Content and interpretation of the Neverending Story

This is a detailed table of contents with an interpretation of the novel The Neverending Story by Michael Ende . The work is a fairytale , fantastic and romantic educational novel at the same time and is now one of the new classics of children's and youth literature .

Genre and sub-genre

The story The Neverending Story belongs to the genre of the novel .

However, the complexity and complexity of the work make it difficult to assign it to a specific subgenre . Reviews and literary studies often refer to Ende's story as a “fairy tale novel”. This is supported by the author himself, according to whose presentation the now widespread term “fairy tale novel” for a literary category was originally his idea. There are a number of very similar names that bring The Neverending Story close to classic fairy tales : “Moral fairy tale”, “Fairy tale for adults”, “Fantastic fairy tale”, “Psychological fairy tale” “Educational fairy tale” “Modern fairy tale” or “Book of fairy tales” ". The book is said to have a fairytale plot, fairytale landscapes and fairytale language. End itself is said to have established an affinity between the book and the fairy tale, which initiated a fairy tale renaissance. In fact, fairy tales play just as important a role for Michael Ende as they do for German romanticism . In his opinion, fairy tales are by no means children's literature. What is now called children's literature goes back to the beginning of the 19th century. Fairy tales had existed for a long time at that time, but they were not only intended for children, but also for adults. According to Ende, fairy tales were more important then than they are today. But modern intellectualism had begun to displace traditional European spirituality and with it the personal worldview with its foaming passion; instead, the whole world has become literally inhumane . Interpretations that give Ende's story consistently fairytale traits or regard it as an art fairy tale oriented towards folk tales do not correspond to the actual circumstances. “The Neverending Story” does not consistently follow the fairy tale form, neither stylistically nor structurally. Fairy tale elements are often only superficially imitated or recreated. The framework story is more reminiscent of an educational novel that is merged with an internal story reminiscent of fairy tales in the classic sense. In this way, opposites such as fiction and reality, the self and the world, inside and outside, are brought together and finally merged on the level of action, but not on the level of consciousness. The neverending story also deals with fantastic (confrontation of two dimensions) and romantic (dissolution of dimensions) topics. The fairy tale elements serve only as a catalyst for a fantastic Bildungsroman and as a cover for its continuation in the romantic sense. The work is thus a fairytale, fantastic and romantic Bildungsroman at the same time.

content

Dualism human world and fantasies, storylines, fusion

In his “Neverending Story”, Michael Ende nests various storylines with one another, which are located in two different dimensions. On the one hand there is the earth , referred to in the book as the “Outer World” or “World of Human Children”, our physical reality of life. On the other hand there is the fairy-tale realm of fantasies, in which man gives shape to his wishes with the help of imagination ; another form of our reality of life that only takes place in the spirit, but is no less real in the end. The first storyline deals with the events in the human world, the second the events in fantasies. The third arises from the merging of the first two storylines and affects both worlds.

Ende connects these two realities primarily through the protagonist , a ten or eleven year old boy named Bastian Balthasar Bux. This moves within both levels and exceeds their limits several times. If the course of action initially changes back and forth between the dimensions (Chapters I. to XII.), The storylines finally merge with one another through Bastian's entry into the realm of fantasy (Chapters XIII. To XXVI., First half), to be reflected on the occasion of his return to to separate the human world again (Chapter XXVI., second half).

Chapters I to XII (or “A” to “L”) tell of how the human boy Bastian Balthasar Bux eagerly pursues the search for the phantasist Atreyu, who was the same age and who was sent out, the cause of the illness of the ruler of Fantasy, the Childlike Empress, with whose death the realm of the imagination would also pass. Finally both understand that only Bastian himself can bring the salvation; he has to give the childlike empress a new name. Attréju's task is to familiarize Bastian with the problem and to lead him on the way to Fantasia. By reading the Neverending Story , Bastian accompanies Atréju on his Great Search . The course of the plot here corresponds to the narrative principle of the hero's journey .

In chapters XIII. to XXVI. ("M" to "Z") Bastian becomes part of Fantasia. He finds that his imagination gives him infinite creative power, a power that at the same time imposes a great deal of responsibility on him, both for his works and for himself. Bastian has to recognize his true will in order to ultimately find his way home to find.

In the last chapter (XXVI. Or “Z”), the second half of which takes place again in the world of people, Ende describes how Bastian has changed through his experiences in Fantasias and what lessons he draws from his journey.

Subject areas and merging covered

How multi-layered Ende's narrative is can be seen in the list of subject areas to which Ende is dedicated in the three storylines.

"First storyline:

The 'pleasure in crossing borders', i.e. the fascination of the supernatural.

The confrontation between subject and object. Bastian is reading a book in which he himself appears.

Dealing with death and grief. The death of Bastian's mother severely affected the relationship between the grieving father and son.

The confrontation with your own body. Bastian thinks about his own unsportsmanlike behavior and misshapeness.

The confrontation with more powerful and equals. Bastian is mocked by teachers and comrades in school.

The experience of infinity. Bastian experiences the 'circle of eternal return' at the ´Alten vom Wandering Berge´.

Antipathy and sympathy. Bastian is initially rejected by Mr. Koreander. Later this turns into friendship.

Second storyline

The confrontation with nihilism . Michael Ende found the metaphor of nothing for this.

The experience of infinity. Fantastica goes beyond all dimensions in terms of both space and time.

The question of the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of the world. This question is in the background when Atréju meets Morla.

The contradiction between unity and multiplicity. This problem is illustrated with the monster Ygramul, which consists of a swarm of insects.

The contrast between willing and able. The more Atreyu wants to open the key-free gate, the less he can because it closes the tighter.

The confrontation between reality and appearance. The ´Zauber-Spiegel-Tor´ cannot be fooled by appearances, because it reveals the true face.

The gap between the potential of possible questions or riddles and the potential of possible answers or solutions. The two sphinxes illustrate this gap.

The juxtaposition of scientific sobriety and poetic truth. Engywuck's dry calculations with no result contrast with Uyulála's sung verses of truth.

The confrontation between the commandment and the violation of the commandment. This is evident, for example, from the wind giants. Atreyu disregards the commandment and is punished.

The ambivalence of success and failure. Atreyu thinks he has to tell the Empress of his failure. The empress teaches him and speaks of his success.

The ultimate victory of the good and just. It is not the destructive nothingness or the werewolf Gmork who remain the winners, but Atreyu, the Empress and Bastian.

Third storyline

The integration of fantasy and reality in one person is a plea for a holistic understanding of being.

The confrontation with the desirable is described. Bastian acts for a long time without really knowing what he really wants; but without a goal his activism is blind.

The collapse of opposites. In Auryn's well, the powers of the white and black snakes are banished. The 'waters of life' are on a territory beyond good and evil. A mythical harmony is described.

The juxtaposition of grief and exuberance. With the juxtaposition of Archarai and Schlamuffen, Ende addresses the problem of one-sidedness.

The resilience of a friendship is addressed in the relationship between Bastian and Atreyu.

Michael Ende addresses the ambivalence of loyalty and betrayal when he sends Atreyu to steal Auryn.

The ambivalence of friendship and enmity is indicated in the person of Xayíde. After submission, she appears to be Bastian's best companion. In fact, however, it remains hostile to him.

The juxtaposition of wisdom and madness. Bastian is wiser than the three "deeply minded" ones, but he moves - as he becomes clear in the "Old Emperor City" - on the verge of madness.

The confrontation between the commandment and the violation of the commandment. Graógramán orders Bastian not to use Sikánda arbitrarily, but Bastian does so in the battle for the ivory tower.

The cycle of life and death. A world and thought cycle is symbolized in the growth and decay of Perelín and in the rhythm between Perelín and Goab.

The relationship between path and goal. The way through the ´Thousand-Door-Temple´ can only be successfully denied by those who have their goal clearly in mind.

The pleasure and seduction of power. At first, Bastian only nibbles on his ability to exercise power. Then he tastes it to the full. Eventually he threatens to be consumed by her.

Love as a remedy for the self and the world. Bastian's desire to be loved or to be able to love oneself is portrayed as a way out of the spiral of power, violence and narcissism .

The relationship between past and future or between experience and change.

The meaning of silence and darkness. Bastian learns this from Yor, the blind miner.

An ambivalence between rescue and the need for rescue. Bastian appears in Fantastica as the great 'savior', but he is really in need of rescue. "

Structure of the book

The author has given his novel a special structure so that it is easier for the reader to see in which of the levels the action is currently taking place. Different font colors indicate in which of the two dimensions the respective storyline is located. The book is also divided into 26 chapters, each beginning with a specific letter (in alphabetical order from “A” to “Z”). This assistance reduces the problem that an orderly access to the narrative due to its complexity is considered difficult even in research.

Red and green font

As a rule, the Neverending Story is not printed in black. Most editions use two font colors. Red font stands for storylines that are located in the human world, blue-green or green font for the events in Fantasy (the colors vary). According to Klaus Berger , the color red is valued by many peoples as the color of life. Green, on the other hand, has a middle and mediating meaning, for example between the colors red and blue, which symbolize hell on the one hand and heaven on the other . In esoteric color mysticism , the meaning of the color green is linked to astral growth. The idea for the double color scheme came from the illustrator Roswitha Quadflieg , who also created the initials at the beginning of the capital.

Ende himself commented on the different colors in an interview as follows:

“This two color thing and this entanglement is a kind of rule of the game that is offered to the reader. He is invited to a game. In recent years it has been forgotten that art and literature are, among other things, a game. Game in the highest sense. As Schiller, who is unfortunately little noticed today, explains it so beautifully in his Aesthetic Letters : The game is the actual place in which human freedom is revealed. It is one of my most important motives to set the game in motion. It was not by chance that I entered the literary salon through children's books. One thing, by the way, that I am still not entirely forgiven for, because what has to do with children is always considered, at least in Germany, as two or third categories - you didn't quite swallow the fact that suddenly there was a children's book author in the literary scene shows up. But precisely because it is possible to play in children's books, I started with children's books. A border crossing has now taken place. I definitely want to keep this game character. "

Twenty-six chapters

The book has 26 chapters, each of which begins in alphabetical order from “A” to “Z” with a large, richly decorated initial . Berger thinks this is an allusion to the mysticism of letters in Kabbalah , which Ende also confirmed. Ende thought letters were extremely important and placed great emphasis on them in The Neverending Story, for example with the name Xayíde, which had to be spelled with a y. In doing so, he leaned on the idea of Kabbalah that letters have numerical values and develop meanings beyond the pure sound. Ultimately, the explanatory value of a letter encompasses more than just a sound, but refers to the human inner world.

The overall design was developed together with the illustrator Roswitha Quadflieg . In the new edition of the book from 2004 these initials and the green font are missing. The letters play an important role in the dramaturgy of the novel. In the middle of the novel, at the letter M, Bastian crosses over to Fantasia.

Ende has repeatedly woven elements and symbols into his stories that are supposed to symbolize a cyclical instead of a linear worldview; including the snake and various Far Eastern references. The illustration of the last letter, the "Z", shows that there is a reference back to the "A". After all, a neverending story has no final chapter. This reference back finds its counterpart in the old part of the Wandering Mountains, which writes "The Neverending Story" and finally starts all over again at the request of the Childish Empress, namely where Bastian storms into Karl Konrad Koreander's second-hand bookshop. And when his story reaches the point where the Childlike Empress asks him to start over, it happens again. All those involved remain trapped in an eternal cycle until Bastian finally dares to take his place in history, immerse himself in it and continue writing it.

In a letter to a reader, Ende writes that he actually intended to hire a type graphic artist to create the initials. This is not how he intended Roswitha Quadflieg to insert the pictures. He had less of a medieval-looking book in mind than a beautifully decorated book, as Antonio Basoli designed for the Italian edition. He regards illustrations as a purely decorative element. The book should “look mysterious and special - as a kind of magic book, so to speak”. However, Michael Ende agreed to the design without contradiction. In this context, Ende said of himself: “I'm just an old perfectionist and I'm never entirely satisfied. This also applies to my own text. "

According to the publisher Hansjörg Weitbrecht in a letter to the artist, the loving design of the book contributed significantly to its success.

Naming of the chapters

Chapters I to XIII
number	chapter	Letter
	Introduction ("tairauqitnA RednaeroK darnoK lraK rebahnI")
I.	Fantasies in need	A.
II	Atréjus vocation	B.
III	The ancient Morla	C.
IV	Ygramul, the many	D.
V	The hermaphrodites	E.
VI	The three magical gates	F.
VII	The voice of silence	G
VIII	In Gelichterland	H
IX	Haunted town	I.
X	The flight to the ivory tower	J
XI	The childlike empress	K
XII	The old man from the Wandering Mountains	L.
XIII	Perelín, the night forest	M.

Chapters XIV to XXVI
number	chapter	Letter

XIV	Goab, the desert of colors	N
XV	Graógramán, the motley death	O
XVI	The silver city of Amargánth	P
XVII	A dragon for hero Hynreck	Q
XVIII	The Acharai	R.
XIX	The comrades	S.
XX	The seeing hand	T
XXI	The star monastery	U
XXII	The battle for the ivory tower	V
XXIII	The old emperor city	W.
XXIV	Lady Aiuóla	X
XXV	The mine of images	Y
XXVI	The waters of life	Z

Figures and magical objects

A number of characters and magical objects play an important role in the narrative.

Course of action

The protagonist of the story is Bastian Balthasar Bux, a ten or eleven year old boy with dark brown hair and a pale face. Bastian is often alone. He is constantly teased and pushed around by his classmates because he is short, fat and unsportsmanlike. His academic achievements also leave much to be desired; he just had to repeat a class. His mother passed away some time ago. Since then, the father has rarely spoken to him and tries to numb the grief through his work as a dental technician. Bastian therefore takes refuge in his fantasies. He is passionate about reading made-up stories and making up his own, for which he is also ridiculed by his classmates. Bastian's ideal is a never-ending story. A story in which he never has to say goodbye to characters he has come to love.

Introduction; Chapters I. to XII. (A - L): Events prior to the merger

The introduction: "TairauqitnA RednaeroK darnoK lraK rebahnI"

Bastian's story begins with an escape. When some of his classmates persecute him again, he takes refuge in Karl Konrad Koreander's antiquarian bookshop. Michael Ende's book “The Neverending Story” begins with the letters “TairauqitnA RednaeroK DarnoK kraK rebahnI”. As it soon turns out, it is a picture of the shop sign ("Owner Karl Konrad Koreander Antiquariat"), which is printed in mirror writing, as you see it when you look from inside the room onto the street.

Ende's description of the bookseller is very similar to that of a fairytale magician ( Merlin , Gandalf or the later invented Dumbledore ). When Bastian comes into his shop, he is reading a book that will soon open the door into the realm of fantasy for the boy.

Bastian rushed into the second-hand bookshop. The apparently grouchy older man is annoyed by the sudden noise and wants Bastian to leave the house, also because he says he doesn't like children and doesn't trust them. It soon becomes clear that Coreander's negative attitude towards young people stems from prejudice. He suspects Bastian robbed a till or knocked down an old woman; he doesn't even consider the real explanation for the boy's haste. For this reason he doesn't want to sell him any books.

Despite Coreander's dismissive attitude, a dialogue between the bookseller and his young guest ensues. He dares to contradict Coreaners: "But all [children] are not like that". As it soon turns out, this level of courage is already unusual for Bastian, but Coreander is quite impressed and brooding, and it soon becomes clear that both have some things in common. In addition to the passion for books, this is above all a curiosity of their two names: Both begin with a triple alliteration . With Bastian Balthasar Bux this is three Bs, with Karl Konrad Koreander three Ks. Coreander initially expresses disparagingly about Bastian's name until he draws his attention to the fact that Coreander's name has the same characteristic. After that, the ice is broken for the time being.

Coreander tries to find out why Bastian was on the run and with whom he is dealing. In this context, it turns out that Bastian's story is one of failure. He does not manage to defend himself against his classmates, he is unsportsmanlike, has little strength, is fearful, indecisive and, moreover, a bad student who had to repeat a class. When the bookseller asks what his parents say about it, Bastian explains that his mother is dead.

Coreander leaves the room when the phone rings; he goes into a small cabinet behind the shop and closes the door behind him. Bastian uses this time to take a closer look at the book Coreander had read when he entered the shop. It is bound in copper-colored silk and is entitled The Neverending Story . The cover shows two snakes biting each other's tails. Bastian is irresistibly drawn to books, but he is particularly fond of this because he had always wanted a never-ending story. A story in which he never has to say goodbye to the characters with whom he has had so many adventures, a story that never ends. For Bastian the book of books that he must have at all costs. Bastian cannot resist the temptation. Since Coreander had categorically ruled out selling him a book, Bastian steals it and hastily leaves the shop, unintentionally confirming Coreander's prejudices.

Bastian is again on the run; Apparently on the run from Coreander's store, but Bastian is actually fleeing from the whole world and above all from his own guilty conscience. He fears punishment for breaking the rules of society, he fears the disappointment his father will feel in the face of the theft, and he believes he has made himself impossible as a thief in the eyes of the world. So he looks for a place of refuge, which he eventually finds in the attic of his school. Although he has no idea how to survive there for any length of time, he thinks his decision is final. He settles in the attic where he intends to stay for a long time. He believes that he can never face his father again.

Between a row of stuffed animals, Bastian begins to read the Neverending Story , which tells of the events in the realm of the imagination, Fantasias.

Chapter I. (Letter A): Fantasias in Need

Michael Ende's description of the world Fantastica begins with the Haulewald, where ancient, huge trees grow. There are four ambassadors present who come from completely different parts of Fantasia and yet are on the same mission. They are supposed to convey the same terrible news to the Childlike Empress , the ruler of the empire, who resides in her ivory tower in the center of Fantasia : Parts of her homeland have simply disappeared. For example, Lake Brodelbrüh in the Moder-Moor is completely gone (and not dried out). Where it once was there is now no dry place or hole, but a complete, mysterious nothingness , the sight of which no eye can endure, since it gives the impression that one is blind. After only individual areas were initially affected, this nothing has now started to expand. It expands slowly but steadily, and it has an irresistible pull. Whoever is near him feels the need to jump into it himself. Anyone who gets into it with a part of the body loses it immediately. It doesn't hurt, but it will go away completely in a short period of time. Everything that comes to nothing remains gone.

Since it is already after midnight, three of the parliamentarians have gathered around a campfire. It is about the rock-biter Pjörnrachzarck, a gigantic form of life that feeds on stones, but also makes everything necessary for life from stones and consequently travels on a stone bicycle, the night album Wúschwusul, who rides a bat, and the tiny Ückück with his Racing snail. Then there is the will- o'-the- wisp Blubb from the Moder-Moor, which has got lost and wants to ask the other three for directions. Normally the will-o'-the-wisps would have stayed away from this gathering because these apparently very different peoples distrust one another and occasionally meet in a warlike way. But its mission is very urgent, it has to find its way back quickly, and it also relies on the others being sent as ambassadors and respecting the peace obligation of this status.

In the developing dialogue, the ambassadors learn that they are all pursuing the same goal for the same reason. Instead of traveling together, the four split up. Everyone wants to be the first to arrive at the ivory tower, and everyone thinks their way of traveling is the fastest. In fact, it is the tiny creature on his racing snail who arrives at the destination long before the others, i.e. the one who the others had given the least chance. The others don't arrive until much later.

For the time being, however, the ambassadors do not have time to go to the Childlike Empress, because the tower is full of other ambassadors from all parts of Phantasia. In addition, the parliamentarians learn that the Child Empress cannot see anyone because she is seriously ill and the best doctors in the empire are taking care of her health. But no one is able to find a cure. The assumption arises that the occurrence of nothingness is somehow related to the disease.

The ambassadors have to register and wait until they are admitted to the Childlike Empress. They use this time to make friends with each other. But this, Ende says, is a different story and should be told another time.

In the first chapter you learn about Bastian that he doesn't like books that convey boring everyday stories. Above all, he hates it when books want to "get" him to do something. His world is made up of imaginative books.

Chapter II (letter B): Atréjus vocation

All kinds of races and peoples have sent doctors to help the Child Empress. These usually include not particularly benevolent and health-promoting beings such as witchers, vampires and ghosts. In this way the reader learns that the Childlike Empress is the center of life in Fantasia. It does not rule, it never uses force or uses its power, it does not command or judge anyone, it never intervenes and never has to defend itself against an attacker because no one would ever have attacked it or stood up against it. Before her, everyone is considered equal. Without it, nothing can exist in Fantasy. Their death would be the end of all phantasians, no matter what kind they are, and in a mysterious way all phantasians know about it, therefore everyone worries about their lives.

The thought of the doctors and death reminds Bastian of his mother, who died during an operation. Since then, his father has changed a lot. Although Bastian lacks nothing physically, he can no longer get close to his father, who is always deep in thought and acts as if he were very far away.

But even the five hundred best doctors in Fantasy have no advice as to why the life of the child empress is threatened with extinction, not even the recognized best doctor in Fantasy, a black centaur named Cairon, who is considered an expert on all medicinal herbs. It seems obvious, however, that the disease of the golden-eyed mistress of desires, as the childlike empress is also called, and the appearance of nothing have to do with one another in some way.

The Childlike Empress then gives Cairon a magical amulet called AURYN, which represents her power and makes the wearer her deputy. It is also called the gem or the shine . The amulet is golden and shows a light and a dark snake biting each other's tail and thus forming an oval. Bastian finds the same symbol on the cover of the book in which he is reading. Cairon to the amulet not wear, but only deliver, namely a green skin named Atreyu , who lives in a steppe landscape, the so-called Gräsernen sea . The centaur should explain his task to him and send him on a journey to look for a rescue for the childlike empress. Little does Cairon know that Atreyu is a ten-year-old boy who has not even been accepted into the ranks of the tribe's hunters. The initiation rite, which is supposed to make him such a hunter, the killing of a huge purple buffalo , his buffalo, is interrupted by the arrival of Cairon, who immediately sends to Atreyu and thus prevents the latter from firing the arrow that he is already in his hands ready to fire holds.

At first, Atreyu is angry about this, and Cairon has great doubts whether the boy is up to the task that the Childlike Empress has planned for him. But when Atréju recognizes AURYN and learns what the task is, he declares that he is ready, without hesitation, to comply with the request of the Childish Empress. The determination with which Atreyu accepts the task makes Cairon understand that the Childlike Empress cannot be wrong on such an important matter. Bastian is also impressed; he would like to be as handsome, brave and determined as Atreyu. So Cairon hands over AURYN, and Atréju leaves immediately with his horse Artax.

Attréjus Queste is called the Great Quest . Although he and AURYN are the bearers of the power of the Childlike Empress, like her he is not allowed to use her, but is limited to searching and asking in order to find out the secret. Since Atreyu was not given a specific route, he let fate guide him. He lets his talking horse Artax choose which direction the two of them ride.

Towards the end of the chapter, the reader learns that a shadowy being manifests itself on a far-off nocturnal heather that appears to have found the smell it is looking for and then starts pursuing that smell.

Bastian lets himself be inspired by Atreyu and his horse Artax and lets out a battle cry. He fears that this has betrayed himself, but nobody discovers him in his hiding place.

Chapter III (Letter C): The Ancient Morla

The third chapter begins with the description that Caíron, exhausted from the journey, is cared for by the greenskins. It is said that his future fate will lead him on a most unexpected path, but that this is a different story and should be told another time.

Atréjus Große Suche leads him through different countries and cities of Fantasy, all of which differ from one another and thus show how diverse the possibilities are in the realm of fantasy. Dreams of buffalo accompany his journey. Especially "his" buffalo, which would have made him a hunter in the event of a kill, always plays a decisive role in his dream world.

Finally, Atreyu arrives in the Haulewald and meets bark trolls , creatures that look like trees. However, they can talk and walk on root-like legs. The bark trolls have already heard of Atréju's mission and are warning him of the nothing that has begun to expand in the area. The other inhabitants of the Haulewald have fled, but the trolls did not want to leave their home. When touching nothing, they have lost some extremities , one even has a hole in the chest. They do not feel any pain, but they know that the process is irreversible; soon they will have completely dissolved. The bark trolls lead Atreyu to the place where nothingness spreads. The “Indian boy” looks into it, but his eye cannot bear the sight of utter nothingness. When Atreyu turns away with a shudder, the bark trolls have disappeared.

At night Atréjus Büffel reappears, this time he can speak. If you had killed me you would be a hunter now. But you have renounced it, so I can help you now , reveals the dream image to him and instructs him to travel north to the swamps of sadness and to visit the Hornberg, where the ancient Morla is supposed to live. Atreyu does not hesitate to believe his vision and does as he is told.

After a few days, Atreyu and Artax reach the swamps of sadness. After riding a little way in, Artax is seized by the sadness and hopelessness of this place. He does not find the strength to defend himself against it and slowly sinks into the swamp. Atreyu itself is not affected; the symbol of the Childlike Empress protects him and leads him on the right path to the Hornberg, where he arrives after a few hours of walking.

It turns out that the Hornberg is the shell of a huge turtle: the ancient Morla herself. Morla refuses Attréju any help that serves to save Fantasia and thus her own life. She is ancient and thinks that she has lived long enough, whether she lives or dies is indifferent to her, as well as the fate of Fantasy. So Atreyu uses a ruse. If she really doesn't care what happens to Fantastica, she might as well tell him what she knows. Morla is amused by the boy's cleverness and therefore decides to help him.

In this way, Atreyu learns that the Childlike Empress needs a new name in order to get well. She is ancient and forever young at the same time. Their existence, their lifespan, is not measured by time or duration, but by name. You always have to give it new names. If her name is forgotten, she needs a new one. But no being in Fantastica is able to give it a name. When Atreyu wants to know who can, Morla advises him to visit the Uyalála in the Southern Oracle and ask her this question. But she doesn't give Atreyu a chance to get there in time. Not only is the place too far away to reach it in its lifespan, by then Fantasia will sink into nothingness and the Childlike Empress will be dead.

Towards the end of this section, the shadowy being succeeds in picking up Atréju's trail.

In the third chapter it is suggested for the first time that Bastian's and Atreju's fate is intertwined. When Atreyu is hungry and eats, Bastian does the same. Bastian also begins to compare himself to Atreyu and thinks about what he would do if he were like him. He thinks it should be easy for him to give the Childlike Empress a new name. Because he's great at making up stories. As much as he longs for Fantasia, he is glad not to be there because he shies away from the dangers of this place.

Chapter IV (Letter D): Ygramul, the Many

Without his horse Artax and with no hope of ever reaching the Southern Oracle to ask the Uyulála who can give the Childlike Empress a name, Atreyu struggles on foot out of the swamps of sadness and finally wanders through a rocky desert that is behind lies in the swamps of sadness. Atreyu soon remembers having heard of this country before. It is located in the Dead Mountains , where a creature called Ygramul lives, who is nicknamed the Many . Atreyu is not known what kind of creature it is.

Atreyu does not have to fear monsters because he wears AURYN, which makes him the deputy of the Childlike Empress. This is not a ruler in the strict sense. It never uses its power, it does not judge, it does not judge, everything is before it and everyone is equal. Good and bad, beautiful and ugly, these opposites do not exist for her. Conversely, the Childlike Empress and her authority, expressed in the magical amulet, are respected by all Phantasians, because the Childlike Empress is the heart of Fantasy, without which nothing in this country could endure.

When Atreyu reached a deep and insurmountable abyss, he had no choice but to continue hiking along the edge of the gorge. The reader learns that the shadow that pursues Atreyu has now condensed into a pitch-black, ox-sized, wolf-like shape that is coming closer.

After Attréju has crossed a cave, he suddenly notices a huge spider web stretched from one edge of the abyss to the other. In this a lucky dragon winds itself in battle with the creature called Ygramul . Ygramul initially has the shape of a spider, but Atreyu quickly notices that the creature can change this shape and transform itself into a hand or a giant scorpion, for example. Finally, the young greenskin recognizes that Ygramul consists of a multitude of insect-like creatures that change their position within the swarm again and again and thus cause its transformation. This explains the nickname the many , even if the insects are guided by a single will. (see superorganism )

As AURYN protects him, Atreyu steps fearlessly towards the fighting. When Ygramul sees Atreyu, Bastian intervenes for the first time in the course of the plot. It utters a scream of horror that is heard in fantasies: it suddenly echoes through the gorge. Bastian is understandably surprised by this passage, but for the time being he cannot fathom whether it was actually his own scream that he has just read about.

Ygramul wants to take Atreyu prisoner, but the latter reveals himself as the emissary's envoy. Ygramul recognizes AURYN and is willing to negotiate. Atreyu demands the lucky dragon to ride to the southern oracle, but Ygramul rejects this request. The dragon had only an hour to live, since it was infected with Ygramul's poison, and even unharmed it would not be fast enough. In addition, Atreyu has no right to demand this, since the Childlike Empress allows every creature to be regarded as what it is. They never use their power.

But Ygramul offers an alternative and reveals her greatest secret to Atreyu, which, if it became known, would mean her death. The poison of the swarm kills within an hour, but it gives the one who has been bitten the power to go anywhere in Fantasia, only with the power of his own thoughts. Atreyu finally agrees, lets himself be bitten and wishes to go to the Southern Oracle. When the teleport kicks in, the boy passes out.

A little later the wolf reaches the spider web - but Atreyu has disappeared. Despite all efforts, the pursuer cannot find his trail again.

Bastian, who has to skip a meal for the first time, considers going home, where his father would agree to sort things out with Coreander. But he stays in memory because he thinks that Atreyu would not give up anytime soon.

Chapter V (letter E): The two settlers

In a fraction of a second, Atreyu got to the Southern Oracle. When he wakes up, he is again in a rocky desert, but this time it is the entrance area of the Southern Oracle. The green-skinned boy is surprised to find that the lucky dragon is also present, who now introduces himself as the Fuchs. He overheard the conversation between Atreyu and Ygramul and also used the chance to escape. Out of loyalty to his savior, he followed Atreyu to his destination to support him in the further implementation of his mission.

Thanks to the proverbial luck of the lucky dragon, Atreyu and Fuchur are found only a short time later by a pair of gnomes who also have the necessary knowledge to neutralize Ygramul's poison. The two small, older and somewhat shriveled gentlemen lead a hermit life here in a cave near the southern oracle, which is why they also call themselves the two settlers . Engywuck is the name of the proud and quickly injured male gnome. He is a scientist and researches the Southern Oracle. His wife Urgl, on the other hand, knows herbalism and healing. The two are in a constant quarrel with each other, as is the case with long-term married couples, as each one sets his own priorities. Urgl is primarily concerned with the healing of her two patients, while Engywuck is keenly interested in Atreju's desire to come to the Southern Oracle. Both seem a little gruff and harsh, but go out of their way to help their guests.

Engywuck leads Atreyu into his observatory , from where you can see the two sphinxes guarding the entrance to the Southern Oracle.

In this chapter, too, the end shows that Bastian's and Atréju's fates are interwoven. While the young phantasian is passed out, Bastian takes a reading break and goes to a toilet. He is almost tracked down by the school caretaker, so that he flies back to the attic. In this context, the reader learns that Bastian's curiosity and thirst for knowledge are suppressed by his environment. So he tried to fathom the legitimate questions, why novel heroes almost never have to go to the toilet or whether Jesus had to meet such needs like a normal person. For this he was laughed at by his classmates and reprimanded by the teacher.

Chapter VI (Letter F): The Three Magical Gates

As Atreyu is on the way to recovery, Engywuck teaches him about the knowledge he has accumulated over the years through the Southern Oracle. On the way to Uyulála there are three gates to pass through, the second gate only being there when you have passed the first and the third only when you have passed the second. So it is not possible to simply walk around the gates from the outside.

In this way Atreyu learns that Engywuck knows nothing about the interior of the oracle, the Uyulála. His knowledge is second hand. He himself has never been there because he considers his work too important to run the risk of failing on the way to the oracle. And those who came back from within were not ready or able to talk to him about what they found there. Engywuck urges Atreyu to tell him everything after his return, but he refuses, after all, there could be good reasons why the others were silent. Engywuck reacts with great displeasure to this answer.

But Engywuck was able to teach the young greenskin a lot about the gates he has to pass through. The two sphinxes guard the first gate, which is also called the Great Riddle Gate . It can only happen when the sphinxes close their eyes, because their gaze, which only another sphinx can endure, sends out all the riddles in the world. Whoever is seized by it freezes and can only move again when he has solved them all. To pass through the gate, the sphinxes have to close their eyes, which sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. There is no discernible pattern.

In the magic mirror gate the seeker sees himself, but not the external appearance, but his true, inner being. The truth is often only found by having the courage to be honest with yourself. At this gate many fail who cannot endure the truth, the encounter with themselves.

The no-key gate is made of indestructible fantastic selenium. You can't force it open. Rather, it only opens up when you approach it without any intention of crossing it. Engywuck doesn't know what the uyulála is. Nobody who was with her wanted to talk to him about it.

Finally, Atreyu says goodbye to the two gnomes and heads towards the Southern Oracle. He's lucky, the sphinxes let him pass the Great Riddle Gate.

Bastian becomes, even more than before, a part of the Neverending Story . When Atreyu eats something, Bastian also feels hungry. He also discovers a mirror in the attic, which soon also turns into a gate. The second gate is the magic mirror gate . If you look in the mirror, you will see what is inside. When Atreyu looks in the mirror, he looks through the mirror in the attic and sees Bastian, wrapped in military blankets, crouching in the attic and reading the Neverending Story . Bastian and Atreyu are really two aspects of the same personality. While Bastian reacts confused, Atreyu is amazed at how easy it is for him to pass the gate where so many others have failed.

The third gate, the no-key gate , can ultimately only be passed by those who have no will to cross it. At first, Atreyu cannot go through it until he finally loses his memory, including of what he is and of his mission. Since he no longer knows any reason to visit the Uyulála, he turns around and wants to go. But again Bastian intervenes in the plot. "No, no, don't go away!" Said Bastian aloud. “Turn back, Atreyu. You have to go through the no-key gate. ”He tells Atreyu not to go, he has to go inside the oracle - and Atreyu turns around and walks through the gate, where a large portico awaits him.

Bastian finds a seven-armed, rusty candlestick and lights the candles, otherwise it would be too dark in the attic for further reading.

Chapter VII (Letter G): The Voice of Silence

Finally Atreyu arrives in a hall that resembles a Greek temple with pillars. Here the Uyulála exists as a disembodied voice that only speaks in rhymes and only understands rhymes. Attréju's memories are still gone, so he first has to find out why he came here in the first place. But he manages to ask the right questions. In this way he learns from the Uyulála that only a human child can give the Childlike Empress a name: Fantasians are only characters in a book who do what they were invented for, but they cannot create anything new; this is reserved for the people whom the Uyulála call "Adam's sons" and "Eve's daughters". The way to people is too far for a phantasyier, because their world lies beyond phantasy, where a phantasy cannot go. People, on the other hand, only have to travel a short distance to get to Fantasia, but they would have forgotten the way there and no longer believed in its existence. But one human child would be enough to save Fantasia. Bastian realizes that he has been spoken to and agrees to help. But he does not believe that it is possible for him to get to Fantasia.

After talking to the Uyulála, Atreyu falls asleep. He awakens with his complete memories in an empty plane, which he recognizes as the plane in which the three gates were previously. Nothing has reached the plane and engulfed the two inner gates, and it is now very close to Atreyu. The boy can escape just in time before he is devoured by nothing. At the edge of the plain he meets the remains of the Great Riddle Gate, the arch of which has collapsed. The sphinxes are gone.

When Atreyu returns to the two settlers, he is astonished to find that he has been gone seven days and nights, although he himself only felt it to be one night. During this time, Fuchs, the great lucky dragon, healed. Engywuck believes that space and time must have a different meaning in the oracle than outside. But even he cannot make sense of the sudden disappearance of the sphinxes. The rock arch suddenly collapsed and looks like it has been lying there for a hundred years. It seems as if the Great Riddle Gate never existed.

In contrast to all other visitors to the oracle, Atréju Engywuck reports every detail of his visit to the Uyulála, but this knowledge is worthless for the gnome researcher, since the oracle has meanwhile been devoured by nothing. He is deeply saddened to discover that his life's work and years of observation were in vain. Right now, when he could complete his scientific research, the subject of research has disappeared, so that his findings are no longer of use to anyone and are no longer of interest. The hermaphrodites decide to leave this place. It is mentioned that Engywuck would later become the most famous gnome in his family, but not because of his scientific research. But this is a different story that should be told another time.

Atreyu and Fuchur, on the other hand, set out to find a human child.

Bastian believes that it would be the salvation for him too if Atreyu and Fuchur came to pick him up.

Chapter VIII (Letter H): In Gelichterland

On the back of the lucky dragon Fuchur, Atreyu sets out to search for the boundaries of fantasy, behind which he suspects the human children. The lucky dragon is described as a distant relative of the fire-breathing dragons. He is a creature of air and warmth, a creature of irrepressible joy, who speaks all languages of joy. Despite their enormous size, lucky kites are as light as a summer breeze and therefore do not need wings to fly. They swim in the skies like fish in water.

But even after days of the journey, no limits of fantasy can be recognized, only a seemingly endless sea below them, and Atreyu is now almost at the end of his strength from exhaustion. Fuchur points out that the Childlike Empress only instructed him to find out the cause of the disease, but not to obtain the cure, and therefore suggests that we change direction and travel to the ivory tower instead of the borders of Fantasy. Atreyu asks him to fly another hour and only return to the ivory tower if the borders of Fantasy are not in sight by then.

It is precisely this hour of flight that lets Atreyu and Fuchur encounter the four wind giants Lirr, Bauo, Schirk and Mayestril, who are once again in dispute with each other and conjure up a storm. Contrary to Fuchur's reservations, Atreyu steps in front of the wind giants and reveals himself to be AURYN as the emissary's envoy. If anyone could know the boundaries of Fantasy, he believes, it is the winds of the four cardinal points. But one of the storms after the other reveals to him that there is no limit to fantasy in his direction. Fantasy, the realm of fantasy, is limitless.

After the conversation, the wind giants continue their fight and no longer pay attention to Atreyu and the lucky dragon. Although the winds do not want to harm the envoy of the Childlike Empress either, in this way both find themselves between the fronts of the stormy battle. Finally Atreyu loses his footing, falls from Fuchur's back into the wide sea below him and loses AURYN in the process. Rescued by mermen and mermaids, he finally wakes up on a wide beach. The wind has died down. Besides AURYN, Fuchur has also disappeared.

Here too, Bastian's story runs parallel to that of Atreyu. Eerie noises in the attic raise the question of whether the attic is haunted, whether there really are ghosts , and it is ghosts that Atreyu meets next. Without AURYN, Atréju doesn't know what to do, without guidance or direction. So he just walks inland and follows the course of a road, on which he discovers a procession of ghost figures (night albums, goblins, ghosts, etc.) who make music with pipes and drums and dance strangely. Atreyu follows the train, which wanders straight into nowhere and plunges into it, which Atreyu, who is lost in thoughts about the childlike empress and the human children, notices almost too late. So he too is almost sucked into nothing, but can free himself.

He quickly fled and followed the road he came on until he finally reached a town.

Bastian feels more and more addressed by the call for a human child who should come to Fantasia and expresses this by whispering in the book and talking to himself. But he doesn't know how to do this.

Chapter IX (Letter I): Haunted City

At the beginning of the chapter there is an account of what happened to Fuchur after he lost Atreyu. Desperate but confident that everything will turn out well, the lucky dragon goes in search of the green-skinned boy. The rest of the course of action is almost exclusively limited to Atréju's experiences in Haunted City .

The sight of the city is oppressive and eerie; all the buildings make a threatening and curse-laden impression. The crooked streets are covered with cobwebs, and bad smells pour out of the cellar holes and wells. As Atreyu penetrates deeper into the city, he sees traces of devastation. Obviously the haunted figures who had thrown themselves into nowhere came from here and fled the city. Atreyu satisfies his hunger with leftover food.

Bastian takes this as an opportunity to think about how long he can survive in the attic without food. He thinks of Fraulein Anna's apple strudel, his father's housekeeper. She has a daughter named Christa, who used to listen to Bastian's stories often. But Miss Anna had given her daughter to a country school home so that Bastian never saw her again.

Later, Atreyu hears a harsh, hoarse howl, in which the abandonment and damnation of the creatures of darkness seem to lie. Atreyu follows the sounds and finally finds a chained and half-starved werewolf in a hidden backyard . First he wants to send Atréju away to die in peace, but then he lets himself into a conversation with him. It turns out, is that in Atréju Spukstadt in Gelichterland is and that the werewolf in the name Gmork hear.

Gmork has been following Atreyu for quite a while; his job is to kill the boy and prevent him from successfully completing his mission. But Gmork lost Atréju's trail in the Land of the Dead Mountains when the young Greenskin asked for the Southern Oracle with Ygramul's help. Since Atreyu introduces himself to him as “nobody” out of shame about his supposed failure, whose name should not be mentioned, Gmork does not recognize him immediately and therefore behaves less hostile.

Gmork is a half-being, neither phantasy nor human, although he can travel to both worlds and appear there in different shapes. Because he has no home himself, he wants to take away theirs from the phantasians, so he supports manipulative forces in the ranks of people who want to destroy phantasias. The manipulators tell people that there are no fantasies. In this way they lose the keen eye that their imagination gives them and are easier to influence. For example, you can more easily sell them things they don't need, or otherwise direct their will, exercise power over them. This is how business is done, wars unleashed, and empires are established. This is also the reason why no human child has come to Fantastica for so long to give the Childlike Empress a name.

Atreyu learns from Gmork that he could get into the human world, albeit differently than he had imagined. Fantasians who throw themselves into nothingness become lies in the human world. Just as nothing acts on the eye as if it were blind, so lies blinds people's minds to the truth. Conversely, this means that every time a person lies, a phantasy is destroyed. Gmork is now on the chain for telling all this to the Dark Lady Gaya, ruler of the Haunted City. She was evil, but she too was one of the creatures of Fantasia, so she did everything possible to prevent Gmork's plan. Only she herself could loosen the chain on which she put it, but immediately after this act she went nowhere. When Atreyu Gmork reveals that he is the boy he is looking for, the werewolf laughs triumphantly, because nothing has now surrounded the city and it seems as if there is no longer any salvation. Gmork dies over it. When Atreyu approaches him, his huge teeth snap shut and hold him tightly. In this way, the dead werewolf unintentionally saves Atreyu, who is prevented from falling into nothing as long as AURYN cannot protect him.

Bastian understands that it is not only fantasy that is sick, but also the human world. He had never been satisfied with the fact that life should be so gray and indifferent, devoid of secrets and miracles. The fact that no one could get there was due to the lies and misconceptions that came into the world through the destruction of Fantasia and make one blind. Someone had to go to Fantasy to make both worlds healthy.

Bastian thinks about the fact that he too lied and thus contributed to the downfall of Fantasia, and is ashamed of it. However, he does not count his invented stories as lies. He tries to imagine what form his lies might have had as a fantasy, but he is unable to, probably precisely because he had lied.

Chapter X (Letter J): The Flight to the Ivory Tower

Meanwhile, Fuchur is recovering the AURYN from the depths of the sea. It protects the kite who was not made for the wet element; at the same time, however, a will that is incomparably more powerful than its own and that emanates from AURYN takes control of its body and its actions. Fuchur even flies further when he passes out due to the stresses and strains of being immersed in the immense sea. In this way, Fuchur finds Atreyu, who has already given up himself, in a place where he would otherwise never have looked for him and can save him from nowhere at the last moment. Gmork's jaw loosens when AURYN touches him.

Fuchur and Atreyu quickly set off for the ivory tower, because they now know the answer that the Childlike Empress asked of Atreyu. The journey to the tower is less than that from the tower. The ivory tower is in the center of fantasy, but since fantasy is limitless, its center can be anywhere. One night later they both reach the ivory tower. The reader also learns here that the fantastic geography is not firmly established. Countries, borders, cardinal points, seasons, all of this can be changed at will, and the words “near” and “far” also have a different meaning, there is no measurable distance. Rather, all these things depend on the state of mind and the will of the person who travels a certain path.

The childlike empress, as the reader learns in a conversation between Fuchur and Atreyu, is not a creature of fantasy, but neither is it a human child. It is of a different kind, and all phantasians are there through their existence. But no fantasy knows who she is, because no one can know. If you can fully understand it, you would extinguish your own existence.

Fuchur cannot get to the Childlike Empress, for he has already seen her once, and it is certain that everyone will only see her once. So the injured Atreyu struggles alone up the steps to the magnolia pavilion where she resides. While the surroundings are clearly showing signs of deterioration, the ivory tower still looks pristine. He is deserted, only the Childlike Empress is there. She appears as a ten-year-old girl with snow-white hair and eyes gleaming gold of overwhelming beauty. It is ancient and at the same time without age. When her figure is described in the book, Bastian can really see her for a moment and she looks him in the eye. From that moment on, Bastian knows her name, which he has to give her. Her name is Moon Child . For the first time, Bastian has the feeling that he no longer only has his own idea of the Neverending Story , not only imagining what the plot in the book might look like, but has seen the Childlike Empress himself for a tiny moment . He cannot explain this to himself.

Atreyu takes off AURYN to give it back to the ruler, who smiles at him from a cushion in the center of the flower dome.

Chapter XI (Letter K): The Childlike Empress

Atreyu wants to admit his failure. It was not possible for him to bring a human child to Fantasia. But the Childlike Empress reacts completely differently than he would have thought: she laughs. Then the Golden-Eyed Mistress of Wishes reveals to him that he has brought the Savior with him. Atreyu is confused and annoyed at the same time, because he realizes that the Childlike Empress already knew the answer to the question of the Great Search before she had sent him off. And he cannot see the savior, because it is Bastian himself who follows his story in the book. And that, explains the Childlike Empress, was Atréju's job. He should call the savior. When he embarked on the Great Journey, Bastian accompanied him the whole time, as a reader of the story. He now knows the problem and he knows that it is he who has to give the Childlike Empress her name.

“There are two ways to cross the border between fantasy and the human world, one right and one wrong,” explains the Childlike Empress. “If the beings of Fantasia are dragged across in this gruesome way, it is the wrong one. But if human children come into our world, it is the right one. Everyone who was with us experienced something that they could only experience here and what made them return changed to their world. They had seen because they had seen you in your true form. That is why they could now see their own world and their fellow human beings with different eyes. Where they had previously only found everyday life, they suddenly discovered wonders and secrets. That's why they liked to come to us in Fantasia. And the richer and more prosperous our world became, the fewer lies there were in theirs and the more perfect it was. Just as our two worlds destroy each other, they can also make each other healthy. ", And:" The misery that has come over both worlds is also of twofold origin. Now everything is in its opposite: what can make seeing, blinds, what can create new, becomes destruction. The salvation lies with the human children. One, one must come and give me a new name. And it will come. "

Bastian reads again and again that the Childlike Empress is just waiting for the rescuer to call her name, but Bastian, who is not yet sure of his cause, does not really know how to decide. He hesitates to do it; he is afraid to go to Fantasia because all the monsters that Atreyu encountered on his journey live there. He is unsure of what will happen if he does what is expected of him. Above all, however, he is ashamed because he believes that Atreyu and the Childlike Empress deserve a handsome, strong, courageous prince instead of the feeble boy he seems to be.

The Childlike Empress then calls her seven invisible powers. Fuchur and Atreyu carry three to a safe place where they can survive the annihilation of nothing. Much later, they learn that it is within AURYN that they were brought into, the source of the waters of life. The remaining four powers take the Childlike Empress away in a glass litter. She wants to see the old man from Wandering Mountains , who could force Bastian to come. For the grass people the old man is a kind of bogeyman with which one threatens children if they are naughty. It is said that he writes everything in his book that you think and feel, and there it is recorded forever as a beautiful or ugly story.

The childlike empress suggests that in such “old wives' tales”, as Atreyu says, there is often a real core. You yourself have not yet seen the old man from the Wandering Mountains. When she finds him, it will be the first time that both of them meet. One could not look for the old man from Wandering Berg. He could only be found by accident or by the stroke of fate. And you have to be alone to find him.

Nobody can know where the old man's mountain is. It always appears unexpectedly, sometimes in one place, sometimes in another. “If it exists, I will find it. And when I find him, there will be ", she says of the old man from the Wandering Mountains, and:" He is like me, because in everything he is my opposite. "

Chapter XII (Letter L): The Old Man from Wandering Mountains

The Childlike Empress had not ordered her powers to find the old man from the Wandering Mountains, but to go “somewhere”. The four powers let themselves be guided by chance or fate and in this way arrive at the Mountains of Destiny, where they find the old man from the Wandering Mountains. They carry the Childlike Empress in their glass sedan chair up to the mountain of fate, where the old man from the Wandering Mountains lives in an egg the size of a house on the highest point of the mountain of fate (a plateau). The reader learns that everyone who wants to conquer the Mountains of Destiny is always the first, because the ascent can only be successful again when all memory of the person who made it before has been extinguished.

Inscriptions that form the rungs of the ladder that leads upwards urge the Childlike Empress to turn back, but she does not let herself be deterred and continues her way into the interior of the egg.

Finally, the ruler of Fantasia arrives at the top after an arduous ascent. There is an old man who holds a book bound in copper-colored silk with the title "The Neverending Story" in his hands; exactly the book that Bastian is reading (and apparently exactly the book that the reader of Michael Ende's work has). There he writes down the history of Fantasy as it happens, and it happens as he writes it down. He is not only holding the history of Fantasy in his hands, this book is Fantasy, he explains to his guest. “And where is this book?” The Childlike Empress wants to know. “In the book” answers the old man. “Then it's just appearance and reflection?” She asks. “What does a mirror show that is reflected in a mirror? Do you know that, golden-eyed mistress of wishes? ”Is his answer. The reader learns that the old man from the Wandering Mountains is the memory of Fantasy and knows everything that has happened up to this moment. But he can't turn the page to see what's going to happen. There are only blank pages there. “I can only look back at what happened. I could read it while I was writing it. And I wrote it because it happened. So the Neverending Story writes itself through my hand, ”explains the chronicler.

The childlike empress demands that the old man from the Wandering Mountains tell the story from the beginning. Knowing that there is no other way, he reluctantly obeys. He tells the neverending story anew from the beginning, not from where the four messengers meet in Haulewald, but from the moment the reader knows Ende's book. The story begins again with the mirror-inverted letters that adorn Koreander's antiquarian bookshop and the description of how Bastian enters the shop. And it always ends with the Childlike Empress's request to tell the story all over again. Bastian puts the book aside, but that doesn't help him. History repeats itself over and over again in his head. He's part of a never-ending story now, as he always wanted to be, but in a completely different way than he ever intended.

Bastian draws an initial lesson here about wishing: “You can be convinced that you want something - maybe for years - as long as you know that the wish cannot be fulfilled. But if you are suddenly faced with the possibility that the dream will come true, then you only wish for one thing: you would never have wished it. "

In order not to get caught in this eternal cycle, Bastian finally calls out the name he has long chosen: Moon Child . At that moment the egg bursts which the Childlike Empress could never have left. Fantasy is thus reborn out of this egg. “Every egg is the beginning of new life” the Childlike Empress declared. “True, but only if its shell pops open,” the old man replied. But only a human child is able to create a new beginning.

At the same time a new day is born in the human world; the tower clock strikes twelve, it is midnight. Bastian is caught by a wind that begins in Fantasia and ends in the school attic and tears it to Fantasia. What the old man from the Wandering Mountains had said about him comes true: "He, too, belongs irrevocably to the Neverending Story , because it is his own story."

Chapter XIII to mid XXVI (M-Z): Events during the merger

Chapter XIII (letter M): Perelin, the night forest

When Bastian names the Childlike Empress “Moon Child”, he is drawn into the book himself. He finds himself in a velvety, warm darkness in which he feels secure and happy. The Childlike Empress speaks to him, but he cannot see her. Bastian learns from her that fantasies will arise anew from his wishes. He wants to know how many wishes he has free. “As much as you want - the more, the better, my Bastian. Fantastica will be all the richer and more varied, ”replies the Childlike Empress, and in saying this, she lies to him. Because for every wish that Bastian makes in Fantastica, he loses a memory of his real life in the human world, and he can only wish for as long as memories remain.

At first Bastian doesn't know what to wish for, but then he wishes to see the Childlike Empress a second time, just as at the moment when Atreyu entered the ivory tower and they looked at each other. Moonskind is happy that Bastian has begun to wish and shows himself to him again. This later heralds a disastrous development. Atreyu and Fuchur know that you can only see the Childlike Empress once, but Bastian is seeing her for the second time. Bastian therefore believes that she made an exception for him and that he could also visit her a third time. A mistake, as he later learns from Coreander. It is possible to meet the Childlike Empress again, but you have to give her a new name. Bastian can only meet the Childlike Empress a second time at this point because she was not yet a Moon child when they first met.

The golden-eyed mistress of wishes, who has now completely recovered, gives Bastian a supposed grain of sand that turns out to be a seed that begins to drift. This is all that is left of fantasy that is beginning to arise anew at this moment. Bastian is soon surrounded by splendid, overgrown plants, which he calls Perelín, the night forest. Bastian wants it to stay the same forever. “The moment is eternal” replies the ruler of Fantasia. When the Childlike Empress tries to find out why he hesitated to come to Fantasia, Bastian admits that he was ashamed of his figure, which didn't seem to suit the overwhelmingly beautiful Childlike Empress at all. This is immediately interpreted as a second wish, and he takes on his fantastic figure, that of an attractive young prince in splendid robes. But the beauty that is given to him has its price, because he gradually loses the memory that he was once fat and knock-kneed. His current form begins to seem natural to him, as if it had never been different.

When Bastian turns back to the Childlike Empress, she has disappeared. Bastian is surprised to find that he is wearing AURYN around his neck, on which there is an inscription that Atreyu had never mentioned: “Do what you want”. He later learned from Atreyu that he had seen the inscription but could not read it. Bastian enjoys his newfound beauty. It doesn't bother him that nobody is there to admire her. He doesn't care about the admiration of those who once mocked him, at least not anymore, and he only feels pity for them. So he walks through the night forest, apparently satisfied in his solitude.

But soon it is no longer enough for him to be beautiful. He wishes to be strong, the strongest there is. A short time later he finds strangely shaped fruits that actually give him great physical strength. When the trees block his way, Bastian can effortlessly bend them apart. He can also climb effortlessly to the top, where in the past he only hung "like a sack of flour" at the lower end of the climbing rope. Soon his memories of his weakness and clumsiness begin to fade. So he climbs the highest point of the night forest and can see and admire it in all its splendor of colors. He feels like the Lord of Perelín because he created him.

Chapter XIV (letter N): Goab, the desert of colors

The next wish is not long in coming. Bastian wants to be tough, toughened and spartan, like Atreyu. To prove this, he would like to cross the largest desert in Fantasy. The day breaks, Perelín dies. In its place there is an extensive desert landscape that Bastian calls Goab, the desert of colors. In fact, sand comes in every imaginable color. In a strange way, sand of the same color always comes together to form hills that alternate with one another. He strides endlessly through the desert, endures pain, tiredness and deprivation, and nothing can break his will. At the same time, he loses the memory that he had once been sensitive, even sorry.

It occurs to Bastian that his story may be continued in The Neverending Story and someone else might read it one day, or even read it right now. That's why he leaves his initials in the desert sand in case he gets lost in the desert and someone wants to know what has become of him. This is made clear to the reader by changing the font color. Actually, everything that Bastian experiences in Fantasia is printed in green and blue font. His initials are the only ones that appear in red. Bastian wants to bear death in this seemingly endless desert with dignity, just like the hunters from Atreju's people.

But Bastian is still not satisfied with himself. He wishes to be brave. So he meets the most dangerous creature in Fantasy, the lion Graógramán, who tracks him down because he discovers the initials in the desert sand. He is a fire creature that always takes on the color of the sand surface that is just below him. At this moment, Graógramán meets another living being for the first time, because nothing can survive in the Goab desert. Bastian, however, is protected by the AURYN, for which he is still grateful at this point; he whispers his thanks to the childlike empress. After an invisible trial of strength, Graógramán submits to Bastian's will. The lion can never leave the desert because he carries it with him; so he cannot lead Bastian out of her either. Instead, he invites Bastian to his palace, where he suddenly freezes to stone as night falls. Where the desert was, the night forest begins to grow again. Bastian falls asleep on his stone paws, mourning the alleged death of the lion.

Chapter XV (letter O): Graógramán, the motley death

When Graógramán wakes up the next morning (or rather, is reborn), Bastian finally knows how to reveal to him the secret of his existence that has preoccupied him for so long. He must die at night so that the desert can give way to the night forest, and he wakes up in the morning to bring death, and both are good. To thank Bastian for explaining the meaning of his existence to him, he gives him a magical sword that Bastian calls Sikánda, whereupon it belongs to him and transforms from an old, rusted piece of iron into a magnificent weapon with a sheet of glistening light . It is an incomparably powerful weapon that knows how to cut the hardest rock and stone, but Bastian must never draw it of his own will if he does not want to bring harm to Fantasia. He may only use the sword if it springs into his hand by itself.

After a ride through the desert on the back of a lion, Bastian asks himself whether Graógramán has really been here forever, when he just created him through his wish. He slowly realizes that, like any other storyteller, he can tell his creations a story. If he determines that something has been around for a long time, then it has been around for a long time and it has never been any other. The story of Graógramán is no different from the story of any other character in a novel who appears later in the plot. The past arises along with history.

This raises other questions, such as the nature of his desires. Bastian seeks confirmation that the inscription on AURYN means that he can wish anything he wants. But Graógráman firmly rejects this assumption. Bastian was mistaken, the words rather meant that he had to research his true will. Bastian doubts that this task is too difficult and annoys the lion even more. The path is the most difficult of all, one can easily get lost if one does not walk it with great truthfulness and attention. Bastian has to walk this path of desires, from one to the next to the last. At this point he is warned for the first time that there is not an infinite number of wishes available to him; Bastian, who has become brave, has lost all memory of his earlier fearfulness. “Do you think because it might not always be good wishes that you have?” Bastian wants to know. “What do you know what wishes are! What do you know what is good! ”Replies the lion.

Since Graógramán cannot get Bastian out of the desert and Bastian will not survive on his own long enough to leave it, the wish to leave it is the only way out. But for the time being, Bastian wishes to be able to stay here forever to keep the lonely lion company with whom he has become friends. But this rejects his request. There is only life and death here, only Perelín and Goab, but no history. Bastian, however, has to experience his story. He mustn't stay here.

The flaming lion Bastian tells of the Thousand Doors Temple, a place that leads everywhere and can be reached from anywhere if one wishes to get there. Nobody has ever seen him from the outside because he has no outside. Its interior, however, consists of a labyrinth of doors . Every door, regardless of whether it is a stable, kitchen or cupboard door, can at a certain moment become the entrance gate to the thousand-door temple. Then it transforms itself back into a completely normal door. Nobody can go through the same door twice, and none of the thousand doors lead back to the starting point. You wander around the temple until a real desire leads you out again. Finding a real wish can sometimes take a long time.

When an inner voice finally calls Bastian away, he walks through a door that at that moment has become the exit from the Thousand Doors Temple. He promises the petrified lion that he will return one day. The chapter closes with the note that Bastian will not keep the promise, but that much later someone will come in his name to keep it in his place. But this is a different story that should be told another time.

Chapter XVI (letter P): The silver city of Amargánth

Bastian initially cannot find a way out of the Thousand Doors Temple, there are more doors behind every door he walks through. Only when the desire arises in him to see Atreyu again can he set off in a targeted manner; he chooses the doors that are connected in one way or another to the young warrior. One door is made of grass (Atreyu lives in the Grassy Sea), the next door is made of mother-of-pearl (the color of Fuchur's scales), and the third is made of leather (like Atreyu's clothes). In this way, Bastian reaches the silver city of Amargánth, where Atreyu is currently busy organizing a competition. The aim is to put together a following of the greatest fighters of Fantasy, which Bastian, who is now revered as the savior of Fantasy, should find and protect.

Bastian initially remains unrecognized. The only one who recognizes him is the mule Jicha. Bastian chooses her as his mount, but asks her to keep the knowledge of his identity to herself. During the contest, a warrior named Hýkrion proves to be the strongest, one named Hýsbald the quickest, and a third named Hýdorn the toughest. But hero Hynreck, who is driven by love for the princess Oglamár, who has sworn to hear only the greatest hero of the realm, challenges all three to battle at the same time and manages to defeat them. Bastian emerges, who has now identified Atreyu and Fuchur among the audience and who at the same time wants to give Hynreck a lesson. Hynreck had previously spoken disparagingly about the savior of Fantasy in his presence, in order to exalt himself in Oglamár's eyes: “If the fellow had only half as much marrow in his bones as I did, then he didn't need a bodyguard to protect him have to look after like a baby. Seems like a pretty miserable fellow to me, this savior. "

Bastian challenges and defeats Hynreck in every competition and thus humiliates him in front of the eyes of Lady Oglamár, who turns away from him disappointed. Bastian only won the final victory when he asked Hynreck to enter the unfair competition of swimming through the Murhu Lake of Tears, which surrounds the city made of silver. Because Hynreck would have to die in the water, but Bastian would be protected by AURYN. Desperate that he should be betrayed, Hynreck pulls the gun on Bastian, who easily fights him down with Sikánda.

Atreyu now recognizes who he has in front of him, although Bastian's form appears completely changed. Only his eyes have remained the same. Bastian reacts in astonishment to this opening and cannot understand why Atreyu claims such a thing, because he can no longer remember it and believes that he has always had this shape. Nevertheless, the two boys make friends to the cheers of the phantasians. Although Bastian no longer needs protection thanks to his changes, he puts together a retinue, which includes not only Atreju and Fuchur and the mule Jicha, but also the three gentlemen Hýkrion, Hýdorn and Hýsbald. His arrival is celebrated with a great festival.

Chapter XVII (Letter Q): A Dragon for Hero Hynreck

When Bastian realizes what he has done to Hynreck, he creates a mighty dragon that brings death and devastation to Fantasia so that Hynreck can prove himself again in the fight against him. This dragon kidnaps Oglamár, and only Hynreck can save her. Bastian doubts whether this wish was the right one. Because the dragon brings suffering to the phantasians, and Oglamár is also exposed to the injustice of a kidnapping. In addition, it is not certain whether Hynreck will actually defeat the dragon. Bastian's doubts prove to be justified. Hynreck kills the dragon and frees Oglamár, who would now like to accept him as her companion, but now Hynreck has lost interest. The happy ending that Bastian had intended does not come to pass. But this is also one of the other stories that will be told another time.

Bastian has the feeling that his victory in the competition on Atreyu no longer makes a big impression, who has since learned that Bastian is now wearing AURYN. So he wants to gain his respect in another way. He chooses a discipline that only he has mastered in fantasy: inventing stories. While he is still a guest of the silver rice Quérquobad, the head of Amargánth, the inhabitants of the city approach him with a request. They are storytellers, but the number of their stories is limited. So they ask Bastian to give them his stories. Bastian, who now knows that he can also create things that begin in the past, quickly invents the entire history of the city. After that, Amargánth was originally a completely normal city made of stone and wood. There was neither the Murhu tear lake nor the special silver from which the houses are built. At that time, a silver goddess named Quana ruled over the city, whose son Quin killed a unicorn and brought the shining stone that was on the tip of the horn with him to Amargánth. With that he had brought great harm to the city. Fewer and fewer children were born. Quana then sent a messenger to seek advice from the Southern Oracle. When he returned after many years, Quin had taken his place and all Amargánther had grown old. There was only one pair of children left, Aquil and Muqua. The Southern Oracle had revealed that Amargánth could only survive if it was developed into the most beautiful city of Fantasy in order to repent of the sacrilege. But the Amargánther needed the help of the Acharai, the ugliest creatures of Fantasia. With grief over their ugliness, they live in deep darkness underground and shed tears incessantly, which is why they are called the Always Weeping . These streams of tears, however, wash the special silver from the depths of the earth with which Amargánth was finally adorned. Aquil and Murhu only managed to find the Acharai years later, when all the other townspeople were dead, and persuade them to make the town the most beautiful town in Phantasia. So the Acharai built the Filigree Palace and diverted their stream of tears so that it formed the Murhu Lake of Tears, on which the Silver Palace floated, in which Aquil and Muqua now lived. In return, they asked the Amargánthians to become storytellers and song singers, because in this way they find solace in the fact that their ugliness leads to something beautiful. For this reason Aquil and Murhu built a library, the famous library of Amargánth. There they collected Bastian's stories, first those that Bastian had just told, then all the others.

In this way Bastian placed the library in question in the center of the city. It has been here for ages now, but the Amargánthians have not yet been able to open it. At their entrance, Bastian finds the shining stone that comes from the unicorn's horn. An inscription indicates the function of the stone. It should shine Bastian for a hundred years and guide him in the dark depths of a place called "Yors Minroud", unless Bastian would speak his name backwards, then his energy burns in a single instant:

“ Taken from the horn of the unicorn, I am extinguished.
I keep the door locked until the one who
calls me by my name awakens my light .
I shine for him for a hundred years
and will guide him in the dark depths
of Yors Minroud.
But if he speaks my name a second time
from the end to the beginning,
I radiate a hundred years of light
in an instant. "

The Amargánther could not give the stone a name, because no fantasy can do this. Bastian calls the stone Al'Tsahir , after which it belongs to him. At the same time the door of the library opens and the people of Amargánth take possession of Bastian's rich treasure trove of stories.

Finally, Atreyu draws Bastian's attention to the fact that it is time to prepare for his return to the human world, after all he has done a lot for Fantasia and received a lot for it. Now he must return home to make the human world healthy. Bastian asks the three gentlemen Hýkrion, Hýsbald and Hýdorn, who have joined him, the mule Jicha as a mount. He prevails with his request, although the three gentlemen believe that such a mount is beneath his dignity.

Chapter XVIII (Letter R): The Acharai

Bastian and his entourage ride away from Amargánth. Everyone, including Atreyu, Fuchur and Bastian, is convinced that they are looking for the way that would lead Bastian back home. But Bastian Atréju only accepted the proposal out of friendship and goodwill. In truth, he doesn't want to return at all. And since the fantastic geography is determined by wishes and Bastian has to decide the direction, the group moves deeper and deeper into Phantasia, to where the ivory tower stands.

Fuchur mentions that he is not satisfied with the story of the dragon Smärg, the hero Hynreck is supposed to slay. After all, the dragon, albeit a monster, is a distant relative of his. Bastian then thinks about the role he would like to play in Fantastica and comes to the conclusion that he doesn't want to go down in fantasy history as the creator of monsters, but as a great benefactor, as a good person who is a shining example for others offers.

This makes him forget Christa, the daughter of his father's housekeeper, to whom he used to tell his stories. When Atréju asks him a little later about the girl, Bastian can still remember that he said her name in Amargánth, but no longer explains why he did it. Atréju is concerned about further details from Bastian's life, with the focus on the everyday things that Bastian seem to be insignificant. They don't seem so common to Bastian anymore, as if they contain a secret that has so far remained hidden from him. Atreyu notes that Bastian's memories have large gaps in some areas and he also draws the right conclusion. It has to do with AURYN that Bastian loses his memory. The shine has a different effect on people than on phantasians; it fulfills all of their wishes, but at the same time it takes away their memories of their world. Bastian, who feels nothing that he lacks, replies what Graógráman had said to him. He must go the way of desires. To do this, he must go from one wish to the next. He couldn't skip any. Otherwise he could not get any further in Fantasia if he wanted to find his true will. “Yes,” says Atreyu, “it gives you the way and at the same time takes you away from your destination.” But Bastian wipes away the concerns. Moon child will have already known what she was doing when she gave him the sign. AURYN is certainly not a trap.

The desire to want to be a benefactor leads Bastian to the Acharai. When he hears her crying, he and Atreyu penetrate a tunnel that leads into the interior of the earth. When he lights up their tunnels with Al'Tsahir, they beg him to turn off the light so that their ugliness is not revealed. Bastian would like to act as her benefactor. Since he is primarily concerned with putting himself in the right light towards his companions - after all, he created the Acharai and is therefore responsible for their fate - he chooses his wish as thoughtlessly as the one with which he creates the dragon for Hynreck has, and turns the Acharai into clown moths, so-called silts. They always laugh, but it's not a happy laugh. In contrast to the Acharai, whose life had a deeper meaning, the Schlamuffen are exposed to ridicule and incapable of any meaningful action. Bastian thus seals the fall of Amargánth at the same time. The silts destroy the work of the Acharai, and now that they are gone, the lake of tears dries up and no more silver is washed from the depths of the earth. Instead of worshiping him as a benefactor, the clown moths mock him. And Atreyu does not adore him as a benefactor either, but rather appears concerned about what this wish may have cost Bastian. Bastian realizes that Atreyu is alluding to forgetting, not Bastian's self-denial.

The chapter closes with the note that Bastian is no longer so sure that he has done something good.

The reader learns in this chapter that William Shakespeare was a traveler of fantasy; he is known here under the name Schexpir .

Chapter XIX (letter S): The comrades

To cheer Bastian, who is in a brooding mood, Fuchur allows him a ride on his back. Later, during a conversation over dinner, it turns out that Bastian has lost the memory of the children who mocked him at school. Fuchur therefore advises Bastian not to use AURYN any more, because he could not return home without memories. Bastian replies that he actually doesn't want to go home. He feels much too comfortable in Fantasy to even consider returning to the human world. Attréju, on the other hand, learned on his Great Quest that the journey to Fantasia serves people to make both worlds healthy, but in order to achieve this, the fantasy traveler has to transport what he has learned into his own world and apply it there for the benefit of the people. That is why he is shocked to see that Bastian has to return to put his world in order so that people can come to Fantasia again. Otherwise fantasies would perish again one day and everything would have been in vain. Atreyu wants to know if his father isn't waiting for Bastian and worried about him. Bastian does not believe this, he thinks that his father is probably even happy to be rid of him. Out of Atréjus and Fuchur's concern, he interprets in this sense that it sounds as if they wanted to send him away so that they no longer have to endure him.

But the friends get along again for the time being, and Bastian follows her advice for a while, which means that the group can no longer move forward, step on the spot or run around in circles. The mule Jicha realizes that Bastian has stopped wishing and explains to his surprise that he has so far headed straight for the ivory tower. This makes Bastian aware that he was guided by the wish to see Moon Child again. By the next morning, Atreyu and Fuchur had also understood that Bastian had to wish again in order to move forward. Bastian decides to keep walking towards the ivory tower. For the time being he justifies this by saying that the Childlike Empress has the knowledge of how to return home and that he wants to ask her about it. Fuchur points out to him that he cannot see the Childlike Empress again because he has met her before. But Bastian does not listen to him and Atreyu. He had already met the Childlike Empress twice, there he could also meet her a third time, she owed him a lot and would therefore certainly make an exception in his case, and in addition, Atreyu's last advice regarding AURYN was harmful . In addition, he is a person and not a phantasy, so it is not at all sure that this rule will also apply to him.

Atreyu and Fuchur understand that the Childlike Empress Bastian did not tell the truth about AURYN and the effects of his wishes. They even suspect that Moonskind might not care what becomes of Bastian, that she was all about fantasies all the time. “Do you think, Fuchur,” Asks Atreyu, “that the Childlike Empress doesn't care what happens to Bastian?” “Who knows,” replies Fuchur. “It doesn't make any difference.” “But then,” continues Atreyu, “she is truly a…” “Don't say it!” Fuchur interrupts. "I know what you mean, but don't say it." They decide to help Bastian, if necessary against the will of the Child Empress or his own.

Bastian's entourage is growing steadily. Great princes from all over the world rush to pay homage to Bastian. A four-quarter troll, a cephalopod, a gnome, a shadow prankster, a wild female, a Sassafranian and a blue genie named Illuán are the first to join the group. And more envoys are coming, so that the procession will soon consist of three hundred people. They want Bastian, who has already created so many stories, to let them partake of the grace of their own story; none of them have any. Bastian put the ambassadors off for the time being. He couldn't do this now, but later he would help everyone. But first he had to meet the Childlike Empress. He asks his entourage to help him find the ivory tower. The messengers do not seem disappointed, they are rather pleased that Bastian tolerates them in his company.

Chapter XX (letter T): The seeing hand

Bastian is annoyed that Atréju and Fuchur treat him like a dependent and vulnerable child for whom they feel responsible. This gives rise to his desire to be dangerous and feared, something everyone has to be careful of, including Fuchur and Atreyu. Then the blue genie Illuán comes to him and reports that one is in the Oglais garden, a forest of carnivorous orchids that belongs to the magic castle Hórok, in which the powerful and evil sorceress Xayíde lives. Bastian orders to keep walking towards the "seeing hand", as the castle is also called due to its shape and its countless, brightly lit windows that look like eyes.

Atreyu asks Bastian to ride with him on Fuchur so that he can talk to him alone. He asks his human friend to give him the AURYN. It led him and took nothing from him, presumably because as a phantasy he has no memories of the human world that it could have taken from him. Bastian, on the other hand, steals his memories and thus his identity. But Bastian categorically rejects Atréju's request. A dispute ensues in the course of which Bastian forbids any interference in his affairs. He has decided not to return at all and will stay in Fantasia forever. He likes it here very much; he could do without his memories. He could give the childlike empress a thousand new names: “We no longer need the human world!” He rates the changes that AURYN has brought about in him as positive. He is no longer the harmless drip that others see in him.

Meanwhile, Xayíde has Messrs Hýkrion, Hýsbald and Hýdorn kidnapped and threatens Bastian with having them tortured to death if he does not submit to their will and becomes their slave. To do this, she sends out her guardians, black, insect-like creatures made of metal, which are hollow inside and which she controls with the help of her will. His entourage could not even hurt these creatures, so Bastian sets off alone with Fuchur and Atreyu in the direction of the castle. While Fuchur and Atreyu provide a diversionary maneuver, Bastian sneaks into the castle, defeats the guardian creatures with Sikánda's help and frees the prisoners. When Bastian and Atreyu enter the throne room, Xayíde apparently submits to his will and joins the group. The sorceress does not want to wear fuchur; Bastian orders him to do it anyway. Fuchur obeys, not him, but Atreyu, who confirms with a nod that he should obey Bastian.

After returning to the rest of the companions whom Xayíde had misled, it turns out that the litter in which she intends to travel was sent towards the traveling party, which now consists of over 1000 phantasians, even before her apparent defeat . So Xayíde's capture was obviously planned by her. Atreyu points this out to Bastian, but he also rejects this advice, this time visibly annoyed. Bastian's wish this time costs him the memory of having been a child in his world. Xayíde, on the other hand, smiles. "It wasn't a good smile".

Xayíde's face and hands are portrayed as pale marble. Her hair is fiery red and piled up in a strange hairstyle of braids and pigtails. The sorceress is much taller than Bastian and very beautiful. The reader learns that Xayíde's eyes are different colors. One is green, one is red, as are the two font colors of the Neverending Story.

Chapter XXI (Letter U): The Star Monastery

Bastian's entourage has grown into an army of several thousand. You spend the night in tents of very different sizes, and such a tent has also been created for Bastian, the most splendid of all. A flag waving on its roof shows Bastian's coat of arms: a seven-armed chandelier, like the one that Bastian once lit in the attic so that he could continue reading the Neverending Story in the dark.

Just as Xayíde steers her hollow tank giants through her will, she also begins to steer Bastian, who, through the loss of his memories, also begins to become hollow from within. She persuades Bastian that the mule Jicha is unworthy of him. Bastian thinks too much of others, he shouldn't let Jicha carry him just because she likes it. Instead, he should think more about his own perfection. Finally the sorceress reaches her goal; Bastian sends Jicha away. Since he knows her most ardent wish to have a child, despite the sterility of the mules, he devises a Pegasus who will take her as a mate and with her can father the longed-for offspring. Although he fulfills Jicha's lifelong dream, this is not out of friendship or compassion for his most loyal and brightest companion, but solely to get rid of her. The mule, however, shows that she would like to have children above all so that she can tell them about her encounter with Bastian when she is old. In fact, Jicha later had a son, a white, swinging mule named Pataplán, who would still make a lot of talk in Fantasy. But this is a different story and should be told another time.

Bastian has a deep grudge against Atreyu and Fuchur, who, unlike the sorceress, still show him no submissive respect, although he has already used several of his wishes to achieve this goal. Nor is it a conciliatory rage; Bastian imagines how he will forgive his friend when he finally comes to him. Xayíde, however, sows further distrust of the two; Atreyu thinks about taking away Bastian AURYN. Finally, she gives Bastian an invisibility belt that belongs to him when he gives him the name Gémmal. She does this in the knowledge that Bastian will spy on Atreyu and Fuchur with his help. Unlike before, Atreyu and Fuchur are no longer the vanguard exploring the terrain, but rather the rearguard. They don't say a word to Bastian.

In this one grows a wish that he considers his last, his true will. He wants to be wise. As a wise man he would be above joy and sorrow, fear and pity, ambition and hurt. He would be above things, hate or love nothing or anyone, but also accept the rejection or affection of others with complete indifference. A short time later, six owls appear as messengers who invite Bastian, whom they refer to as the “Great Knowing One”, to the Gigam star monastery, where the three “deeply pondered ones” reflect on the true nature of Fantasy. Uschtu, the owl-headed mother of intuition, Schirkrie, the eagle-headed father of the show, and Jisipu, the fox-headed son of wisdom, are the fantastic manifestations of the stuffed animals that are on the school attic, where the book The Neverending Story is still located. Bastian, accompanied by Atréjus and Xayídes, goes to the three deeply minded people. Bastian answers their questions as follows: Fantasy is The Neverending Story . This is written in a book bound in copper-colored silk. The book is in the attic of a school building. Bastian asks the three deeply minded people to step onto the roof of the star monastery with him, from where he can see the ivory tower for the first time. There he speaks the name of the stone Al'Tsahir backwards and thus burns its light in a single light explosion. This makes the school attic, which is located above the monastery, visible. The three deeply minded people can recognize the stuffed animals, but each only sees that which is of his kind. In this way a first difference of opinion arises between the three deeply pondered ones, which later leads to the dissolution of the monastery. But let this be a different story to be told another time. That night, Bastian loses the memory that he ever went to school. He can no longer remember the granary, the stolen book or how it got to Fantasia.

Chapter XXII (Letter V): The Battle of the Ivory Tower

Since Bastian is not sure how the Childlike Empress will behave towards him when he arrives at the ivory tower, he gives contradicting instructions to his army. On the one hand he longs to see Moonskind again and this time to face her as an equal, on the other hand he fears that she might demand AURYN back from him and send him back home. Eventually, however, the group reached the edge of the labyrinth that surrounds the ivory tower.

A hurtling who has traveled to the ivory tower appears as a messenger in front of Bastian and reports to him that the Childlike Empress has not been there for ages. Bastian has to remember that Fuchur had warned him that the Childlike Empress could only be seen once. So his friends come back to him. Since Bastian, Fuchur and Atreyu no longer talk to each other, Bastian begins to want the company of them both. In order to avoid having to seek dialogue and sort things out, Bastian puts on the Gémmal belt and sneaks invisibly close to her. There he learns that both actually plan to steal AURYN from him, as Xaýide had said. Bastian has the two captured, for which he himself steers Xayíde's tank giant with his will for the first time, and banishes them from the ranks of his entourage.

Xayíde, who wanted to achieve exactly this, comes to Bastian and persuades him that he has now reached true greatness because he has succeeded in shedding the bonds of friendship. Obviously the Childlike Empress left Phantasia in order to leave her place to her successor. It is now time to take possession of the ivory tower and crown yourself child emperor. He had saved and recreated fantasies, now it is time to seize the omnipotence that belongs to him alone. With that he is truly free from everything that restricts him and free to do what he wants. Let this be his True Will.

Bastian lets himself be manipulated again and moves into the ivory tower, where he is warmly welcomed by the entourage of the Childish Empress. But he fails in the attempt to take possession of the magnolia pavilion. Whatever it does, it cannot be opened. Nevertheless, Bastian determines that his coronation ceremony should take place in seventy-seven days. Bastian spends the next few weeks motionless in his room. He would like to make a wish or invent an entertaining story, but he feels empty and hollow and can no longer think of anything. Finally he got the idea to wish for the Childlike Empress. But as often as he calls her, she doesn't appear. And the more often he repeats his wish, the more he forgets how her gaze had been like a shining treasure in his heart.

Atreyu uses the time until Bastian's coronation to assemble three armies that want to force Bastian to lay down AURYN. When the festivities have already started, his entourage approaches. The battle for the ivory tower ensues, in the course of which many phantasians die on both sides, including Illuán, who tries to save the Gémmal belt for Bastian. A completely pointless death, because Bastian loses his belt shortly afterwards and doesn't even think about him anymore. Bastian feels the need to intervene himself, to lead his entourage, but Xayíde advises against it. It would be unseemly for an emperor to go out and fight.

When the first attackers reached the foot of the ivory tower, Xayíde's black tank giants attacked and raged among Atréju's loyalists. Nevertheless, Atreyu manages to get into the tower because he is not fighting for himself, but for his friend, whom he wants to defeat in order to save him. Bastian is already expecting him, and so he and Atreyu compete against each other. But this time the sword Sikánda Bastian fails to help. In anger, Bastian tears it from its sheath, which extinguishes its magical powers. Bastian seriously injures Atreyu. He falls from the ivory tower, but is saved by Fuchur.

At that moment the fortunes of the fight turn and the rebels begin to flee. When the ivory tower burns down, Bastian blames Atreyu for it. Thinking about revenge, he mounts one of Xayíde's black horses and pursues Fuchur and Atreyu.

Chapter XXIII (letter W): The old emperor city

Bastian's entourage remains behind because it cannot keep up with the black horse, which is made of the same material as Xayíde's giant tank and which Bastian therefore steers with his indomitable will. Most of his followers are wounded, and even Xayíde's will seems to have reached the limits of its strength.

Bastian's anger slowly fades away; instead, questions arise in him. For example, why Atreyu hesitated to wound him to take AURYN away from him. Very close to the Alte Kaiser town, the horse suddenly bursts apart so that Bastian is forced to turn in the direction of the town. Bastian loses his belt Gémmal, which is found days later by a magpie. But this is a different story that should be told another time.

The sight of the old emperor city terrifies Bastian deeply. Not only do the buildings appear to be randomly jumbled up and randomly arranged: The city is populated by madmen, over whom the monkey Argax watches over. Bastian learns from him that they were all once fantasy travelers who could not find their way back into the human world. At first they didn't want to go back there, then they couldn't. They should wish to return home, but they have used their last wish for something else. Some have declared themselves child emperors; Their memories and thus their wishes were then immediately consumed. Others have been brought here in a more gradual process; The result is the same. Bastian learns that he could never have become a child emperor. His power comes from AURYN, and the Childlike Empress' power cannot be used to take it away from her. Argax is convinced that the old emperor city will be Bastian's future place of residence. Even if he has not succeeded in rising to the rulership of Fantasia, he has hardly any memories left and thus hardly any wishes left. Not enough to find the one to lead him back home.

Argax explained to Bastian that his assumption that he could wish on forever was incorrect. He can only wish as long as he still has memories of his world. If you have no past, you also have no future. It wouldn't have been of any use if Atreyu had taken AURYN away from him. Bastian needs it to find the way back. Either way, Bastian would have ended up in the old emperor city. Argax invented the random game for its residents. Since they can no longer write stories, he lets them throw dice with letters on them. If you play this game long enough, words, poems, stories arise by chance. If you play it for all eternity, all the poems and stories that are possible at all must result from it, including the ones in which Bastian and Argax are currently talking.

This time Bastian still manages to leave the old emperor city. Argax advises him to go to Yors Minroud, perhaps his last resort. He must find a wish that will bring him back into his world. But he only had three or four of them at most. Bastian is determined: he never wants to return here. But no matter how hard he tries to escape the city, he has to find again and again that he has missed the direction and is rushing back to its center. Only in the afternoon does he find the heather again and run away until the night forces him to stop. In his sleep he loses the memory that he was once able to make up stories. In the dream he sees Atreyu, with a bleeding wound on his chest, standing there and looking at him motionless and wordless. Bastian buries Sikánda so that the sword can never be drawn against a friend again. In the distant future someone will come who can safely touch it, but that is a different story that should be told another time.

After a violent thunderstorm, Bastian sets off towards the sea of fog that he has to cross to reach his destination. He tries not to use AURYN in order to use the few memories that remain only for wishes that bring him closer to his world. But desires can neither be aroused nor suppressed at will. They arise unnoticed and then form intentions that can be good or bad. So in Bastian the desire to belong to a community arises, not as lord, winner or leader, but as a simple group member, even if it is the slightest. The main thing is that he participates in the community and is part of it as a matter of course.

In this way he is taken in by the fog boaters, the Yskálnari, who live in the basket town of Yskál and travel the sea of fog. They always stick together because everyone thinks and feels the same as the other, but the loss of one person means nothing to them. Because neither is different from the other, neither is irreplaceable; when a Yskálnari is killed, the others don't even talk about it and don't miss him either. Also, none of the townspeople have their own name. Their common ground arises through the dance and the wordless song. Bastian understands that the commonality of the Nebelschiffer is not based on the fact that they let different kinds of ideas sound together. It doesn't take any effort to feel like a community. They can't even argue with each other as neither of them feels like they are individuals. Bastian found this ease of use unsatisfactory. Her gentleness seems bland to him and the constant melody of her songs is monotonous. There is harmony in the community but no love. Bastian, however, wants to be an individual, someone who is loved for being who he is, despite his mistakes or because of them. However, he doesn't even know how he is anymore. Among all the gifts and powers that he received in Fantastica, he can no longer find himself.

Bastian, who was hired as a cabin boy, crossed the sea of fog on one of the Yskálnari ships. These are driven with the help of the fog sailor's imagination, just as a person moves his legs by imagining it. To do this, at least two Yskálnari must let their imaginations become one. This union creates the power of locomotion. During the trip, he loses the memory that there were different people with different opinions and ideas in his world. He now has only three memories, of his home, his parents and his own name.

Chapter XXIV (Letter X): Dame Aiuóla

Bastian's earlier wishes to be admired and feared are no longer relevant. So Xayíde is no longer needed. When the sorceress reaches the old emperor town and realizes that Bastian has already been there, she realizes that the game is over for her. Completely insane, she stands in the way of her tank creatures, who suddenly no longer obey her will, is overrun by them and dies. Hýsbald, Hýdorn and Hýkrion arrive a little later and do not understand what has happened. Having concluded that the campaign has come to an end, they dismiss the rest of the army and recommend that everyone go home. However, they themselves had sworn an oath of allegiance to Bastian, so they decide to look for him all over Fantasia. However, since they cannot agree on the direction, they part and each of them has their own adventures. But these are different stories and should be told another time.

Bastian's desire to be loved leads him to the house of change, which is called not only because it is constantly changing its shape, but also because whoever is in it changes. In the House of Changes, Lady Aiuóla has been waiting for his arrival for a long time, a sentient plant that takes the form of a maternal woman who resembles Bastian's own mother. She knows Bastian's entire story and tells it to him. The reader learns that Bastian, who is called by many phantasians the “savior”, the “knight of the seven-armed candlestick”, the “great knower” or “lord and master”, has not yet forgotten his name.

Bastian tells her his story in return and concludes that he has misunderstood everything and done it wrong. As a result he brought great harm to himself and fantasies. But the lady Aiuóla rejects this. He went the way of desires, and it was never straight. He made a big detour, but it was his way.

Bastian is cared for by Lady Aiuóla until his last wish and true will ripen in him: He not only wants to be loved, but also to be able to love himself. But, Lady Aiuóla explains to him, he can only do that after he has drunk the water of life. This is also the reason why he took such a big detour. He is one of those who can only return when they find the source where the water of life springs. And this is the most secret place in Fantasy, to which there is no easy way. In order to return to his world, Bastian must also bring the water of life to other people. In this way Bastian learns that imaginary people cannot love themselves, only a few who were allowed to drink from the water. Only in the distant future will a time come when people will also bring love to fantasies, then the two worlds will only be one. Bastian wants to know where the waters of life can be found. "On the borders of fantasy" answers the lady Aiuóla. Bastian replies, puzzled, that fantasy has no limits. “Yes,” he is replied, “but they are not outside, but inside. There, from where the Childlike Empress receives all her power and where she cannot come herself after all. ”Bastian could only get there through a wish. It's the last one he has left, because in the meantime he has also forgotten his father and mother.

Now that he knows his true will, Bastian leaves the house of change and begins to look for the waters of life.

Chapter XXV (letter Y): The mine of images

In this way he finally reaches the blind miner Yor, who works in the Minroud mine, the mine of images. Bastian introduces himself to him; so he still remembers his own name.

All lost dream images, every dream that a person has ever forgotten, including Bastian's own, end up in this mine. The whole of fantasy stands on a foundation of forgotten dreams. Bastian cannot simply wish to love; the waters of life will ask who to love. But he can no longer say that because he has forgotten everything except his own name. And he has to forget this too in order to achieve his goal, and ultimately himself. Bastian has to find a dream that can guide him. But even that is almost impossible without his memories, and it means hard, patient work. A job that Bastian confronts without complaint, because he has become patient and quiet and has lost all self-pity.

Bastian first takes the pictures up on the plain and finds nothing. So Yor advises him to drive into the Minroud Pit. Bastian hesitates, because it's so dark down there that he can't see anything. Yor asks him if he has not been given any light, such as a shining stone. Bastian replies: Yes, but he used Al'Tsahir for another purpose. "Bad," Yor replies with a stone face. Bastian drives into the pit anyway and has to continue his search in complete darkness; he carefully scans the thin, fragile panels and tests their effect on himself. Finally, a picture falls into his hand that creates a violent reaction in him, a deep longing for this man he does not know. It shows a sad, troubled man in a white coat, with plaster casts in his hands and frozen in a block of ice. It is Bastian's father and it seems to Bastian that he is calling him for help. “I can't get out of this ice cream alone. Only you can free me from it - only you! ". At this moment Bastian forgets his name and loses the last memory of his earthly identity.

Yor advises Bastian, who from now on is called “the boy who no longer had a name” in the book, to take good care of the picture, because without his help he could not reach the waters of life. Bastian promises and leaves the Minroud pit. But the selfish desires of his past catch up with him. The Schlamuffen appear, tired of their senseless existence, and make Bastian bitter reproaches. He replies that he only meant well, but the Schlamuffen don't believe him. “Yes, with yourself. You felt really great. But we have paid the bill for your kindness, great benefactor! ”They accuse him. They have come to explain Bastian to their leader, to the Ober-, Haupt- or General-Schlamuffe. Bastian should order them around, force them to do something, forbid them to do something, give them rules and set limits, so that their existence is useful for something. Horrified Bastian rejects the Schlamuffen's suggestion. He couldn't, he had to return home. But the Schlamuffen do not want to let him go, that could suit him, just to get away from fantasies. “But I'm finished!” Bastian says to the Schlamuffen. "And we? What are we? ”They reply.

If he could not stay, he would have to transform them back into the Acharai. They would prefer to remain in eternal sadness, let the lake of tears arise anew and spin the silver filigree of Amargánth than to eke out such a senseless existence. But Bastian no longer has any wishes with which he could meet her request. His power in Fantasia is gone. So the Schlamuffen attacked him to take him away, destroying the picture showing Bastian's father. Suddenly Atreyu and Fuchur appear and drive away the clown moths.

Chapter XXVI first half (letter Z): The waters of life

When Bastian sees his friends, he sinks to his knees and puts AURYN down voluntarily. At the same moment the three are moved to a domed hall inside the gem. There the two snakes watch over the spring from which the waters of life arise. As can be seen on AURYN, they hold each other captive, and Bastian suddenly knows that the world would end if they ever let go of each other. By tying each other up, they also guard the water of life. In the middle, around which they lie, a mighty spring rushes, from which the waters flow, which have their own identity and speak to the three friends. But only Fuchur can understand them, as he speaks all languages of joy as the luck dragon.

A time of trials begins for Bastian, but he fails the first one to name his name, because he has since forgotten that too. That's why the guards don't want to let Bastian pass. As Atreyu learned in the course of his Great Search, it is the name that gives a being its true reality. But it is precisely this name that Bastian has now lost and with it his identity. This is what Atreyu answers in his place. The waters ask with what authority he is doing this. Atreyu replies that he is Bastian's friend. Since friendship makes people forget human deficits, the snakes accept this reason and allow Bastian to go to the source, in which he bathes and thus gets his memories back. In return, Bastian has to give everything that the childlike empress gave him. She herself is not here because she is the only one who cannot get here because she cannot put herself down. Atreyu realizes that this is the place to which the three powers brought him and Fuchur when nothingness destroyed Fantasia. As the fat little boy he once was, and yet deeply changed inside, Bastian gets out of the water. The pleasure of the water filled him with joy and he now wants to be exactly who he really is. He realizes that among the many different kinds of joy there is basically only one thing: the joy of being able to love. That's why Bastian wants to bring his father the water of life, but he doesn't know how. Fuchur, however, is convinced that he can do it, even though you cannot carry anything from fantasy across the threshold.

Finally, the snakes want to know whether Bastian has taken responsibility for his actions and completed all the stories that were started by him. Bastian has to admit, dismayed, that it wasn't a single one, and basically it is also impossible to fulfill such a task, since no story ever really ends and new ones can always grow out of each one. Then the snakes refuse to let him pass. But Atreyu steps forward and takes on this task in Bastian's place, and Fuchur is convinced that with luck they will also succeed in the impossible.

With the words “Father! Father! - I - am - Bastian - Balthasar - Bux! ”Bastian returns to his world on his lips.

Chapter XXVI, second half (Z): Events after the merger

Bastian soon realizes that although he has regained his old form, he has by no means lost all the gifts that were bestowed upon him in Fantasia. It's back in the school attic, but it's Sunday and the school is empty. Bastian bravely opens a window, steps into rickety scaffolding and climbs down. As fast as he can, he runs to his father. This is beside himself with worry because Bastian had disappeared. However, much less than Bastian believed, because only a day has passed since he didn't return from school. Bastian tells his father what happened, and when his story ends after many hours, the father has tears in his eyes. Bastian realizes that in the end he managed to bring his father the water of life and to break through the ice armor that had wrapped around his heart, even though he had spilled the water on his return. The two promise each other that everything will be different from now on.

Bastian still has to settle one thing. He has to go to Coreander and apologize for stealing the book that has disappeared since his return. His father offers to do this in his place, just as he had arranged so many things for his son before, but Bastian refuses. He has to do this himself. But Coreander cannot remember the book at all. This is how Bastian tells him his story too. Coreander believes him, because he too once traveled to Fantastica, although he gave the Childlike Empress a different name. Coreander reveals to Bastian that he can return to Fantasy and meet the Childlike Empress again. But to do this he has to call them differently. “There are people who can never come to Fantasia, and there are people who can, but they stay there forever. And then there are still some who go to Fantastica and come back again. Just like you. And they make both worlds healthy, ”explains the bookseller. When Bastian wonders why Coreander can no longer remember the book, the antiquarian replies that there are many ways to Fantasia, not just this book, which probably already comes from Fantasia itself and has possibly found another reader in the meantime - that one namely, who is currently holding Michael Ende's book in his hands and is following what Bastian and Coreander are talking about. When Bastian leaves the shop, he has earned Coreander's respect. He is convinced that Bastian will show some people the way to Fantasy in the future, so that he can bring us the water of life.

The book closes with the words: “And Mr. Coreander was not wrong. But that is a different story and should be told another time. ”As Coreander expressly emphasizes once again, Bastian has learned that every story is in its own way an unending story. Because no story really ends, and any one can grow into new ones using just your imagination.

Key messages of the book

Introduction; Chapters I to XII (A - L): Events prior to the merger

The first part of the book deals with the interaction between the reality of human existence and the spiritual reality of people, their wishes, ideas, goals and dreams. Ende points out that people can use their imaginations to make their world a better, more livable place, but that they can also abuse it to exercise power over others because of their selfish motives. The problem is not the imagination itself, but the motivation from which people act. The misuse of the imagination in the way of lies leads to the withering of the imagination and to the sickness of the human world, especially of interpersonal relationships. But ideas can also get wings and be used to make life more pleasant and bearable. At the same time, Ende works out that nobody is replaceable, that everyone can do something to achieve this goal. Bastian Balthasar Bux in particular, a boy without any power, teased by his classmates, unpopular with teachers, abandoned by his father, who grieves for his deceased wife, a failure across the board, becomes the savior of the childish Empress and thus embarks on a journey to take responsibility for oneself and others and thus to tread precisely this path of growth and purification that makes the world healthy. No one else would be better placed to see the problems that need to be solved. Fantasia is driven into an eternal cycle by the intervention of the Childlike Empress and the old man from the Wandering Mountains; Bastian is caught in a vicious circle of daily routine, discouragement, frustration and bad habits. But such a cycle can be broken if you just learn to believe in yourself and change things for the better.

Key messages of the book

Chapters I to XII -
Atréjus journey

Attréjus Queste, to investigate the cause of the Childlike Empress's illness, which makes her withered away and slowly but surely lets the realm of the imagination sink into nothing, seems to make no sense, since the golden-eyed mistress of wishes already knows the answer. The childlike empress is an allegory of the human imagination. She is not a fantasy herself, but fantasy, the land of fantasy, cannot exist without her. Attréju learns from the ancient Morla that the Childlike Empress needs a new name. But no fancier can give it this name. The Southern Oracle informs Atreyu that it is a human child who has to give the Childlike Empress the new name in order to save her and Fantasia from the impending disappearance into nothingness. Atreyu and Bastian meet on the way to the oracle - one of the gates to the southern oracle lets both recognize that one is in truth the other's self. The human world, as Atreyu learned from the oracle, lies beyond fantasy, but Atreyu cannot reach it because fantasy is limitless. The werewolf Gmork nevertheless shows Atreyu a way: If he goes into nowhere, he will reach the human world, but not in his current form. Like all phantasians who come to the homeland of men in this way, he will become a lie. Just like the nothing that devours fantasies, acts on the imaginative as if he were blind, lies, changed imaginative, perverted ideas confuse the human senses by means of skillful manipulation and serve to exercise power over others with the help of unfair methods . In this way the human world and fantasies influence each other. Ideas, wishes and dreams, degenerated into lies, make the human world sick. For this reason people turn away from fantasies, in the end even deny its existence. But precisely this leads to the fact that fantasies sink into nothing and further lies arise. It is also the reason why no human child has come for so long; people have lost their belief in the world of fantasy. But the opposite can also happen. The worlds can heal one another. To do this, the opposite path must be followed. It is not that a phantasyier has to enter the human world, rather a human child has to come to phantasy by giving the childlike empress her name. Attréju's journey serves to familiarize Bastian Balthasar Bux, the human boy who can save fantasies alone, with the problem and to lead him on this path into the realm of fantasy.

In the twelfth chapter the author himself is a guest in the world he has designed. Since Bastian Baltasar Bux still does not find the courage to take the path to Fantasia, as he has promised several times in the meantime, the Childlike Empress sees only one way to save her empire. She seeks out the old man from the Wandering Mountains. As an allegory of fantasy, the Childlike Empress is eternally young and the beginning of everything that makes up fantasy. The old man from Wandering Berge, on the other hand, is the chronicler who writes down everything that happens in the world of fantasy. He is thus a personification of Michael Ende himself and makes no secret of it (“The beginning seeks the end ”). The imagination is changeable, changeable, alive. But the moment it is captured on paper, the story becomes rigid and immutable, there is no longer any room for change. The Old Man from the Wandering Mountain writes the story of Fantasy as it happens and it happens as he writes it. The Childlike Empress asks the old man to retell the story that has already happened. Since the old man from the Wandering Mountain has to write it down again while he is telling it, an eternal, apparently unbreakable cycle is created that starts over and over again, as the Childlike Empress asks the old man from the Wandering Mountain to repeat the story tell. Only Bastian can end this cycle by giving the childlike empress her name. This gives Fantasia the necessary time to avoid the ultimate ruin before Bastian, who now understands that it is his own story, which here becomes the Neverending Story , makes his decision and sets off on the way to Fantasia.

Chapter XIII to mid XXVI (M-Z): Events during the merger

Bastian receives her mark, AURYN , from the Childlike Empress . It has the power to make each of its wishes come true in fantasies. Its task is to create fantasies more beautiful than ever under the motto do what you want . Although there are apparently no restrictions associated with this request, Bastian finally realizes that there are such restrictions. They consist in not losing the connection to one's own world, and they arise from the responsibility Bastian bears for his actions, which consist in the exercise of power.

In truth, the second part of The Neverending Story is about Bastian's personality development, which is why Wilfried Kuckartz speaks of an educational fairy tale . It is about overcoming the shame caused by the assumed physical inadequacy in order to achieve a strong sense of self-worth. In addition, the story is dedicated to finding and developing one's own ability to love. It is the central message of the second part of the novel, after the first part was about the importance of human fantasy, in which the potential for both worlds is "to make each other healthy". The moment Bastian stops using his imagination to escape from reality, he opens up the possibility for himself to take responsibility for his life, to grow up and to change what burdens him.

With every wish that Bastian expresses, he will lose part of his memory. Almost too late, he will finally find out that this will also cause him to lose his character and his relationship with reality. He becomes arrogant and arrogant. Charles Dickens anticipated this motif in his Christmas story The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain .

Key messages of the book

Chapters XII to XXVI -
Bastian in Fantasia

The core message of the second, longer part of the book (which is ultimately also the focus) is different. In the first part, Ende worked out how great the creative power of the imagination is. Bastian is now given the opportunity to exercise this power himself. He receives AURYN, the symbol of the Childlike Empress who has already protected Atreyu on his journey. Atreyu was not allowed to use his power as a fantasist, since the Childlike Empress does not judge and does not rule. As an allegory of fantasy, it grants every human idea the same right to exist. In Bastian's hands, however, AURYN becomes a comprehensive instrument of creation, since as a person he is naturally able to develop creativity and invent new stories himself. AURYN makes his wishes come true. His mission does not prepare him for what awaits him. The childlike empress, who Bastian Mondenkind christened, asks him to express his wishes, to make them come true. This request does not seem to have any restrictions, on the contrary. The more wishes he expresses, the richer the fantasies will be, explains Modenkind. Even AURYN does not impose any visible restrictions on him: “Do what you want” is the inscription that he now discovers on the gem. Of course Bastian has this power: There are no limits to your imagination, at least no external ones. Bastian only gradually learns that his task in reality is to research his true will.

At first Bastian is still unsure what to wish for. But then he uses his power more and more to compensate for the deficits that inhibit and hinder him in his real life in the human world. He wishes to be strong, to be courageous, he wants company and thus recreates Atreyu and the lucky dragon Fuchur, he also changes his hated appearance. For Bastian, the world of fantasy becomes more and more an escape from reality and from what it really is. At first he is not at all aware of the consequences of this flight. With every wish that comes true, he begins to forget a detail from his own reality. It seems to him that he has always been what he is now in Fantastica. Since his fantastic self, which now has everything he could never achieve even in the material world, seems to him far more desirable than his real life, Bastian, manipulated and strengthened by the sorceress Xayíde's striving for power, decides to rise up against the childlike emperors and to make yourself the emperor of Fantasy. Fortunately for him, this plan fails because of the resistance of Atrejus. Almost deprived of all memories of his earlier life, Bastian realizes that his refuge, Fantasias, has become a prison from which he can no longer find a way. If he had conquered the ivory tower where the Childlike Empress resides (that is, the imagination itself), he would now literally be sitting in one; he would also have lost the last remnant of his sense of reality. Even so, there is a great risk that he will lose himself in his fantasies. In the old city of the Kaiser, Bastian realizes what will happen to him if he does not stop this development: Without a connection to the reality of his life, all he has left is madness. Bastian also has to recognize that his wishes have not made him a better person. In the real world, he only ever saw his supposed weaknesses, the lack of courage, strength and determination, his overweight figure. Now that he has discarded all these qualities, Bastian is forced to realize that all of these are superficialities that ultimately do not really matter. Strength, strength and courage made him a tyrant because he lacks the strength to love. With the few memories and thus wishes that remain, Bastian begins, basically much too late, to look for a way back into his own world. As Ende already pointed out in the first part of the book, the interaction between phantasians and people only works if it is carried by the desire to improve the material world with the experiences in the world of fantasy. Instead, Bastian used his power to escape reality. The way back remains blocked to him if he does not find something that binds him to his own world, that makes a return to the human world appear worth striving for. A task that seems almost impossible given the fact that he has forgotten almost everything that made up his previous life. In the company of Lady Aiuóla, Bastian realizes what his true will is: he wants to be able to love. But he still doesn't know who to love as his memories have almost completely faded. In the mine of images, where all forgotten dreams disappear, Bastian finds an image that awakens his last memory in him. It shows his father, the only person who really means anything to Bastian. Bastian's true will is to love, and since he loves his father, this image gives him the strength to put AURYN aside and thus open the gate that is the way home for him. But the guards of the gate don't want Bastian to pass, because in the end he even forgot his name and, as clearly shown in the first part of the book, it is the right name that gives things their correct reality. But Bastian finds an advocate in his friend Atreyu; Their friendship proves to be stronger than the quarrel the two fought when Bastian Xayíde's striving for power failed. This is how Bastian arrives at the water of life, which he would like to bring to his father, although this seems impossible, since he cannot bring anything material back from fantasy into the material world. And yet he succeeds, as the story of what happened to him, moves his father, who has become emotionally cold after the death of his wife, to tears and both swear to each other that everything will now be different. Bastian has one last hurdle to overcome: the question of whether he has actually completed all the stories he started in Fantasia. Bastian has to admit, dismayed, that it wasn't a single one. A task that also seems to be impossible, ended up pointing out again and again that new stories can grow out of every story (but that is a different story and should be told another time , title: The Neverending Story ). The guards don't want to let Bastian go home; He is expected to be responsible for what he has done by exercising his power. The seemingly limitless freedom that the Childlike Empress and the inscription on the gem had granted him reaches its limits here, because Bastian is brought to the realization that great power also means a high degree of responsibility. Resigned, the human boy, who has regained his old form by bathing in the water of life, prepares himself to remain in phantasy and to fall into madness; At this point, Atreyu declares himself ready to take on the task of completing all the stories that Bastian has started. In this way he can leave Fantasia. There it turns out that he has also learned to take responsibility for himself, because he goes to Coreander himself and apologizes for stealing the book, something he would have previously left to his father.

In the second part of the book, Ende picks up on the message of the first part of the book that imagination is only positive if it is used to improve the real world. Here he illuminates the aspect of escaping reality and warns against getting lost in the world of fantasy instead of drawing lessons for real life from the experiences in the realm of fantasy. Ende also devotes himself to the aspect of the exercise of power and clearly shows that the person who is given power is responsible for his actions and is responsible for the consequences of the exercise of power. Ende emphasizes the importance of interpersonal relationships. The bond with his father and the friendship with Atreyu are what ultimately redeemed Bastian. Since Atreyu and Bastian, as shown in the sixth chapter, are two aspects of the same personality, it is also the belief in himself that gives Bastian the courage to return to his own world. He learned in fantasies that he bears responsibility for his life and that his own strength is enough to change what is destroying him. The book ends with the remark that in the future he will help others to gain this knowledge for themselves as well. Ende makes this statement with the same wink with which he creates the illusion of a book within a book. It would be conceivable to tell more stories that tell of how Bastian shows others the way to Phantasia, but basically that is not necessary because Bastian leads people to Phantasia simply because the reader experiences his journey in Ende's book can. This also makes the end of the story the never- ending story .

interpretation

Like many other works by Endes, The Neverending Story is aimed primarily at a younger audience, but adults also enjoy reading it. This is based u. a. on the popularity of fantasy novels, which also encroaches on the Neverending Story, although this actually does not belong to the genre of the fantasy novel.

The “neo-romantic” consciousness and the desire for the fairy-tale in literature were summarized in the 1970s under the term New Age . At the beginning of the 21st century the terminology in publishing circles changed to "cross-over books" or "all-age titles". This also includes the books of the sorcerer's apprentice series Harry Potter .

In Kindler's Literature Lexicon it says, The Neverending Story can be read on several levels, as an adventure novel , as a cultural criticism or as a reflection on literature and art . For the adult reader, the book is also interesting because of its many quotations from painting , literature, mythology , from psychological , political , religious and mystical models of thought .

"Fantasy is not only the realm of fantasy and dreams, but also the realm of art, that is, the realm of fiction."

The successful German “cross-over” author Cornelia Funke worked out that it was about the “power of the tried and tested mystical-fairytale storytelling” and “storytelling rich in images”, because “in a complicated world you need such images”. In this context, the Frankfurt Institute for Youth Book Research speaks of a “certain dissatisfaction with the literary offerings of high culture”.

According to Agathe Lattka, fairy tales, myths and fantasy are necessary components of a healthy and modern age.

The popularity of the Neverending Story is also based on the controversial film adaptation, which fails to convey the core message of the book and from which Ende has distanced itself sharply.

Fantastic literature as the expression of a new ethic

In 1985 the book "Michael Ende - Healing through Magical Fantasy" by the theologian Klaus Berger was published . Berger found cross-references to various occult systems, mythologies , philosophies and religions . He believes that Ende has to offer an alternative model of thinking in which people can recognize their soul images. He considers fairy tales, mythologies, religions, world literature and poetry to be an expression of these images of the soul, which he consequently quotes in order to directly address the needs and feelings of the innermost part of the human being.

The neverending story is thus largely detached from Western values and tries to offer alternatives on the basis of romantic and Far Eastern ideas.

Since the protagonist of the story, Bastian Balthasar Bux, immerses himself so deeply in the book while reading the Neverending Story that he himself becomes a character in the novel, Ende presents the reading of his text as a story about reading. The breaking through and revision of Bastian's usual everyday reality through the fiction of his fantastic adventures opens up the possibility of shedding light on the ethical potential of human imagination.

Already through the two-tone printed image, which differentiates between fiction (blue-green) and "reality" (red) (although the apparent reality itself is of course nothing more than a cleverly camouflaged fiction), although the transitions between the two are always fluid, partly even within the same sentence, the ending creates a penetration between everyday life and narrative. In the future, the fantastic will also be found in everyday life.

The neverending story reflects on its origins and on possible sequels. Bastian initially considers himself to be the reader of the story, but then becomes a read character himself, especially for the reader of the Neverending Story. Ende creates the illusion that even his own reader can become a character in the Neverending Story who continues the story that has begun. By saving the sphere of the imagination for future readers, Bastian becomes an allegory of reading. He overcomes the distance to the text and takes an active part in his imagination. Ende wants to give his own readers the same opportunity.

Bastian is supposed to save Fantasia from destruction. Fantasy has no autonomy, without contact with Bastian it would perish. Its poetic productivity, the ability to name things and tell stories, give it its shape. Bastian is also supposed to protect the “human world” and the people involved in it from moral decadence and lies. Here, too, his ability to name things correctly should help him, because, according to Ende, the correct name gives a thing or a person its true reality. To give something a false name means to lie, to deceive, to manipulate, to develop intentions in a world that should be unintentional. It is not enough that Bastian only enters fantasies. He has to return to the limitations of his everyday reality in order to make the connections understandable to his fellow human beings. He must not allow himself to be seduced by the intoxication of fantasy, which awakens in him the desire to linger in his fantasies and thereby forget the physical reality of life.

In the end, Bastian's escape from reality is characterized by the fact that he lets Bastian forget it bit by bit. With every wish that comes true, with every change in his phantasical and fantastic reality compared to his physical one, Bastian loses a bit of the memory of his biographical existence. It goes so far that in the end he even forgets his own name, i.e. what, according to the end, gives him his true nature more than anything else. Intoxication of fantasy, loss of name and reality threaten not only Bastian's personal identity, but ultimately also the existence of fantasy itself. Without a name that creates an identity, Bastian can no longer return to his everyday world, but he has to go there again to teach other people what he is into Learned fantasies. Because they too should come to Fantasy, should learn to use their fantasy and with their help to make both worlds healthy.

His own imaginations threaten to negate those who imagine. Through the excessive identification with the fantastic, he risks his physical survival, the “epic of the everyday”. For without living one's physical life, without meeting its needs, survival on a spiritual level is absolutely impossible.

Fantasy and physical reality complement each other, and both spheres can only win their struggle for survival by communicating with one another. Ende ascribes a certain ethical dimension to this communication by making Bastian responsible for both. The ethical challenge for Bastian is to break away from the seemingly irresistible magic of the AURYN. The power of the AURYN to fulfill every of his wishes, to correspond to his will to power, ultimately remains nothing but an illusion that only apparently makes him who he always wanted to be. But Bastian loses his greatest ability, the ability to invent stories and names, through the excessive use of the AURYN, which gradually robs him of these gifts and ultimately even his own name, his own identity. The solution lies in a return to name magic, the natural order of all things. Bastian insists on the possession of the AURYN amulet. Only when it is almost too late, when he has already forgotten his own name, the poetic code for the return to the human world, does he give it back. And only because his fantastic friend Atreyu, who, together with Bastian, recalls an overall personality, can name Bastian's name, does Bastian find his way back to his own identity. This renewed access to the poetry of his name also enables him to return to his usual everyday life.

Imagination and creative power - the importance of imagination for Michael Ende

In the end, imagination was man's creative power, his ability to form an image of the world. He was convinced that everyone could be creative in any situation.

Michael Ende describes the imagination as a counter-power to an increasingly unimaginative, technology-believing world.

"My salvation lay in the knowledge that fantasy is the true mother of a type of literature, that for the salvation of my soul I had to find my way back to the old narrative structures in a nonconformist way."

In doing so, he attempts to overcome the “ purely material worldview ”.

The Neverending Story reflects a philosophy in which the imagination appears as an effective means of changing reality. Ende also works out the value and importance of the individual. Those who find their true will, who discover the power in themselves, can succeed in changing their lives and the lives of others in a positive way, so the book says. The reader is drawn into the plot through the identification figure Bastian Balthasar Bux and the structural peculiarities of the novel, the book in the book and the mirror in the mirror. The neverending story thus turns out to be its own story.

Ende was convinced that he was writing against the zeitgeist with the Neverending Story . But the book hit the nerve of the time in which it was published in a surprising way. Since the mid-1970s, many people's belief in the power of reason had waned. People turned away from the public and in the direction of inwardness, accompanied by terms such as “New inwardness” or “New irrationalism ”.

Ende creates an image, if not a belief system, that counteracts the enlightenment's demands for the usefulness of all thought and action and is thus in the tradition of romanticism . The imagination appears as a new or newly discovered value in a world that has torn down all values. However, contrary to what the accusation of escapism claimed, Ende did not aim to escape from reality, but to contribute to the improvement of the world with the help of new ideas and one's own inner strength.

“ This is the story of a boy who loses his inner world, his mythical world, in this one night of crisis, a life crisis, it dissolves into nothing, and he has to jump into this nothing, we Europeans have to do that too to do. We have reached the point, the zero point. We managed to dissolve all values. And now we have to jump in, and only by having the courage to jump there into this nothingness can we awaken our own innermost creative powers and build a new fantasy, that is, a new world of values. "

“ Imagination is the creative power of man, his ability to form an image of the world. Everyone can be creative in any situation - as a doctor, civil servant, gardener, worker, housewife, in conversation, in dreams, in short: always and everywhere. Among the countless possibilities to be creative, the artist realizes one very special: he is the creator of new beauties. "

“The creative power in people increases, strengthens, enhances the being with which it comes into contact, regardless of the profession. It is the human ability to make the reality of beings perfect. Therefore the creative power is the highest of all human powers. However, it can neither be justified nor learned, but I am convinced that it is inherent in every human being, that therein lies his true likeness to God - or his identity with God. The highest form of this creative power is love. Not that love, which in some way wants to bring about the union of opposites (eros), but the substantial (not accidental) love whose only and passionate will is that its object be, whole and without restriction (sic!). There is no power, no will, no state above her. It is the kether, the crown of the kabbalistic tree of life. "

For Ende, imagination was a vital skill:

“ In our long history of development we humans have acquired the ability to react to dangers that we can see, hear and feel; H. in short, which we face directly. What we don't seem to have learned yet is how to respond to threats that we create ourselves, but which don't reveal their catastrophic nature until a generation, two or three generations after us. We foolishly and negligently destroy the world of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. You will have to foot the bill for our absurd and egoistic behavior towards nature and its inexhaustible treasures. And it will be an expensive bill if we don't come to our senses immediately. To do this, we must all develop a skill that Goethe called 'exact fantasy'. We have to learn to form completely new terms and ideas or to bring the existing ones into completely new, unfamiliar contexts. We have to learn to free our thinking from any rigidity and to make it flexible. I am convinced that almost all children have this gift naturally and that they can keep it if it is not taken away from them by force. Free play and artistic confirmation are the best means to develop and cultivate 'exact imagination'. If we let these facilities wither, then we and future generations will not be able to solve the problems of our civilization. That is why I especially ask all readers and educators for their help in paving the way for new, lively and life-oriented thinking . "

“But there is one phenomenon that receives far less attention, that is the devastation of the inner world, which is just as threatening and just as dangerous. And you can try to counter this inner world devastation with an inner tree-planting, and that is, for example, the attempt to write good poems, that is an inner tree that is planted there. You don't just plant a tree to get apples, a tree is simply beautiful, and it is important that it is, not just because it is useful for something. And so what many writers, not many, but some writers and artists try, is to simply create something that is then there and that can become common property of humanity - simply because it is good that it is there . "

After the end, imaginations are all we live with. We do not know reality, only our idea of it. Ende thus ties in with Plato's famous allegory of the cave .

“So-called realism in literature presupposes two things: First, the belief that we actually know what reality is, that our conception of it is final and correct. Second, the belief that a mapping of this reality would be possible or even useful. The second naturally results from the first.
In order to shake the first belief, it is basically enough to step back behind your own imagination for a single moment. Then one realizes that the reality spoken of by a Mandarin of the year 1000 is very different from that of an encyclopedist from 18th century France, and this again entirely from that of a Gothic monk. Each of the three considered their reality to be final and correct. Today, however, we see that it was a language and culture-bound, a historical and therefore changing reality. Where ghosts are part of reality, ghost stories are not considered fantastic literature, but realistic reports, and of course vice versa. Of course, this also applies to our perception of reality. So the belief in its ultimate correctness is just failure to observe a convention.
The second belief, it seems to me, cancels itself out. Trying to make a truly faithful representation of reality makes about as much sense as making a map on a scale of 1 to 1. Apart from the fact that it is hardly possible, one wonders why? Why this mirror that only doubles the world?
But if realism wants only very specific ones from the universal connection of all phenomena - e.g. B. social conditions - to single out, so he makes use, willy-nilly, of fiction, which in turn is culturally bound. So realism is nothing more than a relatively young part of fantastic literature - which, however, in contrast to this, does not see through its own premises. Fantastic literature assumes that the only reality we can honestly represent is what we make up ourselves. Realism does nothing else, only it doesn't know or pretends not to know. "

“The intellectual middlemen
The progress is worth its price!
Flat heads also want to live, that's
why they were taught to read and write - well
, now they read and write. "

A story about storytelling

The neverending story is a story about storytelling and reading, so to speak the “story of storytelling”. The dramaturgy of the novel becomes the subject of the novel. This can already be seen in the character of Bastian: He is presented as a boy who only knows one thing really well: thinking up stories and telling them. Ende describes him as a bookworm who devours every imaginative book she can get her hands on. By reading Bastian is drawn into the story. But Bastian not only reads, he also keeps telling stories himself. First the girl Christa from his neighborhood, then his classmates (who, however, mock him for it), later, in Fantasia, the residents of the silver city of Amargánth.

For the author Michael Ende, storytelling is a very special creative act. At the end, it was about designing a coherent world of images that corresponds to external reality, even if this is the subject. He tried to escape the compulsion to justify the causal logic, which always needs a reason and a cause for everything that happens. Ende tried to break out of the usual narrative logic and take his reader by the hand. Michael Ende completed many such stories in his book " Der Spiegel im Spiegel ".

Ende's stories are characterized by the fact that the dimensions of space and time are blurred to the point of being surreal. His worlds are located in a limitless place in space and time. In Momo time is in the foreground, in the Neverending Story Fantasy is unlimited in terms of both space and time. Ende thus reflects the reading experience of a reader who reads a good book: time seems to stand still and one's own imagination adds new inner images to what has been read.

Time is always relative in Neverending History. When Atreyu left the Southern Oracle, the rock gate crumbled and covered in moss so much that it looked as if it had been lying there so destroyed for hundreds of years. Although Atreyu feels that he has only been to the oracle for a few hours, seven days have passed in the world around him. The magic sword Sikánda has always been waiting for Bastian, although the new fantasy has only existed for a day and a night and Bastian has only just got the idea for the story on which it is based. When Bastian returns to the human world after his odyssey, he believes he has been absent for weeks or even years, although only one night has passed in the human world. Just as the passage of time when reading a book is not synchronized with the reader's temporal reality, time in fantasies is not the same as in the human world. Ende also shows this in the picture of the tower clock, which repeatedly strikes on the hour. But when Bastian gives her name to the childlike empress, the tower clock strikes twelve, after which no time counts until Bastian returns to the human world.

The linear narrative structure is repeatedly broken in the Neverending Story. So everything comes to a standstill when Bastian refuses to come to Fantasia and give the Childlike Empress her name. The old man from the Wandering Mountains writes Bastian's story from the beginning, from the moment he enters Coreander's second-hand bookshop. Bastian picks up the book again, goes back to the school attic, and starts reading the Neverending Story again. Attréju goes on the Great Search again, again the Childlike Empress travels to the old man from the Wandering Mountains, who begins to read Bastian's story from the beginning. This is repeated until Bastian finally gives in and calls the childlike empress by her name, which he has long recognized.

In Karl Konrad Koreander's shop, too, things come full circle. Where the Bastian's story began for the reader, it ends again. In the initials, the “Z” refers back to the “A”. After all, a neverending story has no final chapter.

With the recurring sentence “But this is a different story and should be told another time”, the end always opens up new narrative strands, whereby he asks his readers to tell these stories themselves. The entire structure of the Neverending Story is thus open and thus itself infinite. In the end, the infinity of history works out here with the poetic means that he later described in more detail in his book Der Spiegel im Spiegel . The book within the book motif can be continued indefinitely. Bastian believes he is reading The Neverending Story , but then finds himself in the book as a person. Isn't the same thing happening to those who are reading Bastian's story? Bastian becomes for the reader what Atreyu is for Bastian.

This infinity finds its symbolic expression in the two snakes that bite each other's tails. They are emblazoned on the copper-colored silk cover of the Neverending Story, on the AURYN, and ultimately on the book editions of Ende's own work.

The inhabitants of Phantasia remind us again and again of familiar figures from literature. A Pegasus, a wise lion, a young hero reminiscent of an Indian (Atreyu), etc. The neverending story is full of literary references, references that span different peoples, cultures and ages. End also did this with care. Fantasy is the realm of fantasy, and this is common to all people. In addition to the offspring of his own imagination, Bastian also repeatedly encounters the creations of other people, of whom he has already read somewhere.

Individuality is characteristic of Michael Ende's literature. The subjective imagination is not transferable. There is no silver bullet, only personal learning processes, successes and failures. Ende had a deep distrust of political ideologies. His idea of art is as personal as a dream that poetry has repeatedly compared to ending. Like a dream, poetry transforms external images into internal images. With their help, people get an idea of the world and make it habitable.

Enlightenment and romance

Enlightenment / causal logic

Up until the seventeenth century, beliefs about ethics and morals were almost exclusively determined by religion . However, since religion claims absoluteness and exclusivity for itself, it is often associated with intolerance . People are persecuted by torture tortured and as alleged witches burned just because they think differently. This was countered by the Enlightenment , led by philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Voltaire . It is no longer religion but reason that will have to decide in the future. "Enlightenment is the exit of man from his self-inflicted immaturity." In this way, the Enlightenment people created a new ethic beyond religious intolerance, which, together with humanism, forms the basis of modern concepts of human rights .

Michael Ende, who has been violently attacked by Christian or Christian fundamentalist authors such as the theologian Klaus Berger for his books Momo and The Neverending Story , would with some probability have been persecuted as a heretic himself before the age of the Enlightenment and therefore took its positive ones Aspects are well known. But Ende turned against an overestimation of reason as he saw it at work in his own time. Reason should not go so far as to forbid people from dreaming.

Since the Age of Enlightenment, people have tried to describe the world as a causal sequence of events and to get to the bottom of their causes. As good and important as this is, if everything just needs to be explained, it is at the expense of the imagination . According to Ende, the present suffers from an excess of causal logic. Only what is useful is seen as good. But what does usefulness mean against the huge background of history? The Odyssey , the fist , the David of Michelangelo or the pyramids are not really useful. But what would humanity be without it?

In the end, causal logic is the worst enemy of the imagination. His heroes are therefore often children. In his opinion, they perceive reality in a purer and more unadulterated way, without allowing themselves to be distorted in causal logic.

Endes' polemical term of the reconnaissance terrorist has become known , by which he means people who are only determined by the causal logic , who want to rationalize and explain everything and forget about the imagination, if not destroy it. In 1973, in a letter to his publisher, he lamented the mania for functionalization of a soulless phalanx of reconnaissance terrorists .

“Causal logic is the basis of every science (...), but this logic only relates to what we find, to what has become, so ultimately to the past. In retrospect, as is well known, everything seems inevitable. The creative, which only ever takes place in the present moment and which is essentially acausal (...) is therefore imperceptible and is therefore denied (...) The blindness for it is a mutilation that leads to the loss of the now and here in our thinking and Feeling leads. As a result, we live trapped in a past world. But every kind of captivity (...) creates aggressiveness (...). "

romance

Ende saw himself in the footsteps of Romanticism , as evidenced by many references in his books.

“I am of the opinion that Romanticism was the only original German cultural achievement to date. Everything else in Germany we have more or less taken over from abroad. In the Romantic era, something succeeded for the first time that also interested abroad. That is why I tried to build on there, because I see myself as a German author and because I am convinced that this voice, which is typically German, should not be lost in the concert of nations. "

As in Momo , which he dedicated to the topic of loss of time, Michael Ende updated a program point of romantic criticism of the Enlightenment in the Neverending Story . The loss of dreams and imagination is understood as a symptom of illness and the consequences of this illness are illustrated. The task of the hero, Bastian Balthasar Bux, is to save the fantasy world as an integral part of reality.

Like the Romantics, Ende saw the beginnings of this crisis, which continues to the present day, as being established in the 16th century.

According to Wernsdorff, in today's media and consumer society, the oversupply of "finished products" makes its contribution to killing the imagination, because it makes the active exercise of the human imagination superfluous. When the willingness has grown to use your own imagination z. B. to be stimulated by reading fairy tales, this is an expression of the uneasiness about the loss of imagination in a finished product civilization and an indication that the importance of imaginative activity has become more and more conscious of the people.

Ende is committed to the reality of fantasy. He understands Romanticism as an epoch that opposed the Enlightenment and reason with dreams and thus freed people from captivity. Romanticism emphasizes the inner world, the fantastic. End sees this as confirmation of his own criticism of the times.

Even the early Romantics dealt with the Enlightenment by upgrading the imagination to a “productive imagination” that was supposed to mediate between the real and the ideal. In doing so, they defended themselves against the devaluation of dreams and imagination by the enlighteners.

The early Romantics turned to the Middle Ages and thus to handicrafts as production and also to the pre-industrial agricultural world. In doing so, they showed a longing aimed at “poetization”, the attempt to reconcile poetry and science on the higher level of art.

ETA Hoffmann postulates that “the wonderful” must “step boldly into ordinary life”, meaning that fantasy and reality (should / must) permeate each other. His fairy tale “ The golden pot ” is set in realistic locations that are supposed to be in Dresden , including a living room with furnishings that are found in everyday life: pipe, coffee pot, punch terrine. In this way he makes the "reality" of the fairy tale happening believable.

August Wilhelm Schlegel turned against a type of reason who, “caught up in the finite”, absolutized rational thought and disqualified fantasy, dream and poetry as “enthusiasm” and “madness”. He warned of the danger of life becoming impoverished under this repressive rationality thinking and the absolutization of the "economic principle:"

"As I (...) believe to have made it clear that it is the economic principle that guides the Enlightenment, so it is also (...) the mind, caught in sheer finiteness, which they put into action, and thus to the have dared the highest tasks of reason. A limited, finite purpose can be completely seen through, and so human existence and the world should also appear to them as pure as an arithmetic. "

In his "Lectures on Fine Literature and Art" (1801–1804) Schlegel railed against the shadowy existence that the imagination had to lead under the Enlightenment concept of reason. In his opinion, the enlightened “completely misunderstood the rights to fantasy and, where possible, would have liked to cure people of them.” They would tend “to regard all appearances that were beyond the limit of their senses' receptivity as symptoms of illness and to be generous with the names of enthusiasm and madness. "

With the Neverending Story, Ende makes exactly the opposite diagnosis and thus confronts the enlighteners. The childlike empress, the ruler of his fantasy world Fantasien, and the human world are equally sick because people deny the existence of Fantasia. The flow of communication between the human world and the fantasy and art world Fantasias is severely impaired. The task of the hero Bastian is to make both worlds healthy. To do this, he has to go to Fantasy and may only return to the human world when he has learned that the boundaries between the two worlds are fluid.

Novalis speaks of the "mysterious way inward". The imagination takes as a “productive imagination” within the cultural revolutionary program of the “poetization of life”, which u. a. the transition of art into life demands a dominant function. Romanticism is directed against the "spirit of the age", which Schlegel describes as "an improper domination of the mind in relation to reason and imagination (...)". Bastian's mysterious path leads inwards, into one's own imagination, and it leads out again.

In romanticism, the imagination forms an authority that expands reality, a force that counteracts the “inadequacy of normality”. In Lucinde's program of the final chapter of 1799, Friedrich Schlegel calls it the “pinnacle of understanding to remain silent of one's own choosing” and “to reproduce the soul of the imagination.” Novalis wants to go through in Heinrich von Ofterdingen from 1802 the free flow of the imagination to overcome what "was previously commonplace". Using the power of the imagination, it should appear “now strange and wonderful”.

“The world becomes a dream, the dream becomes a world,
and what one believed had happened can
only be seen coming from afar.
The imagination should turn free first (...) "

ETA Hoffmann names the “real purpose of the theater” as elevating the viewer above the “meanness of everyday life” by means of poetry and fantasy. In the satirical dialogue News of the latest fate of the dog Berganza, Berganza invokes the blue flower as a symbol for longing and love and for the metaphysical striving for the infinite , which comes from Novalis' Heinrich von Ofterdingen. (The blue flower is reminiscent of the Neverending Story: A blue bellflower with a phoenix nests in front of the ivory tower .) Bergenza explains:

“This elevation to the poetic standpoint, from which one (...) also glorifies common life with its manifold colorful appearances through the brilliance of poetry in all its tendencies - that is only, in my opinion, the real purpose of the theater. "

Hoffmann's remarks are directed against Schiller's “ Schaubühne as a moral institution ”. Berganza resists the assumption that "everything (...) except what it is, what else (should) mean", that is, against the "outside purpose".

"(...) even every pleasure should become something other than pleasure, and thus serve some other physical or moral benefit, so that, according to the old kitchen rule, the pleasant is always connected with the useful."

Instead, art is supposed to free people from the “downward pressure of everyday life” and “(...) lift people up, (...) that they (...) see the divine, even come into contact with it.” Hoffmann also has the central statement of Neverending story : Both a one-sided insistence on the bare outside world and flight into the imagination are the wrong way to go.

The end of the world view of romanticism is conveyed through its description of the imaginative realm of fantasy, which also has romantic models. Both in Heinrich von Ofterdingen and in ETA Hoffmann's Golden Pot there is a fantasy realm called Atlantis . For Novalis, Atlantis is a land of music and poetry, a romantic fantasy. In contrast to Hoffmann and Ende, Novalis' hero Heinrich lives in a world in which the realm of the imagination is respected and recognized. That is why he never meets with a lack of understanding.

The disembodied voice of the Uyulála refers to the idea of natural poetry, which was also shaped by the Romantics . Like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Gottfried Herder , Ende points out that poetry is given equally to all peoples and is a gift of humanity.

The two settlers, the gnome couple Engywuck and Urgl, represent the conflict between enlightened rationality and romantic daydreams most clearly. The two settlers, whose name already recalls the hermit of Novalis, and which have parallels to Philemon and Baucis , the old, hospitable couple from the Greek legend, embody two types of knowledge that were previously assigned to the male and the female gender. The professor stands for the rational, scientific thinking, his wife, who reminds of the witches and their knowledge of herbs and plants, symbolizes ancient, traditional knowledge. Both see the end in constant conflict with each other, which is expressed in the marital bickering of the gnome couple. And yet the gnomes with their very different starting points complement each other perfectly and appear as a married couple like two sides of the same coin. Despite their ongoing dispute, they are ultimately only successful together; both forms of knowledge belong together and complement each other. This corresponds to Ende's idea that the outer and inner world, the physical reality and the thought world of dreams and imagination, form an inseparable unit. But Ende also reports on the limits of science and its failure when it tries to fully explain the mysterious in the world. When Engywuck finally succeeds in uncovering the secret of the Uyulála, for which he had been researching for so long, she is disenchanted and is devoured by nothing before the completion of his work. The end confirms this in Chapter X, when Atreyu and Fuchur philosophize about the question of who the Childlike Empress is: “Nobody in Fantasy knows, nobody can know. It is the deepest secret of our world. I once heard a wise man say that whoever could fully understand it would extinguish his own existence. "

Book in book

As the old man from the Wandering Mountain explicitly says in chapter 12, Ende's novel contains a “book within a book”. This motif of literary hermetism has a certain tradition. The hero of the story, Bastian Balthasar Bux, is a character in Michael Ende's novel The Neverending Story . Inside the novel, he finds a book of the same name, which he begins to read with great tension. He thus becomes the reader of the story from the character of a novel. At the same time, he can also influence the progress of the story (the so-called "Great Search" of the phantasy artist Atreyu). Bastian first influences Atréju's journey in Chapter IV: "Bastian uttered a low, terrifying sound." (Paragraph) "A scream of terror echoed through the gorge and was thrown back and forth as an echo. […] (Paragraph) 'Was it my scream that she heard in the end?' Thought Bastian, deeply worried. 'But that's not possible at all.' ”This is continued in Chapter VI:“ Atreyu felt like going away. He turned back, walked towards the round magic mirror gate and looked at the back for a while without realizing what it meant. He decided to go away, (paragraph) 'No, no, don't go!' said Bastian loudly. 'Return to Atreyu. You have to go through the Ohne Schlüssel Tor '(paragraph) but then turned back to the Ohne Schlüssel Tor. ”Finally Bastian himself becomes part of the story. Bastian's transition to Fantastica is brought about by the old man from the Wandering Mountains, who is a personification of Michael Ende within his own narrative.

The story of the main character, Bastian, and that of Phantásien overlap until it becomes more and more difficult to tell them apart at the end, even for Bastian himself. This structure makes it possible to blur the line between reader and fictional character Bastian moves back and forth between one and the other in the course of the story. Bastian is sometimes a reader of the Neverending Story , sometimes a part of it, and appears as a completely normal person with whom the reader can identify.

Bastian is not only the main character of Ende's book, but also of the book that Ende writes about, and which is mysteriously identical to Ende's book. Ende consistently works with the illusion that the book the reader is holding in their hand is the same one Bastian reads in before he becomes a part of it. In Chapter XXVI it says: “One thing is certain: You did not steal this book from me, because it does not belong to me, nor to you, nor to anyone else. Who knows, maybe at this very moment someone else has it in their hands and is reading it. ”The aim of this is to give the reader of Ende's novel the impression that he, too , can reach Fantastica and become part of the Neverending Story ; he is asked to use the power of his imagination, as Bastian learns in the course of his journey. Bastian lets himself be guided by the imaginative Atreyu, whose journey reveals the way into the realm of the imagination. Ende in turn invites his readers to let Bastian lead them there, as he emphasizes in the final words of the novel: "Bastian Balthasar Bux [...], if I'm not mistaken, you will show some people the way to Fantasia, with it he brings us the water of life ”.

The book seems to have a “narrative power” more. Usually there is a reader and a book. Here comes a “co-reader” who reads the same book as the reader from the “outside world”. It is difficult to keep the distance to the text when Bastian, who is holding the same text in his hand, has the dark feeling that "something irrevocable" has now started and will take its course. The reader shares a reading with the protagonist that seems to have something to do with himself. So does it have something to do with the reader?

The motif of the "book within the book" is one of the most important in the Neverending Story and characteristic of Michael Ende's entire work, because it embodies how important storytelling was to him. The motif that the protagonists of a book read themselves is a popular topos . In Goethe's work The Sorrows of Young Werther , for example, the main character of William Shakespeare's Hamlet is enthusiastic. Like Bastian, Cervantes ' Don Quixote also reads his own story: Sancho Panza informs his master that his story has already been printed in the book The subtle noble Don Quixote of La Mancha . The motif continued in Romanticism into the 20th century. The reference to Novalis ' Heinrich von Ofterdingen is most evident in the Neverending Story : Like Bastian, Novalis' hermit wants nothing more than to own the book in full. Bastian says: “He just couldn't take his eyes off it. It seemed to him as if a kind of magnetic force emanated from it, which attracted him irresistibly. "

“The wise fool
Don Quixote is laughed at by the wise because he always thinks everything is different from what it is.
How right he is! "

Also in analogy to the hermit of Novalis, Bastian gradually realizes that the story tells of himself. When he heard his own scream echoing in the ravine where Atreyu meets Ygramul, or when Atreyu steps through the Great Mirror Gate. “What was being told was its own story! And that was in the Neverending Story. He, Bastian, appeared in the book as the person whose reader he thought he was until then! ”This finally becomes clear to Bastian when the old man from the Wandering Mountains describes him.

Jacques Darida called this technique mise en abîme - placed in the abyss or in infinity. Michael Ende repeatedly emphasizes the book-within-a-book motif in the Neverending Story . The voice of Uyulála Atréju reveals: “We are only characters in a book”. And the old man from the Wandering Mountains explains: "This is how the Neverending Story is written by my hand". However, he does not know what is going to happen, he just writes down what is happening at the moment. By mirroring the perspective, not only Bastian, but also the reader of Michael Ende's Neverending Story himself becomes an actor in the world of the Childlike Empress.

In Michael Ende's successor, a number of modern writers took up the motif again. A well-known example is the philosophical novel Sofies Welt by Jostein Gaarder .

“Question from Kreuzer at Ende:
This game character must be very important, but it is a specific game, namely a game with the key, which really, I really emphasize - this is the core of the experience that the reader has - after Fantasy leads into it. Imagination not as presented on a screen, as presented on a cinema screen - the reader is personally involved. I am quoting the few sentences in the core of your book where it changes from green to red, or where green and red are intertwined. Bastian sits there and reads:
'... and what was told there was his own story, and it was in the Neverending Story. He, Bastian, appeared in the book as the person whose reader he had previously believed himself to be, and who knows ... '
Now comes the crucial part, because now the next step is being taken: the reader who reads about the reader, who to the What is read is included in the game:
'... and who knows, which other reader was reading it right now, who just believed he was a reader, and so on and on to infinity.'
In other words, the reader who reads, as a reader becomes what has been read, is fully involved in the game: He becomes from reader to what has been read, to contributor.

Answer from Ende:
Yes, of course. These are these mannerist mirror effects. This is a labyrinth into which you have to lure the reader into so that he himself becomes part of the story. Otherwise the title 'The Neverending Story' would be nothing but imposture. Only if you succeed in making the reader part of the story is it really a never-ending story.

Kreuzer:
I now suspect that this is where the real spark of success lies. In contrast to the fantastic, which is presented as an image, as 'external fantasy', it is shown here how one gets into the fantasy. Was that what you intended?

End:
That was intended.

Kreuzer:
We're talking about at least three people involved who play along: the hero of the plot, the reader, who increasingly becomes the hero of the plot himself through this game, and finally the essential third, the author. How about them now? Where are you in the game? Is all of this fictional, sophisticated writing and bibliographical trickery, or is this relationship to the imagination something you have found in your own life, something that plays a role in your own life?

Ende:
Of course it plays a role in my own life, but I have to tell you that it all came into being while I was writing. That wasn't planned beforehand, only to be applied somehow in the book. For me, writing a story is always an adventure, sometimes even a life-threatening one. For the two years that I wrote the Neverending Story , I got myself into this labyrinth, that is, it came into being while I was writing it. And I still remember well: The book was supposed to be out a year earlier. The publisher called and asked: 'How's it going, when will I get the manuscript?' And I said: 'I can't send it to you, Bastian won't come back to me. He doesn't want to go back from fantasy. ' And I couldn't help it. I had to go through this whole odyssey through fantasies with Bastian , and I swear to you, I didn't know myself where the end would be. I only found this by writing the story down to the crucial point. You get real depression in between when you just can't look yourself out. I was partly of the opinion that there is no way back, I don't know it, I can't find it ...

Kreuzer:
Then the assumption is correct that this game with the key into the immediate imagination is at least a three-stage game: the hero of the story , the reader of the story, the author of the story are in a similar interplay of entering into the full imagination and searching for it again - and there is the danger of not getting out.

End:
Yes, up to the risk of not getting out. The stuff literally exploded under my hands. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started writing the book. If it doesn't sound like an exaggeration, I would say: I fought for my life in part with this book. "

mirror in the mirror

Ende speaks of mannerist mirror effects, those effects to which he later devoted an entire book in his work Der Spiegel im Spiegel . While the Neverending Story gives the impression of the book in which Bastian reads and into which he is finally drawn, the book in which the old man writes about the Wandering Mountains, and the book that the reader holds in his hand (already the outward appearances agree) are one and the same, it creates not only the image of the book in the book, but also that of the “mirror in the mirror”.

The initial question is: “What does a mirror show when it is reflected in a mirror?” Answer: “An infinite play of images that depict each other: an infinite story.” Only a book is not a mirror in the true sense of the word. It has a last page, then it ends. At least externally. Michael Ende tries to overcome this paradox . The neverending story asks its reader to take an alternative path, to look for a way out in which the narration seems endless. It refers back to itself, revealing the bigger picture.

End's motif has literary models, such as the books by Jorge Luis Borges , who a. a. has worked out that this remedy has already been used in 1001 nights . A king, disappointed in the infidelity of women, marries a new bride every day, who he executes the next morning. However, one of the women, Scheherazade, uses a trick to avoid this fate. She tells the king stories that she interrupts every morning at the most exciting point. In order to satisfy his curiosity, the king leaves her alive so that she can continue with the story in the evening. In one of the stories Scheherazade tells her own story: a king marries a new woman every day, who he decapitates the next day. One of these women can grab his attention with stories. The first is as follows ...

In mathematics and information technology, such a phenomenon is called “ recursivity ”. But there are also examples in numerous other areas of life: Russian matrioshkas (doll in a doll), film in a film, book in a book, picture in picture, etc.

The linear narrative structure is thereby dissolved and the book is placed in a larger context. The levels of the book are intertwined, the magical is evoked. First Bastian's scream, which Atréju and Ygramul perceive, Atréju, who sees Bastian's image in the Great Mirror Gate, Bastian's command, which Atréju obeys at the Without a Key Gate, and finally Bastian himself is drawn into the story. The boundary that existed between reality and fantasy is abolished.

Michael Ende has repeatedly expressed his regret that his books have been dismissed as children's books because of their fantastic elements. Nowadays one no longer wants to recognize the aspect of fairy tales, which is so important for adults too. The Odyssey, if it were written today, would also be sold as a children's book. The motif of the mirror in the mirror can also be found in the classics of romantic literature , in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland , in Pamela Travers Mary Poppins , in ETA Hoffmann's Nutcracker and the Mouse King and in CS Lewis' Narnia stories . Likewise, Ende makes reference to recursive songs and poems, such as A Hole in the Bucket or A Dog Came into the Kitchen .

Unlike in the fairy tale, Bastian's entry does not take place suddenly and without his will, but is dramatically, carefully staged and prepared from the start. The compulsion to take the book that Bastian is holding in his hands, to read it, is there from the start. Bastian feels magically drawn to the book. It seems to be calling him. He has the feeling that now, where he opens it, something irrevocable begins. The book has to do with him. With him, or with the reader too?

In the sixth chapter, the voice of the Uyulála most clearly formulates the secret of the Neverending Story : “Who are only characters in a book and do what we invented for?” Gmork and the old man from the Wandering Mountains confirm this later. Your statements refer to the mirror property of the imagination. Fantasy is not an independent world into which one can escape from reality. It can only exist in close coexistence with the human world. The inhabitants of Fantasia are reflections of the human psyche, archetypes .

“What does a mirror show that is reflected in a mirror?

If two readers read the same book, they are still not reading the same thing. Each of the two contributes to the reading, their thoughts and associations, their experiences, their imagination, their level. So one can definitely say that the book is a mirror in which the reader is reflected.
Of course, the opposite is also true: if a reader reads two different books, they will ultimately not be that different in spite of everything - for exactly the same reasons. So you can just as easily say that the reader is a mirror in which the respective book is reflected.
It is a matter of great concern, it seems to me; because what applies to a reader and his book can be said in general about people in the world.
The answer to the question could be: If the two mirrors are infinitely large, they show - nothing; but if they are limited, the result is a 'regressus ad infinitum', an infinite, albeit imaginary, corridor on both sides. But this answer seems premature to me; it denotes the result and diverts our attention from the actual process, the astonishing process, which in turn is also infinite.
Where does what happens between the reader and his book (man and the world) take place? Not in the book alone, because it consists only of black characters on white paper. It takes the reader. But neither in the reader alone, because without the book the whole process would not take place. What actually happens when reading these black signs triggers joy or sadness, sympathy or antipathy, interest or weariness, laughter or emotion?
In order to draw the reader's attention to this mysterious process, I have tried to write stories that refer them back to themselves, stories that cannot be held onto (by believing that you have 'understood' them, which you can only means that you recognize the familiar), which are open on all sides, which put the reader in the weightless state of free fall, as it were in an orbit around a center that cannot be described otherwise, which is neither there nor not there (like God or the human ego or the meaning of existence). Every narrated process contains, clearly or hidden, the impetus for a new process and so on until the orbit begins again ...
The ideal reader who has the courage or arrogance enough to embark on such a world (interior) space travel should Just like a music listener, just take note of what harmonic or dissonant sensations, thoughts and images are stimulated in him and disappear again, hints and memories, colors, shapes and movements, and he should notice what he himself in all of this add. Then, maybe, he would know the answer to the question of the 'old man'. "

The first words of the book are "TairauqitnA Koln DarnoK KraK rebahnI" - "Owner Karl Konrad Koreander Antiquariat", not written backwards, but in mirror writing, because they are viewed from the back of a pane of glass. There is already a clear reference to the structure of the book as a “mirror in a mirror”.

Reading as a poetic experience

At the beginning of the Neverending Story Ende has Bastian say what corresponds to his own private “literary theory”, which he also called “poetology”:

“ He (Bastian) didn't like any books in which he was told in a bad-tempered and sullen way the everyday occurrences from the everyday life of some very everyday people. Had enough of that in reality, why should he read about it? Besides, he hated it when he realized that someone was trying to get him to do something. And in this type of book you should always be got something, more or less clearly. "

Bastian therefore wanted a productive reading experience in which he could fall back on his imagination. In this respect, The Neverending Story , which he first reads and in which he then appears, is "exactly the right book for him". For Bastian, literature is a medium that stimulates his imagination. Reading experience thus becomes a complement to the perception of everyday life, as ETA Hoffmann has called for the theater.

Ende's own theoretical statements make it clear that with the “Neverending Story” he wants to set his readers in motion a productive reading process, which his hero Bastian presents to the reader as a means of identification.

"The reader has to bring his creativity to this book so that it becomes a real story at all."

Ende thus re-establishes the romantic demand for a “productive imagination” in our society that is becoming one-dimensional and only recognizes and recognizes mere facticity.

“It is a book against the paralyzing omnipotence of television, the attempt to show how many different dimensions reality encompasses.
I want the reader to experience something while reading. "

Just as Dieter Wellershoff defines “poetic experience” as a “state of increased fantasy activity”, reading the Neverending Story is a poetic experience.

Fantasy, the realm of fantasy

“There is only one reality, but it is like a house with many floors, and depending on which one you are in, you have a different view of the world. (...) I describe the world from different floors. Some people who never got out of your floor then say: "None of this exists, otherwise I should know it too." "

Inner world and outer world

Ende characterizes Bastian and his relationship to Phantasien as follows: “Bastian is not […] just a boy who lacks a little self-confidence and who is therefore easy to intimidate. Bastian is a child who cannot find his way in a banal, cold, only rational world because he longs for poetry, for the mysterious, for the wonderful. The death of his mother and the father's being frozen in pain bring this helplessness towards life to a decisive crisis, just reading the Neverending Story - the question of the meaning of his life, his world. In this world everything seems meaningless. Everything has meaning in Fantasia. Without giving meaning to his life and the death of his mother, Bastian cannot exist. That is the reason why he comes into a sinking fantasy. The creeping nothingness that eats up fantasies is the banality, the insignificance of the world. ”Fantasias are Bastian's inner world.

Michael Ende assumes a second, no less real, spiritualized form of reality, the so-called “inner world”, in addition to the physical lifeworld of people, which he calls the “outside world”. Ende gives her the name " Fantasy ", the realm of fantasy . Fantasy and the human world are two sides of the same coin, inside and outside, which could not exist without each other. The realm of the Childlike Empress is not a transcendent, but part of this world. This form of reality contains and reflects human imagination and human dreams. In the end, fantasy is not just a feeling, but a whole that also includes the intellect and the senses.

“ Michael Ende's whole existence confirms the search for other, more intensive considerations of reality. The fantastic world standing above 'normal' reality was not just a theme in his works, but his home. "

Ende accepted different views of reality as equivalent and allowed himself to be "fertilized by one for the other":

"He knew (...): Fantasy is not a fantasy land, not a fantasy, not an escape from the world, but a different form of reality."

With his expressive literary pictures, Michael Ende tries to let his readers experience these realities in a sensual way and consequently “make them see (...) for the essentials that lie behind things”. Thomas Kraft describes this literary experience as “a journey without a fixed destination, an aventiure based on the medieval model, with the blue flower in the buttonhole”.

Ende explains his understanding of reality:

“ Undoubtedly (there are) many things that one cannot see or touch and that are still reality, for example feelings, wishes, thoughts. "

After the end, such inner realities would have to be described by other images “than those of the outer world”.

His literary world gives the impression of a dream landscape, which he achieves through his pictorial language and his strange shapes. Accordingly, the author declares:

“ In a word, I'm trying to write what our dreams are. "

His working method is similar to that of a painter:

“Actually, I work more like a painter. Painters often proceed in such a way that they begin with some corner of the picture, where something then arises, be it a special color or something that demands to be continued ... So you slowly paint the whole picture. You have a certain concept at the beginning, but the concept changes along the way, the direction of the goal then also changes. "

Ende is of the opinion that we have seen a mistake in the last two hundred years. “We persuaded ourselves that there was a categorical difference between subjective and objective reality. We tore the world in two, so to speak. We imagine that there is something like an objective reality out there that also exists without us and our consciousness, and that there is a subjective reality in there that also exists without a world. For me the world and human consciousness are just two sides of the same coin. One is totally dependent on the other. The world and consciousness are ultimately one and the same. That goes up to the ancient Indian sages who said: 'Everything you perceive is yourself.' "

In an interview with Michael Ende, Franz Kreuzer points out that there is no such split between the material world and fantasy among primitive peoples . But she also did not know our culture in earlier times. Kreuzer considers them to be a by-product of civilized societies that are not inherent in man from the beginning. In this context he refers to the daydreams of children before puberty and the children's games, that is, the child's handling of the imagination. It is typical of daydreams that life in fantasy and that in physical reality completely overlap. In addition, daydreams are timeless, the element of time disappears completely.

Imagination and the physical world take on the same value for the end. However, there are two spheres that should not be confused with one another. “The two worlds belong together, but are separate. You cannot move one level to the other. That would mean - which, by the way, happens in the Neverending Story - that one takes something from fantasy into the everyday world. That will not do. You can only take over the changes that you yourself experience in phantasy, but not the parts of phantasy itself. This is part of the whole problem that people live on several levels, not just one. "

A problem that only exists for adults. The child is fully aware of the penetration of his world with imagination and the difference between these two worlds in this sense, although he does not reflect on it. “The child bakes cakes from sand. But if you say to him: 'Try this cake and see if it tastes good.', The child laughs and says: 'Don't you know that I'm playing?' tells the end for illustration ”.

The neverending story is meant to put the reader in a similar state. Their goal is the "suspension of mistrust", "suspension of non-believe", as the American Professor Weizenbaum put it. In this respect there is a parallel to the theater . If you really want to get into the reality of the theater, you have to leave behind your distrust of illusions, something that children find easy.

The key to fantasy is memories. “This shows that what we call memories is a very mysterious something. I just don't think it's just any kind of storage in some neurons . Perhaps these are the external organs for it, but memory is much more than that. Memory is the guarantee of our whole identity. If I couldn't remember being the same yesterday as I was today and ten years ago, I would have no identity at all . So there are secrets everywhere that we experience, that we know but that we don't really understand. ”In the end, this contradicts the assumption of brain research that the human personality consists only of electrochemical processes in the brain and nervous system . Like the human personality , fantasies cannot be explained solely from the brain.

In response to Kreuzer's question as to whether fantasy lies in the right hemisphere, where, according to the findings of brain research, everything creative and timeless has its seat, and whether the left hemisphere is the home of the “gray men”, where calculations are made, the clocks ticking, the calculating When time comes about, Ende replied dismissively: "I would say: What matters to me is not in the right and not in the left hemisphere - there are only the corresponding organs of perception for what is immaterial beyond it."

Kindler sees here the central question of the Neverending Story. What is the status of the reality that sees the end created by language? How real are fictional worlds? This question is posed by the interleaving of frame and internal narration. Bastian is gradually introduced to his fantastic reality from various narrative episodes. First, the framework (Bastian as reader) encompasses the story. Then the framework collapses into the internal story. As a reader of a book, as a “savior”, Bastian must go into the story and the world represented there so that it can continue. This event manifests itself again in a book, the Neverending Story, the reader of which, for his part, could "act imaginatively" continue to spin the story, which in turn could result in a book, etc. to infinity. But Bastian and the reader could only enter a fictional world by expanding it with their own internal processes, ideas and wishes. The question of the reality status of fictional worlds is turned upside down by the fact that Bastian cannot find the stolen book at the end of the story and the second-hand bookshop owner Coreander does not miss such a book. The text offers no explanation for this event. So how real is the real world? Did Bastian just imagine stealing the book?

Logically, the role of the imagination for the fictional and real world is the central theme of the Neverending Story. The fictional world is first created by the imagination, but without it a part of the real world is missing, which end describes with the term illness. Fantasy enriches the real world if the fantasy worlds as such are allowed to exist. But it could also become a danger if imaginary worlds were raised to the same level as the real world, i.e. if fantasy and reality were confused. This will be demonstrated on Bastian as an example. Bastian lost himself in the dream world and no longer wanted to return to reality. The population of the Alten-Kaiser-Stadt shows where this is leading: To senselessness, isolation and lack of communication, where everyone lives in their own world.

Bastian's rescue from this danger takes place through a self-discovery process that is clearly inspired by psychoanalytic processes. The Yskálnari who accept Bastian into their community did not differentiate between I and not-I. Bastian regressed to childhood and found maternal love in the lady Aiuóla. He dug in Yors mine for his forgotten dreams and there he found the longing for his father, which brings him back to reality. Ultimately, he could break the ice that surrounds his father, who is grieving for his mother. By dealing with Fantastica, Bastian had acquired a new ability to deal with and communicate with his world.

This is how the basic thesis of the end develops without ever appearing as such: the boundaries between reality and fantasy are fluid. Imagination is real because it works. The romantic view that poetry and reality are inextricably linked becomes the main theme of the “Neverending Story” and the design principle for its formal structure. As fantasies, myths and stories, i.e. the world of the book and the everyday world interpenetrate, the infinity is created, which Ende with the title of the book indicates. The external world and stories form a context of experience. In experience, they permeate each other in an infinite process. Stories and "the" story cannot be clearly distinguished from one another. With this, a central point in the program of the “poeticization of life” returns, the liberation of the imagination from the ghettoized art world.

Ruler of Fantasy: The Childlike Empress

The Childlike Empress is clearly described as an allegory of the human imagination . Whenever Ende was asked who the Childlike Empress was, he gave the answer: She herself is the imagination. The ruler of Fantasy appears in the form of a child, because in the end children best embody what is spontaneous, capable of development, the joy of amazement in people, which for him constitutes the imagination.

Without the imagination, there can be neither a land imagination nor a being who inhabits such a land; every story is born out of the human imagination. For this reason the Childlike Empress is the embodiment of fantasy, for this reason she does not have to command or fight. It is present in every being, in the good and in the bad. She appears like a deity and she is also, in a sense, the voice of the Uyulála. Letters are the enemies of the Childlike Empress, "once you try to write down a dream, you know why".

The statement that no one ever rose up against the Childlike Empress later turns out to be imprecise. No creature of fantasy origin ever rose up against them, people who come to Fantasia from the real world, but certainly. In the further course of the plot, Bastian also tries to overthrow the Childlike Empress and crown himself Emperor Phantasia; a symbol for the attempt to flee forever into the realm of the imagination and thus to have complete control over everything that happens in one's own environment. When Bastian succumbs to megalomania, the Childlike Empress does not intervene and she also does not fight for her empire, which is hardly surprising: after all, Bastian tries to escape into the realm of fantasy through his imagination - and she embodies this fantasy.

Michael Ende formulates:

“Moon child does not fight. In their kingdom, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, wise and foolish are equally valid. Your realm of dreams, imagination, and art is not a moral realm. Art and poetry are not moral. She, the Childlike Empress, sends Bastian on his journey through this realm (on the path of wishes) and leaves him to his fate, at the risk of perishing and never finding out again. It gives him a great chance, but that chance is also a deadly danger. Bastian could end up in madness too. She wouldn't lift a finger to save him. She means business, deadly serious. That is how gods and the muses are. Dealing with them is not a breeze and is not an open-ended event (i.e. if it gets too dangerous, the rules of the game are lifted). Bastian cannot live in the outer world because nothing matters there, not even the death of his mother. That is why he seeks that other, inner reality - fantasies - where everything has meaning. This is the realm of poetry, myth, dream, art. But dealing with poetry is not a Sunday afternoon enjoyment for higher daughters, not a source of consolation and happiness, but an adventure of life and death. Many do not come back and stay there forever. Many do not even get in - they are afraid of it and rightly so, because whoever does not have the strength and courage to follow the path of desires in fantasies to the end, to be creator and destroyer at the same time, is well advised to first not to get involved in this pact with Moonskind. But of course he won't find the water of life either. "

The imagination as such is neutral in value. She can invent good and bad, ugly and beautiful, clever and foolish beings. Each of these ideas arises from the human world of thought and therefore initially has the same value as any other idea of the same origin. Such thoughts are only subjected to human moral concepts when they come into contact with the outside world, when they result in human action, before they are part of the invisible, inner world of the individual. But only moral concepts lead to a categorization of the desires, dreams and hopes of humans. The allegory of fantasy, the childlike empress, is part of human thought, but it is something different from a human being, just a part of his abilities, powers and possibilities. For this reason, Atréju is also not allowed to use the power of the Child Empress, embodied in AURYN; AURYN is only there to protect him. As a being that arises from the imagination, it is subject to the same laws. Later, in Bastian's hands, however, AURYN becomes a comprehensive instrument of creation, since Bastian as a person is of course able to invent new stories or to change old ones, i.e. to use his imagination.

As it turns out later, you can meet the Childlike Empress a second time, but you have to give her another name. Every trip into the world of fantasy is different, each one grows out of a very individual situation. If Bastian would like to travel to Fantasia again, he will do so as a completely different person and return with different goals, wishes and dreams.

In the eleventh and twelfth chapters, the Childlike Empress acts for the first and only time against her "indifferent" nature by traveling to the old man of the wandering mountains and forcing Bastian to begin his journey to Fantastica before it is finally destroyed. Actually, she should just accept that Bastian won't come. In a figurative sense, it is Bastian's own imagination that does not allow Bastian to accept her destruction, even though he has almost given up on himself.

Klaus Berger considers the Childlike Empress to be a manifestation of the Satan Lucifer , the snakes as a symbol for the powers of darkness. In doing so, however, he fails to recognize that the Childlike Empress stands in the tradition of dualistic Asian belief systems and thus prohibits an interpretation in the sense of Christianity determined by monism . On this complex of topics, cf. Figures and Magical Objects in the Neverending Story # Friction Points with Christianity .

Escapism and ivory tower

“The difference between the 'Neverending Story' and the semi-religious mysticism of Tolkien is its clear pedagogical reference to reality. Ende does not preach escapism, does not create dangerously simple black and white worlds, but rather carefully teaches young readers to get involved with fantasy and poetry, but to measure their wishes and dreams against everyday reality instead of drifting off into the seductive substitute world. "

Bastian's story begins with an escape and ends in a second, more far-reaching one. At first Bastian “only” flees from his classmates, but after stealing the book he flees from his father, the caretaker of the school (in the fifth chapter after a visit to the toilet), actually from the whole world and above all from himself. “Bastian flees in truth before his guilty conscience. ”Ende chose this motif with care, because it is an essential character trait of the boy. His escape from the world culminates in the further course of the plot in an escape from reality, through which Bastian threatens to lose himself in the realm of fantasy. Ende prepares this topic, which is a central concern of his and which he deals with in the first few sentences of the story, and emphasizes that Bastian's flight is necessary: “He has to learn to deal with his problems in the first place confront. He flees, but his escape is necessary because it transforms him, it gives him a new self-confidence that enables him to attack the world. "

Bastian's rejection of books that describe everyday things goes hand in hand with his tendency to escape reality. It says in Chapter I: “He did not like books in which the everyday occurrences of the life of some very everyday people were told to him in a bad-tempered and grumpy way. He had enough of that in reality, why should he read about it? Besides, he hated it when he realized that someone was trying to get him to do something. And in this type of book you should always be got something, more or less clearly. Bastian's preference was for books that were exciting or funny or that made you dream. Books in which invented characters experienced fabulous adventures and where you could imagine all sorts of things ”. If Bastian is to learn a lesson from reading a book, it must contain these fantastic elements, since Bastian would reject the message otherwise contained in it from the start. The ivory tower, the residence of the Childish Empress, also points in this direction. In literature, the image of the ivory tower stands for a place of spiritual seclusion, a retreat from the real world. In particular, unworldly poets and scholars are said to “live in an ivory tower”.

Therefore, the end was misinterpreted by critics in the sense of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien , who viewed his stories as an escape from the prison of the modern world, the evil and ugly reality. They accused the end of escapism , the invitation to flee from the world into his fantasy kingdom, Fantasia. However, they seem to have overlooked the entire second half of the book, in which the end warns urgently of the dangers that an escape from reality, far from one's own reality, brings with it. Fantasy is not a world of retreat in which fat little boys can feel big, beautiful and strong. Anyone who travels to Fantasia is embarking on a dangerous adventure. “There are people who can never come to Fantasy” […] “and there are people who can, but they stay there forever. And then there are still some who go to Fantasy and return again. ”[…]“ And they make both worlds healthy. ”The escape from the world of people to a better Fantasy, which he always has in the context of the escapism debate was accused again was not End's concern or motive. Because the banal, meaningless world, in which the imagination is denied or laughed at as the product of spinners and moon calves , this nothingness has its reflection in the equally senseless and banal world of the old emperor city, in which those end who can no longer find their way out of fantasies . Nothingness and the old emperor city, banality and creativity are their respective reflections . Because out of nowhere, the will for creative work also grows.

Ende emphasized that The Neverending Story is not a fantasy story. He made a distinction between fantasy and fantastic literature . Fantasy is described by Gerhard Haas as a "trivial, fashionable expression of the fantastic". There is little or no reference to the real outside world. The fantastic literature, on the other hand, should enable a new look at reality, according to the end. Ende had in mind a way of thinking that should not follow causal logic alone. The inner world should not represent an alternative to reality, but its complement. In contrast to the Tolkien approach, Ende understood his phantasias as a complement to reality, which one has to get involved with, but which one has to leave again.

In the art theory of the early 20th century, the ivory tower was, unlike today, not a polemical term, but was praised as an ideal by many artists. Michael Ende takes up the motif: In retreat from the world, in the reflection on the fantasy alone and without external influences lies the heart of fantasy. In this respect, every fantasy traveler has to "live in an ivory tower" every now and then. The ivory tower is not a tower in the strict sense, but as big as a city. From a distance it looks like a pointed mountain cone twisted like a snail shell. Its peak is in the clouds. Everything is carved from the finest ivory, so fine that it looks like lace. The court of the childlike empress lives here. At the top of the tower is the magnolia pavilion, where the Childlike Empress herself lives, like in the heart of a mandala. The pavilion is shaped like a white magnolia bud . On beautiful nights of the full moon , the ivory leaves unfold so that you can see the Childlike Empress sitting in the middle. Magnolia trees come from East Asia. Consequently, the child in the flower is also a symbol of the Far East. Buddha is said to have been born from a lotus flower . E. T. A. Hoffmann also uses the motif in his story Princess Brambilla , and it can even be found in George Lucas ' Star Wars : Luke Skywalker's mother uses the code name “Padme”, which means “lotus blossom”. The depiction of the entire ivory tower, which is reminiscent of a mandala , is also inspired by the Far East . Ende's depiction is based on images of the Tower of Babel , such as the famous painting by Pieter Bruegel . There, too, the tower actually appears as a city that has a main street that spirals upwards and tapers towards the top.

Contact with a distant, unknown world is the idea that underlies the labyrinth in the ivory tower. The path to the Childlike Empress in the heart of fantasy is like an initiation , but not into the realm of spirits, but into that of one's own imagination. Ende had mainly Far Eastern motifs in mind: the mandalas are basically a kind of labyrinth. Mandalas are used in Asian religions to delimit a sacred place from the realm of the profane. They therefore have a ritual function. A mandala is used for meditation , but also symbolizes the unity of micro- and macrocosm (just as in the Neverending Story the outside world and fantasy are two sides of the same coin). You can artfully recreate it or simply draw it on the floor. The basic form of the mandala is a system of concentric circles and squares, which are closed to the outside. This symbolizes the layout of a palace district, with the castle in the middle and the labyrinth around it. The floor plan of the palace in the mandala resembles the (Tibetan Buddhist) universe: the center is formed by the lotus center in analogy to the axis of the world, Mount Meru. In the middle, inside the lotus center, there is usually a Buddha or a deity to be seen. The palace area around the ivory tower has a lot in common with a mandala. The tower lies in the middle of a labyrinth garden, it is the heart of fantasy and a special place. The lotus center on Mount Meru, the axis of the world, finds its counterpart in the Neverending Story in the magnolia palace on the ivory tower, the deity in the lotus center would then be the childlike empress as the embodiment of fantasy.

World without borders

Fantasia is the realm of myths and fairy tales from which all stories come, and at the same time the urge to tell and listen to them. There are no limits to the imagination, because the human mind can always invent new stories. For this reason, Fantasy is also limitless, and the journey through this realm is called The Neverending Story .

“ In this world there is no measurable external distance, and so the words 'near' and 'far' have a different meaning. All of these things depend on the state of mind and the will of the person who travels a certain path. Since fantasy is limitless, its center point can be anywhere - or rather, it is equally near or far from anywhere. It depends entirely on whoever wants to get to the center. And this innermost center of fantasy is the ivory tower. "

From time to time, Ende also names cardinal points for Fantasia ("Southern Oracle", the wind giants). However, these are not absolutely valid. You change with your own point of view. Lengths and distances change again and again, and one country suddenly borders on another than was previously the case. This makes it impossible to draw a general map of Fantasy. Fantasias is a very personal matter that is different for every human being, and as human beings develop, their fantasies also change their shape (similar to Neverland in Peter Pan, by the way).

Fantasy rests on the forgotten dreams of people that are deposited in the mine of images. But even this is not to be understood spatially. In a realm without borders there is no "above" or "below" either.

The infinity of fantasy applies not only to the spatial dimension, but also to time. Everything that happens is written down by the old man from the Wandering Mountains. But it remains to be seen whether it happens because he writes it down or whether he writes it down because it happens. The childlike empress must always be given a new name by a human being, otherwise she will die. Fantastica has no history that can be told chronologically, neatly according to date and place. Symbolically, the “imagination” must be kept alive.

For Ende, the inside and outside world are equally real, so it is only logical that he considers transitions from one to the other world to be possible. However, different rules apply to the inner and outer world, which also differ according to whether one belongs to the material world as a person or, as a phantasy, comes from the human imagination.

In order to enter or leave this world, which has no borders, as a human being, one needs magical passages. Bastian finds the entrance while reading in the attic of his school house. The entrance is not in the attic itself, nor in the book that he is holding in his hands, because both are part of the outside world. Rather, through the process of reading, Bastian arrives in Fantasia:

“Michael Ende, the attentive recipient of the sharpest reflections, embarks on the greatest adventure of all, that of a book mirror in which the realities are carefully adapted to one another: the world of the reader and that of the book unite without annihilating each other and thus form they a third size without a name. It is this third quantity that plays the most important role in the novel, it is the story of this third quantity that the book tells. "

The entire Neverending Story can be understood as a reflection of Bastian's reading experience. Bastian loves adventure stories like that of the three musketeers or the heroes Karl May . Attréju, for example, comes from a culture that is similar to that of the North American Indians , not just by chance of the courageous Apache chief Winnetou . Atréju is Bastian's figure of identification in Fantasia, who has many similarities, such as the loss of at least one parent. Correspondingly, Atréju sees Bastian in the sixth chapter when the magic mirror gate reveals his real being.

The process of reading is a personal, intimate affair where the individual matters, not the collective. Accordingly, Fantasia looks different for every traveler. “Every real story is a never-ending story”, as Ende Coreaners say, and also: “There are a lot of doors to fantasy. Not just books. ”The subjective imagination is the path to fantasy; There are no patent remedies. Just as Ende was deeply suspicious of all ideologies , he was also deeply suspicious of the idea that society creates consciousness. In contrast to Bertolt Brecht and his literature engagée , Ende postulated that only a new awareness could bring about social change. Accordingly, Bastian cannot do anything with books in which one “should be gotten to something”, because these books cannot open up any access to fantasy, at least not unlimited.

This touches on a central point in Michael Ende's world of thought. Everything essential has a meaning in itself, including art. It does not explain the world, it represents it. Therefore it does not have to justify itself with a message. “Knowledge ideas” like the message are not the goal of the artist, but part of his material. Thought palaces can be admired, but artists are traveling people. If they had exhausted a worldview, they would move on.

But fantasy is also no counterworld, no projection surface of the longing for peace and a whole world. Bastian is the hero of the story, but his heroism is not one that is only determined by beautiful, good and noble decisions. In this respect he resembles the ancient heroes, who at times could also be very cruel. He allows himself to be manipulated by Xayíde, he raises his sword against his friend Atreyu and barely escapes the madness of the old emperor city. Unlike in fantasy literature, where dark beings primarily serve to be conquered by the hero, neither Atreyu nor Bastian kill the dark beings that populate Fantasia, because they are part of the realm of fantasy and therefore do not pose a threat to fantasies Still, death is prescribed for some creatures here.

Fantasies and the human world are two sides of the same coin, inner world and outer world, which cannot exist without each other. The realm of the child empress is not transcendent, it is part of this world. Imagination is not just a feeling, but a whole that also includes the intellect and the senses. Accordingly, Ende Coreanders say: “There are people who can never come to Fantasy [...] and there are people who can, but they stay there forever. And then there are still some who go to Fantastica and come back again. Just like you. And they make both worlds healthy. "

So the task is not only to get in after Fantasia, but also to leave it again, guided by one's own, true will. And this transition takes place through a magical portal, this time located inside the gem. Bastian only finds this path when he voluntarily abandons the AURYN, which gives him the power to shape fantasies according to his will, and thus signals his willingness not to remain trapped in his fantasies, but to use the creative power inherent in them in order to make the human world healthy too.

Of course, other rules apply to the phantasier who enters the human world. It goes without saying that a fantasy figure cannot suddenly materialize in physical form in the human world. But it can influence people's thinking, feeling and dreaming, as an idea, as a flash of thought, as an inspiration. Or as a lie, if he gets into nowhere and meets the person who has lost the ability to see the truth.

The meaning of naming

With his fantastic pictures and explanations, Ende picks up on complex philosophical topics that have already been influenced in literary terms by J. Böhme, Novalis and Hamann, and the tradition of the Kabbalistic theory of sounds, “a teaching that is based on the inherent character of sounds. The sound itself is understood there as a world principle. ”It follows that a central statement of the Neverending Story is that a person or thing receives its correct reality through its name. “Only the right name gives all beings and things their reality. The wrong name makes everything unreal. That is what the lie does. ”At the end of the Childlike Empress says in the eleventh chapter. Bastian has to give living beings their names on the path of desires so that they appear. He also has to name magical objects so that they develop their effectiveness.

Naming has a function that creates reality. Bastian recreates the fantastic world by naming it. “Language can create reality” is an important assertion of the author: giving a name means establishing a relationship. What we have no names and words for does not appear in our consciousness.

“To give a name means to create a relationship with someone or something through a creative act and thereby give it reality. The name as such is not important. What has no name does not exist in our consciousness. The agony of namelessness is the deadly disease from which the Childlike Empress languishes. "

That ends u. a. Reference to the Bible , namely the first book of Moses, in which man is instructed by God to give names:

“The Lord God formed all the animals in the field and all the birds in the sky from the soil and brought them to man to see what he would call them. And as man named every living being, so it should be called. Man gave names to all cattle, the birds of the sky and all animals of the field. "

- Gen. 2.19-2.20

Accordingly, the Uyulála speaks of humans as the sons of Adam.

"Michael and Adam

Michael means, 'Who is like God?' He is the only archangel whose name is a question. The adversary has no answer to them. This is the archangel's sword.
Adam means: 'I am the same.' It is the I that is created in the image of God. It is the 'sparkle' that Master Eckehart speaks of. "

Walter Benjamin describes the human ability to create similarities as the “mimetic ability”. In an early linguistic essay from 1916, he called the development of language the "linguistic sin". The pure language of the name has become abstractions and judgment.

As part of his interpretation of Genesis, Benjamin reflected on the language magic of names in the early writing On language in general and on human language. According to this, the signified and the signifier are not separated from each other in the divine original language. Language does not describe given realities, but creates and creates them. It is therefore not understood as a system of signs in the linguistic sense, but as something immediate that does not communicate, but rather creates new realities. From a linguistic-philosophical perspective, reference should be made to John Langshaw Austin , who explains in the context of his concept of performative speaking: "Illusions intervene, change and exercise power."

The existence of the childlike empress and her empire is crucially dependent on this performative speaking. Bastian doesn't just design her name, he literally screams it out. In this way he breaks the silence of his reading and literally speaks into the world of fantasy. The magic of the name ensures the continuity of the existence of Fantastica and sets the fantastic change in Bastian's own existence in motion. As the latter surrenders him to the unpredictable desires of his own unconscious, the enchanting language magic and the unconscious instincts that endanger his true will collide. In the AURYN a third form of magic manifests itself, atavistic thing magic, which stimulates the conflict and gradually counteracts its culmination point.

The power of the AURYN to fulfill all of his wishes, to correspond to his will to power, in the end remains nothing but an illusion that only makes him appear to be who he always wanted to be. This does not make Bastian a reality. For such a reality is given to things only by their true name. But Bastian loses his greatest ability, the ability to invent stories and names, through the excessive use of the AURYN, which gradually robs him of these gifts and ultimately even his own name, his own identity. The solution lies in a return to name magic, the natural order of all things. Bastian insists on the possession of the AURYN amulet. Only when it is almost too late, when he has already forgotten his own name, the poetic code for the return to the human world, does he give it back. And only because his phantasical friend Atréju, who remembers an overall personality with Bastian, can name Bastian's name, Bastian ultimately finds his way back to naming magic and thus to his own identity. This renewed access to the poetry of his name also enables him to return to his usual everyday life.

Just as the name of the Child Empress is existentially linked to her existence - without a name she will die - names have a special meaning in religions and fairy tales. Rumpelstiltskin, for example, is defeated as soon as his name becomes known. To give the child empress a name means to connect your own consciousness and subconscious, to establish a relation to the imagination. This act is a creative one, so no being in fantasy can perform it. Because imaginers are themselves only creatures of the human imagination.

It is not only Bastian who has the task of giving his creatures reality by naming them. The creative power of naming is ultimately also that of the writer, who names the offspring of his imagination and makes them so real, because he thereby establishes a relationship with them.

Bastian's and Coreander's names both have a specificity, and it is the same specificity in both cases. This underpins what has already become clear: Bastian and Coreander are similar to each other. As it turns out in the last chapter, Coreanders have also traveled to fantasies. This probably the greatest commonality of the two is something so unique that it has to find its expression in the curiosity of the two names. In a short essay on the true name, Ende writes: “Naming is the first thing Adam does in Paradise after he has received 'a living soul' from God. God gives him the commission to give all things and animals and plants their names [...]. It seems to me that the greatest part of all poetic work consists in giving a name to the still nameless person, namely the true name in each case, because the untrue name, the lie, unravels what is named. "

The ancient Morla says of the Childlike Empress: "Her existence is not measured by duration, but by name." Imagination has to change in order to continue to exist. Her most important quality is to be open, not to become static like the Childlike Empress is. If it is not, it is threatened by nothing. Bastian's job is to change the imagination and keep it alive. This goes hand in hand with Ende's assumption that we only live with ideas and do not know reality, but only the idea of it, and also with his thesis that everyone can be creative at any time.

In the second chapter, a dispute between the doctors about the cause of the Childlike Empress' illness makes it clear that each of them has only one eye for his own specialty; the specialist in colds, for example, looks for coughs and runny nose. This is a subtle indication that people think along the lines of their own language skills. That is also the reason why the Childlike Empress needs a name in order not to go out. Ende says: “Yes, that's how things really come about, because giving names means establishing a relationship. What we have no names and words for does not appear in our consciousness. "" The end ties in with the romantic philosophy of language (J. Böhme, Novalis, Hamann). In addition, he places himself in the tradition of the Kabbalistic theory of sounds [...]. "This is" a teaching that builds on the individual character of the sounds. The sound itself is understood there as a world principle. "

The meaning of individual names

Aiuóla

The flower lady Aiuóla, who Bastian meets in the House of Changes, is a fairy tale figure, a kind of primordial mother and plant in human form, with whom Bastian finds peace and healing. She pampers him with love and an abundance of delicious food. From her he learns that he has to find the place where the waters of life arise. Only one wish could lead him there: the last one he had left. It is thus the imaginative reflection of Bastian's deceased mother, next to his father the last connection to the human world, and symbolizes the maternal love that Bastian longs so dearly. Their fruits represent the care that Bastian misses; only when he has had enough of it can he continue his journey back to reality. It is possible that Ende was inspired for this figure by the motherly figure of the rose in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince when he settled the Aiuólas habitat near roses. The description of the plump flower woman, consisting almost of fruits and leaves, is reminiscent of Giuseppe Arcimboldo , the painter of Rudolf II, whose portraits of people are often composed of fruits and vegetables. Aiuóla comes from Italian and means “bed” there.

House of change

The "change house" stands for "change yourself". Bastian has to change himself, without Auryn's help, in order to find his way back to the real world.

Atreyu

Atreju sounds like the ancient Greek atreus, which means "fearless", whereby fearlessness is one of Atrejus' outstanding qualities. In Greek mythology Atreus is king of Mycenae . The name Atréju is possibly similar to the Atreids in Frank Herbert's novel cycle The Desert Planet , based on this figure.

AURYN

The front of the AURYN shows two snakes biting each other's tails. This mythological symbol, known as the ouroboros , has been common in many cultures since ancient times. In Chapter XIII, Ende takes up one of the meanings of Ouroboros, "death and rebirth", by destroying fantasies and then re-emerging. Another meaning is "infinity", which is reflected both in the boundlessness of fantasy and in the "eternally young" childlike empress. Among the inhabitants of Fantasy, who do not want to pronounce this name, it is also called the shine , the gem or the pantacle .

Caíron

Centaurs in their classic form are people with horse bodies. The black centaur Caíron, who plays a role in the first chapters of the Neverending Story, deviates slightly from this archetype, namely, his body is that of a zebra . In the book this is explained by the fact that he belongs to a special breed called the Black Centaur. Caíron finds its equivalent in Greek mythology. There, the centaur Cheiron or Chiron is the most famous healer, doctor, sage and educator of heroes like Heracles and Achilles . Like Cheiron, Caíron has to prepare a hero for his task. When the centaur appears among the greenskins, Atreyu is initially nothing but a boy who does not know the secrets of fantasy and is also not familiar with the powers of AURYN. Caíron instructs him in this task.

The old man from the Wandering Mountains

The name is reminiscent of Raschid ad-Din Sinan , who found his way into European literature as the old man from the mountains .
He describes himself as "The End" and "The Chronicler", so the likeness of the book author in the story is also to be considered. The childlike empress, who, in her own words, is his opposite in everything, would then be the author's anima .

Gaya

The name of the sinister princess sounds like a reminiscence of the earth goddess Gaia .

Haulewald

The word "Haulewald" is a modification of "Heulewald", ie a "howling forest".

Moon child

"Moon child" is an allusion to the moon, moon fairy tale or moon goddess character of the childlike empress.

The “moon sphere” of female-symbolic thinking stands, for example in Thomas Mann's novel Joseph und seine Brüder , for a room with a peculiar twilight, in which everything takes on the fuzzy contours of symbolic thinking and which stimulates the imagination accordingly.

His objects are subject to a permanent change of shape, sometimes have the same metamorphosis nature as dream images. They are governed by the same law of emotional identity and associative kinship.

That is why there are ghosts in the lunar sphere, not in the (limited) sense in which the word is understood today, but in the original etymological meaning as "web of light". What is meant is the moonlight, which is spherically peculiar to a female deity.

Correspondingly, many of the great ancient goddesses were also moon goddesses: Hecate , Demeter , Persephone , Artemis , Athene , Aphrodite , to name a few examples.

The childlike empress as the embodiment of fantasy also has a divine-allegorical character.

Furthermore, the name "Moon Child" alludes to the novel "Moonchild" by Aleister Crowley from 1917, which is about the fight between two groups of magicians (white and black) over an unborn child. The novel “The Neverending Story” refers to this symbolism in many places.

Nobody

When Atreyu meets Gmork in Chapter 9, he describes himself to him as "nobody". There are similarities here to Homer's Odyssey : Odysseus introduces himself to the Cyclops Polyphemus as "nobody". This is already the second allusion to the one-eyed giant in Greek mythology: the description of Ygramul already reminds of him.

Another parallel is that to Jules Verne's novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - the captain of the submarine Nautilus goes by the name “Nemo” (Latin for nobody ).

Sludge

The name of the Schlamuffen is reminiscent of the land of milk and honey, whose inhabitants, like the Schlamuffen, are usually in a good mood but are not capable of any real deep thoughts and insights.

Smärg

The name of the sinister dragon Smärg recalls the name of the destructive dragon Smaug from JRR Tolkien's novel The Hobbit . The word for dragon sounds similar in different Slavic languages (Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian zmaj , Bulgarian and Russian zmej (змей), Polish smok ).

Swamps of sadness

An example of numerous innovative names that generate linguistic images that take on concrete form in phantasias. The swamps could be a metaphor for depression and death .

Uyulála

The voice of silence is reminiscent of a wind that sings its wisdom. "Uyu" is reminiscent of a wind, "Lala" stands for the singing.

Xayíde

As an archetype, Xayíde stands for Bastian's anima in terms of depth psychology: his image of women, but also the mediator between his self and his subconscious. Ende attached great importance to the fact that Xayíde's name is spelled with a "y". Behind this is a thought from Kabbalah , Jewish mysticism. The “Y” stands for Malchuth (Hebrew: Kingdom), the tenth and most perfect Sefira , in which all others unite. Ende saw something positive in the sinister Xayíde: It is necessary for Bastian to find his way. He has to make mistakes in order to get to know himself. And no mistake in his journey was greater than confiding in Xayíde. The name Xayíde is also reminiscent of the sorceress of Greek mythology, Kirke , and Xayíde also has some parallels to this. Both attract heroes with false kindness in order to harm them. And like Kirke, Xayíde also has the hero's friends kidnapped. Ultimately, both sorceresses must submit to the hero.

Yors Minroud

The words "Yors Minroud" seem to be taken from English: "Your Minroud" means "your own mine". It seems to be a reference to "Birs Nimrud", the name of the hill in Iraq under which the ruins of the Tower of Babylon were believed (in fact, the ruins of Borsippa).

Nihilism and Nothing

Since end fantasies and human world are two expressions of the same medal, one cannot do without the other in the logic of the “Neverending Story”. The imagination is also the idea that people have of the world in which they live. In the end, everything creative is closely interlinked with the values of a culture. When it dries up, no value can arise. When people forget fantasies, ultimately both worlds will be destroyed. In the human world this is expressed as a creeping process that poisons people's thoughts and feelings and floods them with lies in which no truth can endure. For Fantasia, Ende visualizes this decline in a more haunting and tangible way by letting the land of the imagination fall to nothing.

One cannot adequately describe nothing, because it is nothing in its most original sense and therefore does not look like anything. It is most likely as if you were blinded when you look inside. Anyone who gets too close succumbs to its almost irresistible attraction, which forces him to come closer and closer to him. Just being close to nothing is enough to turn ash-colored and gray, whoever touches it loses that part of himself that comes into contact with nothing until it finally dissolves completely into nothing. Whereby the mere presence of nothing nourishes the desire to surrender completely to its force of attraction, to plunge into it and to disappear entirely. And the bigger the nothing becomes, the stronger the pull that emanates from it.

Ende chose nothing as a symbol for the crisis of our present culture. He gives shape to that spiritual current that means “nothing” from its word meaning and which he makes largely responsible for the crisis he postulates: nihilism , the negation of any order of being, knowledge, value and society. Just as the young man Bastian is transported into the realm of fantasy in order to visibly experience the threat of nothingness there, the threat to fantasy and all that is connected with it appears through nihilism as an objective one that can be felt by everyone, even the most unsuspecting , inevitable threat. This affects not only the fairy-tale land of Fantasy, but also tangible and apparently hopeless the real world of the people. Because every phantasy who gets into nowhere becomes a lie there until all truth is extinguished or at least people have become blind to it. And this in turn benefits the manipulators, the mysterious clients of the werewolf Gmork, whom Ende already described in his book Momo as being as gray as nothing turns those who get caught in its suction.

But the crisis of meaning in the world, which nihilism has caused, is for the end not a blind doom for which no one can do anything. Rather, Bastian comes to the realization that everyone is to blame for it, including himself. Everyone knows about it, more or less clearly. It is an existential experience of modern man with himself, which determines his life from the ground up and which grows into a concrete threat for him, the loss of imagination and feeling. But by giving up these basic characteristics, his entire human existence is ultimately at stake.

When the end depicts the threat of nothingness, it also creates the central prerequisite for its message, which forms the hard core of the “Neverending Story”: the threatening catastrophe of the loss of humanity in general. The plight of fantasy is therefore not limited to the circumcision or destruction of the human talent for fantasy, even if the end primarily refers to it. Fantasy appears as the “land of the soul” to which the imagery of fantasy, religion and art essentially belong. Images and symbols appear as nourishment for the soul. Without their wealth and the gift of their beauty, their lives become desolate. They are the only language which the soul innately speaks and understands and which alone interests it.

As its adversary, nothing represents an immediate threat to the soul, the inner life of people. The soul lives from its belief in images, but nothingness transforms these images into fantasies and lies and leaves people completely for their soul and blind their lives. It is thus a symbol for the human mind, a "hypertrophied intellect", which is only interested in concepts, in the relationships between things, but no longer in the images, in the qualities of things that come from sensual perception. The nothingness also stands for a selfish, monomaniacal will to power , which allows everything to apply solely in relation to the human ego and recognizes nothing as valuable in itself. Everything is transformed, damaged, consumed, destroyed in the service of man. Like the tree, which is only viewed as a utility, the wood of which can be used to make furniture and paper, which is used for recreation and which can be burned.

“Materialism is a worldview that has an explanation for everything - except for its own existence. It can only exist as long as it doesn't think itself through to the end. "

“On the subject of 'innocence'
What do the two words 'witchcraft' and 'sorcery' that are often mentioned in the Apocalypse mean? Certainly not what some women do in the brothels and what some superstitious people do - at least not primarily, because these are rather deplorable creatures.
What is meant is something much more general and dangerous, something that underlies all temptation of our entire civilization. Nevertheless, these two terms are symbols. 'Witchcraft' means making something into a commodity that cannot be a commodity - or, more clearly, selling something for money (the monetary value, i.e. power) that can only be given away. This is now happening all the time and everywhere in our commercialized culture. And it actually makes all of our 'values' questionable or lying. Art, religion, knowledge, goodness, love, etc. - today everything is actually only seen from the point of view of salability. We are in the middle of Babylon. Advertising.
'Magic' is, so to speak, the counterpart to this: to acquire or want to acquire something that can only be received as a gift. In this sense, a good part of our science and technology today is “magic” - violent and unauthorized tearing into oneself and evaluating mysterious (spiritual) relationships for material benefit. This also includes advertising, as does our entire political and economic life. Brainwashed by 'information'. "

But, as Ende shows, it is still not too late to put a stop to the threatened annihilation. Because out of nothing, the dissolution of values, the will for new creativity can arise, which ultimately brings healing:

“We managed to dissolve all values. And now we have to jump in, and only by having the courage to jump into this nothingness can we awaken our own, innermost, creative powers and build a new fantasy, that is, a new world of values. "

Archetypes

Fantasy has no limits in space and time, just as there are no limits to human fantasy. As at the end of Chapter XXV. describes, it stands on a foundation, formed from the forgotten dreams and images of the people that are deposited in the "mine of images". Since fantasies arise in the first place through people's imagination, one can also encounter things, beings or people there that do not exist solely in one's own imagination. For example, Bastian finds a painting by Salvador Dalí in the mine of pictures , which shows melting clocks, or he meets the lady Aiuóla, who is inspired by a picture by the Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo .

According to the teachings of the depth psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, there are certain universal patterns in the human psyche that can be found all over the world, in all people, regardless of race, gender or degree of civilization. These patterns are reflections of the human psyche that affect consciousness. They appear symbolically embodied in pictures in fairy tales, dreams and visions. Jung calls these patterns “archetypes” (archetypes). Michael Ende, who was familiar with Jung's work, works in the Neverending Story with numerous archetypes on which he leans the inhabitants of Fantasy. This is also the reason why all inhabitants of her empire are equally important to the Childlike Empress. No matter who they are, how they are made, whether they are good or bad, they are all part of the human imagination and therefore important and significant.

Jung also counts the hero among the archetypes, who saves his people, conquers monsters and sometimes makes use of magical means. Jung considers this to be the embodiment of a need for adventure and the ability to have more control over one's own fate. Atreyu plays this role for Bastian, and Bastian in turn for the reader of the Neverending Story.

Hero Hynreck has to fight a dragon fight against the dragon Smärg. Dragon fight archetypically stands for the overcoming of evil in one's own psyche and the fight of consciousness against unconsciousness, of spirit against nature.

According to Jung's theory of archetypes, the anima symbolizes the image that a boy or man has of the woman . She often appears as a beautiful, angry woman and provokes an argument with her own self. In this way she plays the role of a mediator between the ego and the subconscious. For the Neverending Story , Xayíde takes on this task.

The encounter with the anima usually prepares another archetype, that of the wise magician. In The Neverending Story , this is the miner Yor. He embodies the deeper knowledge of oneself and the contents of the unconscious. Yor lives near a mine, and mines are a symbol of the subconscious. In addition, mountains seem to lie outside the usual reality and therefore take on a function as an in-between world. In ancient China, mountains were considered to be the dwelling places of spirits and gods, who were always surrounded by an eerie aura. If you wanted to climb it, you had to protect yourself with magical amulets. When hermits settled there, they did so to make contact with the gods. The Five Holy Mountains are places of the imperial cult and pilgrimage . It is said of Mount Tai Shan that the souls of the people came from there and also returned there. Mountains also play an important role in other religions. In Judaism , Moses takes the tablets of the law from Mount Sinai . According to Muslim tradition, Mohammed received his first revelation on a mountain . The Greek Olympus was considered the abode of the gods.

Fantasy itself is reminiscent of other, fictional countries that are supposed to create an ideal image of the world: Utopia or Atlantis . And already the first movements work with archaic , archetypal images: all the animals in the Haulewald made their way into their caves, nests and loopholes. It was midnight and the storm wind was roaring in the tops of the ancient trees. The towering trunks creaked and groaned.

The ethnologist Hans Peter Duerr called repressed archaic desires the “wilderness in us”. The landscape of Fantasia appeals to this buried “wilderness in us”.

Dorothee Ostmeier explains : “Bastian's adventures, the characters he encounters and the curious landscapes he wanders through have highly allegorical functions that - as for example with Novalis - express the tension between everyday reality and the magical fantastic in psychological and to create philosophical problem constellations. The tensions between lies, moral decadence and truth, delusion and seeing, everyday banality and miracles, between illness and vitality, life and death are dominant. "

The protagonist Bastian Balthasar Bux

End understanding of art

The protagonist of the Neverending Story, Bastian Balthasar Bux, appears as a mirror of Michael Ende's understanding of art, as the medium through which the end conveys his view to the reader.

The child as a savior

In many of his books, Michael Ende chooses children as protagonists or heroes. This applies to Jim Knopf and Momo as well as to the Neverending Story, in which not only the childlike empress and his alter ego Atreyu, but also the main character Bastian Balthasar Bux is a child. In this way, Ende is based on an ideal of German romanticism, childhood:

"This connection of the positive and utopian to the hope of salvation history in the child (liche) - the child as soter (Greek = savior) - means the return of an idea that played a major role in German romanticism."

The romantic ideal of childhood is already found in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . In his novella, a child overcomes the dangerous lion with song and flute:

"And really the child looked like a mighty, victorious conqueror in his transfiguration, (...) his strength remained hidden in him."

Novalis transfigures childhood into a perfect, i.e. divine being and a representative of the Golden Age :

"Where there are children, there is a golden age."

In his only fragmentary work The Apprentices of Saïs , a child figure takes on the role of the messiah :

"It smiled very seriously, and we felt strangely at ease with it. One day it will come again, said the teacher, and live among us, then the lessons will stop. "

According to his notes on the play, towards the end the child should appear as 'the messiah of nature', connected with the entry into a new age.

For Novalis, an educated person must be similar to a child whose naivety, simplicity and originality create an all-round connection with nature:

"That is why the most educated, earthly person is so similar to the child."

With Nietzsche, the child represents the highest level of transformations of the spirit. According to this, the child stands for the “new beginning” and for “a holy yes-saying (...) to the game of creation”.

In another prominent literary text, which Ende took as a model, the child becomes the protagonist who questions the world with his subjective perception that comes purely from the heart and is not "twisted" by logic: The Little Prince :

"One sees clearly only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes."

Michael Ende connects with the “childlike in us” the part of the human being that “makes him creative and creative”, the part that has “never lost the ability to be amazed, to ask, to be enthusiastic”, and the part that the "consolation asks and hopes".

“I don't write for children at all. As little as Marc Chagall paints for children, although his painting often looks 'childlike'. I write for 'the child in us all' who is creative and able to experience fate - what else was it worth writing for? And what else? "

Ende's figure of Momo acts as a corrective in a (novel) world threatened by loss of time . Their temporal and spatial orientation is based primarily on subjective experience. In addition, she acts as a mediator between two worlds, that of the master Hora and the human world, and thus ultimately ushers in a new age through the annihilation of the gray men. This, too, makes her a heroine of romantic style. Momo, as Ende wrote to a reader, is actually not a real child, but the eternal child in all people. This eternal childhood is an important part of Michael Ende's poetics.

“Many parents admit that they don't even get to read. In this case, don't be surprised if the children don't show interest. When books are discussed or even argued over breakfast or dinner, the children get big ears. They want to participate and have a say and then read the books all by themselves. But if the parents only talk about the rate for the new Mercedes, the last football game and things like that, why should children suddenly discover the good book? "

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Michael Ende did not see a profound difference between literature for children and literature for adults. Even the Romantics had opposed the view that children's literature should be lighter food than that for adults. So ETA Hoffmann has his "Lothar" in the Serapion Brothers defend the fairy tale "Nutcracker and the Mouse King" against this accusation:

"In my opinion, it is a big mistake to believe that lively, imaginative children, of whom we can only speak here, are content with empty phantasies, as they often appear under the name of fairy tales."

According to the end:

“I am a primitive and come from a central European reservation. Even if I tried so hard to pretend, every scientifically enlightened inhabitant of the great civilization desert out there would soon see through me. It is certain gestures, a certain tone of voice, and evidently also a certain way of being silent, that betray us. So I'd rather admit it right away.
The reserve I come from is called: Children's literature. It is one of those reservations that are tolerated with a mild smile by the inhabitants of the desert of civilization, even petted by some good-doer associations, but basically despised by everyone - like most things that have to do with children, by the way. So we're still comparatively well off. From time to time it becomes fashionable among the inhabitants of the civilized desert to deal with us, then crowds of zealous missionaries roam our forests and prairies, surveying our landscape and kindly or severely exhorting us to finally submit to the alone blissful scientific enlightenment and in the future only to tell realistic, socially relevant, socially critical or at least emancipatory valuable stories. Of course, we promise everything they want, making the bows they ask in the four directions, which they call Marx, Freud, Einstein and Darwin. Then they go away very satisfied. That was a while ago, and now we are left a little alone.
Now there is a special enclave within our reservation that is hated like the plague by those missionaries because even the most good-natured among them have given up hope of driving the spirit of darkness out of it. This enclave is called 'the fantastic children's book'. This is an area in which two different reserves overlap, so to speak, namely that of the `` untouchable '' literature just described with that of the fantastic literature, which is generally regarded as escapist and therefore worthless, but at least as Curiosity is noted, provided that one is acting insane, shocking or at least obscene as expected. The overlapping of the two reserve areas not only adds up the respective taboo effect, it multiplies it. If the good-willed missionary has still approved the realistic children's book because it will be instructive or educational, then he usually just keeps the spit away from the fantastic children's book. He no longer finds any yardsticks, no more criteria to which he could tie in with his message of salvation. Nobody will be surprised that this fact does not generally work in favor of books. In any case, only the most unprejudiced among opinion-formers venture into the interior of this zone. They are not afraid of hardships or hardships and, discouraged and with admirable diligence, look to see if there is something scientifically valuable to interpret in the end. May the Great Gallimatthias bless them for it!
So this enclave within our reserve is where I came from. Civilized people expect someone who admits such embarrassment without shame to at least add: And I'm proud of it! (Like Tucholsky's formula: I'm proud of being a Jew. If I'm not proud of it, I'm also a Jew. I'd rather be proud of it.)
No, I'm not proud of it. I'm not proud of it for the simple reason that all these divisions into children's and adult literature, fantastic literature and realistic literature, literature for Catholic housewives, and literature for left-handed tricycle riders are so outrageous nonsense that we natives have to drink a lot of firewater until we can believe that the people of the desert of civilization mean business.
Now I and some of my tribe have recently succeeded in breaking the boundaries of our reserve, attracting the attention of the 'real' literary world, upset their standards a little and even being on the bestseller list. In front of my inner gaze I see the raised eyebrows of the benevolent and how they nod to me and seem to ask me: Well?
No, I'm not proud of that either. Such things sometimes happen to a native without our intending them. How can we be proud of the recognition of a world that is uninhabitable for us? Such successes only prove that the desert of civilization seems to be gradually becoming uninhabitable for an increasing number of its inhabitants. Many of those whom scientific enlightenment has dug up the groundwater of life simply feel a desperate thirst for the wonderful. In their skinned, functional world, everything mysterious has been explained away - or, if it has not yet been completely successful, the promise has been made that it will be explained away for good soon. In our reserve, which is threatened on all sides by bulldozers, chemicals and rationalization measures, a few springs still gush out. That is why the thirsty come. But that they are thirsty is no reason for us to be proud.
[...]
I have to tell a little about how the reservation came about from which I come.
In the desert of civilization, a completely untrue story is being spread about it. You say there - and this is how you can read it in all of their relevant studies - that children's and youth literature arose from an increasing interest of modern, civilized humanity in children and their needs.
[...]
When did the necessity arise to create a world of their own for children and thus also their own literature? In other cultures - if they have not already come under the influence of the scientific enlightenment - children and adults definitely live together in one world. It was no different in older Europe. When and why did this world split in two?
What we now call children's literature began around the beginning of the nineteenth century. Before that there were fairy tales, but they were by no means 'just for children'. In the desert of civilization it is assumed that the people have made up these stories because they were ignorant and naive. We in our reservation know better: The people do not make up such stories, they just pass them on carefully and accurately. The anonymous authors of the fairy tales were actually wise men who knew very well what they were saying - down to the very last detail. There were also the saints' legends and the biblical stories, there were the old magical systems of correspondence in which everything was connected with everything, there was alchemy, astrology and the universe of myths. This world was habitable for adults and children alike, the only difference being in the degree of knowledge and wisdom.
With the beginning of the modern age it changed.
[...]
This bleak imaginary, literally abandoned by all good spirits, had now become the adult world. He was proud of his merciless 'love of truth' and, above all, he was proud of having finally got to the bottom of the whole swindle of creation.
[…]
For us natives, this maddening obsession with disenchantment will always remain a mystery.
But even the most ruthless missionary of the scientific enlightenment that made it all alone somehow darkly felt that children could not live, breathe, thrive in such a world of ideas, that they simply had to starve to death and die of thirst in this devastated landscape. Precisely for this reason the creation of our reserve was tolerated, in which the little savages are allowed to indulge their animistic and anthropomorphic instincts for at least a few years, in which they are allowed for a while the nature of wonderful and mysterious beings, of elves, dwarfs and To think fairies as people - until the moment they are considered 'ripe' enough to be introduced to all the ideas that are now called 'objective facts'.
[...] "

The division into children's and adult literature, into realistic and fantastic are pure nonsense. They emerged in the first place “in a skinned, functional world”, “in which everything mysterious was explained away”. Since the boom in the natural sciences from the 19th century, everything has apparently become explainable. The world is a heap of planetary dust, the ideals of man are nothing but biochemical processes. Only children are allowed to live in a world full of magic and meaning, a world that adults and children would have lived together earlier. The great works of world literature have so much fantastic things in them that Faust or the Odyssey would probably be dismissed as children's literature today if they appeared today.

“Strange significance of my life: Whatever I do, in my house, in my apartment, in my next room, an old man coughs in an enjoyable, detailed, unsavory way. I am constantly surrounded by old men and women. I always have to go slower than I would like because an old man is hanging on my arm - physically or morally or intellectually. Only my previous books are for the youth. It only occurs sporadically in my life. But maybe my books are also for old people. "

In a letter to a reader, Ende wrote that the childlike in the adult should never be overcome. It stands for what is responsive, spontaneous, capable of development, which has nothing in common with infantile behavior. Children still understood the world as a miracle, were amazed at the little things.

Ende ties in with Schiller and Nietzsche when he sees the ideal image of art embodied in a child's unintentional play. In this way, a children's book can be a book for adults just as a book for adults can be understood by children.

Ende wrote about his motives for locating stories in the fantastic:

“What moves me to do this [...] is nothing other than what moves all of our subconscious to express inner soul processes in dream images. Since for me poetry and art consists of nothing else than transforming external images into internal images and internal images into external images (as was, by the way, common in all cultures), this form of expression is obvious. In my opinion, the world becomes habitable for humans only through this 'poetization' (Novalis). By this I mean to say that only when a person recognizes himself in the world around him, and vice versa, when he finds the images of the world in his own soul, can he feel at home in the world. This is exactly the essence of every culture. "

Like Momo, Bastian also travels inside himself. Problems cannot be approached logically and rationally, but only on the way to what is essential, what is seen with the heart, and ultimately solved. Bastian differs from allegorical child figures, as found in Novalis and - in the form of Momo and the Childlike Empress - also in Ende. Neither Novalis' Kleine Fabel nor Momo nor the Childlike Empress are concrete children, but embody the childlike itself.

Bastian Balthasar Bux, the protagonist of the Neverending Story, on the other hand, stands for a real person, a concrete child, who develops further in the course of the story. As a half-orphan, however, he is a topos that is characteristic of Ende's stories as well as many other books for children and young people. Accordingly, Bastian's alter ego Atreyu has no family; in the logic of the story, his name means “the son of all” because his entire tribe takes care of him.

Loss of childhood as a disease

In the context of Romanticism's criticism of the Enlightenment, the loss of dreams and imagination is viewed as a symptom of illness. Among other things, ETA Hoffmann and August Wilhelm Schlegel criticize the enlightenment's one-sided belief in reason. Like Bastian, the protagonists of romantic stories occasionally travel into their own inner world.

In the second part of the apprentices of the Sais, Novalis first presents the positive characteristics ascribed to the child, and then characterizes the loss of childhood as something negative:

“He (Hyacinth, d. V.) was very good, but also whimsical beyond measure. (He, d. V.) spoke (...) always with animals and birds, with trees and rocks, of course not a sensible word, nothing but foolish stuff to make you laugh. "

When Hyacinth outgrew his childhood, he alienated himself from nature and his innocent love for rose blossoms. This change begins with his reading of the "little book (...) that no one could read". This disenchants his view of nature. Novalis equates the loss of childhood with an illness. When Hyacinth breaks out, Novalis makes him say:

"The strange old woman in the forest told me how I should get well, she threw the book into the fire."

The disease metaphor is taken up by Ende in the Neverending Story and describes the lack of a childish quality, the loss of imagination in the human world. This leads to the illness of the child empress and also leads to the illness in the "outer world". The healing takes place, in analogy to the fairy tale of hyacinth and rose blossom, through recourse to the childlike. Hyacinth goes the way back to the origin, to the childish naivety that it has lost, fantasies are saved by the imagination of a human child.

The fact that the ruler of Fantasy, as an allegory of fantasy, is also a child only underlines Ende's romantic view. Ende claims in the spirit of the romantics:

“Poetry is the creative ability of man to experience and recognize himself again and again in new ways in the world and the world within himself. That is why poetry is essentially 'anthropomorphic', or it ceases to be poetry. And for this very reason all poetry is related to the childlike. "

In the ninth chapter of Heinrich von Ofterdingen, the "Eternal Child" appears in an allegorical function, very similar to the Childlike Empress. In the Klingsohrsmärchen she embodies the fable. For Wilhelm Große and Ludger Grenzmann , the fable, derived from fabula (story, legend), is also an allegorical representation of poetry . In contrast to other characters, the Eternal Child does not develop and unites the past and the future in her figure.

Accordingly, the fable can easily solve the tasks set by the Sphinx:

"What are you looking for? Said the Sphinx. My property, replied Fabel. - Where are you from? - From old times. - You are still a child. - And I will be a child forever. - Who will stand by you? - I stand for myself. "

According to Wernsdorff, the little fable from Novalis' fairy tale should "remind mankind of its childhood". This also applies to the children's characters Momo and the childlike empress from Ende's novels. The dominance of the childlike is evoked in the poetic song of the fable:

“Awaken in your cells,
you children of old;
Leave your resting places,
the morning is not far. "

In the end, the “little fable” proves to be the savior of the Klingsohr fairy tale. At the same time it ushers in the golden age, the realm of poetry, because the fable spins "a golden, indissoluble thread" out of itself.

Ende's art concept thus follows Hoffmann's understanding of art. The viewer is relieved of his everyday world and taken into a fantasy world. Only in this way can man come so far that he "sees the divine, even comes into contact with it."

Purposelessness as an ideal

Bastian rejects books that are supposed to get you to something, that is , that have a certain, possibly educational, intention . In this way, Ende stands in opposition to Bertolt Brecht and the literature engagée that dominated until the 1980s . While this assumes that the society the awareness generated sees Michael Ende it the other way around. Only a new awareness creates social changes. Ende had a deep distrust of ideologies . In this way, Ende addresses one of the central points of his world of thought right from the start: Everything essential has a meaning in itself, including art. It does not explain the world, but represents it. Therefore it does not have to justify itself with a message. Breaking away from wanting - that is a basic principle of writing for Ende.

Ende always claimed that he was writing without a specific plan. The outcome of the story is not yet clear at the beginning, the adventure only develops while writing.

About working on his first book, Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver , he says:

“ I just let myself be led from one idea to another, quite unintentionally. So I discovered writing as an adventure. And when I finally wrote the last sentence, about ten months later, a thick manuscript lay in front of me. "

This is how Ende followed when writing the Neverending Story. He says here that when he and his protagonist Bastian embarked on the “long odyssey through fantasies”, he himself did not yet know where the exit into reality was.

“I had to accompany Bastian from station to station, and more than once I despaired that such an exit would even exist. But I kept saying to myself: Fantasy is not a trap! I trusted that the solution would show itself at the right moment, if I only honestly and consistently adhered to the rules of the game that I had set myself. "

The author sees the unintentional and purposeless ability embodied in the image of the tightrope walker.

“ He doesn't want to go anywhere; if he does, he does because he does. [...] But it is the principle of all art in the world, because art always has a meaning in itself and is of no use. "

In Michael Ende's eyes, the fact that art should be socially committed to justify it contradicts the essence of art. Real art for him is unintentional.

Art is always also play, whereby lack of intention represents the connection between art and play. The end is in the tradition of Friedrich Schiller , who says:

"People are only there [...] people where they play."

Games are played seriously, the child develops his own reality.

Contrary to what he was accused of in the escapism debate, Ende did not want to propagate world flight with his art concept. A beautiful work of art already represented an improvement in the world for him:

“ When I came out of a Van Gogh exhibition , I was able to see all the streets, the park, the faces of the people, as he did. This ability lasted a long time, and I can still awaken it anytime now. But what does that mean? Van Gogh had given me his ability to look, my experience. From then on I was richer by this essential experience. "

Art interacts with reality and creates its own reality.

The thought of lack of purpose appears again and again in the Neverending Story. So z. B. In the sixth chapter Atreyu only cross the key-free gate if he is free of any intention.

Ende was of the opinion that there are always several interpretations of a real work of art. If an interpretation is good, it is also correct:

“ But I think that if a story is true in itself, a model always emerges that works on many levels. The Neverending Story has been analyzed by psychoanalysts, philosophers, mythologists and even semantics. Each time it was noticed with astonishment that it was legible in this way as well as that and that it was consistent. "

The fact that The Neverending Story allows for a variety of possible, each coherent interpretations, was for Ende the result of the lack of intent that determined his work. The lack of intentions resulted in the various levels of meaning that could not be planned purely rationally:

“ A mobile cannot be planned - or only very vaguely. But in the end it has the beauty of a natural thing, it was created, not planned. Nobody can tell what it actually is, and yet it is full of magic, grace and life. Shouldn't all art be like this: revelation, manifestation of life, not just its depiction? Anyone who makes a plan kills this mysterious life, rapes it and thwarts his own 'intention'. Intention always destroys itself. "

Berger characterizes the lack of intent and will as a very essential element of magic. Only those who surrender themselves to it passively and completely will be able to penetrate the depths of magic. Magic and occultism would be made socially acceptable under the pretext of good intentions, selfless deeds. However, he suppresses the fact that the concepts of lack of purpose and passivity do not originally come from occultism and magical systems, but from Far Eastern beliefs such as Buddhism .

Just as Far Eastern meditation wants to mobilize healing powers in one's own body by freeing oneself from consciousness and will, art is also supposed to heal, but not by “trying to get its readers to do something”, but by taking a new look at reality opened.

Michael Ende, on the other hand, calls deliberate fictions lies, precisely those inhabitants of phantasy who have fallen into nowhere. A mere story like the one a novel tells is not deliberate. She has no goal, she does not want to convert, proselytize or induce any action to take place. The lie, however, has an invented content that has precisely this intention: to manipulate people .

Another story to be told another time

But that is a different story and should be told another time is a sentence that recurs in the Neverending Story. He emphasizes that a story basically never ends, even if it ends, because new stories can always grow out of it. This thought plays an important role towards the end of the book.

Chapter XXVI says:

“'The waters ask you,' announced Fuchur, 'whether you have also completed all the stories you started in Fantasia.' […] 'But there are innumerable stories,' cried Bastian, 'and new ones always come out of each one. Nobody can take on such a task. '"

But it also contradicts Bastian's assumption that he has to say goodbye to characters he has grown fond of when he has finished reading a book.

Introduction:

"Who has never shed bitter tears openly or in secret because a wonderful story came to an end and you had to say goodbye to the characters you loved and admired, for whom you feared and hoped for, and without their company life seemed empty and meaningless ... "

After all, through his own imagination, he is able to continue writing the story if he so wishes. In this respect, every story is actually a never-ending story.

Chapter XXVI, Coreander to Bastian:

"Every real story is a neverending story."

In letters to readers, Michael Ende repeatedly emphasizes that his main aim is to encourage people to think further for themselves. He made it clear to children, in particular, that he didn't want to “get anything” for them. He doesn't explain to them everything he thought about the book so that they use their own imagination.

This claim is crystallized in the famous sentence that appears a dozen times in the Neverending Story. For Michael Ende, readers and books belong together. Every reader brings himself and his experiences into a book and thus creatively shapes his own reading experience. Preserving this freedom of the reader was a concern of Michael Ende. Therefore he was open to all interpretations of his books, even if he hadn't thought of this possibility himself. Every good interpretation is also correct.

“This sentence had its origin in a strange incident. Michael Ende had to shorten the first version of his manuscript on the Neverending Story. Many chapters fell victim to the red pen. I wanted to end with the sentence: 'But this is a different story and should be told another time', to remind people that there was once a completely different story at the relevant points. In fact, Michael Ende also meant the sentence as an invitation: After the novel was a great success, he received mail from readers in a basket. Many young readers wanted to know when he would tell the stories that he would tell another time. They all got the same answer: every reader should think of a possible sequel. Only in this way would his Neverending Story become a truly neverending story. Fantasies are nothing else than the inner world of people, and this is infinitely wide and grows with every new story, with every new dream, maybe even with every new thought. Times change and the world with them. I think every culture, every generation has to reinvent its special fantasies. Michael Ende says: 'Every generation has to bring the realm of the imagination to new bloom, since all ideas of the world, even our values, arise there.' For me as well as for the authors, that was a challenge that we wanted to face. After all, our time lacks meaningful ideas about what the world in which we like to live should be. "

“I'm not interested in teaching the reader. I want the reader to experience something while reading. I tried to present my conception of literature and art within the story, e.g. B. in conversation with Gmork and Atreyu or in conversation between Atreyu and the Childlike Empress. "

“The refrain comes up again and again: 'But that's a different story and should be told another time ...' My wish was actually that the reader should now continue himself. When writing a book, you always have threads that are straight and cross, and the threads that stay open, that are deliberately kept open, are actually supposed to get the reader to continue dreaming about the story, and then threads will stay open again and someone else will continue until finally hundreds of thousands tell a single great story, as it used to be. It started like this from the Arabian Nights to the medieval legends: Everyone continued to tell where the other left off, and that resulted in a great common story. "

Bastian's development and maturation process

"Warning to all sorcerers' apprentices Turning

a prince into a frog is nothing special and is relatively easy. Any bad-tempered department head can do it every day. But turning a frog into a prince requires great art or strength - or love. "

The neverending story as an educational fairy tale

“The neverending story is about Bastian's inner development. He must first learn to confront his problems. He flees, but his flight is necessary because it transforms him, it gives him a new self-confidence that enables him to attack the world. The story also ends with him crossing these first two thresholds of fear, the one towards his father, the one towards the Korander and that's that. How it goes on is a different story and really ought to be told another time. This is an education novel in the old sense, an inner development is being described here, and that has nothing to do with questions of industrial society, technology and all that. These questions only appear as pictorial components in fantasies because they are present in each of us. However, no solution at all from a social point of view should be offered, precisely because Bastian is about his very own individual odyssey. "

Ende's protagonist Bastian turns against books in which one is supposed to “get something”, against books that have an educational purpose. This goes hand in hand with Ende's understanding of literature, who prefers to encourage the reader to use his own imagination to think for himself. Nevertheless, The Neverending Story allows an interpretation in a pedagogical sense and shows clear parallels to the research subject of pedagogy and the literature dealing with it. Even if the End with the Neverending Story had no educational purpose, it could still have educational effects.

The traditional standpoint of philosophical pedagogy can be summarized as follows: “The essence of man as his destiny is at the same time the real purpose of education , i. H. the education . "

According to Wilfried Kuckartz, the Neverending Story is an "educational fairy tale". In analogy to the Bildungsroman , Kuckartz understands it to be the development and maturation story of a young person, told by a life-experienced or even age-wise author, whereby autobiographical elements may very well have flowed in, in order to pay off the fruit of one's own spiritual existence and maturity in the image and symbol, so to speak to pass on to everyone who wants to try the bullet of knowledge so that he can find the “true meaning of life”, his very own life, as he exemplifies it, d. H. was exemplified in the role model of history.

While the Bildungsroman in the narrower sense only in the 18th / 19th Created in the 19th century, Kuckartz names other works of world literature that fulfill a similar function, but by no means merge in their educational intent or educational effect. He names the Gilgamesh epic , the Bhagavadgita , Homer's Odyssey , the stories of the Old and New Testaments , the Edda , the legendary circle about King Arthur , the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach , Dante's Divine Comedy , Cervantes Don Quixote , Shakespeare's Hamlet , Macbeth and King Lear , Mozart's Magic Flute , Goethe's Faust , Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen , Nietzsche's Also Spoke Zarathustra , Hofmannsthal's wife without a shadow or the husband's Joseph and his brothers . All of these works are something different and greater, which symbolize eternal human life and human fate, in archetypal images and symbols, which nonetheless also have an exemplary and educational character. According to Kuckartz, these stories ultimately represent an initiation event. They are stories of a mysterious process of change, as it originally took place in the mystery cults . There man was initiated into death , the transformation of all the changes in his life. He did not learn intellectually, but in the form of an existential experience that gave him the certainty of overcoming death and was therefore able to change his entire life.

Through this learning process man should find the meaning of life , he should become an educated person and be sent into his true human being. In the ancient mysteries, the way inward regularly led to the succession of a god, depending on the culture, Isis or Osiris , Demeter or Dionysus , Cybele or Mithras . This causes a changed attitude towards life, especially in the face of death and its lived, experienced nothingness and overcoming. Man has been transformed from “natural” to “spiritual” or “spiritual” man. The crucifixion of Christ , his death and his resurrection , which lead to the Imitatio Christi , are an example of a doctrine of initiation which is still widespread in the present and which aims to consider the eternal in the temporal, the infinite in the finite.

Kuckartz is convinced that the "immortal works of art, visual art, music and poetry" pursued the same goal. They reminded incessantly and relentlessly of this life goal of every person and help him in their own way to realize it. The true meaning of the true incarnation in the occidental sense is education, self-realization , self- education in the sense of the expression of one's very own personality or individuality . This in turn is made possible by the equally typical occidental self-knowledge . Accordingly, Carl Gustav Jung understood the image to be individuation , i.e. self-realization.

According to Kuckartz, numerous fairy tales also contain educational stories, i.e. stories of initiation or individuation, in which the truth about the inner, mental development and maturation of the human being is told in images and symbols. Not only the Jungian direction of fairy tale interpretation had come to this conclusion, but every psychological interpretation of fairy tales. All pictures in the fairy tale are symbols that primarily indicate processes in the unconscious soul. Fairy tales are consequently picture stories, a series of imaginative images hardly interrupted by reflection , which correspond to an assigned sequence of impressions, moods and feelings in the receptive, especially in the child's mind. The meaning of the feelings expressed through them resides in the images. Fairy tales are the unconscious expression of human instincts and feelings , according to Jung, next to dreams, the simplest manifestation of human nature, which Jung called the collective unconscious .

Consequently, the most elementary fairy tale motifs, including the basic mythological motifs, are to be understood as structural elements of the human soul. Jung calls them archetypes . The basic psychological structure of the human being is projected outward in fairy tales, myths and great poetry. By studying these works one can learn something about the imperishable nature of man. Father and mother, king and queen, hunter and fisherman, soldier and shoemaker, they are all to be understood as psychological and spiritual forces, as symbols for a psychological and spiritual reality. All products of unconscious phantasy activity, from the individual dream to Goethe's Faust, are representations of psychic processes, largely withdrawn from the consciousness of the individual, in symbolic form, through whose understanding man can hope to learn something about his innermost nature, his real being. The archetypal knowledge is a knowledge valid for humanity.

Wherever the fairy tale speaks ostensibly of people, it always means "entities". Everything concrete is always to be taken general and symbolic. One could only be instructed in this symbolic language or not at all about these psychic beings, who impose an idealistic belief in the spirit. The vivid images are symbols that make you think. With them psychic, spiritual processes beyond consciousness would be appropriately expressed. Like any poetry, the fairy tale is able to represent the reality of its idea and to transfigure it in its highest possible way.

The visual language of the fairy tale can be compared with dream images, which, according to Jungian depth psychology, have the “complementary-compensatory character of the unconscious”. As a result, in the dream in the daytime experiences ignored, in some way missed, not exhausted, suppressed, possibly repressed instinctual impulses, developmental impulses, that is, psychological possibilities to speak, which supplement the consciously wanted and done by the part that is not in them has been taken into account. It is a question of the unconscious but possible life of a person that obsessively determines his entire conscious behavior. Due to the importance of the collective unconscious as an expression of general human nature, the totality of human possibilities, it becomes a message that tends to compensate for any one-sidedness of consciousness, which is necessary and inalienable and has a corrective, wholesome and healing effect.

The concrete shape of a fairy tale depends on the shape of the consciousness, since the unconscious is the component of the human mind, which the consciousness compensates and complements the completeness of the human being. The fairy tale, understood as a symbolic expression of the collective human being, should therefore be understood as a message from the unconscious, which, like the dream should compensate for the one-sidedness of the individual, counteract certain one-sidedness of the collective development of consciousness, should restore a balance that is lost go threaten. Fairy tales therefore offer a picture of the complete human being, its wholeness. The fairy tale appears as an attempt by the unconscious to create a form of the unconscious that balances out the one-sidedness of the conscious self, that has a compensatory effect and seeks to restore the wholeness that is threatening to be lost.

In this sense, Kuckartz also understands Michael Ende's The Neverending Story . He sees the entire sequence of her main character's imaginations as obvious and seamlessly constellated by a certain, seemingly hopeless consciousness and life situation of the protagonist. The latter succeeded in solving his problems through the compensatory, healing productions of his unconscious, called on the scene. He is led cautiously but decisively to compensate for all his one-sidednesses on their surely drawn trail. In the end, he thereby attains maturity, education in the sense of his self-realization, which is made possible by previous self-knowledge.

The task of the fairy tale hero is to represent the correct relationship between me and self . An I that functions as wholeness, the self, requires. The hero has to restore the disturbed order. It embodies the needs of the transited life, which would have to be taken into account for the good of the conscious ego if it were not to perish due to its one-sidedness. The hero symbolizes the right attitude towards the self, which represents the wholeness. He anticipates the intended fate of a future wholeness. It functions as a model for an attitude that seeks to compensate for overcoming an emergency situation into which the ego got into because of its inherently necessary limitation. In short, the fairy tale hero represents a role model that helps those who identify with him in admiration to do what is complete and healing again in his own way, guided by the hidden signals of the unconscious, humbly and obediently following them, to be found again and restore what was in danger of being lost: human wholeness.

Thanks to its structure as a “book within a book”, The Neverending Story fulfills this function in two ways. Just as Atréju, as a figure of identification for Bastian, leads him on the path to his personal development and accompanies his maturation process to the end, Bastian becomes a figure of identification for the reader who holds Ende's book in their hands. As Coreander emphasizes, Bastian's job is to use what he has learned in fantasies to make both worlds healthy, fantasies, the inner world, as well as the outer world in which people live.

The neverending story as a stupid fairy tale

Kurckartz understands the Neverending Story as a "dummies' fairy tale". The Dummling is often the youngest of three brothers, and occasionally an only child. His environment judges him as "tumb". He is not just stupid or idiotic, but naive and subdued, unadjusted, still unconscious of himself and his special talent. The stupid therefore still carries something of the original chaos, he looks unfinished, awkward, offensive. Its hour comes when the world changes, when the king gets old or sick or impotent or another emergency arises in which the adapted behaviors of everyone else inevitably fail and a new solution for the new problems must be devised, an innovation such as it is called today. This solution is then brought about by properties that have hitherto remained in the dark and sidelined, and which had previously been unanimously despised. These properties suddenly turn out to be unused possibilities, the realization of which will restore order. But for this purpose the stupid must first prove what he is made of, must endure dangers and trials and show himself as savior and savior.

As a rule, the stupid stands out through symbolic qualities that are considered feminine, closeness to nature or warm-heartedness, and thereby distinguishes himself from male values such as ratio or will to power. He helps people or animals in need without asking about the benefit for themselves, and then realizes that they turn out to be superhuman powers, who in their gratitude also assist the stupid in solving his problems. They are thus a symbol of the previously unused forces of his own inner being. The stupid does what no so-called sensible person would do if he was asked to, but the strange external requirement proves in retrospect to be the realization of his innermost being.

“ The stupid has to endure the journeys and adventures of the soul, he has to start his hike in search of where he has to find what everyone is missing, but what he could possibly hide from himself, ie. H. unconsciously, carried within and brought out of oneself through hard effort and brought to light, thus realizing oneself, d. H. who becomes who he is. In the end he redeemed the princess and united himself with her and reigned for a long time in wisdom, i. H. a new attitude towards the world as a whole, which is superior to the old one or which has supplemented its one-sidedness, has come to dominate until it too becomes old and is replaced again: the king, the ruling consciousness, must be constantly renewed. "

Dummies' fairy tales can be found frequently, but especially in the fairy tale collection of the Brothers Grimm , Grimm's fairy tales .

Stupid fairy tale near Grimm: KHM 33 The three languages , KHM 54 The satchel, the hat and the horn , KHM 57 The golden bird , KHM 62 The queen bee , KHM 63 The three feathers , KHM 64 The golden goose , KHM 97 The water of life , KHM 106 The poor miller's boy and the kitten , KHM 165 The Griffin , KHM 54a Hans Dumm , KHM 64a The white dove .

Its counterpart in world literature you will find Wolfram von Eschenbach in Parzival .

The hero or anti-hero of the Neverending Story is also someone who has apparently fallen short of, in whom there are far more possibilities and values than his normal environment has been able to get out of him up to now. This is not due to a failure of the protagonist, but rather to the fact that his environment prefers other qualities than Bastian has to show them. Only when the reality of old age gets into an all-threatening emergency, Bastian learns to see that he himself is the panacea , the panacea . Those of his qualities, in whose value he had not previously believed because they had not been recognized or challenged by his environment, especially his talent for imagination, prove to be the key to solving the apparently insoluble problem. This realization enables Bastian to discover further abilities in himself that he would not have thought possible in himself because he could not believe in himself: courage, determination, perseverance and other inner strengths, but above all his ability to love, the yes to oneself.

Imitation of fairy tale elements

Schnöbel compares the Neverending Story with the art fairy tale , but comes to the conclusion that the novel does have a whole series of fairy tale elements that come from very different genres of fairy tales, but that these were often only superficially imitated or recreated without having a solid foundation , and have undergone a fundamental change in function. What is apparently fairytale is often based on traits uncharacteristic of fairy tales. Overall, the neverending story is based only to a limited extent on the genre model, the folk tale . Schnöbel sees the most important reason for this in the fact that Michael Ende replaced the secret of the world, which was once contained in myth and found an aesthetic expression in fairy tales, with the secret of the self. Ende changed the salary while keeping the fairytale-like shell.

Similar turns have taken place in science fiction literature. They are to be seen in the context of a postmodern crisis of meaning. The world has become more explainable and controllable through the natural sciences, but it has by no means made more sense. The resulting search for meaning has brought about the subject of “inner space” in science fiction literature. At the end it leads to a mythologization of the ego. But this motif can also be found in feminist-mythological music texts, for example when Juliane Werding asks her listeners as part of her album: "Mystify your life!"

Against this background, the fairy tale elements only have a serving function; From a poetic perspective, they are functionally subordinate to other, non-fairytale aspects. Nevertheless, they are eminently important for the representation of the plot and the formation of the intention and to a large extent responsible for the success of the book.

According to Ostmeier, the conventionally narrative fairy tale structures and other typical “moves” and “functions of the dramatis personae” demonstrated by Vladimir Propp for the morphology of the folk tale shift the traditional conflict between good and bad to the conflict between true and false or seeing and delusion. Instead of rising socially as in the classic fairy tale, Bastian gains insight into the spectacular power of the imagination and its limits.

First of all, Bastian has to give the Child Empress a new name in order to rearrange her country, to save it from disease, devastation and destruction. Then he has to find his “true will” in order to free his everyday reality from deceit and lies. This double task, which challenges Bastian's poetic and psychological skills, ultimately turns out to be the key to his happiness.

“What fairy tales tell about
The real fairy tales are not just any miracle stories that the 'ignorant and superstitious people' made up in earlier times. The people do not invent such things, but they pass them down verbatim from generation to generation because they sense the truth that is in them. The real fairy tales and experience reports from another (let's say: inner) world of reality, communicated by anonymous authors who knew exactly what they were saying down to the last detail. Since modern western man, because of his conceptual way of thinking, has almost completely lost the experience of this other reality, he interprets these reports either historically (the witch, the prince, the dragon, the magic sword, etc.) - if he takes note of fairy tales at all. ) or psychological. I consider both to be wrong or at least inadequate.
The fairy tale does not speak of an external social world, and if it uses elements from it, then only as a metaphor for that other reality. There you will find the witch, the prince, the dragon and the magic sword - and always will be. I consider the psychological interpretation to be inadequate insofar as it usually only understands all these things symbolically. She assumes, so to speak, that the fairy tale picture is the improper, which one has to transform into the real, namely into 'concrete' terms, through interpretation, in order to get to the core of the matter. One proceeds similarly in dream interpretation. This introduces a causal logic, which has a certain justification for the 'external' reality, into that other reality, in which completely different rules and laws apply. Even the question of cruelty, in general the question of good and bad, cannot be reconciled there with the moral concepts that apply in the 'outer' world.
So is there no longer any way for us to understand fairy tales?
I think so. In every person there is originally the possibility of experiencing this other world of reality. There you can then ask your questions and experience your exams. Of course, this assumes that access to it is not blocked by any means, but that knowledge about it is cultivated and taught from an early age. But that would just mean that the whole line of thought of our civilization, which is only directed outwards, is changing.
Perhaps in the future there will be schools where you can learn to dream properly. "

Bastian's initial situation

" Bastian is not [...] just a boy who lacks a bit of self-confidence and who is therefore easy to intimidate. Bastian is a child who cannot find his way in a banal, cold, only rational world because he longs for poetry, for the mysterious, for the wonderful. The death of his mother and the father's being frozen in pain bring this helplessness towards life to a decisive crisis, just reading the Neverending Story - the question of the meaning of his life, his world. In this world everything seems meaningless. Everything has meaning in Fantasia. Without giving meaning to his life and the death of his mother, Bastian cannot exist. That is the reason why he comes into a sinking fantasy. The creeping nothing that eats up fantasies is the banality, the insignificance of the world. "

Ende in the Neverending Story shows how meaningful he thinks names are. It is they who give a being or an object its meaning. Of all things, this does not seem to apply to the name of the protagonist. "Bastian Balthasar" appears to Kuckartz as an "unusual, awkward, baroque double name", "Bux" as a "common surname". And the name as such seems strange with its alliteration , with “these three B's”, as the second-hand bookshop owner Coreander says, whose shop Bastian enters at the beginning of the story. In the following, Kuckartz tries to prove that Ende did not take the name of his hero or antihero very seriously, but wrote here with the ironic wink of a modern fairy teller, who by no means negates the serious claims of the narrated, but makes it possible in the first place.

At this point, Kuckartz is wrong, because for Ende The Neverending Story was meant not only seriously, but also deadly serious. "If it doesn't sound like an exaggeration, I would say: I fought for my life with the book in part", is how Ende describes his examination of the material that is extremely important to him. If one looks at Ende's remarks about a child who threatens to fail in a banal, meaningless world, one recognizes Ende's actual intention in the naming: A protagonist who leads an apparently unimportant life in a seemingly banal world needs in a context in which every name is of decisive importance, of course also a banal-insignificant name.

As Kuckartz rightly states, however, Bastian has far more abilities from the start than he ascribes to himself. This includes a “certain cunning” as well as “developable bravery”. Bastian has nothing else to learn than anyone: namely, to stand by yourself and to come to terms with your being and also with its limits and weaknesses.

Bastian is introduced as an outsider who has all the traits of an antihero, a figure who arouses pity. In the conversation with Mr. Koreander, Bastian's physical, psychological, family and social situation emerges. Bastian is described from the end with attributes that are considered negatively in Western society; Above all, Bastian's self-assessment is mostly negative. He is fat and pale, fearful, a weakling, a sedentary who is teased and tormented by his classmates, a failure in sports and gymnastics, which at his age can easily amount to a death sentence among boys. “A failure all along the line,” as Coreander sums it up.

Bastian later remembers that he used to hang on the gymnastics rope like a sack of flour, a mockery for teachers and students. He is despised by everyone and in the end has learned to despise himself as well. In addition, his mother has died and his father, who is still disturbed and frozen by it, seems absent-minded, empty and dead inside. Nobody really cares about Bastian, he is “nobody's son”.

Bastian is ready to flee from his classmates, from Coreaners, from his father, from the caretaker of the school, from the whole world, especially from himself. He is willing to escape the loveless world in which he felt superfluous and finds no suitable place to turn his back forever. At first he doesn't have a concrete idea of how to do it. Surviving in the school attic, to which he takes refuge, seems impossible in the long run, but Bastian also rules out a return to his familiar surroundings. The possible way out of this dilemma, suicide , is discreetly indicated by the end, but remains vague.

Bastian lacks affection, recognition and self-confidence. He fails because he has no confidence and he has no confidence because he fails. He can only break this vicious circle by starting to believe in himself. But that is difficult for him as long as others only meet him with rejection. The example of Mr. Koreander makes it clear that this rejection happens to him for no reasons that lie in his own person. Coreander's assumptions about why Bastian is on the run turn out to be false, as they are based solely on prejudice. That these are the same prejudices that Bastian encounters again and again in his everyday life becomes clear when a Coreander begins to talk about children. He meets them with suspicion, if not even rejection, but it is not so much the individual, individual child that he rejects, but rather being a child as such and the values associated with it.

In addition, Coreander does not understand that his own name has the same oddity that he criticizes Bastian's name. In truth, the two have a lot in common. A first name that begins as an alliteration of three identical letters, but also a passion for books. At this point there is already a clear appeal for altruism and against xenophobia ; Ende makes it clear that people who reject each other because the other is a stranger are often not that different at all. Bastian's problems are - as will be shown later - interrelated and form a single conglomerate.

Bastian's conversation with Coreander appears to be a first test in which he does far better than his self-assessment corresponds, which he ultimately fails. Because in order to pass it, he would have to persuade Coreander to sell him the book that he regards as the book of books: The Neverending Story . But Bastian fails at this task because he does not manage to dissuade Coreander from his contempt for children (and thus for the child as a significant value). Coreander signals a growing interest in Bastian, but Bastian cannot transform this into a changed basic attitude, because in order to achieve that he would have to counter Coreander's prejudices with his own self-confidence. But that is exactly what he is not yet able to do at this point, because he lacks the self-confidence that alone gives him the ability to change things for the better. It is consistent that Bastian and Coreander only become friends at the moment when Bastian returns from Fantastica changed and can make the old bookseller understand the many similarities that both have - and is surprised to discover that their greatest commonality is that Coreander was also once a fantasy traveler, even if in the course of his life he seems to have forgotten much of what he learned in Fantasy. But that is exactly the reason why Bastian had to travel to Fantastica: to give the Childlike Empress a new name, to renew what is in danger of being forgotten.

Already on these first pages of the book it becomes clear that Bastian's negative self-assessment does not do justice to his real character. He believes he is despondent and indecisive and unable to defend himself. But he finds the courage to contradict Coreaners when he expresses his prejudices, and with just a few words he succeeds in getting the bookseller to think and to earn his respect a little. In addition, his failure at school obviously does not result from a lack of intelligence or knowledge, as Bastian is very interested in books and can grasp their content correctly. The theft of the book is also a sign of his determination. Coreander made it clear to him that he would not sell Bastian a single book, and that he would certainly not sell him this one, which is important to him. Many others would have done without the book, but Bastian got it. He is a person who makes his desires come true; this, too, is a motif that soon plays a role again in the further course of the story.

Obviously there is potential dormant in Bastian that has just not yet been awakened. This is particularly evident when his greatest quality is brought up, his imagination, the ability to make up stories, invent names and words. A gift that can not only change one's own life for the better, but will ultimately prove to be a cure and salvation for the entire world. But at first it is neither recognized nor recognized as a gift by Bastian himself or by those around him. Bastian's classmates ridicule him as a weirdo, moon calf , boor or swindler. They refuse to let the boy use his imagination. Bastian only gradually realizes their worth and finds the courage to accept his ability as something positive.

By being introduced as an outsider, Bastian can, as an antihero, reflect the hostility to fantasy of his environment, because he negates his abilities simply because they do not fit into the prevailing norms. The protagonist is thus already in the beginning designed to express criticism of the “enlightened” rationality that end personalizes in his schoolmates. The 500 best phantasy doctors cannot cure the childlike empress with their science, but Bastian with his imagination and his ability to give names can.

The fact that the attitude of the other Bastian forces him to talk to himself closes the vicious circle between objective isolation and the flight into made-up stories. The stories become a place of refuge because Bastian is not allowed to get involved in a communication community, let alone that he would be recognized by her.

After stealing the book, Bastian withdraws from the noisy everyday life to a quiet corner, the forgotten memory of his school. It is a retreat into solitude. This is the essential prerequisite for every self- reflection , the introversion . It forms the gate of the way inwards and of every initiation , namely for everyone who needs such a reflection and a change in his life because he can no longer cope in the outer world and with himself.

Against this background, it seems only logical that the first being Bastian encounters when he begins his reading experience with the Neverending Story, his journey to Fantasy, is, of all things, a will-o'-the-wisp. Wisps are small, ghostly, flame-like beings that often appear in literature, for example in Goethe's Faust . Usually they live in the marshland and make other living things go astray, get lost, sink into the swamp. Different in the Neverending Story. Here the will-o'-the-wisp itself got lost, but it does its part to lead the lost Bastian on his life path. An indication that things do not have to be as they seem, and also that not every prejudice corresponds to reality. This statement can also be found in the picture of the "racing snail". If one normally associates a creeping, slow life form with snails, it is an extremely fast mount that is able to bring its owner quickly to the goal.

With his description of the four ambassadors, Ende resolutely counteracts xenophobia and prejudice. Although they come from peoples who normally mistrust each other, they follow a common mission here and later become companions, if not friends. As in the encounter between Bastian and Coreander, Ende gives the hint that differences do not have to be a reason to reject the other person. Once you get to know each other better, you often find more similarities than dividing factors. Appearances in particular do not play a significant role. The four parliamentarians are as different in shape as living beings can be. And yet they are on the same topic and have similar ideas, goals and desires.

“Chapter 1: During the long waiting period, the four unequal messengers became close friends and stayed together later. "

Bastian, too, is later forced to realize that his outward appearance has no significant influence on whether he is a good or a bad person.

The description that the tiny man is the first to arrive at the ivory tower gives, like so many other things, an indication of Bastian's own situation. Bastian believes he is defenseless because he is small and overweight, but it is precisely the tiny little guy with his snail that the others didn't give him a chance to emerge as the clear winner in the “race” of the four ambassadors. With this, too, the end indicates that outward appearances are not decisive. Rather, it is important to believe in yourself and your own abilities if your own venture is to succeed.

Entry to Fantasia

Coreander's second-hand bookshop, whose name is mirror-inverted in Neverending Story, characterizes Bastian's entry into the realm of fantasy. Everything that appears to be the right way around in the outside world is mirrored in Koreander's strange shop and thus vice versa. In the shop as in the book, unlike in the compact world of work, politics and a gray everyday life, the supposed unreality of the mind and the imagination in the form of countless most tempting, mysterious books for the receptive prevails. In this way, the antiquarian bookshop itself becomes a first gateway to the other world of fantasy, which, viewed from everyday reality, is a perverted, unreal, vain world that turns the situation on its head. In the end, however, the true conditions in the end will be restored.

When Bastian takes the book The Neverending Story for himself, he believes he is committing a theft, taking something that does not belong to him, what does not belong to him. But Bastian is wrong about that. Coreander will explain to him later that the book is made of the stuff dreams are made of. It must have come from Fantasy itself. As a result, Bastian could not have stolen it under any circumstances. He himself does not miss any such book. The logic of the narrative does not allow any other conclusion. Fantasy is Bastian's inner world and the book is part of her. By taking the book, Bastian just begins to grasp what already belongs to him, what is inseparable from him.

Questions remain unanswered for the reader, questions that Ende deliberately leaves unanswered. Did Bastian also just invent the existence of the book and its theft? Here one more central question of the book arises: How real is the fiction?

" Because the way Ende tells his fairy tale, you can sometimes get dizzy and waver and get confused about what is reality and what is fantasy or dream, or you have to ask yourself what that actually is, reality: why then a book can appear in itself and its reader can finally slip into its story in person. "

Ende avoids the cheap trick of dismissing the Neverending Story as a dream situation. If at the end of the story he declared that Bastian had only dreamed everything, the rationalist could lean back and relax in every reader and dismiss what he had read as meaningless for his everyday reality, and see it as childish and a pipe dream. He could return to the serious realities of business and affairs. But it is precisely this way out that Ende does not want to leave the reader with. The inner world is just as real as the outer world, a reversal and reorientation away from the material world towards new, spiritual values seems inevitable.

Atreyu as Bastian's alter ego

Like so many other characters in the Neverending Story, Atreyu corresponds to a well-known archetype of literature, in this case the Indian as the noble savage. It is no coincidence that Atreyu is reminiscent of Karl May's famous character Winnetou ; both environments are described similarly. It is also based on Fritz Steuben's “ Tecumseh ”. Atreyu lives on a kind of prairie , the “Grassy Sea”; where Winnetou is a redskin, Atréjus people are called "The Greenskins". It leads a natural, frugal, strict and hard life; the men sometimes wear their hair in plaits. As soon as the reader recognizes the parallels, he begins to interpret the figure in this sense. This makes it easier for him to access, because both characters are actually assigned roughly the same properties. Like Winnetou, Atreyu is agile, courageous, determined to do everything, noble and persistent. Attréju also bears traits of the medieval Parzival , and like this one he has to go on a “great search”, a quest or hero's journey .

In what follows, Atreyu becomes Bastian's guide and companion in the realm of the imagination. As he will find out later, he is doing exactly the job that the Childlike Empress has determined for him. And which he fills out to the end of the novel without ever changing his function in this regard.

Atreyu is a little boy, about Bastian's age. Like Bastian, Atreyu lost his parents at a young age; both were killed by the buffalo shortly after Atreyu was born.

This is where the similarities between Bastian and Atreyu seem to end, who in everything seems to be the exact opposite of Bastian. While Bastian, whom nobody cares about, sees himself as “nobody's son”, Atreyu has never been lonely despite the death of his parents because his entire tribe, all men and all women, raised him together. In the Great Language spoken by his people, Atreyu means "The Son of All".

Bastian is fat, pale and unsportsmanlike, while Atreyu is slim, green-skinned and well-trained. Bastian is not accepted into human society, Atreyu is already on the decisive hunt that is supposed to make him a hunter, a man who is a full member of the community of his people.

Bastian appears anxious and indecisive, while Atreyu is full of resolve and without fear. Ende took its name from the Greek, derived from atreus, fearless. He shares his name with King Atreus of Mycenae , with Paul Atreides, the messiah figure from Frank Herbert's series of novels " The Desert Planet ".

A parallel between Bastian and Atréju appears to result from the fact that Atréju's environment, namely the black centaur Caíron, who brings Atréju in the name of the infantile empress of AURYN, doubts whether a little boy of his age is up to the great search for which the Golden-eyed mistress of wishes sends him. Unlike Bastian, Atreyu does not let the doubt unsettle him for a moment. He realizes the importance of the task the Childlike Empress has assigned him and does not hesitate for a moment to face it. This earns Caíron's respect, and the Black Centaur realizes that the Childlike Empress made the right choice.

The black centaur Caíron takes on the role of Atreyu that Coreander has on Bastian. Coreander's description is similar to that of a fairytale magician, as it often appears in fantastic stories in order to bring the hero into contact with his task. Coreander also has this function. The archetype of the wise old man who familiarizes his young protégé with his task and sends him on a journey. But while Bastian fails to convince Coreander of his worth and has to start his journey without Coreander's blessing and against his will, Atreyu leaves his mentor knowing that he believes in him and that the Great Search can be successful.

Like Bastian, Atreyu is about to receive an initiation. When Caíron arrives, he is on the hunt, which is supposed to make him a hunter, a fully fledged part of the community of men of his tribe. Even in the early days of cave painting , hunting , spirituality and art formed an inseparable unit, some of which has been preserved to this day. Literature, painting, poetry and music have always dealt intensively with the hunt. The spiritual tribal hunter is a familiar, recurring image. Caíron's arrival interrupts the initiation just before it comes to its successful conclusion. Atreyu had already created the arrow with which he wanted to kill the purple buffalo when he was called by Caíron or the Childlike Empress. At this point, too, Atreyu apparently differs from Bastian. While the latter does not recognize and does not seize the opportunities that his abilities offer him, Atreyu quickly understands that he has the opportunity to become part of something much bigger. If the killing of the purple buffalo had been just a simple hunt like so many others, the “Great Quest” has all the characteristics of a “Higher Hunt”, a spiritual journey as described in esotericism and literature, for example in the song “Cernunnos” Group Faun Because Atreyu spares the purple buffalo, the latter can help him later and shows him his way in a dream. As is often the case in such stories, Atréjus moderation is rewarded by a higher power. By sparing the buffalo and treading new paths, Atreyu distances himself from the values of his people; he has to leave this people and go new ways of his own. This enables him to develop new values for himself - the creation of a new world of values, as was a concern in the end. Atreyu embarks on a spiritual journey which, as so often, leads to success in a completely different way than the one that is obvious.

It is part of a good reading experience that there is a character who leads the reader through the plot, a character in a novel with whose fate the reader can identify and in which he reflects the significance of the story for his own life. For Bastian, who likes Indian stories, especially those of Karl May, Atreju is the perfect figure to identify with, because he experiences exactly the adventures that Bastian likes to read about in stories.

But Atreyu is much more to Bastian than just such a figure of identification. In the Neverending Story, Attréju is assigned all the qualities that Bastian sorely misses in himself. This quickly turns him into Bastian 's ideal or wishful ego .

Bastian is painfully aware of the enormous distance that separates him from Atreyu. This is how his crossed legs fall asleep: He wasn't an Indian. The description of how Bastian hangs like a chuckling sack of flour on the climbing rope and is mocked by students and teachers, mainly works out the differences between Bastian and Atreyu.

Bastian is desperately looking for similarities between himself and Atreyu.

“ Nonetheless, Bastian was pleased that he had something in common with Atreyu in this way, because otherwise he was unfortunately not very similar to him, neither in terms of his courage and determination nor his figure. And yet he too, Bastian, was on a Great Search, which he did not know where it would lead him to or how it would end. "

“ Bastian would have given a lot to be like Atreyu, then he would have shown them all. "

Bastian also tries to behave like Atreyu, even if for the time being he only succeeds in imitating him in a rather silly and ridiculous-looking way, since Bastian's external behavior is not supported by a corresponding inner attitude.

“ 'Hoi!' he shouted, 'run, Artax, hoi! hoi! ' […] A little ashamed, he climbed down from the gymnastic goat. Indeed, he was acting like a little child! "

“ When he got hungry, the boy ate a piece of dried buffalo meat and two small flatbreads made from grass seeds that he had kept in a sack on the saddle - actually for his hunt. // ,So what!' said Bastian, 'every now and then people just have to eat something.' He took the sandwich out of the briefcase, unpacked it, carefully broke it into two pieces, wrapped one up again and put it away. He ate the other. "

“ Bastian was also hungry, and he was cold, despite the military blankets hung around his neck. Suddenly he became discouraged, and his whole plan seemed completely insane and pointless. He wanted to go home right now, on the spot! […] 'No' he suddenly said out loud into the silence of the attic, 'Atreyu wouldn't give up so easily just because it was going to be a little difficult. I have to finish what I've started. Now I've gone too far to turn back. I can only go on whatever comes of it. ' He felt very lonely, and yet there was something like pride in that feeling. Proud that he was strong and not giving in to temptation. He probably had a very small resemblance to Atreyu! "

It is precisely at this point in the book that Bastian's “old self” and his incipient inner change meet. Although Bastian shows something like stamina for the first time, which was not his own before, it is actually only the flight from his own problems that he maintains while Atreyu takes on his tasks. His apparent commonality with Atreyu thus proves to be self-deception. To be like Atreyu, Bastian would have to go home and apologize to Coreander, something he finally does towards the end of the book.

Bit by bit, Bastian and Atréju's life paths seem to be similar in this way. Bastian eats when Atreyu does in the story. He divides his provisions carefully, as if he had also started a long journey. He cries with his imaginary companion when his horse Artax sinks into the swamps of sadness. When Atreyu is sleeping, Bastian takes a reading break and goes to the toilet. Bastian identifies completely with these fictitiously heightened bright sides of Atréju's being. For the time being, Bastian mainly uses this identification to reject his previous self in order to come closer to the dream or wish-self.

“ Then Bastian was frightened, because a figure was moving in a dark corner. Only at second glance did he realize that there was a large, half-blind mirror in which he had seen himself indistinctly. He went closer and looked at himself for a while. He really wasn't beautiful with his fat figure and knock knees and that cheesy face. He slowly shook his head and said loudly, 'No!' "

At this point in time, he is still completely unconscious of the dangers of such a longing for someone else. Only later, in the second part of the book, when it comes to overcoming them, does this become a problem and the main concern of his inner development.

As Bastian tries to escape reality and to take refuge in his fantasy, the boundaries between reality and fiction gradually become blurred for him, until he finally gets into the story himself, from which he can hardly find his way out later. This becomes clear for the first time when Atreyu can hear a scream that Bastian uttered.

“ Bastian let out a low, terrifying sound. // A scream of terror echoed through the gorge and tossed back and forth as an echo. Ygramul turned her eye left and right to see if there was another newcomer, for it could not have been the boy who stood before her as if paralyzed with horror. But there was no one. // 'In the end, should it have been my scream she heard?' thought Bastian, deeply worried. 'But that's not possible at all.' "

How deeply Bastian is already involved in the story only becomes clear when Atreyu walks through the magic mirror gate at the Southern Oracle, which reveals his true nature.

“ It was hard to believe that you should be able to walk through this metal surface, but Atreyu did not hesitate for a moment. He expected that, as Engywuck had described it, he would face some horrifying image of himself in that mirror, but now that he had left all fear behind, that hardly seemed worth considering. Meanwhile, instead of a horror picture, he saw something that he had not been prepared for at all and that he could not understand either. He saw a fat, pale-faced boy - about his own age - who was sitting cross-legged on a mattress and reading a book. He was wrapped in gray, torn blankets. This boy's eyes were big and looked very sad. Behind him there were some motionless animals in the twilight, an eagle, an owl and a fox, and even further away shimmered what looked like a white skeleton. It couldn't be seen exactly. // Bastian winced when he realized what he had just read. That was him! The description was correct in every detail. The book began to tremble in his hands. Now the matter was definitely going too far! Surely it was not at all possible that there could be anything in a printed book that was only applicable at this moment and only to him. Anyone else would read the same thing at this point. "

A little later, Bastian succeeds in shouting a command to Atreyu, which he obeys.

“ Atreyu wanted to go away. He turned back, walked towards the round magic mirror gate and looked at the back for a while without realizing what it meant. He decided to go away, // 'No, no, don't go away!' said Bastian loudly. 'Turn back, Atreyu. You have to go through the no-key gate! ' // then turned back to the no-key gate. "

The magic mirror gate uses a meaning of the mirror, as it is common in occultism . There such mirrors serve the purpose of clairvoyance. The expansion of knowledge for Atreyu is connected with the clairvoyance of magic. Berger sees parallels between the three gates of the Neverending Story and the fifty gates of the Kabbalistic intelligence, which also lead to knowledge.

Atreyu would see the image of his true nature at the magic mirror gate, Engywuck had told him. What he sees is a picture of Bastian. At this point it becomes unmistakably clear that one character, Atreyu, is to be seen as the alter ego of the other, Bastian. Conversely, Bastian is to be seen as the mirror ego Attréjus. The apparent opposites between the characters are therefore not opposites at all. Rather, both complement each other perfectly due to their differences.

Jung describes such characters as “shadow figures”, which are in a complementary-compensatory relationship to one another. While Jung regards opposite-sex characters as animus / anima figures, he sees same-sex characters often belonging to one another, of which one, "dark", can be understood as a shadow figure of the other, "light", but also vice versa, so that their relationship between them essentially must be viewed as complementary to one another. Together they form a single personality, an overall personality.

Atreyu is to be seen as the shadow of Bastian, since Bastian as a failure but himself lives in the shadows, Atreyu consequently appears as the light figure, the hero. This, too, is in accordance with Jung's teachings, which state that in special cases the light figure can also be the shadow figure.

The fact that Bastian and Atréju have such a relationship to one another is made possible by the fact that Bastian Balthasar Bux is also a pure fantasy or artificial figure. However, he seems to be much closer to the usual reality than Atreyu. In the end, this creates the illusion that fantasy and reality actually connect with one another at this point and that one merges into the other.

The realization of the complementary-compensatory character of the two characters has enormous potential for Bastian's personality development.

Bastian wishes to be like Atréju, but it is only through Bastian that Atréju becomes what he is. Not only because he is nothing more than the reflection of Bastian's wishes and dreams, but because his appearance without Bastian, without the second half of his personality, would be completely pointless. Atreyu does not experience its own development in the Neverending Story, it is not his story. From the beginning it only fulfills one function. He is the one who leads Bastian into and out of Fantasy. Atreyu is Bastian's alter ego, his wishful self, the person Bastian would like to be, his figure of identification, who maintains his interest in history, which inspires his imagination. The childlike empress determined him to make Bastian understand the problem and to lead him into the realm of fantasy. Atreyu has no other task. And later Bastian chooses him as his companion, who ultimately leads him back into his own world.

This makes it clear that the details, which he rates so positively about Atreyu and so negatively about himself, are not of decisive importance. Especially not on the outside. It even turns out that from the moment Bastian transforms himself into a handsome prince, he starts making arrogant, arrogant and headstrong decisions. Such outward appearances do not have a decisive influence on whether he is a good person or not.

As far as the inner attitude is concerned, Bastian and Atréju are a total personality, each of which contains both. Courage and discouragement, determination and hesitation, perseverance and giving up. The only thing that matters here is the inner attitude with which you shape your life. The power to be the way he wants to be, the ability to become like Atreyu, is already in Bastian. To do this, you don't have to do anything other than change your own mindset.

Caíron's doubts about Atreyu turn out to be unfounded. He, a seemingly inexperienced child, not only succeeds in solving the task given him convincingly, he is even the only one who is able to solve it. This also applies to Bastian. No fantasier can save fantasies from nothing. Only he can do that, because only as a human child is he in a position to give the Childlike Empress a new name, and for this he needs exactly the ability that his surroundings despise in him, his imagination, the gift of being able to create stories and Names.

It is also important to note that Atreyu reacts in astonishment at how easy it is for him to pass through the gate, where so many others could not bear the encounter with their real self. Bastian therefore does not experience the rejection from Atreyu that he is used to from others. Atreyu is free from bias and prejudice. This state of mind manifests itself in front of the Without Key Gate as willlessness, which appears like a loss of memory. Atreyu needs exactly this lack of intention to be able to pass through the gate at all. So it is an undisguised, unbiased view that is able to open this (and other) paths. In this situation, Atreyu is no longer the actor, but Bastian. He intervenes in history by giving Atreyu an “order” not to give up, which Atreyu follows. Atreyu and Bastian need each other to be successful. Because without Bastian's order, Atreyu would not know which way to go. At the same time, however, Bastian will not move from the spot without Atreyu as leader. Although he has recognized which is the right way. But he does not yet have the strength to go himself. Instead, he sends his own, alternative personality with Atreyu to solve this task. In the material world he would have to invest strength and take risks, but in the realm of fantasy he can be what he wants to be without having to work for it. Atreyu acts in his place, as he does at the end of the book, to enable Bastian to return to his own world.

Bastian helps Atreyu to pass the last gate. At the end of the novel, Atreyu returns the favor by allowing Bastian to cross the gate back home. However, Atréju is saddled with the far more difficult task, because he has to finish all the story that Bastian started in Fantasy.

Bastian and Atréju thus characterize two facets of the same personality, which could not be more different. In the course of the story, however, they repeatedly come into situations in which they can only survive if these different aspects act together (overcoming the no-key gate; Atreyu must lead Bastian to Fantasia, but only Bastian can give the child empress a name give; only Bastian can revive fantasies with his wishes, but he needs Atréjus help to find his way home). In the end, Bastian is encouraged to realize that he can only be successful with the use of all facets of his personality, also and above all those whom he considers to be weak and so desperately tries to get rid of. In the future, he will be able to use the full potential that is in him.

Another example of two extremely different facets of the same personality, which can only exist together, can be found in Chapters XIII to XV with Perelin, the night forest, and Graógramán, the colorful death

Stations of a depressive psychosis

The “Great Search” that Atreyu has to embark on in order to save Fantastica shows all the stations of a hero's journey and is a motif that is often used in fantasy literature under the name “ Quest ” or “Queste”. Basically, the quest motif is much older and goes back to the Odyssey , Parzival and other great works of world literature. Atréju's description and his search allude to well-known motifs and relate to adventure stories that Bastian loves. This is consistent, since Atréjus' actual task is to lead Bastian to Fantasia, to establish a relationship with him. Ende writes on the subject of Quest: "Everyone transforms into what he is looking for."

According to Dorothee Ostmeier, Bastian's adventures have a highly allegorical function. The characters he encounters, but also the landscapes he wanders through, link the tension between everyday reality and the magical and fantastic with psychological and philosophical problem constellations. The tensions between lies, moral decadence and truth, delusion and seeing, everyday banality and miracles, illness and vitality, life and death are depicted.

When Atreyu begins his Great Search, Ende traces the stages of a depressive psychosis with the course of the landscapes . From the “swamps of sadness”, Atreyu ends up in the “land of the dead mountains” and finally stands before the “deep abyss”. Where all emotion has died, Atreyu no longer seems to have any real alternative courses of action, because every choice he makes, the jump into the abyss or the bite through Ygramul, obviously leads to the same result: his death. This also appears in a constantly changing, diverse shape, and thus seems all the more inevitable. As a result, Atreyu's view is blocked to the fact that there is a way out after all. Bastian also believes that he has got into a hopeless situation, that he can never leave the school attic, because after all the disappointments he cannot put the shame of the book theft on his father.

Once again, Atreyu appears as a complementary figure to Bastian. He travels through countries that reflect Bastian's darkened soul life and, like Bastian himself, threatens to fail due to the seeming hopelessness of the situation, to be torn into the abyss. Attréjus horse Artax 'cannot escape this pull, this urge, this irresistible longing for death, which Bastian also steers against. When the horse lets himself be overcome by sadness, this heralds his (senseless) downfall. Artax's death shows that the course of one's own life largely depends on how one feels and with what attitude one approaches it. His death is caused by his attitude, his feelings.

Thomas Kraft shows a parallel between the Neverending Story and a drawing by Michael Ende's father Edgar Ende called Das Pferd from 1947. This depicts a young man who desperately clutched his horse by the neck because he has already sunk deep into a river. "Michael Ende only reverses this picture by sending Atreyu with his horse Artax in the sadness and Artax in the morass loses the courage to live and sinks."

With the ancient Morla, Atreyu encounters a being that is just like Bastian: it talks to itself, it is embodied lack of relationship. And it shows where Bastian's path leads when he finally despairs of his problems instead of finding a solution for them and recognizing a meaning in his life. Morla has given up on herself and can only long for her death. Bastian has also taken this path, who is ready to give up everything he has left, including himself.

Attréju's determination offers a counter-model, a way out based solely on one's own inner attitude. Although his situation seems hopeless, he does not give up, and so other, unusual paths open up, which he had completely overlooked until then.

For Bastian, too, this is the signal that there are other ways than to surrender to one's own fate, that people have the strength to change what destroys them. The Great Search is at a turning point at this point. The gloomy (soul) landscapes disappear and never return. For the first time Bastian is given an idea of what it could mean to be happy, to find a cure for his sick soul. This idea manifests itself first in the appearance of Fuchur, the lucky dragon, then in the appearance of Engywuck and Urgl. The two settlers open up Attréju (and with it Bastian) a new, holistic worldview that promises knowledge and healing at the same time.

Fuchur also appears as a symbol that humans determine the course of their own history primarily through their attitude towards life. Ultimately, Atreyu decides on the path that a higher power, embodied by the lucky dragon, shows him, and from this self-abandonment and this trust, the solution to the problem ultimately grows. As Fuchur Atréju later reveals, his proverbial happiness results from his own, always optimistic nature. Even when he was trapped in the net and there seemed to be no rescue, he did not give up for a moment. With success, because when Atreyu Ygramul has coaxed the secret of how to escape his sphere of influence, it has also opened this path for the dragon and thus saved his life.

Ende shows that it is sometimes necessary to take a detour in order to achieve a goal, that the difficult and painful path can be the right one and that helping people to help themselves is the best help. Atreyu has no power to claim Fuchur's life from Ygramul. But he succeeds in unraveling Ygramul's secret and thus giving the dragon the strength to free itself.

Friendship and loyalty have a meaningful effect. Although Fuchur would not have been obliged to want to go to the same place that Atreyu chose, he follows him out of gratitude and offers his help in the Great Search. This behavior brings salvation to both. Atréju's choice of arrival point and Fuchur's proverbial luck ensure that both are healed.

Bastian is also facing such a path. The path of desires that should lead him to find his true will, which consists of being loved and being able to love himself. And he too will be saved in the end. This salvation is based on the same principles as those of Atreyu and Fuchur: self-abandonment in order to gain focus on the essentials (Bastian loses almost all of his memories, except for the one that is really important: the memory of his father), optimism and trust in a higher power, love. Just like Atreyu, Bastian does not achieve his goal as long as he chooses the easy path: as long as he considers the escape into his fantasies to be the way out. Only the difficult path in which he takes responsibility for himself and others ultimately leads him home. But in order to tread this path, Bastian has to recognize that he cannot be redeemed through his fantasies, but only through his true will (love).

The thought that giving up oneself, overcoming the ego, frees one's own gaze and thus enables one to see the solution to a problem, can be found in Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies. It is the basis of most meditation exercises with the aim of overcoming the artificial separation of man from the cosmos of which he is a part. The aimlessness, to let go of all will, should be achieved through meditation and serves to mobilize healing powers. For Ende this thought of lack of purpose had a very special meaning. Art is also supposed to heal, but not by trying to get its readers to do something , but by giving them a new perspective on reality. Ende pursues this idea further in the following chapters; Atreyu has to become completely free of any intention in order to be able to cross the “no-key gate”.

Ende says: “In my opinion, the distinction between this side and the other side is [...] a useless relic of past thinking. Only relatively late in occidental thought was the world divided into these two areas. [...] The originally Christian idea was [...] that the divine manifests itself here among people on earth and that the world itself, creation, is a revelation of the divine spirit. If one understands the world as such a unity, then [...] there is no longer the distinction between this world and the hereafter. ”Human beings and the cosmos are not separated from one another, but rather form a unit; ultimately it is a matter of recognizing this. Michael Ende sees this kind of connection between this and the hereafter as a remedy.

Far Eastern influences using the example of the four Ling

With the gigantic turtle Morla and the lucky dragon Fuchur, the "four Ling " ( Sìlíng ) find their way into Neverending History. In Chinese mythology they are considered beneficial and lucky beings. The "four ling " are: unicorn ( K'i-lin ), phoenix ( Feng ), turtle ( Kuei ) and dragon ( Lung ).

All four appear in one way or another in the Neverending Story. It is the horn of a unicorn from which the stone Al'Tsahir was cut, phoenixes live in the labyrinth garden of the ivory tower, near the Childlike Empress, Morla reminds a little of the turtle Kassiopeia from Ende's book Momo, and next to Fuchur and five others, Lucky dragon not named by name plays a role in the Neverending Story Smärg, an evil, destructive dragon. He embodies the European view of dragons, which brings the dragon closer to Satan, attributes all kinds of horrors to him and regularly sees his fate in being slain by a noble warrior. In the Sino-Japanese region, on the other hand, dragons are generally associated with happiness. This Asian interpretation of the dragon goes hand in hand with Michael Ende's personal happiness; his second wife Mariko Satō is Japanese.

The western-monistic-Enlightenment viewpoint, with which Bastian threatens to despair, is gradually transferred to the Far Eastern-dualistic-romantic worldview, which in the end regards as salvation from the darkness of soul.

turtle

In many cultures, turtles are symbols of immortality. In Ende's story "Jim Button and the Wild Thirteen", the turtle-like Schildnöck Uschaurischuum and the half-dragon Nepomuk work together to create the "crystal of eternity". Also at the end of Tranquilla Trampeltreu and Momos Kassiopeia take up the fight against the hustle and bustle.

Ende explains about his relationship with turtles:

“ I have been asked many times why there is a turtle in almost every one of my books. I have to admit that it wasn't until I asked myself that this fact struck me. Actually, the respective turtle (Ushaurischuum, Morla, Kassiopeia, Tranquilla, etc.) has, so to speak, always set itself completely by itself, without my intention. But perhaps some references to the imagery of myths and fairy tales can at least partially answer this question. World mythology is teeming with turtles. The Moah of the North American Indians z. B. does not save himself in a ship like the biblical one, but on the back of a giant water turtle with his family over the flood. In Indian myth, the world stands on the shell of a cosmic turtle. If you open the 'I-Ching', the Chinese 'Book of Changes', you will find that the 64 original hexagrams, from which, it is said, all the characters are derived from a prehistoric sage from the patterns have been read from the individual plates of a turtle shell. (Anyone who has read 'Momo' will perhaps be reminded of Kassiopeia's information about this.) The examples can be reproduced almost at will. What I personally like so much about turtles (I'm talking about the Mediterranean tortoise) is: - Their total uselessness: Turtles have neither friends nor enemies in nature (apart from humans, of course, who are now the most dangerous enemy of all creatures, but is not a 'natural' enemy). They are of no use and they do no harm. You are just there. That seems to me a remarkable and comforting fact in a worldview like the present one, in which everything in nature is explained from the point of view of utility. - their needlessness: turtles can exist with almost nothing. A few papers a day, they will last for weeks and months. - Their age: I don't just mean that they can get very old in detail, but the age of their species. It already existed when people were still swimming in Abraham's sausage cauldron, and they will probably still be around when we have long since left. - Her face: Have you ever looked a turtle straight in the face? She smiles. She seems to know something we don't know. - their shape: this is the hardest point to explain because it is unfamiliar to current thinking. If you look at a turtle not anatomically but symbolically, that is, if you look at what its shape expresses, then you are actually dealing with a walking horn shell. The brainshell also plays an important role in the myths of the world. According to the 'Edda', the celestial vault of the sky was formed from the skull of the ancient ice giant. In the cranium there is the fontanel, a small opening upwards that remains open in the newborn child for a short while and then gradually closes. This is the memory of the physical body, so say some sources of ancient knowledge, of a prehistoric age in which this human fontanel remained open throughout his life. At this point there was an organ (you can still see its peculiar shape on all Buddha statues as a 'hairstyle') with which man could perceive as if dreaming beyond the world of space and time, beyond the vault of heaven. The Indians call it the 'thousand-petalled lotus'. Perhaps even our royal crowns are still a, meanwhile unconscious, replica of this organ. The shell of the turtle is closed. The thinking I is alone with itself and becomes aware of itself. In other words, it has its own little time in it. "

Dragon

In Europe, the Middle East and West Asia, the dragon counts as the embodiment of evil and as an enemy of deities and humans, until it is finally killed in a dragon fight. In Christian mythology, for example, the dragon can be found as a manifestation of Satan who fights against the Archangel Michael ; the dragon slayer Georg frees a stolen maiden. In alchemy, however, dragons stand for knowledge of nature and for wisdom; in some cultures they are even considered to be the creators of the world. In East Asia the dragon is the embodiment of goodness , wisdom and happiness for people, mediator between heaven and earth. It stands for the masculine, dynamic and active ( Yang ) principle.

In "Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver" Michael Ende combined both meanings of the dragon, Christian and Far Eastern. The evil dragon woman Mahlzahn turns into a "golden dragon of wisdom" after she has been overcome but not killed.

Not only good dragons appear in the Neverending Story: Bastian invents the evil Smärg, who steals Princess Oglamár, who then has to be freed by hero Hynreck. Fuchur is not particularly impressed that Hynreck - following the Christian model - is supposed to kill the dragon: after all, he says, Smärg is also one of his distant relatives.

In the figure of the dragon a basic message of the Neverending Story reveals itself again: Good and bad are not easy to separate. The lucky dragons embody the perfect good and are related to the evil Smärg.

In terms of depth psychology, the dragon fight stands for overcoming the unconscious, the evil elements in the own psyche and (in young people) for overcoming the parents, especially the mother. The dragon fight also symbolizes overcoming nature and, in the Christian context, superstition. That is the probable reason why tales about kite slayers are very common in Europe, while in the Far Eastern world of legends, where humans should not conquer nature but live in harmony with it, there is not a single dragon fight.

Phoenix

The mythological figure of the phoenix, a colorful bird , originally comes from ancient Egypt and has spread from there, for example via Greece to Europe . According to legend, the phoenix bird lived in Arabia . When he saw his end coming, he lit his nest, died in the flames, and emerged from the ashes rejuvenated and more beautiful than before. The phoenix is thus one of the most enduring symbols for the cycle of death and rebirth .

In the Neverending Story, the phoenix lives in the labyrinth garden that surrounds the ivory tower, close to the Childlike Empress. Its nest is in a blue bellflower, an allusion to the blue flower of the romantic Novalis. The phoenix thus not only makes a direct reference to romanticism, but also refers to the rebirth of the Childlike Empress and Fantasia.

The labyrinth in which the phoenix lives is a symbol of Bastian's entire odyssey through fantasy, through his own imagination. In surrealistic pictures, corridors suddenly lead upwards and lead to the next floor. The laws of the real world, including the dimensions, are overridden. The space is only an illusion, detours become necessary stations, apparent goals turn out to be dead ends. Bastian's path through Fantasia runs in the same way.

The oldest labyrinths probably come from the Mediterranean area . The Theseus legend tells of the labyrinth of Knossos on Crete . The legendary Minotaur , a hybrid of man and bull, is said to have been held there. Only with the help of a thread given to him by the princess Ariadne can the hero Theseus, when he penetrates the labyrinth, maintain contact with the outside world and find his way back outside.

The most famous labyrinth of the Middle Ages is in Chartres Cathedral (around 1220). It covers the floor of the church and takes up the entire width of the central nave . In the Middle Ages, the labyrinth symbolized the confusion of life, from which the cross represented the way out.

Giovanni Fontana first made it known in Europe around 1420 that labyrinth passages like the one that Ende describes for the ivory tower . In the Baroque , the world was seen as embodied in it.

In various religions, labyrinths play a role in contact with foreign powers, with the realm of the dead as well as with the realm of the elemental spirits. In antiquity, people walked through ritual labyrinths dancing, in Christianity praying and on their knees as a symbol of repentance.

Contact with another, unknown world is probably also the basis of the labyrinth in the ivory tower. The path to the childlike empress, into the heart of fantasy, is like an initiation that does not lead into the realm of the spirits, but into that of one's own imagination.

Ende had mainly Far Eastern motifs in mind. The Far Eastern mandalas are basically a kind of labyrinth. Ende was inspired by them. Mandalas are used in Asia to separate a sacred place from the realm of the profane. It has a ritual function, it serves for meditation and symbolizes the unity of macrocosm and microcosm . You can just draw it on the floor or artfully recreate it. The basic form of the mandala is a system of concentric circles and squares, which are closed to the outside. This corresponds to the floor plan of a palace district, with the castle in the middle and the labyrinth around it. The floor plan of the palace in the mandala resembles that of the Tibetan Buddhist universe. The lotus center forms the focal point in analogy to the axis of the world, Mount Meru. In the middle, the inner part of the lotus center, there is usually a Buddha or a deity to be seen.

The palace area around the ivory tower has a lot in common with such a mandala. The tower is located in the middle of the labyrinth garden, is the heart of fantasy and a special place. The lotus center on Mount Meru, the axis of the world, finds its equivalent in the magnolia pavilion on the ivory tower in the Neverending Story, with the Child Empress representing the deity. However, the ivory tower and the labyrinth do not have a religious meaning in the narrower sense.

Labyrinths are not only found on the way to the ivory tower. The Thousand Doors Temple is actually just a single labyrinth. For a moment, each door can turn into an exit. Only those who really want to get in or out can find their way.

The hero does not escape the labyrinth by calculation, but by finding his own drive, his true will. This also includes wrong turns, mistakes and wrong goals, even the insane battle for the ivory tower. AURYN shows Bastian the only way out of fantasy: do what you want!

“ The quest
The Labyrinth is the Minotaur's Body. When Theseus goes from chamber to chamber in search of the monster, he gradually transforms into the Minotaur. This has 'incorporated' him. Hence, it is impossible for Theseus to kill him last unless he killed himself.
Everyone turns into what he seeks. "

unicorn

The stone Al'Tsahir , which was cut from the horn of a unicorn, plays an important role in Bastian's personality development. It arises from the same desire that creates the Amargánth library, and is given to Bastian so that it can light the way for him in the mine of images that Bastian has to visit to find his way back home. Here, too, the power of names becomes apparent, because the stone only begins to shine when Bastian gives it his name. When Bastian arrives at the mine of images, however, Al'Tsahir is no longer available to him, as he has used up the power of the stone in a single instant for a much more profane wish. Without a light source, Bastian has to work blindly in the mine of images until he has felt the image that represents the connection to his physical reality.

Unicorns appear regularly as creatures of good and light, can bring the dead to life or are immortal themselves. They have special abilities, often strong healing powers. A well-known unicorn tale is Peter S. Beagle's novel The Last Unicorn , which shows a clear parallel to the Neverending Story: While Bastian unlocks the magic of AURYN by following the path of wishes ( do what you want! ), The magician Schmendrick also receives Access to magic by letting it choose its own shape ( magic, do what you want!)

Michael Ende on the unicorn:

“Like all real symbols, the unicorn is almost infinitely clear. That is why it is difficult for me to tell you something specific here, because I immediately have the feeling that this is too much of a fixation of the picture. You are surely familiar with the medieval instructions on how to catch a unicorn: you have to tie a naked maiden to a tree in such a way that she is completely motionless. Then you have to wait with a lot of patience, but eventually the unicorn will get here and put its head in the virgin's lap. At that moment it is gentle and tame and can be grasped. This last point is important because in any other situation, despite its great grace and beauty, it is so wild and strong that no one can tame it. And this instruction already reveals a lot about the meaning of the unicorn. Of course it is only too obvious for us enlightened people today to interpret the whole thing erotically. But with that one only remains in the personal-psychological attachment. In all of older mythology, the virgin means a world principle (Jesus, for example, was born of the virgin), which is also represented in one of the signs of the zodiac . Paracelsus equates the virgin with “ natural light ”; H. a kind of supersensible substance that pervades and illuminates all of nature, but is only perceptible to the clairvoyant eye. The sign of Virgo is known to be ruled by the planet Mercury , the planet of the mind. Hence, with Virgo (or natural light) we are dealing with a principle of, so to speak, supersensible understanding. If you manage to keep this principle completely still in your own soul, then the unicorn approaches. It can be tamed. By the way, the unicorn is distantly related to the goat . It has cleft hooves and a beard under its chin. In fairy tales, however, the goat is always the symbol of the powers of the mind (e.g. the wolf and the seven little goats ). These intellectual powers are located where the horn grows out of the unicorn's forehead, i.e. at that point above the bridge of the nose, which the Brahmin even indicates with a red signal. I do not know if you have ever dealt with the so-called " lotus flowers ". These are the seven main supersensible organs of perception. One of them, the two-petalled lotus, is the organ above the bridge of the nose. Its perfect development means an increase in the powers of intelligence up to the pictorial perception of spiritual realities. This is exactly what the image of the unicorn is supposed to express. Incidentally, in medieval mysticism the unicorn was also an image of the power of Christ for this very reason. "

Other Far Eastern references

The motif of the gate without a key is also borrowed from Far Eastern mythology. The goal of meditation is to be intentional, to let go of all will.

In the two snakes that bite their tails, the thought is symbolized that opposites determine each other. This assumption is as old as Chinese philosophy itself. It is particularly found in Laotse , the founder of Taoism . Creation arises from the union of opposites, such as male and female, hard and soft, good and bad ( Yin and Yang ).

The cyclical character of the Taoist worldview is also evident in the pair of opposites Perelín and Goab, whose life and death are mutually dependent. This idea is based on Fantastica as a whole: The Childlike Empress is not sick for the first time. With it, fantasy goes under and emerges again. This is also a reason why the phoenix should not be missing from the story. In the Hindu context this cycle is called samsara .

The voice of silence - natural poetry as the salvation of fantasy

“Poetry is the mother tongue of the human race. (...) To speak is to translate - from an angel's language into a human language, that is, thoughts into words, - things in names - pictures in signs (...) "

After Atréju Bastian introduced a new way of understanding the world, symbolized by the two settlers, in whom causal logic and romantic dreaming combine to form a complementary unit, he is sent to the three magical gates by the pair of gnomes. He has to cross this in order to reach the “Southern Oracle” or the “Uyulála”, which is supposed to give him decisive indications for the progress of his search.

Each of the three gates illustrates important principles that underlie the Neverending Story.

The "Great Riddle Gate" is guarded by two sphinxes. In myths and legends, sphinxes have always been associated with riddles. In the Oedipus saga there is a sphinx that tears up anyone who cannot solve its riddle. In the Neverending Story, the eyes of the sphinx send out all the riddles in the world. Only another sphinx can endure this sight. You can only overcome the riddle gate if the sphinxes close your eyes and let you pass this way. They are not predictable. Sometimes they let the bad pass, but not the good. Or they only let those who came here just for fun and those who were in dire need to the oracle freeze by. It is, as Ende said: Fantasy is not a moral realm. The creative, the imagination, does not distinguish between good and bad. Just like all other gates, the great riddle gate cannot be overcome by will. The sphinxes are endowed with godlike power, Atreyu is dependent on their grace. You cannot force yourself to be let through. Creativity is not what you can get by will, it is given to you.

The “Magic Mirror Gate” confronts Atreyu with his “true inner being”. Bastian, his fellow reader, appears in a mirror, sitting in the attic with the book in hand. This establishes the complementary nature of the two characters, Atréju as Bastian's ideal, a character that he fantasizes in order to build up his self-confidence in her. Attréju's own identity disintegrates at the moment of the reflection experience. After stepping through the magic mirror gate, all memory of himself, his previous life, his goals and intentions is lost. Above all, he forgets his name for a moment, which is an important identity factor after the end.

The music of the spheres, which is also mentioned in Momo , can be heard at the “Ohne Schlüssel Tor” . A "singing voice, very beautiful and clear as a bell and high like that of a child" begins to lament.

“ Oh, everything only happens once,
but everything has to happen once.
Over mountains and valleys, over fields and
meadows, I will pass, blow away "

This is the distress call for progression in fantasies, infested with the cycle of eternal return. The ancient Morla had made this known:

“ If you know as much as we do, nothing is important anymore. Everything repeats itself first, day and night, summer and winter, the world is empty and meaningless. Everything turns in circle. What arises must perish again, what is born must die. Everything is canceled out, the good and the bad, the stupid and the wise, the beautiful and the ugly. Everything is empty. Nothing is real, nothing is important. "

The circle of eternal return is related to its unreality. “Everything is just illusion”, the ancient Morla describes the problem and thus points to the illness of fantasy, namely the nothing that spreads because it is isolated from the “human world” as “illusory”.

Only a new name for the childlike empress could cure her illness. “Your existence is not measured by duration, but by name. It needs a new name, always a new one, (...) no being in Fantasia can give it a new name. That's why everything is free. "

Bastian feels affected.

“ 'Strange,' he said aloud, 'that no being in fantasies can give the Childlike Empress a new name.'

If it came down to inventing a name, Bastian might have helped her. He was great at that. But unfortunately he was not in fantasy, where his skills were needed and perhaps even earned him sympathy and honor. "

The Great Mirror Gate indicates Ende's ideal of lack of intent. In Ende's poetic thinking, lack of intent plays a crucial role. In his opinion, intentions stand in the way of the creative process. After Atreyu has forgotten all intention and manages "not to want at all", as the two settlers had recommended, he can step through. But to do that, he needs the help of Bastian, his complementary self.

Uyulála, the voice of silence, is that romantic song of nature that threatens to break off if it is not heard (“I will perish”). In it the natural poetry manifests itself, which is communicated in rhymes. By a poet, the romantics understand a singer whose song is derived from nature, not an educated rhetorician. He translates this natural poetry, as it were, into his own verse.

Similarly, Uyúlala asks Atreyu to speak to her in rhyme. If the song of nature is found with Novalis and Eichendorff, the voice of silence reveals itself as a murmur that blows around Atréju like a breath, moves away and suddenly sounds again when Atréju asks his question. Uyulála remains invisible: "Because my body is sound and tone, audible only by itself, this voice itself is my whole being."

Atreyu learns here why Fantasia is infested with nothing and what the disease of the Childlike Empress consists of:

“ We are only characters in a book,
and we do what we invented for.
Only dreams and images in a story ',
we have to be what we are
and create something new - we can't. "

Someone from the Inhabitants of the Outer World must be found, from the "Sons of Adam" and "Eve Daughters", the "Blood Brothers of Real Will".

“ You have all had
the gift of giving names from the very beginning .
They brought the Childlike Empress
to life at all times.
They gave her new and wonderful names,
but it was too long ago
that people came to us in Fantasia.
You don't know the way anymore.
They have forgotten how real we are
and they no longer believe in it. "

So the oracle mentions that people no longer believe in fantasies, which is why the Childlike Empress and her empire begin to disappear. With his disbelief, Bastian indirectly helps nothing to spread.

Novalis had put it:

“(...) And one
recognizes the true world stories in fairy tales and poems .
Then the
whole perverse being flies away from A Secret Word . "

“Bastian will hit the magic word that Novalis meant, give the Childlike Empress a new name, and, like Momo, appear as a Soter, a savior and a new Messiah who communicates 'the waters of life'. Returned to Fantastica, like Christ, he will ride a mule ... "

Biblical references

Bastian is recognized by the mule Jicha. This is reminiscent of Balaam's mount , which showed greater wisdom than his rider; especially as a donkey was the mount of a Messiah in the Bible, as the Palm Sunday story shows.

literature

Primary literature

Michael Ende: The neverending story . With letters and pictures from A to Z by Roswitha Quadflieg. Thienemann Verlag, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-522-12800-1 .
Michael Ende: Michael Ende's card box, sketches and notes . Stuttgart 1994.

Secondary literature

Klaus Berger : Michael Ende. Healing through magical imagination. With a foreword by Ulrich Skambraks . Publishing house and writing mission of the Evangelical Society for Germany Wuppertal, 1985, ISBN 3-87857-203-4 .
Alwin Binder : Michael Ende's “Neverending Story” as a 'school of imagination'? In: Discussion German . 86, 1985. pp. 585-598.
Roman and Patrick Hocke : Michael Ende, The Neverending Story. The encyclopedia of fantasy . Thienemann-Verlag, Regensburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-522-20050-9 .
Kindler's new literary lexicon; Munich 1989; ISBN 3-463-43005-3 .
Time magic. Our century ponders the mystery of clocks. Franz Kreuzer in conversation with Michael Ende, Bernulf Kanitscheider . Franz Deuticke Verlagsgesellschaft mb H., Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-7005-4518-5 .
Wilfried Kuckartz : Michael Ende. "The never ending Story". An educational fairy tale. , Die Blaue Eule Verlag, Essen 1984.
Agathe Lattka , return of romance? An investigation. Michael Ende's novel "The Neverending Story". 2005.
Marcus Schnöbel : story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story”. (PDF; 1.2 MB). contains a detailed list of literature on further secondary literature.
Christian von Wernsdorff : Pictures against nothing. On the return of the Romanesque with Michael Ende and Peter Handke . Schampel and Kleine Neuss publishing house, Aachen / Düsseldorf / Neuss 1983.

Web links

A short, clear and detailed table of contents and a commentary on the novel
The Neverending Story (1984) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
The Neverending Story (TV, 1996) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
The Neverending Story (TV, 2001) in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story”. P. 129. geb.uni-giessen.de (PDF)

↑ New classics of youth literature

↑ ^a ^b ^c The Neverending Story ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at büchervielfalt.de

↑ Wolf Donner : Sick Moon Child . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1980, pp. 188 ( online ).

↑ Birgit Otte: Michael Ende . S. 3. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): Critical lexicon for contemporary German literature (KLG). Volume 3. 43rd edition. (As of January 1, 1993). Munich 1978 ff. Pp. 1-12 and AN.

↑ Christian von Wernsdorff: Pictures against nothing. On the return of romance with Michael Ende and Peter Handke . Neuss 1983. p. 94.

↑ Michael Ende: Michael Ende's card box. Sketches and notes . Stuttgart 1994, p. 266.

↑ ^a ^b ^c Wolf Donner : Sick Moon Child . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1980, pp. 190 ( online ).

↑ ^a ^b ^c Rainald Goetz: Fantasy circles reality. Michael Ende's great new fairy tale novel . In: Book and Time . Literature supplement of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 10, 1979, p. XIII.

↑ Erich Rammerskirch: A Christian fairy tale? "The Neverending Story" by Michael Ende . In: Christ in der Gegenwart , 51, December 16, 1984, p. 421.

↑ Wilfried Kuckartz: Michael Ende "The Neverending Story". An educational fairy tale . Essen 1984 (= pedagogy of the role model, volume 1).

↑ ^a ^b Gudrun Kratz-Norbisrath: Oh! the sensuality! Or: the soap bubble syndrome. In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. 242 (October 16, 1981).

↑ Reinhard Tschapke: Wonderful worlds, neverending stories . In: Die Welt , August 30, 1995, p. 3.

↑ Titus Arnu: Living creatures of the imagination . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 30, 1995, p. 13.

↑ Heike Nollert: Does happiness come from imagination? To the continued success of the author Michael Ende . In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , December 23, 1983, p. 13.

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v ^w ^x ^y ^z ^aa ^ab ^ac ^ad ^ae ^af ^ag ^ah ^ai ^aj ^ak ^al ^am ^an ^ao ^ap ^aq ^ar ^as ^at ^au ^av ^aw ^ax ^ay ^az ^ba ^bb ^bc ^bd ^be ^bf ^bg ^bh ^bi ^bj ^bk ^bl ^bm ^bn ^bo ^bp ^bq ^br ^bs ^bt ^bu ^bv ^bw ^bx ^by ^bz Roman and Patrick Hocke: Michael Ende, The Neverending Story. The Phantásien-Lexikon , Thienemann-Verlag, Regensburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-522-20050-9 .

↑ Kuckartz: Michael Ende "The Neverending Story". P. 32.

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Chapter VI.

↑ Chapter IX.

↑ Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story”. P. 9 ff .; geb.uni-giessen.de (PDF)

↑ Chapters I. to XII.

↑ Stages of a Hero's Journey

↑ Chapter XIII. to XXV.

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k Chapter XXVI.

↑ Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research into Michael Ende's 'The Neverending Story'. Pp. 103-109. geb.uni-giessen.de (PDF; 1.2 MB)

↑ Prondczynsky, Andreas von: The infinite longing for oneself. On the trail of a new myth. Attempt on an "Neverending Story". Frankfurt a. M. 1983 (= youth and media, volume 3). P. 13.

↑ ^a ^b Review of the special edition of The Neverending Story

↑ Also to be found in the Star Wars saga by George Lucas ; the evil Sith there wear red lightsabers, the Jedi blue or green.

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Klaus Berger : Michael Ende. Healing through magical imagination. With a foreword by Ulrich Skambraks . Publishing house and writing mission of the Evangelical Society for Germany, Wuppertal 1985, ISBN 3-87857-203-4 .

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Time magic. Our century ponders the mystery of clocks. Franz Kreuzer in conversation with Michael Ende, Bernulf Kanitscheider. Franz Deuticke Verlagsgesellschaft mb H., Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-7005-4518-5 .

↑ Michael Ende: The Neverending Story. Imprint.

↑ Michael Ende: The Neverending Story. K. Thienemanns Verlag, new edition from 2004.

↑ Federica Malaspina: Michael Ende: L'esperienza del narrare il narrare. Thesis (Tesi di laurea) of the Università degli studi di Parma. Faccoltà di lettere e filosofia . Anno accademico 1993/1994.

^ Letter from Michael Ende to Roswitha Quadflieg dated May 4, 1978.

^ Letter from Michael Ende to Roswitha Quadflieg dated April 3, 1982.

^ Letter from Hansjörg Weitbrecht to Roswitha Quadflieg dated February 21, 1980.

↑ One of Ende's numerous mirror effects, cf. also mirror in the mirror.

↑ At this point the story ends in the book in the book , s. there.

↑ Ende deals with a very similar topic in his book “ Momo ”.

↑ ^a ^b Chapter XI.

↑ ^a ^b ^c Chapter XIII.

↑ The Beliebigkeitsspiel lettered dice and the monkey, who rules over the city, are a nod to the theorem of endless tip monkeys ( infinite monkey theorem ). It says that an infinite number of monkeys who happen to pick on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually, by chance, write all of William Shakespeare's works.

↑ Chapter XXVI. This last sentence comes up again and again in the book to point out that no story really ends and that more can emerge from every story, as Coreander himself said to Bastian.

↑ For the content of the book, compare not only the book itself but also this table of contents with commentary .

↑ Especially in Chapter XI.

↑ This is mainly Chapter IX. to call.

↑ The Nebelschiffer in Chapter XIV. Form a society in which the individual can be replaced here. Bastian does not feel comfortable with them in the long run, the desire to be loved grows in him.

↑ ^a ^b Chapter I.

↑ Especially Chapter XXVI.

↑ ^a ^b Chapter XI., Die Kindliche Kaiserin

↑ Chapter X, The Flight to the Ivory Tower : “No,” said Fuchur, “she is not what we are. She is not a creature of fantasy. We are all there by being. But it is of a different kind. "

↑ Chapter III, The Ancient Morla .

↑ Chapter VII, The Voice of Silence .

↑ Chapter VI: The Three Magical Gates .

↑ Chapter VIII: In Gelichterland .

↑ Chapter IX, Haunted City .

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Michael Ende . In: Kindler's new literary lexicon . Munich 1989, ISBN 3-463-43005-3

↑ ^a ^b As the author of the book, Michael Ende writes the Neverending Story outside of Fantasy. Chapter XII: The Old Man from the Wandering Mountains writes the Neverending Story within Fantasia. Both books are, according to Coreander's remarks, in Chapter XXVI. identical. Ende and the old man from the Wandering Mountains are one and the same person.

↑ Chapter XII: The Old Man from the Wandering Mountain .

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u Wilfried Kuckartz: Michael Ende, The Neverending Story. An educational fairy tale. Verlag Die Blaue Eule, Essen: 1984.

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Chapter XIII. to XXVI.

↑ ^a ^b Chapter XIII: Perelín, the night forest

↑ For the first time by the lion Graógramán, Chapter XIV.

↑ Chapter XIV: Goab, the desert of colors .

↑ Chapter XVI: The Silver City Amargánth .

↑ For the first time already in Chapter XIII. mentioned.

↑ Chapter XXII: The Battle of the Ivory Tower .

↑ Chapter XXIII: The Old Emperor City .

↑ Bastian takes three steps to get there. He wants to be part of a community, chapter XXIV., He wants to be loved, chapters XXIII., XXIV., But his true will is to love himself, chapters XXIV. And XXV.

↑ Chapter XXIII.

↑ Chapter XXIV.

↑ Chapter XXV: The Mine of Images

↑ Especially Chapter XXVI.

↑ Described in Chapter XXIII.

↑ Chapter XXVII., XXV., XXVI.

↑ Susanne Beyer: You should read like children . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 2003, p. 182 ( online ).

↑ ^a ^b end in a 1981 interview.

↑ ^a ^b Susanne Beyer: You should read like children . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 2003, p. 183 ( online ).

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Agathe Lattka , Return of Romanticism? An investigation. Michael Ende's novel "The Neverending Story" , 2005.

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Dorothee Ostmeier on the Neverending Story.

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Typescript from the estate of Michael Ende.

↑ Margarete von Schwarzkopf: Free out into the realm of fantasy . In: Die Welt , p. 15.

↑ Michael Ende: Note box. Sketches and Notes , p. 112.

↑ ^a ^b Roman Hocke, Uwe Neumahr: Michael Ende. Magical Worlds , published by the Deutsches Theatermuseum Munich, Henschel Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-89487-583-1 .

↑ Michael Ende. From the estate.

↑ Michael Ende, Der Niemandsgarten, p. 169.

↑ Michael Ende, Der Niemandsgarten, p. 248.

↑ Michael Ende, Zettelkasten , p. 221 f.

↑ Michael Ende, Zettelkasten , p. 222.

↑ Immanuel Kant , answer to the question: "What is Enlightenment". In: Berlin Monthly Journal, December 1784.

↑ Michael Ende, Michael Ende's Zettelkasten , Stuttgart 1994, p. 210.

↑ Interview with Michael Ende. In: Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel , No. 102 (December 21, 1990), pp. 39–85.

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v ^w ^x ^y ^z ^aa ^ab ^ac ^ad ^ae Christian von Wernsdorff : Pictures against nothing. On the return of the Romanesque with Michael Ende and Peter Handke . Schampel and Kleine Neuss publishing house, Aachen / Düsseldorf / Neuss 1983.

^ ^A ^b Hajna Stoyan , The fantastic children's books by Michael Ende: with an introduction to the development of genre theory and an excursus on the fantastic children's literature of the GDR , Frankfurt / Main (among others) 2004. (Zugl: Univ. Diss. Budapest 2002).

↑ Novalis .

↑ ETA Hoffmann , The golden pot . A fairy tale from the new era. In: Hoffmann's works in three volumes, first volume (stories, fairy tales), Berlin / Weimar, Aufbau-Verlag 1976, pp. 57–144.

↑ Jost Hermand: The 'neo-romantic soul vagabond'. In: Wolfgang Paulsen (Ed.): Das Nachleben der Romantik in der Moderne Deutschen Literatur, Heidelberg, Lothar Stiehm Verlag 1969, pp. 95–115.

^ ^A ^b August Wilhelm Schlegel : Lectures on beautiful literature and art (Berlin 1801–1804) . Quoted from: Otto F. Best and Hans-Jürgen Schmitt (eds.): The German literature in text and representation, Romantik I, Stuttgart, Reclam 1975, pp. 25-26.

↑ ^a ^b Novalis : Heinrich von Ofterdingen . Ein Roman (1802) , Stuttgart, Reclam 1965.

↑ Lothar Pikulik: Romanticism as inadequacies in normality using the example of Tieck Hoffmann, Eichendorff . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979, 3rd part: Compensation of inadequacy, pp. 251–289.

↑ Friedrich Schlegel , Lucinde. A novel (1799). Reclam, Stuttgart 1973, p. 107.

↑ ^a ^b ^c E. TA Hoffmann's satirical dialogue "Message from the newest fates of the dog Berganza" appeared in Bamberg in 1814 in the "Fantasiestücke in Callot's manner". Hoffmann's description of the function of the theater is directed against Schiller's postulate of the Schaubühne as a “moral institution”. Quoted from: OF Best and H.-J. Schmitt (Hrsg.): The German literature in text and representation, Romanticism I., p. 277.

↑ Generally described in: Uwe Japp: Das Buch im Buch. A figure of literary Hermetism , in: Neue Rundschau 86 (1975). Pp. 651-670.

↑ To the book in the book especially at Ende cf. Prondzcynsky: DuSnss. Pp. 36-39.

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Introduction.

↑ Michael Ende, Zettelkasten, p. 85.

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Chapter IV.

↑ ^a ^b Chapter XII.

↑ Chapter VII.

↑ Note from Michael Ende's estate.

↑ Michael Ende in a broadcast by Deutschlandfunk on December 24, 1981: The neverending story. Kinder and Michael Ende on 'Momo' and 'The Neverending Story'. Editor: Klaus Sauer.

↑ Michael Ende in: 'Conversation with Michael Ende.' Try to get the writer of the Neverending Story to tell. A conversation with Barbaa Bondy, Barbara von Wulffen and Hans Heigert. Editor: Barbary Bondy. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung from 14./15. March 1981.

↑ -Michael Ende in: 'Free out into the realm of phantasy.' Conversation between Michael Ende and M. v. Black Head. In: Die Welt of October 8, 1980.

↑ Dieter Wellershoff: Transcendence and apparent added value. To the poetic category . In: DW: literature and pleasure principle. Essays, Cologne 1973, p. 44.

↑ Michael Ende in: 'Children ask - Michael Ende answers'. In: 'Reading Representing Understanding' A 5 (revision), Frankfurt am Main, Hirschgraben 1982, p. 242.

↑ Typescript from the author's estate, published in: Roman Hocke, Uwe Neumahr, Michael Ende. Magical worlds. , Deutsches Theatermuseum Munich, Henschel-Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-89487-583-1 .

↑ Peter Boccarius: Michael Ende. The beginning of the story , p. 219.

↑ Roman Hocke, Thomas Kraft, Michael Ende and his fantastic world. The search for the magic word , p. 14 f.

↑ ^a ^b ^c Michael Ende: Note box. Sketches and Notes , p. 295.

^ Roman Hocke: Edgar Ende-Website u. Heidi Adams: Visiting Michael Ende

↑ See Ende's novel “ Momo ”.

↑ Michael Ende in a letter to a reader on August 8, 1988.

↑ Chapter XXII.

↑ Michael Ende, letter to EC from February 20, 1987, in: Der Niemandsgarten. Selected from the estate and edited by Roman Hocke, Stuttgart 1998, p. 46 .

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k Chapter II.

↑ Wolf Donner : Sick Moon Child . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1980, pp. 188-189 ( online ).

↑ Lexicon with reference to the introduction to the Neverending Story, pp. 12-14.

↑ Eppler. The End. Tächl: Fantasy / Culture / Politics. P. 38.

↑ ivory tower ( Wiktionary )

↑ Stoyan, Die phantastischen Kinderbücher , p. 44.

↑ Stoyan, Die phantastischen Kinderbücher , p. 36 f.

↑ Claudia Ludwig, What you inherited from your fathers ... Michael Ende's Fantasias - Symbolism and literary sources , Frankfurt / Main, u. a. 1988. (= Europäische Hochschulschriften; Series 1, German Language and Literature, 1071), p. 116.

↑ Star Wars Episode 1–3.

↑ Jacek Rzeszotnik (ed.), Between Fantasy and Reality: Michael Ende Gedächtnisband 2000 , Passau 2000. (= Fantasy 136/137; Series of publications Volume 35), p. 119.

↑ Michael Ende, letter to a world explorer , in: Michael Ende's Zettelkasten , p. 300 ff.

^ Letter exchange M. Ende / W. Petersen. From the estate.

↑ Michael Ende: Zettelkasten , p. 93.

↑ End: Note box. P. 131.

↑ Pascal Trambley, The Fantasy in Fantasy , in: Between Fantasy and Reality. Michael Ende Memorial Volume 2000 , ed. by Jack Rzeszotnik, Passau 2000. (= Fantasie 136/137, series of publications vol. 35), pp. 143-161, p. 146.

↑ Michael Ende, From the estate.

↑ ^a ^b Bondy. Wulffen. Heigert: Conversation with Michael Ende. P. 137.

↑ Wernsdorff: BgdN. P. 63.

^ Meaning of the name Atreyu.

↑ The name Atreyu.

↑ Bernhard Dietrich Haage : Ouroboros - and no end , in: Light of nature. Medicine in specialist literature and poetry: Festschrift for Gundolf Keil on his 60th birthday, ed. by Josef Domes, Werner E. Gerabek, Bernhard Dietrich Haage, Christoph Weißer and Volker Zimmermann, Göppingen 1994 (= Göppinger works on German studies, 585), pp. 149–169.

↑ Norbert Bischof : The force field of myths . Signals from the time we created the world. Munich / Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-492-22655-8 . (Especially Part Two: The Chos, Chapter 6: The Cosmogonic Incest, pp. 191–224.)

↑ Michael Grant , John Hazel: Lexicon of ancient myths and shapes . 18th edition Dtv, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-32508-9 .

↑ Karl Kerényi : The hero stories (The mythology of the Greeks; 2). 21st edition Dtv, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-30031-0 .

↑ Robert von Ranke-Graves : Greek Mythology . New edition. Anaconda-Verlag, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-86647-211-2 .

^ Walter Haas, W. Günther Ganser, Provincial Words: German Idiotism Collections of the 18th Century , Language Arts & Disciplins, 1994, 947 pages.

↑ Michael Ende, Zettelkasten, p. 136.

↑ Michael Ende, Der Niemandsgarten , p. 276.

↑ Michael Ende, The Archeology of Darkness , p. 67.

↑ ^a ^b Claudia Ludwig : What you inherited from your fathers ... Michael Ende's Fantasies - Symbolism and literary sources , Frankfurt / Main (among others) 1988. (= European university publications; Series I., German Language and Literature, 1071).

↑ SP Bumbacher, mountains (five sacred) , in: Metzler Lexikon Religion , Vol I., Stuttgart 1999, pp 138-142..

↑ Hans Peter Duerr , Dreamtime. Across the line between wilderness and civilization . Frankfurt am Main 1978.

^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Works. Volume 6. Novels and short stories I. p. 512.

^ Wilhelm Große, Ludger Grenzmann: Classic. Romance. The history of German literature. P. 106.

↑ Novalis: Pollen. P. 471.

↑ Novalis: The Apprentices to Saïs. P. 203.

↑ Novalis: Pollen. P. 445.

^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Also Spoke Zarathustra , p. 31.

↑ Michael Ende, card box. Sketches and Notes , pp. 180–181.

↑ Michael Ende: Letter to EC from February 20, 1987. In: Der Niemandsgarten. P. 46.

↑ Michael Ende, 'The Children and Reading', in: Michael Ende, Der Niemandsgarten, p. 39.

↑ ETA Hoffmann, quoted from H. Stoyan: The fantastic children's books by Michael Ende; with an introduction to the development of genre theory and an excursus on the fantastic children's literature of the GDR. Frankfurt am Main / u. a. 2004. (Zugl .: Univ. Diss., Budapest 2002), p. 30.

↑ Michael Ende, Zettelkasten , p. 55 ff.

↑ Michael Ende on August 26, 1975, at night, published in: Michael Ende, Der Niemandsgarten , p. 272.

↑ Michael Ende, letter to a reader from October 25, 1981.

^ Novalis: 'Works in One Volume. The Apprentices at Saïs', p. 214.

^ Novalis: 'Works in One Volume. The Apprentices at Saïs', p. 216.

↑ Michael Ende: Note box . P. 69.

↑ Ursula Ritzenhoff: Explanations and documents. Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). Heinrich von Ofterdingen . Pp. 88, 90.

^ Novalis: 'Heinrich von Ofterdingen', p. 350.

^ Novalis: Heinrich von Ofterdingen. P. 351.

↑ Novalis: "Heinrich von Ofterdingen", p. 363.

↑ Michael Ende, card box. Sketches and Notes , p. 187.

↑ Friedrich Schiller, 11th to 15th letter, in: The aesthetic education of people , Volume II, Munich 1966 (15th letter).

↑ Interview with Roman Hocke, conducted by Momo Evers for the magazine 'Nautilus', 2004.

↑ Michael Ende, quoted from Stoyan, Die phantastischen Kinderbücher , p. 119.

↑ Michael Ende: Zettelkasten , p. 166.

^ Conversation by Michael Ende with Erhard Eppler and Hanne Tächl, title: Fantasy / Culture / Politics. Minutes of a conversation, Stuttgart 1982, p. 38 f.

↑ ^a ^b Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story”. P. 129/130; geb.uni-giessen.de (PDF)

↑ Mystify your life by Juliane Werding. In: CD Lexicon

↑ Michael Ende, Zettelkasten , p. 160 f.

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Chapter III.

^ Hints can be found on pp. 13, 44, 66, 89, 94, 102, 113, 132; see. Kuckartz p. 43.

↑ Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story”. P. 133; geb.uni-giessen.de (PDF)

↑ Friedrich Ranke: Irrlicht , in: Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli (Ed.) With the participation of Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer, Concise Dictionary of German Superstitions , Volume 4, Berlin 1931/32, Column 779–785.

↑ Marcus Schnöbel, Stories and Fairy Tales: Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story” (PDF) (PDF; 1.2 MB), p. 135.

↑ World library on the subject of hunting

↑ Faun, Cernunnos , on Youtube.

^ Faun, Cernunnos , text. ( Memento of the original from October 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2
↑ Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story”. P. 49; geb.uni-giessen.de (PDF)
↑ Chapter XXI.
↑ Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story”. geb.uni-giessen.de (PDF)
↑ “Perelín would devour everything and perish on himself if he didn't have to keep dying and turning to dust [...]. Perelín and you, Graógramán, you belong together. ”, The Neverending Story, p. 222.
↑ Roman Hocke, Thomas Kraft: Michael Ende and his fantastic world. The search for the magic word , pp. 21–26.
↑ Eppler. The End. Tächl: Fantasy / Culture / Politics. P. 78.
↑ Geherad J. Bellinger, Knaurs Encyclopedia of Mythology, Droemer Knaur Verlag, Munich 1989, 1993, 1999th
^ Mariko Sato and Japan .
↑ Michael Ende, 'Schildkröten', in: Michael Endes Zettelkasten, pp. 72–74.
↑ Michael Ende, Jim Knopf and Lukas, the engine driver.
↑ Chapter XVII.
↑ C. Ludwig, Was du Ererbt , p. 193.
↑ Michael Ende, Zettelkasten , p. 52.
^ Johann Georg Hamann: Aesthetica in nuce . In: JGH: Socratic Memories / Aesthetice in nuce . Reclam, Stuttgart 1979, pp. 81 and 87 (first published in: 'Kreuzzüge des Philologen', 1762).
↑ King Oedipus - A comedy from the old days. (PDF; 262 kB)
^ Novalis: Heinrich von Ofterdingen. P. 190.

[Schnöbel129-1] Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story”. P. 129. geb.uni-giessen.de (PDF)

[2] New classics of youth literature

[buechervielfalt.de-3] The Neverending Story ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at büchervielfalt.de @1@ 2

[4] Wolf Donner : Sick Moon Child . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1980, pp. 188 ( online ).

[5] Birgit Otte: Michael Ende . S. 3. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): Critical lexicon for contemporary German literature (KLG). Volume 3. 43rd edition. (As of January 1, 1993). Munich 1978 ff. Pp. 1-12 and AN.

[6] Christian von Wernsdorff: Pictures against nothing. On the return of romance with Michael Ende and Peter Handke . Neuss 1983. p. 94.

[7] Michael Ende: Michael Ende's card box. Sketches and notes . Stuttgart 1994, p. 266.

[Donner190-8] Wolf Donner : Sick Moon Child . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1980, pp. 190 ( online ).

[GoetzXIII-9] Rainald Goetz: Fantasy circles reality. Michael Ende's great new fairy tale novel . In: Book and Time . Literature supplement of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 10, 1979, p. XIII.

[10] Erich Rammerskirch: A Christian fairy tale? "The Neverending Story" by Michael Ende . In: Christ in der Gegenwart , 51, December 16, 1984, p. 421.

[11] Wilfried Kuckartz: Michael Ende "The Neverending Story". An educational fairy tale . Essen 1984 (= pedagogy of the role model, volume 1).

[Kratz-12] Gudrun Kratz-Norbisrath: Oh! the sensuality! Or: the soap bubble syndrome. In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. 242 (October 16, 1981).

[13] Reinhard Tschapke: Wonderful worlds, neverending stories . In: Die Welt , August 30, 1995, p. 3.

[14] Titus Arnu: Living creatures of the imagination . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 30, 1995, p. 13.

[15] Heike Nollert: Does happiness come from imagination? To the continued success of the author Michael Ende . In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , December 23, 1983, p. 13.

[Lexikon-16] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v ^w ^x ^y ^z ^aa ^ab ^ac ^ad ^ae ^af ^ag ^ah ^ai ^aj ^ak ^al ^am ^an ^ao ^ap ^aq ^ar ^as ^at ^au ^av ^aw ^ax ^ay ^az ^ba ^bb ^bc ^bd ^be ^bf ^bg ^bh ^bi ^bj ^bk ^bl ^bm ^bn ^bo ^bp ^bq ^br ^bs ^bt ^bu ^bv ^bw ^bx ^by ^bz Roman and Patrick Hocke: Michael Ende, The Neverending Story. The Phantásien-Lexikon , Thienemann-Verlag, Regensburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-522-20050-9 .

[17] Kuckartz: Michael Ende "The Neverending Story". P. 32.

[KapVI-18] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Chapter VI.

[19] Chapter IX.

[Schnöbel9ff-20] Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story”. P. 9 ff .; geb.uni-giessen.de (PDF)

[21] Chapters I. to XII.

[22] Stages of a Hero's Journey

[23] Chapter XIII. to XXV.

[KapXXVI-24] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k Chapter XXVI.

[25] Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research into Michael Ende's 'The Neverending Story'. Pp. 103-109. geb.uni-giessen.de (PDF; 1.2 MB)

[26] Prondczynsky, Andreas von: The infinite longing for oneself. On the trail of a new myth. Attempt on an "Neverending Story". Frankfurt a. M. 1983 (= youth and media, volume 3). P. 13.

[x-zine.de-27] Review of the special edition of The Neverending Story

[28] Also to be found in the Star Wars saga by George Lucas ; the evil Sith there wear red lightsabers, the Jedi blue or green.

[Berger-29] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Klaus Berger : Michael Ende. Healing through magical imagination. With a foreword by Ulrich Skambraks . Publishing house and writing mission of the Evangelical Society for Germany, Wuppertal 1985, ISBN 3-87857-203-4 .

[Kreuzer-30] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Time magic. Our century ponders the mystery of clocks. Franz Kreuzer in conversation with Michael Ende, Bernulf Kanitscheider. Franz Deuticke Verlagsgesellschaft mb H., Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-7005-4518-5 .

[31] Michael Ende: The Neverending Story. Imprint.

[32] Michael Ende: The Neverending Story. K. Thienemanns Verlag, new edition from 2004.

[Malaspina-33] Federica Malaspina: Michael Ende: L'esperienza del narrare il narrare. Thesis (Tesi di laurea) of the Università degli studi di Parma. Faccoltà di lettere e filosofia . Anno accademico 1993/1994.

[34] Letter from Michael Ende to Roswitha Quadflieg dated May 4, 1978.

[35] Letter from Michael Ende to Roswitha Quadflieg dated April 3, 1982.

[36] Letter from Hansjörg Weitbrecht to Roswitha Quadflieg dated February 21, 1980.

[37] One of Ende's numerous mirror effects, cf. also mirror in the mirror.

[38] At this point the story ends in the book in the book , s. there.

[39] Ende deals with a very similar topic in his book “ Momo ”.

[KapXI-40] Chapter XI.

[KapXIII-41] Chapter XIII.

[42] The Beliebigkeitsspiel lettered dice and the monkey, who rules over the city, are a nod to the theorem of endless tip monkeys ( infinite monkey theorem ). It says that an infinite number of monkeys who happen to pick on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually, by chance, write all of William Shakespeare's works.

[43] Chapter XXVI. This last sentence comes up again and again in the book to point out that no story really ends and that more can emerge from every story, as Coreander himself said to Bastian.

[44] For the content of the book, compare not only the book itself but also this table of contents with commentary .

[45] Especially in Chapter XI.

[46] This is mainly Chapter IX. to call.

[47] The Nebelschiffer in Chapter XIV. Form a society in which the individual can be replaced here. Bastian does not feel comfortable with them in the long run, the desire to be loved grows in him.

[KapI-48] Chapter I.

[49] Especially Chapter XXVI.

[KapXI_dkk-50] Chapter XI., Die Kindliche Kaiserin

[51] Chapter X, The Flight to the Ivory Tower : “No,” said Fuchur, “she is not what we are. She is not a creature of fantasy. We are all there by being. But it is of a different kind. "

[52] Chapter III, The Ancient Morla .

[53] Chapter VII, The Voice of Silence .

[54] Chapter VI: The Three Magical Gates .

[55] Chapter VIII: In Gelichterland .

[56] Chapter IX, Haunted City .

[Kindler-57] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Michael Ende . In: Kindler's new literary lexicon . Munich 1989, ISBN 3-463-43005-3

[ausserhalb-58] As the author of the book, Michael Ende writes the Neverending Story outside of Fantasy. Chapter XII: The Old Man from the Wandering Mountains writes the Neverending Story within Fantasia. Both books are, according to Coreander's remarks, in Chapter XXVI. identical. Ende and the old man from the Wandering Mountains are one and the same person.

[59] Chapter XII: The Old Man from the Wandering Mountain .

[Kuckartz-60] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u Wilfried Kuckartz: Michael Ende, The Neverending Story. An educational fairy tale. Verlag Die Blaue Eule, Essen: 1984.

[KapXIII-XXVI-61] Chapter XIII. to XXVI.

[KapXIII_Perelin-62] Chapter XIII: Perelín, the night forest

[63] For the first time by the lion Graógramán, Chapter XIV.

[64] Chapter XIV: Goab, the desert of colors .

[65] Chapter XVI: The Silver City Amargánth .

[66] For the first time already in Chapter XIII. mentioned.

[67] Chapter XXII: The Battle of the Ivory Tower .

[68] Chapter XXIII: The Old Emperor City .

[69] Bastian takes three steps to get there. He wants to be part of a community, chapter XXIV., He wants to be loved, chapters XXIII., XXIV., But his true will is to love himself, chapters XXIV. And XXV.

[70] Chapter XXIII.

[71] Chapter XXIV.

[72] Chapter XXV: The Mine of Images

[73] Especially Chapter XXVI.

[74] Described in Chapter XXIII.

[75] Chapter XXVII., XXV., XXVI.

[76] Susanne Beyer: You should read like children . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 2003, p. 182 ( online ).

[Ende_in_einem_Interview_1981-77] 1981 interview.

[Beyer-78] Susanne Beyer: You should read like children . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 2003, p. 183 ( online ).

[Lattka-79] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Agathe Lattka , Return of Romanticism? An investigation. Michael Ende's novel "The Neverending Story" , 2005.

[Ostmeier-80] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Dorothee Ostmeier on the Neverending Story.

[Typoskript-81] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Typescript from the estate of Michael Ende.

[82] Margarete von Schwarzkopf: Free out into the realm of fantasy . In: Die Welt , p. 15.

[83] Michael Ende: Note box. Sketches and Notes , p. 112.

[Magisch-84] Roman Hocke, Uwe Neumahr: Michael Ende. Magical Worlds , published by the Deutsches Theatermuseum Munich, Henschel Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-89487-583-1 .

[85] Michael Ende. From the estate.

[86] Michael Ende, Der Niemandsgarten, p. 169.

[87] Michael Ende, Der Niemandsgarten, p. 248.

[88] Michael Ende, Zettelkasten , p. 221 f.

[89] Michael Ende, Zettelkasten , p. 222.

[90] Immanuel Kant , answer to the question: "What is Enlightenment". In: Berlin Monthly Journal, December 1784.

[91] Michael Ende, Michael Ende's Zettelkasten , Stuttgart 1994, p. 210.

[92] Interview with Michael Ende. In: Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel , No. 102 (December 21, 1990), pp. 39–85.

[Wernsdorff-93] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v ^w ^x ^y ^z ^aa ^ab ^ac ^ad ^ae Christian von Wernsdorff : Pictures against nothing. On the return of the Romanesque with Michael Ende and Peter Handke . Schampel and Kleine Neuss publishing house, Aachen / Düsseldorf / Neuss 1983.

[Stoyan-94] A ^b Hajna Stoyan , The fantastic children's books by Michael Ende: with an introduction to the development of genre theory and an excursus on the fantastic children's literature of the GDR , Frankfurt / Main (among others) 2004. (Zugl: Univ. Diss. Budapest 2002).

[95] Novalis .

[96] ETA Hoffmann , The golden pot . A fairy tale from the new era. In: Hoffmann's works in three volumes, first volume (stories, fairy tales), Berlin / Weimar, Aufbau-Verlag 1976, pp. 57–144.

[97] Jost Hermand: The 'neo-romantic soul vagabond'. In: Wolfgang Paulsen (Ed.): Das Nachleben der Romantik in der Moderne Deutschen Literatur, Heidelberg, Lothar Stiehm Verlag 1969, pp. 95–115.

[Schlegel-98] A ^b August Wilhelm Schlegel : Lectures on beautiful literature and art (Berlin 1801–1804) . Quoted from: Otto F. Best and Hans-Jürgen Schmitt (eds.): The German literature in text and representation, Romantik I, Stuttgart, Reclam 1975, pp. 25-26.

[Novalis-99] Novalis : Heinrich von Ofterdingen . Ein Roman (1802) , Stuttgart, Reclam 1965.

[100] Lothar Pikulik: Romanticism as inadequacies in normality using the example of Tieck Hoffmann, Eichendorff . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979, 3rd part: Compensation of inadequacy, pp. 251–289.

[101] Friedrich Schlegel , Lucinde. A novel (1799). Reclam, Stuttgart 1973, p. 107.

[Berganza-102] E. TA Hoffmann's satirical dialogue "Message from the newest fates of the dog Berganza" appeared in Bamberg in 1814 in the "Fantasiestücke in Callot's manner". Hoffmann's description of the function of the theater is directed against Schiller's postulate of the Schaubühne as a “moral institution”. Quoted from: OF Best and H.-J. Schmitt (Hrsg.): The German literature in text and representation, Romanticism I., p. 277.

[103] Generally described in: Uwe Japp: Das Buch im Buch. A figure of literary Hermetism , in: Neue Rundschau 86 (1975). Pp. 651-670.

[104] To the book in the book especially at Ende cf. Prondzcynsky: DuSnss. Pp. 36-39.

[Einl-105] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Introduction.

[106] Michael Ende, Zettelkasten, p. 85.

[KapIV-107] Chapter IV.

[KapXII-108] Chapter XII.

[KapVII-109] Chapter VII.

[NNachlass-110] Note from Michael Ende's estate.

[111] Michael Ende in a broadcast by Deutschlandfunk on December 24, 1981: The neverending story. Kinder and Michael Ende on 'Momo' and 'The Neverending Story'. Editor: Klaus Sauer.

[112] Michael Ende in: 'Conversation with Michael Ende.' Try to get the writer of the Neverending Story to tell. A conversation with Barbaa Bondy, Barbara von Wulffen and Hans Heigert. Editor: Barbary Bondy. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung from 14./15. March 1981.

[113] -Michael Ende in: 'Free out into the realm of phantasy.' Conversation between Michael Ende and M. v. Black Head. In: Die Welt of October 8, 1980.

[114] Dieter Wellershoff: Transcendence and apparent added value. To the poetic category . In: DW: literature and pleasure principle. Essays, Cologne 1973, p. 44.

[115] Michael Ende in: 'Children ask - Michael Ende answers'. In: 'Reading Representing Understanding' A 5 (revision), Frankfurt am Main, Hirschgraben 1982, p. 242.

[116] Typescript from the author's estate, published in: Roman Hocke, Uwe Neumahr, Michael Ende. Magical worlds. , Deutsches Theatermuseum Munich, Henschel-Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-89487-583-1 .

[117] Peter Boccarius: Michael Ende. The beginning of the story , p. 219.

[118] Roman Hocke, Thomas Kraft, Michael Ende and his fantastic world. The search for the magic word , p. 14 f.

[Z295-119] Michael Ende: Note box. Sketches and Notes , p. 295.

[120] Roman Hocke: Edgar Ende-Website u. Heidi Adams: Visiting Michael Ende

[121] See Ende's novel “ Momo ”.

[122] Michael Ende in a letter to a reader on August 8, 1988.

[123] Chapter XXII.

[124] Michael Ende, letter to EC from February 20, 1987, in: Der Niemandsgarten. Selected from the estate and edited by Roman Hocke, Stuttgart 1998, p. 46 .

[KapII-125] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k Chapter II.

[126] Wolf Donner : Sick Moon Child . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1980, pp. 188-189 ( online ).

[127] Lexicon with reference to the introduction to the Neverending Story, pp. 12-14.

[128] Eppler. The End. Tächl: Fantasy / Culture / Politics. P. 38.

[129] ivory tower ( Wiktionary )

[130] Stoyan, Die phantastischen Kinderbücher , p. 44.

[131] Stoyan, Die phantastischen Kinderbücher , p. 36 f.

[132] Claudia Ludwig, What you inherited from your fathers ... Michael Ende's Fantasias - Symbolism and literary sources , Frankfurt / Main, u. a. 1988. (= Europäische Hochschulschriften; Series 1, German Language and Literature, 1071), p. 116.

[133] Star Wars Episode 1–3.

[134] Jacek Rzeszotnik (ed.), Between Fantasy and Reality: Michael Ende Gedächtnisband 2000 , Passau 2000. (= Fantasy 136/137; Series of publications Volume 35), p. 119.

[135] Michael Ende, letter to a world explorer , in: Michael Ende's Zettelkasten , p. 300 ff.

[136] Letter exchange M. Ende / W. Petersen. From the estate.

[137] Michael Ende: Zettelkasten , p. 93.

[138] End: Note box. P. 131.

[139] Pascal Trambley, The Fantasy in Fantasy , in: Between Fantasy and Reality. Michael Ende Memorial Volume 2000 , ed. by Jack Rzeszotnik, Passau 2000. (= Fantasie 136/137, series of publications vol. 35), pp. 143-161, p. 146.

[140] Michael Ende, From the estate.

[Bondy137-141] Bondy. Wulffen. Heigert: Conversation with Michael Ende. P. 137.

[142] Wernsdorff: BgdN. P. 63.

[143] Meaning of the name Atreyu.

[144] The name Atreyu.

[145] Bernhard Dietrich Haage : Ouroboros - and no end , in: Light of nature. Medicine in specialist literature and poetry: Festschrift for Gundolf Keil on his 60th birthday, ed. by Josef Domes, Werner E. Gerabek, Bernhard Dietrich Haage, Christoph Weißer and Volker Zimmermann, Göppingen 1994 (= Göppinger works on German studies, 585), pp. 149–169.

[146] Norbert Bischof : The force field of myths . Signals from the time we created the world. Munich / Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-492-22655-8 . (Especially Part Two: The Chos, Chapter 6: The Cosmogonic Incest, pp. 191–224.)

[147] Michael Grant , John Hazel: Lexicon of ancient myths and shapes . 18th edition Dtv, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-32508-9 .

[148] Karl Kerényi : The hero stories (The mythology of the Greeks; 2). 21st edition Dtv, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-30031-0 .

[149] Robert von Ranke-Graves : Greek Mythology . New edition. Anaconda-Verlag, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-86647-211-2 .

[150] Walter Haas, W. Günther Ganser, Provincial Words: German Idiotism Collections of the 18th Century , Language Arts & Disciplins, 1994, 947 pages.

[151] Michael Ende, Zettelkasten, p. 136.

[152] Michael Ende, Der Niemandsgarten , p. 276.

[153] Michael Ende, The Archeology of Darkness , p. 67.

[Ludwig-154] Claudia Ludwig : What you inherited from your fathers ... Michael Ende's Fantasies - Symbolism and literary sources , Frankfurt / Main (among others) 1988. (= European university publications; Series I., German Language and Literature, 1071).

[155] SP Bumbacher, mountains (five sacred) , in: Metzler Lexikon Religion , Vol I., Stuttgart 1999, pp 138-142..

[156] Hans Peter Duerr , Dreamtime. Across the line between wilderness and civilization . Frankfurt am Main 1978.

[157] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Works. Volume 6. Novels and short stories I. p. 512.

[158] Wilhelm Große, Ludger Grenzmann: Classic. Romance. The history of German literature. P. 106.

[159] Novalis: Pollen. P. 471.

[160] Novalis: The Apprentices to Saïs. P. 203.

[161] Novalis: Pollen. P. 445.

[162] Friedrich Nietzsche: Also Spoke Zarathustra , p. 31.

[163] Michael Ende, card box. Sketches and Notes , pp. 180–181.

[164] Michael Ende: Letter to EC from February 20, 1987. In: Der Niemandsgarten. P. 46.

[165] Michael Ende, 'The Children and Reading', in: Michael Ende, Der Niemandsgarten, p. 39.

[166] ETA Hoffmann, quoted from H. Stoyan: The fantastic children's books by Michael Ende; with an introduction to the development of genre theory and an excursus on the fantastic children's literature of the GDR. Frankfurt am Main / u. a. 2004. (Zugl .: Univ. Diss., Budapest 2002), p. 30.

[167] Michael Ende, Zettelkasten , p. 55 ff.

[168] Michael Ende on August 26, 1975, at night, published in: Michael Ende, Der Niemandsgarten , p. 272.

[169] Michael Ende, letter to a reader from October 25, 1981.

[170] Novalis: 'Works in One Volume. The Apprentices at Saïs', p. 214.

[171] Novalis: 'Works in One Volume. The Apprentices at Saïs', p. 216.

[172] Michael Ende: Note box . P. 69.

[173] Ursula Ritzenhoff: Explanations and documents. Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). Heinrich von Ofterdingen . Pp. 88, 90.

[174] Novalis: 'Heinrich von Ofterdingen', p. 350.

[175] Novalis: Heinrich von Ofterdingen. P. 351.

[176] Novalis: "Heinrich von Ofterdingen", p. 363.

[177] Michael Ende, card box. Sketches and Notes , p. 187.

[178] Friedrich Schiller, 11th to 15th letter, in: The aesthetic education of people , Volume II, Munich 1966 (15th letter).

[179] Interview with Roman Hocke, conducted by Momo Evers for the magazine 'Nautilus', 2004.

[180] Michael Ende, quoted from Stoyan, Die phantastischen Kinderbücher , p. 119.

[181] Michael Ende: Zettelkasten , p. 166.

[182] Conversation by Michael Ende with Erhard Eppler and Hanne Tächl, title: Fantasy / Culture / Politics. Minutes of a conversation, Stuttgart 1982, p. 38 f.

[Schnöbel-183] Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story”. P. 129/130; geb.uni-giessen.de (PDF)

[184] Mystify your life by Juliane Werding. In: CD Lexicon

[185] Michael Ende, Zettelkasten , p. 160 f.

[KapIII-186] Chapter III.

[187] Hints can be found on pp. 13, 44, 66, 89, 94, 102, 113, 132; see. Kuckartz p. 43.

[188] Marcus Schnöbel: Story and fairy tale. Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story”. P. 133; geb.uni-giessen.de (PDF)

[189] Friedrich Ranke: Irrlicht , in: Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli (Ed.) With the participation of Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer, Concise Dictionary of German Superstitions , Volume 4, Berlin 1931/32, Column 779–785.

[190] Marcus Schnöbel, Stories and Fairy Tales: Research on Michael Ende's “The Neverending Story” (PDF) (PDF; 1.2 MB), p. 135.

[191] World library on the subject of hunting

[192] Faun, Cernunnos , on Youtube.