Short stories
Isabella of Egypt
Isabella von Ägypten
Achim von Arnim · 1812
Opening lines
Braka, die alte Zigeunerin im zerlumpten roten Mantel, hatte kaum ihr drittes Vaterunser vor dem Fenster abgeschnurrt, wie sie es zum Zeichen verabredet hatte, als Bella schon den lieben, vollen, dunkelgelockten Kopf mit den glänzenden, schwarzen Augen zum Schieber hinaus in den Schein des vollen Mondes streckte […]
Braka, the old gypsy woman in the tattered red cloak, had scarcely mumbled her third Our Father outside the window, the signal she had agreed upon, when Bella was already putting her dear, round, dark-curled head with its shining black eyes out through the sliding pane into the light of the full moon […]
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
In Ghent, in the days of Charles V's youth, the young Isabella learns from the old Gypsy woman Braka that her father, Duke Michael, lord of the Gypsies, was hanged as a thief although he was innocent. At the foot of the gallows she digs up a mandrake, which she raises as a vain little man, skilled at finding treasure. It is through him that the young Archduke Charles hears of her and wants to meet her, and Braka at once forms a plan: that Isabella should bear him a child who would lead their people back to Egypt.
Context
The tale appeared in Berlin in 1812, in a collection of its author's short stories. Arnim fused various readings into it: Cervantes's little gypsy girl, Grellmann's study of the Gypsies, which names a Duke Michael, lives of Charles V by Varillas and by Robertson, and the legend of the golem, the material for which Jacob Grimm had supplied. The young archduke appears in it under the guard of his governor, Adrian of Utrecht. The first French translation, by Théophile Gautier fils, appeared in 1856 in a volume of strange tales; that of René Guignard, from Aubier, dates from 1950.
Who it is for
A narrative of about a hundred pages in which the sixteenth-century chronicle sits alongside the grotesque marvellous; the bilingual edition allows the German to be followed alongside.
Prizes and reception
Held by the literary historian Gerhard Schulz to be Arnim's finest novella, in which a delicate love story is combined with the grotesque.
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