The World of Wonders by Robertson Davies
November 26th 2006 06:30
World of Wonders by Robinson Davies
The World of Wonders is the last novel of the Deptford trilogy. In it, the BBC is making a movie on Houdini and has Magnus Eisengrim, who is a renowned magician himself, recreate Houdini's contraptions. Ramsay hangs out on the sets and by the by, is asked by the production team to keep the production historically accurate. One day they all sit down and ask Magnus about his past.
In several spaced conversations Magnus recounts his life. He was born a premature baby, when his mother is hit on her head with a snowball with a rock hidden in it. Life was hard in the small Canadian town with a mad mother. One day, he is kidnapped by a circus show freak and sexually abused by his kidnapper for the next few years. Magnus has no compunction in telling them that he had done everything to hasten the death of his kidnapper.
The scene next moves to London and Magnus describes he learnt the basics of show business and later, moves to Switzerland where Magnus learns intricacies of watch making. Both these arts help to make him a magician. In Switzerland, he meets also meets Liesl, his life long mistress and manager.
Dunstable keeps close to the conversation because he wants to know Magnus's own version of what happend on the night of Staunton's death. Magnus has more than one agenda and the novel provides for a very entertaining clash of egos.
This novel comes a close second to The Manticore and it has the most explicit statement of Davies' work. Quoting Spengler, Davies tells about a Magian world view, a weltanshauung where, " a sense of unfathomable wonder of the invisible existed side by side with a hard recognition of the roughness and cruelty of day-to-day demands of the tangible world."
Davies' lifelong attempt is to find a way to retain the old magic, fairytales, myths and miracles, that was banished by the advancement of science. His interesting protagonists of the three novels of this trilogy, Dunstable, David and Magnus, all battle with that Magian world view and each comes to accept it in his own way.
For Davies though, the Magian world view provides an alternative to his rejection of modernity. In the Deptford trilogy, this rejection does not descend into a monomania resembling hatred, as it does in the Cornish trilogy.
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