Мельмот-Скиталец: Готический роман Чарльза Мэтурина

1820 novel by Charles Maturin

Melmoth the Wanderer is an 1820 Gothic novel by Irish playwright, novelist and clergyman Charles Maturin. The novel's titular character is a scholar who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for 150 extra years of life, and searches the world for someone who will take over the pact for him, in a manner reminiscent of the Wandering Jew. The novel is composed of a series of nested stories within stories, gradually revealing the story of Melmoth's life. The novel offers social commentary on early 19th century England, and denounces Roman Catholicism in favour of the virtues of Protestantism.

The structure of the book as a series of short stories joined together reflect its initial conception as such. In reality, Maturin was under pressure from his publisher to fulfil a contractual obligation, which goes some way to explaining the "chaotic and haphazard process by which (he) wrote". The novel was described by H. P. Lovecraft as "an enormous stride in the evolution of the horror tale", and Maurice Richardson also wrote an essay for Lilliput magazine praising Melmoth. Melmoth the Wanderer was cited by Karl Edward Wagner as one of the 13 best supernatural horror novels. Thomas M. Disch placed Melmoth the Wanderer at number four in his list of classic fantasy stories. Devendra P. Varma described Melmoth the Wanderer as "the crowning achievement of the Gothic Romance". Michael Moorcock has described Melmoth the Wanderer as "one of my favourites". Literary critic John Strachan notes the fact that much of the novel is set in contemporary Ireland and Spain is not surprising, considering the extent to which both countries haunted Maturin's imagination. Ireland, despite its adherence to Catholicism, at least had the perceived "benefit of the Union and the blessings of a free or mixed government to prevent it sliding into tyranny and oppression", whereas Spain "had no such good fortune and was a country where the untrammelled efforts of Catholicism were displayed".

In Arturo Pérez Reverte's The Club Dumas (the basis for Roman Polanski's film The Ninth Gate), Corso bumps into the mystery girl following him as she is reading Melmoth the Wanderer in the lobby of the hotel after seeing Fargas to review his copy of The Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's Fanshawe, one of the major characters is named "Doctor Melmoth". In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Professor Humbert Humbert calls his automobile "Melmoth". In John Banville's 1989 novel The Book of Evidence, the narrator steals an automobile from a garage called "Melmoth's"; the make of the car is a Humber, an allusion to both Wilde and Nabokov. "Melmoth" is mentioned in Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. In Dave Sim's Cerebus comic book (issues 139–150), there's a writer named Oscar (homage to Oscar Wilde), who's registered under the name "Melmoth" at his hotel. In Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers metaseries, Melmoth is an antagonist of Frankenstein. In Leonie Swann's Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story, the mysterious sheep who has wandered the world and comes home to teach the flock what he has learned is named Melmoth. The mysterious financier Augustus Melmotte in Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now resembles Melmoth in more than name. In an 1842 review of Stanley Thorn, Edgar Allan Poe refers to "the devil in Melmoth" as an ineffectual seducer of souls. In letters H. P. Lovecraft addresses Donald Wandrei as Melmoth the Wandrei. A British magazine about surrealism was named Melmoth after the book. Melmoth was published from 1979 to 1981 and its contributors included George Melly and Ithell Colquhoun. In the British TV murder mystery series Midsomer Murders, the episode "Murder by Magic" (2015) included a mysterious country manor called Melmouth House, the home of an infamous rake hell and paganist, Sir Henry Melmouth, who died, apparently, in a ritual pagan fire, hoping to be reborn from the ashes like the mythical phoenix. In Marty Feldman's movie In God We Tru$t (1980), Peter Boyle plays a con man and crooked street preacher named Dr. Sebastian Melmoth. The book's title and many of its themes inspired Anne Rice's Memnoch the Devil novel. Peter Garrison named the aircraft Garrison Melmoth after himself and Melmoth the Wanderer. Sarah Perry's third novel, Melmoth (2018), centres on a female variation of Maturin's character, damned (like Richard Wagner's Kundry in Parsifal) for denying the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the Julio Cortázar novel Hopscotch, a character denies being either a Maldoror or a Melmoth despite quite a bit of wandering about.