[THE EIGHTH DAY]

Here two pages or so are missing. The author of the foregoing, though he supposed that in the morning he would have to become the porter of the castle, in fact returned home.

This is the strangest turn this strange tale makes. Some commentaries, perhaps baffled, don’t even mention it. It is in one sense a further metafictional swerve – a new omniscient narrative frame is suddenly introduced, calling into question the provenance of the whole story. But how does this new voice come to know what happened to Christian? It might be thought that Andreae got tired of his story and simply drew this line across it. But if so, why not end with “In the end he was allowed to return home” (i.e., because another sinner was found to take his place)? No, he goes home the next morning – on the eighth day of this romance – without explanation. It could have perhaps ended with “In the morning the king sent word that Christian’s wish was granted and he could go home after all” – but no, that’s not even hinted at. I have wondered if Christian simply refused the task – like Alice in the trial at the end of Alice in Wonderland discovering that her tormentors are all nothing but a pack of cards. He forgave himself, and walked away. That would assort ill with the generous and moving resolve he showed, and the seriousness with which he took his sin and his expiation. It might be that Andreae is simply wrapping up his shaggy-dog story and letting us see it was all a joke. I don’t know. I don’t believe it’s an error; I think it has meaning. I just don’t know what it is.

Andres Paniagua, who checked my translation and notes against the original German editions, wonders if Andreae could be suggesting that the story is actually cyclic: perhaps Christian exists within a story loop, where he actually gets to redeem himself, so that the story can return to its beginning and start again. That would be consistent with his being recognized on several occasions as someone who has been expected, and also with the indications I have pointed out that the royal redemption process happens over and over. I think this is a delightful notion, and though it seems to be one impossible for Andreae in the seventeenth century to have had, at least consciously, that needn’t stop us from entertaining it. In a famous essay, Jorge Luis Borges suggested that the very existence of Kafka in the twentieth century creates the “Kafkaesque” qualities of writers who preceded him. It can be posited that the current existence of metafictional science fiction (particularly if I’m right that CW is a science fiction novel avant la lettre) can in a real sense bring into being the post-modernist time-loop qualities of a tale told long ago. That is the strange alchemy of story.