John Fowles’ “The Magus” is not just a novel; it’s an experience. As Fowles himself admits in the preface, this debut work, crafted over a decade, served as his personal writing school. This extended gestation period is evident in the novel’s dual nature – both breathtakingly brilliant and bewilderingly complex. It stands as a profoundly honest exploration of a young man’s tumultuous quest to decipher the human psyche, navigating the unpredictable terrains of love, desire, and disillusionment, echoing Nabokov’s poignant observation of love’s transformation into “rust and stardust.”
“In 1964 I went to work and collated and rewrote all the previous drafts. But The Magus remained essentially where a tyro taught himself to write novels – beneath its narrative, a notebook of an exploration, often erring and misconceived, into an unknown land.”
Revisiting “The Magus” recently, I found myself oscillating between enchantment and tedium, a stark contrast to my initial youthful captivation. Age and experience have shifted my perspective, yet Fowles’ preface acted as an invaluable compass, guiding me through the intricate maze Nicholas Urfe traverses on his path to emotional maturity.
“My heart was beating faster than it should. It was partly at the thought of meeting Julie, partly at something far more mysterious, the sense that I was now deep in the strangest maze in Europe. Now I really was Theseus; somewhere in the darkness Ariadne waited; and perhaps the Minotaur.”
The challenge now lies in distilling this rich, sprawling narrative – a behemoth of suppressed desires, cultural allusions, and psychological games – into a concise analysis. To navigate this textual labyrinth, we need anchor points: pivotal moments and key themes that illuminate Nicholas Urfe’s journey and guide the reader through the maze.
Here are five essential aspects to understanding “The Magus”:
- Nicholas Urfe as the Archetypal Post-War Intellect: Fowles presents Nicholas as a quintessential product of early post-war British society – intellectually sharp yet emotionally stunted, cynical, self-absorbed, and prone to self-deception.
- A Love Story at its Core: Beneath the layers of philosophical games and psychological manipulations, “The Magus” is fundamentally a love story, exploring the complex relationship between Nicholas and Alison, albeit through an allegorical and mythical lens.
- Greece as Catalyst and Backdrop: The Greek landscape, culture, and people serve as both a catalyst for Nicholas’s transformation and the dramatic stage upon which his journey unfolds. The intense beauty and ancient mystique of Greece amplify the novel’s themes of illusion and reality.
- Psychoanalysis and Jungian Archetypes: Carl Jung’s psychoanalytic theories, particularly the concept of archetypes, provide a framework for understanding the elaborate games and parables orchestrated by Conchis, the enigmatic magus. These psychological games are designed to confront Nicholas with his subconscious and force him to confront uncomfortable truths about himself.
- The Enigma of Choice and Interpretation: “The Magus” deliberately avoids providing definitive answers. Instead, Fowles constructs his novel around the concept of choice, suggesting that each reader’s interpretation and ultimate understanding of the labyrinth will be unique. There is no single “correct” solution to the puzzles Conchis presents; the meaning is derived from the individual’s journey through the text.
This simplification of the plot is a necessary starting point. One could easily dedicate an entire analysis to a single story, allegory, or quotation from Conchis. However, in attempting to capture the essence of “The Magus,” some level of messiness, mirroring the novel itself, is inevitable.
Nicholas Urfe: The Flawed Protagonist
“Handsomely equipped to fail I went out into the world.”
Nicholas Urfe embodies the archetype of the privileged yet directionless young man. Raised in a middle-class English family with a distant father and indifferent mother, he receives a classic education, joins fashionable intellectual circles, and enjoys superficial success with women. Yet, post-university, he finds himself suffocated by his mundane teaching job and the perceived emptiness of his future.
“It poured with rain the day I left. But I was filled with excitement, a strange exuberant sense of taking wing. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew what I needed. I needed a new land, a new race, a new language; and, although I couldn’t have put it into words then, I needed a new mystery.”
This quote encapsulates Nicholas’s yearning for something beyond the confines of his predictable existence – a life imbued with meaning and purpose. At this early stage, Nicholas is undeniably flawed – self-centered, prone to self-pity, and oblivious to the needs and feelings of others. His journey in “The Magus” is, in many ways, a protracted lesson in empathy and self-awareness, though progress is far from linear.
Alison: The Unconventional Muse
Nicholas’s relationship with Alison, an Australian woman he meets in London’s bohemian circles, forms the emotional core of the novel. This section is particularly resonant, perhaps due to its poignant depiction of youthful relationships and the pitfalls of self-deception in love. Alison, unburdened by British social constraints, contrasts sharply with Nicholas’s repressed and somewhat snobbish nature. Her openness and directness are initially appealing to Nicholas but ultimately become sources of his discomfort and, ultimately, his mistreatment of her.
Alison’s vulnerability and emotional honesty are highlighted in a conversation following a viewing of “Quai des Brumes,” a film that deeply affects her existential outlook:
“That film made me feel what I feel about everything. There isn’t any meaning. You try and try to be happy and then something chance happens and it’s all gone. It’s because we don’t believe in a life after death. […] Every time you go out and I’m not with you I think you may die. I think about dying every day. Every time I have you, I think this is one in the eye for death. You know, you’ve got a lot of money and the shops are going to shut in an hour. It’s sick, but you’ve got to spend. Does that makes sense?”
Nicholas, in his emotional immaturity, dismisses Alison’s existential anxieties, highlighting his inability to connect with her on a deeper emotional level. This disconnect foreshadows the power imbalances and emotional manipulations that characterize their relationship and Nicholas’s subsequent interactions with women.
Fowles, reflecting on the emotional toll of writing, offers a parallel between the author’s experience and Nicholas’s journey:
“I had escaped Circe, but the withdrawal symptoms were severe. I had not then realized that loss is essential for the novelist, immensely fertile for his books, however painful to his private being.”
This insight suggests that the pain and loss experienced by characters like Nicholas, and perhaps even inflicted by them, are essential components of growth and artistic creation. Alison’s poignant observation on the inherent vulnerability in love and relationships further underscores this theme:
“I don’t wanna hurt you and the more I … want you, the more I shall. And I don’t want you to hurt me, and the more you don’t want me the more you will.”
This encapsulates the delicate and often painful dynamic of intimate relationships, a central theme explored throughout “The Magus.”
Greece: The Enchantress
Greece, personified as the mythical enchantress Circe, acts as a transformative force in Nicholas’s life. It jolts him from his detached British sensibility, awakens his dormant artistic inclinations, and exposes his emotional arrested development. Like Odysseus ensnared by Circe’s magic, Nicholas risks losing himself entirely to the allure of the Greek islands. Bourani, Conchis’s opulent estate, is depicted as a Garden of Eden, from which Nicholas, the questioning Adam, will ultimately be expelled.
“In England we live in a very muted, calm, domesticated relationship with what remains of our natural landscape and its soft, northern light; in Greece landscape and light are so beautiful, so all-present, so intense, so wild, that the relationship is immediately love-hatred, one of passion.”
Fowles’s evocative prose captures the profound impact of the Greek landscape. His personal experience in Greece lends authenticity to the descriptive passages, especially his prescient awareness of the destructive potential of unchecked tourism.
“Goodness and beauty may be separable in the north, but not in Greece. Between skin and skin there is only light.”
This quote beautifully encapsulates the synesthetic sensory experience of Greece, where beauty and goodness become intertwined and inseparable, a stark contrast to the more compartmentalized experience of the “north.”
Bourani: The World as a Stage
The narrative shifts dramatically with Nicholas’s arrival at Bourani and the entrance of Maurice Conchis, the magus himself. The preceding chapters serve as a prelude, introducing the players – Nicholas and Alison – and setting the stage for the elaborate spectacle to come. Conchis, as the director of this psychological drama, orchestrates events designed to dismantle Nicholas’s preconceived notions of reality and self.
“The most striking thing about him was the intensity of his eyes; very dark brown, staring, with a simian penetration emphasized by the remarkably clear whites, eyes that seemed not quite human.”
Conchis’s piercing gaze hints at his enigmatic and potentially manipulative nature. A crucial key to understanding Conchis is recognizing his inherent untrustworthiness: he is a liar, a fabulist, and a master of illusion. Attempting to decipher his motivations through conventional logic is futile. The reader, like Nicholas, is meant to grapple with ambiguity and uncertainty.
Fowles, in his introduction, sheds light on the conception of Conchis:
“… a series of masks representing human notions of God, from the supernatural to the jargon-ridden scientific; that is, a series of human illusions about something that does not exist in fact, absolute knowledge and absolute power. The destruction of such illusions seems to me still an eminently humanist aim.”
Conchis embodies the human tendency to seek absolute certainty and control, whether through religion, science, or ideology. His games are designed to expose the fallacy of such pursuits and to force Nicholas (and the reader) to confront the inherent ambiguity and uncertainty of existence.
“God and freedom are totally antipathetic concepts; and men believe in their imaginary gods most often because they are afraid to believe in the other thing. I am old enough to realize now that they do so sometimes with good reason. But I stick by the general principle, and that is what I meant to be at the heart of my story: that true freedom lies between each two, never in one alone, and therefore it can never be absolute freedom.”
This statement encapsulates a central philosophical tenet of “The Magus”: true freedom is not absolute but relational, existing in the space between individuals. This concept challenges Nicholas’s individualistic and ego-centric worldview. Conchis further elaborates on this theme in a debate with Nicholas, employing the island metaphor:
‘No man is an island.’‘Pah. Rubbish. Every one of us is an island. If it were not so we should go mad at once. Between these islands are ships, aeroplanes, telephones, wireless – what you will. But they remain islands. Islands that can sink or disappear for ever. You are an island that has not sunk. You cannot be such a pessimist. It is not possible.’
This seemingly contradictory statement emphasizes the inherent isolation of the individual while acknowledging the necessity of connection. The “ships” and “telephones” represent the attempts to bridge these islands of selfhood, but the fundamental separateness remains.
The journey through Conchis’s labyrinth of self-discovery commences, employing psychological warfare and modern parables. The novel subtly references T.S. Eliot’s “Little Giding,” echoing the cyclical nature of exploration and self-knowledge:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
This epigraph foreshadows Nicholas’s journey, which ultimately leads him back to a changed perspective on his starting point – himself. Art becomes a crucial tool in this re-examination of the past. Conchis displays a Bonnard painting, which evokes for Nicholas a poignant memory of past relationships:
Sunlight. A naked girl. A chair. A towel, a bidet. A tiled floor. A little dog. And he gives the whole existence a reason.It was an unforgettable painting; it set a dense golden halo of light round the most trivial of moments, so that the moment, and all such moments, could never be completely trivial again.
This passage highlights the power of art to elevate mundane moments to significance, imbuing them with meaning and emotional resonance. It also underscores the theme of retrospective understanding of love and loss.
The narrative then delves into the parables of de Deukans and Seidevarre, each designed to provoke contemplation on fundamental dualities: prose versus poetry, existentialism versus romanticism, science versus the supernatural. These stories, deliberately ambiguous and open to interpretation, serve to challenge Nicholas’s rigid intellectual frameworks and to emphasize the necessity of embracing mystery and uncertainty.
“The solution of the physical problems that face man – that is a matter of technology. But I am talking about general psychological health of the species, man. He needs the existence of mysteries. Not their solution.”
Conchis argues for the vital role of mystery and the unexplained in human life, suggesting that the relentless pursuit of solutions can be detrimental to psychological well-being.
The dynamic between Nicholas and Julie/Lily then takes center stage, becoming a more overtly personal and emotionally charged game. This phase serves as a form of karmic retribution for Nicholas’s past treatment of Alison, while also exploring the complexities of desire, identity, and performance.
“The essences of the two sexes had become so confused in my androgynous twentieth-century mind that this reversion to a situation where a woman was a woman and I was obliged to be fully a man had all the fascination of an old house after a cramped, anonymous modern flat. I had been enchanted into wanting sex often enough before; but never into wanting love.”
Nicholas grapples with differentiating between lust and genuine desire, as Julie/Lily embodies both traditional and modern feminine archetypes, further blurring the lines of reality and illusion. Conchis’s warning, “We are all actors, and actresses, Mr Urfe. You included,” and Julie/Lily’s self-aware statement, “The real me’s a lot less exciting than the imaginary one,” underscore the pervasive theme of performance and deception in human interactions, especially in love.
The narrative briefly touches upon Sartre’s “Huis Clos,” highlighting the theme of relational entrapment and the challenges of authentic connection in love. The review then glosses over the “firing squad parable” and the “mock trial,” acknowledging their significance while maintaining brevity.
“We must always remember that the subject has been launched into the world with no training in self-analysis and self-orientation; and that almost all the education he has received is positively harmful to him. He was, so to speak, born short-sighted by nature and has been further blinded by his environments. It is small wonder that he cannot find his way.”
This quote offers a commentary on the deficiencies of conventional education in fostering self-awareness and emotional intelligence, suggesting that Nicholas’s struggles are, in part, a product of societal conditioning.
Nicholas’s expulsion from Bourani, likened to exile from Prospero’s island, Circe’s spell, and the Garden of Eden, marks a crucial turning point. He is sent back to London, burdened by guilt and the weight of self-knowledge.
“And a great cloud of black guilt, knowledge of my atrocious selfishness, settled on me.”
Even upon returning to familiar surroundings, Nicholas remains introspective, though still prone to self-absorption. Fowles maintains ambiguity regarding his ultimate fate, but offers two key insights. The encounter with Mrs. de Seitas, a Dickensian echo of Miss Havisham, provides two lessons in love: the danger of possessiveness and the importance of forgiveness.
The novel concludes with a Latin passage, offering a final perspective on love and redemption:
cras amet qui numquam amavit quique amavit cras amet.
“Let him love tomorrow who has never loved; and let him who has loved, love tomorrow also.”
This passage, urging both new and experienced lovers to embrace love continuously, provides a hopeful, albeit open-ended, conclusion to Nicholas’s labyrinthine journey. “The Magus,” in its complexity and ambiguity, ultimately invites readers to embark on their own explorations of self, love, and the elusive nature of reality.
