The optical phenomenon known as Fata Morgana can appear in all kinds of landscapes, like the desert, the sea or even as a flickering image above a street. For a Fata Morgana to be visible, cold air must be “trapped” close to the earth's surface, that is, held down by warmer air (or the other way around, both are possible). An optical tunnel is created between this cold air and the warm air further up.1 The atmosphere must be stable so that this optical tunnel can form and a mirage appears. Only a stable – that is, unchanging – atmosphere leads to the mirage. The stable,unchanging atmosphere is the result of a capture. The cold air must be held in place, pressed downwards. The idea of a stable, unchanging territory must also be brought about by force – otherwise the territory dissolves, reveals its fragility. An unchanging territory is an act of violence.
A Fata Morgana is not a concrete territory for which one can fight. As a mirage, it rejects ideas of possession, control and defense. The moment you think you can reach it, it dissolves. As a castle in the air, it describes wishes that will not come true, fantasies. The Fata Morgana is never concrete. It is a figure of the intangible and obscure. In the strait near Messina in Italy, between Reggio Calabria and Sicily, you can see a Fata Morgana on the sea on calm, warm summer mornings. It is one of the most famous places to observe the phenomenon, although you have to be very lucky here too. Its name goes back to Morgain Le Fay, a mystical fairy from Celtic, Norman and Breton tales, a witch or goddess, perhaps the sister of King Arthur, Queen of the Dead, ruler of the isle of Avalon. Legend has it that Morgain carried the wounded King Arthur over the sea to Avalon. Avalon is supposed to be covered by apple trees, and it is imagined as an earthly paradise, one that is unreachable for humans, always postponed, always unrealized. The Normans must have seen the Fata Morgana in the Strait of Messina during their Italian military expeditions in the 11th century and associated it with Avalon – that unreachable island they knew from Arthurian legend, that unreachable island of Morgain le Fay. Her name was translated into Italian: the fairy Morgain became the Fata Morgana.
The photograph shows a view from the Botanical Gardens in Hamburg. There are two glass pyramids in the shape of sails, in whose facade the passing clouds are reflected several times. Their sail shape refers to ships and the sea. But they also remind me of a hill near Glastonbury, which is claimed to be the remains of the isle of Avalon. At the time I took the photo, the pyramids were empty and thus stood like a Fata Morgana in the botanical garden as a reference to something that lies unreachable in another place.
Arthurian legend scholar Roger Sherman Loomis summarizes the many different attributions and ambiguities that can be found in the historical sources on Morgain as follows: “Morgain may be the most beautiful of nine sister fays, or an ugly crone. She may be Arthur's tender nurse in the island valley of Avilion, or his treacherous foe. She may be a virgin, or a Venus of lust. In her infinite variety she enthralled the fancy of the Middle Ages, and has lived on to our day not only in literature but also in folklore.”2 Medievalist Lucy Allen Paton writes that Morgain “is beautiful, has the power of shape-shifting, and understands the healing art, all of which attributes belong directly to her fairy kind; but of the true other-world fay it could not be said that she had learned mathematics, i.e., astrology”3 – hinting at the narrative contradictions inscribed in the myth. If you leaf through the 1000-page Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker, you will find dozens of references – which are often to be classified more as assertions and mostly presented without sources – to the transcultural and transgeographical entanglements of the myth of the fairy Morgana. These lead to Ireland, France, Italy, China, Egypt and Greece, among other places. The origin of the myth remains unclear, even if the association of Morgain le Fay with the Arthurian legend is the dominant tradition. Morgain thus exemplifies the transculturality of myths and other community-building narratives, precisely because ambiguities, fantastic attributions and countless cross-references are not only openly visible here, but are an inherent part of the narrative. Read in this way, the myth of Morgain has its own questioning as its theme. The dramaturgy of the story is complete in the metamorphosis into a mirage/Fata Morgana, in which it is revealed that what was assumed to be in a certain place turns out to be a deception. In the following, I will work on two interpretations: 1) the Fata Morgana as (anti-)territorial poetics; 2) Morgain le Fay as a transcultural myth. The two are connected: together, Fata Morgana and Morgain le Fay form, so the thesis, a possible figure of thought for an awareness of the transgeographical and transcultural links between landscape and identity (constructed through myths, epics and other community-building narratives) and thus a counter-model to a belief in monolithic origins. More concretely, they form a figure of thought for the idea of an unattainable territory and thus the impossibility of inscribing oneself as a community in such a territory.
A Fata Morgana flickering over the sea. The constant shape-shifting becomes visible.
(Video by Brocken Inaglory via Wikimedia Commons.)
Architectural theorist Ulf Jonak rightly points out that, strictly speaking, a Fata Morgana is not an illusion or a confusion of the senses, but a reflection of something that actually exists. He goes on to explain that illusionary “is, however, the place where it [the Fata Morgana] appears to be. I perceive what is actually somewhere – in an unknown but deceptively displaced place.”4 More than a utopia, in the sense of a non-place, the Fata Morgana is thus to be thought of as an atopia. “Atopic literally refers to that which is not in its intended place, […] that which is dis-located as well as that which is not in the locatable paths and therefore shows itself unconventionally.”5 The Fata Morgana is this dis-located place. Like Hakim Bey’s Temporary Autonomous Zone, it appears and disappears again; it points to a possibility without finally or conclusively realizing itself; it enables a fleeting coming together without actually locating oneself – and thus could also be thought of as a brieftopia. It shows something that is there, but at the same time does not show where it is. It multiplies and makes ambiguous. The manifesto Atopische Politische Bildung*en | Wie wir Werden states: “In the atopic, we will be in several places at the same time.”6 Or perhaps the places will be in several places at the same time. The cultural scientist Joseph Vogl describes communities from an atopian perspective as “temporary, ephemeral, and also strategic alliances that are not oriented toward completing the communal substance.”7 The Fata Morgana is the territory of this type of community, which never materializes (and is therefore not a territory in the sense mentioned in the Intro). With Vogl, the Fata Morgana can then be thought of as completely political: for him, the political is connected to the atopic and consequently always emerges “where de-localization occurs within specific, determinable, observable localizations.”8 In other words, the political always takes place “when something is not in the place it belongs,”9 that is, whenever a difference becomes clear and certainties of meaning are broken.
1 Beech, Martin. 2012. The Physics of Invisibility. A Story of Light and Deception. New York: Springer. P. 73.
2 Loomis, Roger S. 1945. “Morgain La Fee and the Celtic Goddesses.” In: Speculum, Vol. 20, No. 2 (April, 1945). P. 183.
3 Paton, Lucy Allen. 1903. Studies in the Fairy Mythology of Arthurian Romance. Boston: Ginn and Company. P. 43.
4 Jonak, Ulf. 2015. Architekturwahrnehmung. Sehen und Begreifen. Wiesbaden: Springer. P. 119.
5 Sabisch, Petra. 2022. “Relevante Praktiken der Gegenwart mit lückenhafter Infrastruktur. Ein Kommentar zu G. Maria Soltros Atopischem Manifest.” In: Friedrichs, Werner (Ed.). 2022. Atopien im Politischen . Politische Bildung nach dem Ende der Zukunft. Bielefeld: transcript. P. 206.
6 Soltro, G. Maria. 2022. “Atopische Politische Bildung*en | Wie wir Werden.” In: Friedrichs, Werner (Ed.). 2022. Atopien im Politischen . Politische Bildung nach dem Ende der Zukunft. Bielefeld: transcript. P. 185.
7 Vogl, Joseph. 2003. “De-totalized Forms of Encounter.” In: Clemens, Oliver/ Fezer, Jesko/ Förster, Kim/ Hagemann, Anke/ Horlitz, Sabine/ Kühnast, Sabine/ Müller, Andreas (Hg.). 2003. An Architektur Nr. 10. Gemeinschaftsräume. Berlin: An Architektur. P. 5. Translated by Matthew Gaskins.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Fitzhugh Talman, Charles. 1912. “The Real Fata Morgana. What Is Known Today About the Famous Phantoms of the Calabrian Coast.” In: Scientific American, April 13, 1912. P. 346.
a condition that frequently precedes the Fata Morgana. Ribaud* describes the mist as becoming “clear” and “crystalline,” and then appeared multiplied and rapidly changing images of palaces, towers, arches, trees, and finally, mingled with them, ships, which were undoubtedly those lying at anchor in the harbor of Messina.”10