The Magus (novel)
Encyclopedia
The Magus is the first novel written (but second published) by British author John Fowles
. It tells the story of Nicholas Urfe, a teacher on a small Greek island. Urfe finds himself embroiled in psychological illusions of a master trickster that become increasingly dark and serious.
The novel was a bestseller, partly because it tapped successfully into – and, arguably, helped to promote – the 1960s popular interests in psychoanalysis
and mystical philosophy
.
wrote but his second to be published after The Collector
(1963). He started writing it in the 1950s, under the original title of The Godgame. He based it partly on his experiences on the Greek island of Spetses
, where he taught English for two years at the Anargyrios School. He wrote and rewrote it for twelve years before its publication in 1966, and despite critical and commercial success, continued to rework it until publishing a final revision in 1977.
graduate and aspiring poet Nicholas Urfe, who takes up with Alison Kelly, an Australian girl he meets at a party in London
. In order to get away from an increasingly serious relationship with her, Nicholas accepts a post teaching English at the Lord Byron School in the Greek
island of Phraxos. Bored, depressed, disillusioned, and overwhelmed by the Mediterranean island, Nicholas struggles with loneliness and contemplates suicide. Finding himself habitually walking the isle, he stumbles upon the estate, and soon the person, of wealthy Greek recluse
Maurice Conchis, who may or may not have collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War.
Nicholas is gradually drawn into Conchis' psychological games, his paradoxical views on life, his mysterious persona, and his eccentric masques. At first these various aspects of what the novel terms the "godgame" seem to Nicholas to be a joke, but as they grow more elaborate and intense, Nicholas's ability to determine what is real and what is artifice vanishes. Against his will and knowledge he becomes a performer in the godgame, and realizes that the reenactments of the Nazi
occupation, the absurd playlets after de Sade
, and the obscene parodies of Greek myths are not about Conchis' life, but his own.
. Fowles received many letters from readers wanting to know which of the two apparently possible outcomes occur, but has refused to answer the question conclusively, sometimes changing his answer to suit the reader. The novel ends quoting the refrain of the Pervigilium Veneris
, an anonymous work of fourth century Latin poetry, which has been taken as indicating the possible preferred resolution of the ending's ambiguity.
has written an article about his experiences in the island of Spetses and their influence on the book http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_n1_v42/ai_18412888/pg_4, and he has also specifically acknowledged some literary works in his foreword to the 1977 revision of The Magus. These include Alain-Fournier
's Le Grand Meaulnes
for showing a secret hidden world to be explored, and Richard Jefferies
' Bevis (1882), for projecting a very different world. Fowles also refers in the revised edition of the novel to a Miss Havisham, a likely reference to Charles Dickens
's Great Expectations
(1861).
It has been recently featured on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels
, #71 and #93 on the Reader's and Critics' lists, respectively.
, and written by Fowles. It starred Michael Caine
as Nicholas Urfe, Anthony Quinn
as Maurice Conchis, Anna Karina
as Alison, Candice Bergen
as Lily/Julie, and Julian Glover
as Anton, and was filmed in the island of Majorca. The adaptation, however, was greeted as a failure. Michael Caine
himself has said that it was one of the worst films he had been involved in along with The Swarm and Ashanti, because no one knew what it was all about. Woody Allen
said "If I had to live my life again, I'd do everything the same, except that I wouldn't see The Magus." Despite the failure, the film was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography
. In recent years, it has gained a cult following
which resulted in The Magus being commercially released on DVD in the US on October 17, 2006.
John Fowles
John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...
. It tells the story of Nicholas Urfe, a teacher on a small Greek island. Urfe finds himself embroiled in psychological illusions of a master trickster that become increasingly dark and serious.
The novel was a bestseller, partly because it tapped successfully into – and, arguably, helped to promote – the 1960s popular interests in psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
and mystical philosophy
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
.
Background
The Magus was the first novel John FowlesJohn Fowles
John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...
wrote but his second to be published after The Collector
The Collector
The Collector is the title of a 1963 novel by John Fowles. It was made into a movie in 1965.- Plot summary :The novel is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall, and collects butterflies in his spare time...
(1963). He started writing it in the 1950s, under the original title of The Godgame. He based it partly on his experiences on the Greek island of Spetses
Spetses
Spetses is an island and a municipality in the Islands regional unit, Attica, Greece. It is sometimes included as one of the Saronic Islands. Until 1948, it was part of the old prefecture of Argolidocorinthia, which is now split into Argolis and Corinthia...
, where he taught English for two years at the Anargyrios School. He wrote and rewrote it for twelve years before its publication in 1966, and despite critical and commercial success, continued to rework it until publishing a final revision in 1977.
Plot summary
The story is written from the perspective of young OxfordOxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
graduate and aspiring poet Nicholas Urfe, who takes up with Alison Kelly, an Australian girl he meets at a party in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. In order to get away from an increasingly serious relationship with her, Nicholas accepts a post teaching English at the Lord Byron School in the Greek
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
island of Phraxos. Bored, depressed, disillusioned, and overwhelmed by the Mediterranean island, Nicholas struggles with loneliness and contemplates suicide. Finding himself habitually walking the isle, he stumbles upon the estate, and soon the person, of wealthy Greek recluse
Recluse
A recluse is a person who lives in voluntary seclusion from the public and society, often close to nature. The word is from the Latin recludere, which means "shut up" or "sequester." There are many potential reasons for becoming a recluse: a personal philosophy that rejects consumer society; a...
Maurice Conchis, who may or may not have collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War.
Nicholas is gradually drawn into Conchis' psychological games, his paradoxical views on life, his mysterious persona, and his eccentric masques. At first these various aspects of what the novel terms the "godgame" seem to Nicholas to be a joke, but as they grow more elaborate and intense, Nicholas's ability to determine what is real and what is artifice vanishes. Against his will and knowledge he becomes a performer in the godgame, and realizes that the reenactments of the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
occupation, the absurd playlets after de Sade
Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...
, and the obscene parodies of Greek myths are not about Conchis' life, but his own.
Main
- Nicholas Urfe – The main protagonist, 25-year-old English man who goes to Greece to teach English and one day stumbles upon the waiting room.
- Alison Kelly – Nicholas's girlfriend whom he abandons to go to Greece.
- Maurice Conchis – Wealthy intellectual who is a main player in the masques.
- Lily de Seitas – Young woman who is involved in the masques and with whom Nicholas falls in love.
Other
- Joe – Involved in the masques.
- Maria – Conchis's maid.
- Demetriades – Fellow English teacher at the school.
- Lily de Seitas (older) – Lily's mother.
- Rose de Seitas – Lily's identical twin sister
- Benji de Seitas – the older Lily de Seitas's young son.
- Kemp – Old, unmarried woman who rents Nicholas a room in London.
- Jojo – Young girl whom Nicholas pays to accompany him.
- Jesus - A young man with schizophrenia that believes himself to be the son of a god.
Ending
The book ends indeterminatelyIndeterminacy (literature)
Indeterminacy in literature can be simply defined as when components of a text call for or require the reader to make their own decisions about the text’s meaning...
. Fowles received many letters from readers wanting to know which of the two apparently possible outcomes occur, but has refused to answer the question conclusively, sometimes changing his answer to suit the reader. The novel ends quoting the refrain of the Pervigilium Veneris
Pervigilium Veneris
Pervigilium Veneris, the Vigil of Venus, is a Latin poem, probably written in the 4th century. It is generally thought to have been by the poet Tiberianus, due to strong similarities with the latter’s poem Amnis ibat. It was written professedly in early spring on the eve of a three-nights'...
, an anonymous work of fourth century Latin poetry, which has been taken as indicating the possible preferred resolution of the ending's ambiguity.
Literary precedents
John FowlesJohn Fowles
John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...
has written an article about his experiences in the island of Spetses and their influence on the book http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_n1_v42/ai_18412888/pg_4, and he has also specifically acknowledged some literary works in his foreword to the 1977 revision of The Magus. These include Alain-Fournier
Alain-Fournier
Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri Alban-Fournier , a French author and soldier. He was the author of a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes , which has been twice filmed and is considered a classic of French literature.-Biography:Alain-Fournier was born in La Chapelle-d'Angillon, in the Cher...
's Le Grand Meaulnes
Le Grand Meaulnes
Le Grand Meaulnes is the only novel by French author Alain-Fournier. Fifteen-year-old François Seurel narrates the story of his relationship with seventeen-year-old Augustin Meaulnes as Meaulnes searches for his lost love. Impulsive, reckless and heroic, Meaulnes embodies the romantic ideal, the...
for showing a secret hidden world to be explored, and Richard Jefferies
Richard Jefferies
John Richard Jefferies was an English nature writer, noted for his depiction of English rural life in essays, books of natural history, and novels. His childhood on a small Wiltshire farm had a great influence on him and provides the background to all his major works of fiction...
' Bevis (1882), for projecting a very different world. Fowles also refers in the revised edition of the novel to a Miss Havisham, a likely reference to Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
's Great Expectations
Great Expectations
Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in serial form in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It has been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times....
(1861).
Critical reception
- 'A major work of mounting tensions in which the human mind is the guinea-pig... Mr Fowles has taken a big swing at a difficult subject and his hits...are on the bull's eye' (Sunday Telegraph)
- 'A deliciously toothsome celebration of wanton story-telling... Before one quite realises what is happenings, one finds oneself no less avid for meanings and no less starving amid a plethora of clues than is Nicholas himself' (Sunday Times)
- 'A splendidly sustained piece of mystification… such as could otherwise only have been devised by a literary team fielding the Marquis de Sade, Arthur Edward Waite, Sir James Frazer, Gurdjieff, Madame Blavatsky, C.G.Jung, Aleister Crowley, Franz Kafka' (Financial Times)
It has been recently featured on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels
Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels
Modern Library's 100 Best Novels is a list of the best English-language novels of the 20th century as selected by the Modern Library. Both Modern Library and Random House USA, the parent company, are US companies. Critics have argued that this is responsible for a very American view of the greatest...
, #71 and #93 on the Reader's and Critics' lists, respectively.
Film adaptation
A film version was released in 1968, directed by Guy GreenGuy Green (director)
Guy Green OBE BSC was an English film director, screenwriter, and cinematographer. In 1946 he won an Academy Award as cinematographer on the film of Great Expectations...
, and written by Fowles. It starred Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
as Nicholas Urfe, Anthony Quinn
Anthony Quinn
Antonio Rodolfo Quinn-Oaxaca , more commonly known as Anthony Quinn, was a Mexican American actor, as well as a painter and writer...
as Maurice Conchis, Anna Karina
Anna Karina
Anna Karina is a Danish film actress, director, and screenwriter who has spent most of her working life in France. Karina is known as a muse of the director, Jean-Luc Godard, one of the pioneers of the French New Wave...
as Alison, Candice Bergen
Candice Bergen
Candice Patricia Bergen is an American actress and former fashion model.She is known for starring in two TV series, as the title character on the situation comedy Murphy Brown , for which she won five Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards; and as Shirley Schmidt on the comedy-drama Boston Legal...
as Lily/Julie, and Julian Glover
Julian Glover
Julian Wyatt Glover is a British actor best known for such roles as General Maximilian Veers in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, the Bond villain Aristotle Kristatos in For Your Eyes Only, and Walter Donovan in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.-Personal life:Glover was born in...
as Anton, and was filmed in the island of Majorca. The adaptation, however, was greeted as a failure. Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
himself has said that it was one of the worst films he had been involved in along with The Swarm and Ashanti, because no one knew what it was all about. Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
said "If I had to live my life again, I'd do everything the same, except that I wouldn't see The Magus." Despite the failure, the film was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography
BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography
-Best Cinematography - Colour:* 1963 - From Russia with Love - Ted Moore** Nine Hours to Rama – Arthur Ibbetson** The Running Man – Robert Krasker** Sammy Going South – Erwin Hillier** The Scarlet Blade – Jack Asher...
. In recent years, it has gained a cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
which resulted in The Magus being commercially released on DVD in the US on October 17, 2006.
External links
- FowlesBooks.com – The Official John Fowles web site