"Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can't explain them, and those who haven't known them have no understanding of them at all. Some people risk their lives to conquer a mountain peak. No one, not even they themselves, can really explain why. Others ruin themselves trying to win the heart of a certain person who wants nothing to do with them...Some think their only hope of happiness lies in being somewhere else, and spend their whole lives traveling from place to place...In short, there are as many different passions as there are people.
Bastian Balthazar Bux's passion was books.
If you have never spent whole afternoons with burning ears and rumpled hair, forgetting the world around you over a book, forgetting cold and hunger - If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless - If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next."
from "The Neverending Story," pp 6-7, English translation, 1983, Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Michael Ende is and always has been my favorite author. His tales full of magic and symbolism have
captured children and adults alike all over the world.
As a child, he takes you away on mythical adventures that leave you breathless; as an adult, the author's hidden, realistic view of life gets revealed to you.
Like in "Momo," (Engl. title: "The Grey Gentlemen,")
where people are urged to save more and more time to deposit in a 'time bank' in order to be able to get it all back with interest at the end of their lives.
In reality, the grey gentlemen use the saved time themselves for their existence in the human world and
for their main goal to take it over. People who follow their advice to save time have less and less of it to spend with family, friends and pets and slowly
wither away. The bad thing is that no one really knows of the existence of the grey gentlemen since, right after they tell people to save time, the people forget someone ever talked to them and think time-saving is their own idea. No one knows of the existence of the grey gentlemen, except for Momo, a little orphan girl who has a rare, extraordinary gift:
being able to really listen to people. She alone has the power to stop the grey gentlemen.
"Momo" has always been one of my favorite books,
but there's one that I love even more and most,
"The Neverending Story." I must have read this book about twenty times since I was a child, and still,
it gives me refuge when I'm sad and need a little break from the real world, and many things to think about as an adult. It tells about a little boy, Bastian
Balthazar Bux, who is lonely and overweight. His mother has died and his father is so wrapped in grief he barely acknowledges Bastian's existence. Bastian's only relief from his father's neglect and his schoolmate's taunts are books. One rainy day he comes across a book called 'The Neverending Story' while hiding from his schoolmates in a bookstore. The grumpy owner refuses to sell the book and Bastian steals it
when he goes to answer the telephone. Without knowing
why he felt compelled to do such a thing, Bastian
skips school, settles himself in the school's foreboding attic, and begins to read. Before long
he realizes that 'The Neverending Story' lives up to its name and he is physically drawn inside the book's
wonderful tale of a dying land called Fantasia with
its mythical creatures, soaring cities and landscapes.
Its empress is very ill and needs to get a new name in order for Fantasia to be saved. Only a human child
can give her a new name. The empress sends a little Fantasian boy named Atreyu and his luck dragon Falkor on a quest to find the human child who can save them all. Once in Fantasia, Bastian has to realize that he not only has to save Fantasia, but also himself.
"The Neverending Story" is probably Ende's most well-known novel and has been translated into at least 20 different languages. Ende has written numerous other wonderful books, including "Jim and Lukas the Engine-Driver" and "Night of Wishes." Both "Momo" and
"The Neverending Story" have been made into movies,
both of them are nice but don't reach up to the high standards of the books in my opinion.
"Jim and Lukas the Engine-Driver" was made into a puppet TV series in Germany which I very much enjoyed as a child and still do to this day :-)
Michael Ende, born on November 12, 1929, in Garmisch-
Patenkirchen, Germany, died of stomach-cancer on
August 29, 1995, in Stuttgart, Germany. He is and will be very much missed, not only by me, but all around the world by people he has enchanted with his amazing talent of story-telling. His books will be loved by generations to come, and therefore he will never be forgotten, but will live on in the hearts of the people he has made and will make happy through his magical books.
Only Time
