Balázs Nyilasy

The Modern Wizard

The Triumphant Romance

 

 

 

Once upon a time there was a little boy called Harry Potter 

The novel entitled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is the first of the series of novels planned to contain seven volumes. At the beginning Harry is only a one-year-old baby, who has already become famous, but in the same time orphan. His parents were killed by the most fearful and wicked magician of the world, Lord Voldemort, the Great Lord, who is so powerful that the magicians themselves avoid uttering his name. They just whisper to one another when speaking about him: You-Know-Who. However something amazing happens: the fearful curse, called Avada Kedavra fails to destroy little Harry although everybody else has proved to be helpless so far when meeting it. Harry has only got a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead to remind him of what had happened to him, otherwise the terrible curse turned back to Voldemort, deprived him of his power, made a cripple of him and cast him into a miserable state. The community of the magicians got rid of the Evil. Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of the school of magicians orders Hagrid, the giant to take the baby away from the place of murder and bring him to his Muggle aunt. (In the vocabulary of the magicians the word Muggle means human, that is those beings that haven’t got the talent of a magician.)

Harry spends sad years in that house because his relatives are rather unkind to him. His aunt and her husband, Vernon Dursley, who works in a screw mill, are typical low brows dreading everything what seems to be mystical or fairy-like. Harry remains for them an alien, an annoying intruder. They do everything to make him to forget his past and his real identity. He is told that his parents died in a car-crash; on that occasion he was also wounded, that is why he has got a scar on his forehead. He knows nothing about the existence of the magic world and as a whole he feels miserable on his eleventh birthday.

On that day a letter comes with the following address on it: Mr. H. Potter, The Cupboard under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. Uncle Vernon takes it away from Harry and after reading it, he gets very scared. He and his wife decide to move Harry from the wardrobe to their son’s smaller room. But all in vain. On the next day another letter is delivered and by this time the address says: The Smallest Bedroom. Mr. Dursley flies into panic and, after tearing to pieces the second letter too, squeezes his family into their car and drives away. He is animated by one single wish: to get as far from Privet Drive 4, as it is possible. Finally they hide in a cottage built on a rock at the seaside. But this far-off place proves to be just as easily attainable as their former lodging. At night, during a terrible storm the door of the hut suddenly opens up and in comes Hagrid, the giant. He was sent to hand the last letter personally to Harry (To Mr. Harry Potter, at the Sea, in the Cottage on the Rock, on the Floor). The strange letter turns out to be an announcement telling that Harry was accepted to be a pupil in the Hogwart School of Witchcraft and Wizardry led by Dumbledore. (The pupils spend seven years in this very old school of long traditions and when they take their finals they are given a licence testifying that they are wizards or sorceresses.)

Harry doesn’t seem to understand anything of what is happening, but the giant explains him, that beside the world of the muglis there is another one, that of magic. He, Harry belongs to that world, he has good, magician blood in his veins, what’s more, he is famous as he miraculously defeated Voldemort. Harry, who has always been oppressed and humiliated, can’t believe his ears, but Hagrid does not give him much time to think. As morning comes he takes him away and they hurry to London. By the way of magic they get to the Diagon Alley, the business centre of the magic world, which can’t be seen by any Muggle, they raise money from the bank of the magicians, have a stroll in the shops selling owls, gowns, magic books, dragon liver and meet several wizards and witches. After buying everything what is needed by a pupil attending the first year in the school of magicians (gown, kettle, magic wand, an owl for mail service, writing pen, textbooks) they hurry to King’s Cross Road which is one of the best known railway stations of the capital. Here, more exactly on line number nine and three quarters, every year, on the first of September a train is waiting for the pupils to take them to the far off castle which houses the school of the magic world.

But all what was told so far is merely an introduction to the novel. The plot of the story begins in its real earnest in Hogwart, the action takes place in the school during the time of the two semesters. The first year proves to be a real trial for the freshly initiated little magician. After ten years of vegetation Voldemort is on the way of becoming active again, he weaves plans about his rebirth. He would succeed if he could seize the philosopher’s stone, hidden in a secret place in the school but Harry, helped along by his new, faithful friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger finally prevents him from doing so.

The structure of the second, third and fourth volumes written about Harry Potter have the same characteristics as the first one. The story happily leads the hero again and again from loneliness and the state of a foreigner into the community. The action every time starts in the world of the Muggles, more exactly in the house of Harry’s aunt and uncle, sometimes in August. The end of the miserable holiday spent with the Vernons can’t come soon enough for Harry who is looking forward to get back to freedom, to his real, magic home in his beloved school. The beginning of the plot, the actions forecasting future trials always take place during the vacation but the development of the story and like this most of the time of the novel is connected to the following school-year. Every semester brings for Harry not only new subjects to learn, but also new adventures, new relationships, new secrets to solve, new mysteries to understand and new, dangerous fights. Lord Voldemort and his followers do not let the grass grow under their feet, the black magician never stops trying to regain his lost power and he wants to kill Harry or, if he can’t do it personally, he wants to have him killed by somebody else. Harry’s fight against him becomes more and more difficult, in every volume he has to defend not only himself but others too and to be able to do so he must be more courageous and ingenious than a boy of his age generally is.

All what has been told so far proves that the series of novels written about Harry Potter – planned to include seven volumes – belong to that literary trend which is called romance in the English theory and history of the literary genres. Northop Frye was quite right when he said that, besides the myth the romance is the most ancient literary form of mankind and it has preserved its freshness and vitality throughout the centuries.

The romance doesn’t approach the world in a realistic way. In the realistic, naturalistic and self-reflexive post-modern trends truth and confinement have a decisive role, while the romance is the realm of dreams, of fantasy, of unrestricted human desires. Here the world is not viewed in a matter of fact way, rules lose their importance, everything is shaped according to the requirements of the imagination. The atmosphere, the actions and the characters of the novels of Rowling all prove this. The hero itself is the product of a fantasy which doesn’t accept less than unbounded freedom. Harry’s character and his skills are basically that of the gifted person, they are somewhat above the individual and have nothing to do with the very earthly intention of greediness. Eternal human pursuits (which in the same time are ancient elements of the romance) are to be found here: miraculous birth, stigmatization, extraordinary abilities, being called to redeem, an unlimited readiness to do what is good and right, natural generosity, openness in the relationship with the other people. Harry is continuously ready for the quest, that is, he is always seeking the opportunity to try his abilities or to help the others. This is how his character develops. His birth is miraculous because as a one-year old baby he fights against Voldemort, although he does it unconsciously. As a result of this fight he gains his stigma and his fame. He becomes a legendary figure in the world of the magicians, he is the one who brought back their freedom and peace. His clash with the black magician has another result: he gains a part of Voldemort’s abilities, for example he understands the language of the snakes. Nobody knows for sure what was Harry protected by. His mother created a protective aura around him, and that must have had a decisive role in his remaining alive, but most probably this was also due to his own abilities. If this is true, he is really called from the very day of his birth. It was him Voldemort was looking for, he was eager to kill the baby and not necessarily the parents. The lightning-shaped scar is Harry’s eternal stigma, the other magicians, who do not know him personally, become extremely happy when they get the chance to cast a glance on it. On the other hand the scar has a warning role in his life: when one of Harry’s enemies is plotting against him, or is somewhere around him, it begins to ache.

Of course magic must be studied by Harry too, and many times, when his life is in danger he escapes because he has learnt so much. But he is gifted, and this is clear for everybody. On the very first flying class the broom springs into his hand and when he rises up he feels extremely happy because he has found something known to him without being taught. When he has to fight against powerful enemies, when his life is threatened, Harry always acts somewhat unconsciously, guided by an inner voice. In the novel entitled Harry Potter and the Secret Chamber when having his final clash he knows instinctively that he has to thrust the poisoned tooth of the basilisk into the diary in order to distroy his enemy, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire he feels that he has no chance of winning in his fight against Voldemort if he lets the light spanning between the two magic wands split.

Of course in the romance the fighting man is never abandoned. Sometimes all his endeavours seem hopeless nevertheless help always arrives in the last moment. In the above-mentioned scene of the fourth volume he is helped along by the ghosts of those who were killed by the evil Voldemort. They float out from the magic wand of the black magician and urge him not to give up. His mother’s ghost encourages him, his father’s ghost gives him advice how to escape. In the second volume, when he is fighting with the basilisk it is Dumbledore’s magic bird, the phoenix which pecks out the death bringing eyes of the fairy snake and drops in his lap the cap hiding the sword which makes fighting possible for him.

The famous magician-headmaster is the wise old man always present in every romance. He is long-bearded and with the help of his supreme wisdom unfolds even the greatest mysteries of life. He is the one who knows the ultimate meaning of everything what happens to Harry and his casual remarks make us believe that he can see most of the forthcoming events. His basic attributions are: extreme old age, remarkable wisdom and, in every case when it is necessary firmness and strength. He seems to be very, very old but at the end of the fourth volume, when he saves Harry from the murderous magic wand of Barty Crouch, Voldemort’s servant, the boy realises that Dumbledore is the only magician Voldemort is really afraid of. As he turns towards the fainted evil-doer his face is more terrible than any black magic. There is wild anger on it and a devastating power radiates from his body like the hotness of fire.

Another significant figure of the repertoire of the romance is Hagrid “the rude giant”. He is a rough, unpolished but warm-hearted, amiable monster who can serve in a very useful way the spiritual force who is greater and more sophisticated than him. He also used to be a pupil in Hogwart but he could never graduate and he was forbidden to practice magic. He is strongly attracted by the magic animal-monsters like the giant spiders, hippogriffs, small dragons. No matter how ugly and aggressive a baby dragon is, he finds it pretty, even beautiful as his great dream has always been to have a dra-gon of his own. He is slow-witted, his handwriting is a mere scrawl, his cookies seem to be pebbles, but he is as good as gold. He is sentimental and his feelings burst out in a spectacular way: when he is sad tears are flooding from his eyes, his whole body is shaking as he sobs and dries his eyes with the tablecloth. He likes to drink and whenever he gets drunk he lets the cat out of the bag. But he adores and faithfully serves Dumbledore and is enthusiastically devoted to the small and vulnerable Harry Potter.

The romance reshapes the world with the help of the unconstrained fantasy and this reshaping becomes total in the Potter novels. Magic is not a rare, extraordinary phenomenon in these books. Dreams come true and the imagination creates a vast, rich realm of freedom, builds up this fairy world in all its details creating like this a kind of playful mythology. In the four volumes which have been published so far the country of the magicians and sorceresses is presented as the real, actual world. They have much efficient skill so they just smile when they see the most recent inventions of the Muggles like the underground, the escalator, the domestic appliances and the kitchen equipment. The sorceress housewife simply waves with her magic wand and the sausages slip into the pan and a slight movement of her hand is enough for the dishes to start and wash themselves in the sink. Her cookery-books are entitled: Charm Your Own Cheese, Enchantment in Baking, One-Minute Feasts – It’s Magic!

It is very important for this magic world to be continuously well-hidden, otherwise the Muggles, realising the wonderful possibilities lying in it would readily turn towards it. Therefore the magicians who regularly wear gowns and send their mails by owls have to disguise themselves throughout England and it is but natural that all their institutions must be hidden or disguised too. Muggles think that they are looking at a humble ruin, but in fact they are standing in front of a wonderful castle housing the famous school of Hogwart which has exactly one hundred forty two stairs. Legions of the employees of the Ministry of Magic are extremely busy before the famous cup-final of the Quidditch to be sure that no Muggle will hang around. (The Quidditch is the soccer of the magicians. Matches are played in the air, the players are riding on their own good-quality broomsticks.) The gates leading from the world of the Muggles to that of the magicians are well disguised too. Diagon Alley can be reached only by those who know that they have to knock three times a special brick above the dustbin standing in the back yard of the inn called Leaky Cauldron. You can get to platform number nine and three quarters if you dare to bump into the wall separating platform nine and platform ten. When doing so, the wall loses its hardness and impenetrability and as soon as we get to the other side we can see the steaming red engine of the Hogwart fast train.

The vehicles of the Muggles seem clumsy compared to the various and efficient ways of travelling which are to be found in the magic world. Wizards and witches simply apparate and disapparate, that is appear and disappear where they want to, they can travel by the means of the Floo powder sprinkled in the fire or they can use the Portkey to get to far off places in a minute. The traditional broom is somewhat slower, but compared to the trains of the Muggles it flies like a streak of lightning. (The friends of Charley, the eldest of the Weasley brothers use this old and reliable vehicle to fly to Hogwart and transport Norbert, the dragon to Romania in a harness fastened to four brooms.)

Common objects and goods are also much more interesting and varied in this magic world than their counterparts in the world of the Muggles. Young wizards and witches eat Every-Flavour Beans, Chocolate Frogs, Liquorice Wands, Cauldron Cakes and drink Butterbeer. In every Chocolate Frog there is a photograph of a famous wizard or witch but these pictures don’t stand still like the photos in the real world, they fidget, they disappear and then appear again. (The portraits on the walls of the school do the same: they change their place and visit each other. After all, nobody can expect them to sit on the canvas all the time. It would be boring.) Individual life is helped by special instruments. The day-dreaming pupil can use a Rememberbrall which turns red if you have forgotten something important. If the sorceress mother gets very angry with her child, she sends her a Howler. This looks like a harmless red envelop, but just wait! When the addressee opens it he or she is immediately overwhelmed by such a vehement reproach and scolding that plaster seems to drop from the ceiling. With the help of the magic hour-glass one can turn the direction of the time, that is you can go back to the past and change the events. However this can be dangerous therefore its use is restricted. Hermione Granger, who is the top of her year receives a special permission from the Ministry of Magic to use it in order to avoid some time-table problems. The Sneako-scope, a small mechanism resembling a spinning top starts to spin widely, becomes enlightened and whistles when sensing something fishy around. Harry and his friend could spare themselves of much trouble if they listened to it in the novel Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. But they don’t. They wrap it into socks, hide it in the bottom of a box, in one word they do everything to stop it to tell its warning.

It goes without saying that the natural surrounding is much more varied in the magic world than in the dull world of the Muggles. Unicorns, gigantic spiders, hippogriffs and centaurs live in the forest around the school. The unicorn is a pearly white-maned, long-legged, slender animal, and who kills it commits the greatest possible sin. The centaurs are kind, but strange: do not expect them to give you a straight answer, they keep speaking in astrological riddles. A huge squid is dwelling in the big lake, little horned water demons called Grindylows grab your leg when you are bathing and on the bottom of the lake there are the villages of the Merpeople. They are ugly, their skin is greyish, their hair is green and untidy, their teeth are broken and they have scale-covered fishtails. They are bad-tempered and rough and know very little about enchanting. They always have a spear in their hand and use Grindylows tied to a rod for the safekeeping of their houses. Their language is the Mermish, and Albus Dumbledore, besides his many other skills is fluent in it too.

Next to the school the mad Whomping Willow is having a fit of rage from time to time. It can badly damage an object as big as a magic car, and naturally it presents an even greater danger for the people.

Weeding the gardens in the world of the Muggles finds it counterpart in de-gnomeing, that is getting rid of the little clawed, potato-headed creatures. They must be dragged out from the ground and thrown away as far as possible. However this is not a final solution of the problem because sooner or later they will sneak back anyway.

The different kinds of leprechauns which are to be found in every tale, saga or myth are treated just like the unicorns, the centaurs or the Mermaids. With the help of a playful fantasy the writer reshapes the magic conventions, moves them towards another direction, takes them to pieces and reconstructs them according to her own purpose. The guards of the Gringotts bank are the Goblins. They are much shorter than a ten-year old boy, their beard is pointed, their fingers and feet are very long. In spite of their apparent physical weakness they are extremely powerful, therefore only very rarely does anybody try to rob the bank.

Trolls are dangerous monsters, they have a huge body but only a small, bald head, their feet are like logs, their arms are disproportionally long and they carry a big club in their hand. What’s more they are terribly stinky and the troll bogies are the most disgusting thing one can imagine. (In the volume entitled Harry Potter and the Philoso-pher’s Stone Hermione Granger once gets in trouble because of a troll, but the boys don’t let her down. This dangerous adventure is an important episode in the novel because it wrights the Ron-Hermione-Harry trio, the team that later faces all troubles together and always proves to be strong enough to overcome the difficulties.

House-elves are funny, even grotesque, pitiable but in the same time ridiculous beings. In the society of the magicians they are mere slaves who readily and zealously do every job they are given. They have bulging green eyes the size of tennis balls, batlike ears and instead of a proper clothing they wear pillow cases. If their master gives them a real dress, this means that they are sent away, therefore taking on some dress is the most fearful event for a good, honest elf. They are unconditionally loyal to their masters and this feeling replaces self-consciousness and identity in their case. If they make a mistake, forget to do something or dare to think that their masters were unkind to them they immediately punish themselves by hitting their heads with a jug or bumping it against the wall or a table. Working for a wage is a dishonest behaviour in their conception, therefore Hermione’s steady endeavour to organise the House-Elf Liberation Front (in the fourth volume) proves to be a total failure, the elves themselves get horrified on hearing her ideas.

A rich variety of the comic, humorous and ironic elements are to be found in the Potter stories. The writer presents the society and its institutions in the world of the magicians from a satirical point of view, in fact she criticises institutionalism itself and the mechanism of publicity. The employees of the Ministry of Magic generally approach the problems in a half-hearted and obscure way, their measurements prove that they don’t actually want to solve them but rather prefer opportunism and the observance of the real or unreal requirements of the public opinion. In the fourth part Cornelius Fudge proves to be a narrow-minded, short-sighted, coward and noxious politician. Mass media and publicity are characterised by emptiness, bluff and scoop-hunting. The trouble-maker Rita Skeeter, the reporter of the Daily Prophet is the embodiment of the careless, sensationalist way of newspaper writing. Gilderoy Lockheart, the star of the media is the final product of the stupid, ridiculous star-creating activity of the show-business and in the same time illustrates how easily all kinds of naive audiences can be deceived. He is a sort of modern miles gloriosus who uses very efficiently the strategy and tactics of snobbism and bluff. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for the time of a single school-year Lockheart is accepted as a teacher in the school of magicians. There – but only there – he finally fails. His failure in fact is an ancient element many times appearing in all kinds of tales. Clowns, buffoons, black lambs have always been comic figures who have big mouth, bluster, saw the air, fall down and are finally cast away. (Lockheart literally comes down on his nose first during his boastful fighting with Snape and then, at the end of the story when he steals Ron Weasley’s magic wand to enchant the boys with it, but the wand, about which everybody knows that it never works, blows up in his hand.)

The ghosts living in the castle-school also belong to the world of “low” comedy, of the burlesque. The writer’s playful fantasy reshapes the elements of the ghost stories, horrors and gothic novels, turns them into a hyperbolic parody and presents them in combinations full of black humour. In the school every house has its own ghost, and every ghost has his or her own appearance and story of being deprived of life. The ghost of the Gryffindor Tower is called Nearly Headless Nick whose venerable head is kept only by an inch of skin. Nick considers this an undeserved punishment, a painfully transitional state, a sinister stigma which makes an outcast of him. He tries in vain to enter the association called Headless Hunt because the lucky and scornful members accept only those who were properly beheaded.

Peeves, the poltergeist, a buffo-like, wild descendant of Puck continuously ravages in every nook and corner of the house. He seems to be present everywhere and all the time, he flies or tumbles in the air with a terrible speed. It is the very essence of his character to tease, to make trouble, to stir panic. He misleads the freshly arrived youngsters, throws waste-paper baskets, walking sticks and balloons filled with water at their heads, readily plays the role of the informer telling the caretaker what the pupils are doing, writes dirty words on the blackboard and mocks at Harry singing loudly and with a wide grin on his face: “Oh, Potter, you rotter, oh what have you done?”

Moaning Myrtle is the ghost of a fat, pimply girl with thick spectacles. She doesn’t really remember the circumstances of her death. Fifty years earlier, she happened to be in the bathroom and suddenly caught sight of a large, yellow pair of eyes. Then everything was over. (She saw the basilisk’s eyes.) Later Myrtle came back just to scare the other girls who used to mock at her. By the time Harry and his friends become students in the Hogwart school Myrtle is spending her days lonely, floating on the toilet bowl, picks her pimples, sometimes cries a little, and, when she really gets bored, jumps into the plug-hole. If she finds somebody willing to listen she starts lamenting in a dramatic way (her life used to be full of suffering in this school, and she isn’t left alone in her death either, if she weren’t dead anyway she would surely commit suicide). However, she likes Harry, she is peeping when the boy is having a bath, helps him along at his trial at the lake and offers him half of the toilet in case he died and became a ghost too.

In the second volume all the ghosts of the school gather for a colourfully morbid Deathday Party to celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of the execution of Nearly Headless Nick. The reunion takes place in the dungeons and Harry and his friends are also invited. In the room is as cold as in a freezer and the menu contains rotten fish and maggoty haggis while the evil, grinning Peeves dressed in an orange clown-cap and a very ugly bow-tie offers them a bowl of peanuts covered in fungus. Thirty sows serve as musical instruments and the guests find delight in the polo match of the headless knights who are riding their horses and pass the ball with their heads kept in their hands.

The sick playfulness of the buffo elements, the black humour and the ghost stories don’t play a decisive role in the Potter novels, nevertheless they make it evident that there is a gap between Rowling’s romance and the satire. Satirical elements are to be found in the novels but they lack the complete, real, traditional features of the literary genre called satire. They remain a colourful, comic mixture, a world of fantasy which knows nothing about the restriction of the ideas.

On the other hand real criticism remains out of question because (as I have already mentioned) the plot mostly takes place in one single site, that of the Hogwart castle housing the school for wizards and witches. And this alma mater is just a larger family, an idyllic microworld, in which everybody is accepted. For Harry it offers infinitely more than his own uncle and aunt. In every September he leaves behind him the alien world of the Muggles and comes back to a community where he is loved and welcomed.

The school is well kept in the firm hands of the headmaster-magician, who evidently has a charisma, and is helped along by the deputy headmistress, the resolute, courageous, severe yet warm-hearted Minerva McGonagall, who has square glasses and is the teacher of Transfiguration. (All the important characters in the Potter novels, like Dumbledore and Harry himself seem to have spectacles.) Even professor Snape who can be unfair and one-sided when teaching, and hates Harry turns out to deserve the manager’s trust and the children are following a wrong trace when they think that he is a villain.

Group behaviour also proves to be more effective within the walls of the school than its counterpart in the real, human world, while the students are highly individualised characters and most of them are utterly attractive. (The only exception is Harry’s enemy, Draco Malfoy, whose role is to offer opportunities to less important conflicts besides the main, central conflict in the story.) In fact, the evil always comes from the outer world and it is always skilfully disguised. Scabbers, Ron Weasley’s beloved pet rat, the timid, pale, easily blushing, stammering professor Quirrel, who teaches Defence Against the Dark Arts, Mad-Eye Moody, the terribly grotesque, famous auror finally all turn out to be totally different characters.

In the Hogwart school the playful, mythological construction of the wizards’ and witches’ everyday life gains colourful richness and verisimilitude through the minute description of the details. When the children come to school for the first time a magic cap enrols them into one of the four houses. Entrance to the living rooms and bedrooms is possible only for those, who know the password. On uttering it, the fat lady dressed in pink or the knight, who is always ready for a little fighting (he is a parody of the knight in the heroic epic) draws aside and on the place of the painting appears a door.

As an introduction to the study of Transfiguration professor McGonagall transforms her desk into a pig and then the pig becomes a desk again. However, this is a very difficult subject for the young students. It needs long time to be able to transform a match into a needle and unpleasant surprises are not uncommon at the beginning.

Preparing magic potions isn’t much easier either. The young magicians and sorceresses have to bend over the boiling kettle for long years and have to practice the cleaning, chopping and stirring of the powdered root of asphodel, bezoar, monkshood, wolfsbane until they become reliable experts. Once Hermione happens to put cat’s hair into the brew of transformation instead of human hair and she suddenly gets ears and a tail like that of the cats. She has to spend long weeks in the confinement of the infirmary until Madam Pomfrey can cure her.

The students are taught the magical art of Divination in a dim hall where thick curtains are drown across the windows, the air is full of rich fragrances and the whole place is lit by a weird, red light. They begin their studies only in the third year by telling fortune from the tea-leaves, then comes palmistry and the study of the fire omens and finally they learn how to handle the crystal globe. The teacher, Mrs. Sybill Trelawney is able to create a ghostly atmosphere. She puts both her hands on her breast and the children get terribly scared when her eyes go wide and she screams as she is watching the omens while the rings are twinkling and rattling on her fingers.

The History of Magic proves to be the most boring subject. It is taught by professor Binns, the only real ghost among the teachers. One evening he died in his sleep and the next day he went to his classes as a ghost.

The description of school-life is full of comic or at least humorous, playful elements, the writer finds delight in offering us a detailed presentation of the magic world endowing like this the reader with the feeling of being there, at home, of being one of the characters. Repetition, reiteration, resumption all serve this purpose.

The methods used by the genre literature also have an outstanding role in the novel. Concentration, humour and typifying are all present when the writer creates her characters, for example the students, or the members of the Weasley family who show warmth and care for the orphan Harry. Mr. Weasley is special for his great interest in the technical achievements of the Muggles. While the other magicians speak scornfully about the escapators he admires cars, plugs and generally speaking all kinds of inventions. He is happy if he can wear jeans instead of a gown and finds delight in going camping, setting up a tent with his own two hands and cooking his meal on a real camp-fire. Percy Weasley, who is older than Harry is the pride of the family. He seems to be prefect, he is the best student in the school and a future employee of the Ministry of Magic. He is rumoured to polish his prefect’s badge daily and he is deeply involved in the study of the book entitled A study of the Hogwart Prefects, and their later careers. He gives orders to the first year students and writes secret reports to the Ministry of Magic about the standardisation of the bottom of the kettles in spectacular seclusion.

The Weasley twins, Fred and George are habitual enemies of all tops, eager-beavers and disciplinarians, they are real trials both for their parents and for their teachers. Percy’s precious badge can never be safe, they keep stealing and enchanting it. They are characterised by the eternal elements of the vitality present in almost every school-boy: breach of discipline, jokes, cheating. They never stop being mischievous, they blow up, transform, enchant everything, give Ton-Tongue Toffee to the others and change the real magic wand into a false one which turns into a rubber mouse when touched. However they are not without talent. They are among the best Quidditch players, they are good actors, tell good jokes, if they are needed in trouble they prove to be reliable, and, although nobody knows how it happens, they finally get reasonably good marks at the exams.

Ron Weasley is the youngest of the Weasley boys and he seems to be sentenced to stay back. He has five brothers and he feels that nothing new can happen to him. Even if he became the best pupil in the school, this would be something natural, as two of his brothers have already been. If he achieves less, people will advice him to follow the example of his eminent brothers. All his belongings are second-hand objects, he wears his elder brothers’ clothes and gowns, uses their books and magic wands, in one word everything comes down to him as a heritage left by the others. He bears his fate with a lot of humour and sometimes with a mild melancholy and no wonder that he sees in the orphan, oppressed Harry a fellow sufferer. They become friends at the very beginning of their school-life and their friendship proves to be a durable one.

The third member of the trio, Hermione Granger is a top student too. She always carries heaps of books with her, and not only knows everything, but also, in a very annoying way, she knows everything better than the others. She gets one hundred and twenty points at the exam and has the whole history of magic in her finger tips. Ron Weasley never stops teasing and bullying her, but in the same time respects her too, because her knowledge many times saves the boys from trouble. However her behaviour sometimes proves to be less than perfect, she many times hesitates whether to observe the rules or to cast them away. This is all Harry’s fault as he somehow always gets involved in dangerous affairs and the faithful Hermione (what else could she do?) helps him. Otherwise she is a real woman: cautious, sensitive, tactful, a smoother, full of common sense and matter of factness, clever and reliable, a real lady who is always able to find the good solution. (The writer makes a hint that later on her feminine features will gain more importance. When they are already at the fourth year of their studies, on the occasion of the Yule Ball the face of the boys fall on seeing her as a beautiful, radiant young girl accompanied by the world-wide famous sportsman.)

 

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Last, but not at all least, let’s mention another important, traditional literary genre, whose rules basically determine the character of Rowling’s novels: the thriller, the detective stories, the secret-stories. All the books written about Harry Potter are in fact good thrillers. The plot is woven in the same way in each of a them: some villains are ready to commit a terrible, mysterious crime and Harry, Ron and Hermione decide to disclose the secret and not to let the evil doers achieve their aim. Who has raised the Philosopher’s Stone from the Gringotts bank? Surely it was hidden in the school, but where? Who has opened the Chamber of Secrets, and who attacks the pupils one after the other? Where does the wicked Basilisk live, the snake, that is able to kill you with a glance of its eyes? How could Sirius Black, the notorious villain escape from Azkaban, the world’s best guarded magic prison, and how did he get within the walls of the school? Who dropped Harry’s name into the cap giving him the chance to be present at the Triwizard Tournament? Does he want him to perish in one of the dangerous trials, and if so, is he also planning to contribute? The three amateur detectives overhear conversations, enter the teachers’ lodgings, sneak across secret doors, dare to go to places which are forbidden for the pupils, wrap themselves into the Invisibility Cloak, use magic map, in a word they do their best to put together the small pieces of mosaics of the facts and to unfold the secret.

In the classical thriller it is the role of the mate of the great detective (for example Dr. Watson) to mix up the traces, to follow a wrong path and be suspicious of innocent people. In Rowling’s novels this function is not given to a separate character but to the three children themselves. While finding out more and more, they finally never come really close to the truth, when they learn it they are shocked, and by that time Harry’s life is in real danger. They are not able to comprehend the evil strategy and in the same time they are mistaken about the person, Voldemort’s agent too. The heap of the facts are organised into a logical order by the story teller and at the end of the story we respectfully watch how the apparently minor events gain importance one after the other. Let’s have an example from the first volume entitled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. In the eleventh chapter, during the Quidditch match Harry’s broom goes mad, it wants to throw him down. Evidently it was enchanted by some evil force and for the children it is just as evident, that Snape is the evil-doer. They don’t like him anyway, and isn’t he craning his neck, gazing at Harry and murmuring something continuously? Luckily Hermione is present, and elbowing her way through the crowd she rushes to Snape accidentally knocking down in her haste the miserable little Quirrel who lands in the aisle. She sets the edge of the teacher’s gown on fire and while Snape is busy with putting off the blaze Harry’s broom becomes obedient again, he is able to continue the match. However, the children are wrong, the nasty Snape is not guilty. On the contrary, he wanted to stop somebody’s murderous attempt. But whose? The key of the mystery is hidden in an apparently unimportant, minor event, in Quirrel’s falling down. The little man who would be the last one to stir anybody’s suspicion is in fact Voldemort’s agent.

Not only the children’s but also the reader’s attention is skilfully driven towards misunderstanding the situations, the writer pulls the string in such a way that truth remains concealed and the real villains seem to be totally harmless beings. In the fairy tales the change of shape, form or size is something common and this makes possible for the writer to turn our suspicion away from the right path. In Harry Potter and the Prison of Azkaban nobody would dream that Ron’s old rat can do anything wrong but in reality it is a wicked wizard while Sirius, who is said to be a murderer is in fact innocent. When trying to solve the mysteries in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire we think that we are quite right when we think, that Mad-Eye Moody, the famous auror can by no means be guilty. Well, we are right, but we don’t know that the real Moody is lying unconsciously during the whole school year in a distant corner of the castle while nobody stops one of Voldemort’s faithful agents to play the role of the real teacher after he drank the magic Polyjuice Potion and by doing so changed his appearance. In the same volume we find a very clever, witty way of revealing Voldemort’s actual aims. In the first chapter the writer seems to be generous enough to show us the real path, only to conceal it ingeniously again during the following chapters. Meditating over Harry’s being chosen in a mysterious way in the Triwizard Tournament we could think that his anonymous enemy only wants to help the dragon or the giant squid. But the real, satanic idea is, that Harry should be helped to win the competition and the Voldemort-boy, Moody-Crouch actively engages in this task. The false Moody has transformed the cup into a portkey, so when Harry will hold it in his hands he will immediately be dragged away from the safety given to him by Dumbledore and will be carried to the Master who needs him alive, at least until his blood will help along his rebirth. And then Voldemort will defeat all his enemies and will become the ruler of the world again.

The novels written about Harry Potter became the most popular best-sellers of our times, hundreds of thousands of children, and not only, were taught by them how great delight reading can be. They were published in two hundred countries (among them in Israel, Japan, Indonesia, China, Chorea, South Africa), on thirty five different languages, in millions of copies. When searching on the net in October 2001 one could find two hundred seventy thousand nine hundred and ten websites in English. Harry’s young fans keep organising Harry Potter Camps, ride on broomsticks during their Quidditch matches and even their grannies love these tales and read them sitting on a bench in the park or while riding on the underground or the tram, but the truth is that sometimes they hide the book behind a newspaper. Religious fundamentalists attack them vehemently and say that by hailing occultism they present a great and real danger as they revive a “modern and eternal gnosticism”. The world of business immediately realised the great possibilities lying in the popularity of the novels and many people make much money out of exhibitions, clubs, clothing, sport facilities, toys, Potter encyclopaedias, magic text-books and other products of Rowling’s rich fantasy.

When taking into account the causes of this enormous success (now let’s think only in the terms of literature) we have to think about more than one element.

First of all, the stories are well compiled thrillers.

On the other hand it may well happen that nowadays, when most of the literary products have a self-reflecting character, this traditional, archaic way of narration which uses the omniscient point of view touches us through its freshness and novelty. While telling the story the writer herself always remains in the background, she focuses on the episodes which build up the story and puts aside the means of the provocative, revolutionary strategy of communication.

Some may find delight in the description of the school-life and the humorous events, others, who are suffering because of the feeling of estrangement so characteristic of our age may turn with painful nostalgia towards the larger community in Hogward and the smaller one formed by Harry, Ron and Hermione.

We may value the warm serenity and the more trivial, elementary comic of burlesque just as the almost morbid black humour. We may happily reveal the ancient, yet still very strong archetypes and way of narration which have always been present in the great, triumphant romance: the eternal Evil which finds its embodiment in one single person, fights, trials, heroism, sacrifice, loneliness and weakness, that finally turns out to be victorious strength, the desire that finds its statement in the vision of the transitory rule of the demonic and the final victory of innocence. We may turn our attention towards the scenes describing actual fighting as they are really full of tensity and become more and more monumental and bloody as we advance from the first novel towards the fourth one. And we would be right if we thought that the great archetypes of the romance would remain flat and mere conventional elements without the boundless, extensive richness of the world-creating process which in the same time is full of humour. The writer takes to pieces magic traditions and builds up a new, playful mythology endowing like this the Great Romance with a modern authenticity.

Of course we don’t have to analyse the novel from different point of views in order to find delight in Rowling’s unique imagination and radiant humour which, following the tradition of the English Romance set themselves free from the clutch of gravitation and fly, swish, flutter, do spectacular bends, turnings, nose-diving and tumbling in the air.

It would be wonderful if all best-sellers which conquer armies of readers and create new cults not speaking about stirring business-life would have just as much genuine literary value as Rowling’s four novels have. By choosing as her hero Harry Potter, a thin, spectacled boy who has a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead as the sign of special talents and who, in the same time is a real friend, an enthusiastic Quidditch player and a faithful student of his school, the writer offers us the eternal tale of the fight and victory of the pure and innocent, in one word a triumphant romance.