In a Dream of Passion

 

            Today, after only a brief mention of Conchis’s theater, a theater without an audience, I could not help but to feel the need to do some exploring of the topic of Conchis’s theater and theater in general.

  First, let us start with the image of Conchis’s theater: everyone who is around is on or behind stage.  Everyone who is watching the play at all is also a part of the production.  What is happening in the play?  Is it not the creation of another world, a world apart where “all the world” is, indeed, “a stage?”  This microcosm is a world unto itself.  How are we to say that this world, our reality, is nothing more than another stage, a microcosm of something so much larger that we cannot possible imagine? Perhaps, we are simply another production without an audience and one day, the curtain will close and that will be the unveiling.  It might seem paradoxical that the closing of the curtain might be the unveiling, but perhaps that is what it will take for us to realize our parts.

            We also encounter other kinds of stages if we look closer at The Magus.  First we see the novel itself as a stage: a platform upon which a prescribed set of actions are to take place.  All novels are, in fact, nothing more than a portable stage.  This allows one to carry a various production around with ease; on an airplane, outdoors, in the bathtub, in a box, or with a fox, the novel is the most portable version of theater.  

            Within the novel, we also see several places where stages themselves exist even if they are not, at first, obvious.  One of the first that come to mind is any place where Conchis manages to have an extended monologue.  Throughout the story, Conchis has several stories that he shares with Nicholas and whoever else is present.  These stories are presented on an impromptu platform and all Nick can do is sit and listen and ‘enjoy’ the show.  We also see the blatantly obvious dramatizations such as the initiation scene.  This production is interesting because it raises the audience and puts him (Nick) on a platform instead of, as would be expected, putting the actors (if we are, in this instance assuming Nick is not an actor) on the ‘stage.’  Interestingly, here, we see three different kinds of audience to the production.  First we have the audience which is, in fact, part of the play itself.  This ‘listeners’ that quietly sit and watch the proceedings are as much a part of the proceedings as the ‘psychologists.’  The second audience is an audience of one, Nicholas Urf and he is forced to sit through the play.  He is literally bound and gagged and forced to witness the production which continues to draw him in and convince him that he is as much a part of this as everyone else whether or not he wants to believe it or not.  The third audience is the reader of the novel.  In this case, Nick is as much of an actor as are the ‘psychologists’ or the ‘audience.’  Is this, then, a play within a play within a play?

 

These are merely some brief reflections of stages and theater, and given the breadth of the novel, it could probably extend into many of hundreds of pages, but for the constraints of time and space, I will leave this as, if nothing more, a starting point for further reflection.