Introduction of the author:
Sir John Dee of Gladhill! A name that few people will ever have heard of ! It was
about 25 years ago that I first read the story of his life - a life so adventurous, so
fantastic, so moving an d terrible that I have never found anything to compare with
it. The account so etched itself on my soul that as a romantic young man I used to
wander up to the Alchemists' Lane on the castle hill in Prague and daydream of
John Dee coming out of one of the dilapidated doors of the crooked little houses
and speaking to me of the mysteries of alchemy ; not of the alchemy by which man
seeks to solve the riddle of how to make gold from base metal s, but of the occult
art by which he strives to transform himself from mortal clay into a being that will
never lose its self-awareness. There were months on end when the figure of John
Dee seemed to have been purged from my memory , but then , often in dreams, it
would reappear , distinct , clear and ineradicable. These dreams were rare but
regular , not unlike the 29 February in a leap y ear that you have to imagine
composed of four separate quarters before you can call it a whole day . We are all
the slaves of our ideas, not their creators, and later , when I became a writer , I
knew for certain that John Dee would not leave me in peace until I had resolved to
record his life-story in a novel . It is now two years since I made the "resolve" to
start the novel . But whenever I sat down at my desk I would hear an inner voice
mocking me, "You' re going t o write a historical novel?! Don't you realise that all
historical material gives off the stench of the grave, a sickening smell of mouldy
feathers with nothing of the freshness of the living present?! "
But as often as I decided to give up the plan , "John Dee" would call me back to
the work , however much I tried to resist . Finally I solved the problem by hitting on
the idea of interweaving the story of a living , contemporary figure with that of the
"dead" John Dee, of making the work a double novel , so to speak . -- Am I that
living , contemporary figure? The answer could be yes or no. They say an artist
painting a portrait always in voluntarily puts something of his own face into the
picture. It is probably the same with writers.
Who was John Dee? That is what the book is about. Suffice it to say he was a
favourite of Queen Elisabeth of England. He advised her to make Greenland - and
North America - subject to the English crown . The plan had been approved, the
military were waiting for orders, but at the last minute the capricious Queen
changed her mind. The map of the world would look different today if she had
followed Dee's advice! At the failure of the plan on which he had set his whole
life, Dee decided to conquer a different country from the terrestrial "Greenland", a
country beyond the imagination of most people today , a "country " whose existence
is mocked today just as much as "America" was at the time of Columbus. John Dee
set of f f or t his country , as unwavering in his determination as Columbus. But his
journey took him farther , much farther than Columbus, and was more wearisome,
more gruesome, more gruelling . The bare recorded facts of Dee's life are
harrowing enough , how much more harrowing must the experiences have been of
which we know nothing? Leibnitz mentions him , but history has decided t o ignore
him : it prefers t o categorise anything it can not understand as "mad". But I tak e the
liberty of believing that John Dee was quite the opposite of "mad".
One thing is certain : John Dee was one of the greatest scholars of his age; there
was no monarch in Europe who would not have welcomed him at his court .
Emperor Rudolph brought him to Prague where, according to legend, he made gold
from lead. But , as I have already indicated, his most fervent endeavours were not
directed towards the transmutation of metals but towards another kind of
transmutation . What that is I have tried to demonstrate in my novel . MsSVig
Sir John Dee of Gladhill! A name that few people will ever have heard of ! It was
about 25 years ago that I first read the story of his life - a life so adventurous, so
fantastic, so moving an d terrible that I have never found anything to compare with
it. The account so etched itself on my soul that as a romantic young man I used to
wander up to the Alchemists' Lane on the castle hill in Prague and daydream of
John Dee coming out of one of the dilapidated doors of the crooked little houses
and speaking to me of the mysteries of alchemy ; not of the alchemy by which man
seeks to solve the riddle of how to make gold from base me
art by which he strives to transform himself from mortal clay into a being that will
never lose its self-awareness. There were months on end when the figure of John
Dee seemed to have been purged from my memory , but then , often in dreams, it
would reappear , distinct , clear and ineradicable. These dreams were rare but
regular , not unlike the 29 February in a leap y ear that you have to imagine
composed of four separate quarters before you can call it a whole day . We are all
the slaves of our ideas, not their creators, and later , when I became a writer , I
knew for certain that John Dee would not leave me in peace until I had resolved to
record his life-story in a novel . It is now two years since I made the "resolve" to
start the novel . But whenever I sat down at my desk I would hear an inner voice
mocking me, "You' re going t o write a historical novel?! Don't you realise that all
historical material gives off the stench of the grave, a sickening smell of mouldy
feathers with nothing of the freshness of the living present?! "
But as often as I decided to give up the plan , "John Dee" would call me back to
the work , however much I tried to resist . Finally I solved the problem by hitting on
the idea of interweaving the story of a living , contemporary figure with that of the
"dead" John Dee, of making the work a double novel , so to speak . -- Am I that
living , contemporary figure? The answer could be yes or no. They say an artist
painting a portrait always in voluntarily puts something of his own face into the
picture. It is probably the same with writers.
Who was John Dee? That is what the book is about. Suffice it to say he was a
favourite of Queen Elisabeth of England. He advised her to make Greenland - and
North America - subject to the English crown . The plan had been approved, the
military were waiting for orders, but at the last minute the capricious Queen
changed her mind. The map of the world would look different today if she had
followed Dee's advice! At the failure of the plan on which he had set his whole
life, Dee decided to conquer a different country from the terrestrial "Greenland", a
country beyond the imagination of most people today , a "country " whose existence
is mocked today just as much as "America" was at the time of Columbus. John Dee
set of f f or t his country , as unwavering in his determination as Columbus. But his
journey took him farther , much farther than Columbus, and was more wearisome,
more gruesome, more gruelling . The bare recorded facts of Dee's life are
harrowing enough , how much more harrowing must the experiences have been of
which we know nothing? Leibnitz mentions him , but history has decided t o ignore
him : it prefers t o categorise anything it can not understand as "mad". But I tak e the
liberty of believing that John Dee was quite the opposite of "mad".
One thing is certain : John Dee was one of the greatest scholars of his age; there
was no monarch in Europe who would not have welcomed him at his court .
Emperor Rudolph brought him to Prague where, according to legend, he made gold
from lead. But , as I have already indicated, his most fervent endeavours were not
directed towards the transmutation of me
transmutation . What that is I have tried to demonstrate in my novel . MsSVig