MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

The next day, while the others slept, Wieland left the camp on tiptoe and began to walk the wooded perimeter of the castle. Tieck followed him at a safe distance. At a too safe distance since, as they both circled the castle, Wieland eventually caught up with Tieck. Then, Wieland showed him what he had discovered: scattered around the castle there were ingenious mechanisms camouflaged on the ground. If you stepped on one of them, you pulled without noticing a thread that rang a bell inside the castle. It was the strange noise they had heard the night before. And that is why Danaus had rushed out: in order to meet the woman who prowled around the castle and who Wieland suspected was the fairy he had stumbled upon a few days before. Tieck did not understand anything and asked him to put it in writing so that he could analyze it calmly. Already back in the camp, Wieland informed his companions of his discovery. And Mrs. Schopenhauer summoned the Romantics to her outdoor salon in the cast...

The next day passes without news worthy of mention. Mrs. Schopenhauer proposes some discussion topics (the maximum age that an ant can reach, the most appropriate size of underpants for a poet, the role played by art in artistic creation …) so that the Romantics are entertained until late afternoon and refrain from playing truant. Even so, Wieland disappears for hours and always comes back with his face covered in pollen and muddy shoes. This man's love for Nature is beginning to be a bit burdensome for the group, and Johanna orders Tieck to watch him and keep him away from the wildflowers. At sunset, everyone prepares to search the preserved wing of the castle again. As on the previous occasion, each one is provided with a candlestick, with the exception of Mrs. Walsolz who, according to her, prefers spiritual enlightenment and that's why she wave an Easter palm about. Led by Friedrich Schlegel, the group enters the darkness that reigns in the gloomy corridors and rooms of th...

At twilight, the Romantics are in the ruins of the old castle, in their open-air camp, around a campfire. Some are standing, others sitting or lying on the grass, and Schlegel wanders around them like a planet. You might say they are in an outdoor version of Mrs. Schopenhauer's salon. Wieland has just told them about his fleeting encounter with his liberator, whom he identifies with a fairy. "A fairy?!", Caroline Walsolz exclaims incredulously. "That’s silly! Fairies don't exist! "Of course they do exist!", Adele Schopenhauer jumps, "Don't they, mom?" Johanna agrees with her daughter and explains that fairies, like goblins, sylphs, undines and other similar creatures, are the spirits of Nature, but not everyone has the ability to see them. "Nonsense!", Mrs. Walsolz exclaims, "I have very good eyesight and I have never seen any of those creatures you mention. I bet they are a Brothers Grimm’s invention." “And what a...

Mother Nature begins to awaken from the harsh winter while the Romantics advance along a narrow path between high snow-capped mountains. Everywhere you hear the word "sublime" on their lips. Because Romantics feel a sincere love for Nature. With the excuse of having to relieve himself, Wieland gets out of the path and embraces a red spruce passionately. From the path, the others hear him murmuring and panting. And, thinking that Wieland has met someone, they join him at the precise moment when he is proposing to the tree and then stamps his lips against the trunk. When feeling reciprocated, he presses his lips with even more pleasure. He stays that way for a while, like in a rapture. However, upon hearing the sudden laughter of his companions, he tries to detach himself from the trunk. But it's too late: the red spruce has fallen in love with Wieland and nothing will be able to separate them. But this is merely a romantic interpretation. The rough reality is that the poe...

"A ghost?!", cries Caroline Walsolz, prey to a mixture of astonishment and terror (5% astonishment, 95% terror, to be precise). Wieland has just informed his friends of what happened last night to Schlegel and himself.   And, just as if they were in Mrs. Schopenhauer's salon, a lively debate begins chaired by the very Mrs. Schopenhauer, who let fly: “Maybe it was Goethe's ghost.” “Nonsense! Goethe would never debase himself to be a ghost!” “However (Adele Schopenhauer declares), at the costume party to celebrate the birthday of Schelling, he disguised himself as a ghost.” “That one was Goethe?! (Schlegel jumps wringing his hands) I thought he was a real ghost! He gave me a fright and I gave him a beating! (And putting his hands together looking at the ceiling, he exclaims:) Forgive me, Master! “That’s ridiculous!”, Tieck sentences. "What nonsense are you all saying!", Bettina Brentano bursts out, "Ghosts don’t exist! They are just an inv...

They say that time is a great healer. And it must be true judging by how fast the group of romantic hikers has forgotten the incident occurred just a few hours before. After spending the day sleeping in the camp, they have taken refuge from a night storm in one of the castle’s towers that still stands. Through the arrow slits, they contemplate enraptured that wonderful spectacle of Nature that is an electrical storm accompanied by strong rainfall, wind and fog. Electricity is precisely one of the natural forces with which the Romantics are beginning to flirt. (At the University of Oxford, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley devotes his free time to electrocuting bats with the hope of turning one of them into a superhero   who he plans to name Batman.) They ignore that, over time, this very force that now lights the night sky, will serve their descendants to illuminate places as dark and gloomy as the semi-ruined castle through which they now wander lighting up their way with candlestick...

“Ecstasy” is a word that would be an understatement to define the emotion that took hold of the group of romantic travelers when they saw the half-ruined castle, with its turrets swirled around by the scrub and overflown by the squawking crows. And “bewilderment” would be another understatement to express the state of transient sensory loss that overwhelmed Johann Wolfgang von Goethe when a centuries-old stone was detached from the high wall and hit on his head. Squinting and staggering like a drunkard and with his tongue hanging out, he was quickly driven by his companions to the nearby river in order to clear his mind in the cold water. "Babbling" would also be putting it mildly to define the sound of the water that flowed fast downstream and in whose current accidentally Goethe fell into before the horrified look of his companions, some of whom ran along the bank following the course of the river that dragged with it the literary glory of Germany as if it were an autumnal ...

The next session in the salon of Mrs. Schopenhauer, it was most turbulent. Everyone was shocked because of the latest events and nerves were like cat meat. It must be said that, after being freed from his captivity, Lord Byron had returned to England by swimming across the English Channel. Although he did not feel the slightest attraction to the alien princess, it hurt his pride that she would have preferred to throw herself into the arms of an eccentric inventor rather than keep trying to convince him to elope with her to another planet. While his body swam fighting against the marine currents, his mind was all the time occupied in the composition of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”, the work that would launch him to fame and that, if read between the lines, is obviously based on his traumatic experience in Weimar with the princess alien (to whom the poem is dedicated under the false name of “Ianthe”, violet flower in Ancient Greek). Also Arthur Schopenhauer left as soon as he recovered f...