I was texting with kleinbl00 the other day and asked if it was appropriate to show The Neverending Story to my 3 1/2 year old daughter. He said that he'd wait till age 6. I stubbornly defied his sage advice. I got 1 minute in and turned it off. "Dad, I had that dream about mom again last night." -Too heavy. Great film though, I can't wait to watch it with her.
I know this article is old, and I only came across it, because I started to get interested in the translation of "The Neverending Story", as I grew up with the german original. While I appreciate many of your insights, I think you missed one major point in your discussion: The question of the Outer World/Fantastica and their relation. As Gmork tells Atreju - beings from Fantastica that enter the human world through the Nothing become lies, defaced and abused. And by making their children believe there is no such thing as Fantastica, humans unwittingly increase the stream of lies loosened upon their world. On the other hand, only a human child can heal the Childlike Empress and restore the balance. Ultimately this is about OUR inner and outer world, the world we live in and the world of our mind. In the beginning Bastian runs away from his life, because he is bullied and lonely, inside Fantastica he can be all that he wants to be... and there he learns that neither beauty, nor courage, nor fame can give him what he truly wants. The love of his friends, of his father. This is the point it all center's around. Through this journey Bastian comes to understand himself and when he comes home in the end, he is willing to tackle his problems. He talks to his father, he is willing to go and set things right with Mr. Coreander himself... and I am pretty sure he will stand up to the schoolyard bullies before long. And here we come to what Mr. Coreander says in the end: that those who go to Fantastica and come back, make both worlds whole. And here we are at our own imagination, our own dreams. If we loose ourselves to our imagination, then we might as well sit in the Old Emperor's city... but if we grow to understand ourselves better through our imagination... then we'll be stronger for it. Upon publishing "Die unendliche Geschichte" received a lot of bad critisism from left-wing literature critics, because the story did not deal with real-world topics, nor with social topics or other 'progressive' themes. Which brings us back to the people who'd prefer that men had no dreams, because people without dreams are much easier to control.
Old but, I hope, still good. Actually your timing is pretty great -- I just finished re-reading it on Sunday. I don't know German so I've never had the pleasure of reading it in the original, but the English is excellent. This time around I read the Esperanto translation, which seemed to come off well. I don't care how old you are or what language you read it in, when Atreyu's horse Artax dies, you man the fuck up and cry. I accidentally read that bit while I was walking down the street and nearly had a public breakdown. You're right about the relationship between the human world and Fantastica. I've never understood it very well, and it's great to hear someone else's insights. This time around Mr. Coreander's bit at the end of the book resonated more strongly with me. The Childlike Empress is the origin, a creative source rather than a character herself. Bastian met her in The Neverending Story, but Coreander has met her in other books he's read. Although anyone can meet her by going to their own Fantastica, fewer and fewer people do. Their engagement with fiction and imagination is through lying -- people get obsessed with reality and forget to feed their souls with art. Ende rings a similar bell in Momo, where everyone becomes obsessed with saving time rather than enjoying it, and they become grey husks of their former selves.
I've never actually read the book. Now I am going to.
The movie only starts to look like a job half-done when compared to the book. I really hope you get the chance to read it. I get a special thrill from books that are so alive. It's also hard to beat the illustrations that go with every chapter. I didn't discuss the artwork, but I used some favorites to illustrate the article and I hope that gives you a flavor of what it's like. They put a lot of care and ingenuity into that novel that you don't often see nowadays.
I didn't discuss the artwork, but I used some favorites to illustrate the article and I hope that gives you a flavor of what it's like. Hah, I didn't realize that you were the author. I guess the name makes it pretty obvious... Great piece.
That's me. I'm glad to hear you are digging it. If you have any feedback, be sure to send it along. Hubski is definitely still beta. I follow #bugski, so if you tag a post with that, I'll see it. It is definitely a labor of love. thenewgreen is a co-conspirator. But, I do the coding and such.