The Fisherman

Throughout The Fisherman, several male characters embrace a similar path of occult knowledge, compelled to challenge the natural laws of the universe. While some, like Dan and the Fisherman, try to bring lost loved ones back to life, others, like the academically oriented Rainer Schmidt, seek forbidden knowledge for its own sake. As the protagonist and hero of the story-within-a-story that Howard relates to Dan and Abe, Rainer first begins his career as a scholar of traditional knowledge—namely languages, of which he knows more than half a dozen. However, his early success in this field, combined with his rivalry with a brilliant colleague named Wilhelm Vanderwort, feeds his ambition, goading him to seek out new areas of knowledge despite the risks involved. As a result, he delves into the topic of prehistoric languages, “the tongues that lay before the beginning (183), soon discovering two extremely rare books whose dire linguistic knowledge is “woven into everything” (185) in existence. In short, the language the books record is essentially magical, since speaking its words conjures changes in the physical universe, such as the creation of darkness or light. Rainer and Wilhelm, whose ambitions had been only to achieve a “limited fame” within their profession, now find themselves on the cusp of almost divine power.