The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart by John Amos Comenius

First published:Labirynt světa a ráj srdce, 1631 (English translation, 1901)

Edition(s) used:The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart, translated by Matthew Spinka. Chicago: National Union of Czechoslovak Protestants in America, 1942

Genre(s): Novella

Subgenre(s): Allegory; autobiography; mysticism

Core issue(s): Awakening; life; morality; mysticism; self-knowledge; wisdom

Principal characters

• A pilgrim, the narrator
• Mr. Searchall, also known as Mr. Ubiquitous, the first man whom the pilgrim meets
• Queen Vanity, also known as Queen Wisdom or Queen of the World
• Delusion, interpreter to the Queen of the World
• King Solomon, suitor of the Queen of the World

Overview

The narrator of The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart begins by giving the reasons for undertaking his journey. He tells his readers that he has reached the age at which he can distinguish good from evil and wants to find his own place in the world. Therefore, he has decided to investigate social orders and professions to decide which one he should join. With this realistic rationale, the journey begins, and it turns immediately to allegory. The pilgrim meets a talkative man who asks him where he is bound. After learning that the pilgrim is setting out to learn about the world, this man, whose name turns out to be Mr. Searchall and who is also known as Mr. Ubiquitous, advises the traveler that the world is a labyrinth and that he will soon be lost without a guide. Mr. Ubiquitous identifies himself as a subject of Vanity, Queen of the World, known to him as Wisdom.

The pilgrim and Mr. Ubiquitous are joined by another man, who says that it is his job to explain the world, as it is the job of Ubiquitous to act as guide. He says that he is interpreter to the Queen of the World, and he gives his own name as Delusion. The guide puts a bridle in the mouth of the pilgrim to keep him from turning back, and the interpreter places spectacles before the pilgrim’s eyes. The spectacles make everything appear the opposite of what it really is. Clearly, Ubiquitous represents the force that drives people through a vain world, while Delusion prevents them from seeing clearly. The pilgrim, however, is able to see around the spectacles, so that he sees the world as it really is.

The bridled, spectacled pilgrim and his two companions enter the labyrinthine city of the world. The pilgrim sees the confusion of the marketplace. He views married couples and enters into the married state himself, only to lose his wife and suffer sorrow. He goes among the working classes and finds their lives wanting. He meets members of the learned class and finds their lives vain and disputatious. He finds philosophers to be hypocritical and alchemists to be working fraudulent experiments. The Rosicrucian mystics are no better than the philosophers or alchemists.

Among the professions, doctors and lawyers practice self-seeking and self-defeating occupations. Among the religious, people representing the pagans, Jews, and Muslims are all found wanting. The Christians are in disagreement and disorder. Members of the governing class are given to misgovernment and the pursuit of honors. The military life is barbarous and pitiless, and it ends in mutilation and painful death. Knights are arrogant and merciless to anyone who fails to show them deference. The folly of the journalists is symbolized by people blowing whistles in one another’s ears.

The pilgrim goes through the Castle of Fortune and examines the lives of the rich, the lovers of pleasure, and the famous of the world. When he finds no value in any of these, he begins to argue with Ubiquitous and Delusion. They respond by bringing him before the queen in the Castle of Wisdom, where they charge him with being opinionated and unwilling to learn from his experiences in the world. While the pilgrim is in the castle, the biblical King Solomon arrives to take Queen Wisdom (Queen Vanity) in marriage. After seeing how the world is really run, Solomon begins to cry out against the vanity and deceptions of the world. The king tears a veil away from the face of the queen, revealing her as hideous and covered with scabs. However, Solomon himself is deluded by the love of his own show of wisdom, and he ultimately submits to the judgment of the world. The king’s followers, who are identified as Moses and the greatest Hebrew prophets, are scattered, captured, and put to death.

After the episode with Solomon, the pilgrim is filled with a desire to run away from the world. He makes his way back to his own home, where pictures on his walls representing prudence, humility, justice, and other virtues have been cut or broken. During his stay in the world, the virtues that were within him have been damaged. However, the pilgrim receives Christ as his guest, implying the need to draw into oneself and to accept Christ into one’s own heart to be saved. After receiving direction from Christ to avoid the glories and ambitions of the world, the pilgrim sees the pictures of virtues on the walls of his home restored. Christ replaces the yoke of ubiquitous worldliness and the spectacles of delusion with a Christian yoke and lenses, and the pilgrim sees things as they are. The rims of the eyeglasses are identified as the Word of God and the lenses as the Holy Spirit. With this new vision, the pilgrim sees the invisible church of true Christianity, which is separate from the false church of many who profess the faith. He sees the twofold inner light of the true Christians, the light of reason and the light of faith, guided by the Holy Spirit. Finally, the pilgrim is received into God’s own and confesses that he has found the glory of God after being led astray.

Christian Themes

The theme of the city as a model for the world is an ancient one in Christianity. In the second part of De civitate Dei (413-427 c.e.; The City of God, 1610), Saint Augustine described two cities, an earthly one and a heavenly one. The earthly city, associated historically with Rome and metaphorically with the world itself, is for Augustine associated with sin and the present life, while the heavenly city is the place of salvation and eternal life. For John Amos Comenius, the world is a labyrinthine city, containing all of the vices and problems of human society.

Comenius brings this theme of the world as city together with the Christian allegory of the guided spiritual pilgrimage. Because the spiritual pilgrimage through the world involves reflections on world relations, this type of allegory is often strongly tinged with social satire in the work of Comenius and in that of other authors. William Langland’s Piers Plowman (c. 1362, c. 1377, c. 1393) tells of the dream vision of the narrator, who is guided by Piers to view the lives of allegorical characters. In Dante’s La divinia commedia (c. 1320; The Divine Comedy, 1802), the poet Dante undertakes an allegorical pilgrimage through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, guided first by the Roman poet Vergil and then by Beatrice. John Bunyan, in The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678, 1694), wrote the allegory that comes closest to that of the Czech writer Comenius. In Bunyan’s work, the central character makes his way from the City of Destruction, or earth, to the Celestial City of Zion, or Heaven. Many of the characters in Bunyan’s work, such as the false Mr. Worldly Wiseman, are reminiscent of characters in The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart.

The theme of contempt for a vain world may be found throughout Christian literature, appearing in the Bible, most notably in Ecclesiastes. This theme is often joined with the idea that the true Kingdom of God is to be found within an individual’s own soul or heart. Written during the Thirty Years’ War, when disagreement between Catholics and Protestants had resulted in devastating warfare, The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart was a particularly poignant turning away from a troubled world to a mystical source of inner peace.

Sources for Further Study

Doležel, Lubomir. Narrative Modes in Czech Literature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973. A collection of essays on Czech writers, beginning with Comenius and ending with the modern novelist Milan Kundera. This is useful for those who want to understand Comenius within the context of Czech literature.

Murphy, Daniel. Comenius: A Critical Reassessment of His Life and Work. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1995. A study of Comenius that offers a brief biography and an extensive consideration of the Czech author’s work and faith.

Spinka, Matthew. John Amos Comenius: That Incomparable Moravian. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943. A biography that covers the life and works of Comenius.