Théophile Homolle (Director of Museums, Paris, 1912)
Roland Dorgelés (French novelist who protested against the glassed paintings in the Louvre)
Vincenzo Peruggia (Louvre artisan who stole the Mona Lisa. I have changed the date of the theft, which actually occurred in August, 1911, and have provided fictional accomplices. His motives were, as in the novel, to return the painting to Florence—where it was ultimately recovered when Peruggia tried to sell it to an art dealer there, after having kept it for more than a year beneath his bed in Paris.)
James McNeill Whistler (American portraitist who was contemptuous of Wilde)
Henry James (American novelist whose practice of listing possible names for his characters did include the name “Bleat”)
BURGHÖLZLI CLINIC, ZÜRICH AND KÜSNACHT
Carl Gustav Jung (Swiss psychiatrist/physician; originator of the theory of the collective unconscious. By 1912, Jung had actually shifted his clinic from the Burghölzli to his home in Küsnacht, down the Zürichsee from Zürich. Otherwise, most of the major facts of his life and the beliefs attributed to him in this novel can be documented—including his war nightmares in the years before 1914.)
Emma Rauschenbach Jung (his wife and researcher)
Agathe, Anna, Marianne, Emma (their daughters; Emma Sr.’s miscarriage is fictional.)
Karl Franz (their son)
Grandmama Rauschenbach (Emma Sr.’s mother)
Ernst Haeckel (German biologist who originated the theory of recapitulation: ontogeny repeats phylogeny)
Gustav Mahler (Austrian composer who died in 1911)
Eugen Bleuler (psychiatrist and Director of the Burghölzli Clinic)
Auguste Forel (his predecessor)
Sabine Spielrein (Jung’s ex-patient/lover)
Antonia Wolff (another ex-patient who became a psychiatric intern and was Jung’s lover until her death in 1953. Jung’s letters to Freud outline his conviction that marriage must make room for such polygamous affairs.)
Sigmund Freud (Austrian psychiatrist and Jung’s early mentor)
William James (American psychiatrist who originated the notion of “the stream of consciousness”)
OXFORD
Walter Pater (English critic and Oxford don who published Studies in the History of the Renaissance in 1873, containing his famous description of the Mona Lisa, which is paraphrased on page 257 of this novel [“All the thoughts…mother of Mary.”])
FLORENCE
Elisabetta Gherardini (Madonna Elisabetta del Giocondo—the Mona Lisa, La Gioconda)
Signor Antonio de Noldo Gherardini (her father)
Signora Alicia Gherardini (her mother)
Leonardo da Vinci (artist/tyrant, who did refuse to paint the face of Christ in The Last Supper, and who did keep the Mona Lisa by his bedside until his death in France in 1519)
Gerolamo Savonarola (Dominican priest and zealot)
SPAIN
Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada (Saint Teresa of Avila)
Alonso de Cepeda (her father)
Doña Beatriz de Cepeda y Ahumada (her mother)
Rodrigo de Cepeda (Teresa’s brother)
Pedro de Cepeda (Alonso’s brother)
CHARTRES
Henry Adams (American author/critic, whose vivid descriptions of the building of Chartres Cathedral include the many destructive fires in its history [except the fictional one presented here]. Adams also describes the stained-glass window known as Notre Dame de la Belle Verrière, the only window to survive the 1194 fire.)
Aside from the books already mentioned, the following have been invaluable sources of information: Memories, Dreams and Reflections, by C.G. Jung; The Freud/Jung Letters, edited by William McGuire; Carl Gustav Jung by Frank McLynn; Mona Lisa: The Picture and the Myth, by Roy McMullen; The Greek Myths by Robert Graves; The Biography of Oscar Wilde, by Richard Ellman; Teresa of Avila by Kate O’Brien and The Eagle and the Dove by Vita Sackville-West.
My thanks also to Beverley Roberts for her exhaustive research; Mary Adachi for her matchless copy editing; Nicole Langlois, Karen Hanson and Sabine Roth for their sharp-eyed spotting of inconsistencies; David Staines for his helpful reading of an early draft; and to Iris Tupholme, Larry Ashmead and Doris Janhsen for their editorial wisdom. Thanks also to my agent, Bruce Westwood, for his unflagging energy, enthusiasm and support. Lastly, I thank William Whitehead, who suffered endless emendations in the transformation of virtually thousands of unreadable handwritten pages into legible typing—and for his equally endless encouragement.
Also By Timothy Findley
Novels
The Last of the Crazy
People The Butterfly Plague
The Wars
Famous Last Words
Not Wanted on the Voyage
The Telling of Lies
Headhunter
The Piano Man’s Daughter
Spadework
Novella
You Went Away
Short Fiction
Dinner Along the Amazon
Stones
Dust to Dust
Plays
Can You See Me Yet?
John A.—Himself
The Stillborn Lover
The Trials of Ezra Pound
Elizabeth Rex
Non-Fiction
Inside Memory: Pages from a Writer’s Workbook
From Stone Orchard: A Collection of Memories
Journeyman: Travels of a Writer TIMOTHY FINDLEY
Praise for PILGRIM
THE #I NATIONAL BESTSELLER
“Findley has consummate skill, disturbing vision and a bleak skepticism about the value of art…Despite what Pilgrim says, it’s enough to make one believe even more in the power of art.”
—Time
“Pilgrim is a marvellously complex set of Chinese boxes, each apparently smaller box opening to ever larger vistas…Anyone who delights in well-wrought fictions that contain complexly human characters in richly philosophic conflict will find it a complicated delight.”
—Edmonton Journal
“Seeing Findley’s name on a book’s cover immediately sends a signal to readers: here’s a story that will be provocative and intriguing, beautifully told, and one-of-a-kind. Findley offers both sheer unputdownable entertainment and intelligent, thoughtful writing.”
—Booklist
“Pilgrim endlessly rewards the reader with luxuriant prose, complex characters and challenging ideas. It is an adventuresome ride well worth taking.”
—Chicago Tribune
“A compellingly literate mystery novel…[Findley’s] sentences are marvels of economy.”
—The Vancouver Sun
“The questions posed by Pilgrim are heavy ones. Why, given access to the wisdom of the centuries, would a person choose oblivion? Why would he come to see art not as solace, but as part of the problem? It’s to Findley’s credit that he has found a story, and a hero, able to carry the weight.”
—The Gazette (Montreal)
“This is a five-ring circus, an ambitious fictional dissertation with a sweep of research that [draws] the line between medicine and coercion, imagination and madness, and infidelity and cruelty.”
—National Post
“This is a polished and exhilarating entertainment that’s challenging, mystifying and expertly crafted.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Strange and ambitious and engaging are the adjectives that come most readily to mind after reading Timothy Findley’s new novel, Pilgrim…Both impressive and haunting, a fin de siècle fable and a prophecy from one of our most resilient writers.”
—Quill & Quire
“A metaphysical thriller.”
—The New Yorker
“A rich narrative tapestry that weaves together history, Jungian psychology, philosophical debate and intricate plot.”
—Ottawa Citizen
Copyright
Pilgrim
© 1999 by Pebble Productions Inc. All
rights reserved.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
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First published in hardcover by HarperFlamingo Canada,
an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1999.
First HarperPerennialCanada paperback edition 2000.
Commemorative hardcover edition 2002.
This mass market paperback edition 2004.
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National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Findley, Timothy, 1930-2002
Pilgrim / Timothy Findley. – Mass market pbk. ed.
I. Title.
PS8511.138P55 2004 C813′.54 C2003-905632-5
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