Ein längerer Artikel in der Times ist inzwischen mit mindestens zwei Werbeanzeigen von Imbissbuden und drei Fotos von Otto Chriek an diversen Stellen unterbrochen.
Aber darüber ist der durschnittliche Leser in Ankh-Morpork eher erfreut. Er mag bunte Bilder und viele Unterbrechungen, die ihm helfen, öfters Pausen beim Lesen von längeren Dingen einzulegen.
Dieser Text wurde am 05.02.2006 eingeschickt von max. Ohne die ausdrückliche Genehmigung des Autors ist es nicht gestattet diese Texte in irgendeiner Form weiter zu verwenden.
Michael Ende: "Momo" and Terry Pratchett: "Thief of Time" A Comparison
- A) Introduction -
There is one thing in the life of all human beings, that is absolutely true: Time is inevitable. But what exactly is it? This is one of the most essential, but at the same time one of the most difficult questions of human existence that has ever been asked, and surely it is far too complex for a human mind to figure out, but throughout the history of mankind there has always been the desire to truly understand the nature of time. Attempts have been made from various fields of human activity, including art as well as theoretical physics. So how to define time? Here's a try: Time is the comparative observance of 'before' and 'after' . Yet we still don't know what is 'before' and what is 'after'. It seems we don't have a satisfying solution for this problem. But why? This is a question Immanuel Kant can answer. According to him, time and space are no substance, but a "systematic framework" by which we structure our sensoric experiences. So we can never truly understand the nature of time, because we cannot escape the frame of our cognition. A perception of time is not possible, we can only perceive the effects it causes.
- B) Comparison -
- 1. Time in General -
- 1.1 Treatment of Past, Present and Future -
- a) "Momo" -
When Momo is a guest in Master Hora's mansion, he wants her to unravel a mystery that, according to him, only few can work out. This poem is meant to explain the nature of time.
The puzzle is about three different-looking brothers living together in the same house, who cannot easily be distinguished from one another. The first one is still to come, the second one has already left, only the third one, who is the smallest of all three, is at home. Without him, the other two wouldn't exist, but he is only there because he has already turned into the second brother. You can't look at the third one, because all you see is his two brothers. They are three mighty sovereigns and reign a great empire.
The solution is: The three brothers rule the empire of time; the first brother is the future, which has not yet happenend, but is still to come; the second one is the past, it is not happening anymore, because it already left; and the third brother, the present, which links the past with the future, but cannot be looked at, because the present itself has no length, it is only a connection. The house the three brothers live in is the world. In this image, none of the three levels of time really exist.
- b) "Thief of Time" -
In "thief of time" only the present is real. Past and future are merely products of human imagination. "In the cup of the hand there is no past, no future. There is only now. There is no time but the present." . This issue is explained in the first scroll of "Wen The Eternally Surprised" (p.1/l.1): "Why was he eternally surprised?"
"Because Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, re-created anew.Therefore, he understood, there is, in truth, no Past, only a memory of the Past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it."
The "History Monks" are a secret sect whose job is to ensure that "tomorrow happens"8 and to provide that time goes to where ist needed. In the second scroll of Wen, who is the founder of the History Monks, explains their duties: "I can teach a gifted few to control their time, to slow it and speed it up, and store it and direct it like the water in these streams. But most people will not, I fear, let themselves become able to do this. We will have to build ? devices that will store and release time to where it is needed. [] This will be our major task."
For the History Monks, Susan, the Auditors, and the antropomorphic personifications like Death, time is not essential. They can decide whether they want to move with or without it: "I will teach you to deal with time as you would deal with a coat, to be worn when necessary and discarded when not."
There is a difference between history and the past, the "CONTENT AND THE CONTAINER" . Because history is only a memory of the human mind, it can easily be manipulated by the History Monks.
- 1.2. The Personification of Time -
- a) "Momo" -
Meister Hora:
Master Hora is first presented as a friendly old man with white hair, but during the book, he often changes his age and when he takes to the hour-flowers, she notices that he seems to be incredibly old, like an ancient tree or a mountain. This proves that he is not affected by time. He calls himelf the administrator of time , and his duty is to give every human the time that is dedicated to him, so if he falls asleep, time will stop until he wakes up again . He owns a device called Allsicht-glasses, which gives the user omnisciency.
Meister Hora's mansion, which he never leaves, is located in a district on the "edge of time" . In this part of town, where everything is white there is a memorial consisting of a white Egg on a black stone box, there is not a single passerby or any other living soul. This memorial appears to be a reference to the personification of time in the orphic creation myth, Chronos, whose symbol was a big egg. With its towers, its palaces of glass, that look like they had stood on the sea bottom, the whole district creates a mystic, ancient atmosphere. To reach Meister Hora's "NIRGEND-HAUS" , Momo has to go backwards through a small alley, the "NIEMALS-GASSE" , which shows that Master Hora lives outside time, because it is 'never'. His mansion contains the biggest hall Momo has ever seen and it is full of clocks of different kinds.
- b) "Thief of Time" -
In Terry Pratchetts novel there are two different personifications of time: the first one, "the personification of time" , who remains relatively uncharacterized up to the end of the plot. As the action progresses, the reader finds out that she gave birth to the twins Lobsang Ludd and Jeremy Clockson who were born just "an instant apart" . They are later to unite and to end up as Time's successor .
Before the original personification of time shows up as a tall woman who is quite young, has dark hair and wears a long red-and-black dress, she seems to be omnipresent . She is married to Wen The Eternally Surprised.
Time's successor is a combination of Lobsang Ludd and Jeremy Clockson. Jeremy Clockson is the best clockmaker of Ankh-Morpork, who is chosen by Lady LeJean to build the Glass Clock which is meant to put an end to time. He is a young man, who is obviously lacking social contact, but is a workaholic and very fond of accuracy and has a strong desire for more order in his life . Lobsang Ludd is a history monk apprentice and an uncontrollable wunderkind up to the point when Lu-Tze starts taking care of him . Before they unite, Jeremy destroys the universe and Lobsang saves it at the same time. This is an image for the recreation process that happens "every instant" .
The home of Time is the Glass House. When Lobsang experiences a disturbance in time caused by a trial run of the Glass Clock, you can find a description of the glass house: "The great glass house and here, where it shouldn't be, the glass clock." "Everything here was transparent- delicate chairs, tables, vases of flowers." "glass was not a word to use here. Crystal might be better, or ice- the thin, flawless ice you sometimes got after a sharp frost. Everything was visible only by its edges. He could make out staircases through distant walls. Above and below and to every side, the glass rooms went on forever."
- 1.3. The Symbols for Time -
- a) "Momo" -
When Momo is a guest at Master Hora's mansion, he shows her where time comes from . When Momo opens her eyes after Hora leads her to that place, she finds herself under a gigantic golden dome with a big circular hole in the center. Out of this opening comes a light beam falling vertically on a pond containing motionless black water, over which a giant pendulum is slowly hovering. Every time the pendular moves towards the edge of the pool, a great flower bud emerges out of the water. The nearer the pendulum comes to the flower, the more the flower thrives, until it finally comes to full bloom. When the pendular swings back again, the flower shrivels and sinks. Momo regards each new emerging flower as the most beautiful thing she has ever seen in her life. Momo notices also a sound that consists of countless tones that are peristently changing, recombining and composing new harmonies. The longer she listens to this music, the more she realizes how outstanding time is . There is a shrine like this for every human.
This symbol for time puts emphasis on the idea that every new moment, which is symbolized by the blossom, is the most wonderful moment that ever was. The mythic atmosphere created by the surrounding and the great music Momo hears emphasize that time will forever be a mistery to humans and that it can never be solved. One could interpret the light beam as a symbol for god's involvement in the creation of time. The fact that everyone has a hour-flower expresses that everyone got his own time.
- b) "Thief of Time" -
"it was as if someonehad taken tons of colored sands and thrown them across the floor in a great swirl of colored chaos. But there was order fighting for survival in the chaos, rising and falling and spreading. Millions of randomly tumbling sand grains would nevertheless make a piece of pattern, which would replicate and spread across the circle, rebounding or merging with other patterns and eventually dissolving into the general disorder. It happened again and again, turning the mandala into a silent raging war of color."
The Mandala illustrates the basic idea of the novel. Time is chaotic, but there are always initiations of order. They can only exist for a short period of time. No regularity can exist forever. Therefore time is a continueing struggle between chaos and order, in which none of the two sides can win.
- 1.4. The Meaning of Time -
- a) "Momo" -
"Time is Life. And life resides in the heart." Master Hora says:"You have a heart to perceive time, and time that is not noticed with the heart is lost." If you die, time stops for you. Someone who can't enjoy his time is as good as dead. Everyone has its own time which can not be transferred from one person to another, if it is tried anyway, the time dies. There is also a connection between money and time, for example when Gigi Tourist Guide becomes famous he has no time for his long missed friend Momo. The more one is trying to earn money and to live the real life, the less time he has left to enjoy.
- b) "Thief of Time" -
Men "cannot progress if they are carried like leaves on a stream. People need to be able to waste time, make time, lose time, and buy time" .
Without flexibility of time, mankind can not develop any civilization. The special, subjective perception of time is what divides the human from the animals.
- 2. "Gray Men" and "Auditors" ? A comparison -
- 2.1. A Description -
- a) "Momo" -
They Gray Men are entirely gray. Their faces, their round stiff hats, their briefcases and their cigars are gray and they also have elegant gray cars at their disposal. They also spread an unusual coldness in people near them . They lead a parasite's life because they live solely on stolen time, which is represented by the hour-flowers they dry and roll into their cigars . They are organized in a hierarchic order, the Zeit-Sparkasse, with courts of their own and a headquarter where they store their stolen time. Their only aim is to have a secured supply of stolen time.
- b) "Thief of Time" -
The Auditors are an infinite number of non-"life-forms" without any personality, being of a "small gray shape, rather like an empty hooded robe" . Their function is to observe the "operation of the universe" , therefore their view of the world is a totally materialistic one. The Auditors believe that "for a thing to exist, it [has] to have a position in time and space" . But since basic human ideas like "imagination, pity, hope, history, and belief" appear to have no position in time and space, the Auditors want to "tidy things up" . In their fight for a completely predictable universe they prefer "subtle, cowardly skirmishes" .
Up to the point when the Auditors put one of them into a human body, they are a collective of immaterial entities, in which "one speaks for all" and all members are completely identical.
- 2.2. Their Tracking of Aims -
- a) "Momo" -
At first the Gray Men gather as much information on anyone to be considered for their aims, while they avoid any attracting of attention, because who knows about them cannot be tricked by them anymore.
They convince people, like shown in the example of Fusi the barber, that the time they spend on activities without any material benefit is lost. In order to live the real life, they have to create a bank account and start saving time. After the Gray Men leave, the convinced people accept the decision to save time as their own, and they forget about the visitors. By applying this procedure, the Gray Men slowly gain control of the city .
- b) "Thief of Time" -
The Auditors want to stop time by building a truly accurate clock which doesn't move with time, but tries to count it. The Auditors want to create a universe, in which nothing unexpected happens. See "3.1.1. The Triggers"
3.3. Their Symbolism
- a) "Momo" -
In Momo the gray men represent the capitalists of our world, as they can only exist by stealing other people's time. One of countless hints is that they call their organization "Zeit-Spar-Kasse" . As they control more and more people, Momo's world changes its appearance from an idyll of friendship and common sense to a desert of order , heavily reminding the reader of a capitalist society including fast-food restaurants, endless rows of similar houses and more and more traffic. Their appearance also reminds us of business leaders of the 20th century, especially their briefcases, cigars and hats.
The fact that they are all dressed in gray stresses that the individual Gray Man is an anonymous being without any character traits, and stands for tristesse.
- b) "Thief of Time" -
In the main conflict of Terry Pratchett's novel, which is the struggle between chaos and order the Auditors represent the "cold, dead rules" . On Discworld, there is a set of rules which is "fundamental to the operation of the universe" called "The Rules" , to which even the Auditors are subordinate. The Auditors are the observers of these rules. They want to see everything "preserved, ordered, understood, lawful [and] filed" .
- 3. The Stopping of Time -
- 3.1. The Triggers -
- a) "Momo" -
Master Hora stops the time in order to let the Gray Men, who siege his mansion in order to force him to give them the whole human time , go extinct. He knows that they don't live on natural time, so if time stops for mankind, there is no one left they can steal time from. Because of their stored hour-flowers, they can go on existing, but if their time-reserve is exhausted, they will vanish into thin air .
- b) "Thief of Time" -
Jeremy Clockson builds a clock that is truly accurate, which traps Time itself in it. By trying to measure the "cosmic quantum" , which is the smallest possible amount of time, that is to say the period in which the universe is destroyed and recreated anew, the Glass Clock stops time. The abbot of the History Monks believe this is only possible because a part of the clock is located outside the universe .
Jeremy's client, Lady LeJean, is an Auditor put into a human body. Their goal to stop time in order to tidy up is what causes the stopping of time.
- 3.2. The Victory over the Enemies ?
- a) "Momo" ?
-
Before Master Hora falls asleep, he gives Momo an hour-flower, which provides her with time, even when the natural time stops. When the Auditors notice that time stopped, they run scared, and trie to get back to their headquarters, since they do not have a lot of the cigars with them, which are indispensable to their lifes. Momo follows them to their headquarters that is located under a construction site in the city's center. In their panic the Gray Men reduce their number, so that only six of them are left. When time stopped, the door of their supplies has been left open, and Momo closes it by touching it with her flower. Now that the Gray Men's supply is cut, they vanish and Momo can open the door again and set the imprisoned hour-flowers free .
- b) "Thief of Time" -
The Auditors have no understanding of the subjective human way of experiencing the world, what is shown by the unease the Auditors experience when they put themselves into human bodies. The problem this causes is that they now have a point of view and can not act in consensus anymore, because their telepathic communication does not work any longer. Therefore they all pick up human traits, which leads to the effect that even the immaterial Auditors pick up a "personality" . Only now, that they are separate from each other, a victory is possible. The restarting of time is achieved on two levels, one in the real world in Ankh Morpork, the other one in a space that can "not be found on any map" , but both are struggles between order and chaos:
Time's successor, the combination of Lobsang and Jeremy, gives help and advice to Susan, Myria a.k.a. Unity, and Lu-Tze, the history monk, who destroy the Glass Clock. The strange team is fighting against the human-shaped Auditors by applying "total madness" , which confuses the Auditors whose "impulse is always to consult" and bewildering them by confronting with absurd rules that they can't obey. When Susan gets near the Glass Clock, Lobsang starts time again.
On the metaphysical level, the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death, War, Famine, Pestilence fight against the immaterial Auditors. When they are about to give up because the Auditors make them feel that what they do is "stupid" and that their fight is hopeless. Only when the fifth horseman, Chaos, the personification of disorder, enters the fight, they achieve a victory.
- C) The timeless World-
- a) "Momo" -
When time Stopps, there is a kind of shock that makes time tremble accompanied by a noise that noone ever heard. There is complete silence and everything except the Gray Men is frozen in its current state . The narrator describes the motionless instant of a whole city in its daily life. The situation is compared with a lifeless photography, a point that stresses the importance of time for life. Momo also discovers Beppo Straßenkehrer and Momo has to cry because she cannot make him notice her. The prospect that he has to stay in this condition forever, scares her. When she enters the construction site over the headquarters of the Gray Men, she recognises another acquaintance, Nicola, the bricklayer, who points into the direction of the entrance. When Momo frees the stolen time, it flies back to their owners in a flower storm, which takes Momo with him and carries her over the city, like she herself was a flower.
- b) "Thief of Time" -
On Discworld there are various levels of a timeless world. The history monks use a technique called "slicing" , which allows them to slow time down for themselves, in order to do the same movement in a shorter period of time. If time is slowed or stopped, the world changes its colours. There are also descriptions of motionless and therefore lifeless situations of everyday life. "People and animals were bluish statues" and mustn't be touched.
- C) Conclusion -
The point of view uttered in the scrolls of Wen The Eternally Surprised is in time philosophy generally called the presentist view . Opposed to this attitude there are the maintainers of the growing past theory . Both viewpoints have the same value, since neither of them can be proved, but in my opinion the presentist one is the one that is more plausible.
When it comes to how the two novels deal with time, we can say that Michael Ende wants to describe the miracle and basic necessity of time, whereas Terry Pratchett puts more emphasis on a philosophical understanding of time. Both are wonderful books on a fascinating issue, and both contain interesting ideas, which makes it a pleasure to read them.
- Bibliography -
Source 1: M. Ende: "Momo", Buchholz 1993, 12. run
Source 2: T. Pratchett: "Thief of Time", New York 2002, 10. run
Source 3: Author unknown, "Info Mensch Maschine Kommunikation", Gießen 2003
Chapter: "Zeit-Historie"
{homepages.fh-giessen.de/~hg54/mmk_2003/mmk_2003_praktikum/mmk_skript_2003.pdf}
Source 4: Author unknown, "philosophy of space and time", w.y. Chapter: "Idealism and anti-realism"
Source 5: Bradley Dowden, "Time", w.y. , Sacramento
Chapter: "9. Is only the present real?"
{http://www.iep.utm.edu/t/time.htm}
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