Anima Rising

On Judith’s next session, Baumann tells them that Jung is gone and gives them a letter. Jung writes that he and Freud had a disagreement over Judith’s treatment, and Freud revoked permission for Jung’s use his office. Jung asks Judith to come see him in Basel, Switzerland, and to have Klimt pay for it.

Wally finds Egon drawing two other women from their apartment block, which hurts her. Egon refers to Klimt as a genius of the past. Wally rushes to Klimt’s studio. Judith tells Klimt about Jung’s offer and his disagreement with Freud. She reveals another reason Freud now refuses to allow Jung to use his office: Geoff vomited a half-digested baby walrus onto the carpet. Klimt struggles to understand how Geoff could eat an entire walrus. Wally interrupts and runs to Judith for comfort over Egon’s betrayal. Klimt agrees to pay for Judith’s trip if she poses for the portrait’s preliminary sketches.

Judith reports that after she left Freud’s office, she visited Walton and agreed to give him regular blood transfusions. However, she refuses to live in an English estate or feel owned by him. She also demanded he stop following her. In response to her demand for independence, Walton insulted her, calling her low class. Judith threatened to kill him and shot one of his minions in the leg, promising to return in a week.

Judith departs for Basel after a week of posing for Klimt. He ensures she has enough money and promises to look after Wally. After Judith leaves, Commandant Kruger appears and demands the truth from Klimt.

Judith travels by train to Basel. Diderot, Jung’s graduate assistant, greets her, shows her to her flat, and returns the next morning to escort her to Jung’s office. Jung has concluded that Akhlut’s physical presence in Geoff proves his theory of collective subconscious. Judith doesn’t know if Sedna and Raven manifest physically in the world, but Raven is a shapeshifter and could be anywhere. Jung asks if Judith is shapeshifter. She suddenly recalls transforming into a bird with sharp wings like Raven during her encounter with Thiessen; when she tried to fly, she ripped his head off.

Ethically, Jung must report Judith for murder, but that would mean admitting that he believes her memories are real, which nearly made Freud diagnose him as neurotic and ruined their professional relationship. Jung decides to ignore his legal obligation and continue uncovering her past. Jung asks about loneliness, but Judith only feels alone when Sedna and Raven are quiet in her mind. Diderot interrupts their session to deliver a telegram from Klimt that warns Judith to stay away from Vienna: Kruger knows the truth about Thiessen’s death. Judith goes outside to find Geoff missing, lured away with pastries. She and Diderot search for him together.

Diderot and Judith search until midnight. After Diderot gives up and leaves, men including Walton attack Judith and try to capture her in a net. Then, another group of men intervenes. A short man shoots Walton in the heart and commands his servants to take him home, as he’ll wake up healthy. The short man calls Judith by her real name: Elspeth Lindsey, daughter of James and Elizabeth, born in 1779 in Northumberland. She and her brother James were entertainers, and Adam murdered them in 1799. The short man introduces himself as Waggis, Victor Frankenstein’s assistant, who has always loved her.

As Waggis and Judith ride in his carriage, Waggis shares his story. He injected himself with Judith’s blood while she was catatonic in Victor’s Scottish manor. He felt close to Judith, talking with her like a friend despite her catatonia. Waggis has died twice, one at the hands of violent villagers who distrusted the lightning he produced in the laboratory, and once by suicide, overcome by grief at losing Judith. Dying keeps Waggis and Judith young; Walton has aged because he hasn’t ever died. Walton will wake up from the gunshot healthy and immortal, but old. After learning that Walton found Judith and sent Thiessen after her, Waggis hired Van Beek to find her first, but an intermediary in Amsterdam scrambled the message and led Van Beek to use violence. Waggis promises Walton won’t be a problem, as immortality is his only goal.

Judith tells Waggis about the Underworld, Raven, and Sedna. She thinks she can transform and move between the Underworld and the Above like Geoff. Suddenly, Judith transforms into her bird form. Raven assures her that she can fly. Judith suggests strangling Waggis to death so that he can visit the Underworld with her.

Wally receives a telegram from Judith promising that Judith is safe. Wally continues her relationship with Egon for three years, waitressing at Emilie’s café in the mornings and modeling in the afternoons. During WWI, Egon travels and shows his art. He gets engaged to model Edith Harms, but makes her sign a contract that he can go on vacation for two weeks a year with Wally. Heartbroken, Wally moves out and studies to become a nurse.

Meanwhile, Alma Mahler marries Gropius and bears him a daughter before leaving him for Oskar, who dies in the war.

Wally struggles to make ends meet, so she asks to model for Klimt again. He paints her in the evenings after her classes. After finishing school, Wally travels to Dalmatia to serve as a war nurse. She contracts scarlet fever and nearly dies in a war tent. Judith arrives, injects Wally with her blood, and smothers her with a pillow, granting Wally immortality.

Egon marries Edith and goes to war but never sees combat. Emilie and Klimt never marry; Klimt has two more children with Ella. Klimt, Egon, and Edith all die during the Great Influenza pandemic in 1918.

Klimt sees Judith after he dies and enters the Underworld. Judith explains that she can go back and forth from the Underworld to the Above. Although usually, people mix into a combined consciousness before reincarnating into a new body, Klimt will remain himself in the Underworld as a Squirrel Person: Because of the kindness he showed her, Judith has advocated for him. Klimt notes Judith’s feathers, which appeared in the portrait he painted of her. Judith says goodbye to Klimt.

Moore discusses the historical background for the novel. He visited Vienna in 2015 and found the city fascinating. Pre-WWI Vienna was home to many famous and influential men; as Moore researched them, he found a number of “extraordinary” women, too (369). He chose 1911 because this was the year when Mahler died, Klimt introduced Wally to Egon, and Freud and Jung ended their friendship. Moore clarifies the difference between historical reality and his alternative version of history: Most of the characters are based on real people, but the dialogue and character interactions are inventions.

Moore addresses Klimt’s relationships with women. Klimt frequently painted models nude and had sex with his sketch models. Moore places this behavior in historical context. There were few job options for working class women in early 20th century Vienna, so modeling for Klimt may have been an “opportunity” to avoid the more common resort of sex work (372). None of Klimt’s contemporaries criticized him for his sexual practices. Klimt paid his models fairly and occasionally helped them with rent. The age of sexual consent in Vienna in 1911 was 14; Ella Huber was 15 when she became pregnant with her first child with Klimt. Klimt fathered between eight and 13 children, and he provided for eight of them in his will.

Emilie and Klimt’s relationship resembled Moore depiction: They had a close friendship and sexual relationship, though they never married. Klimt and Wally’s connection likewise is drawn from history: Klimt introduced Wally to Egon and painted one portrait of Wally after she began nursing school, though Moore imagines it as a favor. Wally and Egon’s relationship also follows historical record, though little is known about Wally outside of her links to men. To make Wally unique, Moor decided to “portray her as resilient, clever, loving, courageous, resourceful, and funny” and turn the novel into “Wally’s book” (x) by imagining episodes like Wally trying to break Egon out of jail in Krumau. Alma Mahler’s life in the novel follows reality, but Moore compresses the timelines, making Oskar Kokoschka commission the doll in 1911; actually, this happened in 1918, when he returned from war after being presumed dead.

Moore draws on Inuit, Haida, and Tlingit mythology in his construction of Raven, Sedna, Akhlut, and the Underworld, though he takes significant creative liberties with the characters and afterlife system. Judith’s four deaths are a tribute to a Crow Shaman Moore once met, who claimed to have died four times, learning all languages after his fourth death.

Moore constructs Freud and Jung’s relationship from a collection of letters dating 1907-1912. The letters describe their friendship ending over Freud’s unwillingness to acknowledge the supernatural and him diagnosing Jung with neuroses. Freud also believed all of women’s mental disorders stemmed from sexual trauma, which Jung disagreed with. Jung didn’t publish his theory of collective subconscious until the 1920s, but Moore moves it up to 1911. Hitler’s brief appearance is factual: Hitler lived in Vienna in 1911 and was a contemporary of Egon, though Moore isn’t sure if he ever met Egon or Klimt in reality.

Moore also borrows characters from Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, imagining that the bride of the creature survived instead of being torn to pieces by Victor Frankenstein. The Great War, or World War I, only appears at the end of the novel because Moore chose to “treat it more like a bus of noisy tourists” driving by the narrative (x).