“Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'someone,' like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind!
“He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must pity the Opera ghost...”
These were the words with which Christine Daae, the heroine of Gaston Leroux’s novel The Phantom of the Opera, described the horrible opera ghost to her lover and childhood friend, Raoul.
But was the apparition with a death’s-head that dwelt in the cellar of the 1909 novel’s Paris Opera House and had the power to appear and disappear from any place in a matter of seconds even a ghost?
This “ghost” was made of flesh and blood. He was a great trickster who extorted great amounts of money from the opera management by passing himself off as a supernatural being.
He was a highly skilled and intelligent craftsman and a musical genius who had served in the courts of Ottoman and Iranian kings and royalties and had made for them contraptions that no one had ever thought about. But now he dwelt in the cellars of the huge opera house.
This evil, murderous and criminal minded specter, however, had a weakness – a weakness that he was himself unaware of. His weakness was his heart which was still capable of love, a heart that was nurturing tender emotions in its secret recesses.
The phantom, Erik, fell in love with the beautiful opera singer, Christine, who in turn loved Raoul. Erik, however, managed to befriend Christine by using his great musical skills.
But those who truly knew Erik were horrified.
Such people might feel pity for him but they couldn’t bear to see his ugly face.
Even Persian Daroga– the only character in the novel who knew Erik from his early days and who had once even saved his life – talked about him in a voice filled with both pity and fear.
Erik, while presenting himself as the Angel of Music once took Christine to his den in the depths of the opera. When she returned she shuddered at the mere mention of Erik and his underground world.
One day when Raoul spoke to her about the “strange stories” told of the lower part of the opera house and suggested that they should also “go down” Christine had caught him in her arms, as though she feared to see him disappear down a black hole
"Never! I will not have you go there! Besides, it's not mine...EVERYTHING THAT IS UNDERGROUND BELONGS TO HIM!” she had whispered in a trembling voice.
Here it becomes difficult to tell if the conversation between Christine and Raoul should be interpreted in the particular context of that sensational story or should the opera house be viewed as a metaphor for the human mind with its seven underground floors as a representation of the layers of the unconscious.
Gaston Leroux’s novel – when read in the light of the psychoanalytic theories presented by Sigmund Freud – presents a world of meaning.
Earlier, Freud – who was Leroux’s contemporary – postulated that there were two types of instincts – one of them were self-centered and the other one were selfless. The psychologist later evolved his theory and named one set of instincts, the Life Instinct and the other set of instincts, the Death Instinct.
Freud said both these instincts remain hidden somewhere in the unconscious and most of their demands are unacceptable both for the Ego and SuperEgo, the two remaining structures of personality.
Remember that Leroux’s anti-hero Erik is hideous and even people who sympathize with him can’t look at his face. According to Freud, the unconscious instinctual desires are also hideous in their original form and unacceptable for the conscious mind.
When Erik goes out, he hides his face behind a mask. The unconscious desires also hide behind veils when they venture into consciousness.
Erik represents the Death Instinct but he is truly in love with Christine. This love kindles the desire in his heart to come out from the depths of his cellar and live a common life.
He tells Christine: “I can't go on living like this, like a mole in a burrow! Don Juan Triumphant is finished; and now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a wife like everybody else and to take her out on Sundays. I have invented a mask that makes me look like anybody.
“People will not even turn around in the streets. You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. You are crying! You are afraid of me!
“And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! All I wanted was to be loved for myself. If you loved me I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased."
This is the point where Gaston Leroux even transcends Sigmund Freud. He reconciles the two divergent instincts of Freud and tells us that the Life Instinct is the only instinct and that the Death Instinct is nothing but a misguided form of the Life Instinct.
The novelist tells us that love is the only reality. When love is not reciprocated by love, the Life Instinct creates its own antithesis. All negativity, mischief, hatred and evil are born from a lack of love.
When Erik comes to meet Persian Daroga for the last time, Daroga is apprehensive about Christine and Raoul, whom Erik had taken hostage at one point in the story. He knows about Erik’s ruthlessness and power and fears that he might have killed them both.
But when Erik came to his house, the Daroga found an emaciated man so weak that had to lean against the wall for support. Erik tells Daroga that he is dying.
"I am going to die. Of love...Daroga...I am dying...of love...That is how it is.... loved her so!...And I love her still...Daroga...and I am dying of love for her, I...I tell you!...If you knew how beautiful she was... when she let me kiss her...alive...It was the first...time, Daroga, the first...time I ever kissed a woman.... Yes, alive....I kissed her alive ...and she looked as beautiful as if she had been dead!”
Erik tells Daroga that even his mother was so appalled by his ugliness that she never allowed him to kiss her. “My mother, Daroga, my poor, unhappy mother would never ...let me kiss her....She used to run away...and throw me my mask [but Christine let me kiss her] on her forehead... and she did not draw back her forehead from my lips!”
Here Erik once again reminds us of Freud. This was not Erik kissing Christine. This was the kiss of death on the forehead of life. But what happens when death kisses life? This one kiss wipes out all his hatred. The horrible ghost fell to his knees, crying and freed both Christine and Raoul.
Erik, the phantom, epitomized the Death Instinct.
However, Gaston Leroux tells us that this Death Instinct was born out of a lack of motherly love and it “died” after its first encounter with love. When the Death Instinct kisses the Life Instinct, death dies and life lives on. Erik will die but his love will live on as love doesn’t die.
The Phantom of the Opera shows that love has the power to annihilate the formidable ghost of hatred.
Mir has rightly said: Muhabbat Nay Karah Hay Zulmat Say Noor; Na Hoti Mohabbat Na Hota Zahoor
Love has created light out of darkness; if there were no love, there would be no universe
Mind and metaphor of a building
Some writers have used the metaphor of a building to describe the human mind. Freud also uses the term “structures” to refer to the three components of human personality, the Id, the Ego and SuperEgo.
The first floor or structure of that building is called the Id, which represents irrational unconscious desires while the third floor, the SuperEgo, represents the moral voice or conscience of that individual.
The middle or the second floor is occupied by the manager, the Ego, which tries to fulfill the desires coming from the depths of the first floor while keeping in mind the outer realities and the moral edicts issued by the conscience sitting on the top floor.
Interestingly, in The Phantom of the Opera, the ghost constantly sends its instructions to the manager of the opera house. However, the most mysterious and greatly unknown part of the man’s mind is the first floor, where the headquarters of both “the Life Instinct” and “the Death Instinct” are located.
These instincts constantly fight to dominate over the second and the floor floors.
In traditional metaphysics, the man is a still more complex reality. It consists of the body, the mind [Nafs] and the spirit [Roh], with the latter two parts each having seven different levels.
If we were to make a graphic description of this concept, we could show it in the shape of a multi-story building with 14 floors over the and above the material foundation of the man’s physical reality.
Interestingly, one of the most complex concepts of man that any modern psychologist has so far proposed is that of Freud. This model, however, is way too simple when compared with the traditional concept of man.
The phantom’s progeny
While The Phantom of the Opera has been adapted into various films in the past 100 years, its anti-hero Erik seems to be an inspiration behind a number of comic and fictional characters including “V”, the hero of Alan Moore’s 1982 graphic novel “V for Vendetta” as well as DC’s masked man, the Batman.
Bollywood has also taken inspiration from The Phantom of the Opera in movies such as Shah Rukh Khan’s 1993 movies Darr and Baazigar, Nana Patekar’s 1998 movie Wajood and Aamir Khan’s 2013 movie Dhoom 3.
Even the protagonist of Daldal, one of the PTV’s series from the mid-1990's, seems to be a version of Erik because of its dark energy, criminality, skillfulness, creativity and resourcefulness.