Retrieve Severins Journey Into The Dark: A Prague Ghost Story Narrated By Paul Leppin Available As Document

times this novella reminded me of Dostoevsky's darker novels where we have a haunted protagonist who is often an asshole, wandering the streets, suffering in his gloomy reflections, getting drunk, finding light in the world only so he can be plunged back into his depression.


This is a "long dark night of the soul" book, It's essentially about a discontented young man named Severin who falls in love with girls, gets bored with them and then finds another, He also has a deep nostalgia for his childhood and a simpler time when he dreamed of living a life full of adventure and great things.
But after he starts working at an office job he finds daily life unfulfilling, From here his life is a bipolar roller coaster, Winter doesn't seem to agree with him either, maybe he has Seasonal Affective Disorder

This is a book about Prague as much as it is about Severin however.
It's a place of mystery, temptations, sin and adventure, It's atmospheric and darkly moody, The subtitle of the book is "A Prague Ghost Story," and there is a vaguely supernatural plot point, but it's a very minor one,

Frankly I wish this story had gone on a bit longer, I like the overall premise and set up, but by the end the whole thing felt like a mere episode, It ends without conclusion, although it's effective in its way,
It would be unfair to rate this book poorly simply because I hated the main character, but I kinda want to, Severin is a twenty something disenchanted with his life, and as a result treats everyone around him like shit, He treats his girlfriends with the consideration of used dishrags, and does so over and over again, It's hard to feel like you should care about what happens to a guy when he's looking for his manic pixie dream girl obviously before the term had been coined to bring his life meaning.
I feel like this guy would have been diagnosed as a manic depressive had he been seen by a doctor, which is a terrible thing, but his cruelty towards the other characters and complete self involvement makes him wholly unlikeable and unsympathetic.
Some poetically beautiful phrasing and engaging descriptions of Prague in this book, but I won't be visiting again, In which Severin savors his pain forpages but shows no concern for anyone else's including the reader's, Another man stares down into the abyss of nothingness themselves and writes a book about it, In this case it was a subpar journey into existential wounding,.stars

An interesting, evocative examination of one selfabsorbed young man's descent into ennui, degradation, and paranoia in very earlyth century Prague,

There are no "ghosts" here beyond those of past traditions that haunt the rapidly changing streets of Leppin's beloved home town, Shadowy, gently erotic, steeped in melancholy, Leppin's Prague is a moody, slightly spooky place where the subconscious reigns supreme and it's nearing twilight all the time.
Expressionist femmes fatales mix with Meyrinkian occultists in a way that feels entirely natural, even preordained, The ending, which might seem ridiculous in any other story, somehow seems inescapable here,

A curious, rather lovely book, تصویرسازی قوی
ترجمه عالی
روایت جذاب Die Prager Mythen, die spezielle Prager Atmosphäre in einem Roman so beschwören, dass sich die Geschichte als idealer Reisebegleiter erweist Nette Idee, aber ich scheitere immer wieder an Gustav Meyrinks sitelinkDer Golem, ja kürzlich gar an seinem Roman über den Alchemisten John Dee sitelinkDer Engel vom westlichen Fenster, auch an den Geschichten von sitelinkLeo Perutz usw.
Die Prager Phantastik des frühen, Jahrhunderts ist faszinierend, schreckt mich aber immer wieder mit Pathos, Geschwätzigkeit und gewollter Unverständlichkeit,

Von Leppin hatte ich noch überhaupt nichts gehört, aber das Cover lachte mich an, Und der Untertitel suggeriert eine Gespenstergeschichte und der November naht und da grusele ich mich gern, Zudem ist die Geschichte nicht allzu lang ca,Seiten und ansonsten gibt es viel Hintergrundinfos: über Leppin, über das Prager LiteratenUmfeld und vor allem eine gute Dokumentation der im Roman genannten Orte, Der deutschsprachige Prager Verlag Vitalis hat hier wieder ganze Arbeit geleistet,

Im Mittelpunkt des Romans steht ein junger Mann, der an seinem öden Bürojob leidet Kafka lässt grüßen und der sich nach starken Emotionen, Leidenschaften, Abenteuern sehnt.
Nach einer Erschütterung, die Alltag und Langeweile diametral gegenübersteht, Es ist ein Wunsch, den man oft nachvollziehen kann wir waren doch alle mal jung und sind immer wieder mal gelangweilt und der einem doch immer wieder kindisch erscheint.
Insbesondere wenn Frauen benutzt werden, um neue Passionen zu entfachen und dann recht schnell wieder fallengelassen werden, weil die Emotionen sich schnell verschleißen,

Wie schon von anderen angemerkt, handelt es sich nicht um eine Geschichte, in der wirklich Gespenster vorkommen, Aber die Geschichte ist doch spannend, stimmungsvoll, melancholisch, man riecht, sieht und spürt die Schattenseiten des Prager NachtLebens, empfindet die Getriebenheit vieler Charaktere und wenn schon keine Gespenster, so gibt es doch Dämonen, mit denen die Hauptfigur und vielleicht auch einige andere Charaktere kämpfen.


Der wirklich tolle Anhang hat mich zum Beispiel darauf aufmerksam gemacht, dass an Meyrink gleich zwei der Nebenfiguren angelehnt sind, Nicht verwunderlich: Beide haben einen Hang zum Okkulten/Düsteren, Leppin was the truly chosen bard of the painfully disappearing old Prague, its infamous side streets and debauched nights, . . a poet of eternal disillusionment, he was at once a servant of the devil and an adorer of the Madonna,
Max Brod

Leppin once wrote: “Prague remains my deepest experience, Its conflicts, its mystery, its ratcatchers beauty have ever provided my poetic efforts with new inspiration and meaning, ” It is this city of darkened walls and strange decay that forms the backdrop of Severins erotic adventures and fateful encounters as he enters a world of femmes fatales, Russian anarchists, dabblers in the occult, and denizens of decadent salons.
First published in, Leppin seeks to unlock the mysterious erotic nature of his native city buried deep in the subconscious of its inhabitants, His depiction of this world, in a Prague straddling the border between the ancient and the modern, has brought Severins Journey into the Dark deserved international acclaim.
As Max Brod so aptly remarked: "Leppin was the truly chosen bard of the painfully disappearing old Prague, . . " There was potential for a thoughtprovoking story on the main characters 'Journey Into The Dark', the hallmark of existentialist stories, but the opportunity is missed, Little of substance actually happens in the book and despite the nice rosy descriptions of the Czech location the characterisation is weak, One of the other reviews here on Goodreads summarises it as a 'subpar journey into existential wounding, ', and that summarises my feelings as well, Leppin's 'Journey Into The Dark' is an intriguing if somewhat halfbaked look into the psyche of a lost soul,
Severin, the narrative's main protagonist, is an intelligent but adrift man who seeks some form of meaning or significance in life, Though he finds physical attention easily, he remains frustrated by his life's seeming lack of purpose,
A chance encounter with a bookseller introduces him to the riches and pleasures of a sort of 'Eyes Wide Shut' type of social gathering, though these pleasures are hinted at rather than described.

The story then escalates into a sort Love Quadrangle and rushes forward onto an aggressive, if muted ending,

There's nothing wholly wrong with this novel, only that it owes much to other novels that have explored similar terrain, The young but middle aged heterosexual, woe is me, my life should have meaning, narrative is explored to a deeper and darker extant in both sitelinkThe Maimed and sitelinkThe Fall.


As for the subtitle, A Prague Ghost Story, it is ghost barely hinted at and misleading to those wanting some form of halloween distraction.


I found it to be a very drab book boring plot, long sentences, nothing that's really hitting or thought provoking Leppin's Buch ist ein wundervoller Stimmungsroman voller Melancholie und latenter Morbidität.
Wer jemals in Prag war, wird sich sofort vertraut fühlen in den Beschreibungen des Autors, Man könnte meinen die Stadt hätte sich in überJahren kaum verändert,
Severin, der Protagonist des Romans, ist eine ruheloser Geist, ein Getriebener, der sich von

Geliebter zu Geliebter hantelt, ohne Rücksicht auf die Gefühle anderer.
Auch wenn er nicht unbedingt sympathisch ist, so konnte ich doch irgendwie mit ihm fühlen und hatte am Ende ein Portion Mitleid für ihn über.

Leppin's Sprache ist poetisch ohne je anstrengend zu werden und die Länge des Romans ist perfekt,
Set in Prague just before WW, Paul Leppins novels essentially plotless, its as much about a place and a time as it is a conventional story.
Leppin structures his material around his main character the young, angstridden, officeworker Severin the deliberate reference to SacherMasochs a taste of whats to come, At first Severin spends his nights walking the city streets alone, tortured by his thoughts, But he slowly overcomes his intense feelings of alienation, at least long enough to interact with disparate groups he encounters during his wanderings, This embroils him in decadent, dissolute gatherings in cafes and salons, providing him with a means of living vicariously, if not parasitically, His only close connections are with the women he effortlessly attracts then discards,

Leppins piece reminded me at times of Rilkes sitelinkThe Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge enough that I wondered if it was a direct influence on this.
There are echoes here in the expressionistic style, the use of imagery and the careful detailing of the city, its landscapes and architecture, But Leppins narrative doesnt have the complexity or discipline of Rilkes and, significantly, it fails to communicate any convincingly coherent, underlying argument, The central character Severins too much of a stock figure, an almost stereotypical portrait of a suffering, young man unable to reconcile with the modern world and the flashbacks to his innocent, lost childhood verge on the sentimental.


Severins experiences, his anguished interactions, his dissatisfaction and rootlessness are more interesting for what they reveal about Leppins era, Severins obsession with death and suicide, the death by suicide of other characters, mirror, for example, Europes high suicide rates at the time, predominantly among young men: the situation was considered so dire that a few years earlier, in, Freud apparently held an emergency meeting to work out how to deal with growing numbers of student suicides.
Similarly, Severins continual underlining of peoples ethnic and religious identities seems to reflect growing divides in Leppins Prague, particularly between Czechspeaking, Germanspeaking and Jewish communities, Overall though the book felt slightly underdeveloped and it degenerates in the final stages, becoming increasingly incoherent as Severin gives himself over to a relationship powered by overwhelming, erotic fantasy.
I thought the most memorable, successful parts were Leppins rich descriptions of Prague, its sights, its smells, its everyday life from markets to meeting places, it was these passages I found the most vivid, and the most striking.
Translated from the original German by Kevin Blahut, .