Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
Once established, numerous diamond-makers would follow in the lit-
erature. The earliest example I found, and perhaps the most original one,
is the last and fragmentary novel by Jean Paul (1763-1825),
Der Komet
oder Nikolaus Marggraf
(1820-22).
21
Like all of his satirical novels, the
story is full of fantastic fictions and parodies. Nikolaus Marggraf, the
diamond-maker, is not really a chemist but a chemically skilled apothe-
cary with strong social ambitions or, to be more correct, egomaniac delu-
sions. Owing to the riches eventually resulting from his successful dia-
mond-making - for which Jean Paul, as always, gives scientific details -
the would-be nobleman is able to buy himself a court with all its pomp
and glamour, including a court society. Yet soon a rival appears who
calls himself the devil and disputes Marggraf's right to the court, and the
fragmentary novel abruptly ends during the quarrel. Instead of drawing a
simple moral, Jean Paul used the story of social advancement to furnish
it with many satires on political events of the time as well as on contem-
porary literary movements such as German Romanticism. Perhaps the
latest classic example is one of the earliest short stories of H. G. Wells
(1866-1946), entitled
The Diamond Maker
(1894).
22
Here, it is an ama-
teur chemist who obsessively performs chemical experiments in his
small apartment during fifteen years of increasing poverty, during which
he nearly starves to death, and who in great detail resembles the medie-
val 'mad alchemist'. When he eventually succeeds in making diamonds
(or some similar stuff), he gets into trouble with the police, to the effect
that he is unable to sell and thus benefit from his creation.
All the stories mentioned thus far reintroduce the medieval alchemist
as the miserable seeker but modify the plot, in that they concede some
experimental success in the making of gold, elixir, or diamonds. In so
21
First published Berlin: Reimer, 1820-22, 3 vols. (repr. Zürich: Manesse, 2002). On
this 'comedy' see Gierlich 1972.
22
First published in
Pall Mall Budget
(16 August 1894); repr. in
The Stolen Bacillus
and Other Incidents
(1895). Wells's oeuvre is, of course, a rich source of 'al-
chemists', including, from the nineteenth century alone, Nebogipfel in 'The Chronic
Argonauts' (1888), Moreau in
The Island of Doctor Moreau
(1896), and Griffin in
The Invisible Man
(1897). As J.R. Hammond (1979, p. 63) observes, these “are vari-
ants on a similar theme. Each, in their different ways, testifies to his deep conviction
that science has unlimited possibilities for both good and evil and that knowledge
without moral responsibility corrupts and ultimately destroys its possessor”.
