The Angel of the West Window (Dedalus European Classics Book 0)

Gustav Meyrink's novel " Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster " was his final work, published in 1927. The work is not well known amongst non-German readers, unlike his earlier work, " Der Golem " ( The Golem , 1914), because it has been neither adapted for film nor, until comparatively recently, translated into English. With this excellent and idiomatic translation for Dedalus European Classics (1991) by Mike Mitchell, "The Angel of the West Window" has finally become available to the English-only reader.Himself a member of the famous Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the author understandably overloads the novel with mystical symbolism and transcendental conjurings of an increasingly nightmarish and hallucinatory nature, as the protagonist proceeds along his path from ignorance to enlightenment and immortality. Meyrink does a masterly job of interlacing and interlocking the stories and fates of protagonist Baron Mueller, an Austrian of British descent living in Austria in the early part of 20th Century, and his ancestor Dr John Dee, the 16th Century magus, astrologer and alchemist, who served in the court of Queen Elizabeth I and whom Mueller increasingly believes to be reincarnated within himself. The book mixes the grotesque and the sinister with sexually charged mysticism in a timeless vista of toil for spiritual perfection and the Philosopher's Stone -- and a counter-struggle to prevent it -- spanning the generations as well as the dimensions of existence.In one sense, the book is a product of its time and of its generation but equally it has something which transcends all such considerations rendering it timeless, phantasmagorical and endlessly enduring.The Kindle edition is an oddly scanned rendition of the printed text, which is nevertheless perfectly serviceable, for all its occasional quirks and kinks.

This is the third great novel by the enigmatic Meyrink. His themes of the gothic, mysticism, religion, occult, death and rebirth continue in this story based around the life of Dr John Dee; the real Elizabethan alchemist advisor to the queen being most famous for his learning and spiritualism. Meyrink is not the only author to use such ripe material (I've read Dan Ackroyd's go) though he does do it in a very deep and complicated way.The story structure is very similar to other novels and Meyrink's own, in being recursive and reincarnate of body or mind. The narrator Mueller has the diary of his ancestor John Roger who was reconstructing the diary of his ancestor Dr John Dee. The central arc is that John Dee (in 1550ish) is involved with the evil Bartlett Green and the Green spirit (of the West Window - the temptress Isais?) - trying to gain immortality (not eternal life which is different) through the philosopher's stone and also the means to create gold. John Dee is helped by his wife (despite wanting the Queen) Jane. Now basically the present day Mueller realises that the people he's dealing with, such as his maid Johanna Fromm (cf Dee's wife) are repeating events of John Roger and then those of John Dee; Mueller begins to experience the events of John Dee in visions and is he being affected by Dee's decisions and can he change them himself. Key reincarnate characters also include Isais/Princess Shotokalungin and antique dealer Lipton/Mascee orbiting the Spear of Hywel Dal which would allow Isais to win. John Dee's real life occultist Edward Kelley makes an appearance. The gothic setting and dark evil pervading the story is very atmospheric (if perhaps a little stereotyped)This really is a very confused/ing book (not least because both Mueller and Dee appear in the first person through the diaries) yet I think it's meant to be. The parallel stories are engaging and you are always wondering where each of the two main overlapping stories (Mueller's and John Dee's) will go; will either, neither or one win out against the two evils Isais and Kelley&Green Spirit?. Because it is so mixed up I would recommend Golem and the Green Face before this novel but it certainly is nearly as good. I would recommend reading a little about John Dee's life off the net before starting the book as it will help.

As i bought this book as a present for someone dear to me whom had tried the book shops really happy thatit came in good time

Meyrink's novel is about already-lived-lives, about echoes of the past surfacing in present-day manifestations. His protagonist, Baron Muller, is a man out of time, caught as a temporal ghost, a twinned and umbilically tied time-traveller, who cannot escape his pre-destiny and ancestry as descendent of Dr John Dee.Written in the style of a disjointed but oddly coherent diary of the obsessed, the novel develops this esoteric connection in which the individual becomes doubled. The Angel is a fast-paced plot-heavy novel that transcends historical document but still lends an archival gravitas to a story filled with magic and alchemy.Baron Muller inherits the legacy of the Dee line and finds that not only do these manuscripts tell of stories old but control the unfolding actions of his very existence. He slips out of mind and into a world where the great Alchemist has achieved immortality. Dee has become the unwitting puppeteer of future generations - his story doomed to be told and retold through the ages. Dee's destiny is to alchemically 'wed' Queen Elizabeth I - the natural and pure union of masculine and feminine principles, sulphur with mercury, sol with luna, red king with white queen. However, evil forces are at work, forces which strive to pervert this marriage, with catastrophic consequences. It is Dee's last surviving descendent, Baron Muller, who must correct the wrongs of the past.

I found it absolutely wonderful and revealing of the perils of esoteric/occult knowledge - that's intertwined so easily with the powers of this dialectical world! "Do or die!" as an antidote, and with the help of the golden rose brotherhood of "gardeners"/helpers. I find it that nowadays it's so easy to get lost in intellectualism and in the same esoteric/occult ways! Don't you?