by John Crowley
So now I was called in. First the king asked me if, after I read the porter’s petition, I’d been able to glean anything about that reprobate among us. I didn’t hesitate; I just started in as plainly as I could to tell the whole story of how it was I myself who had stupidly fallen into that error, and I offered to take the punishment I deserved. The king and his council were dumbfounded at this sudden outburst and asked me to step outside for a moment.
I waited in agony while they debated, and when I was called in again, it was old Atlas who spoke to me.
Well, the answer was that my wish couldn’t be used to wish that.
“The king is so sorry that you, Brother, you of all people, one he loved above all the rest, stumbled so. But he just can’t go against our ancient customs. The old porter must be freed – and you must take his place.” He said the king hoped that eventually someone else who did what I had done might be discovered and apprehended, but the soonest that could happen would be at the wedding of his own son.8
This judgment almost killed me. I hated myself and my babbling tongue – why couldn’t I have just shut up! – but I soon got hold of myself.9 I told the king and his lords how this porter had given me a token, and had also sent a note recommending me to the next porter, and by their help I had got into the castle and stood up to the trial of the weights, and because of that I had been able to be part of all the wonders and delights that followed.
“Now it’s only fair that I should show gratitude to my benefactor,” I said, “because without him none of that would have happened. So thank you, my lords, for your sentence. I’m willing and ready to accept some burden for his sake.
“But now there is, if you please, the matter of my own wish for myself. And my wish, if it can be granted – it’s to be back in my home under the hill again.”
You see, my idea was that I could free the porter by my confession, and then my own wish could free me. Well, the answer was that my wish couldn’t be used to wish that. My wish that the porter go free, though, was granted, and the king said he was very pleased I had acted so generously, even though he was afraid I still didn’t know how bad a fix I had got myself into through my curiosity.
Anyway that good man was pronounced free, and I was sent out.
After me, others went in and came back out again happy as could be, which stung me all over again, since it seemed certain that I would live out my life sitting by that gate. Many gloomy thoughts were running around in my head, about what I was going to do, and how I would pass the time; and my final thought was that since I’m old and very likely haven’t much longer to live, this anguish and my humiliating job would quickly finish me off, and then my door-keeping would be over, and I could sleep in my grave. On the one hand it bothered me terribly that I had seen such superb things, only to be robbed of them. On the other I was glad that at least I had been accepted and found worthy, and not forced to depart in shame.
While I was brooding, the rest of the knights had got ready, and after the king and his lords had said good night to each one, they were taken to their rooms. But I, wretched man, had nobody to show me where I was to go, and all I could do was stand there tormenting myself. And just so that I would never forget for a moment my lowly function, I was made to put on the iron ring that the old porter had worn.
Finally the king spoke to me.
“This is the last time you are likely to see me as my guest and companion,” he said, “but remember that still you should always behave as a knight, and follow the rules of the Order you have sworn to.” He took me in his arms and kissed me, and by all this I knew for certain that in the morning I must in fact sit at my gate.
The other knights stayed to say a few kind words to me, and gave me their hands at last, asking God to protect me, and so on. Then the two old men, Atlas and the old warder, took me into a fine bedchamber, where there were three beds. Each of us took one, and there we spent almost two[…]
Here two pages or so are missing. The author of the foregoing, though he supposed that in the morning he would have to become the porter of the castle, in fact returned home.
1 It’s likely that the processes employed in the Olympus Tower are useless or even harmful anywhere else, though ambitious alchemical workers like these might be tempted to try them out.
2 Clocks that showed minutes were still rare in Andreae’s day. Around the time that CW was written, the great clockmaker-mathematician Jost Burgi is said to have invented (and made an instrument that could count by) seconds.
3 Montgomery thinks that the mysterious gift must be the crucifix formed from a single pearl that Christian observed being carried between the couple on their way to the play and the execution. Since he believes that the rebirth and reuniting of the king and queen are an allegory of the marriage of Christ and the Church, the connection seems obvious to him.
4 This apparently simple statement has given much trouble to interpreters. Rudolf Steiner (founder of Anthroposophy) takes it to mean that Christian is the father of his own “transformed faculties of knowledge” symbolized by the King. Jung sees it as a little metafictional joke: Christian, thus Andreae, is the “father” of all the characters in his book, a fact that a character in the book is here reminding him of. Much as I like that idea, I think a simpler interpretation is preferable: that the King recognizes Christian as the father, or one of the fathers, of his reborn self, thus needing no tokens to be in his presence.
5 Specifically not Knights of the Red Cross or Rosicrucian Brothers. They were formerly Knights of the Golden Fleece – on a quest, like Jason. Now they are Knights of the achieved Philosopher’s Stone.
6 Immortality was a goal of alchemy – the Philosopher’s Stone was also the Elixir of Life. These Knights are foreswearing such a personal pursuit – their skills are to be used to help others.
7 A variant of the remark of Socrates – “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.” It also seems to reflect Christian’s dejection at having passed so many tests and yet failed in the end.
8 An unexpected and yet winning aspect of this story to me is that the death and resurrection of the king (and queen) really have very little effect either on them or on the world. They’ve returned more beautiful and perhaps more noble (there’s no knowing), but they are essentially the same. The true and final aim of the alchemical Work – the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone from the copulation of the Red King and the White Woman – doesn’t happen, at least within the compass of the tale, and here the king predicts that his own son will have to undergo the same process he did, and will therefore be flawed and mortal like himself. (It may be that the old king and his spouse who were beheaded were in actual fact the young king’s parents).
9 It may be – Montgomery is certain of it – that the labors and the visions that Christian has undergone have made it possible for him to do this selfless deed. All the other redemptions (of the emperor in the weights trial, of the king and queen) cost him nothing of himself – but this one does. It is a key concept in Christianity as in alchemy that the seeker must expend all of himself to find that by which he will be restored to himself – he can’t save himself, but must trust in the powers he solicits.
[THE EIGHTH DAY]
Here two pages or so are missing. The author of the foregoing, though he supposed that in the morning he would have to become the porter of the castle, in fact returned home.
This is the strangest turn this strange tale makes. Some commentaries, perhaps baffled, don’t even mention it. It is in one sense a further metafictional swerve – a new omniscient narrative frame is suddenly introduced, calling into question the provenance of the whole story. But how does this new voice come to know what happened to Christian? It might be thought that Andreae got tired of his story and simply drew this line across it. But if so, why not end with “In the end he was allowed to return home” (i.e., because another sinner was found to take his place)? No, he goes home the next morning – on the eighth day of this romance – w
ithout explanation. It could have perhaps ended with “In the morning the king sent word that Christian’s wish was granted and he could go home after all” – but no, that’s not even hinted at. I have wondered if Christian simply refused the task – like Alice in the trial at the end of Alice in Wonderland discovering that her tormentors are all nothing but a pack of cards. He forgave himself, and walked away. That would assort ill with the generous and moving resolve he showed, and the seriousness with which he took his sin and his expiation. It might be that Andreae is simply wrapping up his shaggy-dog story and letting us see it was all a joke. I don’t know. I don’t believe it’s an error; I think it has meaning. I just don’t know what it is.
Andres Paniagua, who checked my translation and notes against the original German editions, wonders if Andreae could be suggesting that the story is actually cyclic: perhaps Christian exists within a story loop, where he actually gets to redeem himself, so that the story can return to its beginning and start again. That would be consistent with his being recognized on several occasions as someone who has been expected, and also with the indications I have pointed out that the royal redemption process happens over and over. I think this is a delightful notion, and though it seems to be one impossible for Andreae in the seventeenth century to have had, at least consciously, that needn’t stop us from entertaining it. In a famous essay, Jorge Luis Borges suggested that the very existence of Kafka in the twentieth century creates the “Kafkaesque” qualities of writers who preceded him. It can be posited that the current existence of metafictional science fiction (particularly if I’m right that CW is a science fiction novel avant la lettre) can in a real sense bring into being the post-modernist time-loop qualities of a tale told long ago. That is the strange alchemy of story.
JOHN CROWLEY is a writer of fictions of various kinds. He was born in the appropriately liminal town of Presque Isle, Maine, and from there journeyed to different places. He lives now in Massachusetts west of the Connecticut River and works part time teaching at Yale University. Insofar as it is his, and depending on how they are counted, this is his sixteenth published book.
Since illustrating The Chemical Wedding THEO FADEL has discovered she is the eleventh great grandniece of Robert Fludd who defended the Rosy Cross manuscripts in 1616. He mentions building his own wooden robots and other things impossible by “mere mathematics without the co-operation of natural magic.”*
Theo lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts with her spouse Ruth and four cats in a charmingly old house that stands by natural magic. A native Charlottean and enthusiastic somnambulist, she grew up within a half mile of PTL’s broadcast studio and Billy Graham’s mother, watching Star Trek and Batman in a Peter Max bathrobe. When science sacrificed the moon program she turned to Dungeons & Dragons. She has a BA in Archeology from Bryn Mawr College and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University. She studied drawing, sculpture and painting at the Art Students League, NYC while working in an old German cabinet shop. Her first day there an aged Austrian said “One hundred years and you’re the first woman we’ve seen.” Currently her studio is in Easthampton, her website is theofadel.com and she’s been in Massachusetts less than a hundred years. This is the first book she has illustrated.
* Craven, J. (1902). Doctor Robert Fludd (Robertus de Fluctibus), the English Rosicrucian : Life and writings. (p. 44). Kirkwall: W. Peace.