Blame it on Kafka..

My dislike for 'BUGS' began with Kafka :-).
As I read 'The Metamorphosis/Verwandlung' by Franz Kafka,

I always seem to see Gregor morph into a roach. 

Kafka calls him ein 'Ungeziefer', which means vermin,

and in common US parlance - BUG! And roaches are BUGS/vermin. A "Kaefer" is a Beetle. And beetles can be and are  interesting. Who does not like to watch cute Lady Bugs, fascinating Stag beetles, big Rhino Beetles fighting, colorful Scarabs and more.

While roaches are not, to me they are NOT, fascinating, most definitely not!

So, do I need to go into THAT novella?

I think most of us have read it, as required reading in school?

Or out of simple curiosity. Or out of admiration for a writer with a visionary imagination.

Which most certainly is caused by personal experiences.

Kafka felt himself haunted, and hunted, I think!

His stories' unknown heroes battle in vain against institutional tyranny, inhumane treatment, desertion!

"(The Judgment"/Urteil, "Penal Colony"/Strafkolonne, "The Castle"/Das Schloss).

"The Trial"/Der Prozess,

 (made into a black/white movie with Anthony Perkins by Orson Welles -

a surrealistic horror movie?) 

His works are defiantly NOT  leisure time reading.

In German with long sentences and words with more than double meanings. 

And that is so difficult to translate without loosing those shadings.  

His translators truly have to call on their powers of imagination to provide adequate translations.

It still amazes me how a story read as a child can form one's tendencies to like/dislike!

Maybe read too early?

Rationally I think I know all that there is about insects, the pros, the cons, the neutrals.

And as science delves ever deeper the pros seem to become more prevalent!
On the one hand there is that - still much alive - dislike of some things.
A pagan fear of evil unexplainable.
On the other hand, the Brother Grimm's stories have left no such lasting impressions.
Why is that, I wonder?

The story below is just another example of that unexplainable dislike (?) fear (?).
Jeremias Gotthelf's (this alias means 'Godhelp'-kinda apropos) novella " Die Schwarze Spinne" (1842), 
is a moralizing tale of many hues!
His real name was Albert Bitzius (October 4, 1797 – October 22, 1854).  
If you are an arachnophobe -  better not read it! :-0.

In this novella,  the 'heroine' Christine (no, not the CAR-but just as scary) becomes a breeding ground for  ugly black spiders. This novella draws on an old saga going back to the time of the plague.
Briefly, without going too far into saga,  folklore background,  and possible psychological meanings:
To help the sorely put-upon peasants of a tyrannical knight, the devil appears as a green clad huntsman. For his help he demands the body=soul of an unbaptized newborn. To seal the pact he kisses the farmer's wife Christine on the cheek. When the farmers do not honor this pact, the spot on Christine's cheek becomes the one from which a plague of black hairy scary spiders erupts.

But there is much more to this story. It was written at a time when women were supposed to care for kids, church and kitchen. Christine, already disliked as a 'foreigner from Lindau', with 'wild black eyes and hair', stands out even more as she dares to involve herself with things outside the house!
Beware, oh woman, stay in the kitchen! It also involves the eternal conflict of Good vs Evil.

But all I remember, rather too vividly, is that 'angst causing' description of million black hairy spiders erupting from Christine's cheek! Every time something does not go according to the devil's pact!
Nightmares! Especially since the heroine's name is similar to mine!
Guilt feeling transference here, hmm :-). And ever since, I have no love for any kind of spider.
I can say honestly I do find them fascinating to observe... from a distance!
I do acknowledge they are useful in eating other insects.
They are worth studying.
Their web is ultra strong though fine.
Their venom can and is being used in medicines.
But: Female spiders eat their mates afterwards!

On the one hand a source for  nightmares..
on the other hand a subject for a melodrama opera?
Heinrich Sutermeister (12 August 1910 – 18 March 1995)
was a Swiss composer

of such works, as Requiem mass (the Introito in the video clip)
and also of an opera ''Die Schwarze Spinne'' based on that Gotthelf novella, composed  in 1935.

It has been  performed by the Gotham Chamber Opera in NY, in its US premiere in 2004.

A Review from that year says:

"Mezzo-soprano Beth Clayton (HGOpera studio alumna BTW) was almost frightening with the heat she generated in the part of Christine -- wild-eyed, writhing, a vocal powerhouse".

Gotham Chamber Opera of NY is dedicated to presenting productions of intimately scaled works, from the Baroque era to the present, that are generally not staged in traditional opera houses but offer audiences immediate, involving, and powerful music theater.

And these are the thoughts for today, mes chers readers!

Which have nothing to do with hockey, which, am sure ;-), is covered extensively elsewhere!