Friedrich Hebbel in his study beside a red stone catching the light

How sunlight finds its way inside Hebbel’s ruby

Friedrich Hebbel (1813–1863), a German poet and playwright, opens his fairy tale Der Rubin at a jeweller’s stall in Baghdad. Young Assad arrived in the city only days ago. Something another visitor might admire or ask the price of absorbs him so completely that he addresses a gemstone aloud. The jeweller overhears him. At first, the man is delighted to have such an unusual visitor.

What remains of sunlight

O gemstone — he cried in delight — well may you be chosen to adorn the crowns of kings, for in you everything splendid is at once concentrated and refined. The fleeting sunbeam has been captured and enclosed in your mysterious core. The swiftly fading colour is transfigured in you and receives immortality. The pure elements of heaven, air, fire and water, are wedded in your lustre!

– Friedrich Hebbel, Der Rubin, 1904, p. 69–70.[1]

The things Assad finds most precious in a jewel are precisely those one would normally find hardest to keep. A sunbeam travels across the display, a colour briefly flares up. He imagines them both preserved inside the stone. Yet there is something troubling about his choice of words. Part of the beauty of a ray of light is how quickly it escapes. To trap it in a body would be to deprive it of the movement that allowed someone to notice it in the first place.

A ring on an inattentive hand

Hebbel lets a small gesture reveal the distance between these two men. Taking pleasure in the stranger’s enthusiasm, the jeweller slips a heavy ring on his finger. Assad scarcely notices. At that very moment the sun has emerged from behind a cloud and falls upon an exceptionally large ruby. Assad draws off the ring and demands the other stone. A moment ago he could discover a world in the play of light on gems. Now he can see only one stone in the entire display. That narrowing of his gaze is where his troubles begin.