Archive of Our Own

The difference between a madman and an artist is the label he puts on his flights of fancy. An artist’s fiction, after all, is nothing more than a madman’s reality.

So begins one entry in the personal diary of Henri die Heilige, a little-discussed but highly-prolific author of children’s fantasy literature. While he found moderate financial success through his writing, his talent was eclipsed in the public eye by the tragedy and scandal that engulfed the rest of his family. Henri, still a young man at the time of the most publicized incident, stayed steadfast in his silence about the matter, and led a quiet, solitary life even after the publicity died down. His books began appearing on shelves seemingly overnight, and with the die Heilige name long out of the papers, they sold modestly.

The low profile of die Heilige’s works has resulted in a dearth of scholarly analysis on them. The situation isn’t aided by the fact that many of die Heilige’s personal journals and letters are lost, destroyed in a fire that consumed the home where he lived with his sister only a year before his death by a mysterious illness. However, the documents that have survived, along with die Heilige’s impressive body of writing, warrants academic discussion. Not merely because of his talent, but also due to the fact that much of it suggests a personal life that was just as complex and troubled as the rest of the author’s family.

When I first took it upon myself to research die Heilige’s life, there were many potential angles I could have taken, and indeed I initially approached my work with a focus on the die Heilige family’s history of mental illness in mind. Given the quote with which I began this essay, it is clear that die Heilige used his writing, at least in part, as a vehicle with which to express and navigate the complexities of his own mind. As I delved deeper into his personal writings, however, several elements stood out to me. Details which, on their own, may seem innocuous, but when taken as a whole suggested to me that Henri die Heilige was struggling with more than a fractured family.

It is important to note that die Heilige never married, nor did he ever make mention of taking a woman as a lover. While it has become something of a trend for overzealous academics to ascribe homosexuality to all manner of historical figures, I firmly believe that die Heilige had a significant, if not necessarily exclusive, attraction to men. Among so many mentions of guilt, his “secret,” and desires “too sinister to put in writing,” a particular recurring figure in both his personal and professional writing seems tied into each of these things.

A shallow analysis may argue that this figure is a fictionalized interpretation of a real-life discrete male lover (or simply an object of die Heilige’s affection). However, extensive research and analysis has led me to a different conclusion; I believe that this “strange boy” – as die Heilige was wont to refer to him in his journals – is an anthropomorphic representation of die Heilige’s own homosexual desires, and the boy’s erratic, manipulative, and destructive behavior symbolic of how die Heilige’s guilt over his supposedly unnatural desires had the potential to harm his relationships with his own family members, as well as his own self-image and resultant mental health.

It is not unheard of for the mentally ill to imagine their ailments as constructed alter-egos, or imaginary friends, to use a less professional term. Interviews with sufferers of anorexia nervosa and depression have revealed an occasional tendency to characterize these diseases as separate entities from the patients themselves. It results from an understandable coping tactic combining the disbelief that one’s mind could betray one so easily, and the natural human desire to pass blame onto someone – or ‘someone’ – else.

While I, personally, do not believe that die Heilige’s sexuality was an illness, the era and culture in which he was raised makes it understandable that he might have considered it to be so. His debut novel, A Boy’s Midnight Journey, makes reference to a “certain boy[‘s]…problematic condition,” which is “thought to be the work of the devil, by many.”

In this case, the title boy’s condition is the ability to speak with the dead at night, but strange ‘conditions’ and secrets that the rest of society cannot understand are a common motif in die Heilige’s works. The protagonist of Treasure beneath the Sea, for example, turns into a mermaid every night at sunset, and must hide this secret from her townspeople, lest she be hunted down and killed for her supposedly monstrous nature. A side plot in Vain Glory features a boy who, one night a week, receives love letters which he believes to be from the moon. He cannot tell anyone this, for fear that no one could understand the true love he and the moon share. (The significance of this detail to my argument should be blindingly obvious, and thus needs no further elaboration.)

But why the night? Why do all these secrets come out at night? The night is a time of mystery, of the unknown and the supernatural – but it is also, according to die Heilige, the time when the “strange boy” comes out to play. The first reference to the boy in what survives of die Heilige’s journals is a retroactive one. In an entry dated several years before his death, die Heilige reminisces:

Lord, I can hardly remember a time when he wasn’t with me – with us. I can recall with painful vividness the first time I heard his voice, however. A warm night, the moon ducking demurely behind waves of clouds, one sleepless boy, and…the voice. Clear as day behind my sister’s bedroom door. It didn’t belong to Goldia, nor was it mature enough to belong to our mother or father. I thought that perhaps some villain had stolen into our home with wicked designs, but…the things the voice discussed made no sense. I suppose they were riddles, but none that I could make head or tail of.

The strange boy is frequently described as loving riddles or jokes (though die Heilige at one point mentions that they are thoroughly unamusing). The boy’s status as a riddling, comic figure suggests that several characters in die Heilige’s books could be modeled off of him, and an examination of these characters reveals further insight into die Heilige’s views on the boy as something seductive, yet simultaneously dangerous.

The King Thief features a scheming, traitorous jester, who is introduced speaking to the young prince protagonist with the line, “'Will you walk into my chamber?' said the jester to the boy." This is a clear allusion to Mary Howitt’s now-classic poem The Spider and the Fly, published several decades earlier. The poem is a cautionary tale, warning its audience of children not to be taken in by sweet, seductive words. Die Heilige’s use of the word ‘chamber’ brings to mind the second stanza of the poem, which evokes more disturbing, darkly erotic undertones to an adult reader:

“Will you rest upon my little bed?” said the Spider to the Fly.

“There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin,

And if you like to rest awhile, I'll snugly tuck you in!”

“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “for I've often heard it said,

They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed!”

Another character who evokes the strange boy’s mannerisms appears in A Boy’s Midnight Journey, in the form of a “demon in a radiant youth’s skin.” This demon comes to the unnamed protagonist’s bedside and offers him a deal: The demon will take his soul in return for silencing the ghastly voices which torment him.

It is interesting to note that die Heilige makes several mentions of a ‘deal’ of his own in his personal journals, once referred to specifically as a deal “with that wretched boy.” I admit, it is unclear how this presence of a supposed deal fits with my argument that the strange boy is purely a construction of die Heilige’s imagination. Perhaps it refers to a sort of emotional compromise that die Heilige made with his own desires/'the boy' regarding his decisions in life, but otherwise, I’m afraid it stands as a bit of an enigma.

Henri was not the only member of his family effected by the strange boy’s presence, as it were. The boy is frequently mentioned in the context of Goldia die Heilige, Henri’s sister. Her relationship with Henri was a complicated one. Henri’s early journals indicate that he was dismissive of his sister, not uncommon for young siblings. Later on, however, dismissiveness turned to outright resentment, as Goldia’s erratic behavior alienated her brother, while at the same time drawing the attentions of her mother and father entirely on her.

There is a several year period in which die Heilige is entirely silent on the subject of his sister, aside from one mention that she is recuperating in a place that will “do her good.” The responsibility of being Goldia’s only living family member, however, finally weighs too heavily on his shoulders, prompting him to make arrangements to transfer Goldia out of the psychiatric institution in which she had been residing. On the night she moves into his home, die Heilige makes a puzzling remark:

I thought she was safe. I thought she was free. And yet, he is not at my bedside, tonight…rather, I hear his voice in her room.

I’ve made a grave mistake.

Clearly, die Heilige believes his secret poses a danger to his sister’s health. Given her fragile mental state, it is reasonable that he wishes to spare her the shock she would suffer should she find out, as well as avoid potential contempt or disgust from his last living family. In the same entry, he continues:

I have resolved that she shall never have to suffer at that boy’s hands again. I’m sure he will ask more from me in return for missing out on her, but it is a necessary sacrifice. I’ve abandoned her for too long, and my eye can no longer be turned and blind.

Forgive me, sister. Mother isn’t the only one with a knack for making deals.

The years after that blessed the siblings with relative peace, if the limited journals remaining are any indication. Their relationship apparently improved along with Goldia’s health, and they lived a quiet life, their curtains firmly closed off to the rest of the world. Apparently, Goldia shared a love of literature with her brother, even if she wasn't so fond of producing it. That isn't to say she wrote nothing, however. A short poem written on a separate piece of paper and tucked into the back of one of Henri's journals must have been written by her, as her handwriting is distinctive, and her style a deep contrast to her brother's.

Three princesses, a prince, and a jester,

Make three too many for a happy home.

Three were cut down, and one rose from their graves,

And the three could live on alone.

Mentions of the strange boy grow fewer and fewer, almost trailing off entirely, until one alarming entry in Henri's diary, dated the night before the fire – apparently a freak accident – that destroyed their home.

His breath is cold at the back of my neck.

I suppose I couldn’t stave off my promise forever.

While both Goldia and Henri escaped the fire unharmed, few details can be found regarding their lives after the incident. Only one diary entry remains from this time period, a week before Henri passed away on his sickbed. It is short but chilling, a sorrowful reminder that die Heilige expected damnation waiting for him in the afterlife:

I suppose he is waiting for me, beyond this world. I’ll be in his realm, then – and fully at his mercy.

It is too late for regrets.

I wonder if I’ll meet my sister there, one day.