The Temporal Monstrosity of the Wandering Jew in ‘Melmoth the Wanderer’

Abstract

writing of medieval representations of Jews and the monstrous, asserts that "it is often not its own misshapen or hybrid body that makes the monster, but its relation to other bodies, social or individual" (2003, 76). In Charles Maturin's 1820 novel, Melmoth the Wanderer, this monstrous relationship is a temporal one, deriving from the complicated and vexed relationship that Christianity posits with its Jewish origins. The uncannily long life of the novel's titular character derives from the legend of the Wandering Jew, who insulted Christ during the Passion and was therefore cursed to linger on earth until the Second Coming. What makes the legendary Wandering Jew 'monstrous' is not his treatment of Christ, but his punishment: the eternity to which he is cursed and the uncanny temporality his presence generates. The Wandering Jew's temporality is always out of sync with the bodies he encounters, both "social and individual," and so too is the temporality of the monstrous Melmoth, who moves in nature-defying ways through time and space, attempting to destroy others in the hope of saving himself. The word 'monster' derives from two Latin verbs monere (to warn) and demonstrare (to show) and we can discern both of these elements in the Wandering Jew legend. The Wandering Jew's cursed state serves as a warning to those who refuse to believe. His unnatural existence demonstrates the consequence of failure to accept Christian temporal order. The Wandering Jew can be seen as a Christian reaction to Jewish refusal to acknowledge Christianity as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy. This Jewish refusal also, of course, includes rejection of Christian salvational history and its temporal structures, the very temporal structures that shape the Wandering Jew legend. Christian thinkers and artists from Augustine in the patristic period through William de Brailes, the English innovator of the Book of Hours form, to 19 th-century French writers and artists such as Eugène Sue and Gustave Doré, have therefore often represented Jews as existing outside of time-in the case of the Wandering Jew's long life, excessively, monstrously so. 1 Melmoth is not a Jew, but like the Wandering Jew, his unnatural lifespan results from transgressive behavior. Melmoth's cursed state appears to come from Faustian explorations of forbidden knowledge that the novel never fully explains. Melmoth has "demon eyes" (Maturin 2008, 45), a laugh that "chilled the blood" (66) and a supernatural ability to cross great distances and to penetrate barriers, even the dungeons of the Inquisition, with seeming ease. Maturin draws upon Matthew Lewis's 1796 portrayal of the Wandering Jew in The Monk. There a character describes the Wandering Jew as "an expression of fury, despair, and malevolence, that struck horror to my very soul. An involuntary convulsion made me shudder" (Lewis 2016, 131). In 1 On Augustine and De Brailes see Lampert-Weissig (2017). Discussions of Sue and Doré can be found in essays in Braillon-Phillipe (2001).