The Neverending Story

by Michael Ende

‘Listen, my boy, I can’t abide children. I know it’s the style nowadays to make a terrible fuss over you – but I don’t go for it.

‘Oh well, our names don’t really matter, as we’ll never see each other again.

Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can’t explain them, and those who haven’t known them have no understanding of them at all.

Some are so bent on winning a game of chance that they lose everything they own, and some sacrifice everything for a dream that can never come true.

Stealing a violinist’s precious violin or a king’s crown wasn’t at all the same as filching money from a cash drawer.

‘I wonder,’ he said to himself, ‘what’s in a book while it’s closed.

The will-o’-the-wisp couldn’t get over it that three such different creatures should be sitting there so peacefully, for harmony between different species was by no means the rule in Fantastica.

‘What – hoo – does this nothing look like?’ asked the night-hob. ‘That’s just what’s so hard to describe,’ said the will-o’-the-wisp unhappily. ‘It doesn’t look like anything. It’s – it’s like – oh, there’s no word for it.’ ‘Maybe,’ the tiny suggested, ‘when you look at the place, it’s as if you were blind.’

She didn’t rule, she had never used force or made use of her power. She never issued commands and she never judged anyone. She never interfered with anyone and never had to defend herself against any assailant; for no one would have thought of rebelling against her or of harming her in any way. In her eyes all her subjects were equal.

You must let what happens happen. Everything must be equal in your eyes, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise, just as it is in the eyes of the Childlike Empress. You may only search and inquire, never judge.

Though exceedingly powerful, they were not dangerous

And farther still there was nothing, absolutely nothing. Not a bare stretch, not darkness, not some lighter color; no, it was something the eyes could not bear, something that made you feel you had gone blind. For no eye can bear the sight of utter nothingness.

When you know as much as we do, nothing matters. Things just repeat. Day and night, summer and winter. The world is empty and aimless. Everything circles around. Whatever starts up must pass away, whatever is born must die. It all cancels out, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. Everything’s empty. Nothing is real. Nothing matters.’

But we both live in time. You a short time. We a long time. The Childlike Empress has always been there. But she’s not old. She has always been young. She still is. Her life isn’t measured by time, but by names.

He felt very lonely, yet there was a kind of pride in his loneliness. He was proud of standing firm in the face of temptation.

The Childlike Empress takes us all as we are. That’s why Ygramul respects her emblem.’

‘No pain?’ she asked. ‘None worth mentioning,’ Atreyu answered. ‘Nonsense!’ the old woman snapped. ‘Does it hurt or doesn’t it?’ ‘It still hurts,’ said Atreyu, ‘but it doesn’t matter.’

A sphinx sees nothing. In a sense she is blind. But her eyes send something out. And what do her eyes send out? All the riddles of the universe. That’s why these sphinxes are always looking at each other. Because only another sphinx can stand a sphinx’s gaze.

He went closer and looked at himself for a while. He was really nothing much to look at, with his pudgy build and his bow legs and pasty face. He shook his head and said aloud: ‘No!’

He had been through a good deal in the course of the Great Quest – he had seen beautiful things and horrible things – but up until now he had not known that one and the same creature can be both, that beauty can be terrifying.

What he saw was something quite unexpected, which wasn’t the least bit terrifying, but which baffled him completely. He saw a fat little boy with a pale face – a boy his own age – and this little boy was sitting on a pile of mats, reading a book.

For wondrous new names have the power to save.

Jabimbles

‘Oh, nothing can happen more than once, But all things must happen one day. Over hill and dale, over wood and stream, My dying voice will blow away.’

‘You’d really set a hungry werewolf free? Do you know what that means? Nobody would be safe from me.’ ‘I know,’ said Atreyu. ‘But I’m Nobody. Why should I be afraid of you?’

‘Because they had given up hope. That makes you beings weak. The Nothing pulls at you, and none of you has the strength to resist it for long.’

‘You ask me what you will be there. But what are you here? What are you creatures of Fantastica? Dreams, poetic inventions, characters in a neverending story. Do you think you’re real? Well yes, here in your world you are.

Are we real? In this world we are.

When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.

‘When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you’ll help them persuade people to buy things they don’t need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them. Yes, you little Fantastican, big things will be done in the human world with your help, wars started, empires founded …’

Now he knew why humans had stopped coming to Fantastica and why none would come to give the Childlike Empress new names. The more of Fantastica that was destroyed, the more lies flooded the human world, and the more unlikely it became that a child of man should come to Fantastica. It was a vicious circle from which there was no escape. Now Atreyu knew it. And so did someone else: Bastian Balthazar Bux.

He had never been willing to believe that life had to be as gray and dull as people claimed. He heard them saying: ‘Life is like that,’ but he couldn’t agree. He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles.

With horror and shame Bastian thought of his own lies. He didn’t count the stories he made up. That was something entirely different. But now and then he had told deliberate lies – sometimes out of fear, sometimes as a way of getting something he wanted, sometimes just to puff himself up. What inhabitants of Fantastica might he have maimed and destroyed with his lies?

I shall die before the Nothing gets here, but you will be swallowed up by it. There’s a big difference. Because I die first, my story is at an end. But yours will go on forever, in the form of a lie.’

It was the longest night Atreyu had ever known; and the same was true for Falkor, who was much older. But even the longest and darkest of nights passes sooner or later. And when the pale dawn came, they glimpsed the Ivory Tower on the horizon.

‘Oh, the world is full of things you don’t see. You can believe me.

‘it was all unnecessary. There was no need of sending me on the Great Quest. I’ve heard that your decisions are often mysterious. That may be. But after all I’ve been through I hate to think that you were just having a joke at my expense.’

Dear God

You entered into his image and took it with you, and he followed you, because he saw himself through your eyes. And now, too, he can hear every word we are saying. He knows we are talking about him,

4th wall

‘All lies were once creatures of Fantastica. They are made of the same stuff — but they have lost their true nature and become unrecognizable.

Lies

When humans, children of man, come to our world of their own free will, that’s the right way. Every human who has been here has learned something that could be learned only here, and returned to his own world a changed person.

Imagination

And the more these visits enriched our world, the fewer lies there were in theirs, the better it became. Just as our two worlds can injure each other, they can also make each other whole again.’

Use your imagination

‘Only the right name gives beings and things their reality,’ she said. ‘A wrong name makes everything unreal. That’s what lies do.’

‘He is like me,’ she replied, ‘because he is my opposite in every way.’

Nonduality

‘Keep going! Just keep going — no matter where.’

THIS IS THE END OF WHAT YOU ONCE BEGAN. YOU WILL NEVER BE OLD, AND I, OLD MAN, WAS NEVER YOUNG. WHAT YOU AWAKEN I LAY TO REST. BE NOT MISTAKEN: IT IS FORBIDDEN THAT LIFE SHOULD SEE ITSELF IN DEAD ETERNITY.

He looked again. Yes, no doubt about it, it was the book he had in his hand. How could this book exist inside itself?

The Childlike Empress read what was being written, and it was exactly what was happening at that same moment: ‘The Childlike Empress read what was being written …’

‘Are you and I and all Fantastica,’ she asked, ‘are we all recorded in this book?’ He wrote, and at the same time she heard his answer: ‘No, you’ve got it wrong. This book is all Fantastica — and you and I.’

‘I can only look back at what has happened. I was able to read it while I was writing it. And I know it because I have read it. And I wrote it because it happened. The Neverending Story writes itself by my hand.’

‘Tell me the story!’ the Childlike Empress commanded. ‘You, who are the memory of Fantastica — tell me the story from the beginning, word for word as you have written it.’ The Old Man’s writing hand began to tremble. ‘If I do that, I shall have to write everything all over again. And what I write will happen again.’ ‘So be it!’ said the Childlike Empress.

Why, this was all about him! And it was the Neverending Story. He, Bastian, was a character in the book which until now he had thought he was reading. And heaven only knew who else might be reading it at the exact same time, also supposing himself to be just a reader.

You are Bastian.

In that moment Bastian made a profound discovery. You wish for something, you’ve wanted it for years, and you’re sure you want it, as long as you know you can’t have it. But if all at once it looks as though your wish might come true, you suddenly find yourself wishing you had never wished for any such thing.