"The Prison of Freedom"? (Der Gefängnis der Freiheit)

[2short]

Ok, so I was going to bed, it had been a long day and I was tired. Still, I had an urge to read something, so I decided to read tnes (for the 3rd time). I read the first chapter and then closed the book and thought "I can't keep reading the same book, Michael Ende must have written some other good stuff!".
So today, I went to libarary to borrow Momo, which I have heard a lot about. I also found a book my Michael called "The Prison of Freedom" ("Frihedens Fængsel" in danish and "Der Gefängnis der Freiheit" in German).
Is this book any good? I'm gonna read it after I finish Momo...

[Grograman]

Wow, your library has other Ende books... I, honestly, have never even heard of that one. I know he wrote a lot, but they're impossible to find. I've only seen TNeS, and The Night of Wishes in books stores and libraries. I've never even seen Momo in a store, except for a used book store once. In fact, when I really wanted to read one of his rare books (Mirror in the Mirror - its amazing, but pretty disturbing too!) I had to order it online from an out-of-print book website. So what's this one about exactly? I may try to find it.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Grograman on 2003-07-25 21:25 ]</font>

[2short]

well, I haven't read it yet, but I'll try to translate what it says on the back:

"The Prison of Freedom takes the reader through a colourful world of wonders and signs, secrets and riddles.
The fantastic stories of Michael Ende do not take place in the world of realities, but we recognize the worlds he describes, because their source is the human mind"

I'm looking forward to reading this, and at my library I also saw the Mirror in the Mirror which I want to read too.
I believe The Prison of Freedom was the last book he wrote.

[bear]

This book is kinda cool -- short stories, not quite so surreal as those in Der Spiegel im Spiegel (the Mirror in the Mirror). They're a lot like Borges, lots of architecture with, shall we say, unusual features -- a hallway that's far longer than the building it's in ("The Corridor of Borromeo Colmi"), a house that seems to have no interior ("The House on the Periphery"). And there's "The Catacombs of Misraim", which has the most amazing final sentence...

Anyway I keep an eye on what's in print in English, and right now it seems there's just TNeS and The Night of Wishes. We're missing a lot. Ende's due for a renaissance in English, and I wouldn't mind if they started with a new translation of TNeS. Ralph Manheim was a great translator, but every time I pick up the English version I get this overwhelming sense that he was not much into this particular job.

[JirkaR]

"The Prison of Freedom" is currently one of the three books by Michael Ende available in bookstores here in Prague (a czech edition from 2009; the other two books are TNES and Momo, obviously...), so I'm reading the "Prison" right now. I only finished the first story today, but since the book consists of eight separate small stories, I'm going to write my ideas down now. I feel like I need to...

It still seems like this book is not available in English, so there's probably not so much people to discuss it (if anyone still visits this forum at all), but still... Ende wrote this long after TNES, for adult audience, and even in the first story alone, I find whole heap of interesting ideas and similarities to TNES and Momo. Definitely worth a few posts here.

SPOILERS: Some information from inside the story is unavoidable below, as I'm going to compare my feelings about this book to TNES and Momo. Honestly, I only came across the very idea of "spoilers" a few months ago, and I don't see any problem about knowing a bit about a story in advance. After all, good stories may be read repeatedly, having no significant dependency on the surprise element alone. But since the English-speaking part of the world seems to be strangely sensitive about "spoilers" (and I don't want to cause people frowning, again), I'm issuing this warning here: I'm not going to repeat much from the story, but there surely will be hints. I'm assuming this is read by someone who already know the book, or else who doesn't care.

First story: Long way's target (Unsure on correct translation of this title)

Well, this starts as a story about a bored son of a diplomat in 19th century, but towards the end it gets quite surreal, having several connections to the ideas behind TNES. It's quite nice and interesting to see the Ende's ideas in a different story. Cyril (using names from the Czech translation here) is, to me, similar to Bastian, and even more to his ice-enclosed father. Also the idea of home is worth noticing. When he found the picture in a private gallery, I immediately thought about the Yor's mine from TNES and it's meaning for Bastian, and at the same time I almost heard mr. Koreander say: "there are many doors to Fantasia". That picture resembles the magic book from TNES in a lot of ways, being stolen, being different to each person, and much, much more and deeper. A gateway to another world. I also see ideas similar to Momo - the relation between the past, the present, and the future, for instance. When it got to mr. Tubal's shop, the story became really awesome. It reminded me of Prof. Hora's house (Mistr Hóra in Czech) from Momo, what with the mysterious city-quarter and a house at the end of a mysterious alley, but this version is much more impressive for me. And Tubal himself - however Prof. Hora comes into mind too, he reminded me especially of The old man of Wandering mountain from TNES. Instead of the book, he have a globe, and being supposedly the old man of wandering mountain to OUR world, living in the Alley of Genesis and challenging the ideas of Genesis, this becomes really interesting - more or less this implies the God getting a role of his counterpart similar to the Child-like empress. Well, I'm an atheist myself, and maybe I'm thinking too far here - but knowing TNES and Momo already, this definitely brings very interesting ideas! There's also the idea of things coming into existence with their full history already existing, where I almost heard Grograman from TNES speaking. And the ending - i like it. It's quite surreal, reminds me of the Child-like empress' way to the big egg, but it's interesting in it's own way. Cyril is still so lonely... He became part of the picture, or was he there always, as seen back in the gallery? Who were the other figures in the painting, perhaps all people who are ever going to reach the castle? Was Cyril the first to be there? Or the last, who missed all the others? Or the only one? Was he still living after all these years [at the end], or did he became just some sort of image? This story resembles TNES quite a bit, as I see it - not on the surface level of the story, but when it comes to the ideas and motives seen by an adult reader, this is perhaps one of the "other Neverending Stories" we're possibly looking for.

All in all, this is really good stuff. Can't wait to read further stories in the book

[JirkaR]

Well, now I finished the whole book, so going to write some final thoughts... In the end, none of the other stories impressed me as much as the first one - for various reasons; or maybe just because these were simply not first - but I can't call them boring either. They are all good stories.

And - spoilers alert again, just to improve my writing freedom below... (See my previous post about that)

After the first, there are three rather small stories - in fact just "written pictures" of interesting phenomenons, having not much of actual story: "The Corridor of Borromeo Colmi", "The House on the Periphery", and "I admit, it's a bit small". These are similar in a way - one about a corridor longer than the house it's in (or rather some deformation of space in that corridor?), second about a house with no inside, third about a small car with *very* big inside space and equipment. I see these as interesting small ideas, offered generously to the reader's own imagination.

I can't help noticing how many of Ende's stories are connected to Italian locations and/or the language. From the stories in Prison of Freedom, only "House on Periphery" (and a few tiny pieces elsewhere) gives a precise location in Germany, the rest is either Italy, or mixed/non-specific, or not reality at all. Names are often Italian (or is that Latin?). Even Momo is set in something much like Italy [Rome?] (although the reality part of TNES might be Germany). The few ties to Germany are natural for a German author, but the massive Italian influence surprised me at the first moment - but that was only until I saw some facts about Ende's life: He was living in Italy more than few years... So mystery solved.

"The Catacombs of Misraim" resembles some other sci-fi stories I've read before, but yes, the ending is somehow unexpected. Good old problem of totality and mass-manipulation. Somehow, I see this as a counterpart to "Prison of Freedom" - one is freedom of many options to choose from and no advice (slightly resembles the Palace of 1000 doors from TNES, BTW), other is slavery and too many advices, both with uncertainty what's truth and what's lie, and with the consequences of any chosen way unknown - and possibly terrible. Both are challenging the idea of freedom being ultimately positive, as maybe oposed to continuity of (possibly very different) local traditional life-style. I see the message like that, and however unsure about some aspects, I think it's a good question to raise in this book. After all, freedom is just a part of culture (or collisions between cultures), and "real" or "full" freedom doesn't exist in our world anyway (that would be anarchy, and loss of morale). I'm getting sidetracked, sorry...

"From diary of Max Mutt, the dreams traveller" (pardon my poor translation here) contains another interesting bit of "unusual architecture" - a living town, i.e. buildings as living creatures. But besides of that, there's also the idea of "chained" stories (each one starts as a result/condition of another), much like some traditional fairy-tales (here in Europe at least), and somehow similar to the idea at the end of TNES book - that Bastian should "finish all stories". Max Mutt actually finds himself sort-of at the end of such a process, only to find that he forgot where it all started, and that he actually doesn't want to stop. Fantasy is neverending...

"The Legend of Sign at crossroads" is another life-story about a traveller, from childhood to unusual end, like the first one in this book. This one plays with miracles - or their lack, and their imitations. The mysterious ending is in a way similar to "The Catacombs of Misraim" - at a gate to another world, we're left with no answer about the fate of the character who went in.

Towards the end of this book, I can't ignore how the ideas behind the stories are more and more related to religion. The most obvious is "Prison of Freedom" (building supposedly on Islam motives), but most of the stories are affected by this direction to some extent. As for myself, I'm an atheist, so I don't really like stories that make assumptions about reader's belief, or dig too deep into details of this or that religion (that I'm not really familiar with). Ende doesn't go that far, so the stories remain fine for me, but some of the ideas are there, and I can't identify myself with some of the characters for this reason. It's also possible, that the author just uses this to show the alternative philosophies to us - I'm really unsure here. But it's worth a little thought anyway.

[Mvek]

I am bookmarking this thread to read it after reading the book myself. Hopefuly this year:-)