Returning to the specific interest in alchemy which was made known as early as 1953 with the publication of a review article entitled ‘L'Alchimic et son langage,’ Portrait de l'artiste en jeune singe¹ written fourteen years later, evokes Michael Butor's experiences as a young man during a stay at the castle of Harburg, whose rich collection of alchemical texts were made accessible to him and furnished his young mind with endless material for thought and dreams. But if in Portrait Butor quotes from alchemical texts and makes what is perhaps his most ambitious use to date of symbolism relating to alchemy, his purpose for doing so is the subject of some disagreement. The question is: has Butor written a truly initiatory work, or is Portrait a pastiche of alchemy? Jennifer Waelti-Walters argues that Butor undergoes initiation according to schemas outlined by Mircea Eliade and then, in turn, offers in Portrait an initiatory text for his reader.² André Helbo, on the other hand, sees in Portrait an ‘assemblage de parodies,’ the subject of which is the organization of language.³ However, both these opinions reflect some of the purpose of Portrait where Butor has interconnected themes of imitation and initiation so intricately that they cannot be separated.

While the very title of Butor's work combines the image of the initiate (artist/alchemist) and the imitator (ape/alchemist), their interconnexion is embedded there in yet another way in the playful parody (imitation) of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (and, by implication at least, of Dylan Thomas, whose Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog is in turn also a parody of Joyce's). Because Butor's Portrait, like Joyce's novel, is concerned with outlining the stages of a journey which leads to writing, it shares with its predecessor the symbol of the writer as Thoth which becomes so central to Butor's meanings: ‘Thoth, the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet and bearing on his narrow ibis's head the cusped moon.’⁴ Thoth, the god of the word and alchemy, is a wonderfully appropriate symbol for Butor, with his claims for the transforming power of language. Furthermore, in the words of E. A. Wallis Budge, Thoth is also ‘called “the scribe of the gods,” the “lord of writing,” “the lord of divine words,” and as he was the lord of books and master of the power of speech, he was considered to be the possessor of all knowledge, both human and divine’⁵—all attributes upon which Butor draws in Portrait.

Portrait's twenty chapters are divided into three parts: prelude, voyage, and ‘envoi,’ the prelude consisting of five chapters, the voyage of fifteen, while the envoi is the blank space for the work that Butor will write in the future. The five opening chapters, which provide the background to Butor's journey to Germany, are an introduction in which clues to the reading (deciphering) of subsequent chapters can be found. In this division into prelude and voyage can be seen an imitation of alchemical works by such authorities as Arnauld, whose Thesaurus thesaurorum et Rosarium philosophorum is divided into two parts, the first giving the origin and constitution of metals, the second directions for operations. The fifteen chapters of the voyage section of Portrait are themselves divided into two alternating typefaces, roman and italic, the first representing ‘real’ events of a daytime world (but a reality already transposed by literature), the second a nocturnal world—not of dreams dreamed, but of consciously fabricated ones, for, as Butor writes: ‘Je préfère délibérément les construire’ (p. 60). These continually interwoven (alternating) inner and outer worlds interact and react to provide a structural metaphor of the metals in the alchemical vessel. But further, totally interconnected and entwined as they are, they become the two snakes around the rod of Mercurius in Flamel's Figures hierogliphiques—one of the works which Butor read at Harburg. For he dabbled in all kinds of books, mostly alchemical, breathlessly moving from one to another, fascinated by what he read there; then in the nocturnal sections, he transposed them into fantasies. These two aspects of his life are not separated and cannot be, for they are ultimately parts of a whole.

If we use a symbol which Butor himself has applied to other works and interpret the diurnal chapters (odd-numbered) as masculine, and the nocturnal ones (even-numbered), as feminine, the interweaving of the two becomes an imitation of the balance of masculine and feminine principles central to alchemical thought. But in the number symbolism of Portrait can be found further imitations of alchemy, including, as Jennifer Waelti-Walters has indicated (p. 26), the possible ‘influence’ of the Arabian alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan, an influence all the more probable in the light of E. J. Holmyard's affirmation that ‘Jabir was … in favour with the Barmecides, the Caliph's all powerful ministers, some of whom figure in the Thousand Nights and a Night.’⁶ Since this Arabian text will be shown to serve as the central pivot of the dreams of Portrait Jabir, at least by implication, is woven into them. Further, Synesius, whose work Butor mentions, refers to Jabir (spelt by him as Geber) as an authority on more than one occasion.⁷ Just as Jabir, like so many alchemists before and after him, sought to apply mathematics to a study of the cosmos, Butor in turn, organizes his text according to number.

The framework for the seven dreams in Portrait is taken from ‘The Tale of the Second Kalender’ in the One Thousand and One Nights. Indeed, when examining how Butor has used this source, we find at the core of the dreams an extensive ‘quotation’ from the Tale. Clearly, one lesson which Butor has learned from the Nights, and which he applies to Portrait, is the technique of interlocking stories, transposed here into interconnected inner and outer worlds. The title itself is relevant because it leads into nocturnal worlds. In borrowing from the Tale, Butor does not deviate from the sequence of events, and culls many passages wholesale. In the Tale, a young man, famed as a calligrapher, sets out on a voyage to a king, but, attacked on the way, he arrives at a city where he becomes a woodcutter. Digging around a tree one day, he lifts a slab which leads to a sumptuous dwelling-place below ground, the residence of a beautiful young woman kept there by her husband—a jinnee. Against the woman's advice, the young man summons the jinnee but manages to escape, only to be sought out by the husband, who transports him back, then kills the woman, before changing him into an ape. The ape sets out on a journey by sea, then, because of his calligraphic powers, is adopted by a king, whose daughter claims that she can change the monkey back into a man. As she begins her spell, however, the jinnee appears. In an attempt to destroy each other, they each adopt a series of transformations, until, consumed by fire, they are finally reduced to ashes. But the spell is now broken, and the monkey, having lost sight in one eye as a result of being hit by a piece of burning cinder, is changed back into a man. Banishment now awaits him.

Within this basic framework used by Butor, general aspects of the Tale which would interest him are indeed plentiful: themes of transformation, writing, the ape, reversals of fortune, emphasis on marvellous and supernatural worlds, and, more specifically, death by fire and reduction to ashes, all of which can be easily rendered alchemical by being woven into an alchemical framework. That such a framework can be accommodated in alchemy can be seen in Jean-Valentin André's alchemical text Les Noces chimiques de Christian Rosencreuz (to which Butor refers in Travaux d'approche), where the hero of the tale encounters marvellous trees, a maiden, and secret inscriptions upon golden tablets, sees animals fighting, and wears a garment embroidered with the shapes of the sun and moon, and where the King of the Moors leads away a princess and a ‘mystical’ wedding follows at which the royal family is beheaded then resurrected. Portrait's very title announces a fusion of the tale and alchemy, for the monkey is both the one from the Kalender's tale and the symbol of the alchemist.

Upon close examination, the Tale as told in the dreams of Portrait is seen to be filled with alchemical references, and has indeed been reshaped by this transposition of alchemical images upon it. To understand the dreams, we need to know that they conceal a highly conscious imitation of alchemy. Why, however, did Butor superimpose alchemy on this framework rather than superimposing the Tale upon alchemical references? Why did he not juxtapose fragments of quotations, as he does in, for instance, Intervalle? The answers provide the keys to understanding how in the dreams Butor imitates alchemical history and its symbolism in a variety of ways. By introducing alchemical references into an Arabian backcloth, he can first provide an imaginative representation of the fact that Western alchemy was influenced by, and grew out of, Arabian thought. The Tale is now transplanted and preserved in the later work—Butor's Portrait—as Butor imitates the tradition whereby works were kept alive by copyists/scribes. If he makes several changes in the Tale (by imposing alchemy upon it) this, too, can be seen as an imitation of the way in which European alchemists built upon preceding works, especially upon Arabian texts and Arabian theories of matter. Just as the alchemists took existing texts, changing them where necessary but retaining the overall outline, so too in Portrait Butor makes alterations. Indeed, in this case the transmutation of the literary text opens it up to new possibilities of meaning. But by ‘quoting’ so much of the Tale he also puts himself in the tradition of those alchemists who chose to emphasize that they made no claims to originality but were merely copying the acknowledged authorities. Further, in using the Tale, Butor, like so many alchemists, is showing his reverence for the knowledge and wisdom of the past, which, in his view, must be understood if we are to move towards the future.

Whereas in the Matière de rêves series Butor consciously imitates Freud, in Portrait he imitates the strange visions of alchemy. Influenced by his reading of alchemical texts at Harburg, Butor, not without a certain degree of playfulness, now rewrites the Tale of the Second Kalender alchemically, creating in the process a vast cryptogram. Apart from implying that the Tale can deliver meanings which are not immediately apparent, he is emphasizing how much alchemy tainted his dreams, and even his daily life, while he was at Harburg, for he says in the outer sections: ‘Alchimiques ces promenades, teintes par mes lectures dans l'énorme bibliothèque’ (p. 152). Indeed, everything became alchemical: ‘Toute terre m'apparaissait susceptible de cuissons’ (p. 152). But even more specifically, he tells us in the outer sections exactly what we need to know to interpret the dream. Quoting from one part of the Kalender's Tale, in which the daughter draws a circle and inscribes Arab letters in it, Butor juxtaposes: ‘J'appliquais à leur déchiffrement [des inscriptions] les principes d'Oedipus Aegyptiacus’ (p. 192), thus, deciphering the tale by means of alchemy. But further, as he has written elsewhere, alchemy is a language which enables him to dream, which sets his imagination playing.

Just as in Description de San Marco, where Butor superimposes an esoteric vision derived from Fulcanelli upon a foundation influenced by John Ruskin, so now in Portrait he weaves alchemy into a backcloth of the One Thousand and One Nights. If the frame of the dreams in Portrait is very close indeed to their source, clues to Butor's purpose can be found in those details which diverge from it. In order to render the tale alchemical, Butor imposes upon it several orders of detail taken from texts mentioned in Portrait: days of the week/planets (from Jacob Boehme and Basile Valentin), colours (from Flamel), musical allusions (from Michael Maier), minerals and metals (from various sources), clothing (from various sources), alchemical numbers (from Flamel and others). Flamel, Valentin, Boehme, and Maier (whose works Butor read in the daytime) are the most extensively used. In the tradition of alchemists who quote from ‘ancient philosophers,’ Butor ‘quotes’ from alchemists in his dreams. Often he alters a detail in order to provide an alchemical resonance. Thus ‘poems’ in the Tale becomes ‘l'écriture de Basile Valentin … l'écriture de Jacob Boehme’ (p. 176). Or he can expand a passage of the Tale by introducing alchemical suggestions. Some details are concerned merely with modernizing the material of the Tale and putting it into a new historical context, as when he replaces ‘a mountain band of Arab highwaymen’ by ‘les militaires’ (p. 64). However, alchemized details are not confined to quotations from texts, for they can also come from other aspects of the real world (descriptions of rooms and so on). But in the dreams these, too, become reworked quotations, since they are transformations of details of the outer chapters. Thus details such as the minerals he saw at the castle of Harburg and at the museum at Munich, or rooms of various castles, are now transmuted into a dream language. Further, the dream sections can combine fragments which are themselves multiplied by repetition so that a reference to Judith et Cléopâtre (p. 144) can be repeated later in a new context (p. 176). While this is characteristic of Butor's method of transforming by repetition and modification, it is here particularly appropriate to his purpose. For is not transformation (of images and language, in Butor's case), by repetition characteristic of (and for Butor also a metaphor of) the alchemical process itself, where procedures are repeated in order to effect multiplication? The dreams, like the Tale, are opened up to multiple alchemical meanings which Butor invites us to explore.

By making such changes and, in effect, interweaving quotations and fragments of quotations or allusions drawn from different sources into the canvas of the Kalender's Tale, Butor endows the dreams with an extraordinary density, which is, moreover, further heightened by the interplay of inner and outer chapters. But a further transposition takes place in the dreams. Just as the compilers of alchemical texts often put together earlier texts, so Butor, too, like a disciple, uses the works of his masters, thereby accepting their authority. By taking so much of the Tale he has, as it were, compiled his own commentary upon it, and placed himself in the tradition of alchemists who cast their writings in the form of commentaries upon the ancients. But like later alchemists who interpreted or elaborated upon earlier works, and translators and copyists who frequently took such liberties with the texts that they were substantially changed, Butor in his role of copyist/imitator takes liberties with the Tale, changing it at will, interpreting it, elaborating upon it, and then further altering it by transcribing it in italics. In his attempts to pass off as his own dream a work which he has borrowed, he in fact reverses the tendency of the alchemists to endow their works with the name of an ancient. This multi-levelled reworking also shows that every quotation is at the same time imitation and transformation.

Embedded in Portrait, and thus echoed in the dreams, are references to a large number of alchemists, including Artephius, Flamel, Synesius, Arnauld, Paracelsus, Valentin, Ripley, Maier, Boehme, Fulcanelli, and Alexandre von Bernus, from whose writings Butor chooses those elements of alchemy which he needs for his dream-tale. If alchemists (in part to escape censors) went to extraordinary lengths to conceal their art, such concealment is made more complicated in Portrait, where Butor masks his dreams within another text, then embeds alchemy into it. A quotation from Ripley inserted in the prelude illuminates Butor's method, which is an imitation of his reading: ‘Il a un peu voilé le principal de l'art par une artificieuse méthode’ (p. 29). Copying the alchemists, who took great pains to stress that their works could be understood by those who sought the truth, Butor in turn provides his readers with the code (authors, texts, references) which can unlock the secrets of Portrait, thereby, like the alchemist, playing a complex game of hide-and-seek with his readers. This is in keeping with the nature of alchemy itself, a secret doctrine hidden from the profane beneath a veil of symbols and allegories to which keys for interpretation are reputedly given.

Alchemy has exerted such a powerful influence upon Butor's writing that its vast network of symbols permeates many of his works. But why is he so interested in it? In Portrait, he shows that it played a vital role in his intellectual formation and thus, ultimately, in his decision to become a writer. Beyond that, it interests (indeed, fascinates) him as a philosophy which seeks to explain in imaginative terms the origin and destiny of the universe, and beyond that to offer a vision of salvation. Further, transmutation, the core belief of alchemy (where it is connected with the imitation of nature and the perfection of man) is in its many ramifications central to Butor's purpose, both in Portrait and in his work as a whole. But alchemy also attracts him as an ‘art maudit’ which, while showing reverence for the learning of the past, developed outside official realms of knowledge and presented a challenge to accepted ways of thinking.

In Portrait Butor constructs his dreams in imitation of alchemy which, he writes in the prelude, ‘me semblait chargé de clefs et formules’ (p. 40). If the alchemists wished to guard their art by multiplying its symbols, so Butor, in turn, adds to these, managing to keep the symbolism constant as the alchemists did. Thus although areas of knowledge, including astrology, lapidaries, bestiaries, medicine, mineralogy, and literature, merge in the dreams as they do in alchemy, this does not prevent them from possessing an internal coherence which depends upon a knowledge not only of the Tale but also of the key stages of the alchemical opus. Thus the seven dreams move through seven days, or planets, or metals, at the centre of which (in the seventh chapter) the transformation into a monkey takes place. Colours, along with certain other details, are organized into serial patterns and these, too, contribute to the overall meaning. As a monkey, the dreamer ‘apes’ or imitates alchemy, recreating its complex symbols in a personal way, consciously shaping the dreams whose format allows Butor to create mysteries and enigmatic hieroglyphs of the forbidden art. In the fancy of these constructed dreams, there is also a playful imitation of the extravagant claims made by alchemists concerning their experiences. There are, however, yet more areas of imitation. For if the mere seekers after gold (imposters) imitated alchemy in the hope of becoming rich, the true alchemists themselves were no less imitators of a different kind, in that they believed themselves to be imitating and reproducing in the alchemical vessel (and spiritually) the secrets of nature and creation. It is these two levels of imitation which Butor in turn imitates by weaving them so decisively into his dreams, for looking back on his stay in Germany, he now views himself as being at that time somewhat of an imposter.

Portrait's seven dreams—or one dream divided into seven parts—describes an initiatory journey through the seven alchemical planets, as Butor indicates in the outer chapters: ‘Je saute de sphère en sphère’ (p. 183), or the seven stages of transmutation, the alchemical journey being used here to imagine the dreamer's initiation not into the world of metallic transmutations—in any case Butor interprets alchemy as spiritual regeneration rather than a strictly chemical experience—but into the future transmutation of language into writing. In the first dream, the dreamer, although conversant with hermetic philosophy, is characterized by naivety and pride, and is but an unconscious imitator. The starting-point for his journey is, paradoxically, Sol, synonymous in the dream with Hungary, but also with rebirth, according to the quotation from Valentin which Butor inserts in the prelude. At the same time, however, the reference to blackness, ‘le visage, les mains et les pieds d'une couleur noirâtre’ (p. 64)—a detail added for its alchemical suggestiveness, since it is not in the Tale—also serves to prefigure the image of the monkey. This blackness denotes the matter of the opus, for according to Flamel: ‘La matiere se dissout, se corrōpt, noircit, & consoit pour engédrer; parce que toute corruption est generation, laquelle noirceur doit estre tousiours desiree,’⁸ and thus denotes the beginning of the work (and in Portrait of the dream) for, as Flamel affirms: ‘Si au commencement apres auoir mis les confections dans l'œuf Philosophic … tu ne voids ceste teste du Corbeau noire du noir tres-noir, il te faut recommencer’ (p. 71). Artephius similarly writes: ‘Qui ne noircist point, celui-là ne peut blanchir car la noirceur est le commencement de la blancheur.’⁹

At this point, the dreamer, an ‘apprenti’ dressed in the garments of an ‘aide-forestier,’ journeys into the Black Forest, or the alchemical chaos. Since in Fulcanelli, the ‘man with the staff’—transposed here into the woodsman—is the dead metal, or the early stages of the alchemical opus,¹⁰ the beginning of the opus is further emphasized in this first dream. The axe and rope carried by the woodsman in the Tale have become ‘une couverture de cuivre’ and ‘un style de fer’ in imitation of an alchemical treatise in which references to metals would be embedded in the text. Descriptions are made to sound alchemical: ‘Mon hôte m'apportait un costume flavescent, ceinture bleue et bottes noires, boutons orangés gravés de deux dragons azurés, avec une couverture de cuivre et un style de fer’ (p. 68). This passage is not unlike the next, taken from an alchemical text, and in which the main colours of the opus are concealed: ‘Or, comme j'étais allé faire un voyage, je me rencontrai entre deux montagnes, où j'admirai un homme des champs … vêtu d'un manteau gris, sur son chapeau un cordon noir, autour de lui, une écharpe blanche, ceint d'une courroie jaune et botté de bottes rouges.’¹¹ The old man, or ‘l'homme de grande vieillesse’ whom the dreamer meets (in the Tale, a tailor), is a composite image (layers of imitation) created by using quotations from two alchemical texts. In the next passage quoted, the first part as far as ‘aux pieds’ is from Valentin, the second from Flamel's first ‘figure’ (although in this ‘imitation,’ Butor updates spelling and makes minor alterations): ‘Je voyais s'avancer un homme de grande vieillesse aux yeux noirs, à la barbe et aux cheveux blancs comme neige, vêtu de pourpre de la tête aux pieds, tenant à la main une verge caducée, entortillée de deux serpents, emblème de la médecine’ (p. 66). Thus in the dream, alchemical texts interweave, winding themselves together like the outer and inner chapters of Portrait. Moreover, much of Butor's text, like alchemical procedure, is concerned with fusion, in his case with the coming together of textual components, a procedure which must be viewed here in the light of alchemy, the quotations being matter, the matter of language which he in turn transmutes and alters.

Colours used in the dreams find a coherence not merely in isolation but also in an overall organization which reveals layers of symmetrical series—such symmetrical forms being themselves metaphorical mirrors, thus layers of imitation (reflection). Butor, understanding and imitating the multiplicity of alchemical symbolism, organizes the colours in his own way. If in the references to iron and copper, traditionally male and female principles, the dreamer endows himself with objects which are hieroglyphics of his initiation into the alchemical secrets, their interweaving allows Butor to introduce a sexual dimension, for his initiation is, in part, one into sexual mysteries. In the prelude, he quotes: ‘le corps composé du masle & de la femelle’ (p. 33). In case the reader is in any doubt about the alchemical context, Butor, not without a touch of humour, adds some alchemical numbers (a quotation from Flamel): ‘trois fois sept feuillets’ (p. 68).

Butor constructs his dreams according to the days of the week (taken from Boehme and Valentin, and so, appropriately, connected with creation). Thus, since he begins with Sunday, references to silver and the moon in the second dream reveal that this occurs on Monday and under Luna's domain. Here, the dreamer arrives at an oak tree, where he finds a silver ring attached to a trap-door made of moonstone, inscribed with obscure hieroglyphics which are covered in snow. References to Luna abound (‘silver,’ ‘white,’ and for good measure, ‘moonstone’). In the Tale, however, we read simply of a ring of brass set in a wooden slab. Butor lets his imagination fly off into alchemical worlds with his references to an oak tree, stones, figures, snow, fragments from Flamel: ‘Je regardais briller, au creux d'un chêne, un anneau d'argent attaché à une trappe de pierre de lune toute gravée de lettres ou figures étranges (et quant à moi je croyais qu'elles pouvaient bien être des hiéroglyphes égyptiens ou d'autre semblable écriture ancienne)’ (p. 68). Indeed, these are some of the most significant changes made to the Tale so far. Woven in also is an oblique reference to Thoth with his moon disc. In Valentin, Butor would have read of the ‘arbre sec et creux’ and then in Flamel specifically of that ‘chesne creux’ so frequently found in the iconography of the adepts where it symbolizes, according to Fulcanelli, the ‘vaisseau alchimique’ in which the transmutation will take place. Here, as elsewhere in the dreams, clusters of images are created in imitation of those found in alchemy.

The door leads to a dark cavern, an underworld, or alchemical mineral kingdom, a descent which follows the prescribed recommendation of Valentin to investigate the interior of the earth. Once there, he finds a female student, or mercurius, in the guise of a woman, the female passive substance which in alchemy waits in the vessel to be united with sulphur (here, the vampire). In this dream and the one which follows can be found Butor's imaginative creation of the sulphur-mercury theory of the composition of metals—the conventional Arabian one which, according to several scholars, was first encountered in Arabic writings and Latinized versions ascribed to Jabir¹² (and, therefore, central to the dreams), and which Butor would also have encountered in Roger Bacon, Valentin, and Paracelsus.

If Mercury—the alchemists refer not to ‘common’ mercury and sulphur but to ‘philosophical’ mercury, or a quality of matter—is traditionally one of the most obscure and multiple of the entire repertoire of alchemical symbols, Butor here imitates her role as mediator (she attempts to pacify the vampire), feminine principle, transforming agent, and wife of sulphur. The dreamer has found his way into a ‘demeure philosophale’ (p. 113), a nuptial chamber, or ‘prison magnifique’ (p. 88), a closed palace into which he, like the young Butor of the prelude, enters: ‘une entrée secrète me permettant de m'introduire, presque frauduleusement, dans une caverne de trésors intellectuels … l'entrée ouverte au palais fermé du roi’ (p. 39), this closed palace of the King being an allusion to Philalethes, in whose work we read of a thief furtively entering an abode. But the woman's husband is now not a jinnee but a vampire, thereby creating links with the theme of Hungary (the land of vampires, according to Fulcanelli), but connecting with the Tale where the jinnee hurries away at the first sight of dawn. If the descent into the underworld is a stage in initiating the dreamer into the two types of mysteries, alchemical and sexual, the union in which he participates is no more than parody, since he is not yet ready for initiation. In his presumption he forgets what he knew in his outer life (‘moi … je n'étais rien, ne savais rien …’ (p. 41)), and forgets as well the greatest quality of the alchemist: patience. Thus, misguided, he adorns himself with a gown bordered with gold to symbolize the alchemical King, and visualizes three processes of the opus, the bath of the King (p. 90), his rebirth, and the alchemical marriage symbolized by union (‘et le soir elle me recevait dans son lit’ (p. 90)), which is a rewriting of Valentin ‘tres amoureusement l'vne auec l'autre coniointe’ (p. 33). But the dreamer's imagination is over-hasty for, since he has not yet attained the status of the alchemical King, the identification here is purely a result of imitation. In his pride and triumph he believes he can rescue the woman, or, in alchemical terms, effect too rapidly the process of transformation from mercurius the raw metal to mercurius the stone.

At the next stage of the alchemical journey at Mars, he meets the vampire who, characterized by a ‘puanteur épouvantable,’ is recognizable as alchemical sulphur, an active principle endowed with fiery and warlike properties. Here he is dressed in an officer's uniform, on top of which he wears a cloak embroidered with a figure holding a sword (‘avec un manteau sur lequel etait brodée la figure d'Alexandre tenant un glaive nu, un homme à genoux …’ (pp. 113–14)), in which can be discerned a reworking of one of Flamel's figures described earlier in Portrait (‘la figure d'un homme semblable à celle de Saint Paul tenant un glaive nu, ayant à ses pieds un homme à genoux’ (p. 30)). The sword which he holds is the ‘philosophical sword’ with which the world was created in certain alchemical texts but which in turn became the ‘common’ sword with which actual executions were carried out at Harburg—the very castle which now boasts such an impressive alchemical collection—as the alchemical symbol (‘sword which divides’) became nightmare reality (the common sword of murder). The vampire's role in the dream is twofold: to blacken and to purify. The ensuing struggle, which takes place between the vampire and his wife, is Butor's personal imaginative representation of the violent interaction of the metals. On the buttons of the clothing of the vampire (now in turn disguised as a woodsman) are depicted five animals—details incorporated not from a text but from the decoration of one of the rooms at Harburg. Around the animals are written reworked quotations from Flamel, while the buttons themselves are made of different minerals whose marvellous powers seem to be invoked in their very names, zircon, wolframite, vivianite, uvarovite, turquoise, and whose alphabetical arrangement shows that the stones are a language. As the vampire undergoes transformation into the volatile substance, he becomes a monstrous bird (p. 117), a creature of the air so that, like alchemical sulphur, he can be both air and fire. Mercury is now killed, and the following stages of the alchemical process have been completed: the initial blackness, the presence of sulphur and mercury in the vessel, their separation, and the death of mercury.

The central transformation takes place, appropriately, at Mercury, regarded by alchemists as the predominant transformative substance, and the central pivot of the seven-stage alchemical voyage, thus here, at the centre of the seven dreams. The female mercury, or wife of sulphur, has been killed so that the transformation can happen and the way has been prepared for the marriage of opposites. Transformed into a monkey, the dreamer is once again the black beast, but now he is the future alchemist. In alchemy, mercury's death or blackening causes the dreamer to turn black, so that Butor seems further to be imitating the Jungian view that the alchemist (here the dreamer) experiences himself the stages of the opus, thus becomes/is the object of his own projection.¹³ Since the dreamer is now at the planet Mercury, references to minerals are henceforth listed in alphabetical order, for the monkey imitates the secret of the alphabet possessed by Thoth. But when, at the close of the dreams, the monkey is turned back into a man, the alphabetical arrangements are destroyed. References to the ‘mers métalliques’ (p. 143) and ‘les tables d'émeraude’ (p. 143)—the latter being a reworking of La Table Émeraude the title of an ancient alchemical text attributed to Hermes—emphasize that we are under Mercury's dominance. Arriving at the sea, the monkey sees a boat with a sail on which are depicted the figures (taken from Maier) of David, Charlemagne, and Pallas (entirely in white), above them Judith and Cleopatra, and above them all Alexander (along with Cleopatra, the reputed possessor of the philosophical stone) judging the world.

A journey by sea follows, in alchemical terms the passage from the dryness of land to the moisture of the sea representing the moment of dissolution, Butor again imitating the usual alchemical progression, since mercury must be transformed into water. The monkey, now noted for his transcribing skills, follows the prescribed alchemical path to Jupiter. There, the chess game played in the Tale becomes a series of patience games (a further reminder that the alchemical work is characterized by patience) in which are found echoes of those games played in the outer chapters, except that now suits have been replaced by stones, for they have become alchemical. With the element of parody in view, the dreamer announces the game which gives him victory (‘Les Mille et Une Nuits me donnaient la victoire’ (p. 177)). Disguised as one of the victims of the executions carried out at Harburg, the rector's daughter reveals the monkey's true identity. When asked if what she says is correct, in the Tale he nodded and wept but in the dream ‘Je faisais des gestes de dénégation, mais il [le recteur] les interprétait à l'envers’ (p. 179). For the monkey, like the daughter, understands that the secret must be guarded (‘Ce sont choses qu'il est bon de savoir, mais il m'a semblé que je ne devais pas m'en vanter’ (p. 180)), but it is too late because, boasting of her magical powers, she has already announced that she can transport them to Venus, thus preparing for the next stage of the alchemical journey to that planet.

In the following dream she appears in the guise of one of Harburg's victims, then assumes a number of other disguises in which she takes on the same transformations as the vampire in order to fight him. Thus they undergo successive transformations into Harburg's victims, themselves disguised as (transformed into) the animals (dog, boar, vulture, hare) which were depicted on the vampire's coat buttons, themselves representations of those found in decorations in the castle, which in turn can also be found in alchemical texts (‘“un chien de plomb” … tel qu'il est dessiné dans l'Africa Illustrata’ (p. 196)). Animals, stones, and alchemical texts are all interwoven in a frenzy of dream images: ‘Walpurge Schweickardt de Schopfloch lançait à sa poursuite, à travers la lucarne, un “sanglier de plomb” à défenses de variscites, décrit dans un Mundus Subigneus sous couverture de fer à incrustations de cinabre et d'étain. Nous le perdions de vue dans les nuages’ (p. 196). Transformed into a worm, the hare goes inside Flamel's book (‘Le lièvre se changeait en ver auprès du Livre des Figures, en perçait en un instant la couverture de cuivre, et s'y cachait’ (p. 197)), a transformation in which, as in alchemy, stages can be hidden in word plays: lièvre-ver-Livre. After more transformations and a battle in water, the vampire emerges in a uniform and holding a scroll on which is written a reworking of a quotation from Flamel. Clouds of smoke emitting from the vampire cause singeing and burning and, to the monkey, blindness in one eye. The vampire now is reduced to ashes, or alchemically, ‘the substance which remains below,’ the ‘crown of the victory.’

In the final dream, the woman, too, is reduced to ashes. In case we have missed the point, Butor emphasizes it: the ashes are symbols (p. 222). In the Tale, a monument was erected; in Portrait, the ashes of the woman are gathered ‘dans un creuset d'or’ (p. 223) for they must become the stone (‘pour mûrir’ (p. 223)). Now they are placed in a mausoleum ornamented with the animals of the opus and a transmuted inscription of Flamel, for the final stage has been reached. The daughter, the original mercury (she and the wife of the vampire are both designated as ‘l'étudiante’), has been revived as a result of the ‘sea of revivification’ traversed by the monkey. The dissolution effected in an earlier dream has been followed by the dramatic depiction of the mutual antagonism of the metals after which the bodies, locked in combat, are finally united, if only momentarily, before they are reduced to the ash which, in alchemy, shows that the metals have been glorified after their successive transformations. Here, the final stage of the opus results in the monkey's transformation back into a man. Although the dreamer has, in his dreams, recreated the secrets of alchemical knowledge, he cannot yet communicate them because his lips are sealed. But rebirth awaits for, quoting Valentin, Butor writes in the prelude: ‘Je renais cependant par Vulcain’ (p. 34).

The dreams, then, have followed the stages of the alchemical opus, but transmuted into different symbols. Although the ash has been attained, we are, in fact, back at Saturn (or, the beginning) for, having witnessed the secrets of the opus, the dreamer must now begin his quest alone to Egypt, the reputed source of alchemy and the land to which the events of his stay in Germany have ultimately led him. Indeed, the Arabian tale is used by Butor as the centrepiece of this initiation because it was Arabian alchemy which preserved the traditions and literature of the earlier Alexandrian alchemy. In Egypt, Butor's initiation into writing will be completed, for there he will learn more secrets which he will transpose into his first novel, Passage de Milan. There he will learn how to apply the alchemical secrets of the past to the modern world. In Egypt he will further learn that his philosophical stone is language. For alchemy has guided Butor through a spiritual development, or rebirth, which has led to writing. Moreover, a further parallel, the ultimate thread joining the tale, alchemy, and Butor's work, now becomes apparent: the alchemist seeks the elixir which will prolong life; Scheherezade prolongs her life by telling stories; Butor writes in order to guard against death.

In Portrait the theme of regeneration can be interpreted only in the light of imitation. Butor imitates on one level because, as a youth, he was a mere copier, but when he wrote down and fabricated the dreams many years later, he understood—with the alchemical adept—that creation is in part imitation. It is these two aspects, the ape (imitator) and the alchemist (initiate) which are combined with such mastery in the central symbol of the monkey and in the created relationships between the Tale and alchemy which have provided him with his dream language.

Notes

1. Michael Butor, Portrait de l'artiste en jeune singe (Paris, 1967). All references are to this edition.

2. Alchimie et littérature (Paris, 1975).

3. Michael Butor. Vers une littérature du signe (Brussels, 1975).

4. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Harmondsworth, 1968), p. 225.

5. Egyptian Magic (London, 1901), p. 128.

6. Alchemy (Harmondsworth, 1957), p. 71.

7. Le Vray livre du docte Synesius, in Pierre Arnauld, Trois Traitez de la philosophie naturelle non encore imprimez (Paris, 1612), pp. 98, 99.

8. Les Figures hierogliphiques de Nicolas Flamel, in Arnauld, p. 70.

9. Le secret livre dv tres-ancien Philosophe Artephius, traitant de l'Art occulte & transmutation metallique in Arnauld, p. 32.

10. Fulcanelli (pseudonym), Les Demeures Philosophales (Paris, 1960), pp. 186–88.

11. From ‘Cassette du petit paysan,’ quoted by Albert Poisson in Théories et symboles des alchimistes (Paris, 1891), p. 46.

12. See, for example, John Read, The Alchemist in Life, Art and Literature (London, 1947), p. 5.

13. Carl G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, in Collected Works, 20 vols (London, 1957–83), XII (1962).