''Earthly Powers'' is a panoramic
saga
is a series of science fantasy role-playing video games by Square Enix. The series originated on the Game Boy in 1989 as the creation of Akitoshi Kawazu at Square (video game company), Square. It has since continued across multiple platforms, ...
novel of the 20th century by
Anthony Burgess
John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer.
Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his Utopian and dystopian fiction, d ...
first published in 1980. It begins with the "outrageously provocative"
first sentence: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my
catamite
In ancient Greece and Rome, a catamite (Latin: ''catamitus'') was a pubescent boy who was the intimate companion of an older male, usually in a pederastic relationship. It was generally a term of affection and literally means " Ganymede" in ...
when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."
On one level it is a parody of a "blockbuster" novel, with the 81-year-old hero, Kenneth Toomey (allegedly loosely based on British author
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German un ...
), telling the story of his life in 82 chapters. It "summed up the literary, social and moral history of the century with comic richness as well as encyclopedic knowingness", according to
Malcolm Bradbury
Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury, (7 September 1932 – 27 November 2000) was an English author and academic.
Life
Bradbury was born in Sheffield, the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with ...
.
The novel appeared on the shortlist for the
Booker Prize
The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a Literary award, literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United King ...
in the year of its publication but lost out to
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel ''Lord of the Flies'' (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980 ...
's ''
Rites of Passage
A rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. In cultural anthropology the term is the Anglicisation of ''rite ...
''. In an October 2006 poll in ''The Observer'', it was named joint third for the best work of British and Commonwealth fiction of the last 25 years (along with
Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan, (born 21 June 1948) is an English novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, ''The Times'' featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him number 19 in its list of th ...
's ''
Atonement
Atonement (also atoning, to atone) is the concept of a person taking action to correct previous wrongdoing on their part, either through direct action to undo the consequences of that act, equivalent action to do good for others, or some other ex ...
'',
Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Mary Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. In 2008 ''The Times'' listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". ''The Ob ...
's ''
The Blue Flower'',
Kazuo Ishiguro
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro ( ; born 8 November 1954) is a British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story writer. Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and moved to Britain in 1960 with his parents when he was five.
He is one of the most cr ...
's ''
The Unconsoled
''The Unconsoled'' is a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, first published in 1995 by Faber and Faber, and winner of the Cheltenham Prize that year.
Plot introduction
The novel takes place over a period of three days. It is about Ryder, a famous pianis ...
'', and
Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Wes ...
's ''
Midnight's Children
''Midnight's Children'' is a 1981 novel by Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape with cover design by Bill Botten, about India's transition from British colonial rule to independence and partition. It is a postc ...
'').
Plot summary
On his eighty-first birthday, retired homosexual writer Kenneth Toomey is asked by the
Archbishop
In Christian denominations, an archbishop is a bishop of higher rank or office. In most cases, such as the Catholic Church, there are many archbishops who either have jurisdiction over an ecclesiastical province in addition to their own archdi ...
of
Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
to assist in the process of
canonisation
Canonization is the declaration of a deceased person as an officially recognized saint, specifically, the official act of a Christian communion declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon catalogue of s ...
of Carlo Campanati, the late Pope Gregory XVII and his brother-in-law. Toomey subsequently works on his memoirs, which span the major part of the 20th century.
Themes
*The
problem of evil
The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,The Problem of Evil, Michael TooleyThe Internet Encyclope ...
*Censorship
*Divorce
*Domenico's brother Don Carlo's ascent to the
papacy
The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...
*
Ecumenism
Ecumenism (), also spelled oecumenism, is the concept and principle that Christians who belong to different Christian denominations should work together to develop closer relationships among their churches and promote Christian unity. The adjec ...
*
Exorcism
Exorcism () is the religious or spiritual practice of evicting demons, jinns, or other malevolent spiritual entities from a person, or an area, that is believed to be possessed. Depending on the spiritual beliefs of the exorcist, this may be ...
*
Pederasty
Pederasty or paederasty ( or ) is a sexual relationship between an adult man and a pubescent or adolescent boy. The term ''pederasty'' is primarily used to refer to historical practices of certain cultures, particularly ancient Greece and anc ...
*
Gay rights
Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality.
Notably, , 3 ...
*Hollywood
*
Terminal illness
Terminal illness or end-stage disease is a disease that cannot be cured or adequately treated and is expected to result in the death of the patient. This term is more commonly used for progressive diseases such as cancer, dementia or advanced he ...
and
euthanasia
Euthanasia (from el, εὐθανασία 'good death': εὖ, ''eu'' 'well, good' + θάνατος, ''thanatos'' 'death') is the practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering.
Different countries have different eut ...
*The marriage of his sister Hortense to composer Domenico Campanati
*The relationship between love and
lust
Lust is a psychological force producing intense desire for something, or circumstance while already having a significant amount of the desired object. Lust can take any form such as the lust for sexuality (see libido), money, or power. It can ...
*Toomey's break with the Roman Catholic Church, which regards homosexual acts as
intrinsically disordered
Places
*England
*France
*Italy
*
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
*
Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
*
Tangier
Tangier ( ; ; ar, طنجة, Ṭanja) is a city in northwestern Morocco. It is on the Moroccan coast at the western entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Spartel. The town is the cap ...
, Morocco
*
Uganda
}), is a landlocked country in East Africa
East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territor ...
*United States
*Germany
*Austria
*Spain
References to historical events
The novel includes coverage of:
*The
Great War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
*The
1918–1919 influenza pandemic
*The rise of fascism in Italy
*
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
*
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
*
Post-colonialism
Postcolonialism is the Critical theory, critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More speci ...
in Africa
Since it is an integral theme of the novel that the protagonist is an
unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. They can be found in fiction and film, and range from children to mature characters. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in ''The Rhetoric of Fiction''. While unrel ...
,
[Chapter 82: "I shall call it, I think," I said "'']Confabulation
In psychology, confabulation is a memory error defined as the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world. It is generally associated with certain types of brain damage (especially aneurysm in the a ...
s''." "That's a wet sort of title." "Well, consider. In psychiatry, according to this dictionary here, it means the replacement of the gaps left by a disordered memory with imaginary remembered experiences believed to be true. Not that I see the difference. All memories are disordered. The truth, if not mathematical, is what we think we remember." the work highlights the fallibility of memory by including many deliberate factual errors, as explained by Burgess in the second volume of his autobiography, ''You've Had Your Time''. These may be found on almost every page of the novel, and vary in subtlety from inaccuracies of German grammar to deliberately contrary re-writings of history.
* The fictional Carlo Campanati becomes Pope Gregory XVII. This name was allegedly the one to be adopted by
Giuseppe Siri
Giuseppe Siri (20 May 1906 – 2 May 1989) was an Italian cardinal of the Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Genoa from 1946 to 1987, and was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 1953. He was a protege of Pope Pius XII. He was considered ...
, who four times failed to be elected Pope in controversial circumstances. The dates of Carlo's papal election (1958) and death (3 June 1963) correspond to those of
Pope John XXIII
Pope John XXIII ( la, Ioannes XXIII; it, Giovanni XXIII; born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, ; 25 November 18813 June 1963) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 28 October 1958 until his death in June 19 ...
, as does his general appearance. However, many of Campanati's achievements and attributes are shared by the real-life
Pope Paul VI
Pope Paul VI ( la, Paulus VI; it, Paolo VI; born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, ; 26 September 18976 August 1978) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City, Vatican City State from 21 June 1963 to his ...
, who, like Carlo, was
Archbishop of Milan
The Archdiocese of Milan ( it, Arcidiocesi di Milano; la, Archidioecesis Mediolanensis) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Italy which covers the areas of Milan, Monza, Lecco and Varese. It has l ...
before his election. Other concordances between Carlo and Paul VI include his dealings with
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...
's government, his support for Jews escaping the Nazis, his arguments against
contraception
Birth control, also known as contraception, anticonception, and fertility control, is the use of methods or devices to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth contr ...
and
priestly marriage, and his world travels during his papacy. Carlo's plan for an ecumenical reorganisation of the church is reflected in both John XXIII, who called the
Second Vatican Council
The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the , or , was the 21st Catholic ecumenical councils, ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church. The council met in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome for four periods (or sessions) ...
, and in Paul VI, who opted to continue the council after John's death.
* The
Jonestown
The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name "Jonestown", was a remote settlement in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, a U.S.–based cult under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationall ...
mass suicide of 1978 is presented in the form of a fictional group called the "Children of God" (not to be confused with the new religious movement of the same name). While the basic premise of the incident is retained in the novel (charismatic religious leader leads a group of disenfranchised followers to ritual suicide), many of the details are changed. In the novel, the mass suicide takes place in 1963, not 1978, in a compound located in the
Mojave desert
The Mojave Desert ( ; mov, Hayikwiir Mat'aar; es, Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily in ...
of California, not
Guyana
Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...
, and the congregation is given cyanide tablets, rather than the now-infamous poisoned
Flavor Aid
Flavor Aid is a non-carbonated soft drink beverage made by The Jel Sert Company in West Chicago, Illinois. It was introduced in 1929. It is sold throughout the United States as an unsweetened, powdered concentrate drink mix, similar to Kool-Ai ...
.
*In chapter 47, Toomey, one of whose books is turned into a film in Nazi Germany, is invited to a film festival in Berlin. He takes the airship
LZ 129 ''Hindenburg'' which from 6 May 1936 until the
disaster
A disaster is a serious problem occurring over a short or long period of time that causes widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources ...
of 6 May 1937 at Lakehurst NJ made ten trips to the US. In Berlin "nowhere on the streets so clean you could eat your dinner from them did I see wretches wearing the yellow David star into trucks being harried. That would all be round the back."
:The
yellow badge
Yellow badges (or yellow patches), also referred to as Jewish badges (german: Judenstern, lit=Jew's star), are badges that Jews were ordered to wear at various times during the Middle Ages by some caliphates, at various times during the Medieva ...
was not introduced in Germany until 1 September 1941.
*There is a reception with
Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 19 ...
at the
Propagandaministerium
The Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (; RMVP), also known simply as the Ministry of Propaganda (), controlled the content of the press, literature, visual arts, film, theater, music and radio in Nazi Germany.
The ministry ...
, "he in tails,
his lady in white and jewels. I had met her before ... when she was still the wife of a certain Herr Friedländer, a rich jew who had been forced by the party to endow her on her new marriage with half a million marks and also to give her new husband as a wedding present the Friedländer ''Schloss'' at Schwannwerder."
:Actually the Jewish merchant Friedländer had been her stepfather and thus made her Magda Friedländer. Before industrialist
Günther Quandt
Günther Quandt (28 July 1881 – 30 December 1954) was a German industrialist who founded an industrial empire that today includes BMW and Altana, a car and chemical company, respectively. Between, 1921 and 1929 he was married to Magda Ritsche ...
married her in 1921, on request of her mother's first husband, Dr. Ritschel, Magda was registered as his daughter. After her divorce from Quandt in 1929 Magda married Goebbels in 1931 and bore him
six children. In 1934 the Goebbelses settled on the island of
Schwanenwerder
Schwanenwerder (; English: "Swan Ait") is an island in the locality of Nikolassee in southwestern Berlin, located in a wider stretch of the Havel close to the eastern bank and adjacent to the Großer Wannsee to the south of it. The neighbourhood ...
buying cheaply from persecuted Jews.
*In chapter 49 the first film shown at the festival is ''
Hitlerjunge Quex'', an early Nazi film of 1933, on the next day to be followed by the premiere of a new film on the life of
Horst Wessel
Horst Ludwig Georg Erich Wessel (9 October 1907 – 23 February 1930) was a Berlin ''Sturmführer'' ("Assault Leader", the lowest commissioned officer rank) of the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA), the Nazi Party's stormtroopers. After his killing in 1 ...
. The reader is correctly informed that already in 1933 a film on Horst Wessel had been made, but out of "suspicions that the film would not really serve ... the name of the hero had been changed to
Hans Westmar
''Hans Westmar'' (full title: ' "Hans Westmar. One of many. A German Fate from the Year 1929") was the last of an unofficial trilogy of films produced by the Nazis shortly after coming to power in January 1933, celebrating their '' Kampfzeit'' ...
."
:That the premiere of ''Hans Westmar'' had actually, as the novel states, been attended not only by
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1 ...
but also by
Wilhelm Furtwängler
Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler ( , , ; 25 January 188630 November 1954) was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. He was a major ...
is unlikely.
*In the fictional Horst Wessel film Toomey gets to see, the Berliner Wessel is played by the popular
Viennese actor Paul Hörbiger
Paul Hörbiger (29 April 1894 – 5 March 1981) was an Austrian theatre and film actor.
Life and work
Paul Hörbiger was born in the Hungarian capital Budapest, then part of Austria-Hungary, the son of engineer Hanns Hörbiger, founder of the ...
. Wessel had died in February 1930 at the age of 22 (the novel says the funeral was in 1929). Hörbiger in 1936/37 was 42 years old and married with four children. The novel describes him as “quite clearly to me homosexual: impulses flashed between us in the garish swastika-flagged eau-de-cologne-sprayed entrance hall.” This has nothing to do with the real Hörbiger.
* The fictional writer Jakob Strehler, whose work Toomey starts reading, is said to have been awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, caption =
, awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature
, presenter = Swedish Academy
, holder = Annie Ernaux (2022)
, location = Stockholm, Sweden
, year = 1901
, ...
in 1935. The prize was not awarded that year.
References
{{Anthony Burgess
1980 British novels
Books about popes
Hutchinson (publisher) books
Novels by Anthony Burgess
Novels set in the 20th century
Catholicism in fiction