Il cardinale Napellus

Gustav Meyrink sought the possibility of his imagery in magic and in the overcoming of all mechanical artifice, believing that our visible world was ceaselessly pervaded by an invisible other. Nothing we can do is not magical, he tells us in his Cardinal Napellus. Another symbol of his vision is the epitaph that the reader finds in J. H. Obereit’s Visit to the Time-Leeches, which despite its unreal appearance is true, not only aesthetically but also psychologically. The narrative, fictional at first, grows until it merges with our innermost experiences and fears. The Time-Leeches are beyond metaphor and allegory; they correspond to the substance of our self. From the very first line, the narrator is predestined to the unpredictable end. The Four Moon Brethren includes two subjects: one deliberately unreal theme that irresistibly engages the reader, and another, even more distressing that is revealed to us in the final pages.