Golem

According to one hypothesis, the "golem" comes from the word gel ( Heb. גלם ), meaning "raw, raw material" or just clay. GLM root is found in the Tanach ( Ps. 138: 16 ) in the word Galmi ( Heb. גלמי ), meaning "my raw form." Already in early Yiddish, the word goylem acquired the figurative meaning “idol”, “stupid and clumsy man”, “idiot”, which migrated to modern Hebrew.

Another variant of the word's origin: the word itself came from the Persian Empire range, from Eastern legends ( Urdu گولیمار , Indian and other Eastern languages). Example: Pakistan. GOLI (bullet) and MAR (fire), the word - Golimar (the process of burning clay).

Golem - clay giant, which, according to legend, created the righteous Rabbi Lyov to protect the Jewish people.

A very popular Jewish folk legend in Prague about an artificial man ("golem"), created from clay to perform various "black" works, difficult assignments that are important to the Jewish community, and mainly to prevent blood libel through timely intervention and exposure .

Having completed his task, the golem turns to dust. The folk legend ascribes the creation of the golem to the famous talmudist and kabbalist , the chief rabbi of Prague, Maharala Yehuda Ben Bezalel, who revived the image by putting it in his mouth. shem, or tetragrammaton . ^{[1] The} golem seems to be reborn to a new life every 33 years. This legend refers to the beginning of the XVII century . There are also other golems created according to popular legend by various authoritative rabbis who are innovators of religious thought. So, for example, in some texts of the “ Big Key of Solomon ” written in the 16th century , there are methods for creating a “stone”, which is created from clay , blood and other impurities, this lump is shaped into a human form and the parody phrase “ may there be ” ^[2] .

In this legend, folk fantasy seems to justify opposition to social evil by some, albeit timid, violence: in the guise of a golem, the idea of ​​intensified struggle with evil, which transcends the boundaries of religious law, is legalized; No wonder the golem, according to legend, exceeds its “powers”, declares its will, contrary to the will of its “creator”: an artificial person does what is “indecent” or even criminal for a naturally-living person.

The image of the golem is widely reflected in the culture of different eras. In particular, golems appear in the following works:

Literature

Western European Literature

The golem's motif is introduced into Western European literature by romantics ( Arnim , Isabella of Egypt, ^[3] ; reminiscent of this motif can be pointed out by Mary Shelley in the novel Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus , by Hoffmann and Heine ); for them, the golem is an exotic one (the German romance perceives very keenly the exotic of the ghetto ) a version of their favorite dualism motif. In the newest literature, two significant works on this subject are known: in German - the novel by Gustav Meyrink and in Jewish - the dramatic poem by G. Leivik .

Meyrink's “golem” is essentially a social satire on messianism . He is a symbol of the mass soul, covered in every generation by some kind of “psychic epidemic,” a painfully passionate and vague thirst for liberation. The golem excites the mass of the people with its tragic appearance: it periodically rushes toward an obscure incomprehensible goal, but, like the Golem, it becomes a “clay idol,” a victim of its impulses. The Golem is a book in which the ancient Kabbalistic images and the mystical background of everyday life take on the sinister reality. Man, according to Meyrink, is more and more mechanized by a fierce struggle for existence, by all the consequences of the capitalist system, and he is as doomed as a golem. This deeply pessimistic work should be viewed as an artistic reaction to the “liberation ideas” of the imperialist carnage by the middle and petty bourgeoisie.

• In 1908, the play “Golem” by Arthur Holicher was printed.
• In Thomas Mann's novel Joseph and His Brothers , Jacob , believing in the death of his beloved son Joseph , in his insanity of suffering, he discusses with his elder slave Eliezer the plan to recreate Joseph by creating a golem.
• The legend of the clay monster, created in Prague at the end of the XIV century, was narrated to children by the Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis-Singer ^[4] .
• Stanislav Lem wrote the story "Golem XIV" in 1973 ( Polish: Golem XIV ).
• In 2013, Helen Wecker's novel Golem and Genie was written in the style of magical realism. He was nominated for the Nebula Award.

Russian folk tale

The fairy tale about the Clay Guy and the Snow Maiden is very similar to the legend of the golem.

Russian literature

In Russian literature, Oleg Yuriev ’s novel “New Golem, or the War of Old Men and Children” ^[5] can be noted, in which the golemic myth is used for toxic civilizational satire: in the novel, among other things, three versions of the Golem history allegedly stolen by the Nazis are considered (in order the creation of a "universal soldier") from the attic of the Old-New Synagogue in Prague. The hero of the novel, “Petersburg Khazarin”, Julius Goldstein, faces the traces of Golem (and himself) in America and St. Petersburg, and in Zhidovskoy Uzhlabin - Yudenschlucht, a town on the Czech-German border, where during the war the “golemic weapons. Also, the Strugatsky brothers fiction writers in the story “ Monday Starts on Saturday ” have a reference to Ben Bezalel and Golem.

The image of the Golem (as a comparison) is often used by writer and publicist Maxim Kalashnikov .

Writer Klimov, Grigory Petrovich in the novel “My name is legion” (Chapter 17 “Purgatory”) mentions the special project of the 13th Division of the KGB of the USSR “Golem”.

In the series of books "The Secret City" by Vadim Panov, golems are very often used, both for combat and for household items.

Poetry

The Jewish poet Leivik interprets the golem in more depth. Golem for him is the symbol of the awakening masses of the people, its revolutionary, still unconscious, but powerful elements, which are striving to finally break with the traditions of the past; she does not succeed in this, but she towers above her leader, opposes his personal will to him, seeks to subjugate him to himself. The philosophical depth of the image is expressed in the fact that the creation, saturated with social potential, continues and wants to live its own life and competes with its creator. Levik in his “Golem” went beyond the limits of the legend, expanded it, capturing in it the fearsome forebodings of future social disasters, identifying it with the mass, which no longer wants to be a tool of the strong and the haves.

H.L. Borges 's poem "Golem" describes the golem as a failed copy of a person.

Science Fiction

The idea of ​​the Golem, as a creature created artificially to perform work, is a precursor to the idea of robotics . At the same time, the fact of the manifestation of Golem thinking, not provided for by the creator, was later widely used in the plots of the “uprising of machines”.

In the works of science fiction writers, the golem is often viewed and used as a primitive robot with a program embedded in it. Unlike the magical revival of the golem used in the fantasy genre , fiction uses processes based on real or fictional physical laws. There are often cases when it is necessary to pick up a letter code to revive a golem.

This image of the golem is found in the works of modern writers:

• Lazarchuk A. , Uspensky M. “ Look into the eyes of the monsters ” - described the monotonous work of the staff of Anenerbe on the selection of such a letter code in order to create perfect and obedient to the will of the Third Reich soldiers.
• Chan T. “72 letters” - on the application to living matter of the principle of imposing a word (certainly from 72 letters of the Hebrew alphabet , arranged 12 in 6 rows) in the mass production of clay golems. Scientists in the field of genetic engineering argue that after several generations, humanity will lose the ability to reproduce. And as a solution to this problem, the protagonist of the story proposes to inject human into the human sperm cell , which is the very word that contributes to the continuation of the kind of golems during one cycle, in order to inherit the fact of human reproduction ^[6] .
• Golem is one of the main characters (albeit 100% virtual) of Alfred Bester 's experimental novel Golem 100, written in 1980. Here the golem comes to light from the depths of the subconsciousness of the young lady- "bees", who are engaged in entertainment for the sake of calling Satan. The spirit golem, called from non-being, infuses men and women, evoking the most base instincts in them, and in the end changes all civilization. Naturally, for the worse.
• The golem is featured in an episode of Umberto Eco 's Foucault Pendulum .
• One of the characters in Terry Pratchett’s “Feet of Clay” and “Patriot” novels is Golem Dorfl. In the Planar world, the creation of golems is prohibited, since the creation of life (even if such) is the prerogative of the gods. However, the previously created golems continue to be used for hard, dangerous, and dirty work.
• The golem as an actor appears in one of the episodes in the third book of the first trilogy of Andrei Valentinov from the cycle “The Eye of Power” - “Carrying the Light”.
• In the annex to the satiric-fiction story "Monday begins on Saturday," the Strugatsky brothers give the following definition to the Golem: "The golem is one of the first cybernetic robots made of clay by Leo Ben Bezalel. (See, for example, the Czechoslovak film comedy " Emperor's Baker ", "the local Golem there is very similar to the present)".
• In V. Pelevin 's novel “Chapaev and the Void”, adjutant Chapaev, a Bashkir nicknamed Baty, turns out to be a golem and dies at the end of the novel.
• In the story of the Czech writer Joseph Nesvadba "Golem 2000".

Fantasy

Golems are often present in the modern fantasy genre literature. Here they usually represent originally inanimate humanoid creatures collected from some material (clay, wood, stone, etc.) and animated by magic . As a rule, they obey and are completely controlled by the wizards who created them, who use them as guardians or workers, as golems are not sensitive to pain, are weakly vulnerable and do not get tired.

A list of fantasy stories and universes in which the golem is present or mentioned:

• Golems in the Flat World by Terry Pratchett .
• In " Igrozeme " by Kevin Anderson .
• In the trilogy of Bartemius Jonathan Stroud , in the second book, The Eye of the Golem .
• Golem in the "Last Watch" Sergei Lukyanenko.
• “The Road of the Magician” L. Kudryavtseva.
• In the book of A. Sapkovsky “God’s Warriors”, the main character Reinevan, being in Prague, intersects with the magician, making attempts to recreate the legendary golem. Based on the dating of the legend and the time frame of the books, this event seems to be an anachronism.
• In the fantasy-detective series of Daniel Kluger's “Magic Cases”, which takes place in Mesotopotamia, with periodically mediated participation of the gods of the corresponding pantheon, clay golems are routinely used as servants, “decoy ducks” during magically dangerous acts, and one artfully made golem is used to kill the witness and the subsequent reservation of the protagonist.
• In some detail the legend is played up in the 12th volume of " Dylan Dog " - "Killer".
• The “Normal Anomalous” series by L. Obukhova and N. Timoshenko, in book 5 of the series The Curse of the Prague Synagogue.

Publicism

The image of the Golem acquired a special meaning in modern Russian social and political journalism after the essay by Andrey Lazarchuk and Peter Lelik appeared in the samizdat in the late 1980s ^[7] . In the article, where the original model of the functioning and development of the Soviet administrative system was proposed, the Golem referred to the administrative apparatus, understood as an information organism that pursues its own goals, which are different from the goals of the state as a whole and from the goals of individual officials. The term “administrative Golem” in a similar sense was widely used by publicists such as Sergey Pereslegin , Konstantin Maximov and others.

Sculpture

On May 20, 2010, a monument to Golem was erected in Poznan by the Czech artist David Cherny .

Theater

On November 23, 2006, the premiere of the musical Golem was held at the Dum u Hybern Palace in Prague . ^{[8] The} musical performance was written by Karel Svoboda , Zdenek Zelenka and Lou Fananek Hagen and directed by director Philip Renk . ^[9] The musical is played in Czech and is accompanied by English subtitles.

Cinema

• The Legend of the Golem became the plot basis for several feature films. Among them, the most famous are the films Golem ( 1915 ) and Golem: How He Came to the World ( 1920 ) - the last one, telling the legend of the creation and the first rebellion of the Golem, is considered the classic film embodiment of this plot. Largely due to the expressive performance of the role of Golem by Paul Wegener , the image of a clay man enlivened by magic gained wide popularity, although later it was pressed back by the similar manner of the Beast created by Frankenstein . In 1935, the film " Golem " shot Julien Duvivier .
• In the USSR, in the 1950s, the witty and entertaining Czech film “The Emperor 's Baker ” ( czech Císařův pekař, pekařův císař , 1951 , director Martin Fritsch ), where the golem plays an important role in the development of the plot.
• In the 1966 English film “It!” (It!), The hero Roddy McDowell uses a golem brought to the London Museum from Prague for personal gain. With the help of the unlimited physical capabilities of the golem, he destroyed buildings, killed unwanted people in his life, and even tried to win over the girl he loved with unrequited love. The hero succeeded in reviving and subjugating the golem to his will when he put an ancient scroll under his tongue, which was kept in a cache in the body of the idol. The golem, however, unlike the classic story, although it did not always follow the orders of the master, was faithful to it to the end.
• In the Russian TV series “On the Other Side of Wolves II. The Keys to the Abyss ”, filmed by Sergey Rusakovich in 2004, is the arch“ Operation Golem ”about the legendary golem (the mythical defender of the people).
• In Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards , the analogy with Golem was applied by Hitler to a squad of American Jews who destroyed the Reich fighters and disappeared without a trace, causing panic among the soldiers.
• In the TV series “ Sherlock ”, filmed in 2010 about Sherlock Holmes in a modern way, the myth of the Golem was used and compared with the burglar-killer who “squeezed” life out of people with his bare hands.
• In the series Supernatural , in the 13th series of the 8th season, a golem is shown, which was created by a Jew to fight the Nazi necromancers.
• A similar plot is used in the 15th series “ Kaddish ” of the 4th season of the “ X-Files ” series, where a Jewish girl and her father create a golem to revenge neo-Nazis - the murderers of her fiancé.
• In the series “Ray Donovan” in episode 5 of season 1 there was a mention of Golem, the hero of Elliot Gould (Ezra Goodman) compares the hero John Voight (Mickey Donovan) with the mythical character.
• In the series “ Grimm ” in series 4 of season 4, the Jewish rabbi creates a golem from red clay to protect his family.
• In the first season of The Secret Order , the character Clay Turner, the room’s main character’s neighbor, turns out to be a golem.
• In the series “ Heritage ”, flashbacks of the 15th series of the 1st season tell the story of creating a golem that was supposed to absorb dangerous supernatural creatures.

Animation and Animation

• The Legend of the Golem formed the basis of the True Monster Faces series of the animated series Extreme Ghostbusters .
• The idea of ​​the golem as a "battle robot" was used in the full-length anime "Slayers Great" (a branch of the anime series " Slayers ").
• In the animated film “ ”, the evil sorcerer creates a golem from clay and animates it by inscribing the word “life” in Hebrew on his forehead.
• In the anime “ The Index of Magic, ” Shelly Cromwell called on the golem Alice with words and seals written and drawn in chalk, beginning with the 20th episode of the first season.
• The 26th series of the anime " Soul Eater " is dedicated to golems, their creation and properties. The action took place in the village of Loev (Czech Republic), where the creators of golems lived (the name of the village, most likely, is made up).
• In the anime " Tristia " the golem is one of the central characters.
• In the full-length anime Flying Ghost Ship , the golem is a robot that destroys a city.
• In the animated series Smeshariki , the golem is the clay son of Losyash.
• In the anime " Pokémon " the Golem is the final evolution of the pokemon Jeodud.
• In the 1985 anime " D: The Vampire Hunter ," the vampire count calls the main character, dumpier Di, the golem ( subhuman and under-vampire ). Also in the eponymous novel, the character Golem Nestradalets, who can give steel to his surface muscles, is one of the gangsters of the “Devil’s Corps”
• In the 17th Halloween episode of The Simpsons ( 18th season ), the second story is about a golem (which looks like a golem from a 1915 movie), a wish-giver.

Video Games

• In the game Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption , which takes place in medieval Czech Republic, there is that Prague golem, which is one of the bosses.
• In Sonic & Knuckles, the Golem is an intermediate level 3 boss.
• In Dragon Age: Origins, one of the possible characters in the main character’s satellites is a golem named Shale, who has free will, a sarcastic sense of humor and skeptical character.
• In the game The Witcher Golem is the intermediate boss in the swamps.
• In Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, a golem is one of the high-level hostile monsters.
• In the game The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, Geralt encounters two types of golems, called Elementals — the earthy (younger brother of D'ao) and the fiery (younger brother of Ifat).
• In the Diablo series of games, a necromancer hero can master a golem creation spell (there are 4 types in total) who will fight on his side.
• In DotA and DotA 2, the Warlock hero can create golems.
• In the Heroes of Might and Magic series there are golem units: stone, iron, gold and others.
• There are also golems in Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor ; In addition, during one of the tasks you need to collect parts of a golem who will guard the castle.
• In the game Cursed Lands, there are two types of golems (steel and diamond), which are virtually unkillable hostile monsters created by an extinct technically advanced June race. Also, in addition to the golems in the game there are elementals of various kinds.
• In the game Minecraft you can create iron and snow golems.
• In the game Clash of Clans, the golem is one of the units (warriors), which, after its death, splits into two small “golemchik”, with half the health and strength of the “parent”.
• In the game Clash Royale - the golem - this is one of the game cards, there is also an ice golem in the game, which slows down opponents after death.
• In the game of Terraria, the golem is the boss.
• In the game of Warcraft there are different types of golems.
• In Magicka, you can create elementals. This can be done after the passage of Chapter X. When using the magic "Summon Elementals", a bodiless figure appears that needs to be filled with one of the basics: fire, water, electricity, witchcraft (death), life, cold or ice (water + cold). The nature of the elemental will depend directly on the base. For the first time, elementals appear in chapter X as enemies.
• In the games of the Eador series there are also different types of golems (such as crystal, clay, obsidian).
• In the Disciples series of games you can call golems.
• In the game Haunting Ground, which takes place in the old medieval castle, the main character, to open one of the doors, obstructed by Golem, you need to insert into his chest a plate with an engraved inscription "EMETH", after which the idol moves to the side and frees the passage.
• In the Serious Sam series of games there are lava golems that can be of different sizes.
• In the Gothic series of games there are golems. They personify the elements: fire, earth, water. To the player are hostile and also quite strong.
• Varieties of golems are found in the Lineage series MMORPG games.

• Homunculus
• Clay guy

in Russian

• Golem / Averintsev S. S. // Hermaphrodite - Grigoriev [Electronic resource]. - 2007. - P. 309. - (The Great Russian Encyclopedia : [in 35 tons.] / Ch. Ed. Yu. S. Osipov ; 2004–2017, Vol. 7). - ISBN 978-5-85270-337-8 .

in other languages

• Bloch Chr. Der Prager Golem. 1919
• Ludwig Albert. Der Golem, "Die Literatur". 1923-1924
• Held Hans Ludwig. Das Gespenst des Golems. 1927
• Gershom Scholem . Zur Kabbala und ihrer Symbolik. Stuttgart, 1973.

The article is based on the materials of the Literary Encyclopedia of 1929-1939 .