The Discovery of Heaven
Encyclopedia
The Discovery of Heaven is a 1992 novel by Dutch
author Harry Mulisch
. It describes the intense friendship between two men and the mystical journey of another to return to Heaven the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments
.
In 2001, the novel was made into a film by Dutch director Jeroen Krabbé
. The film features Stephen Fry
as Onno and Flora Montgomery
as Ada.
-like being, who is ordered to return to Heaven
the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments
, given to Moses
by God
, which symbolise in the book the link between Heaven
and Earth
. The divine being, however, cannot himself travel to Earth, and on several occasions in the book resorts to influencing events, being in effect a deliberate personification of deus ex machina
. He affects the personal lives of three people (two men and one woman) in order that a child will be conceived. This child would then have an innate desire to seek out and return the Tablets.
The book consists of four parts (dubbed "The Beginning of the Beginning", "The End of the Beginning", "The Beginning of the End", and "The End of the End"). In between these four parts, the angel-like being discusses "The Plan" with his superior, who is supposedly an archangel
.
and Second World War were instrumental in this. The messenger's father, Max Delius, was born of a Jewish
mother and a German
officer in 1933. The messenger's mother, Ada Brons, is born in 1946 to Dutch
parents, who also meet in WWII. A third man, Onno Quist, is born into a renowned Dutch Conservative political family, also in the year 1933.
The angel arranges for the men, Onno and Max, to meet in 1967. Onno has just left a family gathering and is in need of a ride to Amsterdam
. By apparent chance to the characters, but clearly a deus ex machina
-effect to the reader, Max is the one to give him a ride. They become friends: Onno and Max's personalities are highly complementary. Onno is an introverted, rather arrogant and highly intelligent professional linguist
. While Onno is trying to 'find God' in the Diskos of Phaistos
, Max is trying to 'discover Heaven' through astronomy
. A more extroverted, erotomanious astronomer, Max is haunted by his rather dark family history: Max's mother, a Jewish woman, was purportedly murdered in Auschwitz, on instigation of his father, an Austrian officer in the Wehrmacht
. After the war his father was imprisoned and later executed by the firing squad. Max was consequently raised by foster parents.
Onno and Max's friendship reaches a high in the many vibrant conversations they have in Leiden and Amsterdam
, in experiencing the revolution of the sixties. Their conversations are filled with great wit and intellect and range over many facets of life: science
, history
, politics
, but especially religion
and philosophy
. Their friendship, however, absorbs them so much that it forces a break between Onno and his girlfriend, Helga.
During a walk in Leiden they come across a small bookshop. Here Max meets Ada, the daughter of the owner and a gifted cellist
. The two become three. Ada and Max fall in love. This is rather new for both of them: Ada, who is only twenty, loses her virginity to Max, who has never had a lasting relationship with a woman. Max, sex-crazy, cannot stay faithful to Ada, and they break up. Max is also haunted by his family history. Moved by Roma music
, who too suffered from the Shoah
, he goes to Auschwitz, Poland
, to seek his parents' history. Ada and Onno, left alone by the sudden departure of Max, fall in love.
When Max returns he sees his best friend with his former girlfriend, but he accepts this change. Onno, meanwhile, has become deputy mayor for the Labour party in Amsterdam and begins his political career. Although nearly everything has changed, their friendship still seems very strong.
The three of them then go to Cuba
, (where Castro
has recently gained power and is fashionable in the leftist elite), and Ada is asked to play the cello. In Cuba, Max and Onno are mistaken for the Dutch delegation to a revolutionary conference, which they attend more as a joke than anything else. On their last day on the island, Onno is seduced by a Cuban woman. Max is unable to suppress his feelings for Ada and makes love to her. Directly after this event, Onno and Ada meet each other in their hotel room, and sleep with each other.
s).
Onno and Ada still visit Max. On one of their visits to Westerbork, Ada receives a phone call from a Leiden hospital: her father has had a heart attack. The three of them drive back to Leiden and are caught in bad weather. Their car crashes. Max and Onno escape without a scratch. Ada, however, is badly hurt and falls into a coma, but the child she is carrying has survived. Max is sent to Leiden to inform Ada's mother, Mrs. (Sophie) Brons, about the events. He arrives in Leiden in the middle of the night. Mr Brons has died and Ada is in coma. Mrs. Brons convinces Max that he must stay the night. Max and Mrs. Brons sleep together.
Max begins to visit Mrs. Brons frequently. During the day the two maintain a formal relationship and are secretly lovers at night. Ada and Onno's child still survives and needs a home. Onno cannot take care of the child alone, and he also has a bright political future. Max suggests to Mrs. Brons that she move to Westerbork. Together they can raise Ada's child in Westerbork and continue their affair.
. The child has bright blue eyes. Onno calls the child Quinten. Max and Mrs. Brons move to an apartment near Westerbork in a former castle, now inhabited by artists and eccentrics. Quinten grows up to be an introverted, peaceful child as intelligent as his father. (The reader has the knowledge that Max is the father) He is obsessed by architecture, ancient keys and obelisks. Onno, who is absorbed by his political career, only infrequently visits his son.
As Quinten grows up he is haunted by dreams of a strange, otherworldly place that has no outside but only an inside. This inside is filled with strange bridges, cranes and architecture. This fuels his interest in architecture and causes him to obsessively make drawings of this place. He also takes care of an old cemetery lot in the garden of the castle, where a racing horse is buried. He seems a rather strange child.
Meanwhile Onno's political career is destroyed, when his visit to revolutionary Cuba is made public. His position within the Labour Party is unretainable and he is not promoted to minister of Defense. That same day, his new girlfriend (Helga again) is killed. With very little left to live for, Onno decides to disappear.
Max, meanwhile, has returned to his old tricks. He leaves Mrs. Brons for another woman but still lives with her and Quinten. Scientifically he is on the verge of making a major astronomical discovery. When he discovers heaven (located beyond the Big Bang
in negative space
), he is killed by a freak meteoroid
, sent from heaven by Angel. (In the movie, Gabriel sends the meteor, even after Angel complains and explains that they still need Max.)
. He visits Venice
and Florence
but through meetings with strange people, he is forced to flee both cities. He eventually arrives in Rome
. In the Pantheon
, he is approached by a strange man with a long beard and a raven on his shoulder. He realizes that it is his father. Onno has fled to Rome and has filled his life with his original quest to decipher the Diskos of Phaistos.
Onno takes Quinten on a tour through Rome. Although they haven't seen each other in years, their relationship is close. Onno recognizes a lot of his friend, Max, in Quinten. When they visit the Lateran
(one of Rome's holiest sights), Quinten is convinced that he remembers the place from his dreams and that the stone tablets are stored there. He becomes obsessed with the place and with the role of the stone tablets in Christianity and Judaism.
After weeks of study, Quinten convinces his father to steal the stone tablet. One night they stay for too long in the Lateran and are locked in. With Quinten's study of ancient architecture and locksmithing and Onno's encyclopedic knowledge, they open the chapel of the Lateran and in a safe they find two stone tablets, grey slabs. Later they learn that the slabs are made of a bright blue gem.
They take the first flight from Rome to Tel Aviv
, Israel
. Onno and Quinten stay in Jerusalem and visit the city's sights, including the Dome of the Rock
, where the stone tablets were stored for ages when the Jews inhabited the city, before the Romans sacked the temple.
After meeting an elderly woman who speaks Dutch, with very blue eyes and numbers tattooed on her arm, Onno realizes that she might be Max's mother and Quinten's grandmother. He goes to tell Quinten but cannot find him. In a state of distress, he calls Mrs. Brons. He learns that Ada has died; Mrs. Brons, a former nurse has performed euthanasia
. While speaking with her on the phone, Onno suffers a stroke.
Quinten has gone into a hallucinative state. In a sort of dream world, filled with references to Jewish mysticism, he returns to the Dome of the Rock with the stone tablets. He meets his father's raven and the race horse, whose burial place he kept. In the Dome of the Rock he ascends to heaven with the tablets.
Back in heaven, the Angel is commended for his deeds by the Archangel. The Angel, however, feels remorse for breaking the link between heaven and earth. But the situation is no longer in his control.
said that this book is his magnum opus. It is his best-known and best-selling work. It is his fourth work to be made into a film. It includes all the major themes form his earlier work: the Second World War, the Shoah
, the Students' revolt of the sixties, Judaism
, Philosophy
and Jewish and Classical Mysticism. The War is given purpose through the actions of the Angels, and the Shoah remains a haunting dream for Mulisch. The students' revolt, in which Mulisch was an active participant, is described with much insight. Judaism, philosophy and mysticism are all blended with great complexity.
The book is also a homage to a friendship. Onno Quist is based on Hein Donner
, a famous Dutch chessplayer and a close friend of Mulisch's who died some years before the Discovery of Heaven was published. He too came from a conservative political family and was a respected sight in Amsterdam's leftist elite. The book is also partially biographical. The first part of the book in particular, where the intense friendship between the two men is described, can be seen as a memorial by Mulisch to a friend. Max Delius resembles Mulisch. Both are partially Jewish, haunted by the war and obsessed with women. Mulisch also visited Cuba during the sixties, and he too was part of the students revolt.
. Mulisch allowed the film on one condition: the English comedian Stephen Fry
should play Onno Quist. The humour of both men also is rather similar. The rest was left up to Krabbé. Krabbé didn't keep very close to the book and removed some of the longer pieces (especially regarding the friendship between Max and Onno and the youth of Quinten) and changed some events for dramatic reasons.
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
author Harry Mulisch
Harry Mulisch
Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch was a Dutch author. He wrote more than 80 novels, plays, essays, poems and philosophical reflections. These have been translated into more than 20 languages....
. It describes the intense friendship between two men and the mystical journey of another to return to Heaven the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue , are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and most forms of Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry,...
.
In 2001, the novel was made into a film by Dutch director Jeroen Krabbé
Jeroen Krabbé
Jeroen Aart Krabbé is a Dutch actor and film director who has appeared in many Dutch and international films.-Biography:...
. The film features Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...
as Onno and Flora Montgomery
Flora Montgomery
Flora Anne Selina Montgomery is a Northern Irish actress.-Early life and family:She was born at her family's ancestral home in Greyabbey, Newtownards, Ards, County Down, Ulster, Northern Ireland, and educated at Rockport School, daughter of William Howard Clive Montgomery of Rosemount House and of...
as Ada.
Plot summary
The Discovery of Heaven tells the story of an angelAngel
Angels are mythical beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The English word angel is derived from the Greek ἄγγελος, a translation of in the Hebrew Bible ; a similar term, ملائكة , is used in the Qur'an...
-like being, who is ordered to return to Heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue , are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and most forms of Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry,...
, given to Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
by God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
, which symbolise in the book the link between Heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
and Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
. The divine being, however, cannot himself travel to Earth, and on several occasions in the book resorts to influencing events, being in effect a deliberate personification of deus ex machina
Deus ex machina
A deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.-Linguistic considerations:...
. He affects the personal lives of three people (two men and one woman) in order that a child will be conceived. This child would then have an innate desire to seek out and return the Tablets.
The book consists of four parts (dubbed "The Beginning of the Beginning", "The End of the Beginning", "The Beginning of the End", and "The End of the End"). In between these four parts, the angel-like being discusses "The Plan" with his superior, who is supposedly an archangel
Archangel
An archangel is an angel of high rank. Archangels are found in a number of religious traditions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Michael and Gabriel are recognized as archangels in Judaism and by most Christians. Michael is the only archangel specifically named in the Protestant Bible...
.
The Beginning of the Beginning
The book begins with the angel reporting to his superior that 'the job is done', and beginning to recount the events. He explains that after seventy years' work and planning, he has created a messenger to return the Tablets, and how, in order for the messenger to be conceived, he first needed to allow the birth of the messenger's parents. He then explains how the FirstWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and Second World War were instrumental in this. The messenger's father, Max Delius, was born of a Jewish
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
mother and a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
officer in 1933. The messenger's mother, Ada Brons, is born in 1946 to Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
parents, who also meet in WWII. A third man, Onno Quist, is born into a renowned Dutch Conservative political family, also in the year 1933.
The angel arranges for the men, Onno and Max, to meet in 1967. Onno has just left a family gathering and is in need of a ride to Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
. By apparent chance to the characters, but clearly a deus ex machina
Deus ex machina
A deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.-Linguistic considerations:...
-effect to the reader, Max is the one to give him a ride. They become friends: Onno and Max's personalities are highly complementary. Onno is an introverted, rather arrogant and highly intelligent professional linguist
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
. While Onno is trying to 'find God' in the Diskos of Phaistos
Phaistos Disc
The Phaistos Disc is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the Greek island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age . It is about 15 cm in diameter and covered on both sides with a spiral of stamped symbols...
, Max is trying to 'discover Heaven' through astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
. A more extroverted, erotomanious astronomer, Max is haunted by his rather dark family history: Max's mother, a Jewish woman, was purportedly murdered in Auschwitz, on instigation of his father, an Austrian officer in the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
. After the war his father was imprisoned and later executed by the firing squad. Max was consequently raised by foster parents.
Onno and Max's friendship reaches a high in the many vibrant conversations they have in Leiden and Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, in experiencing the revolution of the sixties. Their conversations are filled with great wit and intellect and range over many facets of life: science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, but especially religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
and philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. Their friendship, however, absorbs them so much that it forces a break between Onno and his girlfriend, Helga.
During a walk in Leiden they come across a small bookshop. Here Max meets Ada, the daughter of the owner and a gifted cellist
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
. The two become three. Ada and Max fall in love. This is rather new for both of them: Ada, who is only twenty, loses her virginity to Max, who has never had a lasting relationship with a woman. Max, sex-crazy, cannot stay faithful to Ada, and they break up. Max is also haunted by his family history. Moved by Roma music
Roma music
Romani music is the music of the Romani people, who have their origins in Northern India, but today live mostly in Europe....
, who too suffered from the Shoah
Shoah
Shoah may refer to:*The Holocaust*Shoah , documentary directed by Claude Lanzmann * A Shoah Foundation...
, he goes to Auschwitz, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, to seek his parents' history. Ada and Onno, left alone by the sudden departure of Max, fall in love.
When Max returns he sees his best friend with his former girlfriend, but he accepts this change. Onno, meanwhile, has become deputy mayor for the Labour party in Amsterdam and begins his political career. Although nearly everything has changed, their friendship still seems very strong.
The three of them then go to Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, (where Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
has recently gained power and is fashionable in the leftist elite), and Ada is asked to play the cello. In Cuba, Max and Onno are mistaken for the Dutch delegation to a revolutionary conference, which they attend more as a joke than anything else. On their last day on the island, Onno is seduced by a Cuban woman. Max is unable to suppress his feelings for Ada and makes love to her. Directly after this event, Onno and Ada meet each other in their hotel room, and sleep with each other.
The End of the Beginning
Back in the Netherlands, Ada finds out she is pregnant. The child was conceived in Cuba. She tells this to Onno, who then proposes to marry her, assuming the child is his. Max realizes the child is equally likely to be his and decides to leave Ada and Onno, filled with feelings of guilt. After the marriage, he leaves for Westerbork, (a former holding camp for Jews in the Netherlands who would subsequently be sent to concentration camps in Germany and Eastern Europe, now hosting one of Europe's biggest radio telescopeRadio telescope
A radio telescope is a form of directional radio antenna used in radio astronomy. The same types of antennas are also used in tracking and collecting data from satellites and space probes...
s).
Onno and Ada still visit Max. On one of their visits to Westerbork, Ada receives a phone call from a Leiden hospital: her father has had a heart attack. The three of them drive back to Leiden and are caught in bad weather. Their car crashes. Max and Onno escape without a scratch. Ada, however, is badly hurt and falls into a coma, but the child she is carrying has survived. Max is sent to Leiden to inform Ada's mother, Mrs. (Sophie) Brons, about the events. He arrives in Leiden in the middle of the night. Mr Brons has died and Ada is in coma. Mrs. Brons convinces Max that he must stay the night. Max and Mrs. Brons sleep together.
Max begins to visit Mrs. Brons frequently. During the day the two maintain a formal relationship and are secretly lovers at night. Ada and Onno's child still survives and needs a home. Onno cannot take care of the child alone, and he also has a bright political future. Max suggests to Mrs. Brons that she move to Westerbork. Together they can raise Ada's child in Westerbork and continue their affair.
The Beginning of the End
The child is born through Caesarean sectionCaesarean section
A Caesarean section, is a surgical procedure in which one or more incisions are made through a mother's abdomen and uterus to deliver one or more babies, or, rarely, to remove a dead fetus...
. The child has bright blue eyes. Onno calls the child Quinten. Max and Mrs. Brons move to an apartment near Westerbork in a former castle, now inhabited by artists and eccentrics. Quinten grows up to be an introverted, peaceful child as intelligent as his father. (The reader has the knowledge that Max is the father) He is obsessed by architecture, ancient keys and obelisks. Onno, who is absorbed by his political career, only infrequently visits his son.
As Quinten grows up he is haunted by dreams of a strange, otherworldly place that has no outside but only an inside. This inside is filled with strange bridges, cranes and architecture. This fuels his interest in architecture and causes him to obsessively make drawings of this place. He also takes care of an old cemetery lot in the garden of the castle, where a racing horse is buried. He seems a rather strange child.
Meanwhile Onno's political career is destroyed, when his visit to revolutionary Cuba is made public. His position within the Labour Party is unretainable and he is not promoted to minister of Defense. That same day, his new girlfriend (Helga again) is killed. With very little left to live for, Onno decides to disappear.
Max, meanwhile, has returned to his old tricks. He leaves Mrs. Brons for another woman but still lives with her and Quinten. Scientifically he is on the verge of making a major astronomical discovery. When he discovers heaven (located beyond the Big Bang
Big Bang
The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...
in negative space
Negative space
Negative space, in art, is the space around and between the subject of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, and not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and such space is occasionally used to artistic effect as the "real"...
), he is killed by a freak meteoroid
Meteoroid
A meteoroid is a sand- to boulder-sized particle of debris in the Solar System. The visible path of a meteoroid that enters Earth's atmosphere is called a meteor, or colloquially a shooting star or falling star. If a meteoroid reaches the ground and survives impact, then it is called a meteorite...
, sent from heaven by Angel. (In the movie, Gabriel sends the meteor, even after Angel complains and explains that they still need Max.)
The End of the End
When Quinten is 16, he decides to look for his father. Except for his mother and grandmother he has very little that binds him to Westerbork. He goes to ItalyItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. He visits Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
and Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
but through meetings with strange people, he is forced to flee both cities. He eventually arrives in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. In the Pantheon
Pantheon, Rome
The Pantheon ,Rarely Pantheum. This appears in Pliny's Natural History in describing this edifice: Agrippae Pantheum decoravit Diogenes Atheniensis; in columnis templi eius Caryatides probantur inter pauca operum, sicut in fastigio posita signa, sed propter altitudinem loci minus celebrata.from ,...
, he is approached by a strange man with a long beard and a raven on his shoulder. He realizes that it is his father. Onno has fled to Rome and has filled his life with his original quest to decipher the Diskos of Phaistos.
Onno takes Quinten on a tour through Rome. Although they haven't seen each other in years, their relationship is close. Onno recognizes a lot of his friend, Max, in Quinten. When they visit the Lateran
Lateran
Lateran and Laterano are the shared names of several architectural projects throughout Rome. The properties were once owned by the Lateranus family of the former Roman Empire...
(one of Rome's holiest sights), Quinten is convinced that he remembers the place from his dreams and that the stone tablets are stored there. He becomes obsessed with the place and with the role of the stone tablets in Christianity and Judaism.
After weeks of study, Quinten convinces his father to steal the stone tablet. One night they stay for too long in the Lateran and are locked in. With Quinten's study of ancient architecture and locksmithing and Onno's encyclopedic knowledge, they open the chapel of the Lateran and in a safe they find two stone tablets, grey slabs. Later they learn that the slabs are made of a bright blue gem.
They take the first flight from Rome to Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. Onno and Quinten stay in Jerusalem and visit the city's sights, including the Dome of the Rock
Dome of the Rock
The Dome of the Rock is a shrine located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. The structure has been refurbished many times since its initial completion in 691 CE at the order of Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik...
, where the stone tablets were stored for ages when the Jews inhabited the city, before the Romans sacked the temple.
After meeting an elderly woman who speaks Dutch, with very blue eyes and numbers tattooed on her arm, Onno realizes that she might be Max's mother and Quinten's grandmother. He goes to tell Quinten but cannot find him. In a state of distress, he calls Mrs. Brons. He learns that Ada has died; Mrs. Brons, a former nurse has performed euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
. While speaking with her on the phone, Onno suffers a stroke.
Quinten has gone into a hallucinative state. In a sort of dream world, filled with references to Jewish mysticism, he returns to the Dome of the Rock with the stone tablets. He meets his father's raven and the race horse, whose burial place he kept. In the Dome of the Rock he ascends to heaven with the tablets.
Back in heaven, the Angel is commended for his deeds by the Archangel. The Angel, however, feels remorse for breaking the link between heaven and earth. But the situation is no longer in his control.
Interpretation
Harry MulischHarry Mulisch
Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch was a Dutch author. He wrote more than 80 novels, plays, essays, poems and philosophical reflections. These have been translated into more than 20 languages....
said that this book is his magnum opus. It is his best-known and best-selling work. It is his fourth work to be made into a film. It includes all the major themes form his earlier work: the Second World War, the Shoah
Shoah
Shoah may refer to:*The Holocaust*Shoah , documentary directed by Claude Lanzmann * A Shoah Foundation...
, the Students' revolt of the sixties, Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
, Philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and Jewish and Classical Mysticism. The War is given purpose through the actions of the Angels, and the Shoah remains a haunting dream for Mulisch. The students' revolt, in which Mulisch was an active participant, is described with much insight. Judaism, philosophy and mysticism are all blended with great complexity.
The book is also a homage to a friendship. Onno Quist is based on Hein Donner
Jan Hein Donner
Johannes Hendrikus Donner was a Dutch chess grandmaster and writer. Donner was born in The Hague and won the Dutch Championship in 1954, 1957, and 1958. FIDE, the World Chess Federation, awarded him the GM title in 1959. He played 11 times for the Netherlands in the Chess Olympiads...
, a famous Dutch chessplayer and a close friend of Mulisch's who died some years before the Discovery of Heaven was published. He too came from a conservative political family and was a respected sight in Amsterdam's leftist elite. The book is also partially biographical. The first part of the book in particular, where the intense friendship between the two men is described, can be seen as a memorial by Mulisch to a friend. Max Delius resembles Mulisch. Both are partially Jewish, haunted by the war and obsessed with women. Mulisch also visited Cuba during the sixties, and he too was part of the students revolt.
Adaptation
In 2001 the book was made into a movie by Jeroen KrabbéJeroen Krabbé
Jeroen Aart Krabbé is a Dutch actor and film director who has appeared in many Dutch and international films.-Biography:...
. Mulisch allowed the film on one condition: the English comedian Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...
should play Onno Quist. The humour of both men also is rather similar. The rest was left up to Krabbé. Krabbé didn't keep very close to the book and removed some of the longer pieces (especially regarding the friendship between Max and Onno and the youth of Quinten) and changed some events for dramatic reasons.
External links
- The Discovery of Heaven A collection of book reviews at The Complete Review