The mirror in the mirror

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The mirror in the mirror: A labyrinth is a surrealistic collection of stories by Michael Ende from 1983 . All stories in Der Spiegel im Spiegel have their own main characters, but refer to one another through 'literary leitmotifs ' and are linked in terms of content. None of the stories has its own title. A numerical order was dispensed with.

Ende wrote the 30 short stories - according to the dedication at the entrance of the book - for his father Edgar Ende , whose artistic life's work, from which 18 drawings are attached to the book, inspired his stories. In retrospect, the author described the father's influence on this and his entire work in his own words:

“I practically made poems based on my father's pictures. (…) I tried to do the same thing in words as he did in the picture. (...) At that time I wrote a whole series of poems in which I tried to put themes that my father had in his drawings or in his pictures into words. Not by describing the picture, but by simply trying to do what he had painted in the picture in a different way. Well, we stimulated each other a lot, yes, he found it very stimulating. (…) I become more and more aware in the course of my life how much I owe my father. In my whole basic conception of art in general. And also the whole world into which he introduced me. "

- Michael Ende

Themes and motifs

The motto of the story collection is the slogan: “What is reflected in a mirror that is reflected in a mirror?” The end of the book does not give a clearly recognizable answer to this question. This is mainly due to the fact that the reader can get lost in causal relationships and argumentative logic in this work - this is a possible meaning of the subtitle A Labyrinth . Another interpretation of the subtitle arises from the question: “What does a person see who is in a labyrinth?” They see paths that lead into other paths or branch off from them. In a figurative sense, life can also be understood as a labyrinth: The situation in which the reader finds himself results from the paths (decisions) that he / she has taken (what he / she has decided for or against) .

The most famous borrowings for the “occidental” reader are taken from Greek mythology, among other things: The frame is a variant of the ancient Minotaur material : In a labyrinth . Here is Hor, wandering from room to room in this maze. At the end of the story collection, the topic of Hor and Minotaur is taken up again in the last story by a matador and the words "Poor Hor, poor, poor Hor." The second story borrows the Icarus motif, but the “crash” takes place in a completely different way.

Motifs from Christian mythology can also be recognized, such as the motif of the angel, the crucified brother from the hereafter ("Slow as a planet") or the attempt to reach the hereafter with a bridge ("Die Brücke , which we have been building for centuries ").

The dark character of nightmares and the theme of futility are juxtaposed with wonderful events, enigmatic images and fairytale magic. The eternally identical gestures, activities or thoughts to which the people are subjected are particularly striking, whether it is the pointless patrolling of two soldiers, the gathering of abundant money, the walk through the desert in the middle of the room or studying for an exam that is no longer taking place. In this atmosphere characters appear who know about the futility of a quarrel, a meeting or a miraculous increase in money, but who cannot stop or change the often terrible course of things and are swept away by it or become victims of the inevitable course of things.

Another important element is the depiction of brutal physical violence, which often appears pointless, which clearly sets the book apart from Ende's children's books.

It is the vain longing for freedom that characterizes the protagonists of at least the first two stories. This motif is shown most clearly by Hor, who is forever trapped in his labyrinth and who is the only one who describes his monotonous life from his own perspective.

The role of love is the basic theme in several stories, for example in the story "It is a room and a desert at the same time".

Only children are allowed innocence and a basic attitude towards the good.

Motive connections result primarily from the roles of the characters in relation to one another.

Overall, Der Spiegel im Spiegel offers a surrealistic, poetic-dark dream image. The thought of longing for ways out of the previous situation, the labyrinth, which is different for each figure, runs through all sections.

The stories in detail

Forgive me, I can't speak louder

Hor lives enclosed in a labyrinth of rooms. He feeds on the edible substance of the walls and wanders without aim through the rooms, which only open up to new rooms again and again. Hor - who called himself that because nobody else calls him by his name - claims of himself that he has no memories of his own, but he remembers things and places and is unable to defend himself against these sudden memories. He wonders who is behind the name Hor, whether he is one or many, whether perhaps someone will even look for him and meet him, and speculate about what would happen then.

Relation to other stories and possible associations: The labyrinth is reminiscent of the labyrinth of the Minotaur. But it also reminds of the Thousand Door Temple from Neverending History , which also has no exterior as long as one is in it without a goal. The whisper is reminiscent of the silence between waking and falling asleep, which is also mentioned in the text.

The son had himself under the expert guidance

It is the story of the young man who “dreamed of a pair of wings under the expert guidance of his father” , the futile longing for freedom . The youth makes a hopeless attempt to break out of the walled maze city. He has to solve a task that he has to guess. He guesses the wrong answer and fails. The consequences of this are depicted in horrific pictures from the end.

Relation to other stories and possible associations: The story of the escape from the labyrinth is reminiscent of Icarus. Both have wings, both fail, with both the father is punished by the failure of the son. In life, too, every person is faced with tasks whose solution is not always clearly recognizable.

The attic room is sky blue

A student who is constantly studying for the upcoming exam lives in a shabby place that he can no longer afford to own. He has been waiting for some time for the heirs of the former, now deceased owner of the chamber to agree on a new rental price. Unfocused and distracted by worries and uncertainty, he leaves his apartment and meets a working caretaker, with whom he talks. Together with him he comes to the table where the above-mentioned heirs are sitting and discussing, but on closer inspection the student notices that there is already dust on the table and the heads of the motionless men, which deeply shakes and confuses him. With the intention of helping the caretaker with his work, but thinking about the exam material, the student falls asleep with his head on the table.

The station cathedral stood on a large floe

A gigantic building was created on an island float floating freely in space, in which the people have dedicated themselves to the service of capitalism and worship it with religious rituals. One tries to proselytize stranded travelers. A woman wants to escape the superficial hustle and bustle of people by taking a train before the time is up. On the other hand, there is a firefighter who has recognized the self-destructive tendencies of society and fights against them. For this he is despised and persecuted by those present.

Heavy black cloth

The dancer waits in front of the closed curtain for his performance. He doesn't move from the spot, after all it could start at any moment. But because of all the waiting he forgets what he is actually waiting for and even when he realizes that there is no point in waiting, he stays. It could start at any moment.

The lady pushed aside the black curtain of her carriage window

The search for meaning is most evident in the story of the people who restlessly roam the world in search of a lost word. Without the missing word, they explain to a questioning woman, the meaning of the drama that held the world together would be lost. It was no longer complete. Since this realization the search for the lost word began. In this context belongs the ever-arising question about God: whether he answers when arrows are shot in the sky, whether ravens are angels in disguise or not, and whether God or the devil will prevail over the world. It is possible that Michael Ende also made a connection with the lost word that is talked about in Masonic circles.

The witness states that he was on a nocturnal meadow

The story contains a testimony that bears apocalyptic features: a scene is depicted in disturbing and enigmatic images in which, at the command of a voice, masses of torchbearers are massacred without resistance. Later a mysterious figure can be seen who is as it were "crucified" on a rope suspended high above the battlefield.

The marble-pale angel sat among the audience in the courtroom

The criticism of an inhumane society can be clearly heard from Ende's work. This becomes dramatically clear in the story of the negotiation for the life of an unborn child, in which two lawyers bitterly argue about whether a human being should be allowed to live or not on the basis of his future behavior. The guardian angel present at the same hearing is the only one who massively counteracts the argument. However, his imposing intervention shows no success. After all, it is the judge himself who prevents the unborn child from becoming human.

Moordark is the mother's face

This story briefly and drastically describes the course of a family life in monotonous cycles, which is described without any signs of mutual sympathy between the partners. The clock strikes the hours, the man goes into the stable and slaughters a cow, the mother sits on the kitchen table and gives birth to a child who is put with the other children, the man goes into the stable and gets drunk. In this way life goes on until the man mistakenly puts an end to his wife's life. The eldest daughter takes her place, a strange man appears in the hallway, the cycle continues.

Slowly like a planet turns, the big round table turns

The main actor recognizes a rift in the universe, behind which a big brother (in a positive sense) wants to shake hands with him. He tells him to trust him and come to him before it's too late. The main character, however, is suspicious and implores this brother to go away and leave him alone. He is afraid of the unknown and wants to stay in his perfect world. Big Brother keeps appearing behind the crack, and Ende describes wounds in his palms, which suggests that Jesus is meant here. The main character stays tough every time and rejects the brother. At the end the rift closes, and the main actor seems relieved that his original world has returned, but now threatening shadows appear, which ultimately kill him. The main character regrets not trusting the brother and asks him to come back.

The inside of a face with eyes closed, nothing else

A man persecuted by soldiers returns home with the task of freeing his house, which has become a stranger to him, of rats (symbolic of evil) until dawn. If he does not manage it, great disaster threatens him. He loses courage in the face of the seemingly impossible task, but a fox and a wolf help him, whose lives he then saves. In the end, the protagonist gains courage.

The bridge we've been building for centuries

The construction of a bridge over an abyss is described, with people divided as to whether there is another side or not. However, the work can only be completed if it is built against it from the other side. One possible interpretation suggests an afterlife: A believing person also tries to reach an afterlife that he does not even know whether it will come his way.

It's a room and a desert at the same time

This story is about a wedding couple who look for the supposedly shortest path to their partner in the middle of the room in the desert; During the seemingly endless hike, both age from adolescence to old age, so that one only ever reaches the other when one of the two partners has almost reached the end of life, while the other is still in the prime of his life and impatient to meet going towards. The story accompanies the groom, who at the beginning of his journey throws some flowers to an old woman out of pity, while at the end of his journey the same thing happens to his young bride when he has aged long ago. The accompanying figure comments that both could be happy to meet because that is not the norm.

The wedding guests were dancing flames

The burning of a fire is interpreted as a festival.

An ice skater was gliding across the vast gray expanse of the sky

The skater is skating across the frozen sky and to the people watching it looks as if the skater is leaving a message - albeit in a strange alphabet, and so after the tracks have faded, people go home again without spilling any further to think about a possible message - after all, you have enough other problems. Michael Ende may have brought a motif from the biblical story of Belshazzar into a new context.

This gentleman consists only of letters

A man stands between Scylla and Karybdis - two possibilities and both are equally bad.

Actually, it was about the sheep

Anyone who does not report the presence of sheep is liable to prosecution and, like them, will be transported away and killed. An association with the state persecution of minorities seems to suggest itself.

Man and woman want to visit an exhibition

The young doctor had been allowed

The main actor is above all a passive observer, like in a dream (apparently?) Incoherent scene after scene. First there is the overweight woman who only relieves herself when she eats something, then the disgusting animal, which can only produce a wonderful sound with two conspecifics after its release, and finally the scene in an Asian village with the biblical three times wake-up call of the rooster .

After the office closes [sic]

On a winter evening, like every evening after work, a man gets on the tram with which he starts his journey home. Since he feels rather uncomfortable in his own apartment, he secretly wishes for a change during the tram ride, but this usually does not happen.

However, when things really take a very unusual course, the man tries, after initial amazement, to rationalize them into the usual process, however bizarre and absurd they may be. Even when the tram drives through the middle of a desert, it is "explained" by the fact that the tram has to make a detour because of road works. A white horse pushing up to the car and trying to get the man to sit is successfully evicted as the man is concerned about the inconvenience of an accident.

After the situation got increasingly out of control, the man fell into a rollercoaster of anger, despair and resignation. When the tram goes very slowly for some time, the man tries to save himself by jumping out of the moving train. Immediately afterwards, however, he realizes that he would no longer find his way back in the completely unknown landscape. It was only with great difficulty that he managed to get back on the tram, and he was also slightly injured.

Finally the man realizes that the tram is heading for the sea and she is seized by sheer horror.

The brothel palace on the mountain shone that night

A flawless, clinically perfect whore and an old beggar talk about human relationships.

The world traveler decided to stop his hike

A traveler, after having found everything but himself on his travels, meets a little girl who may represent his anima . Together with her he finally has access to his own imagination. A repetition of the motif of the Childlike Empress of the Neverending Story is to be considered.

That evening the old seafarer could no longer bear the uninterrupted wind

The navigator breaks down from the masthead and meets a master.

Under a black sky lies an uninhabitable land

The fair is dead, the stories have fallen silent. A child named Michael and an actor named Ende explore or create their world together. In the neverending story, too, Bastian recreated the realm of Fantastica from nothing.

Hand in hand, two walk down a street

A schoolboy in a sailor suit is accompanied to his first lesson by a sinister genie. At first the boy is defiant and a little bossy; the dialogue with the Djin shows that he will attain great power in the distant future. Nevertheless, the Djin remains adamant, knowing that the boy will be grateful to him later.

Both are in a desolate, desolate and extremely shabby street when an old street sweeper joins them and explains to the boy what this street is all about: It is the street of the losers and their “comforters”.

One of these losers, a spaceman who is still wearing parts of his suit, staggers down the street and finally collapses, exhausted, near the boy. One of the ghostly looking comforters joins him and runs her fingers through his hair, relieving him of the pain of his disappointment. However, this also means that the loser loses his remaining will.

The spaceman tells the schoolboy how he looked for paradise and was bitterly disappointed when he finally found it. Then he gets up and walks with the comforter towards one of the houses on the roadside. When the boy tries to keep the spaceman from losing himself by allowing himself to be "comforted", he is slapped by him.

It rained incessantly in the classroom

A school class of a different kind breaks into a new reality behind the blackboard, similar to how life changes from one reality to the next over the decades. You are a passive spectator as well as an active co-designer of the next and the next stage set.

In the actors' corridor we met a few hundred people waiting

An aging actor has been waiting to play the role of his life for a very long time. However, the costumes that are brought to him for the respective act are imperfect, so that he does not pay any further attention to them. Ultimately, the old man has doubts as to whether someone else might not have gotten ahead of him and played the part in his place.

The fire was opened again

In the labyrinthine rooms of a citadel, a fallen dictator tries to escape his persecutors. He is weakened by numerous fatal wounds, but he cannot die, although he longs for it.

Inexplicably he finds himself in a huge domed hall, where his enemies are no longer chasing him. Since he does not feel safe here either, he climbs a system of stairs that lead him right under the dome; From there he makes his way through the ceiling paneling and finally reaches an eternally long corridor, which contains the same dark green door with the number 401 in endless repetition.

However, the corridor reminds him of his fearful school days, and so he continues on his way. After a while he meets a small procession whose leader offers him an unusual solution: the dictator cannot die, but he can be unborn.

Without the dictator noticing it first, the procession leader leads him a long way back through childhood to infancy - and beyond. After the dictator has transformed back into an embryo, the procession leader "buries" him - in reality a very old woman, which the dictator only notices at the last moment of his consciousness - in a cleft grass mound that resembles a vulva.

The circus is on fire

The protagonist, a white clown , finds himself in an unreal, nightmarish environment: it is ruled by a regime of terror. Politically persecuted people are driven through the streets and ill-treated by the militiamen for no reason. But there are also surreal nightmare images: for example, a shop window behind which there is a rat the size of a dog, which is threatened by even more oversized worms, beetles and woodlice; or the scene of a brawl, which runs like in slow motion.

From the thoughts of the clown emerges his conviction that he is just a character in someone else's dream.

Pressed more or less into resistance against the terror regime by the ringmaster, he finally implores the dreamers in a mental speech to release him from their dreams. At that moment he is hit in the forehead by a beer mug with deadly force. The last expression on his face before collapsing dead shows surprise and complete understanding.

A winter evening

At the end of the story collection, two soldiers patrol in front of a door that obviously has nothing behind. Anyone who went through it, however, never came back. A matador, a hero by trade, has agreed to take it upon himself to kill the bull's head. His adored princess is indifferent to him. The kiss she gives him doesn't mean anything to her because anything that would remind him of her would lose meaning as he walked through the door. The matador doesn't let that stop him and leaves. "Poor Hor", she comments at the end, "Poor, poor Hor."

reception

Spiegel im Spiegel was translated into 13 languages ​​and processed as an audio book and radio play .

expenditure

  • Michael Ende: The mirror in the mirror: a labyrinth .
  1. Hardcover: Edition Weitbrecht , Stuttgart 1984 (336 pages) - ISBN 3-522-70100-3
  2. Paperback edition: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2001 (239 pages) - ISBN 3-423-13503-4

literature

See also

Spiegel im Spiegel , a composition for violin and piano published by Arvo Pärt in 1978 (together with arrangements for other ensembles).