鬼磨坊 (1971)

《鬼磨坊》（德语：Krabat）是由德国作家奥飞·普思乐于1971年发表的长篇奇幻小说。

剧情简介

卡巴拉特（Krabat）是一名14岁，平时靠着乞讨维生的少年。某日在睡梦中，他看到身旁聚集著十一只乌鸦的男子在招唤着他前去一间磨坊。

好奇的卡巴拉特在前往睡梦中的地点后，随后被要求在磨坊里担任学徒。之后卡巴拉特得知该磨坊实际是间私人魔法学校，而磨坊的男主人即为一位法力强大魔法师。

在磨坊期间卡巴拉特虽习得各种法术，但也被磨坊主人给限制自由，并且每年得依魔法契约规定必须要从众学徒里牺牲一人性命。之后为了自身自由以及替死去的弟兄复仇，卡巴拉特便在磨坊的生活期间里等待时机。

改编

德国动画家卡雷尔·泽曼于1977年有将此小说改编成动画上映。真人电影版则在2008年推出，剧中的主角卡巴拉特是由德国男演员大卫·克劳斯担任。

Krabat (German: [ˈkʁaːbat] ) is a 1971 fantasy novel about the eponymous Sorbian folk hero, written by Otfried Preußler. The book deals primarily with black magic and the lure of evil. Other themes include friendship, love, and death. It won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (Prize for Literature for Young People) in 1972.

Plot

Set in the beginning of the 18th century during the Great Northern War, the story follows the life of Krabat, a 14-year-old Wendish beggar boy living in the eastern part of Saxony. For three consecutive nights, he is called to a watermill near the village Schwarzkollm through a dream. Upon heeding the call and arriving at the mill, he begins his apprenticeship as a miller's man. He soon joins the secret brotherhood, composed of journeymen and apprentices, and discovers that the skill he is meant to learn through this apprenticeship is black magic. The first magic powers Krabat acquires are rather harmless, such as the ability to turn himself into a raven. Other peculiarities of this watermill include the lack of any outside visitors, including farmers who would have brought grain. The only visitor to the mill is one Goodman, who may be the devil, although this is never made explicit.

The senior journeyman Tonda, Krabat's best friend and older brother figure, dies, ostensibly of an accident, on New Year's Eve in Krabat's first year at the mill. Tonda offers strangely little resistance to his own death. Krabat's suspicions of foul play are further reinforced when another journeyman and friend, Michal, dies the following New Year's Eve. He soon realizes that the master is bound in a pact to the Goodman: the master must sacrifice one journeyman every year on New Year's Eve, or perish himself.

In Krabat's third year at the mill, the new student turns out to be Lobosch, a fellow beggar boy with whom Krabat used to travel before following the master's call to the mill. To Lobosch he becomes a similar "older brother" figure as Tonda was to him in his first year: he helps Lobosch regularly by mindering his pain in secret and helps him with the hard work, gives him advice and consults him when needed.

Wishing to avenge his friends' death, Krabat secretly trains to increase his mental strength so he can see eye to eye with the master. His quest is aided by Juro, a journeyman skilled in magic who has been playing the fool to avoid the master's attention. Whilst the two leave the mill at easter to receive "the marking" (a process where the brotherhood members have to spend a night outside at a place where someone died forcefully, mark each other with the sign and vow to the master to serve him) Krabat wanders out of himself to see the and speak to his long sought love. A girl from the nearby village, a church singer, “Kantorka”, whose name is never mentioned (“Kantorka” meaning just ‘girl chorister’). Krabat learns that to end the spell, his lover must challenge the master for him; then whoever loses the challenge, the master or the two lovers, will die. The master offers Krabat another solution: He will retire and let Krabat inherit the mill, along with the pact to the Goodman; but Krabat refuses to perpetuate the evil pact. So the challenge goes ahead, and the girl's task is to distinguish Krabat from the rest of the journeymen, all of them are standing in a row, while she is - unexpectedly - blindfolded. (They had expected him to transfer them into ravens, but that she could still see.) Nevertheless, she manages to pick Krabat out by the fact that he fears mainly for her life, while the others fear mainly for their own. Ultimately, she rescues Krabat from death, and they and the journeymen escape the mill. The master is left to die in the burning mill on New Year's Eve, while the survivors lose all their magic powers and are now simple millers who have to provide for themselves through normal hard work.

Characters

The main characters are:

Krabat

Tonda

The Master

The Goodman

Juro

Witko

Michal

The girl ("Die Kantorka" in the original German)