Devil Stories Part 33

BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

The belief in compacts with the devil is of great antiquity. Satan, contending with G.o.d for the possession of the human race, was supposed to have developed a pa.s.sion for catching souls. At the death of every man a real fight takes place over his soul between an angel, who wishes to lead it to heaven, and a devil, who attempts to drag it to h.e.l.l (Jude 9). In order to a.s.sure the soul for himself in advance, Satan attempts to purchase it from the owner while he is still living--_vivente corpore_, as he tells the _restaurateur_ in Poe's story. As prince of this world he can easily grant even the most extravagant wishes of man in exchange for his soul. Office, wealth and pleasure are mainly the objects for which a man enters into a pact with the Evil One. Count de Luizzi in Frederic Soulie's _Les Memoires du Diable_ sells his soul to the devil for an uncommon consideration.

It is not wealth or pleasure that tempts him. What he wants in exchange for his soul is to know the past lives of his fellowmen and women, "a thing," as Mr. Saintsbury well remarks, "which a person of sense and taste would do anything, short of selling himself to the devil, _not_ to know." The devil fulfils every wish of his contractor for a stipulated period of time, at the expiration of which the soul becomes his. Pope Innocent VIII, in his fatal bull "Summis desiderantes" of the year 1484, officially recognized the possibility of a compact with the devil. Increase Mather, the New England preacher, also affirms that many men have made "cursed covenants with the prince of darkness."

St. Theophilus, of Cilicia, in the sixth century, was the first to make the notable discovery that a man could enter into a pact of this nature. The price he set for his soul was a bishopric. This story has been superseded during the Renaissance period by a similar legend concerning the German Dr. Faustus. Other famous personages reputed to have sold their souls to the devil for one consideration or another are Don Juan in Spain, Twardowski in Poland, Merlin in England, and Robert le Diable in France. Socrates, Apuleius, Scaliger and Cagliostro are also said to have entered into compacts with him.

In devil-contracts the Evil One insists that his human negotiator sign the deed with his own blood, while the man never requires the devil to sign it even in ink. The human party to the transaction has always had full confidence in the word of the fiend. There is a universal belief that the devil invariably fulfils his engagement. In no single instance of folk-lore has Satan tried to evade the fulfilment of his share in the agreement. But the man, in violation of the written pact, has often cheated the devil out of his legal due by technical quibbles. "It is peculiar to the German tradition," says Gustav Freytag, "that the devil endeavours to fulfil zealously and honestly his part of the contract; the deceiver is man." In regard to fidelity to his word, the father of lies has always set an example to his victims. "You men," said Satan, "are cheats; you make all sorts of promises so long as you need me, and leave me in the lurch as soon as you have got what you wanted." Mediaeval man had no scruples about his breach of contract with the devil. He always considered the legal doc.u.ment signed with his own blood as "a sc.r.a.p of paper." "But still the pact is with the enemy; the man is not bound beyond the letter, and may escape by any trick. It is still the ethics of war. We are very close to the principle that a man by stratagem or narrow observance of the letter may escape the eternal retribution which G.o.d decrees conditionally and the devil delights in" (H. D. Taylor, _Mediaeval Mind_). We now can understand why in Eugene Field's story "Daniel and the Devil" it seems to Satan so strange that he should be asked for a written guarantee that he too would fulfil his part of the contract. Apparently this was the first time that the devil had any transactions with an American business man, who has not even faith in Old Nick.

Reference is made in this story by the devil himself to the popular saying that the devil is not so black as he is painted. Even the devout George Herbert wrote--

"We paint the devil black, yet he Hath some good in him all agree."

This story recalls to us the proverb: "Talk of the devil, and he will either come or send."

Washington Irving, as we have seen, thinks that he is not always very obliging.

Satan, the father of lies, is said to be the patron of lawyers. The men of the London bar formed a "Temple" corps, which was dubbed "The Devil's Own." The tavern of the lawyers on Fleet Street in London was called "The Devil."

BON-BON

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

This writer, to whom the inner world was more of a reality than the external world, had many visions, especially of the devil. The two seem to have been on a familiar footing. The devil, we must admit, filled Poe's imagination even if we will not go so far as to agree with his critics that he had Satan subst.i.tuted for soul. His contemporaries, as is well known, would say of him: "He hath a demon, yea, seven devils are entered into him." His detractors actually regarded this unhappy poet as an incarnation of the ruler of Hades (cf. _North American Review_, 1856; _Edinburgh Review_, 1858; _Dublin University Magazine_, 1875). It was but recently that a writer in the _New York Times_ declared Poe to have been "grub-staked by demons."

The story "Bon-Bon" offers a specimen of Poe's grimly grotesque humour. It first appeared in the _Broadway Journal_ of August, 1835.

The devil of this most un-American of all American authors is not the child of New World fancy, but part of European imagination. The scenery of the story is aptly laid in the land of Robert le Diable.

Poe's description of the devil is, on the whole, fully in accord with the universally accredited conception of his ordinary appearance. His brutal hoofs and savage horns and beastly tail are all there, only discreetly hid under a dress which any gentleman might wear. The devil is very proud of this epithet given him by William Shakespeare; and from that time on, it has been his greatest ambition to be a gentleman, in outer appearance at least; and to his credit it must be said that he has so well succeeded in his efforts to resemble a gentleman that it is now very hard to tell the two apart. The devil is accredited in popular imagination with long ears, a long (sometimes upturned) nose, a wide mouth, and teeth of a lion. It is on account of his fangs that Satan has been called a lion by the biblical writers.

But although the prince of darkness can a.s.sume any form in the heavens above, in the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth, he has never appeared as a lion. This, I believe, is out of deference to Judah, whom his father also called a lion. Hairiness is a pretty general characteristic of the devil. His hairy skin he probably inherited from the ancient fauns and satyrs. Esau is believed to have been a hairy demon. "Old Harry" is a corruption of "Old Hairy." As a rule, Old Nick is not pictured as bald, but has a head covered with locks like serpents. These snaky tresses, which already "Monk" Lewis wound around the devil's head, are borrowed, according to Sir Walter Scott, from the shield of Minerva. His face, however, is usually hairless. A beard has rarely been accorded to Satan. His red beard on the mediaeval stage probably came from Donar, whom, as Jacob Grimm says, the modern notions of the devil so often have in the background.

Long bearded devils are nowhere normal except in the representations of the Eastern Church of the monarch of h.e.l.l as counterpart of the monarch of heaven. The eyeless devil is original with our writer. His disciple Baudelaire in his story _Les Tentations ou Eros, Plutus et la Gloire_ presents the second of these three Tempters as an eyeless monster. The mediaeval devil had saucer eyes. According to a Russian legend, the all-seeing spirit of evil is all covered with eyes. The cadaverous aspect of the devil is traditional. With but one remarkable exception (the Egyptian Typhon), demons are always represented lean.

"A devil," said Caesarius of Heisterbach of the thirteenth century, "is usually so thin as to cast no shadow" (_Dialogus Miraculorum_, iii). This characteristic is a heritage of the ancient hunger-demon, who, himself a shadow, casts no shadow. In the course of the centuries, however, the devil has gained flesh. His faded suit of black cloth recalls the mediaeval devil who appeared "in his fethers all ragged and rent."

It is not altogether improbable that the ecclesiastical appearance of the devil in this story was not wholly unintentional, as the author believes. While Satan cannot be said to be "one of those who take to the ministry mostly," he often likes to slip into priestly robes. In the "Temptation of Jesus" by Lucas van Leyden the devil is habited as a monk with a pointed cowl.

In the comparison of a soul with a shadow there is a reminiscence of Adalbert von Chamisso, whose _Peter Schlemihl_ (1814) sells his shadow to the devil. In his story _The Fisherman and His Soul_ Oscar Wilde considers the shadow of the body as the body of the soul.

That the devils in h.e.l.l eat the d.a.m.ned consigned there for punishment is also in accord with mediaeval tradition. This idea probably is of Oriental origin. The seven a.s.syrian evil spirits have a predilection for human flesh and blood. Ghouls and vampires belong to this cla.s.s of demons.

The devil's pitchfork is not the forked sceptre of Pluto supplemented by another tine, as is commonly a.s.sumed. It is the ancient sign of fertility, which is still used as a fertility charm by the Hindus in India and the Zuni and Aztec Indians of North America and Mexico. A related symbol is the trident of Poseidon or Neptune. This symbol was recently carried in a children's May Day parade through Central Park in New York.

THE PRINTER'S DEVIL

The term "Printer's Devil" is usually accounted for by the fact that Aldus Manutius, the great Venetian printer, employed in his printing shop (about 1485) a black slave, who was popularly thought to be an imp of Satan. This expression may have a deeper significance. It may owe its origin to the fact that Fust, the inventor of the printing press, was believed to have connections with the Evil One. It will be remembered that during the Middle Ages and, in Catholic countries, even for a long time afterwards every discovery of science, every invention of material benefit to man, was believed to have been secured by a compact with the devil. Our ancestors deemed the human mind incapable, without the aid of the Evil One, of producing anything beyond their own comprehension. The red letters which Fust used at the close of his earliest printed volumes to give his name, with the place and date of publication, were interpreted in Paris as indications of the diabolical origin of the works so easily produced by him. (M. D.

Conway, _Demonology and Devil-Lore_.) Sacred days, as is well known, are printed in the Catholic calendar with red letters, and the devil has also employed them in books of magic. This is but another instance of the mimicry by "G.o.d's Ape" of the sanct.i.ties of the Church.

In the infernal economy, where a strict division of labour prevails, the printer's devil is the librarian of h.e.l.l. The books over which he has charge must be as numerous as the sands on the sea-sh.o.r.e. For nearly every book written without priestly command was a.s.sociated in the good old days with the devil. The a.s.sertion that Satan hates nothing so much as writing or printer's ink apparently is a very great calumny. He has often even been accused of stealing ma.n.u.scripts in order to prevent their publication. The prince of darkness naturally rather shuns than courts inquiry. On one occasion Joseph Gorres, the defender of Catholicism, complained that the devil, provoked by his interference in Satanic affairs (he is the author of _Die christliche Mystik_, which is a rich source for diabolism, diabolical possession and exorcism), had stolen one of his ma.n.u.scripts; it was, however, found some time afterwards in his bookcase, and the devil was completely exonerated.

The concluding paragraph of this story is especially interesting in the light of the present agitation for unbound books and a eulogy of the old Franklin Square Library.

THE DEVIL'S MOTHER-IN-LAW

BY FERNaN CABALLERO

Fernan Caballero is the pseudonym of Mrs. Cecilia Bohl von Faber, Marchioness de Arco-Hermoso, who was a Swiss by birth, daughter of the literary historian Johann Bohl von Faber, the Johannes of Campe's _Robinson_ (1779). Her father initiated her early into Spanish literature, which he interpreted for her in the spirit of the Romantic movement of those early days. The interest in mediaeval traditions, which she owes to this early training, increased when, later, she went to Catholic Spain. The charm of her popular Andalusian tales consists in the fact that she fully shares with the Catholic peasants of that province an implicit faith in the truth of these mediaeval legends. In her stories we find perhaps the purest expression of mediaevalism in modern times. Fernan Caballero gradually drifted to the extreme Right in all questions of religion, art and life. She hated every liberal expression in matters of faith or art with the fanaticism of a Torquemada. This author not only shared the somewhat general Catholic view that all Protestants were eternally d.a.m.ned, but she navely believed that every son of Israel had a tail (Julian Schmidt).

The story of woman's triumph over the Devil is well characteristic of the Land of the Blessed Lady, as Andalusia is commonly called.

The legend of a devil imprisoned in a phial is also found in the work of the Spaniard Luis Velez de Guevara called _El Diablo cojuelo_ (1641), from whom Alain Le Sage borrowed both t.i.tle and plot for his novel _Le Diable boiteux_ (1707). Asmodeus, liberated from a bottle, into which he had been confined by a magician, entertains his deliverer with the secret sights of a big city at midnight, by unroofing the houses of the Spanish capital and showing him the life that was going on in them. The legend was introduced into Spain from the East by the Moors and finally acclimated to find a place in local traditions. From that country it spread over the whole of Europe. The Asiatics believed that by abstinence and special prayers evil spirits could be reduced into obedience and confined in black bottles. The tradition forms a part of the Solomonic lore, and is frequently told in esoteric works. In the cabalistic book _Vinculum Spirituum_, which is of Eastern origin, it is said that Solomon discovered, by means of a certain learned book, the valuable secret of inclosing in a bottle of black gla.s.s three millions of infernal spirits, with seventy-two of their kings, of whom Beleh was the chief, Beliar (_alias_ Belial) the second, and Asmodeus the third. Solomon afterwards cast this bottle into a deep well near Babylon. Fortunately for the contents, the Babylonians, hoping to find a treasure in the well, descended into it, broke the bottle, and freed the demons (cf. also _The Little Key of Rabbi Solomon, containing the Names, Seals and Characters of the 72 Spirits with whom he held converse, also the Art Almadel of Rabbi Solomon, carefully copied by "Raphael,"_ London, 1879). This legend is also found in the tale of the Fisherman and the Djinn in the _Arabian Nights_, which was also treated by the German poet Klopstock in his poem "Wintermarchen" (1776).

The devil, as it is said in this story, has a mortal hatred of the sound of bells. The origin of ringing the church bells was, according to Sir James Frazer, to drive away devils and witches. The devil in Poe's story "The Devil in the Belfry" (1839) was, indeed, very courageous in invading the belfry.

The concluding part of the story is identical with the Machiavellian tale of Belphagor.

This tale of the Devil's mother-in-law first appeared in the volume _Cuentos y poesias populares Andaluces_ (Seville, 1859), which was translated the same year into French by Germond de Lavigne under the t.i.tle _Nouvelles andalouses_. An English translation under the t.i.tle _Spanish Fairy Tales_ appeared in 1881. This particular story was rendered again into English two years later and included in _Tales from Twelve Tongues_, translated by a British Museum Librarian [Richard Garnett?], London, 1883.

THE GENEROUS GAMBLER

BY CHARLES PIERRE BAUDELAIRE

This worshipper and singer of Satan shared his American _confrere's_ predilection for the devil. He found his models in the diabolical scenes of Edgar Allan Poe, whom he interpreted to the Latin world.

"Baudelaire," said Theophile Gautier, his master and friend, "had a singular prepossession for the devil as a tempter, in whom he saw a dragon who hurried him into sin, infamy, crime, and perversity." To Baudelaire, the trier of men's souls, the Tempter, was as real a person as he was to Job. He believed that the devil had a great deal to do with the direction of human destinies. "C'est le Diable qui tient les fils qui nous remuent!" Men are mere puppets in the hands of the devil. "Baudelaire's motto," as Mr. James Huneker has well remarked, "might be the reverse of Browning's lines: The Devil is in his heaven. All's wrong with the world."

Baudelaire's devil is a dandy and a boulevardier with wings. Each author, it has been said, creates the devil in his own image.

The greatest boon which Satan could offer Baudelaire was to free him from that great modern monster, _Ennui_, which selects as its prey the most highly gifted natures. The boredom of life--this was, indeed, as this unhappy poet admits, the source of all his maladies and of all his miseries. He called it the "foulest of vices" and hoped to escape from it "by dreaming of the superlative emotional adventure, by indulging in infinite, indeterminate desire" (Irving Babbit). His preface to the _Flowers of Evil_, in which he addresses the reader, ends with the following statement in regard to the nature of this modern beast of prey: "Among the jackals, the panthers, the hounds, the apes, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents--the yelling, howling, growling, grovelling monsters which form the foul menagerie of our vices--there is one which is the most foul, the most wicked, the most unclean of all. This vice, although it uses neither extravagant gestures nor makes a great outcry, would willingly make a ruin of the earth, and swallow up all the world in a yawn. This is _Ennui!_ who, with his eye moistened by an involuntary tear, dreams of scaffolds while smoking his hookah. Thou knowest him, this delicate monster, hypocritical reader, my like, my brother!"

In Gorky's story "The Devil" the devil himself suffers from _ennui_.

But Baudelaire believed he had good reason to doubt Satan's word, and, therefore, prayed to the Lord to make the devil keep his promise to him. He had little faith in the father of lies. In his book called _Artificial Paradises_ (1860) Baudelaire expressed the thought that the devil would say to the eaters of hashish, the smokers of opium, as he did in the olden days to our first parents, "If you taste of the fruit, you will be as the G.o.ds," and that the devil no more kept his word with them than he did with Adam and Eve, for the next day, the G.o.d, tempted, weakened, enervated, descended even lower than the beast.