5 Final Thoughts

     I have discussed Rudie's and Hesse's cosmopolitan designs, which overlap in a sense of universalism, though not exhaustingly so. While Hesse constructs his model along ideas of natural law and evolution, ideas tainted with enlightenment's tendency to stereotype and eurocentrism, Rushdie paints a diverse picture of international phenomena permeated by synchronicity, from which a model of a world emerges that is connected by exiles and wanderers and their interpretations of it.

    Both novels and the TV-series Utena, all from different cultural backgrounds, share, as I have demonstrated, several motives. Significantly, two of the texts, the Enchantress and Utena, while (probably) oblivious to each other, arrive at profoundly similar motives beyond what is explicit within their source material. This similarity may be a consequence of an inherent cultural logic to these motives, resulting in their continuation also adhering to this logic, and thus forming similar results, or of a wider intertextual relationship, a wider shared canon than I have discussed here. On the other hand, as a reader, a traveler in the magical worlds of Demian, Enchantress and Utena, the idea of synchronicity in a Jungian sense is probably more appealing. The principle of synchronicity borders on the occult, on a mystical quality of the connection between human thought and the laws of nature, and is as such a product of its time. Within the act of interpretation, it occupies the space of doubt between the intertextual and the coincidental, the point at which a system uncannily continues to apply despite (apparently) having exhausted its basis in the causal. In scientific analysis, this space is often covered by employing the subconscious, or expanding the role of coincidence, as the idea of a superior frame of meaning is not consistent with science, but in literature, especially when employing metafiction and historical fiction, leaving that space open will make the reader fill it with the mystical, creating a feeling of magicalness that bleeds out into the real world. When such apparent synchronicities exceed their native texts, they reinforce this effect, and make the reader feel part of that magical order of meaning, creating an immense appeal: “[...] alles blickte ins große und Weite, und alles deutete auf Abraxas.” (Hesse, 114) This meaningful connectedness with the world is a fantasy, of course, but fantasy is a shared human nature, an ambiguous force with which we negotiate self and other, and which drives us to the places of our dreams, into a greater context of the real world.

Bibliography

The following are links to clips from Utena uploaded (unauthorisedly, no doubt) on Youtube, as well as images for illustration.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFaVPYzCXTcGSRpkQc14QwkOhciN_kg-n
(the complete series with partly english, partly spanish subtitles, and the movie with spanish subtitles.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyYs1Mc_XAg
(the opening)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR_EXs-XKRw
(a trailer for the movie)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McKR0IgCM34
(the cited passage about the egg and revolution)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubmJmqtyi-A
(example of a duel, in this case with Juri)


From top left: Tôga, Akio, Saionji. Second row: Miki, Utena, Juri. Bottom: Nanami, Anshi, Chuchu (series mascot).

http://ohtori.nu/gallery/Series/Artwork/Group_Shots/Group_07


Left: Mamiya, Right: Mikage.
http://gallery.minitokyo.net/view/91608


Anshi and Dios.
http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e320/wellworm/Series_ep34_172_zps962d094a.jpg

Essays
Personality + Relationship + Narrative + Miscellany + Music

Context
Introduction + Characters + Reference + Submission

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Analysis of Utena + Empty Movement