«The Nevending Story as an Alchemical Piece of Work»

Abstract

“It’s called the Neverending Story,” said Bastian. “It’s bound in copper-coloured silk that shimmers when you move it around. There are two snakes on the cover, a light one and a dark one, and they’re biting each other’s tails. Inside it’s printed in two different colours—and there are big beautiful capitals at the beginning of the chapters.” (Ende, 1982: 416)

What is The Neverending Story? A Fantasy novel? A children’s book? Over the decades, the studies of renowned specialists have cleared the way for many different levels of interpretation of this piece of work, which has shown itself to be much more complex regarding its meaning than it might appear at first glance. With specific attention to its polyphonic value and while following the path of these studies that have discerned an esoteric significance in the literary work, observing it from an interpretive perspective through its principle symbolical elements, this article conducts a structural and semantic analysis of the comparative character which concludes that The Neverending Story is an elaborate discourse on spiritual alchemy and Hermetic philosophy.