About the author
Claire Goll (1890–1977) was born Klara Liliane Aischmann in Nürnberg, and grew up speaking German and French. She studied literature and philosphy at the Universities of Geneva and the Sorbonne in Paris, and became a poet, publishing her first book of poetry, Mitwelt, in Berlin in 1918.
In 1911, she married Heinrich Studer, but lost custody of their daughter, Doralies, when the couple divorced. She married the French poet Isaac Lang, who wrote under the pseudonym Yvan Goll, and the couple were friends of Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, Salvador Dali and Jacques Lipchitz, who all illustrated books by the Golls.
When war broke out in 1939, the Golls moved to the United States, where they continued to write, and work as teachers. Claire’s mother did not survive the war, dying in Auschwitz. The Golls returned to Paris when the war ended. Yvan Goll died in 1950; Claire Goll on 30 May 1977.
Diary of a horse
Claire Goll had over twenty novels and collections of poetry published, one of which is her Diary of a Horse, illustrated by Marc Chagall. It is, as far as I am aware, the only horse story Chagall ever illustrated. Journal d’un cheval, les mémoires d’un moineau, was originally published in Strasbourg in 1925, and in Paris the year after.
Like Black Beauty before it, it is the autobiography of a horse, though Goliath is a cab horse who works in Paris.
The book opens with Goliath being elected president of the Horses’ Union. They issue a manifesto, which declares:
… [we] summon the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to second our just claims, which are:
An eight-hour day; rest on Sunday; abolition of the use of whips and of the castration of males’ legislation against the muse of horse meat ins sausage factories; aluminium shoes for all horses and pneumatic tires for all vehicles; sickness insurance and old-age pasturage.
Goliath’s life is not a happy one. ‘It pours trams and omnibuses,’ he says. ‘My soul and my joints are full of rain.’ He hopes that in some future existence he might ‘rise splendidly, because I have sufferred so patiently in this.’ Goliath loves the mare Goliane, but she dies, worn out and ill from her work as a cab horse. Her death is too much for Goliath, who casts himself, his cab and driver, into the Seine.
Finding the book
The English language version is not easy to find in the UK; copies are available in America but postage is painful. Original versions from both the German and French publishers are reasonably easy to find.
Links and sources
Dustjacket of Diary of a Horse
Scholars’ Archive on Claire Goll (Bonnie Hansen)
The Jewish Women’s Archive on Claire Goll
Bibliography (horse books only)
Diary of a Horse
Originally published as Journal d’un cheval. Les mémoires d’un moineau.
Éditions du Rhin Rhein Verlag, Bâle Strasbourg, 1925, illus Chagall
Jean Budry & Cie, Paris, 1926, illus Chagall
As Diary of a Horse
Éditions Hémispheres, New York, 1945, illus Chagall
Thomas Yoseloff, Inc, New York, 1956, illus Chagall (illustrated right)
A tragic read, in which cab horse Goliath has noble aims for the emancipation of horses, but is condemned to suffer as a Parisian cab horse. His great love, the mare Goliane, dies, and Goliath throws himself and his cab into the Seine, hoping they will soon meet on the eternal prairie.
