… the path of mystery leads inwards…

Hilde let the heavy ring binder slide into her lap. Then she let it slide further onto the floor.

She slept until eleven o'clock the next morning. The tension in her body told her that she had dreamed intensely all night, but she could not remember what she had dreamed. It felt as if she had been in a totally different reality.

She went downstairs and fixed breakfast. Her mother had put on her blue jumpsuit ready to go down to the boathouse and work on the motorboat. Even if it was not afloat, it had to be shipshape when Dad got back from Lebanon.

It was already lighter in the room than when she had gone to bed. She looked at the clock. It was almost three. She snuggled down under the covers and closed her eyes. As she was falling asleep she wondered why her father had begun to write about Little Red Ridinghood and Winnie-the-Pooh…

"I have to read a little first. Should I come down with some tea and a mid-morning snack?"

"Do you want to come down and give me a hand?"

"Fine with me."

Sophie slipped through the hedge and stood in the big garden which she had once thought of as her own Garden of Eden…

"What mid-morning?"

"I have invited Joanna and her parents."

She went into the house. Her mother had just gotten home and was putting some bottles of soda in the refrigerator. On the table was a delicious-looking chocolate cake.

The visitors arrived shortly before half-past seven. The atmosphere was somewhat formal -- Sophie's mother very seldom saw Joanna's parents socially.

When Hilde had eaten she went back up to her room, made her bed, and sat herself comfortably with the ring binder resting against her knees.

"How?"

There were branches and leaves strewn everywhere after the storm the night before. It seemed to her that there was some connection between the storm and the fallen branches and her meeting with Little Red Ridinghood and Winnie-the-Pooh.

"We're having the real party next Saturday, but I thought we ought to have a little celebration today as well."

"Are you expecting visitors?" asked Sophie; she had almost forgotten it was her birthday.

It was not long before Sophie and Joanna went upstairs to Sophie's room to write the garden party invitations. Since Alberto Knox was also to be invited, Sophie had the idea of inviting people to a "philosophical garden party." Joanna didn't object. It was Sophie's party after all, and theme parties were "in" at the moment.

Finally they had composed the invitation. It had taken two hours and they couldn't stop laughing.

Dear… You are hereby invited to a philosophical garden party at 3 Clover Close on Saturday June 23 (Midsummer Eve) at 7 p. m. During the evening we shall hopefully solve the mystery of life. Please bring warm sweaters and bright ideas suitable for solving the riddles of philosophy. Because of the danger of woodland fires we unfortunately cannot have a bonfire, but everybody is free to let the flames of their imagination flicker unimpeded. There will be at least one genuine philosopher among the invited guests. For this reason the party is a strictly private arrangement. Members of the press will not be admitted. With regards, Joanna Ingebrigtsen (organizing committee) and Sophie Amundsen (hostess)

Her mother read the invitation and then handed it to Joanna's father.

The two girls went downstairs to their parents, who were now talking somewhat more freely. Sophie handed the draft invitation, written with a calligraphic pen, to her mother.

"Could you make eighteen copies, please." It was not the first time she had asked her mother to make photocopies for her at work.

Barbie read the invitation, then she said: "Well, I must say! Can we come too, Sophie?"

"Let's say twenty copies, then," said Sophie, taking them at their word.

"You must be nuts!" said Joanna.

Before Sophie went to bed that night she stood for a long time gazing out of the window. She remembered how she had once seen the outline of Alberto's figure in the darkness. It was more than a month ago. Now it was again late at night, but this was a white summer night.

"But it looks really exciting," said Joanna's father, handing the sheet on to his wife. "I wouldn't mind coming to that party myself."

"You see what I mean? She is going a little crazy."

"I'm sure he did. But all right, we'll talk about that later. Can you come to the major's cabin this morning?"

"No, I didn't, actually."

"I'm sorry I didn't call before, but I've been working hard on our plan. I can only be alone and work undisturbed when the major is concentrating wholly and com-pletely on you."

"It can't possibly be pure coincidence that he lets you arrange a philosophical garden party the same day as he gets home to Bjerkely."

"That's weird."

"Then I seize the opportunity to conceal myself, you see. The best surveillance system in the world has its limitations when it is only controlled by one single person… I got your card."

"Sophie Amundsen."

"Are you coming?"

"Why not?"

"Anything can happen at a party like that."

"Dare you risk it?"

"I thought so."

"You mean the invitation?"

"Of course I'm coming. But there is another thing. Did you remember that it's the day Hilde's father gets back from Lebanon?"

"And Alberto Knox."

"I didn't think about it, as I said."

Sophie heard nothing from Alberto until Tuesday morning. He called just after her mother had left for work.

"Let's say two o'clock, then. Can you make that?"

"I'm supposed to weed the flower beds."

"It began toward the end of the eighteenth century and lasted till the middle of the nineteenth. But after 1850 one can no longer speak of whole 'epochs' which comprise poetry, philosophy, art, science, and music."

"Have a seat," he said, getting straight down to work.

"I'll be there."

Alberto Knox was sitting on the step again when Sophie arrived.

"Previously we spoke of the Renaissance, the Baroque period, and the Enlightenment. Today we are going to talk about Romanticism, which could be described as Europe's last great cultural epoch. We are approaching the end of a long story, my child."

"It has been said that Romanticism was Europe's last common approach to life. It started in Germany, arising as a reaction to the Enlightenment's unequivocal emphasis on reason. After Kant and his cool intellectualism, it was as if German youth heaved a sigh of relief."

"Was Romanticism one of those epochs?"

"Did Romanticism last that long?"

"What did they replace it with?"

"Well, it did and it didn't. Many of the Romantics saw themselves as Kant's successors, since Kant had established that there was a limit to what we can know of 'das Ding an sich.' On the other hand, he had underlined the importance of the ego's contribution to knowledge, or cognition. The individual was now completely free to interpret life in his own way. The Romantics exploited this in an almost unrestrained 'ego-worship,' which led to the exaltation of artistic genius."

"The new catchwords were 'feeling,"imagination,"experience,' and 'yearning.' Some of the Enlightenment thinkers had drawn attention to the importance of feel-ing -- not least Rousseau -- but at that time it was a criticism of the bias toward reason. What had been an undercurrent now became the mainstream of German culture."

"So Kant's popularity didn't last very long?"

"Were there a lot of these geniuses?"

"Beethoven was one. His music expresses his own feelings and yearnings. Beethoven was in a sense a 'free' artist -- unlike the Baroque masters such as Bach and Handel, who composed their works to the glory of God, mostly in strict musical forms."

"But you know how romantic the Moonlight Sonata is, and you can hear how dramatically Beethoven expresses himself in the Fifth Symphony."

"I only know the Moonlight Sonata and the Fifth Symphony."

"You said the Renaissance humanists were individualists too."

"So the artist can provide something philosophers can't express?"

"Yes. There were many similarities between the Renaissance and Romanticism. A typical one was the importance of art to human cognition. Kant made a considerable contribution here as well. In his aesthetics he investigated what happens when we are overwhelmed by beauty -- in a work of art, for instance. When we abandon ourselves to a work of art with no other intention than the aesthetic experience itself, we are brought closer to an experience of 'das Ding an sich.'"

"That was the view of the Romantics. According to Kant, the artist plays freely on his faculty of cognition. The German poet Schiller developed Kant's thought further. He wrote that the activity of the artist is like playing, and man is only free when he plays, because then he makes up his own rules. The Romantics believed that only art could bring us closer to 'the inexpressible.' Some went as far as to compare the artist to God."

"Novalis, one of the young geniuses, said that 'the world becomes a dream, and the dream becomes reality.' He wrote a novel called Heinrich von Ofterdingen set in Medieval times. It was unfinished when he died in 1801, but it was nevertheless a very significant novel. It tells of the young Heinrich who is searching for the 'blue flower' that he once saw in a dream and has yearned for ever since. The English Romantic poet Coleridge expressed the same idea; saying something like this: What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?"

"How pretty!"

"Because the artist creates his own reality the way God created the world."

"It was said that the artist had a 'universe-creating imagination.' In his transports of artistic rapture he could sense the dissolving of the boundary between dream and reality."

"This yearning for something distant and unattainable was characteristic of the Romantics. They longed for bygone eras, such as the Middle Ages, which now became enthusiastically reappraised after the Enlightenment's negative evaluation. And they longed for distant cultures like the Orient with its mysticism. Or else they would feel drawn to Night, to Twilight, to old ruins and the supernatural. They were preoccupied with what we usually refer to as the dark side of life, or the murky, uncanny, and mystical."

"It sounds to me like an exciting period. Who were these Romantics?"

"Romanticism was in the main an urban phenomenon. In the first half of the last century there was, in fact, a flourishing metropolitan culture in many parts of Europe, not least in Germany. The typical Romantics were young men, often university students, although they did not always take their studies very seriously. They had a decidedly anti-middle class approach to life and could refer to the police or their landladies as philistines, for example, or simply as the enemy."

"I would never have dared rent a room to a Romantic!"

"Yes. It was once said that 'idleness is the ideal of genius, and indolence the virtue of the Romantic.' It was the duty of the Romantic to experience life -- or to dream himself away from it. Day-to-day business could be taken care of by the philistines."

"The first generation of Romantics were young in about 1 800, and we could actually call the Romantic Movement Europe's first student uprising. The Romantics were not unlike the hippies a hundred and fifty years later."

"You mean flower power and long hair, strumming their guitars and lying around?"

"Yes…"

"Byron was a Romantic poet, wasn't he?"

"Yes, it was…"

"Yes, both Byron and Shelley were Romantic poets of the so-called Satanic school. Byron, moreover, provided the Romantic Age with its idol, the Byronic hero -- the alien, moody, rebellious spirit -- in life as well as in art. Byron himself could be both willful and passionate, and being also handsome, he was besieged by women of fashion. Public gossip attributed the romantic adventures of his verses to his own life, but although he had numerous liaisons, true love remained as illusive and as unattainable for him as Novalis's blue flower. Novalis became engaged to a fourteen-year-old girl. She died four days after her fifteenth birthday, but Novalis remained devoted to her for the rest of his short life."

"I am fifteen years and four days old today."

"So you are."

"What?"

"I couldn't say, Sophie. But her name was Sophie."

"You scare me. Could it be a coincidence?"

"Her name was Sophie."

"Did you say she died four days after her fifteenth birthday?"

"What was her name?"

"Novalis himself died when he was only twenty-nine. He was one of the 'yun9 dead.' Many of the Romantics died young, usually of tuberculosis. Some committed suicide…"

"Those who lived to be old usually stopped being Romantics at about the age of thirty. Some of them went on to become thoroughly middle-class and conservative."

"Go on!"

"The suicide rate rose after the publication of the novel, and for a time the book was banned in Denmark and Norway. So being a Romantic was not without danger. Strong emotions were involved."

"Ugh!"

"They went over to the enemy, then."

"When you say 'Romantic/ I think of those great big landscape paintings, with dark forests and wild, rugged nature… preferably in swirling mists."

"Was it necessary to go that far?"

"Maybe. But we were talking about romantic love. The theme of unrequited love was introduced as early as 1774 by Goethe in his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. The book ends with young Werther shooting himself when he can't have the woman he loves…"

"Yes, one of the features of Romanticism was this yearning for nature and nature's mysteries. And as I said, it was not the kind of thing that arises in rural areas. You may recall Rousseau, who initiated the slogan 'back to nature.' The Romantics gave this slogan popular currency. Romanticism represents not least a reaction to the Enlightenment's mechanistic universe. It was said that Romanticism implied a renaissance of the old cosmic consciousness."

"Both Descartes and Hume had drawn a sharp line between the ego and 'extended' reality. Kant had also left behind him a sharp distinction between the cognitive 'I' and nature 'in itself.' Now it was said that nature is nothing but one big 'I.' The Romantics also used the expressions 'world soul' or 'world spirit.'"

"It means viewing nature as a whole; the Romantics were tracing their roots not only back to Spinoza, but also to Plotinus and Renaissance philosophers like Jakob Bohme and Giordano Bruno. What all these thinkers had in common was that they experienced a divine 'ego' in nature."

"The leading Romantic philosopher was Schelling, who lived from 1775 to 1854. He wanted to unite mind and matter. All of nature -- both the human soul and physical reality -- is the expression of one Absolute, or world spirit, he believed."

"I see."

"Explain that, please."

"Yes, just like Spinoza."

"Nature is visible spirit, spirit is invisible nature, said Schelling, since one senses a 'structuring spirit' everywhere in nature. He also said that matter is slumbering intelligence."

"They were Pantheists then…"

"Schelling saw a 'world spirit' in nature, but he saw the same 'world spirit' in the human mind. The natural and the spiritual are actually expressions of the same thing."

"World spirit can thus be sought both in nature and in one's own mind. Novalis could therefore say 'the path of mystery leads inwards.' He was saying that man bears the whole universe within himself and comes closest to the mystery of the world by stepping inside himself."

"For many Romantics, philosophy, nature study, and poetry formed a synthesis. Sitting in your attic dashing off inspired verses and investigating the life of plants or the composition of rocks were only two sides of the same coin because nature is not a dead mechanism, it is one living world spirit."

"Yes, why not?"

"That's a very lovely thought."

"Another word and I think I'll become a Romantic."

"You'll have to explain that a bit more clearly."

"The Norwegian-born naturalist Henrik Steffens -- whom Wergeland called 'Norway's departed laurel leaf because he had settled in Germany -- went to Copenhagen in 1801 to lecture on German Romanticism. He characterized the Romantic Movement by saying, 'Tired of the eternal efforts to fight our way through raw matter, we chose another way and sought to embrace the infinite. We went inside ourselves and created a new world… '"

"How can you remember all that?"

"Doesn't that remind you of Aristotle?"

"It does indeed. The Romantic natural philosophy had Aristotelian as well as Neoplatonic overtones. Aristotle had a more organic view of natural processes than the mechanical materialists…"

"A bagatelle, child."

"Schelling also saw a development in nature from earth and rock to the human mind. He drew attention to very gradual transitions from inanimate nature to more complicated life forms. It was characteristic of the Romantic view in general that nature was thought of as an organism, or in other words, a unity which is constantly developing its innate potentialities. Nature is like a flower unfolding its leaves and petals. Or like a poet unfolding his verses."

"Yes, that's what I thought…"

"Go on, then."

"We find similar ideas at work in the field of history. A man who came to have great significance for the Romantics was the historical philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder, who lived from 1744 to 1803. He believed that history is characterized by continuity, evolution, and design. We say he had a 'dynamic' view of history be-cause he saw it as a process. The Enlightenment philosophers had often had a 'static' view of history. To them, there was only one universal reason which there could be more or less of at various periods. Herder showed that each historical epoch had its own intrinsic value and each nation its own character or 'soul.' The question is whether we can identify with other cultures."

"So, just as we have to identify with another person's Situation to understand them better, we have to identify with other cultures to understand them too."

"That is taken for granted nowadays. But in the Romantic period it was a new idea. Romanticism helped strengthen the feeling of national identity. It is no coinci-dence that the Norwegian struggle for national independence flourished at that particular time -- in 1814."

"And the other?"

"The other is the so-called National Romanticism, which became popular a little later, especially in the town of Heidelberg. The National Romantics were mainly interested in the history of 'the people,' the language of 'the people,' and the culture of 'the people' in general. And 'the people' were seen as an organism unfolding its innate potentiality -- exactly like nature and history."

"Because Romanticism involved new orientations in so many areas, it has been usual to distinguish between two forms of Romanticism. There is what we call Universal Romanticism, referring to the Romantics who were preoccupied with nature, world soul, and artistic genius. This form of Romanticism flourished first, especially around 1800, in Germany, in the town of Jena."

"I see."

"I see."

"What united these two aspects of Romanticism was first and foremost the key word 'organism.' The Romantics considered both a plant and a nation to be a living organism. A poetic work was also a living organism. Language was an organism. The entire physical world, even, was considered one organism. There is therefore no sharp dividing line between National Romanticism and Universal Romanticism. The world spirit was just as much present in the people and in popular culture as in nature and art."

"Tell me where you live, and I'll tell you who you are."

"Herder had been the forerunner, collecting folk songs from many lands under the eloquent title Voices of the People. He even referred to folktales as 'the mother tongue of the people.' The Brothers Grimm and others began to collect folk songs and fairy tales in Heidelberg. You must know of Grimm's Fairy Tales."

"Oh sure, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Rumpelstiltskin, The Frog Prince, Hansel and Gretel…"

"And many more. In Norway we had Asbjornsen and Moe, who traveled around the country collecting 'folks' own tales.' It was like harvesting a juicy fruit that was suddenly discovered to be both good and nourishing. And it was urgent -- the fruit had already begun to fall. Folk songs were collected; the Norwegian language began to be studied scientifically. The old myths and sagas from heathen times were rediscovered, and composers all over Europe began to incorporate folk melodies into their compositions in an attempt to bridge the gap between folk music and art music."

"I've heard of The Tales of Hoffmann."

"So art tales are…?"

"They are tales written by an author, like Hans Christian Andersen. The fairy tale genre was passionately cultivated by the Romantics. One of the German masters of the genre was E. T. A, Hoffmann."

"Art music is music composed by a particular person, like Beethoven. Folk music was not written by any particular person, it came from the people. That's why we don't know exactly when the various folk melodies date from. We distinguish in the same way between folktales and art tales."

"Precisely. And this is a good moment to sum up."

"He could play God to a fictional universe."

"What's art music?"

"The fairy tale was the absolute literary ideal of the Romantics -- in the same way that the absolute art form of the Baroque period was the theater. It gave the poet full scope to explore his own creativity."

"The philosophers of Romanticism viewed the 'world soul' as an 'ego' which in a more or less dreamlike state created everything in the world. The philosopher Fichte said that nature stems from a higher, unconscious imagination. Scheliing said explicitly that the world is 'in God.' God is aware of some of it, he believed, but there are other aspects of nature which represent the unknown in God. For God also has a dark side."

"Go ahead."

"The thought is fascinating and frightening. It reminds me of Berkeley."

"The relationship between the artist and his work was seen in exactly the same light. The fairy tale gave the writer free rein to exploit his 'universe-creating imagination.' And even the creative act was not always completely conscious. The writer could experience that his story was being written by some innate force. He could practically be in a hypnotic trance while he wrote."

"He could?"

"Yes, but then he would suddenly destroy the illusion. He would intervene in the story and address ironic comments to the reader, so that the reader, at least momentarily, would be reminded that it was, after all, only a story."

"I see."

"At the same time the writer could remind his reader that it was he who was manipulating the fictional universe. This form of disillusion is called 'romantic irony.' Henrik Ibsen, for example, lets one of the characters in Peer Gynt say: 'One cannot die in the middle of Act Five.'"

"That's a very funny line, actually. What he's really saying is that he's only a fictional character."

"What did you mean by that?"

"Why not?"

"You're making me dizzy."

"Oh, nothing, Sophie. But we did say that Novalis's fiancee was called Sophie, just like you, and that she died when she was only fifteen years and four days old…"

"The statement is so paradoxical that we can certainly emphasize it with a new section."

"You're scaring me, don't you know that?"

"Because there are several more chapters."

"It's really the major trying to make Hilde dizzy. It's not very nice or him, is it? New section!"

Alberto sat staring, stony faced. Then he said: "But you needn't be worried that you will meet the same fate as Novalis's fiancee."

"What are you saying?"

Alberto had hardly finished speaking when a boy came running out of the woods. He had a turban on his head, and he was carrying an oil lamp.

"I'm saying that anyone reading the story of Sophie and Alberto will know intuitively that there are many pages of the story still to come. We have only gotten as far as Romanticism."

Sophie grabbed Alberto's arm.

Alberto looked at him sternly: "And what do you have in your lamp?"

"Both you and I and everything around us are living deep in the major's mind. It is late at night on Saturday, April 28, and all the UN soldiers are asleep around the major, who, although still awake, is not far from sleep himself. But he must finish the book he is to give Hilde as a fifteenth birthday present. That's why he has to work, Sophie, that's why the poor man gets hardly any rest."

The boy rubbed the lamp, and out of it rose a thick cloud which formed itself into the figure of a man. He had a black beard like Alberto's and a blue beret. Floating above the lamp, he said: "Can you hear me, Hilde? I suppose it's too late for any more birthday greetings. I just wanted to say that Bjerkely and the south country back home seem like fairyland to me here in Lebanon. I'll see you there in a few days."

"That's because it was Hilde's father -- in spirit."

"But…"

"I don't believe this," said Sophie.

"The spirit of the lamp spoke exactly like Hilde's father."

"A bagatelle, my dear."

The boy answered for himself: "My name is Aladdin and I've come all the way from Lebanon."

So saying, the figure became a cloud again and was sucked back into the lamp. The boy with the turban put the lamp under his arm, ran into the woods, and was gone.

"Who's that?" she asked.

"I give up."

"That's exactly what I am planning. But before that can happen, we must try and talk with Hilde. She reads every word we say. Once we succeed in getting away from here it will be much harder to contact her. That means we must grasp the opportunity now."

"Were you dreaming?"

"Yes, he was interfering directly there. The last few paragraphs were dictated by him to the letter. He should be ashamed of himself. But now he has given himself away and come out into the open. Now we know that we are living our lives in a book which Hilde's father will send home to Hilde as a birthday present. You heard what I said? Well, it wasn't 'me' saying it."

Sophie and Alberto sat looking across the little lake. Alberto seemed to be in some sort of trance. After a while Sophie ventured to nudge his shoulder.

"New section!"

"If what you say is true, I'm going to run away from the book and go my own way."

"I think the major is just about to fall asleep over his typewriter -- although his fingers are still racing feverishly over the keys…"

"What do we say?"

"But he is more than what we can see here."

"This is the moment when he may write something he will regret later. And he has no correction fluid. That's a vital part of my plan. May no one give the major a bottle of correction fluid!"

"He won't get so much as a single cover-up strip from me!"

"It's a creepy thought."

"I'm calling on that poor girl here and now to rebel against her own father. She should be ashamed to let herself be amused by his self-indulgent playing with shadows. If only we had him here, we'd give him a taste of our indignation!"

"He is here in spirit and soul, but he's also safely tucked away in Lebanon. Everything around us is the major's ego."

"But he's not here."

"We are but shadows in the major's soul. And it is no easy matter for a shadow to turn on its master, Sophie. It requires both cunning and strategy. But we have an opportunity of influencing Hilde. Only an angel can rebel against God."

"We could ask Hilde to give him a piece of her mind the moment he gets home. She could tell him he's a rogue. She could wreck his boat -- or at least, smash the lantern."

Alberto nodded. Then he said: "She could also run away from him That would be much easier for her than it is for us. She could leave the major's house and never return. Wouldn't that be fitting for a major who plays with his 'universe-creating imagination' at our expense?"

"Yes, that's it! Plays the fool! That's what I meant by his using us as birthday amusement. But he'd better watch out, Sophie. So had Hilde!"

"I can picture it. The major travels all over the world searching for Hilde. But Hilde has vanished into thin air because she can't stand living with a father who plays the fool at Alberto's and Sophie's expense."

"How do you mean?"

"And?"

"Are you sitting tight?"

"As long as there are no more genies from a lamp."

"Now it is possible that this soul is Hilde Moller Knag's father. He is over there in Lebanon writing a book on philosophy for his daughter's fifteenth birthday. When Hilde wakes up on June 15, she finds the book on her bedside table, and now she -- and anyone else -- can read about us. It has long been suggested that this 'present' could be shared with others."

"Try to imagine that everything that happens to us goes on in someone else's mind. We are that mind. That means we have no soul, we are someone else's soul. So far we are on familiar philosophical ground. Both Berkeley and Schelling would prick up their ears."

"What I am saying to you now will be read by Hilde after her father in Lebanon once imagined that I was telling you he was in Lebanon… imagining me telling you that he was in Lebanon."

"But why shouldn't they feel so cocky?"

"Who are we talking about?"

"If it was possible for Berkeley and the Romantics, it must be possible for them. Maybe the major is also a shadow in a book about him and Hilde, which is also about us, since we are a part of their lives."

"Hilde and her father. Weren't we talking about them?"

"Because it is feasible that they, too, are nothing but mind."

"But it is possible that a completely different author is somewhere writing a book about a UN Major Albert Knag, who is writing a book for his daughter Hilde. This book is about a certain Alberto Knox who suddenly begins to send humble philosophical lectures to Sophie Amundsen, 3 Clover Close."

"Yes, I remember."

"How could they be?"

"That would be even worse. That makes us only shadows of shadows."

Sophie's head was swimming. She tried to remember what she had heard about Berkeley and the Romantics. Alberto Knox continued: "But they shouldn't feel so cocky because of that. They are the last people who should laugh, because laughter can easily get stuck in their throat."

"Do you believe that?"

"I'm just saying it's possible. To us, that author would be a 'hidden God.' Although everything we are and everything we say and do proceeds from him, because we are him we will never be able to know anything about him. We are in the innermost box."

"What do you mean?"

"… then it's possible that author shouldn't be cocky either."

Alberto and Sophie now sat for a long time without saying anything. It was Sophie who finally broke the silence: "But if there really is an author who is writing a story about Hilde's father in Lebanon, just like he is writing a story about us…"

"Yes?"

"Of course it is, Sophie. That's also a possibility. And if that is the way it is, it means he has permitted us to have this philosophical conversation in order to present this possibility. He wishes to emphasize that he, too, is a helpless shadow, and that this book, in which Hilde and Sophie appear, is in reality a textbook on philosophy."

"He is sitting somewhere, hiding both Hilde and me deep inside his head. Isn't it just possible that he, too, is part of a higher mind?"

Atberto nodded.

"Because all our conversations, all our dialogues…"

"… are in reality one long monologue."

"A textbook?"

"So as not to be interrupted by any further spirits or shadows, we shall go inside."

"Yes?"

"It's getting chilly out here anyway."

"Of course not. I still have to tell you about Hegel. He was the first philosopher who tried to salvage philosophy when the Romantics had dissolved everything into spirit."

"Next chapter!"

"I get the feeling that everything is dissolving into mind and spirit. I'm glad there are still a few philosophers left. The philosophy that began so proudly with Thales, Em-pedocles, and Democritus can't be stranded here, surely?"

"I'm very curious."