Table Of ContentThe Life of Courage
A map of the main towns and countries in ‘Courage’.
The state boundaries are modern.
Johann Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen
Jfife of Courage: the
notorious f/hief ^hore
and Vagabond
Translated with an introduction
and chronology by Mike Mitchell
THE
ARTS
COUNCIL
Dedalus
OFENGLAND
Published in the UK by Dedalus Ltd, Langford Lodge, St Judith’s Lane, Sawtry,
Cambs,PE28 5XE
email: [email protected]
ISBN 1 873982 56 9
Dedalus is distributed in the United States by SCB Distributors, 15608 South New
Century Drive, Gardena, California 90248
email: [email protected] web site:www.scbdistributors.com
Dedalus is distributed in Australia & New Zealand by Peribo Pty Ltd, 58 Beaumont
Road, Mount Kuring-gai N.S.W. 2080
email: [email protected]
Dedalus is distributed in Canada by Marginal Distribution, Unit 102, 277 George
Street North, Peterborough, Ontario, KJ9 3G9
email: [email protected] web site: www.marginal.com
Dedalus is distributed in Italy by Apeiron Editoria & Distributione,
Localita Pantano, 00060 Sant’Oreste (Roma)
email: [email protected]
First published by Dedalus in 2001
Translation copyright © Mike Mitchell 2001
The right of Mike Mitchell to be identified as the translator of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd
Printed in Finland by WS Bookwell
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser.
A C.I.P. listing for this book is available on request.
THE TRANSLATOR
Mike Mitchell is one of Dedalus’s editorial directors and is
responsible for the Dedalus translation programme. His publi
cations include The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy: the
Meyrink Years 1890-1932; Harrap’s German Grammar and a
study of Peter Hacks.
Mike Mitchell’s translations include the novels of Gustav
Meyrink and Herbert Rosendorfer, The Great Bagarozy by
Helmut Krausser, Simplicissimus by Grimmelshausen and The
Road to Darkness by Paul Leppin.
His translation of Letters Back to Ancient China by Herbert
Rosendorfer won the 1998 Schlegel-Tieck German Transla
tion Prize.
êâstWglanâjâïfé
German Literature from Dedalus
Dedalus features German Literature in translation in its
programme of contemporary and classic European fiction and
in its anthologies.
Undine - Fouqué £6.99
The Life of Courage — Grimmelshausen £6.99
Simplicissimus — Grimmelshausen £10.99
The Great Bagarozy — Helmut Krausser £7.99
The Other Side - Alfred Kubin £9.99
The Road to Darkness — Paul Leppin £7.99
The Angel of the West Window — Gustav Meyrink £9.99
The Golem — Gustav Meyrink £6.99
The Green Face — Gustav Meyrink £7.99
The Opal (& other stories) — Gustav Meyrink £7.99
Walpurgisnacht - Gustav Meyrink £6.99
The White Dominican - Gustav Meyrink £6.99
The Architect of Ruins - Herbert Rosendorfer £8.99
Letters Back to Ancient China — Herbert Rosendorfer
£9.99
Stephanie — Herbert Rosendorfer £7.99
Anthologies featuring German Literature in translation:
The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy - editor
M. Mitchell £10.99
The Dedalus Book of German Decadence - editor
R. Furness £9.99
The Dedalus Book of Surrealism - editor M. Richardson
£9."
Myth of the World: Surrealism 2 — editor M. Richardson
£9.99
The Dedalus Book of Medieval Literature - editor
B. Murdoch £9.99
Forthcoming titles include:
The Dedalus Book of German Fantasy: the Romantic
and Beyond — editor M. Raraty £10.99
Introduction
Grimmelshausen quickly followed up the success of
Simplicissimus (1668, though dated 1669) with a
number of other books to which he himself refers in
the foreword to the last as the ‘Simplician writings’.
Probably the best of these — and certainly nowadays,
since Brecht’s appropriation of the heroine, the best-
known — is The Life of Courage, the Notorious Thief
Whore and Vagabond, which appeared in 1670. All
these books were published under elaborate ana-
grammatic pseudonyms (German Schleifheim von
Sulsfort, Philarchus Grossus von Trommenheim,
Michael Rechulin von Sehmsdorf) and the identity
of Grimmelshausen as author was not established
until 1835.
The Life of Courage is conceived as A Counterblast
to Simplicissimus. Courage is the woman with whom
Simplicissimus has an affair, then discards as a
‘man-trap . . . whose easy virtue soon disgusted’ him.
Neither her name, nor the means by which he gets rid
of her are mentioned in Simplicissimus, but his nasty
and embarrassing trick is described in some detail in
Courage and is part of the fictional motivation for
her recounting her life story. She does it, she tells
us, to shame Simplicissimus by showing the world
what a depraved woman he boasted of having had an
affair with. This allows Grimmelshausen to make his
heroine give a frank confession of all her misdeeds:
cheating, lying, stealing and, above all, fornication.
The claim of a serious purpose in using her story as a
9
JOHANN JAKOB CHRISTOFFEL VON GRIMMELSHAUSEN
dire warning is really a piece of moral sticking
plaster rather crudely applied in a note fron|vthe
author at the end. The third of these ‘Sinlplician
writings’, Der seltzame Springinsfeld (The strange
life of Tearaway), starts with a meeting between
Simplicissimus, Tearaway and ‘the author’ in which
the latter tells how he met Courage and was conned
into writing down her life story for her.
Courage is in many ways the female counterpart to
Simplicissimus. Like him, she is swept away in the
wars as a young innocent and like him makes her way
through the devastation of war-torn Germany by
using her considerable talents, in her case her beauty,
a nimble and resourceful mind and an extremely
elastic conscience. Unlike Simplicissimus, who
becomes involved in the war as a boy only after the
battle of Nördlingen in 1634, Courage goes through
almost the whole thirty years, from the initial
Bohemian campaign of 1619—1620 to the Peace of
Westphalia in 1648.
As in Simplicissimus^ Grimmelshausen again
employs the device of the heroine’s mysterious par
entage which, of course, turns out to be aristocratic.
Although her father is only referred to by initial, as
Count T, a nobleman who ‘had been the most
powerful in the kingdom’ but had been forced to
flee to Istanbul because of his rebellion against
the emperor, the reference is clearly to Mathias
Thurn, the leader of the Bohemian rebels. This
device is borrowed from the courtly romances which
Grimmelshausen, and his Spanish models, parodied.
It is interesting to note that he also wrote a courtly
10
