precisely the young mother who finally succeeds in imprisoning the spider. Furthermore, the villagers’ curiosity displays a dangerous desire for novelties. For example, a toxic wind promptly blows on the “neugierige Weibsseele[n],” punishing them with bloated faces for glancing through a gap in the house to see who is carrying the trees for the lord’s alley (Gotthelf 64). The inquisitive servant, who releases the spider from its wooden hole because he wanted to see “was drinnen sei, und sie müßten einmal auch was Neues sehen” (Gotthelf 101), is the first to fall prey to the newly emerging monster. The fact that curious people never go unpunished in the interior storyline forms a radical contrast with the frame story, in which the audience’s productive curiosity motivates the narration in the first place. Not only is the novella inconsistent in its repudiation of the old or the new, it also lets such superficial oppositions repeatedly collapse, for example, when the new turns old and the old appears in a new light. After all, it is the old spider in the second interior narrative that returns and wreaks havoc, compounding a familiar fright with the newly emerging horrors. What is done, is always already The Novella’s Everyday Peril 9 done for the second time. Even during the baptismal celebration in the frame narrative, the priest abstains from naming “[…] ein Mädeli, […] ein Bäbeli” but instead christens “einen Hans Uli, einen ehrlichen, wirklichen Hans Uli” (Gotthelf 38). The sentence’s focus on the “real” Hans Uli serves as a reflection on the nature of reality. The newborn is not, as one might assume, the narration’s first Hans Uli. Not only is the younger godfather already named Hans Uli, the interior narrative’s feudal overlord is named Hans, as is the father who betrays his family. In this way, Gotthelf marks reality as belated imitation or double of the past. The novella’s ambivalent approach toward the old and the new ultimately displays its own problematic self-understanding. Closely entangled with its own tradition, the novella is simultaneously linked to the daily production of news, which leads Paul Heyse to assert that one might take its name literally and find yesterday’s novella already obsolete today (144). Gotthelf’s Die schwarze Spinne attempts to critically affirm its own contemporaneity and its adherence to tradition, which only succeeds because the narrative alternately condemns both the new and the old. From a pragmatic perspective, the combination of a new house and an old piece of wood seems to offer a solution to the new/ old dilemma: “ein neues Haus könnten sie wohl bauen an die Stelle des alten und nicht anderswo, aber zwei Dinge müßten sie wohl bewahren, das alte Holz, worin die Spinne sei, den alten Sinn, der ins alte Holz die Spinne geschlossen, dann werde der alte Segen auch im neuen Hause sein” (Gotthelf 111). Aiming to preserve the old spirit by combining old and new materials, Gotthelf effectively presents an inversion of Schlegel’s dictum, that “Novellen dürfen im Buchstaben alt sein, wenn nur der Geist neu ist” (3). What is more, even when this new house, which contains the old spirit, turns “wiederum alt und klein, wurmstichig und faul,” the post will remain “fest und eisenhart” (Gotthelf 111). Many overlying frames result from this well-intentioned advice to build the new house where the old once stood: the house encloses the post, which in turn imprisons the spider, thus serving as a metaphorical frame for the encased animal. 11 The doubled frame consisting of the house and the post mirrors the novella’s split narrative framework. But this is not all. The garden surrounding the house creates a third frame: “mittendrin stand stattlich und blank ein schönes Haus, eingefaßt von einem prächtigen Baumgarten” (Gotthelf 27). As this multilayered description suggests, Gotthelf replaces the “Einzelkreis mit einheitlichem Handlungskern” (Hart 182) - a key characteristic of the novella - with multiple staggered frames. Interfering with the generic structures of the idyll and the novella, Die schwarze Spinne does not exclude the monstrous but accommodates and duplicates it in its narrative core. Initially, the frames appear stable: The post is firm, the house beautiful, and the garden splendid. Gradually, however, one frame after the other cracks - the 10 Marie-Luise Goldmann post is perforated, the house rots, and its splendor is compromised. Topoi of contamination pervade the narrative frame from the beginning (See Helfer 670-71). The immaculate house is constantly in danger of being blemished: “Um das Haus lag ein sonntäglicher Glanz […] der ein Zeugnis ist des köstlichen Erbgutes angestammter Reinlichkeit, die alle Tage gepflegt werden muß, der Familienehre gleich, welcher eine einzige unbewachte Stunde Flecken bringen kann, die Blutflecken gleich unauslöschlich bleiben von Geschlecht zu Geschlecht, jeder Tünche spottend” (Gotthelf 27). In various scenarios of cleaning, washing, and wiping, black spots incessantly contaminate white fabrics: “und zweimal musste der Bube Besen und Schaufel nehmen, weil er die Spuren ihrer Behaglichkeit nicht sauber genug weggeräumt” (Gotthelf 28). “Auf rein gefegter Bank […] in der weiten, reinen Küche” (Gotthelf 28-29), the “schöne[n] weiße[n] Strümpfe” (Gotthelf 31) and “schönen, weißen Flaschen” contrast with the excessively mentioned “Kaffee” (Gotthelf 29-32), the “schwarzen Schnüre[n]” (Gotthelf 31), and “schwarzseidenen Haarschnüren” (Gotthelf 31). The “schöne, weiße Tauftuch” is decorated with “schwarzen Quasten in den Ecken” (Gotthelf 35). Right from the outset, the narrative introduces textiles that not only obscure the domestic purity of the house but also recall the monster’s arachnid form. The unstable house-frames critically reflect on the narrative framework’s own porosity. It is remarkable that holes are among the many objects that appear both in the interior and frame narrative. Whereas the frame’s narrator, for example, praises the housewife for her strength, “alleine den Haushaltungswagen aus allen Löchern [zu] heben […], in die er geraten wollte” (Gotthelf 36), an inversion of this maternal power occurs in the interior storyline, in which the mother inserts the spider downwards into the hole to rescue her household. The hole guarantees an alliance of frame and interior narrative in two respects, for it simultaneously acts as a plot device on both levels of the narrative and as a threshold separating and connecting the inside and outside. After the spider‘s liberation in the second interior narrative, it sits “auf die Schwelle und glotzte schadenfroh in die Vergiftung, als ob sie sagen wollte: sie sei es und sei doch wieder da, wie lange man sie auch eingesperrt” (Gotthelf 104). Occupying the threshold, the spider jumps back and forth between both narratives. In doing so, it not only crosses temporal and spatial borders but also violates genre demarcations such as the novella’s limitation to a stable frame. In addition to extending the novella’s crisis and destabilizing its frames, Gotthelf transforms the characteristic turning point, the “Wendung der Geschichte, dieser Punkt, von welchem aus sie sich unerwartet völlig umkehrt” (Tieck 75), into a moment of unbearable duration. In the interior narrative, the feudal lord Hans von Stoffeln forces overworked farmers to carry hundreds of full-grown The Novella’s Everyday Peril 11 beech trees up the hill all within a month to construct shade for his personal alley. The desperate men see no way out of their misery until Christine, who is described as the village’s only emancipated woman, enters into a contract with the devil, who promises to help the farmers in exchange for an unchristened child. The signing of the contract serves as the narration’s turning point in which the village enters a state of irreversible catastrophe. The devil, who unavailingly awaits his promised reward, turns the poor but peaceful village into a scene of destruction by giving life to spiders that invade society like a lethal plague. The spiders first appear in a collective like the vast array of little spiders that Christine spawns and later as the individual spider into which Christine herself metamorphoses. Christine is portrayed as an exception among the villagers not only due to her inversion of traditional femininity but also by her status as a foreigner - “eine Lindauerin” (Gotthelf 52) -who acts outside the social norm. She is characterized as a supplement, which already associates her with the black post long before she metamorphoses. Both Christine and the post stand out and cannot be properly integrated. Although scholarship has emphasized the narrative’s focus on Christine’s gender (Donahue 304-324, Freund Phantastik 126, Höhne 195, Kehlmann 47), it is the neutral pronoun es instead of the female sie that defines her. The moment the narrator introduces Christine, she appears already de-subjectified: “Ein einziges Weib schrie nicht den andern gleich. […] Es hatte wilde, schwarze Augen […] wenn es dabei gewesen, es hätte ihm es sagen wollen, sagte es” (Gotthelf 52). Not only does Christine’s visage foreshadow the spider with its wild, black eyes, the excessive repetition of the es as well as the use of impersonal inquit-formulas suggest an action that is dissociated from any subject. The nominative es describing Christine cannot be distinguished from the accusative es denoting the content of her speech. What Christine would have wanted to tell the devil remains vague: this es (“es hätte ihm es sagen wollen” [italics added]) does not refer to any previously or later mentioned object. The pronoun’s doubled use, referring to both Christine and the content of her speech, threatens to confuse subject and object, turning Christine into that which is spoken: narration itself. Always transformed, Christine is the only one in the village who does not flee during the farmers’ second encounter with the devil but “blieb stehen, wie gebannt” (Gotthelf 55). After some chit-chat, the devil and Christine come to an agreement, which to Christine’s surprise is not sealed with a signature but with a kiss, gluing Christine to the floor: “Somit spitzte er seinen Mund gegen Christines Gesicht, und Christine konnte nicht fliehen, war wiederum wie gebannt, steif und starr” (Gotthelf 58). The contract followed by the kiss, from whose place the spider later grows (and with it, as we know, the novella), evokes the 12 Marie-Luise Goldmann initial meaning of “novella” in Roman law, which refers to a supplement which was added to the existing code of legislation (Aust 25). In Die schwarze Spinne too, the kiss/ novella appears as an addendum to the contract. In addition to presenting a link between the novella’s turning point and the miracle it depicts -as emphasized by Ludwig Tieck (Tieck 75) - Gotthelf’s novella extends the turning point’s duration. Stiff and transfixed, Christine is doomed to paralysis. Even after the devil’s disappearance, his forcible kiss yields violent aftereffects: “Christine stund wie versteinert, als ob tief in den Boden hinunter ihre Füße Wurzeln getrieben hätten in jenem schrecklichen Augenblick” (Gotthelf 58). What does it mean if the turning point of the novella, which usually resembles the drama’s “rascheren Fortschritt, Scenen- und Situationswechsel” (Gottschall 125), becomes inscribed in a poetics of duration that shifts the temporality of the genre from one of transience to one of standstill? Christine’s petrification correlates with the paralysis of those who later freeze when meeting the spider’s horrible gaze: “[d]a starrte allen zuerst das Blut in den Adern, der Atem in der Brust, der Blick im Auge“ (Gotthelf 85); “die Hände hielten erstarrt Becher oder Gabel, der Mund blieb offen, stier waren alle Augen auf einen Punkt gerichtet” (88); “[…] die versteinert in tödlicher Angst kein Glied bewegen konnten, dem schrecklichen Untiere zu entrinnen” (103). One can even observe the devil’s effect on Christine as well as the spider’s effect on its victims in the passivity of the frame society, which openly articulates its desire for gripping storytelling. The audience listens in a state of mesmerized fixation. Where the guests dread re-entering the dining room and instead remain “unten wie angenagelt” (93), the novella imagines itself as an enchantment that leaves the reader spellbound. The shift to a poetics of duration occurring in the novella’s pivotal scene is best observed in the transition from the “Stelle” and the “Punkt” to the “Fleck.” Through the overlay of two different discourses, the spot, Stelle, where the devil kisses Christine, evokes the meaning of a text passage, Textstelle: “da war es ihr, als drücke man ihr plötzlich ein feurig Eisen auf die Stelle, wo sie des Grünen Kuß empfangen […] und was sie vom Grünen auf diese Stelle erhalten” (Gotthelf 68-69). More concretely, the Punkt in the shape of which the spider at first appears can be read as a reference to the novella’s programmatic Punktualität: “und der schwarze Punkt ward größer und schwärzer […] desto mächtiger dehnte der schwarze Punkt sich aus” (Gotthelf 69). 12 The diabolical kiss from which the spider grows transforms the fleeting incident into a moment of extended duration. Linguistically, this permanence is illustrated when Stelle and Punkt are replaced with Fleck, meaning the dirty spot that expands not only spatially but also temporally: “da sah die Alte auf Christines Wange einen fast unsichtbaren Fleck. […] [A]ber die Pein nahm nicht ab, und unmerklich wuchs The Novella’s Everyday Peril 13 der kleine Punkt […] und immer und immer mußte sie denken, daß auf den gleichen Fleck der Grüne sie geküßt, und daß die gleiche Glut, die damals wie ein Blitz durch ihr Gebein gefahren, jetzt bleibend in demselben brenne und zehre” (Gotthelf 68-69). As these passages show, the point grows into a spot that finally turns into the spider. The animal resulting from the multiplying Stelle, Punkt, and Fleck is never identical with itself and constantly shifts its frontiers: So war die Spinne bald nirgends, bald hier, bald dort, bald im Tale unten, bald auf den Bergen oben; sie zischte durchs Gras, sie fiel von der Decke, sie tauchte aus dem Boden auf. […] und ehe die Menschen den Schrecken gesprengt, war sie allen über die Hände gelaufen, saß oben am Tisch auf des Hausvaters Haupte und glotzte über den Tisch, die schwarz werdenden Hände weg. Sie fiel des Nachts den Leuten ins Gesicht, begegnete ihnen im Walde, suchte sie heim im Stalle. Die Menschen konnten sie nicht meiden, sie war nirgends und allenthalben, konnten im Wachen vor ihr sich nicht schützen, waren schlafend vor ihr nicht sicher. (Gotthelf 85-86) The dispersive spider reveals an uncanny ability to be soon here, there, nowhere, and everywhere. Resisting localization, the spider’s immeasurable swelling extends to the frame narrative, in which black stains impose themselves on the house. The frames of the narration as well as those of Stelle, Punkt, and Fleck are shifting, overlapping, and constantly transforming. Both in the corporal sense of the word as well as in terms of narration, the spider’s proliferation suspends what Paul Heyse calls a “Silhouette” (Heyse 148), namely a clearly definable storyline that he marks as crucial for the novella. While the arachnid plague contrasts with the programmatic conventions of the novella, it reflects on the novella’s production and distribution, which are closely entangled with mass media (Günter 137-208). Gotthelf’s Die Schwarze Spinne can be read as a genre-critical comment on the novella’s excessive “Massenhaftigkeit, in welcher sie einherflutet” (Rhiel 138), the “Überwuchern der Novelle, die aus allen Journal- und Zeitungsspalten hervorkeimt” (Gottschall 126), its “heillosen Zerstückelung,” “abgerissene[n] Form,” “Flüchtigkeit,” as well as the “Umsichgreifen jener Zwittergattungen, die […] so lange Jahre gewuchert und den gesunden Wuchs der echten Novelle verkümmert haben” (Heyse 146). In a letter to Paul Heyse, Gottfried Keller bemoans that the “Novelliererei” has turned into a “Nivelliererei” overflooding the market (Keller 384). Drawing on topoi of growth and dispersion, 20 th century critic Fritz Martini uses Mundt’s metaphor of the “Hausthier” to characterize the 19 th century novella’s proliferation: “Dies deutsche Haustier gedieh nach 1848/ 49 in zahlreichen Zeitschriften rudelweise weiter.” (365). Martini’s play with the Haustier-metaphor reaches beyond Mundt’s attempt to stress the novella’s familiar and familial qualities. Rather, the emphasis on the reproduction of pets resembles the logic with which 14 Marie-Luise Goldmann Gotthelf’s Die Schwarze Spinne self-consciously activates contemporary discourses on the genre of the novella. Contrary to theories of the novella that presume a focus on a single moment, Gotthelf’s spider proliferates and thus critically displays the 19 th century novella’s conditions of mass production and distribution. Ultimately, multiple generic conventions undergo fundamental changes in Die schwarze Spinne, such as the characteristic escape from the crisis turning into a state of captivity, the traditional frame appearing pluralized and fragile, and the signature turning point transforming into everlasting duration. The novella’s status as a “border genre” (Gailus 774) advances a norm that perpetually expands its borders. Reading the spider not as a symbol or allegory but rather as a means of reflecting on and modifying the novella genre brings the modernity of Gotthelf’s early Realist novella to light. Notes 1 Florentine Biere identifies the term “Hausthier” as a “Metapher einer Domestizierung, die die Poetik der Novelle lange Zeit bestimmt hat und auch in ihren literaturwissenschaftlichen Konzeptionen ihre Spuren hinterlassen hat” (9). She concludes that the so-called “Anti-Novelle” makes the Haustier novella “fremd” again (408). 2 Gotthelf directly cites the falcon but only to suspend it moments later: When a brave knight in the interior narrative takes his falcon along to defeat the spider, the falcon anxiously flies away as soon as it sees the monster: “[v]ergebens ritt und rief der Ritter, seine Tiere sah er nicht wieder” (Gotthelf 87). 3 Jacques Derrida prominently points to the “parasitical economy” (59) inherent in the law of genre, for he considers it impossible to “not cross a line of demarcation,” to “not risk impurity, anomaly, or monstrosity” (57). For recent discussions on the justification of generic interpretative approaches see Florentine Biere (9-10) and Martin Swales, who stresses the validity of genre-concepts as “a reservoir potentiality, as a structuring principle” (15). 4 Martha Helfer’s article constitutes an exception to prevalent scholarship insofar as she examines the self-reflexive gesture that Die schwarze Spinne exhibits, for the spider’s arachnid, circular form resembles the structure of the narrative (673). Yet, Helfer’s poetological observations do not engage with questions of genre or the novella - a gap that my article seeks to remedy. 5 Martin Swales already points to the “remarkable modernity of the nineteenth-century novella, for it raises issues that challenge many accepted The Novella’s Everyday Peril 15 ‘realistic’ certainties” (207). Hannelore Schlaffer‘s concept of the “Anti-Novelle” does not totally apply to Gotthelf‘s Die Schwarze Spinne, because the former is characterized by its “Langsamkeit, Ereignislosigkeit, Bedeutungslosigkeit,” (267) whereas Gotthelf, on the contrary, practices the horrendous event’s radical pluralization. Yet, Gotthelf’s novella can be characterized as an anti-novella insofar as it cites traditional criteria of the novella and critically inverts them. Eric Downing, in his study on literary Realism, exclusively focuses on novellas, “because novellas are, perhaps generically and certainly historically, more obviously given to the interruption of their own invoked interpretive strategies and deployed social iconographies […] and because many of the novellas produced by the German realists […] were notably eccentric (even as novellas) and removed from any uniform, normed discourse easily identifiable as realism, and more-over were notably given to exploring more or less self-consciously the aesthetic and social problematics of their realist enterprise” (13-14). Manuela Günter determines “die Liquidation von Originalität, Identität, Kohärenz und Kontinuität” not so much as “ein Verdienst der literarischen Moderne als vielmehr der periodischen Printmedien des 19. Jahrhunderts,” crediting the novella with a deconstructive force resulting from its specific mediality (333). Florentine Biere emphasizes the novella’s potential as an “Anti-Gattung, als Ort eines erneuerbaren, freien Erzählens gegen verfestigte Normen” (21). 6 As to Goethe‘s Unterhaltungen, Cornelia Zumbusch develops a similar pinciple of inclusive exclusion, but rather than calling this structure Bann, she employs medical terminology defining it as a “Modell der Immunisierung durch gezielten Einschluß,” a “Prinzip der dosierten Impfung” (Zumbusch 306) as well as a “paradoxe Logik der Immunisierung […], nach der man sich selbst zuzufügen hat, was man eigentlich abwehren möchte” (363). 7 Hannelore Schlaffer sees the connection between interior space and vice already as a crucial characteristic of the early novellas: From the beginning of the novella’s history, the predominantly female associated house fails to offer shelter but rather functions as a place for impertinent intruders (33, 271). Winfried Freund argues that the “moderne Novelle entfernt den Leser nicht vom Schauplatz der Katastrophen, sondern führt ihn hautnah heran” (Novelle 62). While even Goethe’s Unterhaltungen already do not assure the crisis’s exclusion anymore but rather describe a crisis that intrudes upon the frame (Schlaffer 17, Zumbusch 301), Gotthelf’s Die Schwarze Spinne sets a counterpoint to Goethe insofar as it explicitly allows for the spider’s inclusion in the house. In other words: Not only does the exclusion fail, but Gotthelf’s society does not even ask for it anymore, instead openly admitting the catastrophe’s fascinating attraction. 16 Marie-Luise Goldmann 8 Elisabeth Strowick emphasizes the genre-critical potential that is inherent in Stifter’s “Poetik des Unreinen” in his novellas Granit and Aus dem Bairischen Walde. What is impure intervenes in the novella’s intact frame. In Stifter, unlike in Boccaccio, narrating fails to provide a refuge from the catastrophe but rather “steht in ihrem Bann” (Strowick 80, 89). 9 Although a popular definition of the novella is Emil Steiger’s characterization as an “Erzählung mittlerer Länge” (Aust 11), the 19 th century novella was usually thought in contrast to the longer novel. 10 Die Schwarze Spinne was first published in a collection, Gotthelf’s first volume of Bilder und Sagen aus der Schweiz� 11 Martha Helfer observes the multiple frames embracing the house, which she interprets as “concentric circles” and links to the text’s circular narrative structure: “In short, in both form and function the text itself mimics a spider’s web” (Helfer 665). Rather than focusing on the circular structure of this individual text, I seek to examine the frames’ consequences for broader questions of genre. 12 See for example: “Punkt: Die tektonische Fassung solcher Konzentration und Verdichtung erfolgt vornehmlich in geometrischen Ausdrücken: Punkt, Punktualität, Achse, Mittel-, Dreh- und vor allem Wendepunkt, gelegentlich auch Spitze” (Aust 16); “Die Novelle hat der gezogenen Linie des Romans gegenüber etwas Punktuelles” (Vischer 124); “Denn wie sehr auch die kleinste Form großer Wirkungen fähig sei, beweist unseres Erachtens gerade die Novelle, die […] den Eindruck eben so verdichtet, auf Einen Punkt sammelt und dadurch zur höchsten Gewalt zu steigern vermag” (Heyse 147). Works Cited Aust, Hugo. Novelle. 5th ed. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2012. Biere, Florentine. Das andere Erzählen: Zur Poetik der Novelle 1800/ 1900. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2012. Böschenstein, Renate. “Mythos und Allegorie: Zur Eigenart von Gotthelfs Schreiben.” Erzählkunst und Volkserziehung: Das literarische Werk des Jeremias Gotthelf. Ed. Walter Pape et al., Tübingen: De Gruyter, 1999. 51-170. Derrida, Jacques. “The Law of Genre.” Trans. Avital Ronell. Critical Inquiry 7.1 (1980): 55-81. Donahue, William Collins. “The Kiss of the Spider Woman: Gotthelf’s ‘Matricentric’ Pedagogy and Its (Post)war Reception.” German Quarterly 67.3 (1994): 303-324. Downing, Eric. Double Exposures: Repetition and Realism in Nineteenth Century German Fiction. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000. Freund, Winfried. Literarische Phantastik: Die phantastische Novelle von Tieck bis Storm� Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1990. The Novella’s Everyday Peril 17 —� Novelle. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1998. Füllmann, Rolf. Einführung in die Novelle. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010. Gailus, Andreas. “Form and Chance: The German Novella.” The Novel: Forms and Themes. Ed. Franco Moretti. Vol. 2. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006. 739-776. Gervinus, Georg Gottfried. Geschichte der Deutschen Dichtung (1842). Polheim 113-115. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. “Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten.” Goethes Werke. Ed. Erich Trunz. 6th ed. 14 vols. Vol. 6. Hamburg: Chr. Wegner, 1956. 125-241. —. Johann Peter Eckermann. Gespräche mit Goethe. 29 January, 1827. Polheim 54. Gotthelf, Jeremias. “Die schwarze Spinne.” Gesammelte Werke. 9 vols. Vol. 7.1. Zurich: E. Rentsch 1982. 27-113. Gottschall, Rudolph. Poetik: Die Dichtkunst und ihre Technik: Vom Standpunkte der Neuzeit. Polheim 125-126. Günter, Manuela. Im Vorhof der Kunst: Mediengeschichte der Literatur im 19. Jahrhundert. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2008. Giovannini, Elena. “‘Plötzlich ging die Türe auf.’ Raumstrukturen und der Einbruch des Teuflischen in Jeremias Gotthelfs Die schwarze Spinne.” Abweichende Lebensläufe, poetische Ordnungen. Ed. Thomas Betz and Franziska Meyer. Munich: K. Kieser, 2005. 305-24. Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. “Bann”/ “Bannen.” Deutsches Wörterbuch. 16 vols. Vol. 1. Leipzig 1854-1961. 1113-17. Hart, Heinrich. “Roman und Novelle.” Polheim 181-182. Heath, John. “Fremdverwandlung der Fremden: Gotthelfs Schwarze Spinne als Ächtungsdiskurs.” Tierverwandlungen: Codierungen und Diskurse. Ed. Willem de Blécourt and Christa Agnes Tuczay. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 2011. 333-52. Helfer, Martha B. “Arachnid Aesthetics: Gotthelf’s Die schwarze Spinne.” MLN 131�3 (2016): 662-78. Heyse, Paul. Einleitung. Deutscher Novellenschatz. Ed. P. Heyse and H. Kurz. Polheim 141-49. Höhne, Steffen. “Gotthelfs Taufgemeinschaft.” Euphorion: Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte 86.1 (1992): 188-200. Kehlmann, Daniel. Kommt, Geister: Frankfurter Vorlesungen. 2nd ed. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2015. Keller, Gottfried. Letter to Paul Heyse, 7 Sept. 1884. Paul Heyse und Gottfried Keller im Briefwechsel. Ed. Max Kalbeck. Hamburg: Georg Westermann, 1919. 382-386. Lindemann, Klaus. Jeremias Gotthelf, Die Schwarze Spinne: Zur biedermeierlichen Deutung von Geschichte und Gesellschaft zwischen den Revolutionen. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1983. Martini, Fritz. “Die deutsche Novelle im ‘bürgerlichen Realismus’: Überlegungen zur geschichtlichen Bestimmung des Formtypus.” Wirkendes Wort 10.5 (1960): 257-78. Rpt. in Novelle. Ed. Josef Kunz. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973. 352-390. 18 Marie-Luise Goldmann Meyer-Sickendiek, Burkhard. Die Ästhetik der Epigonalität: Theorie und Praxis wiederholenden Schreibens im 19. Jahrhundert: Immermann - Keller - Stifter - Nietzsche� Tübingen: Francke, 2001. Mundt, Theodor. Moderne Lebenswirren: Briefe und Zeitabenteuer eines Salzschreibers (1834). Polheim 69-71. Muschg, Walter. Gotthelf: Die Geheimnisse des Erzählers. München: Beck, 1931. Polheim, Karl Konrad, ed. Theorie und Kritik der deutschen Novelle von Wieland bis Musil. Tübingen: De Gruyter, 1970. Reinbeck, Georg. “Einige Worte über die Theorie der Novelle.” 1841. Polheim 33-38. Rhiel, Wilhelm Heinrich. Novelle und Sonate. In Freie Vorträge. 2nd Collection. 1885. Polheim 131-38. Schlaffer, Hannelore. Poetik der Novelle. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1993. Schlegel, Friedrich. “Fragmente zur Literatur und Poesie.” Notebook 970. Polheim 3. Stifter, Adalbert. Einleitung. Bunte Steine. By Stifter. Pest: Goldmann, 1853. 14-15. Strowick, Elisabeth. “Stifters ‘Poetik des Unreinen’: Gattungszitation in Granit und Aus dem Bairischen Walde.” Narration und Geschlecht: Texte - Medien - Episteme. Ed. Sigrid Nieberle and Elisabeth Strowick. Köln: Böhlau, 2006. 73-92. Storm, Theodor. “Eine zurückgezogene Vorrede aus dem Jahre 1881.” Polheim 119-20. Swales, Martin. The German Novelle. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977. Uhlig, Ingo: “Verbreitung - Ansteckung - Monster: Epidemische Strukturen des Monströsen.” How To Make A Monster: Konstruktionen des Monströsen. Ed. Sabine Kyora and Uwe Schwagmeier, Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2011. 71-84. Tieck, Ludwig. Vorbericht. Schriften. Vol. XI. 1829. Polheim 74-77. Vischer, Friedrich Theodor. “Mein Lebensgang.” Altes und Neues. 1882. Polheim 124-25. Wassmann, Elena. Die Novelle als Gegenwartsliteratur: Intertextualität, Intermedialität und Selbstreferentialität bei Martin Walser, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Patrick Süskind und Günter Grass. St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2009. Weitin, Thomas. “Literarische Heuristiken: Die Novelle des Realismus.” Komplexität und Einfachheit: DFG-Symposion 2015. Ed. Albrecht Koschorke. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2017. 422-41. Zimmermann, Christian von. “Der Teufel der Unfreien und die der Freien: Gotthelfs paränetische Erzählung Die Schwarze Spinne (1842) im Kontext eines christlichen Republikanismus.” Jeremias Gotthelf, der Querdenker und Zeitkritiker. Ed. Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer et al. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006. 75-104. Zobel, Klaus. Unerhörte Begebenheiten: Interpretationen und Analysen zu drei Novellen des 19. Jahrhunderts. Northeim: Drei-A-Verlag, 1994. Zumbusch, Cornelia. Die Immunität der Klassik. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011.