Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

Anodos recounts one of the books that particularly stuck in his mind. It opens with a rumination on man’s role in the universe—that he is made of the same stuff as the stars and planets, and everything that man sees is interwoven with man.

Next comes a description of an ancient planet in Earth’s outer solar system that circles the sun so slowly that it came into being before the Earth formed. A single season may last an entire generation of its people. This world is similar to the Earth in many ways, but some of its people’s ways are mirror opposites. The water gives no reflections, and the women are like angels—they have wings, whereas the men have arms. Children are not born but are found by young women when they go out walking. The women are horrified and disgusted when Anodos tells them how children are made on Earth. One woman is so horrified that she dies. When young men and women look too deeply into each other’s eyes, they are struck with a longing so deep they immediately go their separate ways and die.

Anodos recounts another tale that has stuck in his memory—the story of Cosmo and the mirror. Anodos perceives himself as Cosmo and simultaneously watches Cosmo from outside. The story seems like a tale of universal life in which two people love each other but behold each other as in a glass darkly.

Cosmo is a student at the University of Prague. He is noble but poor and a little proud. In addition to his classes, he has a casual interest in Albertus Magnus and Cornelius Agrippa, German mystics seeking union with the divine through inner searching. His lodging is a sparsely furnished room full of curious instruments, scattered weapons, and a mounted skeleton with its hand on a sword standing beside it. A dried bat is mounted on the wall.

One day, Cosmo encounters an old mirror in a shop. The frame is carved with strange symbols. Desiring to study it, he negotiates an affordable price with the dealer with the proviso that if Cosmo should want to get rid of it, he must give the dealer the option to buy it back. Cosmo is repelled by the look and manner of the dealer but agrees to the bargain.

Taking the mirror home, he studies it and remarks on the magic of mirrors which give his hard, bare ordinary room an aura of magic when seen in reflection. As he watches the reflected room behind him, he sees a woman clothed in white enter with a faltering step as if unwillingly. She lies down on the couch, and he sees her lovely face in which beauty mingles with unhappiness. Looking behind him, Cosmo sees that the woman is not there, yet when he turns back to the mirror, he sees her glance at the skeleton and shudder. She falls asleep, and Cosmo stands watching her in the mirror until she wakes, gets up, and leaves.

Hoping that she will return, Cosmo moves the skeleton and other distasteful articles out of range of the mirror so that they will not be visible to the lady. The following evening, the lady returns to the room in the mirror and seems pleased to find the skeleton gone. Cosmo becomes determined to turn his room into a place in which the lady might be comfortable.

Needing money, he begins giving lessons in fencing and swordsmanship. He soon has enough money to replace his old furniture with better and more elegant pieces. The lady greets every change with satisfaction. Cosmo’s love turns from adoration to passion—which the author describes as an inferior kind of love—and he thinks he may die for love of the woman in the mirror. One day, the lady stops coming. Cosmo sickens. The world seems flat and artificial.

Cosmo reasons that if the lady can be compelled to enter the mirror—as he is sure she was initially—then he might be able to find the spell to compel her living form to come to him in his world. Assembling books and certain unsavory materials, he prepares his exercise of tyrannical power. He paints the mystical circle on his floor and sees the lady enter the room in the mirror. She seems troubled. Cosmo moves to an even more powerful spell, and the lady soon leaves her reflected room and walks into Cosmos’s chamber. She tells him she wasn’t brought to him by his spells, but by his love for her, yet the lady tells him she cannot love him so long she is enslaved by the mirror. She begs him to break it, warning him that he may never see her again if he does.

Cosmo’s love is not yet pure. He hesitates. The lady wails that he does not love her enough. Declaring that he will not wait to be willing, Cosmo seizes his sword and tries to break the glass, but his stroke misses, and a clap of thunder knocks him unconscious. When he wakes, the lady and the mirror are both gone. Cosmo has a brain fever and is unable to get up for weeks. When he can leave his bed, he guesses that the mirror has reverted to the dealer, who has probably sold it again, and the lady is now enslaved to another. He learns that a former fencing student of his, Steinwald, has purchased the mirror. Steinwald is hosting a party, and Cosmo determines to slip in and mingle with the guests.

Sometime later the same evening, the Princess lies cold as marble in her chamber. She starts up with Cosmo’s name on her lips. Calling for her cloak, she hurries through the streets. Halfway across a bridge, she meets with Cosmo, who has broken the mirror but was wounded fighting Steinwald. He falls dead in her arms, still smiling in the ghostly moonlight.

For many a day, Anodos in the library, reading one book after another, taking in their lessons, was forever a comfort to him in times of trouble.

Anodos has never heard music in the fairy palace. He feels sure there must be music there, but he is too insensitive to hear it. Sometimes, he sings himself, verses arising spontaneously from within. While exploring the palace, he finds many interlinked chambers filled with marble statues. Nearby, he sees a sign warning him not to touch the statues. One night, he dreams the statues are all dancing. Passing among them in his dreams, he finds the statue of his Marble Lady frozen in stone, not dancing like the rest. A shadow falls from above and hides her from his view. He recognizes his shadow that has largely left him alone while he was in the palace.

Anodos tries to find the room with the dancing shadows and surprise them in motion. He is able to do so only when he is not consciously trying. At last, by a sudden impulse, he darts into one of the great rooms. There, he finds the statues dancing. Hurrying to the pedestal where he’d seen his lady before, he sees only the indistinct shape of her feet. He conceives the idea that as song once freed her from her alabaster prison, his song might release her from the shadow of his doubt.

Inspired, he begins to sing, describing each of the lady’s features in turn and gradually singing her into reality.