Off Centre.

16 Yet, as Miss Malin informs her listeners, Seraphina fails in his mission. He realises that he is unable to create the being he desires Calypso to be. Whereas Count August gives up and shuns what was supposed to become his masterpiece, Kasparson continues pursuing his own personal goals of inventing himself without any scruples. He reveals that he murdered the very Cardinal whom we have so far taken him to be to be able to take his place.[1]Sara Stambaugh considers Kasparson Cardinal Hamilcar von Sehestedt’s alter ego (cf. 88-89) but the text makes clear that these two characters cannot be mistaken for one (Dinesen 176). Again it appears as if there were a firm identity category to be established, that of being someone else, “the Cardinal.” But “the Cardinal” for Kasparson is not so much a personality he wishes to assume as it is an image in the eyes of others. For all he ever desired in life was for the ordinary people to worship him: “If they [the peasants and fishermen] would have made me their master I would have served them all my life” (179). As these people prefer the Cardinal to him, Kasparson thinks that he has to become the Cardinal in order to win the people’s admiration. He realises that they will never admire him as long as he remains the Cardinal’s attendant.

17 Given the different frames within the story, it seems feasible that someone can literally take somebody else’s place as Kasparson remarks to Miss Malin: “Not by the face shall the man be known, but by the mask” (179). He is convinced that “at the day of judgement” God will not be able to call him a bad actor or condemn him for the crime he committed (179). Retrospectively, he is convinced that he has managed to create his most perfect illusion, his best performance of all times. He believes that the people, who admired him as the Cardinal, without knowing that he was simply the Cardinal’s servant, will recall that there was a “white light” over the boat in which Kasparson-as-Cardinal braved the flood with them (179). In this way, encompassed by a (genuine?) halo, the Cardinal turns into a saintly figure without anybody knowing that the person they saw was not the Cardinal but, in fact, his murderer, and – which is more disturbing – without Kasparson seeming to mind. Once again, “identity” seems to be not only a matter of invention but in terms of its very existence also a matter of indifference. The beginning of the story foreshadows the truth of Kasparson’s idea that it is “by the mask” that these characters will be “known,” not by any identity markers of their own, in Kasparson’s case not even that most basic of identity markers, his name: “After the flood it was said by many that he [the Cardinal] had been seen to walk upon the waves” (122). “Truth” itself becomes marginal, a matter of indifference as Kasparson knows that he will probably not survive the night and that his creation will not in fact have changed the way in which the peasants and fishermen have always perceived the person called Kasparson.

18 Three out of the four companions tell stories to communicate to their listeners the way they perceive – or wish to perceive – their or other people’s former lives. Whereas the actor does not at first reveal his true intentions, Miss Malin makes it clear from the beginning that she believes she has contributed to having created her goddaughter Calypso. She tells Maersk, a young man who has also had the experience of having been the “creation” of another person: “I am making [Calypso], as much as my old friend Baron Gersdorff ever made you” (150). The truth these words hold is illustrated by Calypso’s reaction to parts of the story her godmother recounts in her place. When Miss Malin tells her audience about Calypso’s decision to “cut off her long hair, and to chop off her young breast” in order to “mutilate and desexualize herself,” Calypso “began to listen with a new kind of interest, as if she herself was hearing the tale for the first time” (155; Stambaugh 87). At this point of the story, Miss Malin seems to allow her fancy full flight and starts embellishing Calypso’s story on a grand scale. By modifying her past, Miss Malin effectively takes part in “making” and shaping the Calypso the others become acquainted with. In doing so, Miss Malin does not merely modify and create Calypso’s past, but also shapes her present and future.

19 As Miss Malin states, Calypso “had to create herself” (154). Although Miss Malin emphasises this, it becomes obvious that by telling her story it is Calypso’s godmother who really creates, maybe even invents, Calypso. Miss Malin recounts that Calypso is not able to “create” herself and to free herself from her uncle until she enters a room with “a long looking glass on the wall” (155). It is here that she recognises her own beauty. On seeing the reflection of her half-naked body along with that of a painting showing nymphs, fauns and satyrs in the mirror, Calypso learns to acknowledge her own ”loveliness” and reject her uncle’s rules (cf. 156). Miss Malin tells her listeners that

[…] what surprised [Calypso] and overwhelmed her was the fact that these strong and lovely beings were obviously concentrating their attention upon following, adoring, and embracing young girls of her own age, and of her own figure and face, that the whole thing was done in their honour and inspired by their charms. (156)

20 With regard to this scene, Aiken stresses that “unlike the Lacanian construction of the mirror stage, Calypso’s jubilant self-recognition leads not to fragmentation, alienation and acceptance of the law of the father as the price of identity but to ‘a great harmony’” (106). Calypso’s discovery convinces her that she does not have to accept her fate at Angelshorn but that “she [has] friends in the world” (Dinesen 156). The discoveries she makes that night encourage her to leave the castle and to turn to her godmother. Previous to her departure, she enters her sleeping uncle’s bedroom. On looking at what she believed to be “a minister of truth, an arbiter of taste,” she comes to realise that there is no longer any reason for her to fear him since she was “a hundred times as strong as he” (157). Remarkably, she is not inclined to resent Count August – she does not regard herself “a freed slave, but a conqueror with a mighty train, who could afford to forget” (157). If she referred to herself as a “freed slave,” she would have to accept having been a “slave” at some point. Yet Calypso renounces the social system that governs Angelshorn – a system that first rendered her “neither a boy nor a girl” and after puberty invisible – and refuses to make use of terminology that would locate her within this system. As a figure rendered invisible, she ceased belonging to the centre of the exclusively male society long ago and only led an existence on its periphery. Earlier that night, she had hoped that by mutilating her body she would be accepted into her uncle’s exclusive circle again. However, the discovery she makes in front of the mirror changes her mind – she no longer aspires to be part of Angelshorn, nor does she seek any other, alternative centre of meaning beyond the realisation of her own imperial indifference. This scene shows that it is not only Miss Malin who remains indifferent to society’s expectations but that Calypso also gradually learns to distance herself from the society she moves in, to turn away from it not as a “freed slave” but with the indifference of “a conqueror with a mighty train, who could afford to forget.” The indifference an eccentric holds for his or her surroundings is not governed by the nature of the society in which he or she moves but is an intrinsic feature of establishing a position one may once again phrase in the words of Miss Malin: neither the one nor the other of anything.