SOURCE: "Historical Consciousness versus Action in C. F. Meyer's Das Amulett," in Symposium, Vol. XXXII, No. 2, Summer, 1978, pp. 114-32.

In the essay that follows, McCort traces the conflict in Meyer's Das Amulett between nostalgia for an existentially comforting world order and a persistent skepticism regarding the possibility of transcending limited and subjective comprehension.

It has been long in coming, but due recognition is finally being accorded Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's earliest novella, Das Amulett. As sometimes happens with works whose artistry is subtle, critical evaluation has come full circle. Deemed a triumph on publication for its integrity of plot structure,¹ in the critical canon of our own century the novella fell to the status of an apprenticeship-exercise, faulted variously, even contradictorily, for awkward organization, strained symbolism, hedging on questions of destiny versus free will, and outright fatalism.² Sporadic attempts to "rehabilitate" the work,³ from the mid-thirties through the late...