The West Window
‘I never knew before that there is something beyond waking or sleeping, dreaming or madness; another way, a mystery: a clear vision of things that are beyond this world.’
The Angel of the West Window is a 1927 novel by Austrian writer Gustav Meyrink. It follows a man who inherits a manuscript written by John Dee.
Dee was a sixteenth-century polymath with a particular interest in alchemy. In the court of Elizabeth I he gained a reputation as something of a magician. The story alternates between the two characters, past and present. Their lives become intertwined through Dee’s frantic attempts to summon the Angel of the West Window, a spirit of damnation and transcendence.
Towards the end of the book, the narrator has a vision:
‘My eye rests on a sundial and a fountain tirelessly splashing. The sunlight creates the shadow; and the shadow makes time. And the splash of water is an activity in the time of the shadow. Links all around, links in all things; even time and space are links within which images move. I draw near to my lover; two comets converging after thousands, millions of years in different orbits.’