(1898)
I was in Hamburg, the most mysterious city in Europe, where one can find a factory of monsters, a repository of ferocious animals, and houses of joy of a magical luxury.
It was winter: a gray or yellow sky replete with snow, and that indefatigable snow buried the old Medieval houses, the laborers’ cottages in wood sculpted by decay, the churches, the docks and the harbor. It caused a great silence, and the idea of so much mute life under the snow frightened me.
I spent my monotonous days at the hotel. I had brought with me as a companions the Introduction à la médecine de l’esprit by my friend Maurice de Fleury.31 The new and troubling ideas with which that work swarms delighted me. Although I scarcely believe in doctors, and even less in medicine, I marveled to see the mechanistic theories of Spinoza regarding the movements of the soul taken up again and adapted to the context of modern science by a subtle, clever and sincere mind. I thought that the book inaugurated a singular order of research and avenged literature somewhat for the base scoria of a Lombroso.
The door opened. A servant brought me a card: Dr. Otto Serpius.
I knew that unusual name. I got up to go and meet him. He was already advancing toward me, tall and stooped, like an ape; the white hair and beard matched the wan snowy day. The dark eyes sparkled beneath bushy eyebrows. The cheeks and forehead were broad, engraved with a thousand wrinkles; the features, shriveled like the web of a dead spider, expressed malice and pride. I noticed the hands, large and hairy, animated by a slight tremor.
“I heard that you had arrived in Hamburg,” the individual said to me. “I came to invite you to a little visit, which, I think, will interest you.” With a slight embarrassment, he added: “Bur it’s necessary for you to come with me right away, because today is the one only I have before leaving tomorrow on a voyage.”
“I’ll come with you, Doctor,” I replied.
The people who had recommended me to Otto Serpius had warned me about the eccentricities of the scientist’s character; some people thought he was mad, others that he was the greatest genius in Europe.
His eyes, which were inspecting everything, fell upon Fleury’s book.
“Oho!” he exclaimed, with interest. “You Frenchmen are on the road to wisdom, then. The medicine of the mind—but it’s the only one, my dear fellow, the only one. And has Monsieur Fleury kept the promises of that noble title?”
“You’ll judge for yourself, when you’ve read that fine work. Official science is rampant in my country, but from time to time, a clear audacious and powerful mind emerges that breaks down a worm-eaten door, and one sees admirable horizons...”
After a long and tortuous walk, rendered difficult by the snow, through the sordid and fantastic labyrinth of Hamburg, we finally arrived at an old Gothic building, a town house opening directly on to the street, of which that strange city has many. It resembled a mass of flour beneath the somber crepuscular sky.
“Here it is,” said my companion. He took an enormous key from his pocket.
The lock grated. The snow was blocking the door, and I admired the vigor of Otto Serpius as his muscular hands agitated the batten, which finally yielded and let us through.
The darkness of the dwelling impressed me immediately. I could make out, dimly, suits of armor: warrior carapaces posed as if holding a lance or a sword.
“My guardians and servants,” said Otto, laughing—which showed two gleaming rows of yellow teeth.
We climbed a wooden spiral staircase whose steps creaked and whose handrail was unsteady. My guide opened another door.
We found ourselves in a vast room, suggestive of a workshop and a laboratory. Daylight was coming through a vast bay window. Monotonous files of rooftops extended all the way to the river, where the masts of ships were visible. On a long table, which extended for the whole length of the room, all the instruments necessary for physiological research were accumulated: glass cages, flasks, balances. Sitting before that gigantic display, motionless, very attentive to his work, I saw a bizarre individual dressed in black velvet. There was a little skullcap on his round head. He did not look up when we came in.
“That’s you assistant?” I said to Otto Serpius.
He smiled cruelly. “I’ve forgotten something downstairs. I’ll leave you for a moment, if you’ll permit.”
And I remained alone in the laboratory with the famulus, who did not budge.
The silence and that petrifaction irritated me. “Terrible weather for research,” I said, loudly.
Abruptly, the individual looked up, and I perceived the most comical face in the world: a large nose, a black beard, two globular eyes wide with amazement. Then, with a rigidity of movement that puzzled me, he stood up, pushed back his chair, turned toward me and started singing a song with words by Heinrich Heine, to a tune by Schumann, in a grotesque and nasal voice.
When that brief performance was finished, he asked, in German: “Are you satisfied?” And without waiting for a reply, he resumed his work.
I did not know what to think. The strangest suppositions went through my mind. Undoubtedly, Otto Serpius was employing a madman. I took a few steps toward the phenomenon and saw that his occupation consisted of arranging packets of equal size, similar to those that pharmacists make up, in a long and narrow box. He proceeded with that task in a fantastically rapid and precise manner. The packets succeeded one another between his agile and stiff fingers, which superimposed them with a brief flick of the thumb and a delicate push of the index finger.
“You have a splendid voice, Monsieur,” I said, by way of a compliment, desirous of hearing the sound that had troubled me so violently again.
Without raising his head, he replied, in his nasal but very correct German: “It’s necessary to put on a little performance from time to time.”
Suddenly, he stood up again, his round eyes expressing anger. He thumped the table, which rendered a dull sound, and addressed me furiously. “Are you going to let me work, finally?”
A few gross insults followed. And he remained standing, trembling with fury from head to toe, to such an extent that his hairy chin was twitching convulsively.
He really is a madman! I’m in a pretty pickle. He’s going to attack me and I have no means of defense.
As I made that melancholy reflection, Otto Serpius came back into the laboratory, and laughed.
“What’s this? What’s this? You’re misbehaving again, Vladislas! Give me the pleasure of sitting down and remaining tranquil. Otherwise, I’ll make you sorry.”
The monster obeyed.
Otto murmured in my ear: “Well, what do you think of him?” His face expressed malice.
“I expected, on coming to your home, some curious spectacle. I wasn’t mistaken.”
“He’s excitable, but not malevolent,” said the doctor, inviting me to sit beside him, in a large armchair. He’s a very strange fellow. He doesn’t understand French, so we can speak freely in that language. Can you spare me a few minutes?”
“I’ve nothing better to do in Hamburg.”
Then, in that redoubtable laboratory, in the presence of the snow, the dusk and the impassive Vladislas, the doctor said: “That fellow would astonish all my colleagues greatly, but I conceal his existence carefully and only make use of him for my own research. He has no father or mother. Such as you see him, he’s the child of the flask and the furnace. You seem astonished! Hamburg is the city of prodigies. Ha ha—I’m an old enchanter myself.”
“So Vladislas is an automaton?” I asked, very intrigued.
“An automaton, yes, but of a new kind, made of flesh and bone. More precisely, Vladislas is a homunculus. His manufacture gave me a great deal of difficulty. He’s the triumph of my vigorous old age. I’ll try to explain my efforts and their miraculous result, briefly.”
Otto Serpius commenced, in his colorful language: “Scarcely had I entered the grotto of science than I was struck by the poor research in which my colleagues wore away their brains. It seemed to me that they were afraid of delving into the mysterious grotto, where one could nevertheless glimpse singular dormant miracles—for scientific darkness”—he emphasized those words forcefully—“is nothing but a purée of seeds, the fecund reservoir of the possible. I resolved not to follow their example, and to devote myself, body and soul, to some singular order of research.
“I made a pact with the Devil—ha ha!—which is to say that I made him a gift of the energy that was within me, on condition that he would help me to fabricate a homunculus. A homunculus! That was my dream. A being whom I would dose with sensations and sentiments, who would think in accordance with my law, who would gradually, by the wearing away of the springs, increasingly take on an independent existence. For the great spring that governs us, my dear friend, is fatality: Fatum. That’s where the initial thumbprint of the creator is found.—and haven’t you noticed that with age, that fatality distends, that external powers are removed from our route as we fall apart? I can assure you that old men are much less subject to the stars than young ones. We are gods, in proportion to the energy with which we struggle against the sun.”
After that singular remark, Otto Serpius fell silent for a few moments, as if to allow his prophetic observations time to influence my mind.
Vladislas continued his work. Every time I glanced in his direction, I experienced a slight anguish.
The scientist continued: “I won’t go into the minute detail of my failures, or my recipes. Let it suffice you to know that I recommenced the Great Work twenty times over, with the requisite formulae of conjuration. The house shook. A comet appeared over Hamburg, and great scourges burst forth, for we only wrench the partial secret of life from Mystery at the price of veritable hecatombs. Fortunately, my fellow citizens, prey to the ideas of civilization—the most false and absurd of all—never suspected the true cause of the disasters that overwhelmed them. Amid the horrors of cholera, the death-rattles, in the odor of a universal charnel-house, I continued my rude task. Once—don’t laugh—the Devil appeared to me in the form of a mouse. I was hesitating between two acids; he upset the bad bottle. Another time, it was by means of a great gust of wind that the Evil One announced his presence to me. The wind caused a grimoire whose calculations were false to fly away, and threw another on to my table whose calculations were accurate.
“The cholera continued its vengeful work. A great pride entered into me at having occasioned such a catastrophe. The gleam of my furnace, by night, appeared to me as the breath of the disease. The tocsin deafened me. I had to close the shutters of the laboratory for a month. I dismissed all my servants. Who could be taken into such confidence? I worked alone, drinking stagnant water, nourishing myself on exotic herbs brought back from my travels. Those large tropical fruits, dried up but still alive, pouted into my veins the ardent poison of research. My ideas seemed to be burning; the furnace roared night and day, such that I ceased to hear the tocsin.
“Finally, on Christmas Eve three years ago, I understood by certain signs that the great mystery was nigh. I locked myself away in the laboratory. I stopped the clocks whose moaning irritates the powers of life and death. I sat down in front of my furnace, and I went into a trance, like the sages of old. The reasons for everything abruptly filed before my mind’s eye, but with such a racket, in such hasty pursuit, that I was unable to grasp them. All of a sudden, my retort exploded, and a kind of howling monster rolled from the furnace on to the floor. That was the so-called Vladislas, making his appearance.
“I immediately plunged him into cold water. It wasn’t sufficient to have created him. It was also necessary to give him something with which to occupy his life—which is to say, the keyboard of human sentiments…and here I can be a little more explicit.
“The Homunculus is like a piano. He is endowed with certain strings, whose sonorities form all possible sentimental combinations. Those strings end in a single bar, which is the stem of Egotism. From that stem, like the teeth of a comb, depart Pride, Lust and Dread. From those three secondary branches depart a multitude of subdivisions, which, via the vices and the virtues, terminate in simple sensations that are distributed over the skin of the Homunculus as over the skin of a human being, appended to the ears, the eyes, the nose, etc.
“Two large keys, at the level of the hips, put my fellow in joy or in pain, giving his entire organism a particular inclination corresponding to one of those states. Finally, I’ve established in him the three degrees that are for my Homunculus what speed is for an automobile: heroism, simple life and bestiality. And now you have the outlines of the theory, let’s pass on to the practice.”
Having finished his demonstration, parts of which seemed obscure to me, Otto Serpius ran to his automaton, who, at the sight of him, uttered a roar.
The scientist burst out laughing. “I left him in pain last time I made use of him. Look, I’m putting him in joy.”
He turned a key near the left hip. Immediately, Vladislas’ features relaxed, expressing the most vivid delight. He became incredibly polite. He apologized to me for his earlier insolence. He offered to explain the marvels of the laboratory one by one. Except for a little monotony in his expressions and grimaces, and a slight stiffness in his movements, it was impossible to discern anything artificial or unusual in the origin of the Homunculus.
Meanwhile, Otto Serpius seemed plunged in the keenest satisfaction. He observed, while smiling, the behavior of the individual he called “his son,” and from time to time, he approved his speech by means of a little affectionate brutality—a rap on the hard skull, a kick on a leg that sounded like wood.
“Does Vladislas know that he’s an automaton?” I asked him.
He frowned. “That question is replete with mystery. In giving my Homunculus the exact appearance of life, I’ve given him the appearance of the laws and progress of life. Thus, I’m amazed to observe in his various performances a veritable change. I know that the springs are wearing away, but that’s not all. A particular mode of existence has formed in that semi-artificial being and—don’t laugh—he’s on the way to liberty. Yes, toward liberty. When I leave him at rest, with neither joy nor pain, do you know what he expresses in that neutral state? Melancholy! Now, according to my studies, melancholy is the condition of someone obtaining a clearer consciousness of himself, more anxious as to his destiny.
“Stranger still”—at this point Serpius lowered his voice—“is that as time goes by, Vladislas has conceived a hatred for me, his Creator. He has begun to deny my existence. He’s on the point of murdering me. That’s the way it is. That assemblage of life and springs, which I’ve grouped together myself, suffers in my presence and my power. Two or three times I’ve surprised him sharpening knives with a strange expression when the work I’d give him to do was making up packets of bismuth.
“When I catch him I those homicidal reveries, I switch him to pain and let him suffer for days on end. I’ve noticed that after those harsh ordeals, his intelligence is refined in an extraordinary fashion, and the cruelty in his gaze is reduced. He detests me less. He even comes, like a puppy, to rub himself against me, in quest of my caresses...
“All the same, it’s quite possible that you’ll learn from the newspapers some day of my sudden death. You’ll know then that I’ve be killed by my automaton.”
Vladislas had returned to work; I experienced a kind of indefinable dread. Otto Serpius divined my state of mind and said to me with his usual perspicacity: “Every time a mystery disappears, suffering and anguish increase. I’ve often noticed that, in the course of my work. After the creation of Vladislas, I was prey to an atrocious mental torture for two months. At any rate, the cholera ceased. My automaton scarcely suspects that his life is made from the death of so many peaceful and honest inhabitants of Hamburg, whose souls have passed into my furnaces. You’re right, my dear fellow—we live in a strange city.”