work, argues that Lewis found the war and the new political arrangement it had produced deeply worrying and considered literature instrumental in fending off the threat of totalitarianism, which instils in people the belief they are helpless and that their efforts for change are pointless.116
Indeed, the historical totalism of the Second World War and the fictional totalitarianism of the rule of the White Witch seek to remodel the existing order of the world. In this respect, the White Witch resembles Brzechwa’s Alojzy – a mechanical product which is a technological representation of the authoritarian power he aspires to wield over the free world of the fairy tale.
These insights help us understand what the good-vs.-evil opposition, which is the essential generic cornerstone of the fairy tale, looks like and how it works. The fairy-tale tradition demands that good be embodied in a sage, while evil should be represented in a de-humanised dummy. Yet the innovative and at the same time terrifying final twist of The Academy divests the tale of a happy ending. Mr Inkblot turns out to be the loser in this fabular contest, and his continually diminishing physique serves as an extraordinarily vivid metaphor for the demise of the researcher, who retreats in the face of the forces of evil and darkness. The menacing quality of the finale of The Academy cannot be alleviated even by the meta-literary investment which Lipszyc highlights in his interpretation. The tale is after all supposed to lead the reader out of the space of childhood and towards adulthood, driving home the message that the fairy tale ←55 | 56→was but a literary game orchestrated by the writer with a pronounced proclivity for prattling away: “ ‘I am the author of the story about Mr Inkblot,’ replied the grizzled man. ‘I wrote this tale because I love telling fantastic stories, and I have superb fun when writing them.’ ”117
The fairy tale owes its existence to the imagination of the writer. It was invented and written only in order to bewilder readers, who must now come to their senses and return to normality the way they do after twirling around or riding a merry-go-round. The only thing that remains when a wild ilinx is over is dizziness.118 One of the fairy-tale’s major protagonists, Adaś Niezgódka confesses: “I had buzzing in my ears, and red spots were fluttering in front of my eyes.”119 The lonely and confused boy is surrounded by darkness, lit up by mysterious moonlight. It is the Saturnian night: “gloomy and ominous, when malevolent and baleful demons are unleashed. It is illuminated by the Moon, a natural ally of the vampire and the werewolf.”120
On such a night, the lunar time signifies a time of inverted meanings, with what has been there so far vanishing, and what was not there during the day rising. This principle is also embodied in the ontology of the Academy building itself, “which no longer was the magnificent edifice of old. Somehow, it eluded me completely that it had shrunk by half and kept shrinking as I was looking at it. The same had happened with the park and the wall around it.”121
Of course, the transgression of the fairy-tale world into the non-fairy-tale space of the fabulist’s study can be explained by the oneiric convention which is framed as “adventures of the eye,” with the protagonist probably waking up from or trying to fight the drowsiness which is stealing upon him.122 However, it seems that Adaś is not awakened from a nightmare, although the swapping of the Moon for a round lamp in the writer’s study is a clear indication of the transition from ←56 | 57→the dream to reality and the victory of light over darkness. All the signs imply that the world has regained its form, which is founded on the library: “There was a bookcase where the wall once was, and the gates in the wall had changed into book spines with titles imprinted on them in gold lettering. The bookcase held all the fairy tales by Mr Andersen and Brothers Grimm […] and many, many others.”123
However, it is precisely at this point that a real child nightmare begins, for in front of him Adaś sees Mr Inkblot diminishing and ultimately transfiguring into the button of Doctor Paj-Chi-Wo. Snatched by Mateusz the starling, the miraculous object effects another transformation as the bird morphs into the writer himself. It turns out that it is not Mr Inkblot, but the writer, who is a specific homo magicus, performing a double closure on himself – transfiguring into a button and Mateusz. The ending of the story marks the real birth of its author. In order for the author to appear, two conditions must be met: the protagonist (Mr Inkblot) must be declared “dead,” and the creator must be divested of the attributes of divinity. For this reason, Mr Inkblot must vanish and the metamorphosis of the bird (Mateusz) – the Horatian symbol of poetry – into a human (the writer) restores the lost order, or more precisely restores the order that reality lost for the benefit of the fairy tale.
What Max Weber referred to as “the disenchantment of the world” comes to pass.124
Is there a difference between the disenchantment of the world and the exit of child readers from the fairy-tale space of childhood? It seems that the question concerns the processual mode in which the fairy tale operates. The narrativity of the fairy tale is supposed to employ the maturation-centred plot coupled with the recurrent, well-known fabular motifs and fairy-tale patterns in order to prepare the reader to abandon the secure space of childhood. Relinquishing the fairy tale is a natural process which is sequentially distributed over time. Though dislodged by adulthood and incorporated into the mythical code of childhood, the fairy tale still retains its ontological identity.125 Given this, interpreting the ←57 | 58→ending of The Academy in terms of maturation should not be viewed as a surprising venture.
However, the culmination of Brzechwa’s narrative does not dovetail with canonical farewells to the fairy tale, for the ending of The Academy is total and irreversible. The reader finds out that the story of Mr Inkblot is invented, and its producer owns up to having performed a prestidigitating trick. The knowledge of there being or rather not being a fairy tale comes out all of a sudden to possess the reader by violence and disenchant the world in which the child has been immersed so far, while the fairy tale is by definition supposed to alleviate the pain caused by the brevity of our worldly life and to channel real satisfaction that comes from bonding with other people.126
In Brzechwa’s fairy tale, the admission of the writer, who appears in a deus ex machina mode, abruptly puts an end to all speculations about the tale the child is experiencing. Reduced to an act of fabrication which caters to the ludic needs of the artist and the audience, it no longer possesses the therapeutic capacity of comforting and supporting readers. It is no more than a beautiful deceit by which sensitive readers get fooled.
Construed in this way, The Academy of Mr Inkblot represents one of the most ruthless fairy-tale endings, as the revelation of it fictionality shatters the child’s world. This fabular self-exposure certainly suggests that Brzechwa’s text is an embryo of the postmodernist fairy tale. Nevertheless, to avoid abusing notions specific to the developments which The Academy predates by a few decades, I propose to view it as an anti-fairy tale, not because of the above generic reinterpretation, but due to its dedication to interpreting history.
It is next to impossible to read The Academy of Mr Inkblot in disjunction from its historical context. As argued by Mariusz Urbanek, historical associations are practically unmissable: “On 1st September127 […]
