There is a classic of Czech literature, written by Jan Amos Komenský (1592–1670) — more often referred to by his Latin name Comenius — entitled, The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart (1623).
Komenský was a member of the Bohemian Protestant “Community of Brethren,” and was forced to leave Bohemia in 1628, in the aftermath of the Protestant defeat at the Battle of White Mountain (1621). He spent forty years in exile in England, Sweden, and Holland (where he died). He is best known in intellectual history as an educational reformer whose influence was widespread throughout Europe.
The Labyrinth is a religious allegory, similar in some ways to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. It is considered by some to be the foundational work of Czech literature. It introduces three characters and themes that have become archetypal in subsequent Czech literature — the pilgrim, the labyrinth, and “the castle.”
At the beginning of The Labyrinth, the pilgrim looks out over a city and its castle, as from a high tower (like that atop Petřín Hill, from which some of us have taken breathtaking panorama photos of Prague):
The city itself, as I perceived, was divided into innumerable streets, squares, houses and buildings both large and small. Towards the east, I saw a gate, from which an alley ran toward another gate facing west. The second gate opened upon the streets of the city. I counted six principal streets running from east to west, parallel with each other. It the midst of these streets was a very large ring or marketplace. Farthest towards the west, upon a steep and rocky eminence, stood a lofty, magnificent castle towards which the inhabitants of the city frequently gazed.
What city could he be describing?
A man named “Ubiquitous” offers to lead the pilgrim to the castle. But as they move through the city, they find that the apparent order is only an illusion, and soon disintegrates into a labyrinth. All is confusion, pretense, and conflict. There is a conglomeration of languages spoken (!!), and the only real value seems to be money and commerce (“Vanity Fair?”). Along the way, they encounter every kind of person — from workmen to astronomers, soldiers to philosophers.
When pilgrim finally arrives at the castle, where Worldly Wisdom reigns as queen, he discovers to his surprise that the walls, which appeared to be built of fine alabaster are in reality mere paper and stuffing. The castle is really no different from the city that surrounds it. The chambers and stairways and halls are themselves labyrinthine. Along the way the pilgrim hears heated arguments that are meaningless to him. Even those who represent the church are only interested in preserving their position and wealth. Priests and lazy and gluttonous. All is empty, meaningless.
I read Kafka’s novel The Castle before coming to Prague this time. It will make you scream, unless it numbs you into insensibility first. In our time, the kind frustrating confusion and hostility it portrays has come to be known as “Kafkaesque.” It was striking to find that Kafka’s seemingly original vision itself has its Czech roots.
What Kafka did not share with Komenský was an answer to all the futility and confusion. The Castle ends in mid-sentence. One author suggests that Kafka simply could go no farther with it. The frustration was seemingly endless.
Komenský, however, has his pilgrim, despairing of life itself, turn in the end from “the labyrinth of this world” to the heart. Though the heart is admittedly corrupt by nature, and cannot be reformed by worldly wisdom, yet God grants illumination. Christ comes to the pilgrim and invites him to share in an inward communion with the true and living God. True joy and peace are offered in the gospel, in the Redeemer. The pilgrim is given the Bible, in which he will find true wisdom.
(There would be as much to be learned by contrasting Komenský’s vision with Bunyan’s as comparing them, but that’s for another time. If you want to explore it, you can get a copy of John Comenius’ book. It is published in the series, “The Classics of Western Spirituality,” published by Paulist Press.)
Richard Burton (not the actor) has observed, “Kafka’s novels and stories have a Comenian structure without the happy Comenian outcome, for here the mind and heart of the pilgrim are at least as labyrinthine as the city and castle, and there is not way out — any more than there is a way in: ‘There is a goal, but no way; what we call a way is only a wavering.’”
It is fascinating and rewarding to consider the ways in which biblical themes, like those portrayed so powerfully in Ecclesiastes (Solomon is himself a character in The Labyrinth) — time and eternity, order and confusion, frustration and hope, God’s revelation and man’s experience — have been worked out in the literature of the world, past and present.
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