Peter Schlemiel: The Man Who Sold His Shadow

Reviewed By Ezzat Goushegir, DePaul University, Chicago It began with my exploration of the word "Schlemiel"! For its personification of human identity and for its designation of those who are unfortunate and succeed nothing in life. That's how I came across to read Peter Schlemiel. But the book gave me a broader perspective of the place of a human being in this world. Dreaming of self improvement Peter Schemiel sells his shadow to a mysterious stranger in a gray coat in exchange for a purse that contains boundless wealth. Lacking a shadow he has no place in society. Helplessly he wanders around the world in search of knowledge and spiritual sanctuary to give meaning to his life. Adelbert Von Chamisso has profoundly experienced dualism in his life as a displaced person and had a tireless wrestling identifying himself within two countries, two cultures and two languages. Peter Schlemiel is the creative result of his deep understanding of fractured lives. Peter Schlemiel can be equivalent to Georg Buchner's Woyzeck, Kafka's Gregor in Metamorphosis and Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. This is a timeless book for its illustration of a society in which wealth, power and torture governs. The mysterious man in gray coat symbolizes Evil which suggests those decadent forces who for the sake of power, use their greedy cynicism to terrorize people and ultimately conquer their souls and ruin them for the rest of their lives. Chamisso portrays the quality of elite society of his time from one of his character's point of view: "Frankly," he maintained, "anyone who isn't worth at least a million is nothing but- if you forgive the term- a sniveling worm." (P2) The theme of this book is immensely relevant to today's world politics. The interpersonal structure that Chamisso explains, illuminates a wide range of human interaction from social relation to Geo-politics in which new colonialism degrades developing nation. The result is isolation, marginalization, exile and misery. Although it is a novel, it has certain qualities of dark allegory similar to Brothers Grimm's folktales. It presents an unforgettable picture of displacement, estrangement, incongruity and human misery.

This is the story of Peter Schlemihl, an impoverished, ineffectual young student whose misguided yearning for the finer things in life leads him into contact with a mysterious party guest who offers him fulfillment of his dreams in exchange for his shadow. The outcome of the deal is pretty much a foregone conclusion, since Chamisso takes no pains concealing the satanic identity of his antagonist. As is usual in these cases, the Devil appears to get the better part of the bargain. Schlemihl, provided with a never-empty "purse of Fortunatus," has piles of gold, but no one to spend them on. The fraulein who is the object of his affection will have nothing to do with a shadowless man. The story is one in a long line of cautionary tales that warn against dealing with the likes of Mephistopheles. The critic, Karl Miller, points out that Schlemihl is denied a comfortable existence, since "he begins and ends as an outcast: by hazarding his soul for gain, he is barred from family life, from the happiness of marriage." The idea of an outsider whose self-will bars him from middle class comforts can be traced in German Romantic literature from the late 18th century to the time of Hesse. Chamisso's tale may strike the modern reader as little more than a literary curio, a moralistic fairy tale replete with enchanted moneybags and seven-league boots. In Chamisso's day, however, the work was highly esteemed and had enormous influence on writers such as E.T.A. Hoffman and Hans Christian Anderson, who wrote stories of their own in the "Schauerroman" genre. One facet of the story that has bearing in terms of modern critical inquiry is Chamisso's adoption of a framing device that is in many respects self-reflexive. The central narrative is epistolary, which, in terms of the conventions of the day, was nothing out of the ordinary (Richardson being the most common example). What makes things more interesting about "The Man Who Lost His Shadow" is the author's including himself as a character in the story. At the tale's conclusion, Schlemihl signs off with the announcement: "So ends my story. On a cloudy day I will take these papers to you, my friend Chamisso, that you may do with them what you think right." We have here an attempt, however crude (especially when compared with the subtleties of Borges or Nabokov), on the part of an author investigating the boundaries between fictional and "real" worlds. Chamisso's depiction of the dissociated self also represents a departure from earlier German Romantic authors such as Kleist and Richter, who tended to represent Doubles more obliquely and figuratively. Peter Schlemihl's shadow will lead to the more concrete manifestations of the double motif found in the works of Hoffman, Hogg and Conrad. This novella is short and well paced. It can definitely be read for pleasure as well as for an appreciation of its place in an important literary movement.

This is a wonderful tale of the absurd and the fantastic. Peter Schlemiel is a young man who trades his shadow for a bag of gold coins which never gets empty of them. But, no one must notice his lacking a shadow. Those who do, despise him and get away. Peter goes to a resort and falls in love with a girl , but the wedding is impossible because she notices he doesn't have a shadow. Then he meets again the man who traded the bag of gold for his shadow, and Peter asks it back. The man agrees, but in exchange he must give him his soul. Peter refuses and throws the bag to an abyss. Then he finds the seven-leagues boots, wears them and runs to the Thebaid, in Greece. This is pure fun on crazy and absurd adventures. Very pleasant reading.