My further speculations about Scarabocchio, therefore, will be based on the search for  the isomorphism and deviations between these two works. I begin from the assumption that the artist "is not a follower but rather an innovator of previously exploited structures"[16] and that deviations are the key to the artist's hidden intent. And it's in accordance with Goethe's analytical method, too: he always claimed that "the difference is just as crucial, and the two, similarity and difference, have the same importance in understanding the movement."[17]

2. SCARABOCCHIO: PLOT-LINES, CONCEPT AND CHARACTERS IN THE LIGHT OF GOETHE'S FAIRYTALE

A STORY ABOUT THE GREEN SERPENT AND THE BEAUTIFUL LILY: A SUMMARY

To give a short summary of Goethe's tale, it encompasses various characters, among them, the Prince, the Will-o'-wisps, and many others who are in search of the beautiful Lily that lives on the other side of the shore. There are two bridges which lead to her: one is formed by the Green Serpent, and another one by the Giant's Shadow. The types of relationships among the characters are rather complex, but they all are going to unite with each other in order to establish the long-awaited Temple - a symbol of universal harmony. In the end, the Prince marries the Lily and everyone celebrates the rise of the Temple. 


LA LILY 

The white petals of lilies "trembling on thin stems" open their dangerous goblets, slowly spilling their malignant content and soon the entire world is trapped in haze. 

I saw that the room was filled with white lilies, thrust into every possible receptacle, and lying in great loose armfuls on the furniture and floor.

The allusion to the Lily is created through various details, including the white color of Anabelle's dress which in the space of action is explained by the fact that the girl is presumably a charity child from the Conservatorio di San Onofrio. For those who are not familiar with the Conservatorio, it was founded by the Congregation of the White Dress. This partially clarifies the meaning of the color. Another meaning is revealed in connection to the lily to which the girl is compared: "Beneath the bow the golden hair flowed over a neck as thin and pliant as a lily stalk." 

Anabelle-Faustina-Siamese girl appears to be an incarnation of the Lily's attendants.  Her triple personality corresponds to the triad serving Goethe's Lily. There are many more "lilies" around, among them, Santa Rosalia whose cheeks are "white, white as lilies", lily-rose and the crook-necked lily from the poem. All of them gravitate towards one great Mother of lilies, Carolina Lily, "the famous American diva", La Lily, Barton Beale's strange love, who in the implied space is tied with Goethe's fair Lily.

Her name is apparently derived from her "namesake", a beautiful North Carolinian wildflower, Carolina Lily, or Lilium michauxii.  The flower is quite tall - the stem can be up to four feet, which partially explains the enormous height of the diva.  Her constant comparison to a tigress ("She is terrible as a tigress when she smiles.") supports even more the association with the lily-flower: Tiger Lily is a type of lily that received its name owing to its red and orange flowers marked with dark purple or brown spots. At the same time, it adds new - negative - qualities to the many-faced quantum character. The red and purple gamut of colors flashing in the skies and marking the priests' attire signifies the triumph of the Lily-predator over the Lily-harmony, Ewigweibliche.

Carolina Lily appears in the company of two children, a boy and a girl, whom the Meister first meets in the garden. Passing by the garden, he hears birds' voices, and only when he sees the children, does he realize that the voices belong to them. The children play an odd game whose meaning he can't explain. It seems the boy tries to catch the girl, and she rushes "headlong into the dark." Throughout the novel, the children keep playing the same game.

My little Anabelle joined her brother in a mysterious game that involved much climbing up and jumping off the ruins, much hiding in the tall grass and behind the columns, whispers, and sudden shrieks of laughter that sent blue-white sparks high into the air, where they mingled with the darker cries of the roving birds of prey and were carried away on the wind.

The symbolism of the game and the birds comes to light when considered in connection to the fairytale, namely - the story about the Prince's Hawk that scared off the Lily's Canary. Both birds become victims of the "game" they played together and both are revived in the end. In the novel, when the children first appear in the Lily's company, the boy carries a bird-cage while the girl holds a little black dog in her arms. The arrangement of attributes corresponds to the relationship between the bird and the dog in the fairytale: the body of the dog in the form of black onyx is put next to the body of the Canary-bird and both wait for their imminent revival.

All this suggests a strong intertextual connection between the two Lilies. Nevertheless, as a quantum character, Carolina Lily possesses some other qualities which are not necessarily tied in with the lily-flower. These are revealed in connection to the domain of music. First of all, Carolina Lily's rather "military" behavior echoes the "militant masculine beauty" of the adagio of the second recording of the Goldberg's Variations, as described in the novel.

She tilted her head upwards in my direction and looked at me - I am sure of this, for despite the veil I felt her gaze penetrate - a single sonorous C sharp of crystal clarity to my ice-cold, turgid, palpitating heart. I raised my hand in acknowledgement of her attention and she raised hers in return - a salute of almost military simplicity. …

The adagio is now of a beauty altogether different from the shy sensuality of Goldberg I. A militant masculine beauty, emphatic, relentless, even harrowing. After this adagio the remaining variations explode one after another in a crescendo of erotic desperation.

The "erotic desperation" is what distinguishes the Meister from the others, and what is constantly in his mind even when he thinks about Beale's relationship with Carolina Lily - that "very black" "Nubian empress".

I wonder what exactly his relations may be with the Lily? Does he take that enormous, darkly glowing musical object in his arms, does he pinion it between those long, athletic legs, does he draw torrential music from its mahogany heart of darkness? It is difficult to imagine him in such a position - it would require a strength of which he hardly seems capable. He has the true pianist's temperament, and I can only imagine him happy in the embrace of that lumbering exo-skeleton, that brute music-machine which he is accustomed to abuse at will.

The reference to the "musical object" as well as the description of the diva (everything is "enormous" about her: she is "enormously tall"; her stone-cut lips stretch in "an enormous ivory smile") suggest that the Lily is also - and first and foremost! - a musical instrument.  Her features stands out in connection to music: "The veil did not obscure, but rather dressed with point and filigree the stark bones of her face, much as a composer will cover with a lacework of harmony a powerful, even overwhelming theme." 

The allusion to the piano outlines in very general terms the basic plot-line that, in the light of Goethe's tale, can be described as the Prince-Pianist's search for Carolina Lily-Piano.

BARTON BEALE'S BRIDGE TO THE LILY

If anyone in Scarabocchio should be associated with Goethe's Prince it could be only Barton Beale, the musician, who is also the mysterious Prince of Palermo, the owner of the gardens. His prototype, Glenn Gould, provides a rich background for the symbolism designing his character. Presumably the first name, Barton, is derived from "baritone" - the type of Gould's singing voice. Once Gould admitted that his wildest dream was "to sing the baritone role in a Bellini opera with Maria Callas."[18] The last name, Beale, may relate to the famous Beale Street known for its Music Festival held in Memphis in May - the name of the month-long festival that also includes a night of classical music, the Sunset Symphony. The poetic name of the musical event is reminiscent of the sunset in Goethe's tale, during which the Man with the Lamp should revive the Prince.

Just as both Glenn Gould, who renounced the stage and contests, and Goethe's Prince, who lost his interest in the "crown, and scepter, and sword", Barton Beale loses his interest in the "crown" as a musician which makes him look dead in the public eye.

He had retired first from the concert stage at the age of thirty-two, then from a lucrative recording career at the age of fifty, and had given himself out to be dead. These successive stages of retreat from reality had in fact rendered him dead in the public eye (although the matchless recordings continued to sell steadily) and perhaps something close to dead in himself, for as he sat there in a sunny corner of the dining room, hunched inside his ubiquitous greatcoat, he had the appearance of something shrunken, mummified, partially dissolved in the intensity of the light that poured in through the plateglass and reflected upwards from the glittering sea, and he did not move, he did not look as if he could ever move, but sat as still as a dead person over his gleaming white coffee cup.