I find it interesting that many people find the ending of the book frustratingly obscure or deliberately ambivalent. (Caution: Spoilers ahead.) The Times review says:
And in "The Magus," the story of a young Englishman who gets caught up in the frightening dramatic fantasies of a strangely powerful man on an Aegean island, he again wrote an ending of self-conscious ambiguity, leaving the hero's future an open puzzle that readers are challenged to solve for themselves.Well, as much as one hates to disagree with the New York Times, I did not find the ending all that ambiguous. In terms of plot (though not of metaphysics or of morals) the biggest question is: Will Nicholas and Allison get back together? When they meet, at the end of the book, that is the issue before them. Although no explicit resolution is given, Fowles gives a rather broad hint, by ending with a famous quote from an ancient Latin poem, the Perevigilium Veneris:
cras amet qui numquam amavit
quique amavit cras amet
I would translate this, rather literally, as "tomorrow let him love who never yet loved / and may whoever has loved love again tomorrow." The Loeb edition has "To-morrow shall be love for the loveless, and for the lover tomorrow shall be love." Finally, Eugene Ehrlich in Amo Amas Amat and More, translates as follows:
May he love tomorrow who has never loved before;
And may he who has loved, love tomorrow as well.
In terms of the plot, this seems pretty clear to me. "The one who has never loved" is Nicholas, who is basically a selfish jerk, who, by the end of the novel, is learning what it means to love; while "the one who has loved" (quique amavit) is Allison, who (with all her many faults) has loved Nicholas better than he deserved. Surely the implication is that they both will finally find mutual love and together have a future (cras)?
Have people found the resolution ambiguous because they were unable to read Latin? In fact, in the foreword to the revised edition of The Magus, Fowles suggests as much, saying that the "general intent [of the ending] has never seemed to me as obscure as some readers have evidently found it — perhaps because they have not given due weight to the two lines from the Perevigilium Veneris that close the book ..."
In my opinion, then, the "deliberate ambiguity" is just not there (or is less than usually supposed), and this leads me to see Fowles as a somewhat more traditional storyteller (at least in this case) than others saw him, and perhaps than he saw himself. But it is clear, in any case, that the world has lost a thoughtful and thought-provoking artist.
20 comments:
This is now the second time in as many days that mention is made of The Magus (... the prior one was in Robert Nozick's Philosophical Explanations.)
I'll have to find myself a copy.
I literally just finished reading the book right now (2:40 am) and now knowing what the translation of the last lines of the book mean i couldn't agree more...
Aha! Thanks for the translation. Was thoroughly confused but now I get it! Glad it's an optimistic ending!
I'm not so sure about all of this. I read the Magus in one sitting on a 32 hour bus ride, and when I reached the end, I initially misread the present subjunctive amet as a future indicative (an embarrassing mistake for a Latin teacher). Yet it seems to me that it would *need* to be a future indicative to support the unambiguous reading that you guys have been giving it. As a future indicative, it would simply say that they will love. As a subjunctive, though, it expresses a wish -- may they love. To me, the subjunctive combined with the previous paragraph ("she is still standing...") make the ending deliberately ambiguous in terms of its plot. The ambiguity of plot might make it truer in other ways, though.
i agree with the ambiguity
also, you need to understand one thing about the latin. sorry, i can't let this slide.
quique is masculine. it cannot refer to alison. it would have to be quaeque. it refers to alex.
the decision about whether alex loves or has ever loved alison is being brought into question here as well.
fowles himself is on record as giving the narrative BOTH an "optimistic" AND "pessimistic" interpretation.
decide yourselves - that's the point.
I've also just finished the book, i think that whether they get back together is irrelevant. It's more about them both (I assume both from latin at the end) being able to experience and appreciate love and its mysteries, freedom, etc. whether together or with other partners
I argue that it is not possible to exclude with certainty that while their love may continue to exist in some metaphysical, eternal place, they are forever separated through the respective tenses assigned to them by Fowles:
Alison: "She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen PRESENT tense."
Nicholas:
"TOMORROW let him love who never yet loved / and may whoever has loved love again TOMORROW"
... meaning that with this newfound ability to love and to recognize it for what it is, he will find it, but in his TOMORROW, away from the shattered crystal she would not, could not, resurrect.
Altogether, I commend Fowles as a master of his craft, and indeed think that part of his ingenuity lies in his ability to place the agency for meaning on the reader. In this vein I tend not to decide so much as entertain every possibility-- not just what I would sentimentally wish to be true.
I think Fowles was being a bit self-deceptive when, in his introduction he states about his ending, ' its general intent has never seemed to me as obscure as some readers have evidently found it.' Here Fowles seems to be putting the onus of understanding, or misunderstanding, on the reader. But the original version's ending IS much more obscure than the revised version, and that bit of Latin doesnt clear anything up. The reader can easily read it as a final moral lesson that Fowles is proferring, but that is separate from what happens to Alison and Nicholas. For those readers who haven't read the original ending, I suggest they do for clarification of the ambiguity. There are two major changes: in the original's last scene, Nicholas is portrayed as a far more negative, even repulsive, person, with his interior thoughts imagining himself havi g violent sex with Alison, punishing her with his 'ramming' thrusts. For me, re-reading this ending after a forty-five year hiatus, it was a shocking revelation of how much Nicholas hadn't gained anything from the godgame. In the revised 1977 version Fowles ( perhaps from the recent rise of feminist studies into sexist male fiction ) wisely deleted this. The second, and more relevant change, is: in the last paragraph of the original, Nicholas starts walking away from Alison with his certitude in his own 'understanding' of freedom. The reader, thus, is left to pinder if Alison, after Nicholas hitting her, is going to follow him. In the revised version not only does Nicholas NOT walk away, but Fowles gives him the dialigue that wasnt in the original, telling Alison, 'You cant hate someone who's really on hos knees, who'll never be more than half a human being wihout you.' This bit of humaniizing is absent from the original, and implies that Nicholas has gai ed some understanding. The original version's ending was unsatisfying as well as ambiguous; Nicholas seems to have understood nothing. In the revised version, Fowles himself has seen into his own flaws in writing that ending, and satisfyingly humbled Nicholas just a tad.
Thank you for the translation. I'm romantic enough to be pleased with this ending, even though Sweet Alison surely deserved better.
I loved this book! Anyone have any suggestions for more like it?
Alison did deserve better.
I think the ending was perfect. All of us will agree that near the end of the novel, Nicholas had already started feeling a "Change".. Alison was blind to see it when she mentioned " I hope you'd change " ..That provoked the anger in Nicholas..After putting himself deliberately through all that..after so much waiting ( which ofcourse we all know he wouldn't have done before Bourani ) ..He gets to hear that? He was the one misjudged! The slap was on point.
These are helpful comments. I finished the book feeling Nicholas did not genuinely grow up. If anything, I feel he is too scared to have romantic relations with anyone other than Alison now, because he’s still paranoid that Maurice is messing with him. I feel he is settling for Alison, choosing her from a place of practicality, not desire/want. I never felt at any point throughout the book he truly WANTED Alison. He acknowledged settling down with Alison was likely the best choice for him. But she still isn’t what he wanted. In my opinion.
The original ending described above makes more sense to me. I truly wanted Alison to walk away from him. I’m choosing to believe this is what she does.
Similar books: http://www.fowlesbooks.com/novels-reminiscent-of-the-magus/
It is what it is. It's a story believe what you will or end uncertain. Still a cracking read
I just finished listening to this story which is sadly often forgotten. Thanks for clearing up the ending, I feel much happier now :)
The joke is on us. It's a work of fiction, a story. It ends right there. She is frozen in time because she only exists in our imagination, and gets life from Mr Fowles. This is where the book ends, and so do Nicko and Alison. They are not people, except in our minds.
I agree. Fowles prefers ambiguity and it’s really not clear what will happen later. Nicholas never seems to learn, so is likely to continue to let himself down, and Allison would probably be wise to find someone less likely to mess up endlessly. On the other hand most of us end up compromising so they could easily find themselves getting together happily, if not ever after.
So, it's already 2026, and we're still debating the ending of "Magus." This is encouraging—few works manage to stir readers' minds with such moments.
I agree with those who wrote that the ending is less unequivocal than it might seem. And the Latin quotation has nothing to do with it. First, we need to understand what exactly Fowles called "less ambiguous" in the preface to the 1977 edition. I'm surprised when someone writes that the 1965 ending is ambiguous because "Nicholas left." It seems to me that those who say this decided to open up that ending for a second and read its final words. Although, if you read it in its entirety, it's very "positive," but it's precisely this naive optimism that's the problem. In short: a few paragraphs earlier, Nicholas laid out a whole plan for Alison, according to which he was supposed to leave after the slap. Moreover, he is compared to Orpheus there: and, as we know, Orpheus lost Eurydice precisely because he turned around. Nicholas walked on without looking back: he was convinced she would follow him. In this ending, Alison behaves very favorably; after the slap, she smiles. And, as we know, smiles in this novel mean a lot: remember the smile on the statue that Conchis mentioned. The 1965 ending is a victory for the accomplices: Nicholas and Alison together against Conchis. Of course, it's a reunion.
But there is indeed a problem here, connected not only to Nicholas's crude sexual thoughts but also to his overall stance and behavior. He truly hasn't reformed, considering Alison his property, his thing.
Actually, "less ambiguous" in the context of the 1977 ending is precisely Nicholas's reformation, not Alison's favoritism. Alison, on the contrary, is indifferent, distant, cold. And yet she can't let him go. This doesn't mean they'll get back together. There are many "bad," sad words in this ending. Of course, the last sentence (before the descriptions of the park) is Nicholas's thoughts. But even if we assume Nicholas is an unreliable narrator, these are still his final thoughts. It's unlikely that "will never forgive" should be seen simply as his neurosis and anxiety.
Fowles wanted to show not this, but rather that Nicholas had found meaning in life. He was in a state of emptiness that philosophy couldn't eradicate. Remember all of Conchis's experiments. First, with the dice. Nicholas didn't commit his first suicide for purely philosophical reasons. But here, for emotional, pre-reflective reasons. It is precisely this pre-reflectiveness that runs through the work. Remember the fairy tale "The Prince and the Wizard"—the princesses and islands are unreal, yet dear to his heart.
There's a comment in this thread that Nicholas's opinion of Alison has never changed. But this is contradicted by the novel's direct text. In the final chapters, he admits that no woman can replace Alison, that what he needs isn't sex, but something else, and only Alison can provide that something else.
You could call it love. You could call it psychological attachment. But it's neutral only from the perspective of an outside observer. For Urfe, this feeling is no longer reducible to nihilism or aestheticization. And now he understands why he needs to live, even though it may be painful and fruitless. If Alison doesn't return to him, he will spend the rest of his life in tragedy—not in emptiness. And from an existentialist perspective, that's more valuable. From an existentialist perspective, finding love is more important than the object of love. So, many writers have pondered how the nihilistic intellectual can escape the void. If you've read "Fathers and Sons," you'll see that love also intervened there, but Bazarov's feelings were too naively romanticized by Turgenev, in my opinion. Fowles showed everything more honestly. And I think Fowles's answer is that the void can only be escaped through irreducible feelings, not through logic or philosophy. According to Gödel, any closed system contains unprovable questions. The question of the meaning of life is one of them. Strong feelings ("anchors") are the external reference point that completes the proof for a specific person, making the meaning of life self-evident. Nicholas may know all the arguments of nihilism, but still madly desire a reunion with Alison—this is both his happiness and his curse.
At the end of 1977, Alison regains her subjectivity. Now she's not a "dog" chasing Nicholas around. She can choose. Her frozen presence in the "frozen present" is a powerful metaphor. When Nicholas says it's impossible to hate someone who's only half human without you, he prefaces it with, "Alison, that's your word." And she truly can't hate him, even though she does. She considers the question, "Why can't you let me go then?" unfair. Because if she had to answer it, a positive answer would do Nicholas a lot of credit (which he doesn't deserve), and a negative one would be a lie.
As for the plot's denouement, reread the phrase: "at a moment when the difference between fission and fusion lay." This is what is called "quantum entanglement", pure "Schrödinger's cat". That's why the novel ends here. If Fowles had continued, the position of the quantum particle would have been fixed, but the author wanted to show that their relationship is very fragile. Note: he left her 4 times. 1 time - "As you’re going back to Australia anyway", which she met with such anger. 2 times - when she confirmed that she was returning (after his four points). 3 times - when she shouted his name. 4 times - when she started to catch up. 4 times. And that's not counting that main time, in Athens. Do you think it's easy to forgive after that? She doesn't care that he has found the meaning of life, she doesn't want to be the object of this meaning. The fact that she still loves him (or rather, doesn't love him, but simply cannot let go) is not his merit, but a weak miracle that can perish at any moment. After all, he never intended to fight for her. That's why she said, "I thought you'd changed." After those words, she should have left—everything had already been said. But she still didn't.
As for the blow—it wasn't out of anger; I can't agree with the comment about that. Urfe doesn't strike this blow coldly—that is, emotionally, not deliberately—that is, unplanned, and not instinctively—that is, consciously. And in fact, there are two key, opposing existential choices. His—to strike, hers—to leave after the blow. This is their ultimate rational choice. Because classical rationality, of course, is against both. With this blow, Nicholas shows her in an extreme way: "I haven't changed. I'm the same monster, or worse. But now I can't live without you. Choose, just choose." He doesn't make any plans, like at the end of 1965. By striking Alison, he seems to be making a chess move, after which Alison can checkmate him. He unties her hands completely. If he had started making excuses, playing on her pity, lying, that would have been the old Nicolas Urfé. But the new one can't do that anymore.
Therefore, I share neither optimism nor pessimism. This is not a romantic story. It is an existential one. That's why the Latin quotation at the end is precisely about everyone finding that irreducible "anchor," and either abandoning it out of fear of the consequences ("bad faith") or accepting this cross. The only hope is that Nicolas and Alison will accept it.
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