Eternal Cocoon: A brief word on those German riddle-poems that start each chapter
Spoiler Warning: Mild
The riddle-poems are Easter Eggs, but they’re more than window-dressing; they delve into the themes in the mythology that anchors Echoes of the Mystic Chords and the trilogy as a whole. I’ve held off on explicit translations for now (fan-translations of course always welcome!), though there is some spoiler potential in the thematic content laid out below.
With each chapter transition in Echoes of the Mystic Chords, there’s a four-line “riddle-poem” in German on the left-hand page. This design element is intentional, a deliberate placement to highlight the riddles’ status as Easter Eggs not essential for following the story – yet also to tease and invite any daring readers interested in peeking under the hood, glimpsing the metaphysics at the heart of The Leibniz Demon Trilogy. What are these riddles? And why are they there?
The riddles, at their core, are both pithy little ponderings and foreshadowings of the Big Questions bubbling underneath the trilogy’s plot, driving much of the action and character development. As highlighted elsewhere on this site, Echoes of the Mystic Chords (along with its two successors) is an unrepentant genre-hopper: a metaphysical thriller crossed with a cosmic dark mystery. It dives deep into some very ancient conundrums with profound philosophical and even spiritual roots. The trilogy reframes them while also posing new puzzles, ultimately reframing and tackling them from the perspective of modern discoveries in a range of discipline-crossing fields, from neurology to digital physics to computer science.
The riddle-poems, in effect, offer up quirky little enigmas about metaphysics, logic, love, dreams, and the ancient puzzles of the mind, body, and spirit. I wrote each of them to roughly parallel the content and mysteries of the chapter which each riddle kicks off, and to pose something new and original every time. You might be wondering if these little lyrical nuggets have a more direct connection with the story in the trilogy, and the answer is yes. The four-line verses, taken together, will eventually add up to a kind of grand metaphysical inquiry dressed up as a long-form poem – entitled Das Rätsel des ewigen Kokons (“The Riddle of the Eternal Cocoon”) – by one of the characters in Book 2. (It’s one of the reasons the poems are in German – authenticity of the fictional exposition and all that.) I can’t blab too much about this without crossing the border into Spoilerville, but suffice it to say that the protagonists do make reference to the riddles later in the trilogy, and they have a concrete significance for the story’s events and suspense.
Another point worth mentioning is my gratitude to my native-speaker helpers in double-checking the final versions of these poems (they all take a bow in the Acknowledgments section of Echoes). I’m something of a dyed-in-the-wool language nerd and German was one of the first foreign languages I picked up in my school days. Even so, the prospect of scribing poetry in it was more than a little daunting at first, yet somehow the verses gelled neatly in my head as I mulled over the content and rhymes. (German is a surprisingly nimble language for lyrical musing – at least to my untrained mind, not that much more difficult than in say Spanish or Italian where you’d think the rhymes would come more naturally.) That being said, the grammar and meter can be a tad tricky for even a native-speaker trying to channel Herder or Novalis, let alone an American second-languager like yours truly. So it was a great relief having my verses scoured and checked by smart folks who’ve been rolling the language of their tongues since toddler-hood!
On a final note, as I alluded to above I’m holding off on the official (canonical) translations of the riddle-poems until well after the mass-market release of Echoes of the Mystic Chords. This is in part to ward off any inadvertent plot or theme-related spoilage before the book’s on the shelves, but it’s also to encourage fan-translations and suggestions which I’m happy to entertain and respond to. From the get-go I’ve conceived of Echoes and the trilogy as interactive projects with the audience, much as Dickens approached his own literary efforts (to the point of incorporating fan responses as his stories developed). And whether on fansites, Blogs, fan-fic pages, wikis, or other reader-driven content, I’m ever enthusiastic about the back-and-forth with my readership and seeing their own participation and insights. Given the intrigue and thought-provocations I’ve woven into each of these riddle-poems, I’m definitely looking forward to the audience’s thoughts and translations in connection with them, and I welcome any and all contributions. All the best to all of you and enjoy the ride!
J. Wes Ulm